Zhetass
Big shiny eye.
Basic Info
- No: 83
- Ship: Zhetass
- Affinity: Shield Breaking
- Type: Double Defense
- Main Weapon: Flux Array
- Aura: Phalanx
- Zen: Personal Shield
- Rarity: Rare
- Price: 1500
- Main Description: Single forward firing laser with a long interval.
- Upgrade Info:
| Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Ult |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DPS | 25.00 | 26.25 | 27.50 | 28.75 | 30.00 | 31.25 |
- Test Results:
| Main | Aura | Zen | Survival | Survival Tier | Speedrun | Speedrun Tier | Fun | Fun Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 65.45 | 50.18 | 70.91 | 32.73 | B- | 12.00 | C- | 18.55 | D |
| APEX1 | APEX2 | Base Score | Base Rank | Low Score | Hi Score | Apex Rank | Final Score | FinalRank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32.00 | 36.36 | 186.55 | 90 | 218.55 | 222.91 | 96 | 286.18 | 96 |
- Main Weapon Illustration:
Survival
- Phalanx is used primarily as a movement tool in order to allow Zhetass to move sideways from invader to invader.
- The same goes with PS, in the absence of lasers in the wave.
- In order to move from invader to invader, you will need a lot of diagonal shoveling, pushing your way forward as well. Push diagonally, then slowly retreat back down (with the same speed as the bullets on the side you are going towards) in order to shift sides.
- Phalanx should always be up whenever possible. This allows you to quickly extract yourself from the corner whenever threatened by too many bullets.
- When faced under both laser and bullet fire, be sure to burn down the Phalanx before the lasers fire so that you will not waste PS laser reflection damage.
- On top of the 31.25 DPS, the 4 spike structures, 2 on the left, 2 on the right, also deal 6.25 DPS at ult level. (The damage increases for each main weapon upgrade.) To make use of this damage, however, the spikes must be directly on top of an invader. This makes it extremely difficult to make use of this extra damage and thus Zhetass DPS is still 31.25 DPS "with a bit of bonus at very specific times".
- However, these spikes can be used against Sparrows that spill out continuous dart streams since it can be difficult to use the rather thin forward firing laser to eliminate these Sparrows.
Speedrun
- Despite a double defence, Zhetass' main is very powerful, and optimizing it very well can deal rather respectable damage. Using Phalanx to navigate sideways is extremely crucial.
- Because Phalanx allows you to push forward, it can be very useful to push forward when faced with multiple laser spreads to maximize the laser catch rate and thus the laser reflection damage. After the laser reflection is done, you can Phase Out towards the bottom of the screen again.
- While Zhetass' spikes look useless, they actually help out in speedrunning a fair bit. Since Zhetass' main has a very long interval, the spikes can be used to deal damage against heavily damaged Sparrows, or sometimes even heavily damaged Ravens and Herons to take them out before the main burst fires, saving potential time if you do take them out with purely the spikes.
- The second more useful purpose of the spikes come in handy closer to the end of a wave. Sometimes, since optimizing the main requires you to sweep the screen, you get invaders who are stripped of their shield but are not destroyed. However, the interval between bursts may be too long, in that before the next burst fires, the invaders regenerate their shield. Going up to them and making contact with the spikes prevents that. This is particularly useful against Herons, but sometimes even Eagles, but bear in mind usually this is doable only in Laser/Pellet and Laser/Shuriken missions due to how turrets don't turn or fire so fast to track you.
Fun
- The mobility provided by Phalanx, when well utilized, can give Zhetass quite a fair amount of space to move around the field.
- It's kind of fun to use the spikes to eliminate Sparrows, especially when dart streamer Sparrows can get very annoying.
- Otherwise, Zhetass is a pretty unimpressive ship.
Trivia
- Zhetass was only introduced into Phoenix 2 at v5.0.
- It is the only ship that can truly close combat.
APEX 1
- Name: Supersize
- Type: Zen
- Description: Aegis amplifiers create an extra large Personal Shield.
- Interpretation: The size of the Personal Shield is increased by 50%.
- Form: Gamma
- Price: 15000
- Score: 2.00 / 5
The increase in PS size not only allow for better laser coverage or bullet clearance, but it also protects the currently deployed Phalanx. As Phalanx is almost always active for Zhetass to work effectively, this allows you to conserve Phalanxes instead of Phalanx breaking after invaders fire lasers at you. This also allows for the full laser reflection damage to be inflicted rather than part of it being absorbed by the Phalanx.
APEX 2
- Name: Focus
- Type: Zen
- Description: Focused interconnects charge Personal Shield faster and recover it more quickly.
- Interpretation: The charge time decreases from 0.4s to 0.3s, the recovery time decreases from 6.5s to 4.5s.
- Form: Beta
- Price: 10000
- Score: 2.27 / 5
This apex is potentially more useful against Pellet/Shuriken/Laser missions, where Phalanx can be dedicated to eliminate the massive amount of bullets while PS can be used to ward off laser bursts. It is quite useful against constant laser bombardment, the increased usage of PS wave after wave even if it is a light wave allows for better safety rather than using Phalanx against lasers which isn't terribly reliable.