AK12 is a self-buff AR.

As AK12 self-buffs almost all the useful stats for a damage dealer, her overall performance isn’t terrible.

That said, she’s still a generic front-targeting AR so there’s no reason to use her before Modding her. As such, she is not recommended for use pre-Mod.

Note that AK12 buffing Crit Rate multiplicatively means she is much worse at Night (as she still needs a PEQ) and should be using a Focus Chip at Day.

After waiting seemingly forever, AK-12 finally has her neural upgrade. Now that it’s here, I can confidently say… It’s pretty good. Nothing meta defining, but a good AR in the right situation, who can put out some good damage when paired with AN-94 MOD especially.

With her new Skill 2, Alpha’s Instinct, every time one of her attacks crits, she applies a ‘Marked’ stack to the target. This stack reduces the enemies armor and evasion by 1 and also causes them to take 1 more point of damage per attack. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but there is no limit to how many stacks can be applied to any target (outside of stacks simply starting to naturally expire). In addition to this, DEFY members benefit twice from the flat damage taken debuff.

As you can likely surmise, this skill very much points AK-12 towards a single target oriented role. In something like a boss fight, she can solely focus herself on one target and really begin to crank up the marked stacks on the foe. In more general battles against multiple targets, AK-12 won’t get the opportunity to make her stacks actually matter all that much.

This gets even better when you throw AN-94 into the mix. The extra hits that AN-94 will give AK-12 can crit, and when they do, they will also apply a Marked stack. As such, AK-12 applies stacks so much faster with AN-94, that using her without AN-94 is a DPS loss. In addition to this, AK-12 will overcap her Crit Rate during her Skill 1, meaning AN-94 will convert 30% of her Crit Rate into 50% Crit Damage for a substantial personal damage boost.

Her tiles now cover her column as well, which goes along with her buffed Skill 1 which now provides a number of small buffs to allies on her tiles. Unfortunately the tilebuff still doesn’t buff ARs, which is a shame considering it would’ve been a strong Damage and RoF buff.

All in all, AK-12 sets out to do single target well and she does fulfill that role. In a team with AN-94 and Ribeyrolles for example, their output will be similar to that of the SCAR sisters in optimal situations. There are some big caveats: She is extremely expensive, requiring two 6 ☆ upgrades to work well. She is not very good against groups of enemies, due to the constant need to stack debuffs on each new enemy. And she's a front-targeting AR, unable to hit backline.

First, make sure to upgrade AN-94 as well, and second: MOD3 is the overall recommendation. Her Special Equipment is pretty neat, being a stronger Focus Chip and allowing her to basically become near invincible during her Skill 1. Do note though that she cannot get directly buffed while she’s in the invincible period, but buffs that check the tiles, such as Ribeyrolles, will still work. Otherwise, you may need to use AK-12 in manual skill mode if you use this SPEQ in order to ensure she still can gain full benefits from buff.

The stealth from her SPEQ makes her untargetable and will also make her immune to AoE damage. As noted above, this will also make her unable to be buffed by ally skills unless the skill is "tilescan" (ex: RIbeyrolles, K5) and certain other targeted skills.

Note that this also means that enemies can walk past her if she is the last echelon member on the field and uses her skill.