With Graham vs Angelo I'd say it's a tossup over whether Graham can use his Flag's superior mobility and his melee skills to overcome Angelo's newtype abilities and weapons, but they should be about on par. Anyway, yeah, the thing about VSBRs is that if they're used on pierce mode they don't really cause much damage over an area. They'll definitely keep going through obstacles with more ease than a regular beam shot and cause collateral like that but a shot to the arm will just rip it off without extending the damage to the rest of the suit, at best. At worst it'll just put enough of a hole in it that it becomes unusable.
The tradeoff is that there's pretty much no stopping a pierce beam. A single shot completely destroyed an anti-beam cloak that can take 5 or so regular beam shots and it's been shown as going right through two beam shields one after the other and only stopping when it's parried with a beam zanber, a beam saber also capable of cutting through beam shields produced a decade after the F91 was fielded out. Obviously, that parry was not a normal thing to happen and the impact was still bad enough that it damaged the Crossbone X1's sensors.
IIRC the only way to really, effectively stop one is using a very powerful i-field, which tends to be the purview of mobile armors. That the Phantom Gundam's i-field could do so, with trouble, was seen as outstanding and only worked because it can put more energy into its field thanks to the Minovsky Drive. The V2 Assault gear has an even better version since it's more advanced than the Phantom. I'm guessing it can pierce through most GN Fields and planet defensor barriers as well? The mechanics should be about the same.
The tradeoff is that there's pretty much no stopping a pierce beam. A single shot completely destroyed an anti-beam cloak that can take 5 or so regular beam shots and it's been shown as going right through two beam shields one after the other and only stopping when it's parried with a beam zanber, a beam saber also capable of cutting through beam shields produced a decade after the F91 was fielded out. Obviously, that parry was not a normal thing to happen and the impact was still bad enough that it damaged the Crossbone X1's sensors.
IIRC the only way to really, effectively stop one is using a very powerful i-field, which tends to be the purview of mobile armors. That the Phantom Gundam's i-field could do so, with trouble, was seen as outstanding and only worked because it can put more energy into its field thanks to the Minovsky Drive. The V2 Assault gear has an even better version since it's more advanced than the Phantom. I'm guessing it can pierce through most GN Fields and planet defensor barriers as well? The mechanics should be about the same.