Still offline-only so far, except for the one time I ventured online just to test it out. It ran like shit honestly, was sub-30 fps the whole quest (nerscylla) with 4 players. I don't know if it's due to my regular 3DS or my bad wifi.
I've mostly stuck to GS so far, I'm not 100% new to the weapon but it was always a 'toy' before. As in I'd only use it once I got the best GS and armor skills in the game, then I'd go around killing everything with crit draw. So it's been interesting to use it from the start - I was able to get by with the Jaggi GS and Velociprey armor until high rank. At that point I was getting my shit wrecked by even the tiniest of hits, so last night I quickly farmed up high rank Velociprey armor. It was surprisingly much easier than making the low rank set thanks to that dual velocidrome quest you get.
Still haven't seen much in the way of good GS armor. I'm used to having crit draw, sheathing, and focus - earplugs help too. Right now all I got is attack up large and some minor things like autotracker. I was surprised by how fast they give you an awesome GS in high rank though, the Hermitaur one is very easy to make, blue sharpness and almost a 200 raw upgrade over what I was using. Getting a black pearl took a few kills but I needed the money from selling his parts anyways - I made a hammer to farm it because hammering crabs is fun, but that also cost me 20k.
I've also dabbled in HBG but I have no idea which guns to look into moving forward - hard to tell just from glancing at Kiranico which ones are good. I also REALLY need an evade distance charm so I can get more freedom in armor sets.
I feel like I blasted through low rank without really trying, so I'm going to slow down in high rank. I don't mind taking my time and farming up weapons and armor sets. I want to enjoy myself because at best it'll be years before we get a new game.