(Not a Xecty review, take with a grain of salt)

These two units are generally considered to come as a pair due to their synergy skill that isn’t mentioned in their introduction post. The synergy skill prevents the debuffs from affecting your team. To add to that, if they are positioned horizontally adjacent to each other, for example with MPK on 6 and MPL on 5, the range of their skill radius is increased by 2 tiles. So that’s why this entry is going to be combined into one. That being said, you don’t ACTUALLY need to use them together, but I don’t really recommend it.

While very neat, they’re not very good. They have some very large issues that prevent them from doing what their skill suggests. The main problem is that they offer very little damage mitigation to help them survive. SMGs typically being tanks aside, they’re required to sit on the field for a fairly long time to get mileage out of their skill. Their paltry amount of defense means that most modern enemies will shred them in seconds. The second problem is that you’re committing two slots (typically) to run these SMGs. Two full slots of commitment is a large ask when that’s approaching the majority of your echelon slots. They don’t do enough to warrant that investment.

Passively, she's Mk23 with better tiles. Regarding her active abilities, she isn't as nice as Mk23's straight damage upgrade for some, but better for others (such as fights with Grape that require her to shoot faster). They're similar but not interchangeable so you'll need to use the space between your ears.

Also she's kind of boring and has no easy jokes besides the Viking name, which doesn't suit her at all, so blah.

If for some reason you absolutely must have a 2 star Molotov. You get Skorpion for free really early so she doesn't see much use (though she does slightly outdamage skorpion). Has not great dodge and okay HP. She does however come with an adorable as hell Children's day skin so I wont entirely fault you for wanting to bring it.

Basically Glock 17 but with different tile buffs (and personally less goofy). Often compared to Nz75, but reduces damage outright instead of RoF so I personally find it better. Tiles are ok, and more importantly, unlike Nagant, she works the same day or night

She's not actually bad, but you won't usually need the exact combination of what she offers. She's there if you need her though.

Also she appears to have gacha currency on hand.

With MG34, this was Germany's primary machine gun for WW2. You may also note that they lost that war.

With a lot of the enemies MICA loves to toss at us now, MG4 mod has seen a lot more use as of late. She does, however, take a ton of investment (all her equipment, mod 3, etc) to get her to that point. Is it worth it? Probably. She's still an MG though, so she's not going to be pulled out as much as a good AR or RF.

Her ability to reduce enemy Firepower ONLY comes when equipped with SLAP rounds, which she only gets at Mod 3. Before then, meh. A major thing is that the damage reduction is at the very end of the enemy's damage calculation (because reasons) instead of the beginning, so it has more of an effect on low FP enemies than high FP ones.

Note that the bounce effect is buggy as hell, especially when the enemy dies.

Weird tiles and an "interesting" (in a Chinese sense) skill. She tries out some ideas, but the execution kinda falls flat. She has some memey uses, like being able to theoretically have near constant fire with formation jank, but those meme formations are for style rather than practical use. The mix of short skill durations, weird effects, and being a solution in search of a problem all play against her, which is a shame since she's cute.

Another Dangerdrop daughter, except not as cute as M200.

She has two big things going for her: 1. She keeps firing until she's top of the damage list (fuckin' tryhard). 2. She will shoot the enemy with the highest FP.

So if you pair her with Kord who does bigdick burst damage, she will keep firing for a while.

Is your name Ian McCollum? If not, you probably don't care.

She's Honeybadger, but 3 star, and the tiles are kinda upside down.

She's surprisingly alright for a 3 star, but she's not going to wow you.

Insert bad joke about 7mm French Long here.

Like every other DPS shotgun, she really doesn’t have a place in current content. A phrase commonly used around here is “a solution in search for a problem”, but the real problem with MAG-7 is that I’m not entirely sure she’s a solution either.

Her passive effect can be very nice when enemies start having 600 armor, but the times there are less than three targets are very rare. Her active skill can make her damage go sky high if it’s allowed to stack, but her being on the frontline gives her the same issues a lot of DPS SMGs have. She’ll lose links, cutting her damage by a ton. Not to mention that it takes a little while for it to ramp up. The DR afforded to her by the skill isn’t high enough to keep her healthy enough to do much.

Another one of those funny two-mode dolls. She's actually not an awful damage dealer, but her damage is still less than other dolls that are pure damage dealers. Also, despite having a rifle mode, she can't equip AP rounds so you're stuck with only the AP stats you get from her skill.

She might have use in some formations (mostly shenanigans), but most people probably won't use her.

After literally years, M4 demonstrates WHY SHE IS THE HEROINE and becomes METAL GEAR.

She keeps all her old benefits but has 5 star multipliers and better stats now. This gets even better when Mod3 when she gets a unique that ups her firepower and ALSO gives her armour, so she can kinda tank in a pinch. Her buff tiles are ALSO slightly improved. Her mod 2 skill also tags enemies and enhances the mod skills of other Anti-Rain units.

The big thing however is the desperation mode. At mod2 onward, when 3 or fewer allied dolls are in battle (you can retreat 2 units to force this, or simply deploy her with a partial strength echelon), she pulls out the portable cannon and proceeds to deal hilarious damage that makes grenadiers wet their pants, as huge AoE blasts firing from every dummy. The blasts are kinda 100% accurate (the main hit can never miss, even at night, but the splash damage can. Its weird), and can partly crit (its complicated), and is meant to be a last ditch thing to save a fight under dire circumstances (of course, we instead abuse it). This is however, a doubled edged sword, as her RoF also goes down, so its possible for some enemies to slip by if you havent taken this into account.

Basically, Mod her first. She's pretty much priority #1 for modding.

If you're looking for an 8s Grenadier, well, she was always a very strong choice, and now she's pretty much almost the default one for most circumstances by sheer stats and having the 2 accessory slots. Improved Grenade performance (not that most enemies will notice) and bonus MIRVs on top of that. She does get bonuses with M4, but due to the fact M4's marks affect her targeting (and potentially are buggy with her MIRVs), using her with M4 is not always ideal.

Aside from that, it's the same old SOP, but with a unique equipment (thats pretty much just an improved Eotech) and bigger numbers.

With LTLX7000 being out, the main question asked of most shotguns is "are they as good as LTLX?" As for M26-MASS, she does her damn best trying to be. While LTLX has her SUPER dumb damage mitigation in her active skill, M26 has it baked in as a passive. If any damage she takes is 5 or lower, it’s completely ignored, as if she had very good flash rounds. This is applied AFTER armor mitigation AND flash rounds. With flash rounds, she’s essentially immune to anything 8 damage or lower, which is very strong. However, if the enemy does too much damage, this passive does nothing. However, in current day, LS26 exists. This fixes damage taken to 5 which, spoiler, is negated by MASS's skill. Can be very strong to force MASS to tank some insane things. How often will that be used? Eh. It's neat at least.

The one thing she does have going for her with her passive is that she can actually mitigate damage that bypasses armor. You can entirely mitigate stuff like grenades through it. You could sit in gundam range for a bit and not fussed about it. You could even sit in Typhon lasers and be fine. (Depending on firepower of Typhon, please do not attempt without consulting a local doctor)

Overall, she does fall short of LTLX just due to the sheer power of doubling your armor along with 20% DR. The utility of her active also is less relevant compared to LTLX. Removing HP shields and buffs (which get far more common) is stronger than a Molotov and DR to backline. To add to that, the 6 second initial cooldown hampers the effectiveness of the backline portion of the skill. This is because most things that do target the backline would already be skullfucking you at that point. Other cases this is bad include maps M26 shouldn’t be brought to for one reason or another, like when shotguns are bad for it in general or you can’t use machine guns.

The Chicago typewriter, the classic mobster gun (ignoring the fact mobsters actually used M1918 BARs most of the time for actual hits), and TaneRisa-chan proving that even as a gun, she protects us. Highest HP among SMGs but conversely has abysmal evade. Has a very good invul skill though, and is a solid tank overall, though she'll need a lot of repairs after every mission.