Girls Frontline 2: Exilium – Pros and Cons That You Need to Know for All Dolls / Characters

The Doll-Specific Pros and Cons

By Wewechoo.

Andoris

Pros:

• She can heal teammates, make them stronger, and take damage for the team all at once. This makes her very useful in any team.
• She’s very hard to kill because of her ultimate ability and can come back to life once, which is especially helpful in boss fights.
• Works perfectly well without needing duplicate copies of her character.

Cons:

• She doesn’t deal any damage to enemies. The good news is you don’t need to give her good weapons.
• She only fits well in teams that use electricity-based powers.

Belka

Pros:

• This character is really good at the vanguard role thanks to her ability to teleport after attacking and move quickly across the battlefield.
• One of her best features is her debuff called Negative Charge, which is quite powerful since it makes enemies take at least 30% more damage.

Cons:

• However, she does have some drawbacks. Her ultimate ability might look strong on paper, but you’ll rarely get to use it because it costs too many resources.
• Another problem is that her debuff only helps other electricity characters, and right now there just aren’t many of those to team up with.

Centaureissi

Pros:

• An extremely good healer. Not only all of her skills can heal allies, she can provide support buffs like Thermal Recovery, has Action Support, and at V1, she provides two powerful buffs to your DPS (Flame Assault II + Damage Increase II).
• Applies Overflowing Flame (the main debuff for Burn teams to exploit). The debuff is still useful even for non Burn teams as it can trigger the effects of Anomalous Strike.
• Gains additional effects on S1/S2 if the target has Overflowing Flame, S1 heals two allies and S2 dispel buffs.
• Ultimate provides global healing. The heal is enough to recover everyone’s health to maximum regardless of where they are on the field. This includes friendly allies in escort/defend the point missions.

Cons:

• Doesn’t perform as well in non Burn teams due to the lack of other members that can inflict Overflowing Flame for G36 to exploit. However, she is still a decent healer.
• Ultimate consumes all CG points. As the only way for G36 to recover CG points is to trigger her passive, her Ultimate can only be triggered once per 3 turns.
• S1 prioritizes distance rather than HP/Stability when healing targets. This could be detrimental if the nearest ally does not need healing at all.
• Doesn’t heal as much Stability compared to Colphne.
• The two buffs she provides at V1 varies in performance depending on who she gives it to. Note that “1 turn” means 1 action, so units like Qiongjiu, who mostly deals damage outside of her action, doesn’t benefit much from the buffs as it will only apply on the attack that she dealt on her action.

Cheeta

Pros:

• Insane action economy after using her ult. She can dish about 300% dmg and 130% heal, 10 stability damage in the following turn.
• Very good leading assist with extra range (8, which is the same as your ARs), twice per turn too.
• Her utlimate is insanely good. Flame Assault II is already potent then you add 3 random buffs on top, one of which could be movement +1 – any strategy player would know how good it is. You almost get her value back the moment you pop her ult.
• Her stability heal can be somewhat mitigated by investing into her attachment sets and skill nodes
• She works with both Precision and AoE damage.
• Her Overheat is really potent on some elite enemies that you can’t kill instantly.

Cons:

• When you use Ultimate, you’ll always get Flame Assault, but the other buffs are random. This means you might not get buffs that help your situation.
• Buff uptime is inconsistent.
• Unable to recover Contamination through any means other than Ultimate. As her Ultimate has a cooldown of 3 turns with no methods of lowering the cooldown, Cheeta can find herself out of Contamination quickly if she uses her skill frequently.
• Bosses are immune to Silence.
• Her biggest weakness is that she is unable to recover Stability for allies. While this might not be a problem for short fights, this problem becomes glaringly obvious in long fights, which happens frequently in the endgame.
• Despite her skills have good damage multiplier, as a support her attack attribute is a lot lower than firepower or vanguards, which means you might still want real damage dealers in your team.
• While she deals Burn damage, she doesn’t apply Overwhelming Flame.

Colphne

Pros:

• The best unit in the game that provides healing and Stability recovery.
• S2’s heal has an infinite range, and provides AoE healing within a 3 tiles radius if the 4-01 key is picked
• S1 provides 4 defensive buffs if the 2-01 key is picked.
• S3 can cleanse Taunt and Panic debuffs. Taunt is applied by the shield robot while Panic is applied by the bear.
• She works well with Tololo as Tololo’s passive can be triggered by Faint Glow of the Battlefield. Crisis Aid is great for making sure Tololo meets her buff count when using Supernova Impact.
• It’s true for all supports but they are really sturdy, only surpassed by Bulwarks. With her healing she can take a beating if the situation demands it.
• She is your quickest way to debuff removal at low level. Since her shared node can provide this ability to any healer, in all likelihood you’ll have to max her out even if you want to use another healer later on.
• She has an acceptable leading assist attack that triggers 1 time per turn.

Cons:

• Apart from her passive providing an ATK buff, she does not provide any other offensive buffs compared to other healers (Cheeta, Ksenia).
• Doesn’t deal much damage.
• Doesn’t have elemental debuff or AoE damage so a bit limited in terms of synergies.

Daiyan

Pros:

• Has the highest mobility in the game. With her Common Key, she gets up to 16 tiles of movement in one turn.
• Able to easily capture designated points and kill backline enemies thanks to her movement speed.
• S2 –> Ultimate at max Permanent Calibration stacks resets Ultimate cooldown.
• Tuning allows her to deal massive damage to Stability despite not being able to deal elemental damage.
• Has Ambush which lets her gain Permanent Calibration. Ambush can also trigger support attacks from units like Qiongjiu.

Cons:

• Doesn’t deal elemental damage, or apply elemental debuffs.
• Takes a while for her Calibration and Permanent Calibration stacks to build up. Not suited for short fights.
• As per usual with all Vanguards, she is rather squishy and easily flanked by enemies. 6 tiles of Extra Movement helps her a lot in mitigating this.
• Several of her dupe upgrades are disgusting – with V2 upgrade, S2 –> Ultimate resets Ultimate cooldown, with V3 upgrade, Ultimate has 0 CD if Permanent Calibration is stacked to maximum, with V6 upgrade, Daiyan gains Permanent Calibration at a much faster rate.

Dushevnaya

Pros:

• Really helps Ice teams do better. Makes Ice attacks 20% stronger, and when she uses Blizzard’s Prayer, it makes enemies Solidified (which works well with other character abilities and weapon effects).
• You always get Combat Grade points from her ability – no random chance or special conditions needed.
• Does good damage when you use her second special attack for the second time.
• Can attack right after teammates.

Cons:

• While she makes Ice teams better, it’s not amazing. You should probably get Macchiato Version 1 before getting her.
• When she attacks after teammates, it doesn’t do much damage.

Groza

Pros:

• Can be slotted in pretty much any team and still perform well.
• S2 increases team’s survivability significantly.
• Counter can trigger Support Attacks from units like Qiongjiu.
• Being a Bulwark, she is quite tanky with 12 Stability. 6-03 further boosts her defensive capabilities.
• Applies Taunt if 4-03 key is picked, and Movement Reduction on both her S1 and Ultimate. Taunt can redirect enemies into normal attacking Groza, which can take hits thanks to her bulk, and Movement Reduction is useful against bosses as it is not considered a hard control.

Cons:

• Ultimate is not as powerful as before – it can only be used to kill weakened enemies.
• Perfect Cover no longer gives Extra Command.
• Jack of all trades but master of none – Groza has defensive, AoE, ST, and supportive abilities, but she isn’t the best in any field.
• Bosses are immune to Taunt, while Movement Reduction is useless against stationary enemies (e.g. weekly boss).

Jiangyu

Pros:

• A unique and oppressive ambush: it reacts to any enemy action targeting anything including aoe attacks and self-buffing.
• It gets better with her passive applying Conductance meaning said enemy action will be denied, before triggering support attacks from other dolls that is.
• It also has a huge range of 8, outranging the vast majority of enemies.
• Conditionally hard-hitting: she hits quite hard when the enemy has electric debuffs. Don’t worry it’s a trivial condition to met with either her Vertebrae 2 or another electric type doll in tow.”+

Cons:

• She is severely handicapped at Vertebrae 0, so much so I’d argue that she’s only half a doll before V3. Basically nothing works until V3, then she gets exponentially better all the way to V6.
• Her ambush is extremely CG hungry. Between the cost and her mediocre CG gain, she won’t be able to ambush very often. Her V3 fixes the CG gain part and her V6 the cost part, making her borderline broken but these are locked behind a ton of tickets.

Klukai

Pros:

• She’s the main choice for a grenade-focused character in the game and actually has good abilities for this role.
• You can use her effectively in pretty much any game mode, including boss fights. She’s good at both dealing damage and making enemies weaker. She works well in most team setups.
• When you pair her with Klukai in guild boss fights, she becomes really powerful. Before Klukai came out, Peritya couldn’t use all her support attacks in one turn. Now at Version 6, she can do 10 support attacks per turn, making her damage almost as good as Qiongjiu, who is a premium character meant for single-target damage.

Cons:

• She can have problems if there aren’t enough enemies to target with her abilities.
• She’s so good at her role that there’s no reason to use other characters with similar grenade abilities.

Krolik

Pros:

• High mobility.
• 4* sword is given for free, allowing her to act again after killing 3 enemies.
• Able to easily capture designated points and kill backline enemies (Sniper robots, frogs etc).
• Extra Movement provided by S1/Ultimate allows her to reposition herself to a safe location after attacking. S2 returns her back to the same location, allowing her to disengage safely.
• Ultimate has the ability to “”noclip””. She can reach places otherwise unreachable (e.g. a place locked behind a switch).
• Very versatile synergies: she can dish out AOE damage, precision damage and burning—one of the best units if you are looking to light everything up. Works very well with Sharkey and to a less extent Peritya.

Cons:

• Easily flanked by enemies despite the Extra Movement from her skills.
• Squishy due to only having 8 Stability.
• Her S2 and Ultimate are somewhat hard to use as the movement is mandatory.
• She does not have Overwatch.

Ksenia

Pros:

• Works well in a Burn team, has Flammable Items for Burn DPS to exploit.
• With Fixed Key 4 + Fixed Key 6, Ksenia can maintain her Contamination Gauge consistently without running out.
• Fills in multiple roles at once. She buffs allies, heals, recovers Stability, has Support Attack and can deal a good chunk of damage. Flame Assault II and Thermal Recovery are good buffs to have too regardless of any unit.

Cons:

• Doesn’t heals as much and restores as much Stability as Colphne.
• S2 only applies Flame Assault II if the target is healed to full HP. If you took the 4-03 key, this will also determine whether Ksenia will get the buff or not.
• Does not have AoE healing.

Lenna

Pros:

• The best crowd control unit in the game, as she excels in inflicting Conductance/Paralysis. Paralysis prevents enemies from using any attacks.
• The core unit in a Electric focused team.
• Fixed Key 4 allows her to always paralyze two enemies every turn.
• Ultimate generates a Voltage terrain that inflict Conductance on all enemies within the field. Your other units can choose which enemy to paralyze by just shooting them again.
• Common Key allows one unit to inflict Conductance on single target attacks. Ideally, it should be on someone that has a support attack that goes first (e.g. Centaureissi).
• V1 upgrade increases her performance greatly – assuming S2/S1 is used each turn, she’s able to activate her Ultimate once every 3 turns. 3 turns Ultimate synergizes with Arc – on subsequent activations, her Ultimate will paralyze all enemies within her field instead of only inflicting Conductance.

Cons:

• V0 Lenna’s Ultimate can only be triggered once every 6 turns. Due to turn limit restrictions, this usually means she can only use it once per battle most of the time.
• Ideally, you would want to activate her Ultimate in a spot where the most number of enemies are in her field. However, this spot might not be under Cover. She can be killed easily if there are enemies near her and outside of her field. Concealment does help with this problem though.
• Paralysis might stop enemies from using any attacks, but it doesn’t stop them from moving. This is bad for “capture the area” stages.

Littara

Pros:

• Her S2 mass-applies def down 2 which is immensely helpful for AOE skills.
• Works extremely well with Peritya due to the way their overwatch interacts with each other.
• A defense type debuff enabler and payoff all by herself.
• Requires minimum investment to be useful as a support.

Cons:

• Does nothing but AOE damage.
• Only does slightly more stability damage than Peritya.
• Her own combo (S2 into ult) isn’t reliable as enemy moves.

Lotta

Pros:

• Has the best knock back/cover destruction skill in game. If you need enemies pushed down cliffs or covers blown up, she’s your girl.
• Her AOE is decent, since she comes with V6 she is better than a lot of V0 grenadiers.

Cons:

• Awkward skill rotation as she has to use a full action to refill her resource.
• Shared problem by all grenadiers but her AOE damage is lacking in high-level battles.

Macchiato

Pros:

• One of the best DPS post buff.
• Has great survivability thanks to her Ultimate giving her a shield.
• Can inflict Chill which prevents enemies from moving.
• V1 massively upgrades her main DPS skill (S1) and solidifies her as the second best ST DPS behind Qiongjiu.

Cons:

• Some of her buffs are dependent on her having more than 80% HP. Her Fixed Key 6 requires her to have 100% HP, which can be difficult to accomplish. Fortunately, she is a sniper which stays mostly out of the enemy’s range.
• Loses her Overwatch once her Shield is broken.
• Chill is a weaker debuff compared to Paralysis. Enemies may not be able to move, but they can still attack.

Mechty

Pros:

• An excellent support character who can weaken enemy defenses and remove enemy buffs very effectively.
• Better at staying alive than most supports thanks to her healing ability and defensive boosts.

Cons:

• Her ultimate ability isn’t always available when you need it – you need to watch its cooldown timer.
• Deals low damage, though this is normal for support characters.
• Only works well when paired with Klukai, similar to Peritya. Not worth getting unless you already have Klukai.

Mosin Nagant

Pros:

• All skills can apply elemental debuffs for allies to trigger the effects of Anomalous Strike.
• Paralysis is an extremely powerful crowd control debuff. Think of it as another version of Stun. Nagant is only able to apply Stun on enemies that move within her range that has DEF debuff, but Mosin Nagant can apply it with less stricter conditions.
• One of the few units with the longest range. Ultimate has a 10 tile radius with Insight. Coupled with Paralysis, Mosin Nagant can stun pesky backline enemies who are hiding behind Cover and can’t be killed immediately.
• Has Action Support.

Cons:

• Action Support only triggers against enemies with no Stability. While this might be good for boosting her DPS, you’ll need your other allies to break the enemy’s stability first.
• One of the two slowest doll in game, with a paltry 4 movement speed. Do not bring her into maps where you have to evacuate your units in a set amount of turns. Don’t take her into battles where you need to move at all. This can be remedied somewhat by obtaining Nemesis common key or Fixed Key 6.
• Burns through Contamination Gauge extremely fast as all her skills have 0 CD in exchange for consuming Contamination. Without her passive triggering (which only happens conditionally), she will run out of Contamination fast.

Nagant

Pros:

• Gives you easy access to Concentrated Acid II, a very potent elemental defense debuff.
• Can apply Vulnerability I, a unique yet powerful debuff.
• Comes with a superior Overwatch. It triggers whenever any enemy unit end its movement in her range. Unlike other trigger attacks it initiates assist attacks such as those from Qiongjiu. It even applies stun if the target already has defence debuffs. Humanoid bosses often end up getting shot by Nagant as they love moving around for no reason.

Cons:

• Despite having good damage multipliers on her skills, Nagant has a lower base attack attribute as a support.
• She is not very fast, and her range isn’t impressive either.
• Her debuff often have short durations so she needs to re-apply them often.

Nemesis

Pros:

• Has Support Attack.
• 2-01 applies DEF Decrease II, a powerful DEF lowering debuff.
• Ultimate hits hard if activated at max Contamination and the enemy has Death Prophecy.
• One of the two units with the longest range. With Insight and 2-03 key, she has 10 range, allowing her to outrange even backline enemies (e.g. frogs, sniper robots).
• Her long range makes her surprisingly useful on maps with high grounds or complex terrains. Also decent in PVP if you are into it.

Cons:

• Qiongjiu performs better in most aspects, with the only exception being range. You can attack from further away, but Qiongjiu has advantages in all other areas.
• One of the two slowest doll in game, with a paltry 4 movement speed. Do not bring her into maps where you have to evacuate your units in a set amount of turns. Don’t take her into battles where you need to move at all. This can be remedied somewhat by obtaining her shared key.
• Her assist attacks require the target to be marked by her first which doesn’t work well with her slow movement. The mark is also single use so she’s not very good against bosses.
• Struggles to gain Contamination if your allies aren’t attacking enemies with Death Prophecy – only her S1 gives her 2 Contamination per 2 turns with conditions attached.

Papasha

Pros:

• Completely free. While it will take some time you can get her and her weapon to dupe 6 100% free.
• Comes with a robot that adds a bit damage but more importantly a body to take shots and block paths. You don’t care too much if the enemy shoot at it as it comes back very soon.
• Has decent damage curtesy of her sentinel stats and the robot carries over 100% of her stats other than HP.

Cons:

• The robot dies very easily. It can’t be shielded nor healed and has less HP than PPsh. It will also act like a retard at finding cover. Not the end of the world but she does lose considerable damage while it’s down.
• Her S2 is critical at controlling the robot yet is also a huge CG drain, if the map demands movement you will have to use her normal attack.

Peritya

Pros:

• Queen of AoE damage. Core piece in an AoE centric team thanks to her passive.
• Can spam her ult with enough AoE dolls in the team and enough targets.
• Grenade comes with position manipulation, while it can’t drag enemies into the abyss, it’s still a rare and useful capability.
• Moves fairly fast with Fixed Key 2.

Cons:

• Does nothing but AoE damage.
• Does barely any stability damage.
• AoE damage has to fight through cover DR and having low multipliers doesn’t help.
• Single target is far superior to AoE on bosses/elites.
• Contamination gain relies heavily on teammate triggering her support. She will struggle heavily if you do not bring teammates that can deal AoE damage.

Qiongjiu

Pros:

• THE premium single target damage dealer, period. Can deal 4 instances of 90% damage, with 30% DEF down and 30% damage increase on all 4 damage instances (Fixed Key 3 must be taken). Your weekly boss experience will become much easier with her.
• S2 inflicts Overflowing Flame, allowing allies to trigger the benefits of Anomalous Strike.
• Fixed Key 4 lets S2 hit multiple targets.
• Works extremely well with a single target centric team. Becomes better with a Burn team (Sharkry, Krolik, Ksenia).

Cons:

• Slow movement speed.
• Hard to use S2 well due to its unique range.

Sabrina

Pros:

• Counter can trigger Support Attacks from units like Qiongjiu.
• Being a Bulwark, she is quite tanky with 12 Stability.
• Good fit for an AoE team (Peritya, Littara).
• Pairs well with Tololo – having on demand elemental weakness infliction means Tololo’s S1 will always counter the enemy’s weakness, and dealing AoE Turbid damage increases Light Spikes stacks significantly faster.
• Fixed Key 4 allows her to naturally regenerate Stability on her own.
• Fixed Key 6 allows her to apply Taunt, which redirect enemies into normal attacking Sabrina, which can take hits thanks to her bulk. This is particularly useful in PvP.

Cons:

• For V4 and below, Sabrina needs to get enough Contamination to activate her Ultimate once every three turns. This is achieved by ensuring her S1 hits as many enemies as possible.
• Ultimate doesn’t deal any damage and only provides defensive/support buffs.
• Does not have any single target capabilities.

Sharkry

Pros:

• Your go-to unit for lowering Stability. S2 can reduce up to 11 Stability (Flammable Items + Focus x2 + Overflowing Flame debuff).
• The core piece in a Burn team. The 2-03 key is mandatory for her, making her into a mini Qiongjiu with stricter conditions.
• Can apply Overflowing Flame.

Cons:

• Does not deal any AoE damage.
• Slow movement speed.
• Weak in early game as she does not have access to her 2-03 key yet.
• Falls off hard when there is no one else providing Overflowing Flame for her to trigger her support attacks.

Suomi

Pros:

• Her Ultimate gives everyone on your team shields. When maxed out, it’s like giving everyone a backup health bar. This means your team can be more aggressive since they can take more hits.
• The shields are so strong that your team can stay alive without needing a healer.
• Her special meter fills up naturally without any tricks needed. This means she can keep her Ultimate shield up all the time (if she doesn’t use her second skill).
• Her first skill can do a lot of Stability damage, especially when your team stays close together (up to 14 points with 5 teammates nearby).
• Her second skill lets her protect one teammate if her Ultimate isn’t ready.
• She helps the team in several ways – she can boost actions, increase critical hit damage to break Stability and help damage dealers hit harder. She can move around quickly, and her Avalanche skill also helps break Stability.

Cons:

• Without spending money, she can only heal through her passive ability.
• Without spending money, she can’t recover Stability Gauge. Getting her to Version 1 fixes both these problems.
• She doesn’t do much damage herself.

Tololo

Pros:

• Extremely reliable burst damage. She gets a guaranteed extra turn every time she ends her turn with a full CG, and she starts every battle with said full CG. Since the first turn is usually quite important, she out-performs her otherwise unimpressive stats by a mile.
• She can easily apply element debuff with a skill node, while the debuff itself isn’t amazing it enables the Anomalous Strike set.
• She can apply Stun with a skill node, a great control debuff against elite enemies.
• She could become borderline broken with her dupe 6 upgrade which give her double action back one turn faster – instead of 6 actions in 4 turns now she can execute 5 full actions in 3 turns. It’s a long way off but still the potential is there.
• She can bank her extra turns by not attacking, a useless feature elsewhere but it works wonders in PVP mode.
• Lots of enemies/bosses in the game is fortunately weak against her S1.

Cons:

• Her skill rotation breaks down if she can’t meet the CG gain requirements of her S1 or S2. The latter is easily solved by having someone slaps a few buffs on her, but she’ll have a hard time if there’s no enemy weak to her around.
• Doesn’t have any AoE attacks- Slow movement speed without Additional Action.
• She does not have Overwatch.
• Her action economy is otherwise unimpressive, 130% damage multiplier is nothing to write home about.

Ullrid

Pros:

• The only 5* melee damage dealer so far.
• Extremely good burst damage.
• Good team player with (potentially) multiple attacks per turn.
• Superb mobility losing to Daiyan only, great for interacting with stage mechanics.

Cons:

• Sub-par stability damage.
• Resource hungry both in terms of cooldowns and CG.
• Being a melee unit, she has range issues even with 10 movement.

Vector

Pros:

• Makes fire support attack characters much stronger, especially Qiongjiu.
• First character that’s really good at weakening enemies to fire damage. Most fire characters could make the team stronger but couldn’t make enemies weaker until now.
• Does a lot of guaranteed damage that doesn’t depend on stats. This is particularly useful when fighting enemies that take extra effects from being hit multiple times.

Cons:

• Very difficult to use effectively – getting 5-6 support attacks is even harder than getting 4 attacks with Qiongjiu.
• Only focuses on dealing damage. Can’t help the team by taking hits, healing, or removing enemy buffs.

Vepley

Pros:

• High mobility.
• Surprisingly good survivability thanks to her 4-01 key.
• Only unit that can knock back enemies by 4 tiles. Use it to instant kill enemies by pushing them off the map, clumping them together for a huge AOE, or removing their Cover to hit them for more damage.
• S1 can destroy Cover.
• Has a mix of single target and AoE attacks. Hits pretty hard too.
• Slow synergy and she can mass applies slow (movement reduction 2) herself through her passive. Paired with knockback she is the bane of melee enemies.
• Obtainable for free after beating chapter 6.

Cons:

• Can’t move after attacking. As Vepley is a Vanguard, this results in her getting easily flanked and killed. It only improves a little bit after she get her dupe 1 upgrade. Handle with care and get her 4-01 node ASAP.
• No overwatch skills.
• Relies heavily on her passive unless someone else can apply slow for her.
• Can’t deal elemental damage.

Zhaohui

Pros:

• Great mobility and even the ability to teleport back to one of her anchors after an action – really good at doing vanguard things.
• She can apply an unique debuff that grants lifesteal to your dolls.
• Her anchor occupies a tile on the map but cannot be attacked or damaged, meaning you get to block enemy units with impunity.
• Her S1 can stun enemies, although without V2 you need to apply a Turbid debuff first.
• Her Ultimate becomes a mass teleport at V3.

Cons:

• Garbage tier damage, she gets a lot better at V5 where she can make 3 assists per turn but with her low stats she’s very far behind a proper sentinel. Her 6 range also doesn’t make it easy.
• While able to heal a little she cannot replace a real medic who can dispell debuffs and restore stability.
• Much of her utility is locked behind a pile of dupes.