Ulevo said:
Unfortunately the only character worth TAing with here is RAcast.
* off-topic
This is not true, HUcast is still very good and cannot be overlooked. He is not completely overshadowed by RAcast by all, because of his immense ATP and access to particular weaponry.
1. ATP -- higher single target damage with a few things such as Mechguns. C. Raygun also works perfectly fine on Vanilla enemy statistics on most things (I believe Heaven Striker is stronger though on a RAcast, although you can argue this is an issue also due to its auto-target properties).
2. Vjaya -- Do I need to explain this one?
3. Excalibur -- Same thing.
4. TJS -- Iron Faust is combo locked on Vanilla, meaning that TJS is the only viable tool to attack enemies from a central point. This is especially important for certain spawns in TA. Berdysh does do the same thing but uses normal attack damage unfortunately...
5. Dark Flow -- It might be combo locked, but that doesn't make it unusable (kind of needs a lot of hit though, and doesn't work on everything if it has decent EVP).
Dark Flow actually skews the entire balance away from RAcast and makes the game imbalanced overall. While it doesn't make him ultimately useless, RA's involvement in the TA metagame is very minimal because of it on other servers (except Ultima, because of their EVP boost which makes C. Raygun on HUcast useless and they don't get Raven or LK38, so you need RA to deal with a few things that Dark Flow cannot since HU doesn't have the tools for it there).
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Also about the drop rates, I'm not sure what I think. I don't really like everything averaging around 1/2,000, but some drop rates are really extreme, such as 1/1,800~ from like Girtablulus... the maximum you can get in one quest is like 6 (if I remember correctly) and that specific quest takes 15-20 minutes with 4 people, meaning the item isn't really "huntable" so to speak. I don't think things should be easy, but they definitely shouldn't be necessarily so discouraging in a way that people feel like they can't hunt an item. Even SJS isn't quite so bad as you can do the 5 Gi-Gue on PW4 in like a minute.