Honestly the part you care about is the damage reduction and taunt, which can be useful depending on the type of enemy you're fighting. She wants very much to be the off-tank, in a classic ARSMG formation, and actually has decent tiles for it.

She is NOT for normal use due to her awful DPS, but the taunt can be useful vs certain enemies in the distance to keep them from interfering with the fight (for example, the new model Army tanks). The taunt can also affect random-target type enemy attacks.

With gear, she effectively has a 45 round mag, although shots after her "normal" ammo capacity decrease her acc while upping her FP. This may be good or bad depending on what you're shooting, but she's perfect for low or 0 def enemies that you normally throw MGs at. This is pretty good, but not particularly great compared to the more modern MGs.

A quirk though is if she moves after beginning to go into her reserve ammo, her gun will be considered "empty" and she will need to reload.

Very good buffs, not good in her own stats though. Skill is blah-ish but serviceable at night. When she gets to MOD3, however. Becomes COMMISSAR NAGANT. May or may not land you in jail (or gulag as the case may be). She does say it herself afterall, about your odd taste...

Her mod form is here

Babushka says not one step backward. Every seventh shot, she gives a damage bonus! Also, the thing starts active, making her one of very few buffers with a start-of-battle skill activation. Her first skill is still defensive in nature, and the percentages got bigger. She's actually useful in a number of situations, either for reducing enemy firepower in specific fights (usually Gundam or tank related) or just the straight DPS boost from the get-go. You only really need her up to Mod 2, but the Mod 3 art is cute.

Her pre mod form is here

Expensive AND still doesn't do anything useful? Say it ain't so.

Shame, since I like the shotgun, but she sucks harder than the vacuum cleaner she should be using instead of her broom.

Note from Kyazuki: Xecty doesn't like DPS shotguns, but she's alright if you want her for that. Probably not worth the cost for most.

There was a two-year span where BAR Mod was unquestionably one of the best MGs in the game between her great skill and super good early reload cancel frames, that even resulted in debates over whether or not to use an ammo box for maximum early burst. EN skipped that period entirely and introduces her alongside one of her replacements.

Now, she's still decent at first mag fire, but she's really expensive for this, essentially making you pay for a full 4-star Mod for slightly better performance than M2HB. In the long term, she's outperformed by Lewis, who is introduced in Isomer.

So yeah... she's been replaced at half her job and she's really expensive to build up for the other. If you like her a lot though, she's not the worst Mod to spend on.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.