I've been fairly lucky with eHZD pubs tonight/last night. Still need one more weekly but some failed runs came very close (...and it was sometimes my fault, I haven't played it since Time Attack and never got used to handling later parts of the fight).
I think I'm gonna be sort of checked out of things for this month, though that's not the worst thing after going too hard for TA. My main issue with progression right now is that I'm not really sure how to handle the HD cycle, not necessarily having difficulty with Expert. In the short term I'm probably just running eHZD and eHJP till I hit MUB on my light and dark weapons, since I can use extra HZD orbs for getting the dragon and I actually use the characters I'd unbind weapons for in the other fight. But Master is super intimidating, and the water/fire/wind cycle is frustrating. I use Noelle/Thaniel/Verica (or Lowen), which means investing further in HDs (or making one at all for Noelle) is a bit of a waste for Expert. But if Master requires MUB HD1s for them... that's 4-5 HDs spent on a weapon that doesn't really help me elsewhere and may not ever be turned into an HD2 to use for future content besides.
Of course, maybe next month will make this easier- once the new endgame boss is announced, I can at least aim for farming a weapon in the element you use (and the one that leads into it). And we'll also see who's viable for that fight. Cause that's the other big issue- even if I make alts that use the weapons that I actually want to unbind and bring them to Master, if anyone I have with that weapon type isn't viable for the new boss, I'm gonna have to farm even more anyway...