I just got into this - I’m pretty much a newbie and I’m not great on reflexes and timing, but I’ve been switching around. I’m tempted by sword and shield now that you mentioned it’s working well for you but for me:
heavy bowgun - there’s a bunch of dive-rolling away when the monster decides to go in close, but usually my Palico eventually takes the heat off or the monster decides to do bigger windup attacks. Also great against flying monsters since you don’t have to wait for them to get closer. You could put a shield on the heavy bowgun too if you’ve liked the defense options. I just got into the light bowgun too and that’s pretty fluid although I find there’s a lot more reloading there.
long sword - it’s still relatively quick and I find it has a ton of range and it feels pretty heavy hitting.
dual blades - on the other hand, this is all about fast and in-close, sacrificing defense. When I feel like just running around hitting things a lot.
Note that I started on the switch axe because giant swords and transforming weapons, but I’ve been playing around with everything else so everything feels quite different from that because it was pretty slow so I went from slower to faster. Although there’s plenty of even slower weapons I haven’t even touched yet… I love the insane weapon designs, and how there’s a weapon for how I’m feeling. I’m still a bit stressed by the time limits, but actually most of my hunts don’t even take 15 minutes. I like that each chunk can be pretty quick, but there’s so much to find. I just found that you can go explore waaaay up the ancient forest!
I’ve been farting around with mostly the Longsword, though I’m looking to diversify. Longsword has good reach and quick recovery, which is pretty sweet. I can’t seem to nail the special counter thing I forget the name of. Sometimes it just doesn’t go off, or the enemy stalls and throws off the timing.
I tried Dual for a while and it’s fun, but against most “real” things you can just instantly die it feels like. Any enemy you need to wait for opening on, they feel useless.
Heavy Bowgun… seemed just meh to me. I have like 5 shots that don’t do any damage and sometimes I just put it away while shooting things. Probably not the weapon for me, or I’m missing something.
I definitely want to try sword and board wants I’m back on a computer that can run MHW!
I don’t think I’ve ever had defense yet and I’ve so far played so so I’m used to constantly rolling around and mostly attacking monsters from weird directions. Dual blades usually trying to stay away from their front and bash them in the butt - you have to stay close, but you can pretty much always stop attacking to run away whenever things get dicey. I’ve got a pair that look like lightsabers sometimes when I power up so I like that ;)
Bowguns the biggest trick is that you’re at the wrong range if your crosshairs don’t have a double set of rings. When you’re too close or too far usually you’ll do almost no damage per hit. The range will change with the ammo! When it says “Out of range” you won’t damage at all. “Ranged” in monster hunter feels pretty close for my FPS instincts. Otherwise - spread is shotgun and for super close-in. Pierce is your long-range ammo, and does damage multiple times as it goes through body parts so shoot through the long/wide/thick parts. Slicing is an cutting delayed explosive (cutting off tails!), and Sticky is a impact explosive (KOs!), so they’re good for when you don’t want to deal with range aspects and explosions look cool. Heavy bowguns hit harder, but light bowguns can sometimes have rapid fire for certain ammo types, which means you get a three round burst for every shot of that ammo type (which is pretty awesome for spread shots).
I also think I like the bowguns because I’ve always brought them on hunts against flying monsters and never regretted it. “Oh you’re taking off? Thanks for the break and let me continue to hit you like nothing’s changed”. I did get mauled to death by the Odogthing in the wasteland area (brought a switch-axe I think to finish that fight) but wiped out that flying rathalos in the ancient forest pretty handily with a light bowgun.
Yeah, I was in ideal range and I’d fire and do like… 5 or something. The big sniper shot was pretty great, but otherwise you fire like 4-5 shots for the damage of a single longsword swing and then reload half the time. I’m sure I’m missing something about it, but it seems like a ton of experimenting and feels like inventory management mid-fight half the time.
I’ve tried out the hammer and switch axe. Hammer is fairly decent and actually really mobile, which is odd. Switch axe is… interesting? Most of the time you just get knocked around against anything that doesn’t stand there, which honestly is a problem with a ton of the weapons imo. I swear half of the weapons are only decent if you have someone else around or are already so good it doesn’t matter what you use.
The Palico is like the worst teammate ever. “You’re trying to heal and the monster is on me? Let me run directly to you. Nah, I’m not healing you, I already did that when you got hit for 2 damage earlier, I’m just making the big monster charge into you while you’re drinking a potion.” Thanks, cat.
I tried Chargeblade a bit and it felt fairly good, but learning those combos is kind of daunting. Gunlance was kind of fun as well.
In the end the only weapon I feel is great is the Longsword. Being able to move with a pocket invulnerability move is kind of huge. Hammer comes in a close second because, again, you can actually move with it.
Also roars are an annoying as crap mechanic and I feel like fully half the armory is garbage until you can make yourself immune to them. Anything that combos or charges can be countered by the monster randomly making a noise.
Too funny. My palico is my best bud. I don’t know how many times I’ve been saved by him taunting something away, clutch heals, a stack of sleep or paralysis… in fact, my son and I prefer playing just 2-man most of the time simply because we keep our cats that way.
I’ve said it somewhere here before, but the MWH Palico is the best damn NPC sidekick I’ve ever had in any game, period.
Little dude puts in some serious work, and best of all, he doesn’t need me to force him to go glean info and assistance from the natives. Fucker just oozes charm, and they love him too. He looks cool, acts cool, has a life and mind of his own; and yet he’s always right there to help out in a pinch. He carries his weight and never complains. He’s a badass with personality, and he never gets in my way.
I highly, highly suggest trying the chargeblade. It seems more complicated than it is (although it does feel like a game unto itself sometimes) It’s powerful, nimble, and lets you play around with different types of attack power and movement speed depending on the form. sword mode is almost like a sword and shield
The Palico is awesome. If you haven’t spent time getting the other tools for him, perhaps take a break and get those. Healing is one of the weaker offerings.
I just got into this game and now I think I need to triage it until the summer. So many games to play and only 2 months until the February/March wave hits. It’s honestly disgusting.
There have been zero chances to get him anything. I know he gets other stuff all of which sounds better than “throw down a healing thing randomly when you don’t need it”.
I tried Heavy Bowgun again. This time I was doing okay damage, but… it feels like Gears of War in slow-motion (aiming with a slow controller reticle ftw). Plus you get a zoom, which does nothing but make it harder to see what’s going on and throwing off your perception. Add in playing around with ammo all day and I think I’ll stay away. At least I can see the appeal of it now though.
I might give Chargeblade another shot when I’m in a learning mood. Right now I’m trying to progress, unsuccessfully. Also I need to find a way to set a deadzone on my Xbox controller, because it’s actually getting me killed a lot. The thing drifts VERY slightly up, which normally wouldn’t matter, but in this game that means like 1/3 of the skills don’t fire because you’re “moving” when you’re trying to stand still.
Gadget proficiency has different levels to it, don’t expect too much on level 1. ;)
Next Vigorwasp level your Palico will also lay one down so you can break it when you need it, then after that you can also command it directly from your item bar like a healing potion.
Palico shield taunting! That one’s pretty much completely hands off, although I should probably practice having him taunt on demand when I’m feeling pressured. The free traps looks to be pretty neat as well. Also, I’ll go recruit another palico and a monster so there’ll be more targets.
I do find that whenever I go back to an older area and face down an earlier monster I feel way overpowered - I pretty much laugh at the Great Jagras whenever he accidentally walks in on whatever I’m doing. Although it’s always surprising me - you’re sloppy for one moment and suddenly you discover the Anjanath can literally pick up you up with his mouth and gulp you down?!
This game teaches me most of the time it’s better to dish out one hit or maybe two most of the time and prepare to avoid the next attack, rather than do a long combo string but get knocked down and invariably trampled as I panic…
I do run the light bowgun a lot more these days, especially with a rapid fire spread shot and it’s so much faster to sheathe and unsheathe. I’ve also usually run with one rapid reload mod and a damage mod for light, and two rapid reload mods for the heavy bowgun, but I definitely consider them all to be “sniper” guns rather than run and gun. I keep meaning to try bows again - maybe they’re the short range/high mobility shotgun/smg equivalents? I agree the ammo switching is ridiculous though - why a billion types of ammo?! I run with mouse and keyboard though so aiming is a different beast for me…
He’s got all that, thing is the second we engage with anything he plops down the Vigorwasp, usually nowhere near the fight. It is sometimes in a decent spot, but fairly often he likes to toss it out as the monster is running away or the like. The bigger issue with the ability really is that he uses it randomly. I take 5 damage, HEAL. I’m nearly dead? He’s wandering around ignoring my cries for help. I give up, start drinking a healing potion, as I’m nearly finished he runs out of the bushes and hits me with a Wasp.
Again, advice for what to give him… doesn’t really matter atm since as far as I know I can’t get anything for him. He’s got the Wasp and that’s all he’ll have for now.
The fact that every ammo type has 3 levels for no real reason is just baffling.
Also I went back to longsword and facerolled the dude that was holding me up, so maybe that’s just the only weapon I’ll really use, though it can be a pain in a lot of fights. I have the Hammer and Dual Blades if things get weird.
I think next outing I might focus on Chargeblade, Gunblade and Bow and see how things go. Chargeblade seems like what I’m looking for, but I kept screwing it up.
The higher level ammo types do more damage but often have fewer shots and longer reloads. If the reload speed is really slow it’ll make you stop moving when you reload which I find to be often pretty bad for suvivability. For light bowgun the lowest tiers are the ones that generally have the burst fire, which generally makes up for the lower damage output. I guess I should start not carrying the types I don’t usually use…but I’m always worried about running out, and since switching ammo does require you to reload, I’ll sometimes just switch to the next available ammo type and not reload a lot of them (especially the high tier ones!) till the monster runs away.
I do love how changing the weapon changes up the game so much! Well, at least for now when they’re all new and I’m pretty much horrible at them all. Half the time I miss the monster anyways for now so I’m more working on positioning for one hit let alone an entire combo haha…Maybe that’s why the guns are my fallback - if nothing else I just have to keep the reticle pointed at the monster and it’ll do some damage…
You have to find the the other tribes on each of the maps and do their thing to get the other options. it’s not really clear that you have to go out of your way to get these things, but you do. It’s related to those doodles you find marked in various places. It’s not a quest that just shows up.
Ah, okay. I mean I’ve found like 50 of the damned things on the first map and nothing happened until last time I was there, but then Rathalos showed up so the little thing I was chasing basically vanished. I assumed it was part of the story event.
I gave the Gunlance a go and I love it. Or I did until I had to use it against Rathalos and Friend. Not being able to dodge in less than a week sucks when attacks you can’t block are coming at you and putting away the Gunlance takes forever.
Found the little shits. I really hate that upper level of Ancient Forest, I always forget how to get up there.
Also continuing my observation that my cat is a useless idiot:
Palico: “Hey boss I can talk to Jagras’ now, we should try it out.”
Me: “Cool deal, lets go do it.” Walk up to Jagras Cat sits there with his thumb in his ass Fight Jagras
Palico: thumb still rammed up his stupid ass
Me: Christ you’re useless.
You made a bad palico then. All this talk of gadgets and crap, whatever. Fashion kitty is the name of the game. Mine is dressed up like a little miniature king. Probably terrible stats. But MINIATURE KING.
My inability to navigate the upper ancient forest is one of the reasons why I don’t normally try walking around with the egg too. I did make it back to camp once… as in base 1 camp, all the way on the shore when others played with her.
In single-player, if you can get kitty, one of his little kinsman, and a little monster, it sure makes some of the bigger guys later easier to fight!
Anyways, Palico as a secondary target is great by itself, and if you open up the other gadgets you might find those more useful to your play style. There is even a more passive one where he just buffs you, you and your friends if get some allies.
