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[Frumple]

So this is apparently on steam now?

Going to give it a look, I think, but that 67 gig initial download is mildly daunting

[Dostoevsky]

It's decent fun, if feeling somewhat dated in a lot of little ways. I played a decent bit of it on the Windows Store version (albeit using PSO Tweaker to actually get the darn thing to work), then kinda petered out in interest after PSO3/2.5/2 2 or whatever it is was announced a few weeks back. Kind of odd for them to properly localize this just a few months before releasing the next one - if it's hype they're looking for, that's an awfully expensive way to do it.

Yes there's going to be some extent of character transfer between them, but I'm assuming that a) if not reset outright, gear will quickly become obsolete in the face of a new grind, and b) fashion, the real endgame, will probably not transfer over in a meaningful way.

[Ygdrad]

It's decent fun, if feeling somewhat dated in a lot of little ways. I played a decent bit of it on the Windows Store version (albeit using PSO Tweaker to actually get the darn thing to work), then kinda petered out in interest after PSO3/2.5/2 2 or whatever it is was announced a few weeks back. Kind of odd for them to properly localize this just a few months before releasing the next one - if it's hype they're looking for, that's an awfully expensive way to do it.

Yes there's going to be some extent of character transfer between them, but I'm assuming that a) if not reset outright, gear will quickly become obsolete in the face of a new grind, and b) fashion, the real endgame, will probably not transfer over in a meaningful way.

https://pso2.com/news/announcements/pso2ngsannouncement/
Has info on it, it seems like they're going to exist side by side, not what I had understood at first. I thought it was just an overhaul.

This bit of info might interest you:
"Finally, PSO2's core graphics engine will also be overhauled, allowing you to use characters created with PSO2: NGS's system within PSO2 as well. Naturally, ALL character creation info from PSO2 (including items linked to emotes and other previously registered data) will be compatible with PSO2: NGS!"

[Dostoevsky]

Thanks. It's an interesting mish-mash of what transfers and what doesn't.

⬨ Items Obtained in PSO2 That Cannot Be Used in PSO2: NGS

Skill Rings
Consumable Items used for battle, growth, and enhancement
Boost Items
Materials
Furnishings

That's... actually pretty minor in terms of what isn't compatible. So high-star gear and character fashion will transfer over, interesting.

⬨ Character Growth

Character growth will not be shared between PSO2 and PSO2: NGS.

⬨ Examples of Character Growth Elements That Are Not Shared With PSO2: NGS

Level
EXP
Class Skills
Photon Arts
Techniques

This, however, is pretty big - if you're going to play the new one, no long-term reason to continue the grind to level 75 with one/multiple classes for the next few months.

⬨ Weapons

While the fundamental weapon design will not change, their stats, augments, and potentials will. Additionally, some higher-rarity weapons may not be equippable until your character has reached a certain level. For weapons pertaining to classes that have not yet been added to PSO2: NGS, they will be unusable until the relevant class has been released.

Assuming the current/old weapons aren't horribly power-creeped this does seem pretty handy.

⬨ Units

In PSO2: NGS, Units will become armor that is not visible. Even Units that have been obtained in PSO2 will become invisible in PSO2: NGS. Furthermore, similarly to weapons, their stats, augments, and potentials will change, and high-rarity Units may not be equippable until your character has reached a certain level.

Kind of a shame units don't have visuals any more, but more accessory slots will hopefully be a good (possibly better) replacement.

⬨ Mags

Although Mags within PSO2: NGS do not affect your stats or aid you in battle, Evolution Device data from PSO2 will carry over.

Now this is wonderful. 'Optimal' mag needs discouraged playing around with different classes, and was kind of a dumb grind.


I kind of wonder if the old episodes will be playable in the new system, but I've found what little of the story I've done to be so 'meh' that I can't say I'm really concerned either way. (I've heard it gets better in later episodes, at least.)

[Nighthawk]

In essence, if you're still playing PSO2 with the intention of playing New Genesis when it comes out, you're playing to collect fashion items and maybe stock SG, because ain't nothin' else gonna carry over.

[Frumple]

Fiddled a bit. Current major question: Are there axes? If so, how get? Tiny chonkbot needs axe.

[Dostoevsky]

I don't think there's anything like a traditional axe class of weapon, though some of the partisans and halberd-like and some of the swords are greataxe-like, if I recall.

Here are the current melee weapon classes - I'd encourage doing the class mini-tutorials at the counter next to the daily quest counter to get a feel for the various weapons.

• Gunslash: Everyone can use, but crummy. A one-handed sword that can also double as a peashooter. Photon Arts (PA, weapon skills) are generally just flailing the weapon around at short range, sometimes punctuated with a shot or few.
• Sword: Hunter weapon. Your traditional anime bigsword, slow-swinging. PAs are often big ol' swings, leaping slashes, that sort of thing.
• Partizan: Hunter weapon. Less about spear-poking and more about Glaive acrobatics. PAs are somewhat varied.
• Wired Lance: Hunter weapon. Er, kind of its own thing. Extendo-Swordchucks, kind of? Several of its PAs grab opponents and swing them around.
• Twin Daggers: Fighter weapon. Anime dual-wielded daggers. Haven't used enough to get a feel for PAs.
• Double Sabers: Fighter weapon. Darth maul, generally speaking. Haven't used enough to get a feel for PAs.
• Knuckles: Fighter weapon. Boxing anime. Haven't used enough to get a feel for PAs.
• Katana: Braver weapon. Anime katana, though several of them visually are a sword+shield combo. PAs include some extremely mobile options and often feature broad slashes - feels pretty beginner-friendly.
• Dual Blades: Bouncer weapon. A pair of shortswords; like all bouncer weapons they're very mobile.
• Jet Boots: Bouncer weapon. What it says on the tin; like all bouncer weapons they're very mobile. Visually great on tiny chonk characters, as you're basically flying around and kung-fu fighting.

It's possible to use 'off-class' weapons, but with a couple of major caveats: only certain individual weapons allow off-class use, and you need to be using the appropriate subclass to get access to PAs. Without PAs you can't really use the weapon effectively.

[Frumple]

Have to check those mini things. So far out of the three they started me with as a hunter (sword, wired lance, gunblade), I've outright sold everything except the lance The sword and gunblade both kinda' felt like ass, but the lance feels alright. The grab is great and the geyser thing seems like pretty nice poke, plus the range on the basic gives you a nice bit of leeway. Just doesn't have the visual impact a big ol' axe could

Picked up a partizan from somewhere or another, though. Just don't have the bitsies to do anything with it except basic attack, yet. Probably should see how the ranged stuff feels at some point. I understand there's rocket launchers...

E: Man, what. The big ape boss thing that randomly shows up in the forest (and I think the initial tutorial) is like two or three times harder of a fight than the giant spiky wolf thing that looked like it was supposed to be the first "real" boss. That ape has chunked my ass every time I've encountered it but I solo no-damage chumped the wolf on first encounter. Friggin' weird.

[Dostoevsky]

One thing I failed to mention is that each melee weapon class has a special action and a special mechanic in addition to the basic attacks and PAs. These tend to be thematic to the class - e.g. Hunter weapons generally have a block of some sort as their special action. The mini-tutorials will explain and demonstrate the action & mechanic that each weapon has for a class.

For getting access to PAs, I'd suggest using the market to look for cheap PAs once you've accrued a bit of money. You can usually find a good selection at the minimum market price (1050 meseta).

Ranged weapons generally feel okay. If you want to do ranged I'd probably stick with Ranger - the Gunner class is effectively melee and kind of awkward compared to the Bouncer, and the Braver class's bow feels a bit secondary to the katana unless one really specializes. The main problem is that unless you're focusing your Mag on DEX and using a Bouncer or Braver subclass, it's hard to switch between melee and ranged classes at higher levels because each requires a different raw stat build for the mag. Less of a problem at lower levels, at least...

There's also the summoner class. Functionally ranged in that you stay back and use a pokemon-like to fight for you, but feels rather different to play. Main problem (in my opinion) is that animations are really weird - it basically flits & hovers about, even if it's a four-legged dog. Summoners also get to deal with a pretty different realm of itemization, as there is mostly just a single 'weapon' that's the wand, and they accrue monster eggs and 'sweets' instead. Sweets fit into this funky tetris grid system of powerups for an individual creature.

[Frumple]

... man, I solo'd the falz arm thing, but I'm definitely getting the feeling I probably should have found extra bodies for that fight

Half mate burned through a full ten stack of mono and a couple di, and the whole time I had like... zero feedback I could notice if I was actually making progress. It worked out, but yeesh, what a mess...

E: Success!(?) Auxiliary is more or less as tall as my actual character. Could have fiddled with the hat to make it straight up taller (counting the hat, anyway)...

E2: Holy hell, daybreak province is a nightmare. Not because it's hard or anything, but because there's goddamn giant things everywhere and you can't see shit half the time because your screen is literally full of giant demon ass.

Possibly the worst thing about it is the enemies themselves are actually pretty neat looking. They're just too goddamn big, and too numerous.

... also the level is legit too friggin' bright, just as a general thing. Probably the worst level design I've seen from PSO2 so far, made worse by having some of the more interesting set pieces, just tuned poorly. Argh.

E3: so that's what a 6+ group descending on Appos Dorios looks like

3 peep kill was sorta' reasonable (not actually a threat or anything, if nothing else the thing functionally couldn't hurt me and I think I was drawing a decent amount of the fire), but that second go was like a plague of locusts falling upon the poor bastard. Poor critter didn't last long...

[Greiger]

Once you get to higher difficulties the Urgent Quest bosses start to last a bit longer, capping out at super hard which is in practice the hardest difficulty currently. Because the enemy stats kinda jump up a significant amount more than the player stats do around that difficulty level.

 There is a difficulty level after super hard but once players are able to do stuff at that difficulty generally their gear and stats have caught back up and in practice the content is easier because everyone had to gear up massively to get past the brick wall that is super hard.  I am a level 80 Braver/Summoner with the best bows and armor currently available, and I'll often drop down to super hard just because the fights last for more than 5 minutes on super hard with a 12 man.

Heck there was a rumor that Super Hard Apos Dorios and Luther actually have MORE HP than the Extra hard versions (the difficulty above).  And while I can't vouch for the truth of that.  It definitely seems true with how quickly they die in extra hard compared to Super.

[Frumple]

... so is like... fulcrum tanking, where a hunter basically just spams the lance swing on top of something and becomes a ridiculous looking but borderline unhittable distraction supposed to be a thing, or is there something else going on? Because it seems silly good at keeping you alive while still getting most things to try (and mostly fail) to hit you. Plus it even hits pretty hard.

It just. Looks completely ridiculous (and hella' messy) from my end. The tiny purple chonkbot on the flying trapeze of DOOM.

[Greiger]

Can't speak for that much as I don't play much hunter.  A lot of mobs do seem to have trouble dealing with things on the vertical, though at higher levels those zit things that attach to their heads can get stronger and at a certain point start firing ranged attacks at you independent of the monsters actions, so that may become problematic later.  I suspect those exist solely to counter air camping certain mobs.

As for tanking itself it's largely not a thing in the meta.  Threat is heavily damage done biased, so if you want to tank you have to have high dps to keep threat, if you have high dps you likely have to sacrifice defensiveness to do it.  If you sacrifice defensiveness having threat can hurt.  And even then there is the risk that some Fi/Gu chain. braver counter, or Fo/Te Fomeglion will take threat off of you no matter how hard you try and keep it. 

That said a friend of mine built a guard stance hunter with the intention of tanking and seems to perform better than all the folks touting meta as lord and savior predicted.  So trying to tank would probably be more difficult with little real gain, you may struggle to keep threat in larger groups at all, and the meta will say you are wrong.  But I've seen a hunter 'tank' build clear just about all the content currently in NA with a party* without any real issue, so if one is dead set on tanking it doesn't stop you from clearing content at least.

* (and I suspect he could have handled most of that without a party too)

[Frumple]

I mean, I literally haven't talked to anyone in game yet (Level 34!), so I haven't engaged with the meta, like... at all. Gone hunter for potential axe (so far actually just mono-lance in practice) and tech-thing, uh. Mostly for the passive PP regen (it's led to some silly situations  where I've straight up planted my butt in front of a giant mob of fellspawn and spammed the starting whirlwind throw thing until they all died) and so I can easily heal up minions/myself between battles. Have been building guard stance just so I don't have to, like... play as carefully. My HP bar reads like 700, but my functional HP with full mate inventory is several times that and most stuff that hits me just doesn't hurt super bad, gives me more wiggle room.

I'm only up to hard on some things, and I can't solo most event quests if that's a thing a meta build is supposed to be doing at this point, but so far nothing kills me even if I run out of time and I'm clearing content out pretty much hitchless outside the event quests.

I guess I just don't know what high damage is, exactly. Up to against level 40 bosses my swing does between 6.5 and 16k-ish damage per use if every swing hits (depending on where it hits, of course, with the swing, uh... not being easy to aim, ahaha), so. It mostly keeps stuff aimed at me instead of the AI minions I bring along, at least...

[Nighthawk]

I mean, I literally haven't talked to anyone in game yet (Level 34!), so I haven't engaged with the meta, like... at all. Gone hunter for potential axe (so far actually just mono-lance in practice) and tech-thing, uh. Mostly for the passive PP regen (it's led to some silly situations  where I've straight up planted my butt in front of a giant mob of fellspawn and spammed the starting whirlwind throw thing until they all died) and so I can easily heal up minions/myself between battles. Have been building guard stance just so I don't have to, like... play as carefully. My HP bar reads like 700, but my functional HP with full mate inventory is several times that and most stuff that hits me just doesn't hurt super bad, gives me more wiggle room.

I'm only up to hard on some things, and I can't solo most event quests if that's a thing a meta build is supposed to be doing at this point, but so far nothing kills me even if I run out of time and I'm clearing content out pretty much hitchless outside the event quests.

I guess I just don't know what high damage is, exactly. Up to against level 40 bosses my swing does between 6.5 and 16k-ish damage per use if every swing hits (depending on where it hits, of course, with the swing, uh... not being easy to aim, ahaha), so. It mostly keeps stuff aimed at me instead of the AI minions I bring along, at least...

I'm gonna assume you're talking about your subclass when you say tech-thing. Most people will recommend Fighter as a subclass for Hunter, because it adds more P-ATK (physical attack, which Hunter obviously uses) and has really high percent boosts to damage on its tree. Honestly, though, if you're not going for damage meta, you can build whatever you want. I run a Hunter/Summoner, because Summoner subclass makes me really tanky and, like you, I enjoy having wiggle room. Just don't expect to contribute much in the super advanced content (highest-level event raids) where damage matters if you don't want to run out of time.

If you're going to invest in Guard Stance, I highly recommend getting one point into Advanced Guard Stance (or whatever it's called; it's near the bottom of tree). It provides a big percent boost to damage for 40 seconds after performing a perfect guard. And if you're not already aware, Hunters benefit hugely from perfect-guarding, as it allows them to maintain aggression while negating all damage (and even healing if you take the skill that heals you when perfect guarding!).

Also, this could be really useless or really useful advice depending on whether you checked skill page or not, but if you're using Guard Stance, make sure to turn it on when each mission starts. The first stance (leftmost) in a class's skill page works automatically without input, but the second one functions via toggle (and turns the first stance OFF if you have it). In short, Guard Stance does nothing at all unless you turn it on when you start a mission.