What should I aim for?

[omgwtflolbbl]

Returning player after a year, blah blah blah.

I no longer have any idea what I equipment I should be aiming for, if my mags are decent, what kind of content I can handle, etc. Hoping to get a decent idea of where to go/what to do.

I used to mainly play Ra/Hu, Gu/Ra, Hu/Fi, and Fi/Hu. All 4 are at 50-55 except for Fi which is 45. My current skill trees for them are http://ryuhiroshi.funpic.de/pso2/ski...000000Ib000008. Are these still okay? They seem to at least match up well enough with the all class info sticky. I have like 5 tree reset passes from who the heck knows what, but I'd rather not use them if I'm still okay.

Weapon wise I have a few of the (normal) AQ weapons at +10 and a few of the Lambda all class for Fi/Hu at +10. My Surukurai TMGs are only +5 but at 50 element for some odd reason. I'm thinking that's going to be something I'm going to regret since it seems like AQ stones are still useful but the Surukurais themselves are not that good anymore. For right now I'm thinking I'll probably mainly use Fi/Hu or Hu/Fi and Ra/Hu (I don't know why I find sneak shot so amusing), with mainly Knuckles and Sword or Partisan on Fi/Hu. For right now I'm going to kind of ditch my Gu. What items are realistic to hunt for/which quests can I do to get a decent weapon of these classes?

I used to regularly do AQs, but I have no idea what this "super hard" mode is or what these extreme quests are. Could I tackle any of those with my current equipment and still be useful? What about super hard tacos? Is Falz still important to run whenever the EQ comes up?

My character is a female newman, and I have one 150 helix proi with 110s/40sdef, ajax proi with 145ratk/3rdef/2dex (no idea why i have it like that, probably screwed it up), and a ketos prio with 100tatk. Are these mags still okay, or will I have issues with equipping gear later? I heard the cap for mags was increased to 175, so that's a relief at least.

What equipment abilities are still really valuable? I have a bunch of stuff with Mizer soul and whatnot when the prices for those were kind of high, as I remember I was preparing a vardha set back when that thing was actually good. And on that note, what are decent units now to aim for now? I think I mainly just use a PP heavy setup at the moment since I never really took hits to begin with, but I have no idea what is good now.

Is it worth looking into crafting? Since it looks like I'm probably going to have to switch to ship 10 (while all my friends are at pretty low levels, there's like 6 of them and 1 of me, and they seem to really not want to change for whatever reason), I was thinking about desynthing a bunch of my fodder gear that I won't have room to take over.

TL;DR - I'm really lost, and need some help figuring out what I should be doing lol.

[Hobu]

Hu/Te, go full tank and heals.

[omgwtflolbbl]

Wow, sounds like things have changed a ton. What happened to Fo/Fi, Ra/Hu, and Gu/Ra?

[Sanguine2009]

they are still things, just not as popular as shunka spam and flip 2 win because they require more effort

[SociableTyrannosaur]

Just so we're clear Hobu is trolling. And Fo/fi doesn't take more effort it takes significantly more money and multiple skill trees to get the same effect as half way trying with Br/Hu and Gu/Hu.

Ra/Hu I think is on its way back. Satellite Cannon is stupid OP and lvl 16 PAs do solid damage. Only downside is having to stand still to get a chunk of the boosts where Gu/Hu does heavy damage and remains mobile.

Gu/Ra is still viable. Just Hu gives more accessible bonuses than Ra does and people consider the loss of WB a reasonable trade-off although it's not very party friendly. You still need someone to WB for the quick kills, so Gu/Ra still has a place. Unfortunately for ranger, the biggest hole in Gu's game, namely AoE has been fixed, so It's a bit too well rounded for being such high DPS.

Anyway Hu/Fi is kinda out of style thanks to SH, but aside from that, not THAT much has changed I think.

[omgwtflolbbl]

Are knuckles any good at the moment? Paired with a decent mobbing weapon, of course. They weren't very good when I used to play but I thought they were the most fun of the melee bunch.

[Zipzo]

Returning player after a year, blah blah blah.

I no longer have any idea what I equipment I should be aiming for, if my mags are decent, what kind of content I can handle, etc. Hoping to get a decent idea of where to go/what to do.

Well you're in luck, things are pretty straight forward these days, and you can handle the current content with pretty much any combination of the "high grade" stuff current available. That includes 10* equipment.

I used to mainly play Ra/Hu, Gu/Ra, Hu/Fi, and Fi/Hu. All 4 are at 50-55 except for Fi which is 45. My current skill trees for them are http://ryuhiroshi.funpic.de/pso2/ski...000000Ib000008. Are these still okay? They seem to at least match up well enough with the all class info sticky. I have like 5 tree reset passes from who the heck knows what, but I'd rather not use them if I'm still okay.

Ra/Hu is receiving a pretty hefty buff soon so it's like it will be popular again, but we can't know for sure until the buff hits, until then it is overshadowed completely in performance by Gu/Hu except for the fact it has weakbullet (which could be considered a huge benefit to a group, so it's not like Ra/Hu is invalid). Fi/Hu is considered "balanced" as a melee DPS, but currently is overshadowed performance-wise by Bravers or "Undercover" Bravers (maining Hunter with a multi-class Katana). Fi/Hu has contestable options available to it to match most situations with their weapons, such as Deadly Sarabande (twin dagger), Deadly Archer (double saber), & Backhand Smash (knuckles), but in the long run falls behind the current very popular Katana setups.

Gu/Ra is not very useful unless you're in an organized group that needs a WB that desperately. Hu/Fi is currently not in a good spot unless you're using multi-class Fi weapons, in which case you only become as effective as a Fi except with more HP. This is because right now hunter weapon PAs are in desperate need of love, as they are falling way behind in performance compared to the Katana and even the Fi weapons. Their gear acquisition is also lacking in comparison to the competition.

Weapon wise I have a few of the (normal) AQ weapons at +10 and a few of the Lambda all class for Fi/Hu at +10. My Surukurai TMGs are only +5 but at 50 element for some odd reason. I'm thinking that's going to be something I'm going to regret since it seems like AQ stones are still useful but the Surukurais themselves are not that good anymore. For right now I'm thinking I'll probably mainly use Fi/Hu or Hu/Fi and Ra/Hu (I don't know why I find sneak shot so amusing), with mainly Knuckles and Sword or Partisan on Fi/Hu. For right now I'm going to kind of ditch my Gu. What items are realistic to hunt for/which quests can I do to get a decent weapon of these classes?

The best advice anyone can really give is to be online for Tower Defense and Falz EQs and cross your little fingers for good 11* weapons, and when those aren't happening, running the appropriate Advance Quest (in Super Hard mode) for the according 10*/11* weapons you are searching for.

If you're premium, then you can just buy some quality 10* weapons, as not only are most 10* weapons cheap now, but many 10* equips are still considered optimal for a lot of situations. You should really be looking mostly at latents when choosing your weapon, as that generally tends to determine a weapons price and value as an equip. You want latents that increase your damage in as many situations as possible, some folks with the money and dedication will get a whole collection of weapons in order to have weapons available to suit the area they're running, but it's not really necessary, just a min/max desire.

I used to regularly do AQs, but I have no idea what this "super hard" mode is or what these extreme quests are. Could I tackle any of those with my current equipment and still be useful? What about super hard tacos? Is Falz still important to run whenever the EQ comes up?

Super Hard mode is just the next difficulty level up past Very Hard. The differences are few aside from most enemy (including bosses) animations being a little quicker and bosses having a different priority on their abilities, for example the Vol Dragon powers himself up to golden mode in the beginning of the fight in Super Hard. Most things still die relatively quickly, despite these small improvements to their AI, generally because player character power has scaled to dwarf these improvements anyway.

Extreme quests are your ticket to easy 11* weapons not reliant on RNG. It's just a 50 floor tower, each floor having a few waves of enemies (sometimes with bosses intermixed in the fray, multiple occasionally as well). You pick up stone items while doing them, and once you get a lot of stones you can trade them in for an 11* weapon of your choosing. In a lot of cases the current 11* trade in weapons (the Bio series) are the best of their aforementioned weapon category...so many folks are currently indulging in Extreme quests in order to line out their gear sets.

My character is a female newman, and I have one 150 helix proi with 110s/40sdef, ajax proi with 145ratk/3rdef/2dex (no idea why i have it like that, probably screwed it up), and a ketos prio with 100tatk. Are these mags still okay, or will I have issues with equipping gear later? I heard the cap for mags was increased to 175, so that's a relief at least.

Fish is really the only PB worth having on any mag for most any general situation, but these days the only truly maximized mags are pure mags (IE, 175 S-ATT/175 R-ATT/175 T-ATT). These values sometimes tinker up or down for certain setups in order to allow them to use certain specific pieces of equipment, for example Fo/Te or Te/Fo right now likes to use Elysion, but without a smidgen of S-ATT on their mag they can't equip it, so their mags are something like as much striking as they need to equip Elysion, then the rest is T-ATT.

You'll need to observe which pieces of equipment you plan to use in order to know if your mag needs some tinkering of that nature.

What equipment abilities are still really valuable? I have a bunch of stuff with Mizer soul and whatnot when the prices for those were kind of high, as I remember I was preparing a vardha set back when that thing was actually good. And on that note, what are decent units now to aim for now? I think I mainly just use a PP heavy setup at the moment since I never really took hits to begin with, but I have no idea what is good now.

Right now the most valuable and effective affix setups are ones that give you ATT + PP. That means Mizer Soul, Elder Soul, or Quartz Soul are the most popular souls. The reason why is in combination with similar affixes on your armor, it's possible to reach anywhere from 130-150 PP. This allows you an extra one (or two) extra casts/PA uses before you're finding yourself needing to string in a few hits to recover it. The reason why this is currently popular is because of how quickly mobs currently (still) die.

If you want some basic guidelines for affixing up to 3 or so, in order of priority I would go Soul, then Soul + ATT, then Soul + ATT + Ability III/Spirita Boost/Spirita III/Stamina III (depending on what you feel like you need).

Is it worth looking into crafting? Since it looks like I'm probably going to have to switch to ship 10 (while all my friends are at pretty low levels, there's like 6 of them and 1 of me, and they seem to really not want to change for whatever reason), I was thinking about desynthing a bunch of my fodder gear that I won't have room to take over.

For weapons, it's only worth it to craft if you do not currently use a 10* weapon. This is because when you craft a 10* it actually loses damage in the form of a wider hit variance. 10* weapons are variance capped, crafted weapons are not.

Armor can be OK when crafted because it gives you very decent base defense stats, if you've no other options, but you lose things like resists (strike, ranged, or tech resist, elemental resists).

Pick your armor first based on the set bonus. You should be going for a set bonus that provides you with at least 60 of your main att stat. Everything else under that is preference determined by your playstyle (the resistances on it and what not). More importantly, pick a set bonus that also gives 10 PP as well, to help you reach that PP threshold.

TL;DR - I'm really lost, and need some help figuring out what I should be doing lol.

You're welcome.

[Stickboy]

Are knuckles any good at the moment? Paired with a decent mobbing weapon, of course. They weren't very good when I used to play but I thought they were the most fun of the melee bunch.

knuckle has RNG based PA now

[TaigaUC]

Knuckles are much faster (less hit pause). Itemization still not great.
They just got this silly chargeable PA that's kinda clunky to use but has a random chance to do insane damage.

Zipzo has probably already covered everything else.
Some other random stuff that may or may not have been said:
- Mag PBs are getting "buffed" soon.
- Ranger's new PA Satellite Cannon is amazing. Cosmo Breaker is okay, too.
- Ra/Gu is pretty decent, if you have the right gear (eg. Guld Mira).
- 11 stars are sorta attainable now. If you're lucky.
- The Sholded lucky drop unit set is amazing for survival. Purchasable with EXPcubes.
- It's easier to level past 45 now.
- Use Tower Defense for EXP (including orders) and stocking up on 10 stars (for EXPcubes or spheres, whichever you prefer).

[Dammy]

- Use Tower Defense for EXP

please dont