Type88

While most of Hanyang’s Neural upgrade is fairly standard multiplier bonuses, and stat upgrades, her second Skill joins the ranks of long GFL skill texts, and does a good job of obfuscating its true power. While none of this Skill is ‘fluff’ some parts are more important than others.

First, the AoE attack on Damage Focus’s Activation, which varies based upon the highest HP enemy. A rocket if the enemy is Armored, a cluster grenade if they are unarmored. Thanks to her relatively high base Damage, this cannot be ignored as a source of Damage but is overall merely a strong bonus, rather than the focal point of her kit. The same is true of the melee attack. While the piercing effect is useful, as a rule, you do not want Hanyang to be in position to be attacking in Melee.

The important portion of this Skill is the line in the middle of the text, ‘While Skill is active, all attacks will pierce at 1x Damage’. Much like Kord’s pierce, this is incredibly potent, allowing Hanyang to clear groups of enemies with frightening speed. As a consequence of her Rifle Class base Damage and Damage boosting Skill, Hanyang’s Damage output against groups of enemies is fantastic, and even gives her a strong niche in Day battles, despite her overall weaker Damage multiplier under those conditions. The value of being able to damage more enemies than just the one you are targeting cannot be understated, as she is effectively multiplying her Damage output by the number of enemies hit, but bear in mind the overwhelming majority of the utility is in her damage against groups; against a single target, Hanyang struggles to keep pace relative to her peers.

This effect is illustrated in battle by Hanyang’s attacks transforming into a laser that visually travels horizontally from her position. This results in her attack animation being somewhat deceptive, as the actual hit is applied slightly later than the visuals might indicate, as well as obscuring her targeting. Consider this gif.

Contrary to what the visuals indicate, Hanyang does still target normally, as you can see above. Bear this in mind when considering the piercing effect, and its quirks as discussed below.

The piercing effect works in a manner that is slightly counterintuitive as well. First: While it may visually appear that all Dummies are firing a shot, behind the scenes, all of Hanyang's shots originate from the 'main' link, or the one standing at the front of her unit on the screen. This is important, because:

Instead of drawing a line between Hanyang and her target, and damaging every enemy along this line, it instead draws hitboxes at set intervals. This means that there is a chance for an enemy to be skipped by the piercing damage if they happen to exist in the gaps between these hitboxes. for a good illustration of how this can be a problem, consider this example:

This has a perhaps unintended side effect. Because Hanyang's Peirce generates hitboxes in a horizontal line from the muzzle of the gun on her chibi, instead of a fixed position Skins that modify that position can adversely affect her in battle. At present, this appears to, in a peak moment of irony, be a detriment reserved for her Mod Skin, as during her firing animation Hanyang floats a few pixels into the air. This moves the hitboxes up a few pixels in turn, which increases the chances of enemies slipping through the gaps in the line. For those looking to squeeze their very own Gundam for every bit of performance, leaving her in her original Skin is recommended. 

Much of the information on hitboxes and skins is compiled from this thread: https://gall.dcinside.com/mgallery/board/view/?id=micateam&no=1635018&page=1

When placed in a standard RF/HG Echelon Hanyang can now safely occupy Position 7, able to apply her Cooldown buff to both frontline Handguns, as well as take better advantage of the Buffs provided.