Rei Ayanami: Tentative Name Guide & Review

We decided to make the foreword for this guide an interesting fact about Rei’s unique name! Rei Ayanami: (Tentative Name) is one heck of a name given by Shift Up, isn’t it? A few people here might be wondering why Shift Up decided to name her as such. Be assured, this is not a mistake or an oversight. The real reason is that in the Rebuild Series of Evangelion, this Rei Ayanami was not actually the real one. She was merely a clone, and her real name is actually “Ayanami-Type No.006”. She was given the name of Rei Ayanami only because she resembled the real Rei. Hence, it is a name without any meaning to her, given to her just because she looks like the real Rei Ayanami. On to the review!

Can you give a brief summary about this unit?

Rei Ayanami: (Tentative Name), who we will call Rei 2.0 from now on, is a very simple unit to understand. She has gimmicks here and there, but all in all she is your average element-based raid DPS who will shine brightly against Iron bosses (since Iron is weak to Wind). However, Rei 2.0’s role is not quite restricted to just being a DPS for Wind Weak Bosses. This is because not only is she quite decent in Campaign, she is also a very decent unit for PvP. She is also not just a pure DPS for Raids, but also buffs allies in her team with minor buffs and unique synergies with MG units that burst. The best synergy she has is with Asuka: Wille, who does not particularly require her to work but does appreciate the buffs Rei 2.0 provides her with. This synergy section is talked about in detail in the guide, but we will tell you this much. Contrary to people who have been saying that Asuka needs Rei, it is actually Rei Ayanami: (Tentative Name) who needs Asuka: Wille to deal DPS, and not the other way around!

As a DPS, she is a unit very similar to our very own Scarlet 1.0, but is probably best compared to the unit she is the clone of: Rei Ayanami (from EVA 1.0). Rei 2.0 can deal decent damage from her normal attacks and skills during her own burst. Unlike drunk Scarlet or Rei 1.0, Rei 2.0 does not buff herself a lot when it is not her own burst, hence she is not a good off-burst unit. This is something Rei 1.0 and Scarlet have an edge in.

Rei 2.0’s flexibility and usability in other game modes makes use of her Nuke in her Burst. Her personal DPS mostly gets a decent boost when it is her own burst, which also happens to buff her nuke! This buff to her nuke makes her the 2nd highest nuke for PvP, only behind Cinderella. This nuke is also a powerful screen clear ability for Campaign since it is an instant screen clear, making her the 3rd usable instant screen clear unit. Scarlet 1.0 for Electric, Rei 1.0 for fire, and now Rei 2.0 for Wind. Iron and Water await their high damage instant AoE!

Should I get this unit?

If you have Asuka: WILLE or are planning to get her, then the answer is a resounding YES. However, if you are skipping Asuka: WILLE, then it’s probably a no and a relatively easy skip since Rei’s best use is alongside Asuka 2.0. Asuka 2.0 is a much worthier investment even when alone, so your order should be Asuka: Wille first, and only then think about Rei 2.0. However, despite Rei's lower priority, she has a better value proposition for PvP-ers thanks to her very strong AoE Nuke and low feeding to Jackal.

To add, EVA 2 units are unlikely to be replaced soon in Raids. We don't have many good Wind DPS units at the moment, and even if we did, the EVA 2s would still be universally good against all elements. Rei, however, is the weaker of the two and might not see much use against neutral elements unless you have a very invested Rei 2.0. Both of them still shine in Bossing and are usable in Campaign and will definitely compete for a spot in one team with SBS. And they're limited—you won't see them return unless they strike another deal with EVA (very unlikely). Even then, it's not guaranteed.

As far as dupes are concerned, we must divide you into 3 categories. Firstly, Competitive. Competitive PvP and Raid players should ideally MLB Rei Ayanami, especially for the upcoming Wind Weak Raid with ‘Massive Object Q’, where she is expected to deal a lot of damage. Secondly, if Rei is your waifu, MLB her for the extremely pretty Lobby screen (they really cooked this time for lobby screens!). If you do not fall within these categories, one copy is absolutely fine. She does her job well even with one copy, so you do not need to worry about getting dupes of her overall. Her impact is also relatively lower compared to Asuka: Wille. If you plan to get dupes, Asuka is a higher priority.

What about Golden Mileage? Well, if you already have Asuka and somehow are unable to get Rei from pulls, then consider ticketing her instead. We know tickets should be saved for 1% Pilgrim banners, but you definitely don't want to end up not having Rei at the end of the event since she will NOT come back! Maybe save up and see whether you can squeeze out a bit more gems before the event ends. Definitely save for half anniversary pilgrim after the collab ends if you do not have Golden Mileage left for half anniversary!

Rei’s kit is not that hard to explain so we will try to keep it as simple as possible. There are only a couple of gimmicks she does that we need to be wary of. Rei’s base weapon damage is towards the weaker side when compared to other Meta DPS, with only 14.71% of ATK as damage. Units like Asuka (18.76%), Scarlet (27.08%), Grave (17.91%) have higher base weapon multipliers than her. Units like Snow White and Brid have similar multipliers as ReiTN, which is not a great start.

Rei’s reload time is also 1.5s, which is .5s more than the expected 1s reload time. This makes Max Ammo lines on her OL gear more important, since her DPS depends on how many bullets she fires, as we will read now in her Skills.

Annihilation Support

■ Activates after landing 18 normal attack(s). Affects the target when the target is in Anti A.T. Field status.

Deals 590. 64% of final ATK as additional damage.

Stack count of Anti A.T. Field ▲ 10.

■ Activates after landing 7 normal attack(s) when self is in Attack State status. Affects the target(s).

Deals 286.37% of final ATK as additional damage.

■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies in Annihilation State status.

Units affected by Annihilation State's additional effect ▲ 1 for 9 sec.

Attack range of Annihilation State's additional effect ▲ 500% for 9 sec.

ATK ▲ 17.6% of caster's ATK for 9 sec.

This is the bread and butter of her DPS. Let’s go over each of the 3 parts of her Skill 1 one by one.

The first part activates every 18 bullets shot and affects only those units that have Anti AT Field status. This status is only inflicted by Asuka:Wille on enemies, making her a necessity to activate this skill! The 590.64% additional damage can be simplified to 32.813% additional damage dealt per bullet, which is a huge increase to her DPS! As thanks to Asuka allowing Rei to deal this additional damage, Rei increases the stacks of her AT field, allowing this AT field status to reach max stacks much faster (from 5 seconds down to 3 seconds), increasing the value of this buff from 18.675% over 10s to 21.165% over 10s, which in turn increases the team’s damage overall as well. Be vary that Rei does NOT increase the uptime of the buff, just the value of the buff over it’s active period is increased due to faster stacking.

The second part of this skill activates during Attack state, which is Rei’s burst. This 286.37% additional damage can be simplified to 40.91% additional damage per bullet! This increases her DPS significantly as well, since now she is essentially dealing 6 times her base weapon’s damage per bullet! On bosses with low core uptime, this is some serious damage being dealt by Rei 2.0!

The third part of her skill 1 is meant only and only for Asuka: Wille. This skill increases the targets affected by Asuka’s “Annihilation State's additional effect” from 2 raptures to 3 raptures. (Note: does NOT increase uptime of this skill). This specific part is only relevant for Campaign, and does not matter for bossing. What does matter everywhere is that she turns the additional damage dealt by Asuka’s skill into an AoE by increasing the explosion radius of this additional damage. She also buffs Asuka’s ATK by 17.6% of Caster’s ATK, which is where investments and dupes into Rei can come handy, which is quite a decent buff to her overall DPS output every time Asuka is in her burst. A wordy skill, but a very useful one for Rei.

Maintenance and Resupply

■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies with a Machine Gun, who have used their Burst Skills.

MG heating up speed ▲ 100% for 13 sec.

■ Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all allies.

ATK ▲ 11.61% of caster's ATK for 10 sec.

Another 2 part skill. Firstly, if any other Machine Gun bursts in the current burst rotation, ReiTN halves the wind up of their gun. This means that if an MG unit stops shooting for some reason, to reload or to take cover, Rei will allow them to start shooting again at max wind up speed much faster than usual. This is a useful skill for MG units since winding up causes severe DPS loss, and is a major reason why Max Ammo and Reload Speed is highly appreciated by MG units. There is only one unit who’s wind-up is not halved, but is instead returned to normal, and that’s Asuka: WIlle. This skill is part of the synergy between Asuka and Rei. Do keep in mind that this skill is not entirely super strong as initially thought it would be.

The second part of this skill is a Caster’s ATK buff to all allies, which activates every burst rotation.

Attack State

■ Affects self.

Attack State:

Attack Damage ▲ 35.9% for 10 sec.

ATK ▲ 63.36% of caster's ATK for 10 sec.

■ Affects all enemies.

Deals 990.2% of final ATK as Burst Skill damage.

The first part of her burst is her Attack State, in which she buffs herself with ATK and Attack Damage buffs. These buffs then further increase the damage in the second part of her skill, which is a high damage nuke. For PvP, these buffs are very important. With both the buffs and the Nuke being in the same skill, the damage ramps up hard for each level upgraded. Hence, there is a big difference when Rei 2.0’s burst is lvl7 and when it is lvl10. In PvP, it can be the difference between a win and a loss.

Campaign (LD) - SS | Campaign (HD) - SS

Rei’s job in Campaign is that of a DPS unit that can instantly clear screens. We already have a unit that does that for wind - Scarlet: Black Shadow, but SBS is not a screen clear in the High Deficit campaign. She needs to activate her Skill 1 multiple times in order to finally kill all of the units on the screen, and her effectiveness is reduced if there are a lot of units on the screen. ReiTN, alternatively, thrives when there are a ton of units present since she can kill a huge amount of squishy raptures at once with her nuke. This is her major role in Campaign. During her burst, she can deal a high amount of damage with her weapon as well. If paired alongside Asuka: Wille, she can allow her to deal AoE additional damage procs, and also increases the units that have Damage Taken Debuff from 2 to 3, while also allowing the debuff to get max stacks in just 3 seconds.

Rei’s AoE is very similar to that of drunk Scarlet, who has been used throughout Nikke’s campaign time and time again on stages that need an instant wipe when there's too many units present that can one shot you. In the new element focused meta, Rei 2.0 is now here to do that for Wind weak stages, which will be her major strength and use!

Bossing - S

Raids are pretty much the endgame of Nikke right now, and Rei’s rating is floating around SS tier and S tier as far as we are concerned.

Rei is a strong wind DPS, that is already a given. Around S.Sakura tier of DPS. She can stage 9 Kraken in Anomaly Interception alongside Asuka:Wille, making one of the best Kraken teams being AsukaW+ReiTN together! SBS + Alice and Asuka + Rei also form a very solid team structure for Union Raids, where in the new Hard Mode we have to hit Wind Weak bosses with multiple attacks sometimes. Wind is the first element to have 2 super teams for Union Raid.

However, Rei 2.0 does more than just deal damage. Her synergy with Asuka:Wille, an SSS tier DPS by our standards, is something that can allow her to stand out even against neutral elements! She provides Asuka with roughly a 15~20% damage buff overall, varying slightly depending on investments and team. It is true however that it may be more fruitful to use element based DPS, if any are left to fill slots, over ReiTN. The 15~20% damage buff and Rei’s personal DPS can be covered by elemental damage OL if the DPS is anywhere around Rei’s damage quite easily. And we can assure you that reaching Rei’s DPS is not outlandish by today's standards. Hence why we rated her S tier, since we feel that Rei’s use is strongly concerned with Wind Weak bosses only.

The best chance Rei has of being used on non Wind element bosses is if the boss does not have a core, or has low core uptime. This reduces the usability of a lot of DPS, and is a situation where both AsukaW and ReiTN excel in and can be used effectively in. Otherwise, there is not much hope for Rei outside of the Wind element.

PVP - SS

Nuke and win, that’s all the PvP Rei is concerned about. Her high damage nuke is the second highest nuke in terms of value, only behind our beautiful Cinderella, and only requires one buffer to kill an Attacker unit. With a double buff, you are possibly guaranteed a wipeout unless Max HP buffers, Noah, Bay or collection items have something to say about it.

Rei’s burst gen is not anything special however, and she is hence forced to be in teams similar to those used for units like Cinderella, 2B, Maid Privaty, Ein Quency: Escape Queen, or Scarlet. Scarlet’s reflect ability from her skill 2 and Cinderella’s higher damage nuke does mean that they are better units and have more flexibility in team-building. Otherwise, ReiTN should have an easy time fitting into general nuke teams. She is also a Wind unit, which means she can try to snipe off units like Red Hood, Jackal, or Centi - who are common Iron units used in PvP. Some big names here that she can target.

Gear Investments

Rei gets the average DPS treatment. Elemental Damage, ATK and some Ammo can help her deal decent damage. Her OL gear breakdown is as follows:

• Essential: -
• Ideal: 4× ELE, 4× ATK, 2-4× Ammo
• Passable: 2× Crit Damage, 2× Crit Rate
• Priority: Medium

Skill Investments

• Skill 1: 7~10
• This skill is what matters for Rei’s weapon based DPS. This is where all her additional damage lies. Her ATK buff for Asuka is also in this skill. We recommend getting the skill to 10 as first priority, but keeping it at 7 is also fine.
• Skill 2: 4/7/10
• Third in priority, but still a decent skill to upgrade. We recommend getting this skill to 4 first, and then 7. If you have extra mats, you can get this to 10 eventually, but the damage increase is minimal.
• Burst Skill:7~10
• This skill increases Rei’s personal damage by providing her with ATK and Attack Damage buffs. Hence, it is an important one to upgrade. This is second in priority to upgrade for Rei. For PvP and Campaign, this skill is the top priority skill to upgrade instead since her nuke value and her nuke buffs both scale with this skill.

Suggested Progression Path

 

PVE Investment

PVP Investment

Priority

Rei Ayanami (Tentative Name)

PVE investment

1/1/1 → 7/4/4 → 10/7/7 (→ 10/10/10)

PVP investment

1/1/1 → 4/4/7 → 7/4/10 (→ 10/7/10)

Priority

Medium

Cube Investments

As is common, Resilience cube for reload teams (Crown, Maid Anchor and Maid Mast, Privaty), otherwise use Bastion cube. Destruction cube is the best choice in teams like Crown-Priv or Maid Duo team since reload speed is already so high that we can ignore it. Instead, using Destruction cube to increase damage dealt to parts from her base weapon should be the best way to increase her damage.

Doll Investments

We recommend getting ReiTN to SR5 doll as a start since she is a DPS unit and also provides Caster’s ATK buffs. AR units get a damage increase when hitting core but Rei’s base weapon does not deal a lot of damage to begin with so that effect is kinda useless for her. If you are aiming to get a high rank in Wind Weak Raids, you can choose to increase her doll to SR10 or SR15, but only if you have already upgraded dolls of other meta units since Rei as a DPS is lower priority to upgrade compared to mega DPS like Red Hood, Cinderella, Alice, SBS, AsukaW, RapiRH and so on.

Team #1: Asuka x Rei Team Up Again

Burst 2

Burst 1

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 3

The strongest, yes the strongest, no-core wind comp, featuring 2 EVA units. Liter Crown and Helm are the best supporters if you want to maximise Asuka and Rei’s damage. Since reload is quite irrelevant, you can switch between Grave and Crown depending on the situation (Crown is still GOAT against A.I Kraken though). RapiRH is the best if you are looking for just a single team comp and not for multiple teams. With Rei removing wind-up, Rapi is the staple alongside her even on Raids where multiple teams are required, unless the fire trio of Asuka Rei Mod is in play.

Both Raids or Wind-weak Campaign should fear this team. It can find itself being used outside Wind-weak Raids, but the boss ideally should not have a core for this team to get a solid chance of being used.

Team #2: Rei the Screen Clearing Menace

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

B3

Burst 1

Burst Flex

A team for Wind Weak campaign stages. ReiTN can be used as a screen clear unit, with RH as B1 buffing her damage. The other B3 can be any unit you like here that can deal enough damage or perform the job you want them to do so that you clear the stage.

Team #3: Tornado Bunnies

Burst 1

B1 CDR

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 3

Bunnies in 2025! Well they still have their use, especially in running braindead MG comps. Noir being a Wind unit helps her cause as well. This comp provides a lot of healing amount, a lot of ammo for Asuka to shoot (due to Noir’s + Asuka’s ammo refund). Bread and butter team, use it when you are too lazy to even think. Machine Guns love ammo and make Noir a very happy relevant unit.

Team #4: Maids Ahoy!

Burst 1

B1 CDR

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 3

Burst 2

Mast and Anchor are the 2nd best buffers for non core bosses. They also provide heals, reload speed and burst gen so that Asuka and Rei can have a more lenient time when it comes to OL gear, and can just focus on dealing damage.

Team #1: 3RL Nuke Wombo Combo

Burst 3

Burst 2

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 1

This team has pure stacked power. It allows Rei to deal a devastating blow that can kill off a slow enough enemy team, or an enemy team that is not instantly killing you.

Team #2: 2RL Snipe with Ele

Burst 3

Burst 2

Burst 2

Burst Flex

Burst 1

This team focuses on cleaning units with the help of elemental damage on OL gear. Units like Jackal, Red Hood, Centi, Rapunzel, LaplaceTreasure, Crown or Liter are often seen being used in PvP. A 2RL fast swipe can deal massive damage with the help of elemental damage, and can possibly break the burst chain before the opponent even bursts! xAnne, and especially Blanc, can help ensure that enough damage is dealt after the Burst Nuke that whoever is left alive can be taken care of.