GBO2 Byarlant Custom: Is it still the king of the skies?!
This video contains two recent matches I had with the LV1 Byarlant Custom on Gundam Battle Operation 2. It is a 600-700 cost raid with insane mobility, flight ability, great melee damage, a heavy attack which can be used for risk free take offs and a claw downswing with great range and speed. Its weaknesses would be long cooldown on the claw, the heavy attack not being as useful offensively as others, the suit being massive with no Damage Control skill and the suit having low melee resistance. This suit used to be borderline broken at 600-650 cost but the meta has changed a lot thanks to the rise of MP ZZ and Atlas Gundam. I am a bit rusty with this suit and I made quite a few mistakes in both of these videos, but I still felt like I demonstrated how best to use the suit along with the various techniques it can pull off. I hope that you enjoy watching!
Its primary ranged weapon is a mega particle cannon with 2150 power, 3.5 seconds cooldown, 80% heat, 13 seconds overheat, 0.5 seconds swap, 450m range and 20% stagger value. This is nothing special but it will be your primary stunning tool. The 13 seconds overheat time means that it can sometimes be practical to fire it before it finishes cooling when you need another stun, or if you need to get max damage in a combo while the claw is cooling.
Its primary melee weapon is a beam saber with 2600 power, 2.5 seconds cooldown, 0.77 seconds swap, 1.5 seconds focus time, standard swing modifiers, 100/80/64% combo modifier and 135%x2 heavy modifier. The standard swings will do high damage because of the good combo modifier while the heavy attack also has high power. It is awkward to land both hits of the heavy but the animation itself launches you forward where you are aiming. You can use it to cancel the flight start up animation to instantly take off into the air, for general midair mobility or to knock down other flying/transforming MS.
Its first sub weapon is a mega particle cannon on both arms with 250 power, 4% heat, 450 RPM, 15 seconds overheat, 0.5 seconds swap, 200m range, 1875 DPS and 8% stagger value. Although you cannot boost fire these like vulcans, they stagger quickly and do amazing damage. They are great for breaking MA or shooting down other flying suits as well. It can nuke supports as well but needless to say you are an easy target while using these.
Its second sub weapon is a claw arm with 3000 power, 8 seconds cooldown, 0.5 seconds swap, 100% side swing modifier and 200% downswing modifier. This is easy to use to confirm a knockdown after a stun in a hurry or for big damage in triple downswing combos. It also heavy staggers on neutral/side swings. The long cooldown makes it impractical for stunlocking though.
The LV1 Byarlant Custom has 19000 HP with 31 ballistic/beam defence and 10 melee defence. This leaves it as very squishy in melee which means that you will often be destroyed in one combo if caught by melee focused generals. I was using a thrust overheat build in this video to bring recovery time down to around 3 seconds, but I recommend using melee defence and thrust until you are comfortable with the suit.
It has 140 walking speed, 235 boosting speed, 85 thrust and 84 turning speed. This makes you the single fastest suit at 600 cost and means you can easily out maneuver other suits, especially while flying.
Its major stand out skill is the LV3 Flight System. This is activated via the touchpad and makes the MS begin flying with the same mechanics as in space. Thrust is constantly consumed like this. Unlike earlier levels of flight system, you do not share the same weakness to build stagger. This is the most important skill on the entire suit and what makes it so powerful in the first place. You should rarely be engaging in combat without having this on at all. You also need to carefully manage your thrusters to make sure that you do not run out in an unsafe area. It also buffs hover/boosting speed by +5.
The rest of its skills aren't too out of the ordinary for this cost with skills like LV2 Maneuver Armour, LV2 Forced Injectors and LV3 Emergency Evasion System.
Overall I think that the Byarlant Custom isn't as viable as it once was, especially if there is a good Atlas player on the enemy team. Atlas can disable your flight mode and take you out in one combo, so you can't make any mistakes at all. MP ZZ doesn't have trouble either since it can just use its chest shotgun for an easy knockdown. This doesn't make Byarlant Custom unviable, but rather just really difficult. It can't make many mistakes and it demands great skill with the flight mode. I think it can work but only if you put in a lot of practice with it. It would become much stronger if Atlas and MP ZZ got nerfed but I think it would be a bad thing to buff Byarlant Custom at the same time. Thanks for watching, and I hope that you enjoyed it!
Music used:
Yakuza Like a Dragon, Geomijul Encounter
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, A Good Thing is Possible