So we have two types of...harder fights I guess, hyper and deviant. Mechanically I have no idea what the difference is but in my head I'm sort of equating hyper to apex and deviant to guild quests. I know that you level up...or unlock harder quests featuring the deviants and I believe hyper monsters don't change in the quests that feature them. Is this about right?
Also the gear from these two are different. Each has a set of weapons again my assumption is the deviant stuff charges hunter arts faster and hyper weapons might...have slightly better damage or sharpness or something. Also my impression of the armor is that hyper sets are designed around mixing to get all the skills you want and deviant armors have special skills tied to the specific monster and that you unlock those by both having the full set and also leveling it up (through the harder deviant quests). Again...am I more or less on the right track?
Is it safe to say that either of the above gear categories outstrips basically anything in normal HR? Is all are most of this stuff intended to be taken on after the HR break, sort of like a soft G-Rank?
Hyper monsters are basically monsters that have a hunter's art gauge. They have glowing dark spots on their body, which if you hit, fill up both theirs' and your art gauges faster. When the monster's gauge fills up enough they can do a super powered version of some of their attacks, generally with more damage, or making projectiles larger etc. You'll be able to tell when they do it by a pause and red lightning flash before the attack. Deviants are monsters that actually have new variations of their attacks/patterns, like silverwind shoots shock waves with every tail swing and has homing tail spike projectiles.
The deviant monsters are also definitely more powerful than their hyper counterparts.
This is a great explanation. Just to expand on this a little, I've just finished my hyper Seregios armour. It's effectively the high rank armour, but allowed upgrading to level 7 that required materials only available from the hyper monster (such as hyper scales), and heavy armour spheres (that are very rare at high rank but drop fairly regularly from hyper monsters). Each piece also required a Seregios Dissenter- something that is a fairly rare drop at high rank, but seemed to drop much more easily from the hyper- I got six in about 10 hunts. The jump to fully upgraded is similar- buying the Regios armour S at 60 points defence per item gives 300 as basic. All in all the armour maxed out at high rank was around 450 defence, and with the hyper materials it is now about 600.
The weapons often need tickets- generally the rank 6 hyper quests often give a Hyper Hunter I ticket, the rank 7 single hyper quests give a Hyper Hunter II, and the rank 7 hunt-a-thons give a Hyper Hunter III.
Your tactics vs the hyper monsters are the same as they are just quicker and stronger, but with added occasional hyper moves as Peroist says. Seregios was so quick that I was glad I had constitution+2- triple aerial kicks and 4-5 stomps in a row (including combos with hyper stomps) were pretty common! As a solo hunter I found the hypers tough as they wasted my cats fairly quickly, but in multiplayer they don't seem to last very much longer than the high rank versions, mainly as hunter teams still easily keep the lighter creatures stun-locked.
Deviants are far, far tougher, and require learning new tactics and evasive manoeuvres.
There are a few hyper armour sets, but for the most part it's just the regular high rank weapons and armour that need hyper monster parts to reach their final, fully upgraded forms.
'Soft G rank' sounds like a pretty reasonable way to describe it, but it's less of the clear distinction between high rank and G as in previous games seeing as most hyper hunter teams will have a mix of high rank gear in various states of upgrade rather than specifically 'hyper' gear. Hyper monsters also don't need the specific anti-apex/frenzy skills/items from MH4U.
