Welrod MkⅡ is an Accuracy debuffing HG, reducing enemies’ Accuracy with her Skill.

A HG’s effectiveness is based on their Skill effect combined with their tilebuffs. Killing enemies faster is almost always the best way to reduce damage taken, and reducing Accuracy is not an effective way of reducing enemy damage when plenty of later enemies have Surehit or simply too much Accuracy for this to function. Even though Welrod MkⅡ’s tiles are good, she is not recommended to use before Modding.

It’s a common pitfall among newer players to believe that a HG doll makes a suitable tank. Now this pitfall is definitely still true, but Welrod’s Neural Upgrade does a valiant attempt to break that mould, offering some strong and interesting defensive capabilities.

Welrod MOD’s new Skill 2, Riot Shield, does what you would expect from the name: gives her a riot shield. She will place it down when she receives damage and will make anyone behind it completely invulnerable. Usually this “anyone behind it” will just be herself, since it only protects the tile Welrod was on when it was placed. This shield is also extremely resilient, requiring 15 hits to be taken down, can actually evade somehow, and is completely immune to any damage below 24. It is a short lived shield though, being on the field for only 4 seconds and having a cooldown of 8 seconds before it can be placed again (even if the cooldown can be reduced by RF tiles).

Welrod also gets a suite of upgrades for herself. Her tiles received a complete change, now making her a Position 8 HG. Her stats received a nice boost overall, primarily focusing on her evasion. Her Skill 1 now debuffs enemy Damage. When she is equipped with her MOD3 SPEQ, she also takes 30% less Damage from her current target. That SPEQ also gives her 5 points of armour, something that no other HG has.

Her SPEQ-Set adds some additional benefits to her MOD3, increasing the intensity of her Skill1 debuffs to 60% Accuracy and 30% Damage at Night. While not bad, it's a bit expensive to MOD3 her for this. The SPEQ itself is always worth picking up as it's just a better Taclight.

So overall, does this make Welrod an effective HG tank?… To some extent. She’s considerably more resilient by default, and her ability to completely block damage from herself half of the time as long as she is under fire is quite useful in the right cases. However, we do also have plenty of traditional tanks, so the need to upgrade Welrod is not as high as one might think at first. If you do upgrade Welrod, MOD2 is what offers the bulk of her power, but her MOD3 is worth considering for that Special Equipment.