So how do you, like, properly play a HUcast solo?

jcorb

jcorb

Member
I’ve had a blast on my RAmar, but I got to lvl 65 and just feeling like I want to change things up a bit. I’ve not enjoyed Forces much in the past, so I’m thinking I’ll play the HUcast I created, since I’ve heard they’re supposed to be amazing at higher levels.

Thing is… he actually seems way harder to play, at least at low levels.

Traps feel awkward to use, and without access to techs or any kind, he seems particularly reliant on spamming a metric ton of monomates to stay up. He doesn’t exactly shrug off damage, and “dodging” attacks seems incredibly difficult.

Curious what the general cadence of gameplay ought to be, and if there are particular weapons or strategies to focus on?
 
If all you're used to playing is RAmar, you're going to find playing HUcast difficult at the start, as you now have to properly pay attention to positioning and attack timing in a way you generally don't have to when using ranged weapons.

A challenge mode video would probably be a good watch to see how early-game Hunters use traps and attack enemies without getting hit - once you know how to, dodging enemies is not particularly difficult. Some examples are: My own 1C7 and my own 2C1. Spuz also has many videos, such as this 1C3.

While traps are good early game, they are somewhat limited in their scope until Ultimate, by at which time you'll have a good base amount, and they also gain double range compared to before hand, making them extremely powerful (so much so that it completely changes how the game is approached). Most importantly, they are much, much more powerful than Techniques, even if this is not immediately obvious at the start of the game. Don't be discouraged by how "bad" traps may seem to be at first.

Anyway, somewhat counter intuitively, PSO functions on a mostly ranged meta, even as Hunters you will be using some sort of ranged attacks most of the time, meaning slicers, handguns, mechguns, and so on. Try to get yourself kitted out with these weapons as early as possible as you'll have extra tools to be able to deal with situations you won't know how to handle using melee weapons.

In regards to taking damage, the amount of healing items you get is more than enough for almost any quest you play, so if you find yourself chugging through mates, the only takeaway is that you're not dodging damage well enough and need to figure out how to, but I personally find it very difficult to actually explain how to do this. It's done by making sure you never walk (I do this by making my back palette not have any attacks, so I can just flip it), delaying/timing your attacks so you don't just get hit during a combo, and attacking enemies not-from-the-front when I know I can't kill close up.
 
Mag choice is also pretty important. Twins are a must for pretty much any mag but I really like running Rati on casts for the full S/D triggers they have.
 
Oh interesting, I didn't realize ranged weapons played much role for Hunters! I figured you'd carry a handgun for dealing with traps or something, but didn't really occur to me they would be useful beyond that.

Slicers in particular seem quite strange to use, to me. Are there particular affixes (or whatever they're called) I should look out for as being especially useful?

I think I follow what you mean on the "not attacking from the front" thing. It's been a LONG time since I played on GameCube, but I remember playing a HUmar, and vaguely remember that now that you mention it. I think I've gotten spoiled to kiting enemies around and slowly whittling them down as the RAmar, so there's definitely going to be an adjustment.
 
Mag choice is an illusion; if you want to be optimal then you are stuck with mags that have invincibility on all triggers. Unfortunately trigger SD is very low; level 6 SD just can't compete with the ability to do whatever you want for 30 seconds. Resta is a unique trigger in that it can piss your team off in multimode, but otherwise does pretty much nothing considering you will heal much faster using a mate if it really matters.

You can expand the pool of available mags if you only consider the 1/10th HP trigger. Or you can just say to hell with that aspect and pick it based on looks.

The best slicer in the game is Braveman combined with the Thirteen frame, but you can play safely using a Charge Diska (or whatever slicer) instead. You're giving up (potentially a lot of) ATA and damage once you can equip Thirteen. Other slicers aren't really worth it, at least for a hunter.

Slicer use relies heavily on SNS.
 
As the King of ATP and Melee...be prepared to use the handgun and mechgun a LOT!!!

With practice, you can also "trap-shoot" easily. As soon as you drop a trap, use a Normal attack. If timed correctly, you can freeze/confuse the enemies around you, and smack them relatively safely. The freeze trap radius is quite small in Normal, Hard and Very Hard though, so be careful!!!

Activating traps can be easier later once you get items like Twin Blaze...but knowing how to trap shoot will help with any Cast/Caseal :D
 
Well if ranged weapons are important, wouldn’t that sort of make Rangers the best overall?

Also, I’ve never really compared the stats of different classes before, but I suppose it’s now got me wondering if the RAcast would actually be a better character than my RAmar? I almost never remember to use Shifta until it’s a boss room (trying to get better), and Resta seems like it’s only really useful if I’m already “safe” anyways (does it still have invulnerability frames like on the gamecube? because if so, my timing seems terrible).
 
jcorb said:
Well if ranged weapons are important, wouldn’t that sort of make Rangers the best overall?
Click to expand...
The use of both ranged and melee weapons on all classes is important. There is a ton of damage output to be gained on a hunter with the use of sacrificial handguns and mechguns. If it takes you too long to walk up to an enemy, a ranged option is most likely the better answer.
RAcast and RAmar are better in different ways. RAmar will absolutely destroy a lot of solo content with proper use of Shifta 15 and Berserk Needle. RAcast however will offer traps for more difficult to handle enemies such as in Seabed.
 
Guns are useful for all classes, even FOs.

What HUcasts bring to the table are their immense damage because not only do they have the highest ATP of all classes...but many Melee Weapons also have extremely high ATP. Once your HUcast starts getting some really high damage weapons, you can kill large enemies (Dark Flow) or a group of grunts (say something like Vjaya) much faster.

As strong as DEMONs is from rangers needles/shots, it's sometimes unreliable, and also just faster to do like 5*2500 dmg with one hit, than whittle something down with 75% attacks. Also a Charge Vulcans combo takes longer to recover from compared to some weapons, leaving you vulnerable to other attacks.

These points mostly apply if you are well-geared and well-fed with mats though...

If you are a lower level HUcast though, you still have a nice bonus in that you get FAR MORE Freeze traps than other casts at your level (until level 126 where you reach your max FT: 20) . So you can still contribute a lot to group games by freezing annoying waves.

**For 1p mode, I'd stick to areas where monsters don't have weird janky patterns (like Gorans who teleport everywhere).

Sabers, Katanas, Partisans, Claws and Swords: Do a N->H combo and walk out of enemies hit. Repeat until dead
Slicers: Try to get monsters in a group, FT them, and then do as much damage until they unfreeze (Personally find it a bit annoying to use Slicers in 1p mode because you move forward each attack and can offset the amount of enemies you hit)
Daggers/Double/Dual: Also can do a N->H combo, but use this for single-target monsters and when there aren't grunts surrounding you
Fists: ...
 
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