I got slapped when I did Kirin MR first time, he is fairly different than original Kirin, not like too much but the patterns are different and he does more stuff, so yeah not too surprising. After the first fail though I killed him without an issue just from learning what he was doing, he's not much harder than the original just need to know what he does and dodge accordingly, as usual you don't want to commit much on him, mostly just attack once in the head then run around to bait an attack then attack again and so on, it's the best way to deal with Kirin short of using explosives(sticky/gunlance etc) or bow and such.
Pretty sure yeah, you can go into it with SnS too but not really worth it IMO(yet).
All safi weapons are basically the best options once they're released with only a handful of exceptions and even these are borderlines. Safi weapons are highly customizable and can get high raw with high sharpness and whatever ailment you want(blast tends to be the main choice for raw weapons, although you can make a poison version for when a monster is resistant to blast).
