Pretty much yes, ealry IB gear outclasses base game end gear for the most part, so as you take down the forst couple of monsters, you’ll be replacing all your egar anyway - may asa well change weapon focus.
what’s great about MH is you can give it a break, come back, and try to learn to play with another weapon. its like a whole new game
I hear you there. If MHW2 is far away or if they keep continuing to add more content, I’m sure I’ll be diving in for another spin. I’ll probably pick back up the Charge Blade when I do. I got decent with it but never mastered it.
Charge Blade is fantastic. One of my favorite weapons in MHW.
AWAB
All Weapons Are Beautiful
Iceborne on sale for $24 on PSN. Not the $20 I said I was waiting for, but I’ve got buy in from two of my three brothers so I think we’re gonna take the plunge.
Nice. Iceborne is great.
I’ve gone to lance. I’m a crappy player, and lance is saving me from lots of rage. I play mostly duo, and I was getting tired of dragging my teammate down every time. I’m now doing a much more respectable job.
I had tried lance as my very first weapon years ago, thought “wow, walking with the weapon out is stupid” and switched away immediately. Obviously, walking around with the weapon out is not how it works but rather than learn that I struggled to play other stuff poorly. So much wasted time :)
So I’ve heard a lot of things about new switch axe moves in Iceborne, but what nobody says is whether they only apply to new Iceborne weapons or all old switch axes if you own Iceborne. Which is?
Should be all, as far as know.
Kolbex, new moves work on old weapons too. You can think of Iceborne unlocking the new moves on the character, not on the weapons. So all weapons will have the new moves once you get Iceborne.
The new Switch Axe moves really give the weapon new options and improve its mobility. However, in my experience, the more mobile monsters in Iceborne reduce the impacts of those changes a lot. Also, in my opinion, if you think in terms of efficient DPS, the changes reduce Switch Axe to “Zero Element Discharge spam”, much like Charge Blade was all about Super Amped Elemental Discharge pre-Iceborne (funnily enough, Charge Blade and its new Axe mode in Iceborne made it more flexible and adaptable than nearly any other weapon). So, while there are nice changes, in practice they don’t matter that much, unless you want to play sub-optimally.
Switch Axe was one of my favorite weapons in base MHW. I barely play with it in Iceborne.
Wild, I usually hear the opposite. I was mostly bow and lance in the base game and have been thinking of expanding to something else. Maybe charge blade. Is there a decent non-video rundown of the changes to all the weapons anywhere? The monsters really are more mobile, aren’t they. I wonder how much of the longer time to kill is just being unable to hit them as much because they won’t stand still. They hit like trucks, too. I fainted several times against Beotodus and Banbaro, and that was a surprise.
In my experience? Quite a lot, actually.
That might be because of your equipment, since you’re fairly early in the game, most likely with base MHW equipment. The first real sample of the average experience in Iceborne (the equivalent of that first Anjanath in base MHW) is Barioth. You’ll see. ;)
Well I remember Anjanath being a huge pain the first time around, so I’m not looking forward to it! Beotodus was much tougher for me now than Great Jagras was at the beginning of MHW.
Oh, for sure. It’s an expansion you have to beat the base game to reach so the difficulty curve doesn’t get reset that bar back.
Swag axe is a beast in Iceborne, I’ve used it through almost all of MR and consider it my main. ZSD spam is one way to play, but the weapon is completely viable outside that option and I’ve found it effective against every monster in the game. Power axe mode is a huge upgrade from base mhw, you can play for trips and partbreaks primarily and find a lot of success there–if you’re trying to get a feel for the weapon I’d start with that, only incorporating sword mode when the monster is downed or immobile until you get a handle on sword mode and energy gauge management. Also recommend running evade extender and evade window (nargacuga set is perfect) as sort of training wheels until you get a feel for it, then start reducing your reliance on those as you get a feel for range and mobility options.
Also early on it’s often better to give up armour skills in the name of defense and elemental resist - I think all the master rank armour is more protective than even the best high rank gear (not sure about max augmentation, I didn’t do much augmenting before MR), so if you’re running any high rank gear you become much more of a glass cannon. 5% damage isn’t much compared to 100% dead. Don’t forget you can go hunt your old high rank monster buddies in master rank to get their master rank versions (even Jagras gear will outlevel anything high rank) - don’t worry, you’ll get nicer pieces with more slots and skills again later.
Oh, good tip, I didn’t really think about hunting a “master rank” Great Jagras and getting some tougher armor that way.
Almost all the high rank monsters are back in Master Rank (except like Behemoth and Leshen I think) and most (all?) have been tweaked so stay on your toes for new moves - they’re good just for a break from all the new monsters! There should be optionals unlocked the moment you start Iceborne and I’m told you can even return from the first Beotodus quest and hunt for MR gear if the start is too tough (although I think you get unlimited faints for the expedition-style encounters) - more monsters will unlock as MR versions as you go along. Also, I often made sure to have the relevant blight resistance for the monster I was fighting just to not have to deal with all the Nullberry usage (note that you get Fire/etc blight resist for free if your elemental resistance for that element hits 20) which I never did in high rank but which I did a lot for MR.
