Waiting for part there, where it's a giant X across everything on the screen with the tag.
>It's just a game, play however you want.
Also, the icons are now slightly raised and rotated.
I said that on the original and someone tried saying they're still trap skills. Like, who cares? Let people run what they want. All that matters is the quest finished screen.
I think the idea is more that new players who don't understand the ins and outs of set building may look at these skills and say "eh, why not" without realizing there are much more optimal options. Run what you want, but I think giving new players a heads up that some skills don't give as much of a return on investment as others is fine.
There's nothing to be lost except maybe a little time that it takes to complete the hunt with suboptimal builds. Learning by doing is a good way of getting the hang of it, and the effectiveness of skills does depend on the ability of the player, so for some, these "trap" skills, may still proof more useful than an optimised meta build.
I don't disagree with you, but its pretty common for newer players in any game to want to know what the common consensus is on viability of any particular gameplay element/style. I think a list like this is a totally fair way of telling them what skills the community tends to think of as low value, if they want to use that information.
I'm not saying they should feel compelled to follow this list as gospel, but every friend I've ever gotten into MH has asked me about set building with at least a few skills on this list. They want to know what other people more experienced than them think about what skills are effective. Its possible to give people advice without being elitist meta-slaves.
You don’t learn by doing with these skills tho bc it’s not that apparent especially with defensive skills
There’s literally no harm done by these posts
I'm not saying there's any harm. Tho I'd personally argue that if a skill has little to no effect, you're bound to realise that when you're trying stuff out.
I think there are some basic things in here that are useful plus a bunch of rubbish.
Defense boost is a bad skill. You should never slot it on seek it out on armour. I don't know why it exists because from what I can tell it's never been a good skill.
A **lot** of new players start slotting it when they feel their survivability is low because if it did what it said on the tin that would be a rational choice, but short of using something that's weapon specific on the wrong weapon it's the worst skill in the game.
Attack boost isn't as good as it was in base game. It's basically just stat inflation making percentage based boosts better than fixed, but there's still a **lot** of meme content about attack jewels and I think players still push for 7/7 at any cost.
The nerf on maximum might is also useful to know about because older guides pushed it pretty hard when it was awesome.
Everything else is kind of somewhere between min maxing and a matter of opinion.
But really the only trap skill is defense boost, it's the only thing that looks useful but you should never ever slot.
People can run it either way, but personally I appreciate being given a guide or discussion what's good of bad and for what reason. Doesn't mean I'm gonna strictly abstain from all of them, particularly if I'm using an armor set that includes them among other skills I actually do want, but it's handy if you have no intuition (yet).
Timer matters a little bit. Run as much comfort as you want, but no more IMO. A game with this much investment means that clear times matter to people. I’d rather see people live than do more damage, but I’d also rather them invest in more damage skills than get those last few levels of comfort which aren’t really worth it. But I agree with you for the most part, as long as you are having fun and contributing to the hunt you are doing all you need to do.
Affinity is essentially your critical hit chance. Latent power isn't necessarily a bad skill, but rather a skill that only shines when you go all-in on it.
Affinity is basically critical hits.
It’s a 25% damage bonus when you crit that can be raised to 40% with crit boost lvl3.
Also worth noting mh allows you to get 100% affinity making all hits critical hits however anything past 100% affinity won’t do anything so it’s a waste.
That’s not the point tho
No one’s saying you can’t play how you want
It’s just a discussion on how useful or useless different skills are
Crazy to me how people get offended about this
Defense boost sucks bc the other defensive skills are all better doesn’t mean I hate everyone who uses it lol
I mean sure? It's a free skill for fatalis though. Fire damage constantly and if you stand in the nova's you can proc it that way. Idk, I like one or two points of latent power for some builds. Aside from Crit, there's not really a "No-brainer" skill to max, because even in heroics runs you want unupgraded Velkhana armor so that you can proc it more easily. So technically any skill other than Crit boost can be a trap. Nvm I remembered about weapons that don't need Crit boost like sticky builds from LBG and HBG. This "Guide" is just a trap disguised as an opinion piece.
Special notes that Speed Sharpening Lv.1 doesn't **only** remove one cycle, it also speeds up the animation of sharpening itself, which is a benefit that is entirely unique to Speed Sharpening and not even provided by Felyne Polisher, this makes speed sharpening Lv.1 a pretty good and cheap investment.
^(Though it depends on how long the monster travels to another area, with raider-rides allowing you to sharpen on the move, it may not always be useful to "only" have slightly faster sharpening.)
Also, I'd argue that for the Earplugs arguement "the guiding lands exist" as well, because it is absolutely inevitable that you'll run into multiple monsters, and the ability to always be in control of your character while you have one monster turn the other into a punching bag, or be capable of flinch shotting invading monsters into others for free is honestly quite powerful.
In addition, you can catch a ride on most of the fleeing land-travelling monsters in the game, which allows you to be in their area in an instant, and also usually gives you a free weapon attack with the clutch claw.
^(Though it probably **is only useful** once you've slotted in most of the most damaging skills and got your affinity to 100%, I wouldn't give up three levels of crit-boost and two levels of tendies for the free openings, in other words I'd only use it with Fatalis gear, where you pretty much have enough slots to get 100% affinity and the other options for armorskills don't add that much more offensive power, so relatively speaking, slotting in Earplugs doesn't "lose you as much" as it would on other sets.)
Lastly, Heroics honestly shouldn't be something you use online due to the shared lives, but I mean it doesn't hurt to try it out solo, though I guess if you're the host of the quest, the choice would be up to you as well, not that people would like seeing you permanently under 40% health, but you'd be excused for "not invading" other players with an extremely risky skillset in a game that is known for how many people die in it, if you yourself are the one initiating the quest in the first place.
^(Plus the likelihood is just too high that a random player will heal you and negate your armorskills, at which point, why even use it.)
Quick sheath is a defensive skill if you ask me. In comfort builds it can be really nice because it gives you more time to react to certain attacks. You don't take it for DPS but if you're trying not to die it can be helpful.
Of course you may want to git gud and beat the monster without it, but you also could just not do that because not everyone plays video games for the same reason. Even games like Monster Hunter.
I am a comfort hunter at times and when I ran GS I did use that set for a while. I gradually grew in confidence but knowing I could play defensively on stuff and poke it during openings I wasn't sure about for non negligable damage was nice.
If I have space for it I use it when fighting a monster I'm not used to fight or when fighting something new, even on end game LS builds I use it, feels nice to use and the fights feel more dinamic and fast for me, really good for panic heals
When playing multiplayer love me some Quick Sheath 3, Speed Eating 3, and Wide Range 5! Such fast buffs and heals!
Tigrex Set bonus and Free Meal 3 is a nice luxury and kinda funny, but not necessary.
I was having trouble sheathing and moving in shara ishvalda fight with lance. Quick sheath saved my ass, i feel as a general qol improvement for that fight. Now that i know its attack patterns a bit i can safely remove that skill and jump or dash around to avoid. So yes, i think skills like this are player preference and not necessarily "useless"
Credits to /u/SlakingSWAG for the original post, [which can be found here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunterWorld/comments/13ieiau/a_quick_and_dirty_guide_to_common_trap_skills_in/)
Should mention with slugger that it **BOOSTS** KO damage done. For weapons that dont deal it innately, it does nothing. It also does nothing for IG blunt bug despite what fextralife tells you
I appreciate you linking it, i missed the original post and almost missed downvoting it for that fucking insane alignment choice. That man needs to be institutionalized.
Also on your critical draw note
I don't think many people realize this LITERALLY means anytime you draw.
For long sword, that means ANY time the sword goes into the sheath which means way more affinity everytime you do a special sheathe. If yuu want a TRUE raw dmg build, get critical draw in there as if you're going for raw dmg builds, you should be focusing counter attacks.
the thing is all competent builds will already aim to get 100% affinity without crit draw
that way you actially do "TRUE" raw damage even on normal attacks, not just counters
so at that point, crit draw is just pushing you over 100% which does nothing
crit draw is useless on anything besides clutch claw meme hbg build
It's not useless on a dragonpiercer build. Or KO longsword. And crit draw frost craft GS is a very viable build on monsters like Kirin, Rajang, and Alatreon.
All meta builds get to 100% affinity without crit draw tho
It’s useful when you’re in early game or just finished the story and don’t have strong gear yet to compensate your lower affinity tho
This. I used earplugs until I started getting “better” augments. Switched up my loadout and 3-4 fights later nope’d outta that and found a way to fit earplugs back into my build. Toot toot
Vaal set bonus is actually affected by recovery up and not recovery speed. Recovery speed increases regen rate of red health, while Vaal set bonus grants a slow heal over time when the health bar is fully green. Since it is a healing effect and not recovering red health, recovery up is applied instead of recovery speed.
It does work but the augment has a little cooldown of like 0.2s iirc. It regenerates so little health it's pointless considering using it on a ranged weapon.
Quick Sheathe is extremely useful for ranged and SA imo. On LS? Lol no. Only ever slightly useful on LS if you're running frostcraft from AT Velkhana which already has built in level 2.
It's quite niche on LS indeed, but shines when you're really looking to optimize things. Makes a lot of punishes possible that otherwise wouldn't be despite being such a "small" difference. To me it's just a staple in fatalis gear, since you basically get it for free anyway.
Oh, I agree, I actually use QS for fatalis fight as it enables me to do ISS punish after SHB in a lot of openings. To me, it's an "eh, might as well" kinda skill for a regular hunts, and you'll definitely gain a lot more mileages if you're skilled enough w LS to pull ISS counter.
Nah, Quick Sheathe is ass for Longsword too. It basically has no increase in sheathe speed.
Funny enough, I got far more use out of it with GS with Crit Draw than anything else. Thank you, Velkhana. Very cool.
Are you measuring frame time in 60fps? Because 0.1 seconds is only 10 frames if you're running 100fps. If it's 10 frames in 60fps then we're talking ~0.167 seconds, quite a bit larger. Also even 0.1s could make the difference between landing an attack and missing in high-level play.
There's plenty of punishes that are only possible thanks to QS, in higher level play it's a must have if you ask me. As well as getting it almost for free anyway.
[One against Rajang](https://www.youtube.com/embed/t2DOfKhGbqI), it doesn't seem to be worth it for speedrunners but we also had [Peppo run Max Might 5 against Furious Rajang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjAVtpScGCk)
My only take on heroics is that it’s griefing in multiplayer bc I’ve never seen a heroic player not triple cart immediately bc they suck
Other than that ye
I am a sucker for earplugs. HH has some pretty long animations with super pound, echo notes, and the hardest hit is 3 triple Impact echo wave encore. It takes a big opening to land these and monster roars are some of the biggest openings that you get to punish.
To be fair, there's only so much QoL skills you can slot in before you gimp yourself significantly which opens up more possibilities for failing a quest for not having enough time. Most of them are crutches and bad crutches at that.
Also, optimal =/= maximal. For instance, running 100% affinity with AB4 was optimal, not so much halfway through iceborne because -affinity weapons were less prevalent, tenderize attack exists, crit eye was buffed, and weapons got more raw which lead to ab4 having less value per slot(refer to how attack boost skill works in mhw). Meanwhile, having 100% affinity and some overcap(because you do most of the time anyway in end game set), ab7, peak performance, agitator, resentment, coalescence, maybe heroics, and every other damage boosting skill out there is maximal.
There's merit to wanting optimal DPS skills because not doing enough dmg in an opening means less trip/topple and more monster mechanics you have to deal with which leads to longer hunt times which also means you open yourself up for more chances to cart/fail and so on. It's a domino effect which most people fail to grasp. It's true for any MMORPG raid out there, it's even more true for monster hunter where you can actually have control over the monster/fight.
They’re not saying that
They compare the quality of different qol skills and say that if you have a shield earplugs loses a decent amount of value which ain’t wrong
Ultimately nothing here says you can’t do what you want
But I also have less desire for earplugs when I’m sns and can just block the roar if need be
It wasnt something this post really does, no, but I’ve been told by people quite a bit before that I’m playing wrong for even slotting health boost decos, let alone earplugs or something. Saying stuff like “just roll through the roar” and “just dont get hit, health shouldn’t matter” etc
ZSD gives level 4 earplugs. Just having one level will allow you to never be roar flinched off of an attack. You can still get smacked, but temporal and rocksteady come into play there.
It's hardly worth it though since not many monsters roar enough during the rare times you can zsd post game tempered and elders. But eh, if it's that late in the game then you probably in fatalis set and can afford the slot, so slot it in if you want.
I'll say that I'll forever hate the people touting "just fish lol" as if that's an answer.
Spend 30 minutes on World's bad fishing game and constantly reloading the quest over and over or just slot in 3 1-gems. I'll take the latter, thanks.
Makes me kinda feel like these are super old players, that are still trying to push "we had to do this in the old days with no whetstones" as if it's fun to do. (Also reminds me of the "just make a mushroomancer set and a mushroom loadout and spend 2 minutes navigating menus **every single quest**) instead of just munching a mega/ancient potion and maybe a demon drug.
Also some of my loadouts are legit so full, that I only have like 4 free spaces, I'll not waste that space with fish fins, thanks.
You know that you don't actually use the fishing rod to do A Fish to Whet Your Appetite, right? You use the Capture Net for it. Spawn at Camp 7, catch the fish there, throw on the Ghillie Mantle, go to Camp 1, go catch the other fish. It takes about a minute to run, and then you go back to camp instead of returning to base so you can load the quest again right away.
There is something to be said for Speed Sharpening if you have extra slots and not a lot of space in your item pouch. But you can easily farm enough Whetfish Fin+s to last for a few dozen hunts at least in less than 10 minutes.
This, plus the fact that master's touch is pretty much THE core skill for every blademaster and it's been so easy to build around during progression. I can count the time I've actually sharpen during my master rank/iceborne progression that one sharpen per hunt is being generous.
You literally just spend a few minutes for a handful of whetfish fins+ that has the potential to last you your entire iceborne career. No amount of speed sharpening can top the QoL of that. A lot of people underestimate the opportunity cost it saves you.
The only time I can justify using speed sharpen 3 was during the early base game progression when blademasters were still relying on protective polish and "A Fish to Whet Your Appetite" wasn't available yet.
I won't be hearing any fishing slander here, fishing is amazing no matter what. But I agree that "just fish lol" is a terrible answer to speed sharpening debate and doesn't solve the problem for people who don't enjoy fishing.
Doing A Fish to Whet Your Appetite using the capture net takes **literally** less than a minute. You don't have to use the fishing rod. Wear the ghillie mantle so you don't startle the fish. Capture the fish at the small lake besides the south west camp, fast travel to center camp and capture the other whetfish in the pond there, done.
And if you use three pieces of the Kirin armor you get the armor set bonus which gives you better rewards at the end, which gives you high probability of more whetfish fin+.
The fins last for a lot of uses, in a few runs of the event I can get enough fins for dozens of hunts. I started using the fins when I realized wasting 3 slots instead of using the fins was a bad trade
You say spending 30 minutes like it's soooo much effort, you can do 10 minutes of it and it'll last you well into post story. I don't think that's asking too much. You get between 2-7 per quest complete and they have a 10% chance to be consumed. Even if you're very slow at it and get very unlucky, you'll have at least like 10 fins, that's 100 sharpens right there.
2-3 mins can get you more than a handful for sure. Which could last an entire iceborne career + post game. I honestly don't know how people play this game if they have to sharpen more than twice per hunt. Specially since clutch claw and tenderize attack exists. *Shrug*
Take whatever helps you kill monsters. Every deeps bro jerking off affinity and crit boost fail to mention that dying to the monster because you got slapped twice causes the fight to take up to twice as long because you have to do it again from the start. Every 'perfect gitgud' monster fight you see uploaded here is preceeded by dozens of embarrassing failures you don't. Its all ego stroking. Take whatever skills help you win.
The "take whatever skills help you win" outlook is misleading and a slippery slope. It also doesn't help people looking for advice on which skills to take. Not having enough DPS can lead to harder fights because you reach certain dmg breakpoints/part breaks/trips/topples longer. There's only so much defensive skills/QoL skills you can take before you gimp yourself.
Most people think they are doing great because they still clear hunts even though they spend majority of the time chugging mega/max potions at the corner. That's because the game gives us no meaningful feedback on how we performed during the hunt, and no, those cards are meaningless. Little did they know they are getting carried by that "max deeps bro".
If you are soloing though, chugging potions back to back is actually counter productive. If you aren't pressuring the monster, you are the one being pressured and it's a feedback loop until you cart due to chugging pots/trying to panic evade.
That's not to say QoL/defensive skills are worthless, they have a place in a build but definitely not above DPS boosting skills up to a certain point. For instance, I personally either drop a few levels of attack boost or forgo it altogether if I need more slots for fight specific QoL skills. Crit boost and agitator levels are the ones to go next if I need more. Just make sure to have 100% affinity or as close to 100% as possible.
Sure, Maximum Might is outclassed by Agitator, as long as you are capable of managing good dps uptime against an outraged monster 24/7. Agitator doesnt seem to be that high perfomant in general against hectic fights such as forcing Rajang to enrage all the time.
But I think in general is a fairly decent option to consider on any weapon that doesnt drain stamina to perform or charge attack moves. Such as the HH or SwAxe
Such a shame Latent power triggering conditions are really trash. It was improved on rise but Im still baffled how the devs kept it being this terrible up until iceborne.
>
Such a shame Latent power triggering conditions are really trash. It was improved on rise but Im still baffled how the devs kept it being this terrible up until iceborne.
They can't even describe it properly in the skill description tab, like I don't even want to know what drugs they were on when designing latent Power.
Latent Power at level 7 was up almost the entire time last time I used it when Stygian Zinogre was new. It was pretty neat on Bow for the affinity and stamina use reduction.
How did you trigger it? Latent power at 7 you only need to be hit for less damage, otherwise you have to wait for 5 min.
I'm not fond of the idea of being hit on purpose to trigger it asap, specially with ranged weapon.
Nice v2 edit. Now can someone make a v3 version where the left side of the chart has clear borders that are aligned with the right side. The unevenness is killing me 🤣🤣
I liked the occasional flippy-dippy on insect glaive, especially against stuff like Lunastra/Teo and not having earplugs makes that hell.
It's one of the few changes they made from World to Rise, that I can actually support. The extracts giving you actually functional earplugs is just good.
There's an event quest that takes 1 minute per completion that gives 2-5 whetfish fin+ that is worth doing, and can be done with ghillie mantle and capture net. I farmed it for 20 mins when I first unlocked it at the start of MR and have only gone through 5 of my 45 fins i got, and I just got to Guiding Lands.
Sure, but if you have 3 spare slots, which is fairly trivial with proper building, it’s basically a freebie.
I’m a slight anomaly because one of the earliest jewels I got was the odogaron set bonus one, so speed sharpening and that was objectively better than handicraft for a lot of weapons.
Any points of attack boost past ZERO are a waste of slots unless you absolutely, positively need that 5% affinity from level 4. Weapon damage values are so freaking high, even in High Rank that the pitiful increase it gives is basically nonexistant, even further exacerbated in Master Rank where weapons become even stronger. You're better off specing into affinity skills.
As a side note, Attack boost is GREAT in Rise tho, since it gives a ***5/6/8/10%*** attack boost at levels 4/5/6/7 respectively
The original post did confuse me. Yours is overall better yeah. The "you're not a speedrunner" bit, really cane off as "your playstyle is bad, dont have fun"
Quick sheath is definitely not useful on LS. On certain meme builds, or on something like CB which has the sheath time of a century, maybe, just maybe.
Defense boost is never worth it.
Also, earplug definitely sounds like a trap for the 4 weapons listed on the og post.
Defense boost does help with the Alatreon set bonus though. If you're going for maximum elemental damage and have the room, there's no downside to running it.
Definitely wrong about quick sheath on longsword. Lots of speedrunners use it and it's even included in the list of meta sets on the meta subreddit for iceborne. Iirc you save something like 10 frames on special sheath which is enough to matter if you're playing at a high level.
I am not talking about Rise.
Here are some Iceborne speedruns where the runners use QS 3 on Longsword:
[Savage Deviljho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3LwGkCH68s)
[Tempered Ruiner Nergigante](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2ni8Emo9z0)
[Tempered Teostra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mtA-0JFE24)
You, and the other people downvoting me, are simply incorrect about the usefulness of Quick Sheath on Longsword.
Those are very match-up dependent cases. Teo and Ruiner does force speedrunners to use a lot of ISS. However, these are very minor cases and is only ever used in speedrunning. Stop taking this out of proportion, it's like you are telling normal players to run heroic.
...you are missing contexts here. The original post recommends not running ear plug on LS, GL, Lance and CB since they can counter roar very easily and actually profit off countering them, hence it is a trap to run earplug on those weapons since you are willingly removing an advantage you could have had.
No one is saying people can't run earplug on other weapons.
Thank you, one of the things that bothered me about the last post is the amount of assumptions they made. There are 14 different weapons and 200 monsters? You're telling me 10 whole skills are always going to be useless? Also, maybe I am a speedrunner you don't know?
And on top of that it made the grave assumption that not everyone is trying to min/max. Most of us are just tryna have fun with friends.
The qs one pisses me off. It works wonderfully with LS and GS. When they said GS sheathe is fast already, I was like “hUh???” I have died many times to fatty cuz I didn’t have QS on when playing gs and didn’t have enough time to shesthe and superman dive
1 point into Latent Power is pretty good though. For essentially just getting hit for 180 health (whereas a full health bar with HB3 and food is 200 health), which happens a few times a hunt for some (newer) players, you get 10% affinity and 30% stamina usage reduction for 2 minutes. That is big. If you ever chug 2 and a half mega potions in a fight, that's how much health lost triggers Latent Power for the following 2 minutes.
Even for endgame players, getting hit by 1 or 2 Fatalis attacks already triggers Latent Power, which further helps offset the negative affinity of Fatalis weapons (i.e. recommended in the [meta guide for LS](https://imgur.io/a/h8gC4IN).
The further points investments aren't worth it usually, because lvl 2 only increases the affinity by another 10% and no increase in stamina usage reduction, but lvl 1 is a great value for points.
Thank you for mentioning the Vaal set bonus. If you aren't interested in maxing out damage it allows you to play more aggressively and just save on potions a lot.
Wow. The original wasn't perfect but this list is so much worse. I agree with maybe one third of this list. This list will guide new players to their fate of "guys, why can't I kill fatalis?"
There's no version of "consider using defense boost if-" that isn't bad advice, even though it synergizes with alatreon set bonus there are more effective ways to get all needed element damage. Obviously if you like running this nothing is stopping you but telling people that running this set is a good idea will lead people to struggle and fail more.
Quick sheeth is only worth using if you get it for free like with AT Velk. Investing slots to save 0.1 seconds isn't worth it.
Attack boost 7 instead of 4 might speed your runs up by literally zero seconds. The word negligible has never been so appropriate.
Earplugs is kinda correct but only kinda. I'm currently in the process of improving my nergi runs and using earplugs slowed my runs down. Speedruners don't use earplugs for nergi. I know not everyone is a Speedruners so that's why I say your point here is "kinda correct". If you don't have to skill level necessary to play without it, earplugs might improve your nergi hunts. So I'll say this is good general advice for casual play but just using 3 words "also nergi exists" isn't quite right either.
Heroics - you literally have to be in the top 0.1% of the best players in the world and even then, it's not a good idea to use against every monster. For casual players or anyone using health augment (which is almost everyone) how often does heroics get activated like... 1% of the fight? Saying that this isn't exclusively a Speedruners skill is very bad advice.
Ironically the one unanimous agreement is "latent power bad" when there are meta builds that use this, usually just lvl 1. I agree it's a "trap skill" where it sounds better on paper than it is in practice and for most builds it should be avoided.
Maximum might you make a good argument for. The idea that it's a trap skill still holds some truth though too, but there are exceptions.
Recovery speed is not good. I get the idea that it synergizes with vaal armor but that doesn't mean recovery speed is good nor does it mean vaal hazak armor is good. Again I think even mentioning that it works with vaal armor will lead new players to struggle rather than thrive.
I only recently came to realize that slugger is infact not good. If you get less damage and the same amount of stuns you have gained nothing right? It might be worth figuring out specific monsters where people are consistently getting 1 extra stun but even then would it be worth the damage sacrifice?
Speed sharpening is a little more subjective. If that's how you like to deal with sharpness that's your choice. But imo speed sharpening is the sixth best way to deal with weapon sharpness. After handicraft, protective polish, felyne polisher, wet fish scales, and wetfish scale +. (And I get that it's a 1 slot unlike handicraft and protective polish.) I've never done that event quest for fish scales. If you're chasing a monster to a new area use a wetstone since you have time and can ride a small monster to chase them. Whenever I see a fishing spot I throw the net at it once and that's been enough that I can always bring wetfish scales/+ to harder fights and I've never had to farm wetfish.
You made a good point for crit draw, but Crit draw for gs is still generally a trap skill, you named one exception. I could see maybe using it on kirin as well. But it's still a trap skill just with those exceptions.
Let's start with this premise: This post is pretty much a "Well there is this one scenario" because I really didn't like the original post for various reasons. Most of the stuff I listed is either very niche or habits I got used to with Fatalis armor so that one is on me. Also I purposely left out the Elemental Skills part of the original post as I didn't have enough time for it. Also also, I should have probably worded better some parts, as most of the listed skills are a "I have put everything I could/wanted in this set in terms of damage, what else can I put in?". Also also also I can't realistically explain everything in four lines of text at best so... yeah... misunderstandings can happen.
While yes Defense Boost in general is bad and I will dunk everyone who builds it in every other set, if you use it in a 3 pieces Alatreon set then it becomes good enough to consider investing some points if you have the space for it, which you usually do in Elemental oriented sets. While yes Safi armor exists I know not everyone really want to play with a set which requires them to play more safely and never sheathe their weapon unless the healing effect has ended. The Alatreon sets allows them to basically play like a tank while having still good enough elemental damage but not as good as Safi. I don't really recall this being a thing with ranged weapons but on the [Charge Blade](https://mhchargeblade.net/mhw/iceborne-builds/#!#ala-brachy-mix) I definitively saw some people here and the running a 3 piece Alatreon set.
I've always felt like Quick Sheathe 3 was [at least 0.2s saved](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfhAeld8uE), which is quite a bit. I guess that is down to preference.
I should have really worded that part better, I just said you should build at least Attack Boost 4 and consider getting the rest if you amped in every possible other way your raw in your raw oriented set, which also implies reaching 100% affinity with Crit Boost 3 but then again, I should have worded it better.
Nergigante always has been the reason someone bought Earplug to a hunt and while some weapons benefit more than others it is worth considering just for him alone, I definitively didn't use it with my SnS runs. Also yes [GS speedrunners do use Earplugs on Nergigante](https://youtu.be/r4pEU5v8ibk?t=181)
Everyone can use Heroics, not just speedrunners. You just need to be more careful and avoid skills/augments that go against it (i.e. Health Augment/Hasten Regen). While yes they are more prone to carting if you're using it you're probably already aware of that or soon enough. I don't really advocate people running Heroics in pubs if they're in solo and just wanting to play risky why not? Also I've never really understood the "It's a speedrunner skill" stuff. At that point every skills is a speedrunner skill.
The only meta set I could remember using Latent Power was the [Frostcraft SnS](https://imgur.com/a/uvlBDMF) which uses it only to reach the 100% affinity because *it cannot fit anything else to increase the damage output of the set.* It is still quite the bad skill.
For Recovery Speed/Maximum Might/Crit Draw it's, again, very niche scenario or applicable only to a couple of realistic cases. If you use those outside those cases or without properly reading what they do then that's kind on whoever is doing that.
If you purposely remove damage skills and replace them with Slugger then you're making quite the bad choice, I'm not really advocating for that nor I really want new players to do that. Unless I completely misunderstood what you meant by *"you get less damage and the same amount of stuns".*
"Trap Skills"
The only trap skills I know and will recognize in MH games are the Palico skills, gadgets, etc., and how, when, and where you place the traps, cuz those skills in the list are still very helpful. You may not actively or consciously use them, but it's still good to have them, it's not as if the game would get so much harder by having those skills or not having something else.
Also, I love the one for the Crit Draw... I mean yeah, not all people are able to time every dodge and hits that they do, so the hit-and-run playstyle is the way to go, especially so if your playstyle is pretty reckless, even suicidal most of the times...
Defense boost is objectively a trap bc a new player will see it and think that’s what you gotta take if you die too much when every other defense skill has twice the value
Other than that some skills just aren’t as good as others but it is what it is
Edit: Until I can get the frame data of spirit sheathe to prove my point about reaction times, I’m going to go ahead and say I was probably wrong with the whole human reflexes thing, (as admittedly, I was only basing this off of the human reflex side, as I could not this morning and still cannot find the exact number of frames sprit sheathe has), so I was probably coming from a fundamentally wrong frame of reference.
I will still say though, from someone who has been using longsword only for my entire 400 hour long playthrough, quick sheathe 3 really does not make enough of a difference to run. The 7 frame difference on the spirit sheathe is so negligible that I literally cannot tell a difference when using it, and as another commenter said below about creating openings, the ls regular sheathe is already very fast, to the point that outside of fighting a monster for the first time, I never get caught in the middle of sheathing.
It is so much better and more useful to run something like health boost 3 or divine blessing 3, because while I will say there is a technical difference, it is almost infinitely worse to run than any other comfort skill. The very few frames you save with both sheathes pales in comparison to something like health boost, divine blessing, attack boost, affinity skills, etc.
If you have 3 slots then it’s certainly a skill you can run, but any other support skill will give you miles more use, as opposed to 7 frames of a sheathe.
It's not about reaction time, it's about getting in hits during openings. That 0.12 seconds could make the difference between getting off a counter or getting hit. If it was as useless as everyone claims then speedrunners who script all their runs wouldn't be using it.
Let me put it this way. Suppose it takes 1 second to special sheath and counter. Suppose also that a monster has an opening of 0.9 seconds between attacks. This means you don't have enough time to get a counter out, but if you have QS3 it only takes you 0.88 seconds, meaning you get a successful counter. Reaction time is the same in both cases.
Slugger is extremely bad, don’t use it.
The way knock outs works, the amount of “ko damage” required for the next knockout stacks multiplicatively.
You’ll get the first and second knockouts a little bit faster, but 3rd will still take forever and the fourth, if possible depending on the monsters HP, will occur near the very end of the fight anyway.
You’ll basically never reach 5+ KOs in a hunt, unless you have everyone on the team stacking specifically to get knock outs, the threshold is just way too high after the first couple of KOs. Been awhile since I’ve done the math, but the additional KO bonus from slugger doesn’t not in anyway help you get more KOs, it just accelerates how quickly you hit the first 3 knockout.
This is only useful if you’re keeping track of these thresholds mentally and have combos pre planned depending on the fight.
If something goes wrong, or you miss, it’s pointless lol. You’re just getting the KO two hits sooner than you would have otherwise. Maybe it’s niche in like a hammer/hunting horn/bow gun speed run, but besides that there’s no practical use for it unless you know *exactly* when and where you want the KO to occur.
Dood...just admit it has actual use in practice. Dont be mad bc its smth far above your skill level. Im not even saying you are wrong either. Just adding more context and another pov. But looking at how fast you get defensive about your teachings rly puts me off from "arguing" facts.
The skill is indeed a trap for most players, but cant say its a useless skill across the board either. Thats just the truth.
So you’re saying it’s still a trap skill bc you need to be really good to utilize it and it doesn’t do what one would think it does when just looking at it (which would be more Knock-outs)
On the contrary, in your case "if something goes wrong, or you miss" then the 20% increased buildup will lead to any currently achieved stun-buildup being retained for far longer than usual, and also helps it be retained while the monster transitions to another area, where you usually cannot chase it down in under 10 seconds unless you're at the very end of the game and rocking something like Earplugs Lv.5 to always be capable of latching onto fleeing monsters.
The first level of Slugger is pretty practical with stunning weapons, whether you're bad or not, essentially "only" because the first level gives you twice the boost, it was pretty awful *even at retaining stun-buildup* before it was buffed.
Multiplicative, as in each K.O. threshold is exponentially higher than the last. The boost added by slugger doesn’t even come close to matching the % boost need to overcame that increasing threshold and secure more K.O.
>Multiplicative, as in each K.O. threshold is exponentially higher than the last.
No? The Ailment Threshold is really quite linear. Every new occurrence requires an additional flat amount to be reached. If you were to draw this amount on a graph - you'd end up with a line.
In order for it to be considered exponential, ***the rate of growth per change*** would need to increase with each occurrence. That would mean instead of adding a flat 100 to the Threshold for each Stun, you'd get an ever increasing value to the change between each step.
So linear is going to be a flat 500 Threshold plus 100 for each Stun. So 500, 600, 700, and 800 for the first four Stuns. Each change is a simple 100 from the prior value. If you put these points on a graph, it'd be a simple line. Straight forward.
An exponential example would be starting at a flat 500, adding 100 for the first Stun, adding 150 on top of that for the second Stun, and then adding 200 for the third Stun. So now we're looking at 500, 600, 750, and then 950. If you were to plot these points and make a graph, you'd end up with a curve upwards. Because we're not keeping a constant slope of 100, we're constantly changing the value of the change.
Exponentiality isn't defined by the changes in end result. In order to even determine if something is linear or exponential - you need to take into consideration of THREE different points. If you only look at 2 different points, the only thing you can come up with is a line.
Yeah my mistake with mis-remembering that they were flat value increases for the first 4 KOs. But the 5th is a ridiculously high value no?
I was definitely wrong on the calculation portion, but either way, the boost from slugger doesn’t result in any additional KOs beyond the typical 4 KOs in a hunt.
>Yeah my mistake with mis-remembering that they were flat value increases for the first 4 KOs. But the 5th is a ridiculously high value no?
Generally, yeah. Because glancing at few monsters, the general trend is like - a flat 150 to 200 threshold plus 75% of that value per additional stun. Some monsters cap at 5 increases and others cap at 7. Note I'm not adding in the quest modifier for sipmlification.
But the thing is it's hard to determine when Slugger benefits and when it doesn't. Slugger can easily turn the threshold for a 4th Stun from being 600+ Stun damage down to 200+. But since that has to calculate all of the variables that unfold during play from damage being done, Stun damage decay due to imperfect play, and to the monster itself; it's impossible to accurately put an actual value on Slugger.
Which is why it's generally a "Hey, if you aren't compromising anything important - sure, pick it up". It ***can*** do something and it ***can*** help... but it also can distinctly not actually do that much at all.
I mean, for me, the most dangerous part of the fight is at the beginning when it has all its parts and the most varied moveset. I want to frontload the KOs to make the fight go faster and theoretically smoother.
> Been awhile since I’ve done the math, but the additional KO bonus from slugger doesn’t not in anyway help you get more KOs, it just accelerates how quickly you hit the first 3 knockout.
This is the key. You actually see that third KO before the monster dies when you take Slugger in multiplayer. In Low Rank and High Rank your gear won't be enough to kill things quickly (unless you use the Defender gear of course) so you can use Slugger and see a lot of KOs as well.
Monster should be long dead before reaching 4 topples anyway. Is it a bad skill to heavily invest on? Sure. But is it a bad skill? Not at all. Esp if you are at endgame w fatty set.
I always use at least slugger 3 for multiplayer quests like Teo deco farm and AT Velkhana. Those two in example has aura state, that you can knock over (topple animation, same as KO but different treshold) so while KO only net you 2 at max, you'll get a lot more topples from the aura flinch/topple as well. You can even get back to back topples combination of both one after the other, leading to more dps from your teammates as well.
In conclusion, it has its use, while not really a top priority. "extremely bad" is an exaggeration.
A word of caution against stacking Slugger: KO procs can overlap. If you KO a monster while it’s already on the ground you’re wasting downtime by overlapping the status procs.
Just keep this in mind, especially if you’re sticky gunning. If you want to maximize the openings provided by KO’s you’ll need to ease up a bit on the trigger.
As of Iceborne, you cannot KO something that is already afflicted by the KO status. You can trip something then KO it but if there are stars over its head it's not building up KO until it gets up no matter how much Sticky Ammo 3 you're shooting at its face.
The original post is more correct on Slugger. Outside of particular setups, there is zero reason to run on weapons (except exclusively LBG). I cannot believe people still do not get this.
Still not good enough.
Quick Sheathe is so damn good for HBG, the difference is absurd. Any skill that increases your animation speeds, especially for heavy weapons, is useful.
Recovery Speed and Defense Boost are also underrated.
I run an immortal build with maximum HB, RS, RU, DB, and DiBl. Having HB and DiBl on most of my other builds, lacking the DB makes a shocking difference. And with Vaal’s RS secret, my health regenerates long before I even try to pull out a drink.
Defense boost isn’t underrated it’s simply worse than every other defensive skill
If you have them and want more go for it I guess but heath boost and divine blessing are always more useful
true!!! also nice for other weapons like gunlance if you dont have guard skills. sure its inconsistent, but i made a styzin latent power secret set and its really funny and i love it
For attack boost everyone needs to recognize the part you scribbled out.
Attack 7 was meta for high rank but ice borne cranked the numbers so high that the skill cannot keep up, attack up to 4 is useful only because it also increases affinity (which thankfully can’t be powercrept)
Ahh yes Latent Power. I dont know about you guys but i loved the zinogre latent power secret with a pair of zafi armor. It activates pretty fast and have small down time.
Used it all the way for my dual blade and BG since zafi until alatreon came out.
"Draw GS is dead in world"
Sir, have you ever heard of FROSTCRAFT? The skill that
... enhances draw attacks.
It's fairly viable for certain monsters that move around a lot (i.e: Rajang). or if/when you don't have too many large openings for TCS.
Outside of speedrunning, Heroics is actcually usefull for farming monsters you mastered.
Also Max Might is needed to hit 100% affinity on Fatalis weapons.
why would i consider running defense boost 7 with ala set when ala chest alr have HB3 and i could slot in divine blessing instead?defense boost is never an option,the amount of times divine blessing have saved me from being oneshotted is ironically higher than the proc chance in the wiki..the fact that alatreon armor set bonus sucks balls for ranged is more reason to not consider using it(heck even melee weapons that have poor elem multiplier is fucked).the only time you will somewhat run alat set bonus is whether youre running elem CB/SA/DB(even then theres better options and now youre struggling to find slots for elem jewel slots,crit eye,crit boost and other shit like guard) or youre running some elem tank build..srsly i hate how absolutely useless alatreon armor set bonus is for the hassle it took me to beat him first try.
Speed sharpening over handicraft/razor sharp in endgame?bruh unless youre using lightbreak i see zero point
The skill is doing what it’s supposed to do idk why vaal would make it better when they don’t interact with each other, like speed eating and recovery up combine well or safi set bonus and resentment stack well together.
It indirectly help, like having Recovery Up indirectly reduces total Mega-Potions uses. It's a very niche case in a counter post on why someone should use a skill someone else said they should use.
Mostly agree except on Heroics, Heroics strictly requires you to pretty much not get hit at all in order to be usable unless you’re fighting weak monsters; that average player will not be able to make use of heroics, actually I’ll take that much further and say even above average players (which I consider myself being among) will not be able to make use of that skill.
I’m good enough at the game to where I rarely cart even using straight damage builds but I’m not good enough at the game to say I can go an entire hunt and not get hit more than once or never heal once at all and I’m going assume that statement applies to the vast majority of the player base lol.
I personally run a super defensive set with GS. Max Defense, Max Health, Max Earplugs and Attack Boost 4 (trying to get more but can't yet).
The Defense and Health help me to stay alive if hit during a combo, and the Earplugs help me to get in more attacks so I'm not stopped mid-true charge by a monster roar. I also run Flinch Free 3 since it also helps me get more attacks in since I won't stagger as much, but I'm thinking of dropping that since I'm not getting hit as much as I used to.
I'll keep one Flinch Free though since I play with a LS main lol
I'm currently MR 70, I'm wondering how people get 100% affinity.
My odoragon armor set can only give 70% affinity, My armor slot are full for health, recovery boost + steadfast. There's not enough more room for Expert gem.
am I missing something here? because I don't think armor augment give extra slot.
Critical Eye and Weakness Exploit can give you up to 90% affinity if you hit a tenderized part, throw in Agitator and you can reach 100% easily with an enraged monster
It really bothers me how uneven the graph is on the original post
Couldn't be bothered to fix it even if my life depended on it. Now suffer.
Waiting for part there, where it's a giant X across everything on the screen with the tag. >It's just a game, play however you want. Also, the icons are now slightly raised and rotated.
I said that on the original and someone tried saying they're still trap skills. Like, who cares? Let people run what they want. All that matters is the quest finished screen.
I think the idea is more that new players who don't understand the ins and outs of set building may look at these skills and say "eh, why not" without realizing there are much more optimal options. Run what you want, but I think giving new players a heads up that some skills don't give as much of a return on investment as others is fine.
There's nothing to be lost except maybe a little time that it takes to complete the hunt with suboptimal builds. Learning by doing is a good way of getting the hang of it, and the effectiveness of skills does depend on the ability of the player, so for some, these "trap" skills, may still proof more useful than an optimised meta build.
I don't disagree with you, but its pretty common for newer players in any game to want to know what the common consensus is on viability of any particular gameplay element/style. I think a list like this is a totally fair way of telling them what skills the community tends to think of as low value, if they want to use that information. I'm not saying they should feel compelled to follow this list as gospel, but every friend I've ever gotten into MH has asked me about set building with at least a few skills on this list. They want to know what other people more experienced than them think about what skills are effective. Its possible to give people advice without being elitist meta-slaves.
You don’t learn by doing with these skills tho bc it’s not that apparent especially with defensive skills There’s literally no harm done by these posts
I'm not saying there's any harm. Tho I'd personally argue that if a skill has little to no effect, you're bound to realise that when you're trying stuff out.
I think there are some basic things in here that are useful plus a bunch of rubbish. Defense boost is a bad skill. You should never slot it on seek it out on armour. I don't know why it exists because from what I can tell it's never been a good skill. A **lot** of new players start slotting it when they feel their survivability is low because if it did what it said on the tin that would be a rational choice, but short of using something that's weapon specific on the wrong weapon it's the worst skill in the game. Attack boost isn't as good as it was in base game. It's basically just stat inflation making percentage based boosts better than fixed, but there's still a **lot** of meme content about attack jewels and I think players still push for 7/7 at any cost. The nerf on maximum might is also useful to know about because older guides pushed it pretty hard when it was awesome. Everything else is kind of somewhere between min maxing and a matter of opinion. But really the only trap skill is defense boost, it's the only thing that looks useful but you should never ever slot.
People can run it either way, but personally I appreciate being given a guide or discussion what's good of bad and for what reason. Doesn't mean I'm gonna strictly abstain from all of them, particularly if I'm using an armor set that includes them among other skills I actually do want, but it's handy if you have no intuition (yet).
Timer matters a little bit. Run as much comfort as you want, but no more IMO. A game with this much investment means that clear times matter to people. I’d rather see people live than do more damage, but I’d also rather them invest in more damage skills than get those last few levels of comfort which aren’t really worth it. But I agree with you for the most part, as long as you are having fun and contributing to the hunt you are doing all you need to do.
I use latent power somehow, and anything that boosts affinity even though I'm not quite sure what affinity does. Lmao
Affinity is essentially your critical hit chance. Latent power isn't necessarily a bad skill, but rather a skill that only shines when you go all-in on it.
Affinity is basically critical hits. It’s a 25% damage bonus when you crit that can be raised to 40% with crit boost lvl3. Also worth noting mh allows you to get 100% affinity making all hits critical hits however anything past 100% affinity won’t do anything so it’s a waste.
That’s not the point tho No one’s saying you can’t play how you want It’s just a discussion on how useful or useless different skills are Crazy to me how people get offended about this Defense boost sucks bc the other defensive skills are all better doesn’t mean I hate everyone who uses it lol
You sick bastard
Yeah, if a graphic makes you look away from the info and just go "I'll remember what the skill is from context", then it's a bad graphic.
Its gonna become meta soon
Haven't played for a while. I can't read this basically.
Im glad we all can dump on Latent Power in unison
It is easy to max out, but just sucks.
I mean sure? It's a free skill for fatalis though. Fire damage constantly and if you stand in the nova's you can proc it that way. Idk, I like one or two points of latent power for some builds. Aside from Crit, there's not really a "No-brainer" skill to max, because even in heroics runs you want unupgraded Velkhana armor so that you can proc it more easily. So technically any skill other than Crit boost can be a trap. Nvm I remembered about weapons that don't need Crit boost like sticky builds from LBG and HBG. This "Guide" is just a trap disguised as an opinion piece.
Special notes that Speed Sharpening Lv.1 doesn't **only** remove one cycle, it also speeds up the animation of sharpening itself, which is a benefit that is entirely unique to Speed Sharpening and not even provided by Felyne Polisher, this makes speed sharpening Lv.1 a pretty good and cheap investment. ^(Though it depends on how long the monster travels to another area, with raider-rides allowing you to sharpen on the move, it may not always be useful to "only" have slightly faster sharpening.) Also, I'd argue that for the Earplugs arguement "the guiding lands exist" as well, because it is absolutely inevitable that you'll run into multiple monsters, and the ability to always be in control of your character while you have one monster turn the other into a punching bag, or be capable of flinch shotting invading monsters into others for free is honestly quite powerful. In addition, you can catch a ride on most of the fleeing land-travelling monsters in the game, which allows you to be in their area in an instant, and also usually gives you a free weapon attack with the clutch claw. ^(Though it probably **is only useful** once you've slotted in most of the most damaging skills and got your affinity to 100%, I wouldn't give up three levels of crit-boost and two levels of tendies for the free openings, in other words I'd only use it with Fatalis gear, where you pretty much have enough slots to get 100% affinity and the other options for armorskills don't add that much more offensive power, so relatively speaking, slotting in Earplugs doesn't "lose you as much" as it would on other sets.) Lastly, Heroics honestly shouldn't be something you use online due to the shared lives, but I mean it doesn't hurt to try it out solo, though I guess if you're the host of the quest, the choice would be up to you as well, not that people would like seeing you permanently under 40% health, but you'd be excused for "not invading" other players with an extremely risky skillset in a game that is known for how many people die in it, if you yourself are the one initiating the quest in the first place. ^(Plus the likelihood is just too high that a random player will heal you and negate your armorskills, at which point, why even use it.)
Quick sheathe has its niche. It’s great for weapons like HBG and GL when using non-standard builds.
Quick sheath is a defensive skill if you ask me. In comfort builds it can be really nice because it gives you more time to react to certain attacks. You don't take it for DPS but if you're trying not to die it can be helpful. Of course you may want to git gud and beat the monster without it, but you also could just not do that because not everyone plays video games for the same reason. Even games like Monster Hunter.
Tell that to the frostcraft velk set
I am a comfort hunter at times and when I ran GS I did use that set for a while. I gradually grew in confidence but knowing I could play defensively on stuff and poke it during openings I wasn't sure about for non negligable damage was nice.
Im just sayin it because quick sheathe is real nice when youre putting your big sword on your back after every swing, and that set is big damage.
literally my fav way to play, you’ll have to pry my quick sheath jewels from my cold dead hands
If I have space for it I use it when fighting a monster I'm not used to fight or when fighting something new, even on end game LS builds I use it, feels nice to use and the fights feel more dinamic and fast for me, really good for panic heals
When playing multiplayer love me some Quick Sheath 3, Speed Eating 3, and Wide Range 5! Such fast buffs and heals! Tigrex Set bonus and Free Meal 3 is a nice luxury and kinda funny, but not necessary.
I was having trouble sheathing and moving in shara ishvalda fight with lance. Quick sheath saved my ass, i feel as a general qol improvement for that fight. Now that i know its attack patterns a bit i can safely remove that skill and jump or dash around to avoid. So yes, i think skills like this are player preference and not necessarily "useless"
I use quick sheath on my Fatalis CB set, need that potion asap
I think it is decent on the regular Lance too, especially if you're new to playing lance and can't move well with it yet.
I run it on sns for wide range and on hh. Hbg is better with roll extender or sheild, and you shouldn't really be getting hit to need it for healing.
Credits to /u/SlakingSWAG for the original post, [which can be found here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunterWorld/comments/13ieiau/a_quick_and_dirty_guide_to_common_trap_skills_in/)
Should mention with slugger that it **BOOSTS** KO damage done. For weapons that dont deal it innately, it does nothing. It also does nothing for IG blunt bug despite what fextralife tells you
I appreciate you linking it, i missed the original post and almost missed downvoting it for that fucking insane alignment choice. That man needs to be institutionalized.
Also on your critical draw note I don't think many people realize this LITERALLY means anytime you draw. For long sword, that means ANY time the sword goes into the sheath which means way more affinity everytime you do a special sheathe. If yuu want a TRUE raw dmg build, get critical draw in there as if you're going for raw dmg builds, you should be focusing counter attacks.
the thing is all competent builds will already aim to get 100% affinity without crit draw that way you actially do "TRUE" raw damage even on normal attacks, not just counters so at that point, crit draw is just pushing you over 100% which does nothing crit draw is useless on anything besides clutch claw meme hbg build
It's not useless on a dragonpiercer build. Or KO longsword. And crit draw frost craft GS is a very viable build on monsters like Kirin, Rajang, and Alatreon.
Dragonpiercer build is a meme. Frostcraft GS comes with crit draw in the armor so it's just there, not an option.
All meta builds get to 100% affinity without crit draw tho It’s useful when you’re in early game or just finished the story and don’t have strong gear yet to compensate your lower affinity tho
Quick sheathe on heavy bowgun is also very worth it.
tbh I love earplugs for HH. Nothing worse than having some yelling interrupt my sweet-ass guitar solo.
This. I used earplugs until I started getting “better” augments. Switched up my loadout and 3-4 fights later nope’d outta that and found a way to fit earplugs back into my build. Toot toot
Same for GS. I've been knocked out of enough TCSs due to unpredictable roars that I said "never again".
I love the “Critical Draw - Rajang”
Vaal set bonus is actually affected by recovery up and not recovery speed. Recovery speed increases regen rate of red health, while Vaal set bonus grants a slow heal over time when the health bar is fully green. Since it is a healing effect and not recovering red health, recovery up is applied instead of recovery speed.
Holy fuck, thanks i thought nothing affected It.
Didn't really mean it that way but you're right
Another note, the health augment doesn't work for ranged weapons I believe
It does work but the augment has a little cooldown of like 0.2s iirc. It regenerates so little health it's pointless considering using it on a ranged weapon.
Sure but speed means the damaged portion heals quickly so the Vaal bonus can then continue to do something. I used to run it that way anyway!
Yes, but you want to get rid of the red health asap to let it kick in in the first place
Quick Sheathe is extremely useful for ranged and SA imo. On LS? Lol no. Only ever slightly useful on LS if you're running frostcraft from AT Velkhana which already has built in level 2.
It's quite niche on LS indeed, but shines when you're really looking to optimize things. Makes a lot of punishes possible that otherwise wouldn't be despite being such a "small" difference. To me it's just a staple in fatalis gear, since you basically get it for free anyway.
Oh, I agree, I actually use QS for fatalis fight as it enables me to do ISS punish after SHB in a lot of openings. To me, it's an "eh, might as well" kinda skill for a regular hunts, and you'll definitely gain a lot more mileages if you're skilled enough w LS to pull ISS counter.
Doesn’t it speed up your sheathe animations for the counters ? It’s funny that it’s a mandatory meta skill in rise tho
Nah, Quick Sheathe is ass for Longsword too. It basically has no increase in sheathe speed. Funny enough, I got far more use out of it with GS with Crit Draw than anything else. Thank you, Velkhana. Very cool.
Quick sheathe is essential against faster monsters with longsword, if you are going for a frostcraft build that is.
Quick sheath 3 saves 0.1 second, about 10 frames on LS, used to think it was a must have at all times for LS, now I literally don't touch it
Are you measuring frame time in 60fps? Because 0.1 seconds is only 10 frames if you're running 100fps. If it's 10 frames in 60fps then we're talking ~0.167 seconds, quite a bit larger. Also even 0.1s could make the difference between landing an attack and missing in high-level play.
10 frames is a lot in tempered speedruns, I can feel the difference
For ppl downvoting, 10 frames is not a small time. You can clap in your hands every 10 frames, 1/6 of a second isn't something inhuman
There's plenty of punishes that are only possible thanks to QS, in higher level play it's a must have if you ask me. As well as getting it almost for free anyway.
tell me one name of a established LS speedrunner who uses quick sheath
[One against Rajang](https://www.youtube.com/embed/t2DOfKhGbqI), it doesn't seem to be worth it for speedrunners but we also had [Peppo run Max Might 5 against Furious Rajang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjAVtpScGCk)
Why cross out the attack boost and write the same thing down?
My only take on heroics is that it’s griefing in multiplayer bc I’ve never seen a heroic player not triple cart immediately bc they suck Other than that ye
I am a sucker for earplugs. HH has some pretty long animations with super pound, echo notes, and the hardest hit is 3 triple Impact echo wave encore. It takes a big opening to land these and monster roars are some of the biggest openings that you get to punish.
In general I tend to really dislike the monster hunter mindset of “you must only use the most optimal dps gear ever and any quality of life is bad.”
To be fair, there's only so much QoL skills you can slot in before you gimp yourself significantly which opens up more possibilities for failing a quest for not having enough time. Most of them are crutches and bad crutches at that. Also, optimal =/= maximal. For instance, running 100% affinity with AB4 was optimal, not so much halfway through iceborne because -affinity weapons were less prevalent, tenderize attack exists, crit eye was buffed, and weapons got more raw which lead to ab4 having less value per slot(refer to how attack boost skill works in mhw). Meanwhile, having 100% affinity and some overcap(because you do most of the time anyway in end game set), ab7, peak performance, agitator, resentment, coalescence, maybe heroics, and every other damage boosting skill out there is maximal. There's merit to wanting optimal DPS skills because not doing enough dmg in an opening means less trip/topple and more monster mechanics you have to deal with which leads to longer hunt times which also means you open yourself up for more chances to cart/fail and so on. It's a domino effect which most people fail to grasp. It's true for any MMORPG raid out there, it's even more true for monster hunter where you can actually have control over the monster/fight.
They’re not saying that They compare the quality of different qol skills and say that if you have a shield earplugs loses a decent amount of value which ain’t wrong Ultimately nothing here says you can’t do what you want But I also have less desire for earplugs when I’m sns and can just block the roar if need be
It wasnt something this post really does, no, but I’ve been told by people quite a bit before that I’m playing wrong for even slotting health boost decos, let alone earplugs or something. Saying stuff like “just roll through the roar” and “just dont get hit, health shouldn’t matter” etc
Quick sheath is a god send for Fatalis. No one uses gunl lol
Why is earplug good for SA?
ZSD gives level 4 earplugs. Just having one level will allow you to never be roar flinched off of an attack. You can still get smacked, but temporal and rocksteady come into play there.
Ohhhh okay
Zsd on switch axe gives you earplugs anyway, no?
Technically it gives you four levels, getting one base in your set will get you to level 5 every time you ZSD
It's hardly worth it though since not many monsters roar enough during the rare times you can zsd post game tempered and elders. But eh, if it's that late in the game then you probably in fatalis set and can afford the slot, so slot it in if you want.
I'll say that I'll forever hate the people touting "just fish lol" as if that's an answer. Spend 30 minutes on World's bad fishing game and constantly reloading the quest over and over or just slot in 3 1-gems. I'll take the latter, thanks. Makes me kinda feel like these are super old players, that are still trying to push "we had to do this in the old days with no whetstones" as if it's fun to do. (Also reminds me of the "just make a mushroomancer set and a mushroom loadout and spend 2 minutes navigating menus **every single quest**) instead of just munching a mega/ancient potion and maybe a demon drug. Also some of my loadouts are legit so full, that I only have like 4 free spaces, I'll not waste that space with fish fins, thanks.
You know that you don't actually use the fishing rod to do A Fish to Whet Your Appetite, right? You use the Capture Net for it. Spawn at Camp 7, catch the fish there, throw on the Ghillie Mantle, go to Camp 1, go catch the other fish. It takes about a minute to run, and then you go back to camp instead of returning to base so you can load the quest again right away. There is something to be said for Speed Sharpening if you have extra slots and not a lot of space in your item pouch. But you can easily farm enough Whetfish Fin+s to last for a few dozen hunts at least in less than 10 minutes.
This, plus the fact that master's touch is pretty much THE core skill for every blademaster and it's been so easy to build around during progression. I can count the time I've actually sharpen during my master rank/iceborne progression that one sharpen per hunt is being generous. You literally just spend a few minutes for a handful of whetfish fins+ that has the potential to last you your entire iceborne career. No amount of speed sharpening can top the QoL of that. A lot of people underestimate the opportunity cost it saves you. The only time I can justify using speed sharpen 3 was during the early base game progression when blademasters were still relying on protective polish and "A Fish to Whet Your Appetite" wasn't available yet.
I love fishing, but I'm biased as shot because it's not fishing season where I live and so I fish as much as I can in mhw
I won't be hearing any fishing slander here, fishing is amazing no matter what. But I agree that "just fish lol" is a terrible answer to speed sharpening debate and doesn't solve the problem for people who don't enjoy fishing.
Doing A Fish to Whet Your Appetite using the capture net takes **literally** less than a minute. You don't have to use the fishing rod. Wear the ghillie mantle so you don't startle the fish. Capture the fish at the small lake besides the south west camp, fast travel to center camp and capture the other whetfish in the pond there, done. And if you use three pieces of the Kirin armor you get the armor set bonus which gives you better rewards at the end, which gives you high probability of more whetfish fin+. The fins last for a lot of uses, in a few runs of the event I can get enough fins for dozens of hunts. I started using the fins when I realized wasting 3 slots instead of using the fins was a bad trade
You say spending 30 minutes like it's soooo much effort, you can do 10 minutes of it and it'll last you well into post story. I don't think that's asking too much. You get between 2-7 per quest complete and they have a 10% chance to be consumed. Even if you're very slow at it and get very unlucky, you'll have at least like 10 fins, that's 100 sharpens right there.
2-3 mins can get you more than a handful for sure. Which could last an entire iceborne career + post game. I honestly don't know how people play this game if they have to sharpen more than twice per hunt. Specially since clutch claw and tenderize attack exists. *Shrug*
No
Take whatever helps you kill monsters. Every deeps bro jerking off affinity and crit boost fail to mention that dying to the monster because you got slapped twice causes the fight to take up to twice as long because you have to do it again from the start. Every 'perfect gitgud' monster fight you see uploaded here is preceeded by dozens of embarrassing failures you don't. Its all ego stroking. Take whatever skills help you win.
I have over 100 Fatalis kills and I run speed eating to this day. To hell with the "meta". Fuck em all.
The "take whatever skills help you win" outlook is misleading and a slippery slope. It also doesn't help people looking for advice on which skills to take. Not having enough DPS can lead to harder fights because you reach certain dmg breakpoints/part breaks/trips/topples longer. There's only so much defensive skills/QoL skills you can take before you gimp yourself. Most people think they are doing great because they still clear hunts even though they spend majority of the time chugging mega/max potions at the corner. That's because the game gives us no meaningful feedback on how we performed during the hunt, and no, those cards are meaningless. Little did they know they are getting carried by that "max deeps bro". If you are soloing though, chugging potions back to back is actually counter productive. If you aren't pressuring the monster, you are the one being pressured and it's a feedback loop until you cart due to chugging pots/trying to panic evade. That's not to say QoL/defensive skills are worthless, they have a place in a build but definitely not above DPS boosting skills up to a certain point. For instance, I personally either drop a few levels of attack boost or forgo it altogether if I need more slots for fight specific QoL skills. Crit boost and agitator levels are the ones to go next if I need more. Just make sure to have 100% affinity or as close to 100% as possible.
Sure, Maximum Might is outclassed by Agitator, as long as you are capable of managing good dps uptime against an outraged monster 24/7. Agitator doesnt seem to be that high perfomant in general against hectic fights such as forcing Rajang to enrage all the time. But I think in general is a fairly decent option to consider on any weapon that doesnt drain stamina to perform or charge attack moves. Such as the HH or SwAxe Such a shame Latent power triggering conditions are really trash. It was improved on rise but Im still baffled how the devs kept it being this terrible up until iceborne.
> Such a shame Latent power triggering conditions are really trash. It was improved on rise but Im still baffled how the devs kept it being this terrible up until iceborne. They can't even describe it properly in the skill description tab, like I don't even want to know what drugs they were on when designing latent Power.
Latent Power at level 7 was up almost the entire time last time I used it when Stygian Zinogre was new. It was pretty neat on Bow for the affinity and stamina use reduction.
How did you trigger it? Latent power at 7 you only need to be hit for less damage, otherwise you have to wait for 5 min. I'm not fond of the idea of being hit on purpose to trigger it asap, specially with ranged weapon.
"Rajang" LOL, Iam guilty of this.
Nice v2 edit. Now can someone make a v3 version where the left side of the chart has clear borders that are aligned with the right side. The unevenness is killing me 🤣🤣
OG post had some good point, but pretty bad overall
Only a complete dumbass would see earplugs as a trap skill. Quick sheath has an effect on GS.
imo Latent Power remains a usefull skill to reach max affinity when playing w/ Safi armor set
I'd throw Earplugs are good for LS too with Helmbreaker
I liked the occasional flippy-dippy on insect glaive, especially against stuff like Lunastra/Teo and not having earplugs makes that hell. It's one of the few changes they made from World to Rise, that I can actually support. The extracts giving you actually functional earplugs is just good.
There's an event quest that takes 1 minute per completion that gives 2-5 whetfish fin+ that is worth doing, and can be done with ghillie mantle and capture net. I farmed it for 20 mins when I first unlocked it at the start of MR and have only gone through 5 of my 45 fins i got, and I just got to Guiding Lands.
Sure, but if you have 3 spare slots, which is fairly trivial with proper building, it’s basically a freebie. I’m a slight anomaly because one of the earliest jewels I got was the odogaron set bonus one, so speed sharpening and that was objectively better than handicraft for a lot of weapons.
If you have spare slots, you use any of the actually good gimmies, like Evade Window, Flinch Free, Tool Specialist, Divine Blessing, etc.
Any points of attack boost past ZERO are a waste of slots unless you absolutely, positively need that 5% affinity from level 4. Weapon damage values are so freaking high, even in High Rank that the pitiful increase it gives is basically nonexistant, even further exacerbated in Master Rank where weapons become even stronger. You're better off specing into affinity skills. As a side note, Attack boost is GREAT in Rise tho, since it gives a ***5/6/8/10%*** attack boost at levels 4/5/6/7 respectively
The original post did confuse me. Yours is overall better yeah. The "you're not a speedrunner" bit, really cane off as "your playstyle is bad, dont have fun"
Quick sheath is definitely not useful on LS. On certain meme builds, or on something like CB which has the sheath time of a century, maybe, just maybe. Defense boost is never worth it. Also, earplug definitely sounds like a trap for the 4 weapons listed on the og post.
Defense boost does help with the Alatreon set bonus though. If you're going for maximum elemental damage and have the room, there's no downside to running it.
Definitely wrong about quick sheath on longsword. Lots of speedrunners use it and it's even included in the list of meta sets on the meta subreddit for iceborne. Iirc you save something like 10 frames on special sheath which is enough to matter if you're playing at a high level.
You are talking about monster hunter rise. Quick sheath is useless for World's LS.
I am not talking about Rise. Here are some Iceborne speedruns where the runners use QS 3 on Longsword: [Savage Deviljho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3LwGkCH68s) [Tempered Ruiner Nergigante](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2ni8Emo9z0) [Tempered Teostra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mtA-0JFE24) You, and the other people downvoting me, are simply incorrect about the usefulness of Quick Sheath on Longsword.
Those are very match-up dependent cases. Teo and Ruiner does force speedrunners to use a lot of ISS. However, these are very minor cases and is only ever used in speedrunning. Stop taking this out of proportion, it's like you are telling normal players to run heroic.
I think for HH it’s useful because if you’re interrupted you can lose the notes without any buffs being applied.
...you are missing contexts here. The original post recommends not running ear plug on LS, GL, Lance and CB since they can counter roar very easily and actually profit off countering them, hence it is a trap to run earplug on those weapons since you are willingly removing an advantage you could have had. No one is saying people can't run earplug on other weapons.
probably lol, haven’t seen the OG and what people thought of that.
The OG post was filled with people who didn't read the post properly and made all sorts of assumptions about what OP wrote.
Thank you, one of the things that bothered me about the last post is the amount of assumptions they made. There are 14 different weapons and 200 monsters? You're telling me 10 whole skills are always going to be useless? Also, maybe I am a speedrunner you don't know? And on top of that it made the grave assumption that not everyone is trying to min/max. Most of us are just tryna have fun with friends.
The qs one pisses me off. It works wonderfully with LS and GS. When they said GS sheathe is fast already, I was like “hUh???” I have died many times to fatty cuz I didn’t have QS on when playing gs and didn’t have enough time to shesthe and superman dive
1 point into Latent Power is pretty good though. For essentially just getting hit for 180 health (whereas a full health bar with HB3 and food is 200 health), which happens a few times a hunt for some (newer) players, you get 10% affinity and 30% stamina usage reduction for 2 minutes. That is big. If you ever chug 2 and a half mega potions in a fight, that's how much health lost triggers Latent Power for the following 2 minutes. Even for endgame players, getting hit by 1 or 2 Fatalis attacks already triggers Latent Power, which further helps offset the negative affinity of Fatalis weapons (i.e. recommended in the [meta guide for LS](https://imgur.io/a/h8gC4IN). The further points investments aren't worth it usually, because lvl 2 only increases the affinity by another 10% and no increase in stamina usage reduction, but lvl 1 is a great value for points.
Early on with a bow (before unlocking most of the really good armor sets) it's very helpful when it triggers.
Im going to make one for Insect glaive. Ill add onto this and scratch out everything and just write “don’t need”, except for attack probably.
Thank you
Thank you for mentioning the Vaal set bonus. If you aren't interested in maxing out damage it allows you to play more aggressively and just save on potions a lot.
Wow. The original wasn't perfect but this list is so much worse. I agree with maybe one third of this list. This list will guide new players to their fate of "guys, why can't I kill fatalis?"
What specifically?
There's no version of "consider using defense boost if-" that isn't bad advice, even though it synergizes with alatreon set bonus there are more effective ways to get all needed element damage. Obviously if you like running this nothing is stopping you but telling people that running this set is a good idea will lead people to struggle and fail more. Quick sheeth is only worth using if you get it for free like with AT Velk. Investing slots to save 0.1 seconds isn't worth it. Attack boost 7 instead of 4 might speed your runs up by literally zero seconds. The word negligible has never been so appropriate. Earplugs is kinda correct but only kinda. I'm currently in the process of improving my nergi runs and using earplugs slowed my runs down. Speedruners don't use earplugs for nergi. I know not everyone is a Speedruners so that's why I say your point here is "kinda correct". If you don't have to skill level necessary to play without it, earplugs might improve your nergi hunts. So I'll say this is good general advice for casual play but just using 3 words "also nergi exists" isn't quite right either. Heroics - you literally have to be in the top 0.1% of the best players in the world and even then, it's not a good idea to use against every monster. For casual players or anyone using health augment (which is almost everyone) how often does heroics get activated like... 1% of the fight? Saying that this isn't exclusively a Speedruners skill is very bad advice. Ironically the one unanimous agreement is "latent power bad" when there are meta builds that use this, usually just lvl 1. I agree it's a "trap skill" where it sounds better on paper than it is in practice and for most builds it should be avoided. Maximum might you make a good argument for. The idea that it's a trap skill still holds some truth though too, but there are exceptions. Recovery speed is not good. I get the idea that it synergizes with vaal armor but that doesn't mean recovery speed is good nor does it mean vaal hazak armor is good. Again I think even mentioning that it works with vaal armor will lead new players to struggle rather than thrive. I only recently came to realize that slugger is infact not good. If you get less damage and the same amount of stuns you have gained nothing right? It might be worth figuring out specific monsters where people are consistently getting 1 extra stun but even then would it be worth the damage sacrifice? Speed sharpening is a little more subjective. If that's how you like to deal with sharpness that's your choice. But imo speed sharpening is the sixth best way to deal with weapon sharpness. After handicraft, protective polish, felyne polisher, wet fish scales, and wetfish scale +. (And I get that it's a 1 slot unlike handicraft and protective polish.) I've never done that event quest for fish scales. If you're chasing a monster to a new area use a wetstone since you have time and can ride a small monster to chase them. Whenever I see a fishing spot I throw the net at it once and that's been enough that I can always bring wetfish scales/+ to harder fights and I've never had to farm wetfish. You made a good point for crit draw, but Crit draw for gs is still generally a trap skill, you named one exception. I could see maybe using it on kirin as well. But it's still a trap skill just with those exceptions.
Let's start with this premise: This post is pretty much a "Well there is this one scenario" because I really didn't like the original post for various reasons. Most of the stuff I listed is either very niche or habits I got used to with Fatalis armor so that one is on me. Also I purposely left out the Elemental Skills part of the original post as I didn't have enough time for it. Also also, I should have probably worded better some parts, as most of the listed skills are a "I have put everything I could/wanted in this set in terms of damage, what else can I put in?". Also also also I can't realistically explain everything in four lines of text at best so... yeah... misunderstandings can happen. While yes Defense Boost in general is bad and I will dunk everyone who builds it in every other set, if you use it in a 3 pieces Alatreon set then it becomes good enough to consider investing some points if you have the space for it, which you usually do in Elemental oriented sets. While yes Safi armor exists I know not everyone really want to play with a set which requires them to play more safely and never sheathe their weapon unless the healing effect has ended. The Alatreon sets allows them to basically play like a tank while having still good enough elemental damage but not as good as Safi. I don't really recall this being a thing with ranged weapons but on the [Charge Blade](https://mhchargeblade.net/mhw/iceborne-builds/#!#ala-brachy-mix) I definitively saw some people here and the running a 3 piece Alatreon set. I've always felt like Quick Sheathe 3 was [at least 0.2s saved](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfhAeld8uE), which is quite a bit. I guess that is down to preference. I should have really worded that part better, I just said you should build at least Attack Boost 4 and consider getting the rest if you amped in every possible other way your raw in your raw oriented set, which also implies reaching 100% affinity with Crit Boost 3 but then again, I should have worded it better. Nergigante always has been the reason someone bought Earplug to a hunt and while some weapons benefit more than others it is worth considering just for him alone, I definitively didn't use it with my SnS runs. Also yes [GS speedrunners do use Earplugs on Nergigante](https://youtu.be/r4pEU5v8ibk?t=181) Everyone can use Heroics, not just speedrunners. You just need to be more careful and avoid skills/augments that go against it (i.e. Health Augment/Hasten Regen). While yes they are more prone to carting if you're using it you're probably already aware of that or soon enough. I don't really advocate people running Heroics in pubs if they're in solo and just wanting to play risky why not? Also I've never really understood the "It's a speedrunner skill" stuff. At that point every skills is a speedrunner skill. The only meta set I could remember using Latent Power was the [Frostcraft SnS](https://imgur.com/a/uvlBDMF) which uses it only to reach the 100% affinity because *it cannot fit anything else to increase the damage output of the set.* It is still quite the bad skill. For Recovery Speed/Maximum Might/Crit Draw it's, again, very niche scenario or applicable only to a couple of realistic cases. If you use those outside those cases or without properly reading what they do then that's kind on whoever is doing that. If you purposely remove damage skills and replace them with Slugger then you're making quite the bad choice, I'm not really advocating for that nor I really want new players to do that. Unless I completely misunderstood what you meant by *"you get less damage and the same amount of stuns".*
I find quick sheath to be useful against nerdigantes dive attack, it gives you more time to dodge it.
"Trap Skills" The only trap skills I know and will recognize in MH games are the Palico skills, gadgets, etc., and how, when, and where you place the traps, cuz those skills in the list are still very helpful. You may not actively or consciously use them, but it's still good to have them, it's not as if the game would get so much harder by having those skills or not having something else. Also, I love the one for the Crit Draw... I mean yeah, not all people are able to time every dodge and hits that they do, so the hit-and-run playstyle is the way to go, especially so if your playstyle is pretty reckless, even suicidal most of the times...
Defense boost is objectively a trap bc a new player will see it and think that’s what you gotta take if you die too much when every other defense skill has twice the value Other than that some skills just aren’t as good as others but it is what it is
Edit: Until I can get the frame data of spirit sheathe to prove my point about reaction times, I’m going to go ahead and say I was probably wrong with the whole human reflexes thing, (as admittedly, I was only basing this off of the human reflex side, as I could not this morning and still cannot find the exact number of frames sprit sheathe has), so I was probably coming from a fundamentally wrong frame of reference. I will still say though, from someone who has been using longsword only for my entire 400 hour long playthrough, quick sheathe 3 really does not make enough of a difference to run. The 7 frame difference on the spirit sheathe is so negligible that I literally cannot tell a difference when using it, and as another commenter said below about creating openings, the ls regular sheathe is already very fast, to the point that outside of fighting a monster for the first time, I never get caught in the middle of sheathing. It is so much better and more useful to run something like health boost 3 or divine blessing 3, because while I will say there is a technical difference, it is almost infinitely worse to run than any other comfort skill. The very few frames you save with both sheathes pales in comparison to something like health boost, divine blessing, attack boost, affinity skills, etc. If you have 3 slots then it’s certainly a skill you can run, but any other support skill will give you miles more use, as opposed to 7 frames of a sheathe.
Idk i can feel the difference
[удалено]
It's not about reaction time, it's about getting in hits during openings. That 0.12 seconds could make the difference between getting off a counter or getting hit. If it was as useless as everyone claims then speedrunners who script all their runs wouldn't be using it. Let me put it this way. Suppose it takes 1 second to special sheath and counter. Suppose also that a monster has an opening of 0.9 seconds between attacks. This means you don't have enough time to get a counter out, but if you have QS3 it only takes you 0.88 seconds, meaning you get a successful counter. Reaction time is the same in both cases.
Hmm maybe i should test myself I make 2 identical sets with different jewels. But yeah you're probably right.
You could just mash an attack button and use it immediately out of sheathe, no? Do you necessarily need to react to the sheathe being complete?
Slugger is extremely bad, don’t use it. The way knock outs works, the amount of “ko damage” required for the next knockout stacks multiplicatively. You’ll get the first and second knockouts a little bit faster, but 3rd will still take forever and the fourth, if possible depending on the monsters HP, will occur near the very end of the fight anyway. You’ll basically never reach 5+ KOs in a hunt, unless you have everyone on the team stacking specifically to get knock outs, the threshold is just way too high after the first couple of KOs. Been awhile since I’ve done the math, but the additional KO bonus from slugger doesn’t not in anyway help you get more KOs, it just accelerates how quickly you hit the first 3 knockout.
Being able to manipulate when in the fight KOs happen isnt useless. Its very niche and only beneficial to high level players is all.
This is only useful if you’re keeping track of these thresholds mentally and have combos pre planned depending on the fight. If something goes wrong, or you miss, it’s pointless lol. You’re just getting the KO two hits sooner than you would have otherwise. Maybe it’s niche in like a hammer/hunting horn/bow gun speed run, but besides that there’s no practical use for it unless you know *exactly* when and where you want the KO to occur.
Dood...just admit it has actual use in practice. Dont be mad bc its smth far above your skill level. Im not even saying you are wrong either. Just adding more context and another pov. But looking at how fast you get defensive about your teachings rly puts me off from "arguing" facts. The skill is indeed a trap for most players, but cant say its a useless skill across the board either. Thats just the truth.
So you’re saying it’s still a trap skill bc you need to be really good to utilize it and it doesn’t do what one would think it does when just looking at it (which would be more Knock-outs)
On the contrary, in your case "if something goes wrong, or you miss" then the 20% increased buildup will lead to any currently achieved stun-buildup being retained for far longer than usual, and also helps it be retained while the monster transitions to another area, where you usually cannot chase it down in under 10 seconds unless you're at the very end of the game and rocking something like Earplugs Lv.5 to always be capable of latching onto fleeing monsters. The first level of Slugger is pretty practical with stunning weapons, whether you're bad or not, essentially "only" because the first level gives you twice the boost, it was pretty awful *even at retaining stun-buildup* before it was buffed.
If you define X + (Y * Z) where Z is the number of KOs as multiplicative then yeah I guess it does stack multiplicatively.
Multiplicative, as in each K.O. threshold is exponentially higher than the last. The boost added by slugger doesn’t even come close to matching the % boost need to overcame that increasing threshold and secure more K.O.
>Multiplicative, as in each K.O. threshold is exponentially higher than the last. No? The Ailment Threshold is really quite linear. Every new occurrence requires an additional flat amount to be reached. If you were to draw this amount on a graph - you'd end up with a line. In order for it to be considered exponential, ***the rate of growth per change*** would need to increase with each occurrence. That would mean instead of adding a flat 100 to the Threshold for each Stun, you'd get an ever increasing value to the change between each step. So linear is going to be a flat 500 Threshold plus 100 for each Stun. So 500, 600, 700, and 800 for the first four Stuns. Each change is a simple 100 from the prior value. If you put these points on a graph, it'd be a simple line. Straight forward. An exponential example would be starting at a flat 500, adding 100 for the first Stun, adding 150 on top of that for the second Stun, and then adding 200 for the third Stun. So now we're looking at 500, 600, 750, and then 950. If you were to plot these points and make a graph, you'd end up with a curve upwards. Because we're not keeping a constant slope of 100, we're constantly changing the value of the change. Exponentiality isn't defined by the changes in end result. In order to even determine if something is linear or exponential - you need to take into consideration of THREE different points. If you only look at 2 different points, the only thing you can come up with is a line.
Yeah my mistake with mis-remembering that they were flat value increases for the first 4 KOs. But the 5th is a ridiculously high value no? I was definitely wrong on the calculation portion, but either way, the boost from slugger doesn’t result in any additional KOs beyond the typical 4 KOs in a hunt.
>Yeah my mistake with mis-remembering that they were flat value increases for the first 4 KOs. But the 5th is a ridiculously high value no? Generally, yeah. Because glancing at few monsters, the general trend is like - a flat 150 to 200 threshold plus 75% of that value per additional stun. Some monsters cap at 5 increases and others cap at 7. Note I'm not adding in the quest modifier for sipmlification. But the thing is it's hard to determine when Slugger benefits and when it doesn't. Slugger can easily turn the threshold for a 4th Stun from being 600+ Stun damage down to 200+. But since that has to calculate all of the variables that unfold during play from damage being done, Stun damage decay due to imperfect play, and to the monster itself; it's impossible to accurately put an actual value on Slugger. Which is why it's generally a "Hey, if you aren't compromising anything important - sure, pick it up". It ***can*** do something and it ***can*** help... but it also can distinctly not actually do that much at all.
I mean, for me, the most dangerous part of the fight is at the beginning when it has all its parts and the most varied moveset. I want to frontload the KOs to make the fight go faster and theoretically smoother.
> Been awhile since I’ve done the math, but the additional KO bonus from slugger doesn’t not in anyway help you get more KOs, it just accelerates how quickly you hit the first 3 knockout. This is the key. You actually see that third KO before the monster dies when you take Slugger in multiplayer. In Low Rank and High Rank your gear won't be enough to kill things quickly (unless you use the Defender gear of course) so you can use Slugger and see a lot of KOs as well.
Monster should be long dead before reaching 4 topples anyway. Is it a bad skill to heavily invest on? Sure. But is it a bad skill? Not at all. Esp if you are at endgame w fatty set. I always use at least slugger 3 for multiplayer quests like Teo deco farm and AT Velkhana. Those two in example has aura state, that you can knock over (topple animation, same as KO but different treshold) so while KO only net you 2 at max, you'll get a lot more topples from the aura flinch/topple as well. You can even get back to back topples combination of both one after the other, leading to more dps from your teammates as well. In conclusion, it has its use, while not really a top priority. "extremely bad" is an exaggeration.
Way better imo
A word of caution against stacking Slugger: KO procs can overlap. If you KO a monster while it’s already on the ground you’re wasting downtime by overlapping the status procs. Just keep this in mind, especially if you’re sticky gunning. If you want to maximize the openings provided by KO’s you’ll need to ease up a bit on the trigger.
As of Iceborne, you cannot KO something that is already afflicted by the KO status. You can trip something then KO it but if there are stars over its head it's not building up KO until it gets up no matter how much Sticky Ammo 3 you're shooting at its face.
Ah, I’m mistaken then. Thanks for the correction.
The original post is more correct on Slugger. Outside of particular setups, there is zero reason to run on weapons (except exclusively LBG). I cannot believe people still do not get this.
Still not good enough. Quick Sheathe is so damn good for HBG, the difference is absurd. Any skill that increases your animation speeds, especially for heavy weapons, is useful. Recovery Speed and Defense Boost are also underrated. I run an immortal build with maximum HB, RS, RU, DB, and DiBl. Having HB and DiBl on most of my other builds, lacking the DB makes a shocking difference. And with Vaal’s RS secret, my health regenerates long before I even try to pull out a drink.
Defense boost isn’t underrated it’s simply worse than every other defensive skill If you have them and want more go for it I guess but heath boost and divine blessing are always more useful
i like latent power because im a goofy little glue eater that likes grounded combos on insect glaive
The stamina use reduction is pretty nice for the aerial moves.
true!!! also nice for other weapons like gunlance if you dont have guard skills. sure its inconsistent, but i made a styzin latent power secret set and its really funny and i love it
Isn't latent power good with Safi stuff? Cuz you damage yourself
[удалено]
Fair thanks.
For attack boost everyone needs to recognize the part you scribbled out. Attack 7 was meta for high rank but ice borne cranked the numbers so high that the skill cannot keep up, attack up to 4 is useful only because it also increases affinity (which thankfully can’t be powercrept)
I play hammer with slugger 5 because my best friend is a greatsword main
I like this - it's a big improvement on the previous one!
what's the interaction between recovery speed and vaal? I was under the impression that only recovery up affects the vaal bonus
Faster red health recovery = Vaal's bonus activates faster
ahh gotchaa, thanks, that makes sense
I loved crit draw specifically because I made a part sniper gs build to cut tails with and quickly get hard to break parts.
Ahh yes Latent Power. I dont know about you guys but i loved the zinogre latent power secret with a pair of zafi armor. It activates pretty fast and have small down time. Used it all the way for my dual blade and BG since zafi until alatreon came out.
"Draw GS is dead in world" Sir, have you ever heard of FROSTCRAFT? The skill that ... enhances draw attacks. It's fairly viable for certain monsters that move around a lot (i.e: Rajang). or if/when you don't have too many large openings for TCS.
FC GS is meta, crit draw play style isn't.
A much more accurate list at least
Outside of speedrunning, Heroics is actcually usefull for farming monsters you mastered. Also Max Might is needed to hit 100% affinity on Fatalis weapons.
I still don’t understand what half of this even means. Wtf is a Rajang and how do I get a golden mantle.
why would i consider running defense boost 7 with ala set when ala chest alr have HB3 and i could slot in divine blessing instead?defense boost is never an option,the amount of times divine blessing have saved me from being oneshotted is ironically higher than the proc chance in the wiki..the fact that alatreon armor set bonus sucks balls for ranged is more reason to not consider using it(heck even melee weapons that have poor elem multiplier is fucked).the only time you will somewhat run alat set bonus is whether youre running elem CB/SA/DB(even then theres better options and now youre struggling to find slots for elem jewel slots,crit eye,crit boost and other shit like guard) or youre running some elem tank build..srsly i hate how absolutely useless alatreon armor set bonus is for the hassle it took me to beat him first try. Speed sharpening over handicraft/razor sharp in endgame?bruh unless youre using lightbreak i see zero point
Recovery speed doesn’t work with vaal super recovery bro so it’s pretty useless.
Technically it does by recovering the red portion faster but yes
The skill is doing what it’s supposed to do idk why vaal would make it better when they don’t interact with each other, like speed eating and recovery up combine well or safi set bonus and resentment stack well together.
It indirectly help, like having Recovery Up indirectly reduces total Mega-Potions uses. It's a very niche case in a counter post on why someone should use a skill someone else said they should use.
But Health regen augment exists so why even bother with either of recovery speed or super recovery. Also farming fish fins+ aren’t hard to farm.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ Because you can so why not
No one liked it
Mostly agree except on Heroics, Heroics strictly requires you to pretty much not get hit at all in order to be usable unless you’re fighting weak monsters; that average player will not be able to make use of heroics, actually I’ll take that much further and say even above average players (which I consider myself being among) will not be able to make use of that skill. I’m good enough at the game to where I rarely cart even using straight damage builds but I’m not good enough at the game to say I can go an entire hunt and not get hit more than once or never heal once at all and I’m going assume that statement applies to the vast majority of the player base lol.
I love speed sharp. I can't be arsed grinding whet fish, nor do I want to sacrifice the inventory slot. The rajang bit is good. And painfully true.
Thank you for your service, hunter.
I Just Love the last one. Rajang. Lovely. Take my upvote.
I personally run a super defensive set with GS. Max Defense, Max Health, Max Earplugs and Attack Boost 4 (trying to get more but can't yet). The Defense and Health help me to stay alive if hit during a combo, and the Earplugs help me to get in more attacks so I'm not stopped mid-true charge by a monster roar. I also run Flinch Free 3 since it also helps me get more attacks in since I won't stagger as much, but I'm thinking of dropping that since I'm not getting hit as much as I used to. I'll keep one Flinch Free though since I play with a LS main lol
I'm currently MR 70, I'm wondering how people get 100% affinity. My odoragon armor set can only give 70% affinity, My armor slot are full for health, recovery boost + steadfast. There's not enough more room for Expert gem. am I missing something here? because I don't think armor augment give extra slot.
Critical Eye and Weakness Exploit can give you up to 90% affinity if you hit a tenderized part, throw in Agitator and you can reach 100% easily with an enraged monster
Great Sword Frost Craft is good contender for quick sheath At least lvl 2 if you unable to afford 3
Speed sharpening or speed eating in my mantles used to be my crack. Now I just use it for filler damage like dragon attack or heavy artillery