Thanks Mica, for actually buffing someone with cool art for once.

In her pre-mod state, she's dire, not really worth using, and honestly a waste of really REALLY nice art (including porn by her original artist). With her mod, she has ridiculously high stats and a powerful skill at Mod 2. The big issue is she needs setup, and can't really be used on her own, but that's pretty much every funny specialist rifle anyway, so it's not really a downside.

What makes her stupidly good is that you get more damage if you have more debuffs from other sources, so go nuts.

She was handy for Dual Randomness. It is now past DR.

Her previous form is found here.

She could have been useful if we got her a lot earlier. Her skill is reliant on her standing still, so if you move her past the first two seconds, her second skill will effectively give the first one a three second cooldown if you manual it, unless it's enough to kill on its own without the buff. Her Mod 3 equip is just a cape with some extra damage on it, but she shouldn't be moving a lot anyway given her skill, so it's worth it if you do choose to mod her for whatever reason.

Also, she is the true cinnamon roll and if you don't mod her Yuzhong will fly in your kitchen and mess up your pots and pans.

Her original version can be found here.

Her mod has changed her up from just a 1-shot-1-kill attempt like the other bamboo rifles and gone to... uhm.. she keeps trying to kill them if she fails. It's sort of funny thinking about it, with her going "WHY WONT YOU DIE, JUST DIE ALREADY" as she keeps unloading into the poor fucker who should have been killed.

It's not especially useful right now, but if there's a situation where you want an actual specific thing killed and need something that will keep targeting that thing, it has some potential use. It's very very niche and she's not an especially big priority right now, though.

There is nothing I can say about Bren Mod that would compare to the sadness of her existence. The most I can say is "Well, I guess she's got better DPS than Ameli and MG4", which is not a very high bar. Her stats go up a lot after the mod, but not enough to be worth investing your limited supply of memory fragments into. She doesn't give an armor buff, so she doesn't fit in with machine guns that give those, and she doesn't have the sheer firepower of the other first-belt machine guns, so she doesn't fit in with those either.

The even sadder part is her history. At one point, during the Reload Cancel Era, she was shitty because her reload timer did NOT cancel and she reloaded on the move, making her completely inferior to every other choice including MG4. When reload cancel was removed, there was a brief resurgence of interest because people thought "Aha, now a machine gun that can reload on the move is an interesting thing!"

...It turned out it was a bug and it was fixed, except they waited until it was an interesting feature to fix it...thanks, Mica.

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.

She actually gets some fairly hefty stat increases in her mod, with Mod 2 hitting as much FP as M2HB. The issues that 2 stars normally face (low skill values compared to higher ones, etc.) are pretty solved thanks to being upgraded to a 4 star, and it also gives her extra base ammo which helps out a lot. Overall a cheap mod to get, and honestly you get a fair bit of value off even just Mod 1.

She's pretty much an all-rounder MG, and with the Mod 2 skill, technically you're not limited to just SGs, but uh... the shield values are so low otherwise that it only really helps armored things, though I guess some people might find a use for that anyway. MATH BIT: Her Special Equip actually isn't awful, but tbh you're better off with an EOTech in most cases.

Her original form can be found here.

Modded version of M1911

A really expensive trash cleaner.

Basically when she pops smoke, she then goes Alvin York and blasts away 7 times for extra damage, hitting the farthest enemy and working her way closer to the front with every shot. If there are no closer enemies, she just keeps shooting that one until someone else has gotten closer (either because its dead and thus a new thing is closer, or something ran ahead of it).

Note that while the skill has an ICD of 1 second, she doesn't actually start blasting away until 3 seconds in due to the throw animation.

"Yay, we can all clear singularity now!" Oh wait... :V Fucking Ceia, I swear...

Yeah, she's a little over-hyped, but she's actually a fairly solid unit. A stacking buff every few seconds? Not bad at all. This allows her to buff firepower, accuracy and rate of fire all at once. Her main issue is it takes a few seconds for her skills to REALLY kick in, but she's great for the longer fights that start creeping up here and there, and for things like backing up M4 in her railgun mode. Not super necessary compared to before now that we have lots of buffing HGs, but she's handy for things like ranking maps.

Another fun thing about this mod you might not know is that the passive 2nd skill automatically activates on a cooldown that you can't see, so rifle tile buffs (which speed up handgun cooldowns) make this activate faster.

Her Mod 3 equipment is kinda pointless for her role, though, so unless you like the art or have bad OCD, she's fine at Mod 2.

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

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.

One important thing with her mod is that she has a backwards facing tile now. This means fun times for Python fans, Nagant users, or users of any doll who prefers to be in the middle of the back row and could benefit from an attack speed buff, which happens a lot of the time. She also debuffs the enemy if the node you're fighting on is controlled by you, and buffs your attack and move speed if it isn't, but those are kind of icing on the cake for an already useful doll.

Oh, and the move speed buff is hilarious when combined with other move speed buffs, turning Hanyang Mod into a a rocket. This makes some boss fights hilariously easy as you give no fucks about their mechanics, and 60s is long enough for most battles.

You can probably leave her at Mod2, but her Mod3 equip is a suppressor equivalent with +20 evade at max. It's up to you whether that's worth it or not.

Her Mod 3 unique equip is alright. It lets her punch through lighter armors, and otherwise is excellent at finishing off weakened enemies, rather than wasting full-power shots on them. This is usually a thing with rifles that don't quite instantly giblet their foes. Her tile buffs are pretty okay.

She's alright but not a priority.

Modded version of G36

Distraught by the loss of her braid, she gets over it and discovers the TRUE maid was inside her all along. Or something like that.

Her stats are boosted a fair bit and the %s on her skill get a boost to 5 star levels. At mod 2, she gets a rider on her skill that boosts the Evade of stuff in her tiles, and also boosts her own RoF by 10% for every unit standing in her tiles (Max 2, yes it stacks multiplicatively). Yes, tile fuckery applies.

She does have the problem though that to fully make use of this skill, she needs units standing in the tiles, which weakens her flexibility a bit. Totally still fine for going gung ho and just blazing away in a static formation or if you can keep the formation such that stuff remains standing in the tiles though. Her performance is generally a bee's dick below that of AN94 (and makes a good match for AK12) in general use, but beats the Russians vs armored enemies.

Like any good HK product though, she's pretty expensive, so make sure you're sure about the investment and you have nothing else more important to work on (like AR team). Still, if you like the maid, definitely a thing to look at.

Technically has a combo thingy with Springfield, but it falls under "I guess it exists?" Yeah, I dunno what they were thinking.

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.

The pinkhaired tryhard who is absolutely every bit as good as she says she is. 1 of the best sustained DPS ARs in the game, and can actually hit the RoF cap on her own. She can actually outDPS OTs-14 and 9A91 at night against up to moderately armoured opponents (moderate. Dont try to send her vs Hydras)

As a bonus, her mod skill ups her DPS some more by making her pull out ANOTHER gun and throwing extra attacks that do a % of her main damage, with more damage if paired with M4Mod.

Her mod skill however, does look absolutely retarded unless you're in her mod 3 form. Normally she's supposed to pull out another gun, but since her school skin and base sprite dont have that animation, she instead fires from her scope.