Overview

FAL is a burst DPS grenadier who relies on her three grenades to deal significant AOE damage. Overall, FAL’s excellent combination of quality stats, a great skill, and useful tile buffs makes her an excellent -- if not the best -- pick if a grenadier is desired.

FAL’s Skill, Grenade Salvo, is what separates her apart from the other grenadiers. Because she is able to fire three weaker grenades instead of just one powerful grenade, she can effectively avoid overkill, which is the act of dealing too much damage to a group of enemies and wasting valuable damage or reload time. Because of this quality, her Skill is one of her uniquely powerful tools.

FAL does suffers from a issue common with all AR grenadiers, however -- their Initial Cooldowns are too long for them to make a significant impact in most battles. Overall, while her performance might be below self-buffing ARs like G41, FAL is still a powerful unit who likely will not disappoint.

Full analysis

As one of the first 5 stars many players will receive due to being granted as a bonus when spending money on GFL for the first time, FAL will prove to be a crutch for quite a few beginners. As is common with most grenadiers, FAL excels when fighting hordes of enemies due to her amazing AOE burst damage. While she may seem like an excellent general use AR due to her strong skill, stats, and buff tiles, the impact she brings into most battles, however, is relatively mediocre due to the long Initial Cooldown on her skill.

At max level, FAL has an excellent Damage stat significantly above her class average. Combined with her average RoF, FAL’s remarkable DPS influencing stats put her in a favorable position as an AR. While FAL’s stats already highlight a powerful DPS unit, her merits don’t end there -- as a grenadier, the high Damage stat also influences her total burst damage due to the Damage multiplier from her grenades. Thus, stat-wise, FAL has little to no flaws in her kit and also has stat synergy to boot.

FAL’s Grenade Salvo is arguably the strongest grenade Skill and that is not without good reason. Instead of firing one strong grenade, Grenade Salvo does exactly what its name implies, and causes FAL to launch a salvo of three weaker grenades. This unique aspect is what makes her Skill absurdly strong in comparison to grenadiers. Other grenades may deal absurd amounts of damage in a single blow, but this often hurts their overall damage since they deal more damage to a single foe than they need to. Against hordes of enemies, FAL’s Grenade Salvo has the opportunity to wipe out three large groups of enemies while any normal grenade might just deal an absurd damage just to wipe out one group of enemies.

It is this essence of overkill -- the act of dealing too much damage to a group of enemies and wasting valuable damage or reload time -- that makes FAL’s Skill so useful. Compared to HK416, another 5 star AR grenadier, FAL not only has the same total multiplier (15x spread across three grenades) but she also wields a shorter Initial Cooldown and a Skill that can clear out more foes. For these reasons, Grenade Salvo is a Skill that sacrifices little for its power -- not to mention that it is on a T-Doll with premium stats.

While FAL’s Grenade Salvo may seem absurdly strong and powerful relative to other grenade skills, it does suffer from its flaws. FAL’s Skill tends to fall short of its usefulness if a grenade fails to KO a group of enemies -- this will result in requiring more time to defeat the same enemy due to needing two grenade tosses instead of one. Additionally, FAL suffers from another issue common with most grenade ARs, which is a long Initial Cooldown. FAL’s Initial Cooldown may be short for an AR grenadier, but it still is still is relatively long in the scope of most battles. In a normal battle, six seconds is more than enough time for a well-leveled team to completely wipe an enemy squad. Additionally, FAL’s Grenade Salvo does not provide any self-buffs, which results  in lower DPS in extended fights and against single targets. FAL’s usefulness therefore tends to fall off in the late game where her ability as a general-use AR gets outclassed by Damage/RoF buffing ARs, but there are already plenty of Damage/RoF buffing ARs to compete for that role, and FAL continues to remain one of the strongest grenadiers in the AR class.

In a AR+SMG Echelon, FAL provides a 20% Evasion tile buff to the 3 SMGs in front of her. Not only does the buff provide an excellent coverage, but Evasion is universally utilized by all SMGs. Evasion often also will be necessary to tank the battles where FAL is desirable -- blocking off the hordes of enemies for the initial six seconds before FAL can activate her Grenade Salvo and wipe them out.

Overall, FAL is a solid AR who fits amazingly into the grenadier role. Her stats are excellent and synergize well with her Skill. Her tile buffs have an excellent coverage and provide useful buffs. While the usefulness of her Skill heavily relies on the situation, FAL’s effectiveness against grouped enemies remains unparalleled.