Zastava M21 – ★★★★★ Assault Rifle
Tags: Class: Assault Rifle Misc: Witchcraft Role: Grenadier Tile: Buff Eva Tile: Buff RoF
Another grenadier that's not useless. Her grenade fires after just 4 seconds, making it actually matter, and either makes hit enemies take 115% damage for 3 seconds (3 or more hits) or buff her own damage by 60% for 8 seconds.
The self buff isn't too useful, giving her damage output on the lower end of usable at least, but since she hits a wide area she'll probably trigger the much more useful debuff. While much better dolls have largely obviated the need for this, maybe it'll be useful for someone. I dunno.
Additional Notes#
Zas is most often known for her corpse dragging power, but she's pretty good on normal mobbing / bosses than a lot of people believe. Though yes it's true that EN has no such content which makes Zas truly shine, Zas' grenade synergizes with grenade SMGs, self-buff SMGs, grenade ARs, self buff AR, (this is literally ALL of the possible combat combinations for Zas) and by herself as well. It also immensely helps out the tank. Let me give some examples.
- If you turn your SMG dolls to manual skill, Zas's grenade can be used to land right before SMG grenades, e.g. Vector's molotov, giving it a huge damage boost (15%). Not recommended if you only do auto as it often has targeting problems in that situation.
- Grenadiers benefit if you use Zas' skill on manual, letting the 15x GLs hit even more stronger. FAL is the exception as only her first grenade will benefit from Zas' debuff.
- Self buff ARs are also exceptionally good with Zas because Zas' early CD lets her debuff (15% increase in damage taken) around the 5 second mark. Which is just about the moment self-buff ARs proc their skills, leading to a (near) flat 15% damage increase for the next 3 seconds, and as the AoE is so large, almost all enemies get hit by the GL. Which is enough to end the fight.
- The grenade alone, given that Zas reaches over 390 skill damage (this requires fairies as Zas needs 130 damage) can erase high area Jaegers (Area 8) at the 4.5 second mark (as her AoE reaches the back line), making tanking significantly easier for SMGs.
Even if it doesn't wipe out the entire back line, or even against normal enemies like Rippers, Vespids, at least 1-2 links are chipped off, this nearly takes 1/3 - 1/4 of the damage that will potentially be accumulated in the next 3 seconds which makes a huge difference in long endurance situations like aiming for silver medals or a portion of ranking maps. - Self buff SMGs like SR-3MP benefit SO MUCH as Zas' skill reduces stress on the tanks (less damage to SR-3MP) and increases damage taken by enemies (equals flat damage buff to SR-3MP), so if you choose to activate SR-3MP's skill on manual, she shines a whole lot better.
- Zas is the only GL AR that can hold her name against bosses
(moving aside the fact that bringing a GL AR to a boss is stupid in most cases)as her skill buffs herself when it hits only a few enemies. Meaning if the boss has a number of pesky groups of enemies on the way, Zas can work as a great debuffer on the way and still work as a self-buff AR on the boss. - People don't realize Zas' base stats are on par with other self-buff ARs, when other GL ARs have slightly lower stats. She only has 3 less RoF than G41 and has 5 more damage.
Therefore, if G41 is a univeral self-buff AR, Zas is a universal grenadier. Her evaluation is actually becoming better than G41 (unless you happened to get G41's exclusive equipment from CT Rankings, and even so, her debuff is invaluable and can be placed in Pos 1 without losing efficiency) in CNKRTW for her versatile performance regardless of whatever echelon she is placed in to.
Dusk's Note#
If you decide to not use manual skill casting (because it's easy to forget), she doesn't synergize too well with grenade SMGs, as one of the two grenades will reduce the damage of the other grenade. Not always terrible if you run the maths and know that double grenade will kill all enemies off, though.