GBO2 RX-0 Banshee: Can it win against Xi Gundam?

This video contains two recent matches I had with the Banshee on Gundam Battle Operation 2. It is a 700 cost raid with good melee damage, high mobility in NT-D mode, a powerful heavy attack that can be comboed into via the right technique and LV4 melee priority in NT-D mode. Its weaknesses would be that it has mediocre shooting ability, short melee reach, long cooldown for the claw, long swap time for the beam saber, not enough close-mid range stagger options and the downside of it needing to lose enough HP before it can use NT-D mode. I thought that this suit was bad before Xi came out, but now it is a struggle that words can scarcely describe. I heard people online talking about using this suit as a Xi/Penelope counter pick, and while I think it has some merit if you are close enough to use the heavy attack, it is far too impractical to use against good Xi players. I hope that you enjoy watching!

Its primary ranged weapon is a beam smartgun with 2800 power, 3 seconds cooldown, 70% heat, 13 seconds overheat, 0.5 seconds swap time, 400m range and 70% stagger value. This has low heat, good damage, pierces and instant stuns. It is your best option to combo into melee with.
Its primary melee weapon is a beam saber with 2950 power, 2.5 seconds cooldown, 0.77 seconds swap time and 80%/64% combo modifier. This has good damage in 2-3 swing combos but has somewhat long swap time and short range. It gains a third swing once NT-D activates.
Its first sub weapon is a head vulcan with 150 power, 40 ammo, 600 RPM, 11 seconds reload, 0.5 seconds swap time, 200m range, 1500 DPS and 6% stagger value. This has long reload time and not much ammo, but it can stagger in just 1.7 seconds and has great DPS.
Its second sub weapon is a vibro-nail with 3250 (3600) power, 3.5 seconds cooldown, 0.33 seconds swap time, 100% side swing modifier, 160% downswing modifier, 1.5 seconds focus time and 400% heavy attack modifier. This weapon has long cooldown, but high damage and the ability to heavy stagger with normal swings. NT-D activation causes the weapon to gain a larger hitbox, enables use of the heavy attack and causes normal attacks to bypass buffers. The heavy attack can even be comboed into, provided that you do a somewhat tricky dodge roll combo.
Its third sub weapon is a beam smartgun with 800x5 power, 70% heat, 4 seconds cooldown, 13 seconds overheat, 0.5 seconds swap time, 400m range and 50%x5 stagger value. This stops to fire for an extended period of time, but it fires a highly damaging piercing beam with good stagger accumulation.

The Banshee has 24000 HP, 24 ballistic/beam resist and 30 melee resist. This is pretty durable considering the size of the MS, but the HP drain in NT-D means that it isn't quite as good as it seems. It has LV3 (LV4) Maneuver Armor, LV3 Emergency Evasion, LV2 (LV3) Special Leg Buffer and LV1 (LV2) Special Armed Armor VN Buffer for defensive skills. The numbers in brackets refers to the changes when NT-D activates. The buffers make it so that it can be quite durable if shot in the right places, especially since the VN buffer is 60%/70% damage reduction depending on if NT-D is active.
It also has 135 (140) walk speed, 230 (240) boost speed, 75 thrust and 75 (87) turning speed. It gets absolutely amazing mobility once NT-D turns on, but is below average before that. It also gets LV3 Flight Control and LV2 (LV4) Forced Injectors to further increase mobility.
The Banshee has a unique skill called LV2 NT-D. This can be activated via the touchpad at 80% HP or less and grants the aforementioned skills and stats boosts, but this comes at the cost of losing 30 HP per second. In the case of Banshee specifically, NT-D also causes melee priority to be boosted past high, so it can swing through other raids without clashing.

In conclusion, I feel that while the Banshee can in theory fight against Xi in this meta, it is just not very practical at all. You are rewarded greatly if you can shoot them out of the sky then combo into heavy attack, but this assumes that you are close enough to land it, that you wont get interrupted and that you can even shoot them down in the first place. I think it is quite weak overall considering this. I think that it will need big buffs to compete in this new meta; such as 1 second beam smart gun cooldown time, better turn speed while shooting the stop to fire beam, less end lag for the stop to fire beam, 3 seconds claw cooldown time, 2 seconds saber cooldown time, 0.5 seconds saber swap time and the ability to activate NT-D at 90% HP. They could even go further and add another sub weapon, perhaps its beam tonfa that it is missing. This assumes that they give Xi a reasonable nerf down the line though, it might not be enough if they leave Xi alone. Thanks for watching, and I hope that you enjoyed it!

Music used:

Kingdom Hearts 3, L'Oscurita Dell'Ignoto

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, A Good Thing is Possible