Each weapon is an entirely new game. I have over 600 hours (if you count both PS4 and PC) and there are a few weapons I haven’t touched yet.
MH is a lifestyle, haha.
What is a charge blade parry?
If you guard at the last second before an attack, it gives you certain advantages. I think less/no stamina or sharpness drain? I don’t remember. The nice thing is you can go straight into the amped discharge.
With charged shield obviously.
So the Insurgent’s Bow (made out of 100% free range Deviljho, guaranteed organic) is pretty fantastic. High damage, a dragon damage chaser, and high elderseal. I think I found my bow to get me through the finale.
Bow is awesome in MH not only for the combat, but because it’s one of the only weapons where elemental damage matters. You can fall down a deeeep hole with bow. Common build is to stack two pieces of rath gear (rathalos or rath soul) to unlock the crit element skill (allows elemental damage to crit), and then run the best elemental bow for the job.
Best in class for each element (not including Kulve bows):
Thunder: Flying Kadachi Strikebow
Dragon: Hazak Velos II
Ice: Legia Snowfletcher
Water: Hunter’s Proudbow II
Fire: Anja Arch III
Thunder (Flying Kadachi Strikebow) is what most hunters chase first, since soooo many monsters are weak to thunder damage.
Sword and Shield, Dual Blades and Insect Glaive say hi! ;)
Oh totally, but just for my money, Bow is where the real elemental fun is. You don’t need to run handicraft with bow, so it frees you up for more elemental/crit/dmg stacking. Not poo-poo’ing the other options you listed ; )
Yup, that was my first rarity 7. Working on Legia Snowfletcher, but taking a little Deviljho detour because Insurgent and its upgrade seem outstanding.
If the game was looking to totally tank my enthusiasm, it has succeeded remarkably. From full (max) health all the way to zero while standing next to a vigor wasp without once being able to get a right click to use it to register. I mean, wow. Taking control away from the player is always annoying, but that Daora fight is a pile of bullshit I’m not sure I’m willing to tolerate.
Kush with bow (I assume you’re using bow) is probably the worst fight in the game. Stacking a little wind resist goes a long way, and she’s (he’s?) super vulnerable to being flashed. A lot of people hate the Kush, but I’m a big fan. That said, I tend to melee her.
Well, that makes me feel better. Honestly it was going quite well for the first few rounds, I credit the high elderseal on the Insurgent’s Bow. Then it’s as if every attack started doing triple damage and stagger suddenly. That I was absolutely not able to deal with, especially with all the stun, stagger, hit, stun, stagger nonsense. Not knowing why things have suddenly gone sideways is actually worse than if it had just been bastard hard from the start. It wasn’t even a rage thing - I sincerely don’t get it.
Fights like this exacerbate the already annoying control issues with the game - those times you have to hit “drink the damn potion” three times to get it to actually drink the damn potion go from maddening to rage inducing.
Yeah, fighting Kushala Daora (and Teostra too, to a lesser extent) with a bow can be very painful.
Not sure if you’re playing on the PC, but if you are, find me there and I’ll take the best weapon to face Kushala Daora: a specific Hunting Horn with a song that prevents wind damage. It gets a lot easier that way. ;)
I appreciate the offer, but that feels like cheating. :)
Hey, it’s not cheating! It’s a feature! ;)
Not sure how deep you’re going to go into the endgame (past the elder dragons into tempered and arch tempered hunts) but the skills that negate monster abilities are by no means cheating haha. They are necessary for success.
Making monster specific builds is part of what makes MH such a deep game (and for me personally) fun game.
When I fight Kush I stack 3/3 wind resist to negate that awful wind pushback and stagger. When I fight Vaal I stack 3/3 miasma so the effluvium tics and her vomit breath don’t totally destroy my health bar.
You still need skill and experience to understand the moves and patterns and such, but the extra skills go a long way to making these fights seem less “cheap.”
I actually meant that having someone else do that for me felt like cheating, I agree completely that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with preparing properly for a fight.
Side note: I thought I’d read that wind resist didn’t work for Kush?
Ooof I’m sorry, my mistake, it’s the “nullify wind pressure” set bonus for equipping 3 pieces of kush armor. Not 3/3 wind resist. Obv you need to have killed her before you’re able to craft this gear, so my suggestion is useless : (
Fun story I heard about re: MH developers and Kush. Kush was one of the first “dragon” dragon’s they developed for the game, having stayed away from traditional dragons for most of the life of MH favoring “wyverns” instead. They wanted the Kush to be worthy of the dragon label.
So they develop Kush and are very proud of her and set her loose in the world as this fearsome, challenging, major Dragon…annnnnd, players equipped bows, stood back, avoided all of her attacks/moves, and took her down easily.
The lead developer, upon seeing this, was angry. So, in subsequent iterations of the Kush her wind aura was programmed to knock arrows out of the sky.
So if she seems extra hard with bow, it’s because she’s designed to be, mainly out of spite for those early bow users, haha.
That’s fascinating.
It took me awhile to adjust to the fact that often the best equipment to use against a monster is the equipment you get from that monster. It really seems counter-intuitive compared to other games that it’s set-up this way.
I have not read this whole thread. Yet. But let me guess, there was discussion about the horrible, execrable, miserable camera default settings. I fixed them. I don’t blame any of you. But still… eww.