GFVerse.info - M26-MASS

Tiles and aura

Affects MG

Increases damage by 15%
Increases accuracy by 10%

Cheese Coagulase

ICD: CD:

[Passive]: Becomes immune to damage 5 points or lower. [Active]: Creates an area 2 units ahead of self that deals damage to enemies every second equal to ($dam_value)x of the users armour. This damage has perfect accuracy, bypasses armour and can damage dummy-links. Additionally, machineguns within the rearmost column gain 90% incoming damage reduction. Both effects lasts for 10 seconds.

Skill level: 1

Doll review

Overview

M26 Mass is a defensive SG, and quite a decent one at that. Her base armor is average, slightly mediocre for her rarity. Her maximum HP is rather low for a SG. So she is not perfect for the role. But her main draw is her skill’s passive.

Her passive ignores all damage from attacks that deal 5 or less damage. This also stacks with flash ammunition, making her immune to up to 8 damage. This makes M26-MASS’s effective armor higher to make up for her mediocre base armor. It is the most important part of her kit, since she is mostly a defensive SG, and does not increase with skill level. Therefore it is viable to keep M26-MASS at skill level 1 if constrained on skill data, since it will still reduce damage taken by 5.

Now onto the less important but more complicated parts of her skill.

Her active skill has a 6-second initial cooldown (which means she can activate it late into her first clip) and 2 portions.

The first part is an attack directly in front of her. This does not use up her ammo reserves and hits a small circular area directly in front of her. It link-splashes ignores armor, and ignores evasion. Its damage output is 6x her armor, which is about 200 damage with just an armor plate equipped. It’s too close-range and infrequent to rely on, so it isn’t something to invest heavily into, but is a nice bonus damaging explosion from what is otherwise a tanking-dedicated SG. Range visualized here:

The second part of her active skill reduces the damage taken by all MGs on the back-most column of the formation by 90%. Unlike most, this skill does not last its duration regardless of doll condition. Once M26-MASS retreats, the damage reduction disappears along with her, so no using MGs as tanks. Usually this part should not matter, since MGs should not be taking shots in the first place. However, there are enemies that can hit the MGs despite the SG’s presence, most of these being enemies with AoE attacks. (e.g. Coeus, Guards, Typhons, Rodeleros, Doppelsoldners, Patrollers). In those cases, the damage output of the team can be protected through this active skill.

All in all, M26-MASS is an alright defensive SG for those who know how to make armor tanking teams well. She also comes with some extra utility on her active skills, which are not that fight-changing but do come in handy.

Pros

High Effective Armor

While her base armor value is nothing special, the additional 5 less damage taken can help M26 armor tank better, and even potentially ignore weaker link-splashing attacks.

Since she technically has the highest base effective armor pre-external armor buffs, she's also a viable single-link farming tank for farming comps. 1-link SG is a lot cheaper than a fully linked SG after all.

Built-in Flash Ammo

Because her passive works similarly to flash ammo, if the enemy's firepower is low enough m26 can save commanders a flash ammo slot.

Lowers Chip Damage on MGs

While she is unlikely to turn MGs into tanks anytime soon, M26-MASS’s active skill’s damage resistance can lower chip damage from enemies that have ways of ignoring the tank or attacking the backline.

Good Tile Buff and Coverage

15% damage and 10% accuracy is nice to have for an MG, and covers the back column from position 6.

Low-ish Initial Cooldown

While it is not almost immediately into the fight like other good SGs, M26-MASS has a 6 second initial cooldown on her active skill, which she should be able to use before needing to reload the first time.