Overview

One of the rare Hand Grenade SMGs, PP-19 is off to a rocky start. She struggles to stand out from her primary competition in her role, PPS-43, thanks to PPS’s impressive base Damage, and PP-19’s equally underwhelming Damage. The rest of PP-19’s stats are a mixed bag, with low HP, and good Evasion. For reasons unknown, she features a surprisingly high Accuracy, but this does not imply she should be used as a direct fire SMG. 

Thanks to her conventional Hand Grenade, PP-19 has a larger AoE than Molotovs such as Skorpion or Vector, but sacrifices Damage multiplier, and Damage over time to get it. While her exact performance will vary by the amount of enemies hit, in general PP-19 does less Damage than Vector, and she will struggle to compete with Skorpion, who is a Doll every Commander acquires at the start of the game. With inflating enemy HP in later content, this becomes a greater and greater issue, as PP-19 cannot clear out large groups of Strelets or Cyclops effectively.

Overall, PP-19 is a fine, but unimpressive SMG. Even for New Players acquiring her from one of her various farming appearances, PP-19 struggles to find her niche, thanks to the ready availability of Skorpion, and eventual uses for Vector (13-4 Drag).  Leotard lovers will rejoice, but at best, PP-19 will remain as a second string SMG at best.

Overview

PP-19’s Neural Upgrade comes out swinging. The standard suite of stat buffs, and increased multipliers thanks to her increased rarity offer just what PP-19 wanted, boosts to her Damage directly, boosts to her HP, and a sizable boost in her Grenade’s multiplier. All of these things go a long way to improve PP-19’s ability to deal Damage, putting her in a better position to try and compete with Vector and Uzi Mod for the AoE Offtank role.

Savage Instinct is a powerful tool for PP-19, provided the situation allows for it. Any surviving enemies after her initial Grenade are peppered with additional Grenades every second or so, up to 4 additional Grenades, determined by her remaining number of Dummy Links. These Grenades deal less Damage, and only continue while enemies that were ‘Marked’ by the first Grenade are on the field, but they do help to clean up whatever PP-19’s first attack leaves alive.

Visually, this is not intuitive. While the Skill text says, ‘remaining Dummies will throw’, in practice not all Dummies will throw grenades, and sometimes two dummies will display the throwing animation at the same time. Do not be alarmed if the animation is weird, you will get the correct number of grenades.

Accurately estimating the increased Damage output from these grenades is tricky. Because these additional Grenades are tied to enemies that are marked by PP-19’s initial grenade, it is possible, and in fact, likely, that you will not get the full 4 additional Grenades. Most likely, PP-19’s teammates will kill off whatever is left behind, or PP-19 will eliminate the remaining enemies herself, leaving some extra Grenades in her pocket. This does little to directly mitigate her issues with leaving enemies alive with low health, as it will take an additional second or more for the second Grenade to be thrown, giving time for enemies to chip away at the Maintank before they are finished off. This can cut the other way however, if PP-19 catches backline units in her initial grenade, she can take them out with her extra Grenades, before her teammates have finished cutting down the frontline enemies. 

The second part of Savage Instinct is a conditional buff for when PP-19 is equipped with her Mod 3 SPEQ. Namely, PP-19 will receive a buff to either her Damage or Evasion, depending on whether or not her HP is the highest in her column. While PP-19’s mod does buff her HP significantly, she still lags behind the traditional main tanks, meaning without either the main tank sustaining Damage, or time sensitive micro, PP-19 is not likely to get her Damage Buff.

Again the game is deceptive. The in-game description says ‘Row’ but the game itself checks against her column.

The rest of PP-19’s kit is a smattering of improvements, including a buff to her Tile Buff rounding up her Damage buff, and adding an Accuracy Buff, along with improved coverage. This does give PP-19 a small but noticeable edge over her competition, in the ability to buff more than 1 AR.

Ultimately, PP-19’s Neural upgrade is a luxury rather than a requirement. It certainly improves her abilities, and offers some interesting new functionality, but given the increasingly niche nature of AR/SMG Echelons and the specific enemies they face, PP-19 struggles to find her place. For her fans, it is a reason to be excited, but this upgrade is likely to be quite far down the list for most other players. 

Her Mod art also do away with her leotard, so this is a rare case that the mod art is not an improvement.