AKA Dogmom. The Crazy Dinergate lady. The weirdo. The Ringleader who gets her head blown off in the mango version of the game before she actually gets to do anything.

Her skills are focused on throwing wave after wave after wave of dinergates at people and somehow making it stick. Good for mass warfare, or overwhelming things that cant shoot very much and have no AoE attacks.

TBH I'm not convinced she is really worth the effort to train, but there's a certain boss in Mirror Stage EX that she trivializes, so if you're into raising an entire unit just to kill one specific enemy...

Let's get this out of the way quickly. It has godawful single-target DPS, and in most cases where you need cleave, Manticores can do the job. However, they're cheap to field, you can get them easily, and some of you might not have enough Manticores. The AoE attack is surprisingly much bigger than it seems (roughly the size of a grenade's AoE) and with boosts from a Ringleader that can buff it, it's not that bad. However, it's also not especially great otherwise.

It does, however, have really long range that it can contribute to a formation if nothing else. YMMV.

Hot art (Why dont we get their proper portraits Mica? The damned Aegis do), a big gun, decent performance, low cost, no frills. She's a DPS unit that deals damage. Decent Firepower, High Acc,... surprisingly good evasion for a DPS. The skill she gets is pretty much what SWAP Jaegers torture players with. Also punches through some armor.

Good general purpose if you have room in the team.

Probably the closest to a top-end all-rounder. It has armor. It has good stats. It withstands AoEs really well due to being a single unit, and it has two very nice skills.

Now the big thing that is unlike enemy Hydras, your Manticores only have 30 armor. However, they pack the same short range explosive blast hydras do (And they have 500+ base attack power so it'll hurt masses of light enemies when they do it), and uniquely, a pushback skill with a 10 second cooldown that reduces enemy movement speed and rate of fire.

Not always the best solution, but it's the true waifu of the game.

Your primary armored DPS that isn't a Manticore. In most cases, a Manticore is scarier, but these guys have consistent output and are also armored. And unlike Manticores, you get all 5. You can think of them as armored Jaegers that do better vs high HP enemies and same-ish or worse vs. lower HP enemies.

The big thing about them is their skills. They get bonus damage based on how much max HP a target has, and they can drive their own crit rate up as they keep firing.

They do however, apparently have defective targeting systems, so you NEED something else like a Jaeger to provide range, because otherwise they're kind of not going to spot anything to shoot.

She has map utility and can buff allies, rather than simply being overwhelmingly strong on her own. However, unlike the map utility things used by Agent or Scarecrow, she isn't so much going to let you control a map as much as let you buy time in case of nasties you can't deal with or something needs to be delayed (perhaps on a ranking map).

This, my friends, is why you don't send ricecookers to war.

It's flat out awful. Weirdly, the SWAP version is actually really fuckin good.

You know what I like? SMG performance when I pay SG-like costs.

Strictly speaking, their evade is quite high, and their performance is on the high end of SMGs, but you have other options for tanks. YMMV. Personally I've never used these, and frankly there's a better thing on the way anyway (the SWAP Rippers)

Same skill 1, way better skill 2. The really big thing is the shields will absolutely stop the hit that breaks them, so they can take a Goliath to the face and be absolutely fine as long as their shields were up at the time. Also, you get damage reduction for having more units left. The main thing to note about them is they lose their offensive stats (considerably worse RoF, slightly worse Firepower) in exchange for this tankiness, so you'd better have the rest of your echelon be tanky.

Unlike the basic Dragoon, this one has an infinite (until shot at) duration shield that replenishes itself at regular intervals. She also has higher stats than the basic version, and the 2nd skill reduces enemy stats.

Basically, if your enemies ignore Armor making AEGIS unsuitable for your frontline, these might work out better. SWAP Rippers are broken, but sometimes these will last longer depending on the specific fight you're gearing up for.

Yeah, she's not the worst unit, but she's a 2-star (so good luck finishing her), and she's not exactly exceptional. Most pros and criticisms of the Guard still apply. The most common use for her is stacking her shields to tank AoE shots (like Typhon lasers), but otherwise, ehhh.

The buffs are actually quite usable and it costs about as much as a 1 star prowler. Will you actually use these? Who knows, but they can help melee units a fair bit. The thing about SF units is that half the time, you can braindead your way through 99% of encounters using Manticores.

The most ridiculous SF tank in the game. She doesn't have Armor, but she has high Evasion, and her second skill works off your echelon setting. In defense mode, every time she loses a link OR her main skill activates, she gets a 9999 power distortion barrier that lasts for a few seconds, meaning that no matter what, she's going to buy you some time. In other modes, it becomes an attack buff that contributes a bit to DPS. And that's her passive. For her active, it triggers her passive and defense mode gives her a considerable 120% Evasion boost, on top of the barrier. In other modes she gets an attack boost that stacks multiplicatively with her passive.

If an SF team needs something ridiculous tanked and you absolutely need to buy time, she is currently the last word in.

The SWAP Striker has higher offensive stats, better multipliers, and notably higher accuracy than the base version, so it can actually hit things. The main downside to this is it costs 6 instead of 4 to put into your echelon.

Almost across the board, it's an improvement for the Vespid. However, its a pain to get a full formation of them because its a 2 star base unit, and as a DPS unit you want it at full stacks. Also, it's not really significantly better than stuff like Jaegers and Strikers. They're not useless, but there are just much better SF units to spend effort and slot points on.