HUcast/Guide
HUcast is an android Hunter with the highest ATP in the game. While not immediately intuitive, HUcast is the best Hunter for both solo play and multiplayer, as his tremendous ATP makes him have the highest ATP in both modes. Along with his access to traps, this gives him extremely powerful crowd control with the power to mow down any spawn.
In comparison to the other Hunters, he is almost always better in every situation, with only HUnewearl having an advantage in regular play with her access to useful support techniques.
HUcast is good for both beginners and advanced players, although beginners who are not familiar with how to avoid enemy damage may struggle with staying alive due to only being able to carry up to 10 of each mate item.
Pros and cons
HUcast is a master of close range damage. If positioned well he can deal the most damage of any class in the game in most situations. His access to traps and boosted arrest makes him among the most capable at crowd control, as well.
In many situations it is optimal to play HUcast at less than 12.5% HP in order to enable Dark Flow's special. This can be a pro or can be a con depending on personal preference, and is not a mandatory part of playing the class.
Pros
- Highest ATP - large combo kill potential
- Access to traps - the most powerful crowd control tool in the game
- Hunter arsenal - with options such as Dark Flow, Vjaya, Diska of Braveman, and L&K38 Combat hunters have some of the most efficient answers when prepared for a spawn
- Good at both solo and multiplayer. Level 3 shifta is enough to give HUcast the highest solo ATP
Cons
- Lower ATA - while mostly compensated for by freeze and arrest, HUcast can struggle with lower hit gear
- Limited effective range - HU's arsenal is much less effective if they are not positioned for a spawn
Section ID choice
As HUcast, any ID is a good choice, as HUcast is an optimal damage dealer in any area. Below are some recommendations for HUcast, but there are no wrong choices if you want another ID to hunt a specific item.
Finding items for HUcast
Skyly
Skyly has access to many essential HUcast items, including increased rate of finding swords, which is important for early-game and finding hit Caliburs later. Items include Daylight Scar, Sealed J-Sword, Zanba, Red Ring, and Lame d'Argent.
Finding items that HUcast hunts well
Viridia
Hunters are potent boss killers, and Viridia is ideal for hunting bosses as Red Ring and Parasitic Gene "Flow" are coveted drops which only drop from the bosses at the end of episode 1 and episode 2. L&K38 Combat is also an item that can be hunted while hunting bosses.
General good ID
Whitill
Whitill is a powerful ID that gets many coveted and valued items in almost every area in the game. Whitill is the most unrestrictive ID, giving players the freedom to play any content and still have the chance of scoring something big, in contrast to more restrictive IDs such as Bluefull, which focus players into certain areas. Whitill finds many good items such as V502, Heaven Striker, Diska of Braveman, Frozen Shooter, Slicer of Fanatic, and more!
Material Plans
Important Stats Only - Maxes important stats as early as possible. Recommended for levelling.
Min-Max - Maxes as many character specific stats as possible by level 200 using the minimum number of slot units. Recommended at level 200.
Max Stats - Attempts to max all stats at level 200. Ignores any sort of equipment efficiency. Not recommended.
| Plan | Mag | Units | Shield | Materials | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power | Def | Evade | Luck | Unused | ||||
| Important Stats Only | 5/133/62/0 | V101 | Red Ring | 122 | - | - | 28 | - |
| Min-Max | 5/133/62/0 | V101 | Red Ring | 106 | 16 | - | 28 | - |
| Important Stats Only* | 5/133/62/0 | V101 | - | 112 | - | - | 38 | - |
| Min-Max* | 5/133/62/0 | V101 | - | 106 | 6 | - | 38 | - |
| Max Stats | 5/139/56/0 | V101, Centurion/Ability | Red Ring | 85 | 25 | 15 | 13 | 12 |
| Important Stats Only (-3 ATP) | 5/130/65/0 | - | - | 115 | - | - | 35 | |
The ISO* and Min-Max* plans disregard Red Ring as a means of maxing the LCK stat, allowing for swaps to other barriers such as Kasami Bracer without losing out on crit chance.
HUcast has no Max Stats plan without a V101; it would still require two units, so it's better to use a plan that includes V101 to allow for more equipment usage.
Equipment progression
Pre-Ultimate
Early Ultimate Essentials
Heavenly/Battle: 40% battle speed is borderline mandatory for handling monsters in Ultimate. This will make everything else more effective.
Smartlink: Removes the ranged accuracy penalty Hunters suffer from. Details are on the smartlink page.
Berserk/Charge Raygun: Necessary for trapshooting and any situation where you need to quickly deal damage at a distance. Faster and better range than mechguns, more accurate than L&K38. 50 hit common weapons can be acquired through events that feature the scavenger, and can often be bought from other players for 1pd each.
Berserk/Charge Vulcan/M&A60 Vise: Very high single target damage. 50 hit common weapons can be acquired through events that feature the scavenger, and can often be bought from other players for 1pd each. Generally ATA is a much higher priority than the marginal ATP mechguns provide.
Diska of Braveman and Thirteen: Powerful multi-target ranged damage that can be hunted or bought early. Even with low hit and HUcast's accuracy this weapon can reliably hit using the Accuracy glitch. Thirteen is not essential but it substantially boosts DoB's accuracy and damage.
Twin Blaze: Casts low level gifoie. The lingering attack can be useful for detonating traps instantly and stopping enemy charges (eg dorpons, delbiters, zus).
Next Tier
V501: Boosts the effectiveness of hell and arrest specials.
Arrest Raygun: Fast, accurate, ranged arrest. Extremely important when dealing with enemies that can't be frozen (Dorphon, Girtablulu).
Hell Raygun: Fast, accurate, ranged hell. Less important on HUcast because his ATP makes damage viable, it is still the fastest way to deal with many episode 2 enemies.
S-Parts ver2.01: Barrier that provides +15 ATA. Generally the best barrier available to HUcast before level 180.
Excalibur: Can increase ATA if paired with POSS. Fast, high DPS dealing weapon up to 3 targets. Best used on frozen packed foes (e.g. jumping Sinows, rushing Delbiters, etc), with a high potential of CK.
Vjaya: Highest multi-target damage weapon in the game, special attack has hard attack accuracy. While being a costly weapon to use, it is the best to safely CK multiple high HP enemies. To give you an idea of its potential: the right support allows you to one combo most Episode 2 mini-bosses. With the right sphereing, it can kill weaker grunts in one swing.
Next Tier
V502: Doubles the effectiveness of hell.
V101: Heavenly/Battle with stat bonuses attached.
Hell ES J-Cutter/ES Slicer: Multi-target, ranged hell. With the Accuracy glitch this is one of HUcast's most accurate multi-target hell options, as well.
Arrest ES J-Cutter/ES Slicer: Multi-target, ranged arrest. Particularly helpful for groups of dorphons or girtablulus after it starts flailing its arms (slicers aren't affected by manual evasion).
Dark Flow: Strongest single target, spawn-killing weapon. Special attack has hard attack accuracy, but high hit is required for safe usage. Have to stand against an enemy in order to stack all 5 waves of the special attack. Hard attack can be used to one hit kill Ob Lilies (A% required most of the time). DF's special also has infinite vertical height, making if useful against flying monsters/bosses. It also has the unique property of killing foes before target even appears, on the very first frame of their spawn (video example).
Red Ring: Barrier that provides +20 ATP and ATA as well as great defensive stats. Outside of specific situations this will be HUcast's best-in-slot barrier.
Strategy
Comboing Safely
When close to an enemy, it is often necessary to delay your second and third attack in order to stagger the monster. Hitting a monster when it is recoiling from a previous hit will not add any duration to its recoil animation, so if you attack as quickly as possible it can often hit you after your second attack.
Some weapons leave you unsafe after the third attack: you will want to use a two attack combo unless you are certain the third attack will kill. This varies based on your battle speed, the enemy, and positioning; but swords are particularly bad about this. Ending on a heavy attack can also be safer as it pushes the enemy back more than normal/special attacks (with a few exceptions).
You can feint an enemy to swing in the air, leaving his side/back safe for you. It is extremely useful against fast moving monsters such as Melqueek and Del-D, or a Delsaber that you want to hit in close combat. Know your safe combos and which weapons are efficient against what. Knowing if a combo will kill
Trap Usage
Traps are an extremely powerful tool given to androids and effective usage can be the difference between struggling and efficient play.
There are a few common ways to use traps:
- Trap shooting: set a trap and immediately detonate it by shooting it, typically with a handgun but possible with some other weapons. This is the fastest way to detonate a trap if unprepared, with the downside of being mid handgun animation when the trap is detonated, wasting some of the effective frozen time.
- Twin blaze: the lingering gifoie from twin blaze will instantly detonate any traps set in it. This is a little slower to set up but lets you immediately attack after setting the trap.
- Timed: traps have a set amount of time to arm, after which they will detonate immediately when something (player or monster) comes within range. Leaving traps where enemies will spawn soon gives you flexibility of positioning.
Freeze Traps: guaranteed AOE freeze. This buys your team four seconds to safely deal with a wave in addition to reducing the enemy's EVP by 30%. It's hard to overstate how powerful freeze traps are, freezing the right waves can make everything easier for your whole team. It might not always be ideal to freeze waves immediately as they spawn - allowing monsters to group together can make them easier to take out.
Damage Traps: moderate damage to enemies with low EFR. In ultimate damage traps are most commonly used to kill slimes and scare rappies. Detonating a DT where a slime spawns will instantly kill it. Detonating a DT where a rappy is dropping in will cause it to drop to the ground and run immediately, but this is prone to desync.
Confuse Traps: AOE confusion. This is a powerful effect when monsters' damage is higher than the players'. It can also be useful to cause enemies to gather to each other. Generally in ultimate confuse traps are considered disruptive because it overrides freeze and can cause monsters to behave unpredictably, but it still has use.
Spawn knowledge
The best way of being effective in this game is to know the spawns by heart along with the monsters' behaviors, and it goes for any class, really. It seems tedious and difficult at first, but it is a Hunter's keystone as their AOE is very limited and their effectiveness relies on knowing what is happening next. The easiest way to learn a quest is to run it several times, remembering the most important waves first (e.g. iconic enemies positioning, dangerous enemies, large amounts of enemies), then filling the gaps with the minor ones. It allows you to read what your partners' are intending to do once you are comfortable with the quest. You can assume that an experienced player going towards X direction means that he will deal with X enemies and leave the others to you. That is why following someone and attacking "his" monsters likely doesn't help and can be dangerous if nobody takes care of the remaining ones.
Recommended endgame equipment
Melee
- 3 Targets: Excalibur
- 1 Target Multi-Hit: Black King Bar, Daylight Scar, Jizai, Double Cannon, Musashi
Ranged
- 4 Targets: Diska of Braveman, Diska (Charge)
- 1 Target: Raygun (Charge, Berserk)
- 1 Target Multi-Hit: Vulcan (Charge, Berserk), M&A60 Vise, L&K38 Combat (No Combo)
Specials
- 4 Targets: ES Slicer/ES J-Cutter (Arrest, Hell)
- 3 Targets: Slicer of Fanatic
- 1 Target Multi-Hit: ES Mechgun (Demon's)
Special Purpose
Armors
Shields
Units
| Classes | |
|---|---|
| Hunters | HUmar (Guide) • HUnewearl (Guide) • HUcast (Guide) • HUcaseal (Guide) |
| Rangers | RAmar (Guide) • RAmarl (Guide) • RAcast (Guide) • RAcaseal (Guide) |
| Forces | FOmar (Guide) • FOmarl (Guide) • FOnewm (Guide) • FOnewearl (Guide) |
| Other | Class comparison |
