PSO2NGS: Malignant Dark Falz Solus Gu/Ra Solo

From this point forward, I have to ask myself, is this a Gunner run or a MARS run?

Solus R2 has been comfortably impossible up until now, and probably would still have been impossible with the upcoming armors and weapons. But the addition of MARS, and in particular the Hydra module, has given us such a comically large power boost that looks brain dead at face value, but the complexity arises from trying to find an 8 second window where you won't get hit which is a lot harder when you're alone.

The giant laser move Hydra Termination, that I use 14 times by the way, has a potency value of 8000% - differences between vehicle potency and regular potency withstanding - that is basically twice as strong as a photon blast. It does such ridiculous damage, down, and photon blast generation all at once, but has no superarmor, has very slow rotation, no vertical rotation to speak of, and is incredibly narrow and deceptively short too. It is a tool that needs to be planned for and can't just be spammed, but when it does work, it is the highest dps option that you have available to you, quite possibly so as any class in the game.

The major downside of MARS for gunners is that our ancient curse of Chain Boost gets reset every time we use it; so we are back to base attack speed once again. You can offset this with storing some chain/hail of bullets, but you don't always have that luxury. This is such an annoyance that it disincentivizes short bursts of MARS usage since we are basically set back to the start of the fight every time. If there was any time to get rid of Chain Boost, it would be now, SEGA...

The actual GUNNER play doesn't change much from my duo with Kat. The main change is that I stopped using my Fatale weapon here because I'm now sitting at 79.6% floor, which devalues crit a lot; so I just used my Blastor as my non-unwix weapon. I didn't upgrade my Unwix from regular Gladia Soul, but since it is an Eredim, I probably should have as it's a free transfer later.

I have planned around my current damage schedule to know where to fit Hydra Terminations:
1) Right after the second arm breaks, get on MARS and use one.
2) Immediately try a second one after the first.
3) Target a hand or any other damageable area, and when pressing weapon action, my sub module will fire homing lasers. I just need any one of these to hit to induce break. While I do that, start casting the next laser. Two lasers will not fit in break no matter what I try.
4) A laser blows up each of the P1 transition objects, so barrel stuff the first one. I want to be on the right side on purpose here.
5) Carefully aim the laser so that I DO NOT hit the hand. If I'm on the left side, it's nearly impossible to do this, as the laser is on my right.
6-7) Lobotomy + colonoscopy.
I can technically fit a laser in during the pillar attack, but it is risky and RNG heavy. I chose not to do so here, but I think it actually helped me, because:
8-10) The staff has broken, but break hasn't happened yet. That gives me free reign to biden blast, which immediately induces break, which lets me fire again and presumably crit (unfortunately the damage number was off screen but it definitely felt like one). After that there's just enough time to buffer a laser during the P3 transition and kill an egg for free. (I did try to see if I could laser every egg down, but the amount of sweeping AoEs makes it too random to rely on)
11-14) Stand back and cross your fingers. Nothing can hurt you from a distance. Even when those random pillars fall on you, they don't seem to do any damage in my experience.

With how much damage the laser does, it's imperative that both lasers on breaks crit, because otherwise that's nearly 230k damage lost each - which is around how much damage a non-crit laser does outside of break. I MIGHT have crit one of them, but the number was off screen. I choose to believe that one did crit. Critting both would make this a lot less close.

You might be thinking, is this all there is to MARS? Spam the same move over and over again? The answer is mostly yes. There is a place for Garm and Nidhoggr in certain bits of multiplayer content, but Hydra has probably the best raw DPS option, which doubles as a hilariously overpowered pre-fire option, and a pretty decent sane-person rotation so long as you don't get attacked too much. I had concerns that MARS wouldn't be worth it if it meant having to restart chain boost every single time, but Hydra Termination is more than worth that penalty (though I still wish the penalty would just go away already).

You could see this as a besmirching of the sanctity of NGS gameplay, now that everyone must adhere to doing things like this for optimal performance. It has only been two days, but I'm liking it so far, keeping in mind that the Hydra Termination crit lottery will be an eternal struggle added to our plates. I'd like to see how group speedruns turn out.

0:00 Phase 1
6:53 Phase 1 Transition
7:46 Phase 2
12:04 Phase 3