RQ; DDP Saidaioujou 2nd boss and general rank control?

[Spirit X]

Hi,

I'm going after the 1cc on this, just survival really for now, a 1 sissy if you like. I'm struggling a fair bit but gradually improving although I'm finding the second boss a particular sticking point. I've been watching vids and stuff but find that there's just enough randomness in the placement of his attacks to necessitate a fair degree of improvisation. Mostly during his second attack wave (with the clusters of 4 columns of psuedo-aimed blue bullets combined with the exploding pink ball attacks).

Are there any particular tricks to this boss that I should be aware of? I've figured out that he either does a left pattern or a right pattern but that's still not helping me avoid it much. I suspect I may be suffering from general noobiness though, having limited experience with shmups but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, as I'm going for survival at the moment, my main strategy across the first two stages is just keeping the chain going without hypers or bombs so I can keep the rank at zero. I wondered if there are any 'No Hyper' vids out there as I can't seem to find any...or any other general advice about using/ not using hypers and controlling rank while attempting the survival clear? Bearing in mind that by the time I get to the second boss, I've obviously got a max hyper ready to go (which will put my on rank 5 if I use it) so I want to keep it in stock until I really, really need it....and then maybe use a bomb while I'm hypering to bring the rank back down a bit.

I'm just curious as to whether or not an experienced player would regard this as a sound tactic or if the effect of rank is even noticeable at low levels like this? What else should I be thinking about when developing a strategy?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Erppo]

I don't think there's much point to rank control if you just want a basic clear. The reason people do that is either to optimize the cancels in stage 5 or if they're fighting Hibachi. You're not going to be able to make the rank very high unless you already play well.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I have to disagree about there not being any point to rank control. Although the game is still hard at rank 0 it can certainly get a lot harder and you'll probably 1CC quicker with the most resources in stock when you hit the stage 5 boss. The way to rank control is keep the number of trophies you pick up limited to where your hyper doesn't grow so much that you can't control it down to 0 with bombs (preferably wisely using extras). So for example when you hit the stage 2 boss you don't want to have hyper past level 4. When you pop open the bomb release right before him let it float, use a hyper, this will put rank at 2, then use a bomb and pick up the floating bomb. At this point you have rank at 0 and full bombs and don't need to worry about hyper level getting too high to throw you into wild rank. Then after you kill the midboss on stage 3 (probably with a hyper and a bomb if you want the easiest way) you can pick up the bomb release there and again be down to rank 0 with full bomb stock. Then you can use a hyper and bomb on the stage 3 boss and go into stage 4 with rank 0 and only losing 1 bomb. From there it's pretty much good luck.

[Bananamatic]

it's a non issue until you get to expert where you basically have to hyper and you get only 1 bomb per life
if you're going for a basic clear then you're probably going to die or bomb all over the place anyways and you won't generate enough hypers to get the rank get anywhere high

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I can tell differences in the difficulty even when raising it to lower levels. It seems like I can tell differences in boss bullet speeds even at rank 1 and they're already too fast at 0. But to each their own.