So, my kid decided to blow birthday monies on this. Which of course means I now have to play as well. Mostly enjoying it so far. We just finished the quest line introducing Jyuratodus and are going to tackle Tobi-Kadachi next time around.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the MP implementation sucks with the not being able to team up until halfway through the quests.
My one question so far is this: are there ANY friggin’ online resources that aren’t PS4-controller focused so that I can actually relate what they say about the controls to a PC’s mouse and keyboard? (Something like this, but with the actual relevant buttons to mash: https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/Bow).
In base MHW Bow is arguably the *best weapon against nearly every matchup (*best as in: fastest clear time vs. risk of carting). This is largely due to how elemental damage works. Bow is highly dependent on gear/decos, but once you have a set for every element, you’re GTG. The barrier to entry is way lower on most melee weapons, as you can just go with the best raw damage weapon, but the upside to bow is immense once you have the gear.
Kush is a deliberately bad matchup for bow, and this is due to a bit of MH lore (a story I told somewhere upthread).
Lance is another weapon with almost no bad matchups. But due to the relatively low damage output, it takes longer for clears. It’s a great choice when you’re having trouble with something.
Kolbex
1826
Man, every weapon I use seems like “the best weapon,” and I can’t remember if it was here or Reddit that someone was downplaying the impact of elemental weapons, but I just tried out a water long sword on a Jyuratodus and Barroth with one of my brothers and we absolutely annihilated them.
Elemental damage can be effective, but it depends on the weapon and matchup. The way the math works, for most melee weapons anyway, raw damage is usually better.
There’s a lot going on under the hood.
Kolbex
1828
Might have been because it let me strip their mud armor away?
Shouldn’t having a lot going on favor elemental matchups, though? Always (or nearly so) favoring raw damage seems like a simplification, not a complication.
KevinC
1829
Yeah, the generic solution usually being the best solution just seems bad design, IMO.
That’s how it should work, sure, but for most weapons that’s not how it ends up working.
It’s pretty complicated, but the gist of it is elemental damage adds additional damage with each hit. Faster hitting weapons (like the bow or dual blades) get more benefit from elemental damage because each hit is adding that additional damage.
So, theoretically, if you have a high damage weapon with high element it should hit a monster weak to that element for more damage when compared to a raw damage weapon.
But, raw damage weapons in MHW are tuned way higher than elemental weapons. And when adding the bonus from “non-elemental boost” it’s pretty much impossible for elemental weapons to catch up. There’s also the whole additional complication of how affinity and crit boost works (you need a specific skill from an armor set bonus to get crit element), and how MHW is an affinity META.
It is bad design. The generic raw damage option should not also be the best option for nearly every weapon type and matchup. Iceborne fixed SOME of this, but then in endgame decided to add a certain weapon from a certain monster that breaks all the rules all over again.
It almost seems like they don’t want you to chase down an elemental weapon of every type. Which is a shame.
SlyFrog
1831
Like, why don’t they fix this? This is something about game developers I’ve never understood. It seems like it should be quite straightforward to tweak these things where there isn’t an obvious “best.” But game after game, there is some build or item that is just clearly better than everything else, and they just let it sit that way.
It becomes frustrating, because it then makes you wonder, why have all of the extraneous bullshit in the game about capturing different monster parts for elements, etc., when it really doesn’t make any sense to use them.
It’s like giving a ton of choices, where only one choice really makes sense. Stop dicking around with all the extra shit then, why even have it in the game?
They did put some effort into fixing the elemental damage problem. And Iceborne is way better than base MHW in the variety of viable builds you can chase down. There are fun elemental and crit draw and status effect builds (blast is good!).
But for most melee weapons, there are like two or three “best” options. Typically a super high damage raw weapon, and two or three additional “comfy” weapons.
Charge Blade and Lance and Insect Glaive join with Bow and Dual Blades as super strong elemental weapon types. It’s an improvement to be sure, but the pendulum hasn’t swung all the way in favor of element.
SlyFrog
1833
I’ve only done sword and shield, which I understand is also a good elemental weapon (basically because it relies on repeated fast attacks for lower base damage, instead of slower high damage attacks)?
Kolbex
1835
Well, regardless of what it means, I am enjoying the heck out of this game, although the whole cutscene/multiplayer thing is just beyond moronic. I hate it so much and just cannot even fathom what they were thinking. It might keep me from buying another one of these.
As someone who’s done it, I can tell you that what they were thinking was “synchronizing cinematics in a network environment is really hard, let’s skip that”
Kolbex
1837
From (certainly no strangers to laggy netcode) solved the problem years ago, how hard can it be for a firm the size of Capcom.
KevinC
1838
I don’t think too hard. Many games have cinematics that don’t prevent MP. Borderlands 3, recently, and Gearbox isn’t exactly known for their technical wizardry.
Well, it’s only a problem the first time you play a given mission, so there’s that.
Nesrie
1840
I’m under the impression this game did very well for them, as in a bit of a surprise, perhaps they will acknowledge the feedback and be willing to put more resources into the next one to make it better as a result.
It functionally prevents a co-op playthrough with a friend (or friends), which is a pretty huge bummer to be honest. It’s obviously not a problem for playing with randos, but I don’t generally do that!
Thraeg
1843
I’m muddling around in the dark trying to evaluate the tradeoffs between weapons. I’ve crafted my first rarity 8 weapon (Sin, the Odogaron dual blades) and have done well with it at first, but it’s based around low base damage with high affinity, sharpness, and fire damage in parentheses. So I had to build a different armor set with Free Elem to use with it, and then I felt like I was suffering from the loss of other useful armor skills, and it was a waste when fighting stuff that is resistant to fire (which seems to be a most monsters). I wound up switching back to Azure Star “Dragon Dance” longsword, which is only rarity 7, but seems a bit more flexible in practice.
Is rarity actually a proxy for overall quality? Some of the rarity 6 and 7 stuff seems almost as good as 8, but I’m not sure if I’m just mentally weighting the attributes wrong. Should I be considering the final tier 6 and 7 when looking at what to craft, or is it obsolete? Is there any significance to how far to the right in the tree a weapon is? And what’s the deal with the relatively unremarkable Odogaron getting a half-dozen tier-8 weapons, while most monsters have none? I’d like to have some more cool tier-8s to work toward, but it seems like most of the options are also fire-based (and people seem to agree that if you’re going to bother with elemental at all, dual blades is the best option for it), or require materials I haven’t unlocked yet. I guess I should just not sweat it because I’m progressing steadily enough without understanding it and all of this is going to be moot soon enough once Iceborne arrives.
