A Complete History of Monster Hunter Weapons

ever since i first started playing monster hunter there is one weapon i have solely made throughout the entire series the best weapon in the series the long sword now that every generation of monster hunter has been covered and every update of frontier there's various specific aspects of the game that i'd like to cover to start today we'll be going over the history of the long sword focusing less on the development of the weapon and more on how it evolved over each game and each generation keep in mind there's less development history to go over so these videos will probably be short in comparison to the previous history videos there are a lot of revisions and fine-tuning with this weapon a lot of design decisions moved back and forth through multiple games such as whether or not the player would lose one level of charge or the entirety of their charge when the charge gauge runs out and there's been a history of disdain for this weapon from its weave design to its extended hitbox which can collide with other hunters and interrupt or trip them mid combo due to this and the popularity of the weapon longsword is rather notorious among monster hunter fans but how has it evolved since its initial inception in monster hunter dose today we'll take a look at all the design changes revisions and additions to the weapon from generation 2 all the way to rise i'm super rad and this is monster hunter history of the longsword [Music] longsword wouldn't actually appear within the initial release of the series despite this there were several greatswords with long sword adjacent designs but the functionality and classification of the weapon wouldn't be introduced until monster hunter dose's release and the west wouldn't see the weapon until the release of monster hunter freedom too like all weapons the hunter would have access to various upgrade paths including the bone path and the iron path with bone focusing more on status ailments and elements while the iron path focused more on damage and sharpness the weapon was especially interesting for two reasons to start it has the ability to combo infinitely by alternating between using your vertical slashes and thrusts the hunter has the ability to continually attack without requiring a pause animation this can also be comboed into the fade slash ability which allows the user to hop backwards away from the direction that they are facing this made the weapon highly mobile while being able to output a large amount of damage making it an incredibly popular choice for many hunters the second and arguably most unique aspect of the weapon is the spirit gauge in gen 2 a lot of the functionality of the gauge that we are familiar with now is missing things like the roundhouse slash and charge levels were not yet implemented instead hunters were simply expected to maintain their gauge maxing out the gauge would activate an effect that applied a hidden 12 percent increase in raw damage as well as a non-hidden plus 10 to raw this effect would last about 25 to 30 seconds if not attacking anything and the spirit gage would stop depleting over time instead only being used up by attacks from the spirit combo an additional aspect of these spirit moves were that they didn't cause a bounce animation if the hunter's sharpness was low allowing the hunter to continue their combo regardless as a weapon it offered many advantages including high damage output mobility and range however as a slashing weapon the longsword is ineffective at breaking parts that are weak to impact such as horns or fangs still it was an incredibly useful slashing weapon for dealing damage to heavily armored monsters thanks to its spirit combo to be efficient at the weapon it pays to be patient thanks to the fade slash and the large delay windows the weapon can be cancelled out of combos and repositioned fairly easily if practiced this allows alert players to constantly reposition without losing out on dps and wait out their next attack based on the telegraph of the monster does it make sense to keep the combo going or does it make more sense to fade slash out of the way now generation 3 changed a lot for monster hunter in general but some of the updates to longsword were so iconic that they would have a ripple effect throughout the entire series one big change was that the spirit gage would no longer be depleted through attacks if full instead the player could perform part of a spirit combo cancel out of it and start over without a full gauge depleting at all however a new move was introduced to finish the combo called the spirit round slash by performing a full combo the hunter would finish with a high damage horizontal slash that sheaths their weapon automatically doing so will charge the weapon by one tier starting with a white glow around the weapon the player then has a limited amount of time before the charge depletes to perform the same combo again this allows them to move up in the charge levels starting from white to yellow to red which offers the largest damage boost one of the big issues in tri was that the charge level didn't visually inform the user when it was depleting meaning there were many chances for the user to perform a roundhouse slash too late only to lose all of their charge tears engaged the red church depleted the fastest but by continuing to perform roundhouse slashes players could refresh it allowing the hunter to remain in the red throughout the entirety of the hunt if they played the weapon efficiently try also introduced an upgrade to the fade slash players were no longer limited to moving backwards but can now dictate which direction they would jump toward making the weapon even more versatile portable third attempted to rebalance the weapon slightly nerfing how the spirit gauge depleted once again using spirit combos on a full gauge would deplete it with each attack so the hunter was back to having to properly utilize gauge gains at all time however they made up for this in two ways one the charge level now visually conveyed how close it was to running out over time two allowing the charge level to run out simply reverted you to the previous level so yellow to white or red to yellow as an example making it much less punishing overall most of these changes carried over into three ultimate as well with minor revisions meaning portable 3rd and 3u were both a very successful high point for long sword users as keeping consistent damage was much easier at this point in the series but it would be generation 4 where we began to see power creep and the abilities of the weapon explode like i said generation 4 is where things start to get a little crazy monster hunter 4 didn't see too many additions to what was already available to the weapon at the time hunters did gain the ability to spirit combo out of the fade slash adding more options to their maneuverability but the charge functionality was once again reverted if the hunter allowed their charge level to deplete it would immediately go back to the base level removing all bonuses this would be a design decision that would go back and forth between the games and the generations until gen 5 where the concept seems to have steadied out one new move included was the ability to perform an upward slash out of a dodge and for ultimate completing a roundhouse slash while in the red wouldn't actually recharge the red gauge meaning the hunter had a firm 90 second charge of red boost and would have to work around that before their gauge depleted completely for this reason runners would genuinely stay in the yellow for the majority of the fight switching to red when optimal as it guaranteed that the hunter would have to start all over again the big addition of all weapons this generation were aerial attacks which would allow the hunter to mount the monster if they dealt enough mounting damage to it longsword players can actually combo out of these attacks leading to additional damage spirit gauge gain and potentially a charge level it was a rather punishing time for longsword players to go back to a full depletion on their charge level and there was a fair bit of criticism towards the weapon especially when playing online but this would all change in generations i'm not going to discuss all of the hunting styles and how they affected the weapon but i do want to focus on valor which was introduced in the ultimate edition of the generation's release valor specifically makes some of the biggest gameplay changes for longsword and is widely considered to be the most effective style for longsword users in that entry essentially overpowering the weapon the valor sheathing mechanic acts as a dedicated evade which while not avoiding damage completely heavily mitigates it when in the sheathing stance hunters have the ability to spirit slash sheath rinse and repeat building up their valor gauge until they are at a full blue charge certain moves the hunter may be used to are locked behind the valor gauge or the valor mechanic in some capacity for example the face slash doesn't fully become available until fully charged but hunters can fade slash at any time out of the sheath stance while the damage buff from the blue valor charge is not as strong as the red it's infinitely easier to gain and keep active and with moves like critical juncture longsword was truly at the top of its game in this entry fowler longsword also had the additional mechanic of properly timing the start of your spirit gage combo to lead into a counter if the hunter times the start of their combo properly as the enemy is attacking them they'll lead into a high damage counter this spirit counter could also lead into a shortened version of the full spirit combo making one of the strongest moves of the weapon incredibly spammable this really was the start of the longsword's legacy as a counter weapon and would define it moving into generation 5. funny enough the weapon again reverted the charge level design on the normal styles so that if the level runs out it just moves down to the previous level instead of completely removing all benefits seriously the weapon was insane in this entry it feels like the monster hunter world devs looked at the valor longsword and said yeah let's amp that up to 11. new moves higher mobility it seriously became a staple of the series in my opinion in base world the biggest addition for every weapon was being able to dodge in all directions but for long sword users this was less useful thanks to the fade slash luckily they still got some branch of new moves such as a sliding attack for easier mounting as well as dedicated abilities like the spirit thrust players now had the ability to thrust their weapon into the monster when hit the player could then launch into the air before crashing down if the hitbox of the sword met with the monster on landing it would be hit by several high damage attacks all at once this would become incredibly strong at high charge levels with the downside being that performing the attack would lower the user's charge level by one force light slash was the next huge addition hunters could cancel out of their delay window into the foresight slash having them slide back away from the enemy if the hunter is hit by the attack of a monster in a specific time window they would then dodge that attack and perform a counter when the counter connects they can follow it up with a roundhouse slash automatically boosting their charge level by 1. this move would completely drain the spirit gauge if the hunter didn't time it correctly making it a risk versus reward scenario that promoted skillful knowledge of the enemy's moveset iceborn introduced new mechanics revolving around the clutchclaw such as being able to use the slinger and clutch claw when the hunter's weapon is unsheathed longsword specifically could use the slinger mid-spirit combo but clutchclaw is garbage and we're going to focus on the main new addition for the longsword the special sheath players now had the ability to sheave their weapon in between their combos doing so opened up a couple of new options the first was the normal ei slash by attacking out of the sheath the hunter would be able to do a special ei attack that if connected would add a regeneration effect to their spirit gauge for a limited time this attack could even be comboed into the final attacks of the spirit combo allowing the hunter to raise their charge level incredibly easily next if the player activates their spirit combo while sheed they will perform the eye spirit slash which deals high damage by itself and eats up a charge level if not timed correctly there is additional benefit if timed right however similar to foresight slash if the player times the move with the monsters attack they will evade it and deal additional high damage this is possibly one of the highest points for a longsword when it came to the abilities it had available to it on top of mobility and the amount of damage it could produce in a short period of time this wasn't without a few downsides however namely helmsplayer said box being so poor that you'd often see hunters miss the mark of something that looked like it connected moving on the ryze longsword is potentially one of the most effective renditions in any entry with new and returning features that make it one of the most brain-dead options out there so of course you can understand why i'd want to mean it at its base the weapon functions significantly similar to its predecessor in monster hunter world but with a few worthwhile changes for one if the hunter is crowded they will retain whatever level of spirit gauge they were at previously if you're carded while in yellow gauge you'll return to camp and still have said yellow level meaning it is much more forgiving for hunters in terms of meter management it also still keeps the same style of refreshing red gauge every time a round slash connects and will simply go down one level whenever the gauge runs out next to releases like those in generation 3 the gauge is probably at its all-time best within this entry special sheet is another example of an ability that received a major improvement as the quick sheath armor skill significantly reduces the animation time depending on what level you use to the point that you'll see most of if not all meta sets running quick sheet 3 at all times this is because the special sheath is now so fast with quick sheet level 3 that you can very easily get off eye slashes and ei spirit round slashes for easy meter regen or counters and ei spirit round slash no longer drains you of your spear gauge level if it misses seriously some brain dead damage possibilities here it's amazing and i love it for the silk mind attacks the first is soaring kick which allows the hunter to launch themselves upward and forward slightly the nice thing about this move is when it connects to a monster the hunter will be launched upward slightly to perform a multi-hit aerial attack that activates meter regen that's not the only functionality though if the hunter presses zr while launching off of the monster instead of the normal multi-head attack they will perform a helm breaker for high damage at the cost of losing a level of meter this silk bind ability is by far the most effective overall within the weapon's arsenal but to do it it costs a level of gauge to make use of it's also the ability that requires the highest skill level for the weapon as the only way to build spirit levels are via the spirit combo or effectively countering this ability costs one wire bug if you find yourself in a particularly sticky situation or just want to see some absolutely insane damage numbers this next ability is for you serene pose is essentially a critical juncture from monster hunter generations with a few caveats mostly just the fact that it costs two wire bugs to use and will lower the spirit gauge level by one this means it's best to use it while in red gauge with full sharpness for optimal damage and i'm talking unga bunga numbers to make up for the gauge loss the hunter can immediately follow up a counter with a spirit combo to try and quickly regain said level now if you're looking for a more comfy casual experience rather than working hard to maintain red gauge for as many home breakers as possible you may find yourself choosing the first switch skill ability silk bind sakura slash which is another ability from generations ultimate the move will launch you forward and has the ability to land two impacts each of these impacts if connected will perform multiple hits afterward for high silk buying damage and it's very easy to land consistently to make it even more useful the move will raise your gauge by 1 upon connecting meaning you can easily maintain red gauge at all times within a hunt the big downside is not the cost as it only spends one wire bug but the amount of time it takes for the wire bug to regenerate which is fairly long drawn double slash slashes the next switch skill and switches with the normal draw attack it's two hits and has from my understanding high motion values making it the better of the two to slide in in almost any situation that's my personal opinion though so let me know if there's some reason to not use it on top of the high damage it also allows you to immediately enter into the second attack of your spirit combo and has a small level of super armor i believe so you can actually take the brunt of small attacks with it super useful for zero meter cost finally the best spirit combo marks its return from generations ultimate with the spirit reckoning combo seen via valor mode showing up as a switch skill this is an amazing ability due to its vertical nature and the ability to rush forward to close the distance on the monster you're hunting if it looks like your attack may miss it's also just incredibly satisfying to land the developers call the longsword and rise the new beginner weapon and it's easy to see why the abilities of the weapon combined with its damage output make it incredibly effective within any fight however it makes up for this with a high skill ceiling to maximize damage and offers both advanced and casual play modes via helm breaker vs sakura slash if the weapon didn't already feel like it promoted patient knowledgeable play it definitely does now as i mentioned earlier the perception of longsword users has been a vocally negative one for a very long time many people seem to think of the weapon as overly simplistic annoying to fight alongside and a weapon for weeaboos who want to pretend to be a samurai or something realistically the weapon has a lot of depth and the mechanics introduced to it all promote more patient efficient play in comparison to what we see complained about online i think the weapon is amazing it's my main and a personal favorite it's sad to see people dislike the weapon due to bad experiences with players that may not be as efficient with it as others but that's all i really have for you today longsword went from a very basic high damage weapon that was highly maneuverable to an even more maneuverable untouchable camera machine that is not to be trifled with throughout my time playing monster hunter i have rarely deviated from my favorite weapon type often opting to stick with something tried and true instead of experimenting with anything i haven't really played before however thanks to a large rework in monster hunter rise the hunting horn has been on the top of my radar the hunting horn has potentially received one of the biggest gameplay shifts out of all the weapons in the series a weapon that was considered to be the least popular to use overall seems to be exploding in popularity with only the release of the ryze demo so consider subscribing and be sure to stick around i'm super rad and this is the history of the hunting horn monster hunter dose to freedom unite would introduce the hunting horn to the series in many ways it was very similar in design to the hammer albeit extremely weaker however the hunting horn attempted to make up for this in two ways first the reach of the weapon was longer and attacks were faster than a typical hammer meaning users had more mobility and range to work with within a hunt second was what made the hunting horn truly unique the recital ability by pressing the recital button the r button in freedom unite hunters could enter recital mode which would allow them to play various sequences of notes while mostly stationary players could even unsheath immediately into recital mode with the right combination of buttons while in this mode the hunter can attack but the majority of these attacks are centered around mobility allowing the hunter to evade monsters while continuing to play and changing the type of note they create each horn will have three different colored notes that the hunter can play these colors can be different between each weapon meaning the possible combos that can be played in recital mode are also different for example playing the white note followed by the red note on the bone horn will provide an attack up boost to you in the party the different attacks you can perform in recital mode are what dictate which notes will be played one unique song that is available to all horns is the drift speed up ability which is activated by performing two white notes in a row or two purple notes if you have a higher rank weapon this is an incredibly important ability for hunting horn users as it dramatically increases their movement speed with their weapon unsheathed these songs could even be comboed into one another say you activate health up which is a red blue and then white recital you can then follow up with another white note to activate drift speed and then another red note to activate attack up another big aspect of song combos is simply replaying the same combination many songs have additional effects if played twice or they may simply refresh the timer by playing white into white the user gets the drift speed buff and by performing white into white again they gain the minor esp boost allowing the hunter to not only move faster but also bounce off of the monsters less this isn't limited to the self-improvement buffs either by repeating melodies that give you something like attack up s you can replace it with attack up l the weapon had multiple other subtle nuances it contained an infinite combo ability by simply pressing triangle over and over to perform an upward swing which could be angled with the analog stick and as an impact weapon it could knock out monsters leaving them open for big damage honestly out of any weapon in the series at this point hunting horns shined is a truly unique addition that contained an incredible amount of depth within its moveset i also just want to point out that the speed boost makes hunting horn the fastest weapon in the game in terms of movement and yes that's even faster than sword and shield this aspect of it would persist throughout the generations you may not remember this but many weapons introduced in gen 2 or earlier did not make an appearance in monster hunter try one of the weapons emitted was hunting horn and we wouldn't see the weapon again until monster hunter portable third while originally appearing in the second generation both players introduced to monster hunter and tri and veterans would basically be picking up a brand new weapon altogether thanks to the first of multiple large reworks around the weapon the biggest change to the weapon involves recital mode which has been combined into the weapons main combos and attacks rather than forcing the hunter into a dedicated stance in order to play once the right combination of notes has been played the hunter can activate the melody which will throw them into the recital stance temporarily as they play their melody and activate the effect this leaves the hunter temporarily vulnerable but much less so than in the second generation of games overall the weapon became much more versatile in comparison to its gen 2 counterpart thanks to lowering the amount of time that the hunter was slowed down or stuck in place the trade-off for this however was the loss of being able to combo melodies since gen 2 would automatically activate a buff as you played the proper sequence of notes you could combo into multiple buffs fairly easily gen 3 looked to balance this by having the hunter able to store up to 4 notes but only activate one combination of them let's say you want to activate a 3-notability but the last note of set ability could combo into a 2-note ability meaning you could theoretically get two buffs with one recital this isn't possible as the latest notes played will dictate which combo gets activated other small aspects of the weapon like its infinite have been changed slightly hunters could now combo through triangle to circle and repeat for a dedicated infinite additionally the select button could perform a hilt stab similar to the old circle button attack but faster and for less damage this move would even generate a note and was mostly utilized for getting notes ready quickly ahead of time or performing a recital immediately after which would have a different animation known as a quick recital now one of the biggest and most useful additions to be introduced in this generation has to be the encore ability as i mentioned pressing r after playing a proper combination of notes will activate a buff effect if that buff effect is multi-leveled playing it a second time will boost it to its next tier now the fun part is that the devs realized playing the same combo twice is absolutely ridiculous when you have a giant angry monster charging toward you throughout the fight so hunters can now opt to extend their recital into an encore by pressing r you begin the recital and by pressing it again you extend the combo and activate the same ability a second time automatically boosting it something like defense up s can automatically go up to defense l within the same combo however from what i could gather the encore wasn't actually used that often in high level play despite its apparent advantages being stuck in an extended recital animation for too long was incredibly dangerous most players seemed to opt for an evade to cancel the recital animation as it would save time and allow them to reposition and attack as necessary in gen 4 many of the typical attacks launch fellow hunters for free aerial attacks speaking of aerial attacks the hunting horn can perform the same aerial slam with either x a or the x plus a combination and each will allow the hunter to acquire a specific note another large change is the double swing or flourish mechanic hunters that press forward and circle on their gamepad will perform a double swing move that acts as two attacks however during the middle of the flourish hunters can input an extra move that will allow for a free note to be generated an example of this would be the user pressing forward in circle to perform the double swing which generates a blue note depending on the weapon and can then press triangle mid swing to get a free white note this can be done for all note types making it incredibly useful for quickly pumping out melody combinations now generations as we all know adds various styles to each weapon to make them incredibly unique depending on which one you pick up but huntinghorn actually received several new mechanics outside of styles to help promote a more aggressive playstyle originally hunters could swing willy-nilly without actually hitting anything and they'd get notes regardless while that's still the case hunters are encouraged to actually attack the monster now thanks to the mechanic known as special or double notes these special notes function similarly to your normal notes but can only be obtained by performing an attack that actually connects against a monster by using recitals with only special notes you will not only play the song you have slotted in but also play the last song used previously think of this as a way of getting a new set of buffs while encoring your previous song if you haven't used a previous song this is a great way to get both effects of self-improvement in one combo without the need to use an encore some of you may be wondering why they began to promote such aggressive play and i'll actually get into why this might be the case later like the last video i won't go into all of the styles the main differences in each are the possibility of removing double notes in favor of some old school moves and changing certain combos with the weapon but it's nothing we haven't seen before if you're curious which option was used by most speedrunners it seems like guild style was best i suggest trying them out yourself to see what feels best for you one very useful hunter art will actually let you perform special notes regardless of whether or not you hit the monster which is useful when you need to get a big buff boost whether you're near a monster or not valor mode makes the weapon even more aggressive allowing for recitals to perform incredibly flashy high damage attacks but some of the mechanics with valor seem to limit the hunting horn's ability to actually you know play music if i were to use the valor evade i'd automatically sheath my weapon which may interrupt or mess up my combination of notes i'm building that being said generations ultimate introduced a new art for huntinghorn that makes it so your recital and encore have iframes allowing the user to play certain songs and if timed right dodge attacks safely while doing so this is something we actually see brought over into ryze but we'll get to that shortly okay i am not a hunting hormane so bear with me while i attempt to explain some of the most confusing but incredibly interesting changes world introduced with the weapon namely the ability to cue melodies each time you play a valid combination of notes they get added to your song bank and each hunting horn user can store up to three of these at a time with the oldest getting pushed out whenever you play a new combination the hunter can dictate which of the songs in their bank to play by combining the recital button with their attack buttons to play the first song press the recital button to play the second instead press circle and recital together and finally press recital and triangle for the third queueing songs also reintroduces the combo or bridging mechanic from generation two by stalking one song you can continue attacking to bridge the notes you just played into the notes of another melody meaning certain songs can be strung into others for efficient banking encore remains the same if you only have one song stocked allowing the user to easily replay it but the big differences lie in how encore functions with multiple songs queued this is probably to me at least one of the biggest buffs hunting horn has ever received if the user has three songs queued and presses recital once they will take time to play all the songs in the list as one unless interrupted you know either by being attacked or evading they can even decide to encore all of the songs at once leading to huge long lasting buffs for the hunting horn user in their party it's seriously insane in comparison to the older designs of the weapon one thing to note is that the double notes from generations do not make their return instead pressing triangle and circle together will visually look like a double note but function as you would expect a gen 3 or early gen 4 horn to like other weapons iceborn introduced some new moves and mechanics for the hunting horn echo attack is a new move performed by pressing l2 after a traditional attack it's a multi-hit move with high ko damage making it incredibly useful to use when attempting to knock out a monster on top of the high knockout it introduces a new unique note to the horn which can be used to generate unique combos and melodies specifically tailored to the type of hunting horn being used this special note can be combined with the second or third note available to the hunting horn to generate a new melody that is dependent on the type of hunting horn being used for example when i recorded this footage i used the raging brachidio's hunting horn and had access to the dragon echo wave ability which is a lokayoba potentially high damage attack another weapon may have impact echo wave which has increased ko values which makes it better for knocking out monsters the second ability places a bubble on the ground for the party to utilize by walking through for the weapon i used in this example it was the speed plus evasion boost buff where if i were to walk through it i'd gain a speed boost similar to self-improvement and an evasion boost while party members would only receive the evasion boost okay if you thought the hunting horn was already receiving a lot of reworks get ready because it is almost an entirely different weapon in monster hunter rise like seriously different to the point that i'm actually saddened by the changes overall the biggest change is how melodies activate no longer are you focusing on two to four note combos before activating your ability instead possible buffs are listed for you and simply performing the combo will activate them automatically without needing to perform a recital saving a large amount of time when attacking the monster self-improvement can be activated in multiple ways the easiest of which is by simply pressing zr which will perform a special attack called performance that generates iframes during the initial part of the animation and is generally worked into your combos as it performs a decent amount of damage is evasive and allows you to follow it up nicely with music notes a new combo called magnificent trio becomes available when the hunter has played one of each possible note the notes don't need to stay on the melody chart for this ability to remain active and it is a very effective high damage multi-hit combo that decimates any monster that it touches while also activating each of the song's abilities a brand new mechanic is the circular gauge that charges as the hunter attacks once full this allows the hunter to perform the infernal melody out of the magnificent trio combo or out of a silk mind ability known as slide beat it is a multi-hit move with the same animation as echo wave but instead of providing a special note on the chart it instead provides an additional damage boost to you and your party via song of the raging flame additionally in previous games the draw attack of the weapon would apply a note right away now a hunting horn main can draw attack and immediately press one of the corresponding note buttons to get the note of their choosing making the weapon much more versatile when it comes to planning out melodies for stealth bind abilities the first you'll have access to are slide bead and earth shaker slide beat is functionally a gap closer but it also has the ability to shake off both monster attacks and roars meaning it's a great way to keep up time whether the monster is attacking you or moving away from you as i mentioned the hunter can combo a recital out of it to apply self-improvement and if their gauge is full also combo out infernal melody earth's shaker should be used on an enemy's weak zone as it will plunge the hunting horn into the monster for high damage if it connects the hunter attaches a silk bind cord to the monster allowing for additional shock wave damage to be generated earth shaker can be swapped out for beat of resonance which is designed to allow players to really utilize that corner horn or play style i know you love so much it will place a beat on the ground and while active all of the hunting horn effects will also be active within the radius of the bead meaning if the hunting horn player is too far away from their teammates the teammates can still gain buffs by standing close to said bead for switch skills the hunting horn can swap out its overhead smash for melodic slap which performs less pure damage in comparison to the smash but offers more stun damage allowing for easier kos i believe but overall smash is simply more effective due to the high damage output and the fact that you'll be landing these kos anyway it removes the iframe ability and is used to manually activate notes to make the hunting horn feel kind of similar to its old school counterpart but not really i really don't know why you would use this ability over the typical performance as it seems overall worse in a utility sense but it does seem to have a higher vertical reach all in all the hunting horn rise is almost a completely new weapon in comparison to world and iceborn which is very different in comparison to gen 3 and gen 4 which were completely different in comparison to generation 2. honestly the hunting horn has had some of the biggest face lists throughout the entirety of the series something i learned really quickly is that the way you classify a weapon can be a sensitive topic for dedicated hunters especially hunting horned mans especially especially hunting horn mains hunting hormones are very very outspoken and dedicated while i won't discuss whether or not the weapon is considered support or not although i do have my own opinions on it it's clear there is an issue with some of the playerbase misunderstanding the weapon due to the classification a hilarious term i've heard used as corner horners describing huntinghorn mains that would rather keep their distance and buff the party rather than getting directly into the fray i think a lot of the facelifts throughout the series all had the same goal in mind make the weapon more versatile and promote the player engaging with the monster we saw this in gen 3 when they removed the dedicated recital stance and introduced encore we saw this in generations with the ability to produce double notes we saw this in world with song stacking and recital combos producing high damage and we have really seen this in rise with the hunting horn being one of the highest performing weapons in the demo support or not the hunting horn is an incredibly versatile weapon and very useful in taking down any monster whether solo or in a party i do feel like ryze may be oversimplifying the weapon slightly removing mechanics like encore and making melodies incredibly easy to cast to me it looked like the main appeal of the weapon was its depth and i think some of that has been lost here however like i mentioned previously the weapon was apparently one of the least popular in the franchise so i expect we'll see that change and rise anyway that's all i have for you guys today in regards to the hunting horn if there is any weapon that could be considered the most iconic within the monster hunter series i'd have to say it was probably the greatsword having existed since the very first iteration of the series the weapon has managed to continually evolve and progress in design to what we can now see in monster hunter rise today we're going to take a look at the start of the great sword and thanks to that revisiting the start of monster hunter as a whole we'll go through each generation of the series and look at the changes and design decisions made each time i think you'll be surprised at how drastically the weapon evolved over the course of almost 20 years i'm super rad and this is the history of the greatsword monster hunter on the ps2 would introduce players to the greatsword a towering beast of a weapon that packed quite the punch but really showed off the contrast between monster hunter and other action games of its time a slow methodical weapon that packed incredibly high damage helping reward the player for utilizing a safe and methodical playstyle the main aspects of the weapon include its large sweeping attacks either vertically or horizontally and its ability to block it's an incredibly slow weapon but when planned appropriately can unleash a large amount of damage through timed hits and even an infinite for example pressing left on the right analog stick will perform a horizontal slash which can then be followed up with right on the analog stick to perform an upswing or up on the analog stick to perform a vertical slash these attacks can all be chained together but the hunter can't use the same attack twice in a row the downside to the infinite is how slow it is meaning hunters are more likely to roll and cancel out of their combos to evade being attacked rather than persistently applying damage upswing is also particularly annoying in this gen as it can send any fellow hunter near you flying this would actually be something that continues on in later generations the main greatsword attacks can be mixed and matched for a variety of combos that fit various situations giving the weapon a larger amount of depth than you may expect the block mechanic isn't unique to the great sword but can be utilized to dodge multitudes of attacks without having to reposition or she the hunter's weapon it consumes stamina and sharpness which is dependent on the strength of the attack the sword is blocking but can even block special attacks like the gypsoros flash or stop bullfangos that are charging at you endlessly until the remainder of your sanity has been depleted while the weapon is a true powerhouse it actually pales in overall dps in comparison to something like the lance which is one of the weapons that dominated that generation additionally if you remember from my longsword video the weapon sported many models that while looking like long swords functioned like greatswords some of these models would later be reworked into the longsword class in the next generation the weapon also has generally lower sharpness in comparison to other weapon types regardless of what tree you decide to forge or upgrade through a couple final nuances of the weapon include how damage is calculated and a small kick attack the key area of the weapon that provides the most damage is the center of the blade with the base and the tip lessening the amount of damage significantly meaning hunters had to be very aware of their positioning when attacking any monster the kick attack could be done with a weapon sheath but was effectively useless at this point in the series however it would gain slightly more utility in the third generation now you may be asking me at this point um daddy super rad why aren't you talking about the charge mechanic you know the most iconic aspect of the weapon that defines it throughout each generation well believe it or not random viewer that i just made up but the charge mechanic didn't actually exist in the first generation and wouldn't exist until monster hunter dose in generation 2. so what are the biggest changes in generation 2 well the only truly major change would be the charge mechanic which takes a deceptively simple looking weapon like the great sword and applies even more depth and versatility to its moveset the charge mechanic is directly attached to the vertical swing attack which now comes in 4 attack states starting with uncharged this attack has the fastest build up but lowest damage or motion value then there's charger level 1 which requires you to hold the weapon in position for one tier of charge hunters would see their character begin to glow slightly and could release the attack button in order to launch their weapon attack with a slightly higher motion value charge levels 2 and 3 would require the hunter to stay in position for longer and their character would begin to glow brighter through each tier with each providing higher motion values overall if the hunter holds the charge all the way to level 3 it releases automatically this mechanic helped build on the original concept of the greatsword if you thought it promoted slow and methodical play before and really made you commit to each attack that was even more the case now having to stand in place for so long to get the most out of your weapon really puts the pressure on the hunter to make sure that they aren't simply opening themselves up to get both fangoed many monsters would have plenty of openings in which a level 3 charge was possible but it required a large amount of knowledge on the hunter's end to perform successfully the weapon attacks were switched to buttons instead of the right analog stick in this generation now vertical slash was mapped to triangle horizontal to circle and upswing to triangle and circle together additionally mechanics like blocking or charge attack could be performed out of weapon sheath one of the most effective aspects the bread and butter if you will is utilizing draw attacks the high motion value of draw attacks with the greatsword makes it perfect for utilizing hit and run tactics where hunters would run in for a draw attack evade away sheath and repeat this is especially useful when armor skills buffing these types of attacks are applied monster hunter's third generation introduced a new move that could be comboed out of the underutilized kick animation from previous generations now hunters could slap monsters with their sword for a slight amount of impact damage a new form of the charge slash called the strong charge could even be comboed further out of the sword slap by pressing a direction in the triangle button at the same time while this charged attack is slightly more powerful than the traditional charge attack it can't be comboed out of lowering its versatility a major change made to the charge mechanic was how the level 3 charge was activated while the hunter could still hold the charge until it released on its own this would only produce the motion value of a level 2 charge to get the proper level 3 charge to activate the player would have to release their attacks slightly after the glow from their level 2 charge began to disappear or lessen invisibility the hunter would know they were successful as the level 3 charge has a more prominent energy burst around the hunter in comparison to an overcharge this requirement of timing your level 3 release also applied to a strong charge at this time but overcharging the strong charge would be removed altogether in portable third onward other than that greatsword wouldn't see many major changes in this generation and would stay relatively similar to its gen 2 counterpart until moving on to monster hunter 4 and cross in generation 4. monster hunter 4's main new addition next to aerial moves is the strong side slash attack after performing a strong charge the player can press x to perform the strong side slash finisher functioning as a powerful horizontal slash the attack damage is dependent on the level of the strong charge so it'll be more powerful during charge level 3. due to its especially high damage the attack comes with the major downside of not being able to cancel out of the attack by evading and the ending animation is fairly long so hunters would want to make sure that they have a fairly long opening to use the ability moves like the horizontal slash now allowed for more evasive options starting in this generation players also gain the ability to enter the strong charge stance through multiple means hunters can perform a side slap out of an evade allowing them to quickly enter into a strong charge without having to perform the initial charge attack alternatively performing the horizontal slash with the a button followed by another a and a direction will also begin the strong charge though no one really seems to use this since horizontal slash covers so much ground and trips easily i thought that was a long sword thing with aerial attacks there's a small nuance attached to the aerial slam that the greatsword can perform namely being able to perform a level 2 strong side slash by pressing x immediately after performing your jump attack it's a great way to get in some extra damage after an aerial attack if the hunter doesn't manage to mount the monster but remember the animation is very long moving on to generations something i noticed first was that small attacks seem to not knock me over while using my charge attacks implying there's some form of super armor on the charge but i'm not sure if this was introduced specifically within this entry as with all weapons the greatsword had access to multiple hunting styles the most effective of which seemed to be guild adept and valor with valor being incredibly powerful however i have also been informed that striker was the second best style so you know take that as you will the different styles would not only unlock new movement or attack options but also limit which abilities could be used for example striker style doesn't allow the hunter to strong charge fowler's style specifically opened up a few cool options for the weapon once in the valley state hunters have the ability to perform very efficient charge maneuvers for example the draw charge is much faster now thanks to a built-in focus ability that stacks with the focus armor skill it can't be overcharged and the hunter can perform a side slash out of it however unsheathed valor level 3 charge slashes do not have built-in focus say that three times fast the player can now launch themselves forward with the a button while charging this way but the attack afterward would be slightly weaker in comparison to your typical idle charge greatsword specific arts were also introduced moves like lion's maw allowed the hunter to perform a powerful swinging attack before sheathing and powering up the next attack that they performed perfect for draw charging or planning for any big hit brimstone slash is another example that performs an even more powerful charging attack that will automatically unleash if the hunter is interrupted effectively making it a counter wait a second they stole that from longsword the trend of these videos so far is that we usually see some singularly large changes throughout each generation with world completely opening up the possibilities of each weapon this is still the case with the greatsword which gained a large amount of functionality that we haven't seen prior one minor but useful change is how you can slightly reposition the upper body of your hunter while charging allowing you to see the slight angle for where the hit was going to finally land angling was introduced with the charge mechanic but being able to properly see it beforehand was specific to generation 5. no longer does pressing the circle simply perform a wide slash well it does but this move can be comboed consecutively the user can press circle to perform the wide slash and then circle again for a new move or mechanic known as a tackle we'll get into tackling in a moment but pressing the circle button one more time performs a jumping wide slash that can move the hunter forward for better repositioning the tackle move is a new mechanic introduced in generation 5 and allows the hunter to either combo into it or cancel into it depending on the situation it effectively works like a super or hyper armored guard that moves the player forward slightly and prevents them from being flinched or knocked back the downside of using a move like this is that the hunter will still take damage although mitigated but the upside is that it helps keep the aggression on the monster and lowers the overall amount of down time in between attacking when performing a charge attack hunters can press circle while still holding triangle to perform the tackle this will not cancel the charge and will allow the hunter to continue where they left off tackle can also be activated through a guard or after an evade so there's many options for how you plan on using it another nuance to the tackle is that the iframes differ depending on what charge level you cancel out of by cancelling out of a charge level 3 into a tackle you'll gain a more effective animation additionally the damage inflicted by the jumping wide slash seems to be determined based on the level of charge you cancel out of this can even be weaved into a sword slap to continue into a strong charge combo another big change is having the ability to immediately shift into a strong charge from an overhead slash without requiring the sword slap by performing an overhead slash followed by any direction on the analog stick and triangle hunters would automatically start the animation for a strong charge in fact players can actually immediately enter the strong charge through tackles as well meaning many aspects of the weapon that were locked behind one or two combos now have a large amount of branches for accessing them the strong side slash has been mapped to the circle button now rather than needing to press triangle again and other combo options out of the strong charge like upward slash or another sword slap get boosted when performed however those moves pale in comparison to the new true charge slash attack by pressing a direction and triangle after a strong charge the hunter can begin charging an even more powerful attack when released it actually comes out as two separate collisions with the first being weaker and the next incredibly strong iceborn continues with the additions by adding more worth to making sure you get both hits in when doing the true charge slash specifically if you land the first hit the second cartwheel attack becomes powered up for extra damage the second big addition is how the greatsword can utilize its slinger combos like all weapons the graysor can cancel part of its combos by performing a sling or burst doing so allows the hunter to immediately shift into the true charge slash right away meaning it became incredibly easy to simply spam true charge flashes throughout the fight without needing to rely on a long-winded combo to do so finally moving on to ryze we can once again look at the demo to see what new abilities and changes have been bestowed on the iconic monster hunter weapon a new aerial attack can be performed by hunters when they plunge down with their greatsword for a multi-hit attack that leads to mounting damage this plunge can also be comboed into charge attacks but the big change here is that these attacks will start in their second level of charge making getting to level three much faster players can even plunge into the strong side slash from previous generations right away and then combo into a true charge slash giving greatsword users a new way to quickly enter the stance considering they lost the ability to use the slinger from iceborn while the tackle mechanic remains relatively unchanged the jumping wide slash now has a new mechanic rather than dealing more damage based on the charge level you cancel out of when performing the tackle the jumping white slash will instead gain multi-hit properties at charge level 3. aside from the plunging mechanic and how jumping wide slash works there aren't many new changes to the greatsword overall if you've played worlds in iceborn you're probably going to feel right at home with this weapon where the other major changes lie or in the silk bind attacks and as i mentioned in my previous videos we don't have access to all of them within the demo let's take a look at what is currently available the first silk bind maneuver hunting edge seems effectively useless to me it launches the hunter into the air and similarly to the longsword gives them options on how to land either by performing a plunging attack or a generic slash it's good for mounting damage but with how easily the hunter can enter the air i don't see it being used fairly often seriously it may be my lack of experience as a greatsword user but the move seemed positively lackluster and difficult to land the next maneuver is power sheath which launches the hunter forward slightly and cheese their weapon the move has iframes making it good for advancing or retreating from a monster without getting hit performing this maneuver applied a damage buff to the hunter's weapon for a short period of time it's similar to the hunting art lions maw seen in generation ultimate but instead of being applied to only the first attack the ryze version could potentially get multiple buffed hits out of it for switch skills so the third silk bind ability is known as adamant charge slash which swaps out with hunting edge and allows the hunter to dash ahead with a gap closer before releasing a charge slash during the gap closer the hunter seems to have super armor meaning it's a great way to keep damage up time and withstand things like monster attacks and i assume monster roars though i'm not entirely sure if there's footage of me with standing one in this video like while i'm editing this while you're watching it then you know i found it out tackle will get swapped out with the new guard tackle mechanic which is slower than your traditional tackle but can take the brunt of stronger attacks while your timing may need to be reworked to use this ability it seems overly more effective than the traditional mechanic finally true charge slash can be swapped out for rage slash a switch skill that is weaker than tcs but can make up for it in its counter mechanic absorbing the brunt of an attack and turning that into additional damage for the hunter while that's nice the fact of the matter seems to be that tcs is just more consistent overall when it comes to getting those big damage numbers and this is especially true in multiplayer while ryze doesn't seem to have added too much to the great sword it does seem to fine tune the weapon slightly and make it more useful in the air considering monster hunter rise has a larger focus on verticality the great sword started as a rather simplistic weapon from a first glance perspective but it really did have a fair amount of depth to it i think a lot of people early on wanted to get into the series after seeing a hunter carrying a giant sword and fighting dragons i know as a child it reminded me of final fantasy vii and needless to say i was a little disappointed at first with how slow and methodical the game was in comparison to my expectations despite that the weapon was truly much more maneuverable and versatile than it seemed and the charge mechanic ended up being an addition that completely defined it moving into later generations i was honestly shocked at how much world managed to squeeze in for the greatsword users in comparison to every other generation it truly blew up in the amount of options and branches hunters had at their disposal i often think of the great sword as the face of monster hunter and i think it managed to hold that role by being an incredibly gratifying weapon to use with an absolutely iconic design anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the great sword okay okay i can't wait to start filming the footage i need for the switch axe should be easy peasy no issues no issues whatsoever super simple a few moments later apar tip redact what apart tip redact scavenge rather than scavern kashmiri so when it comes to monster hunter i feel like a lot of you know my style and preferences by now mainly that i've been sticking to one weapon throughout the entirety of the series with little to no wiggle room but when choosing the weapon i'd use throughout the entirety of the series it's not like longsword was the only weapon i thought about no in fact tri introduced one weapon that was so unique so different in comparison to everything else available that i had to see if it was right for me spoiler alert it wasn't but it did leave a lasting impression i'm talking of course about the switch axe potentially one of the first weapons to really diversify and accentuate the design of weapons and monster hunter as a series a weapon with the ability to not only act as a heavy-hitting axe but transform into a giant sword exploding with energy it just had this flamboyant flare about it something so eccentric that was incredibly new to the series at the time it's no wonder that i was drawn to it at this point and we're going to take today to look at all of its features and developments from monster hunter tri all the way to rise in the meantime i'm super rad and this is the history of the switch axe the switch axe would be introduced in monster hunter with the release of try on august 1 2009. it was truly unique in both visual design and the mechanics it introduced to the series as i mentioned previously the weapon exists within two forms to start we'll take a look at the axe form which is a heavy hitting and long reaching weapon perfect for attacking flying enemies that hover above you this state of the weapon is what you would generally use within a hunt and despite its size it's fairly mobile with decent damage output the axe's moveset consists mostly of lunges and chops but has the ability to perform a swinging pseudo-infinite that is limited by the player's stamina from what i could tell during my research the damage output of this infinite is high but isn't worth the cost of the stamina at this point in the series this could be dependent on what stats and elements were available to the weapon while in this mode additionally items like mega dash juice make the ability much more worthwhile it's also an incredibly dangerous combo as it's difficult to stop and get out of meaning if you start it you'll take a large stamina loss regardless and probably get hit now sword mode is the really unique part about this weapon the hunter has the ability to switch the mode of their weapon on the fly whenever they want to weave the change of modes in through their combos once in sword mode the hunter will gain access to the ability of their weapon's file an ability that is built into the weapon and dependent on the type of switch axe you're using there's a meter under the sharpness icon similar to that of the spirit gauge that fills over time while in axe mode and the use of the sword is dependent on it if the gauge runs out the hunter will automatically switch back to axe mode and be forced to perform a reload animation that will allow the gauge to start recharging so what makes the sword mode advantageous it's two things that both center around the use of files to start each file that may be attached to the weapon has a special effect that dictates how sword mode will interact with the monster power file boosts the raw damage of sword mode elemental file will boost the weapon's elemental attacks dragon file bestows dragon element on the weapon and a paralysis file can inflict the paralysis ailment the second big advantage is the elemental burst or discharge effect players can combo into a special attack out of an elemental thrust attack that allows them to charge the energy remaining in their gauge into a high damage attack that is not only incredibly powerful but still benefits from the effects of the file however this will automatically drain the gauge and revert the weapon back to axe form the nice thing about this burst is that it doesn't seem to rely on how much of the gauge is left to determine damage meaning it's beneficial to get the most out of your sword mode with your normal combos and then finish off near the end of the gauge with an elemental discharge the discharge mode is a charging attack that needs to be built up by having the hunter mash the attack button but it can be canceled out of in dangerous situations or even fired off early at reduced damage finally while in sword mode the hunter gains an inherent mind's eye ability meaning that the weapon will never bounce off the monster regardless of sharpness i should also point out that the gauge only depletes when attacking and that the hunter can draw into sword mode with the right button combination on top of the two forms the weapon also added an invade step mechanic after an attack a hunter has the ability to quickly evade to the right or left without rolling in order to keep the aggression on the monster and lower the overall recovery time while keeping situational mobility while attacking switch axe also benefits from a low amount of super armor preventing knockback from weak attacks a really annoying factor about the weapon in tri specifically is that it's not even unlocked from the get-go instead players have to reach a certain point in the game where the argosy captain will teach the blacksmith how to make them after that the player will have full access to a very limited set of switch axes not every monster had a switch axe equivalent so the options for a hunter would be few and far between despite its unique design and mechanic the weapon isn't very popular in a 10th anniversary poll the weapon was ranked 11th out of all weapons available by fans and even in world is usually the 10th most used weapon overall at least on pc despite this the weapon would see various changes not only throughout different generations but the releases within those generations as well with the release of portable third the switch ax would receive a brand new icon originally it boasted a design that looked solely like an axe without actually conveying its ability to shift between two modes starting in portable third the new icon was designed to show the two sides or modes of the weapon with different blades on each end this icon design would persist throughout the remainder of the series not only was the weapon fully available from the get-go but monsters that originally didn't have a switchax equivalent and tri now gained a version of their own making the roster for the weapon much larger in comparison to its wii counterpart this wasn't only the case for tri-monsters but for monster hunter freedom unite and portable third exclusive monsters as well really fleshing out the weapon moves that were annoying to use before like the pseudo-infinite slashing attack were now able to be canceled out by evading performing infinite combos was also much easier in this entry with both sword and axe forms allowing the user to simply press triangle repeatedly to do so additional changes included two new potential files for the weapon those being the poison file which can inflict the poison ailment and exhaust phylos which allow the hunter to drain stamina from the monster and potentially stun them three ultimate took some notes from portable third and made the switch axe available from the get-go the hunter no longer had to advance through this storyline in order to unlock it and would have a beginner bone axe available in their equipment box right away other than bringing over most of the weapon branches introduced in portable third there weren't many changes this iteration and there wouldn't be further mechanical changes until generation 4. let's take a look now monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate added a few new additions to the switch ax but nothing incredibly major of course there's aerial attacks and even an aerial reload if the hunter is below 40 on their gauge both sword and axe mode also have their own jumping attacks of varying effectiveness a new double slash move is introduced that can launch the hunter forward slightly and this move can be comboed into a quick elemental thrust to elemental discharge finisher remember the hack and slash move that drains stamina and now has a high damage finisher introduced to it which propels the hunter forward and can be sidestepped out of really upping the usefulness of the combo and mobility of the hunter overall moving on to generations we get to see the large inclusion of mechanics through hunter arts and styles just like previous videos i won't go into every style and art but we'll take a surface level look at the ones that were used in majority or the most effective like one can expect with various styles multiple moves may be shifted around or locked out completely depending on which one you are currently using in terms of effectiveness aerial style is actually pretty decent while using aerial style in sword mode the kickoff launcher actually becomes an attack of its own which contributes to two different hits with an upward and downward swing respectively this is especially useful for dealing mounting damage thanks to the two hits and makes it a widely popular option for hunters elemental discharge also starts off with an aerial combo that is stronger than your typical variation of the move in generations ultimate alchemy style is possibly the most effective on the switch ax in comparison to any other weapons considering it changes the attacks in a very unique way now all attacks on the x button will be axe attacks and automatically morph into axe mode while comboing similarly all a attacks will be sword attacks and morph accordingly and that's honestly just a really cool mechanic to introduce fowler style has multiple moves that can be cancelled out of the valor sheath including morph moves from each form and both an x and a move for both the axe and sword respectively for example while in sword mode canceling out of the sheath with x will perform a strong upper swing once in valor mode hunters get access to an infinite morph attack combo that they can use by simply spamming r after an attack on top of that the sword gauge will begin to recharge faster and they can perform a special elemental discharge finisher where the initial charge is faster and the burst activates twice for incredibly high damage many of the arts are fairly useful with the weapon as well for example demon riot will allow the sword gage to drain over time but in exchange all sword attacks become stronger and tempest axe introduced in generations ultimate specifically creates an overtime effect that makes multiple attack animations faster and introduces a vertical slash attack similar to the finisher seen in the hack and slash combo the chopping hack and slash ability specifically becomes incredibly fast and costs half the normal amount of stamina energy charge was another hunting art that instantly charges the sword gauge the yard itself charges pretty fast but the rate in which it charges was nerfed slightly in generations ultimate however due to how effective it is it's possible for hunters to rarely if ever revert to axe mode if they prefer not to honestly from the point of try up until 4u the switch ax pretty much started with it all there weren't many major changes that needed to be made to the weapon due to the overall amount of options and utility it had at its disposal generations ultimate really blew the door wide open once again with the inclusion of styles and arts bringing the functionality of the switch ax to an all-time high now let's move on to generation 5 and see what world brought to the table i hope you're amped for generation five this is such a dumb joke because the amped state of the switch axe was first introduced in this generation world adds a new mechanic where attacking with the switch axe in sword mode will fill up a glowing meter effect around your sword gauge once full the hunter will enter the amped state and gain additional damage as well as a new mechanic related to the weapon's file as the hunter attacks in this state the file will begin to apply an extra coat dealing extra file specific damage to the monster discharge attacks also change within this state hunters can still perform their forward thrust attack into discharge but if the forward thrust connects with the monster the hunter will cling to whichever part they made contact with following this hunters will perform a high damage discharge attack on the part that they are clinging on to before jumping off this state is incredibly useful and great for maximizing damage while giving the switch ax a little more meter management in comparison to its previous iterations the state will revert over time allowing hunters to build it up once again meaning hunters are heavily rewarded for consistently attacking in sword mode speaking of meter management morphing from one to the next also replenishes the gauge slightly making it much easier to keep active morphing attacks are now easier to perform than ever and can be changed from almost every move in the weapon's arsenal and the axe form actually gains its own fade slash ability what's with every weapon stealing long sword mechanics something mentioned to me in the comments of previous videos is that i don't often talk about sliding attacks that are unique to this generation of the series sliding and pressing triangle will perform a basic axe form aerial attack but jumping and pressing r2 will perform the upward and downward sword form slash similar to what we saw from aerial style in monster hunter generations this is the most effective attack generally as it performs two attacks and leaves you in sword form and you can immediately enter elemental discharge while performing it and normal aerial attacks from jumping off a cliff remain mostly unchanged moving on to iceborn the big differences lie in each form axe form has been reworked slightly in how some of the combos work since i'm playing on iceborn i can't really show the differences but the main combo has been reverted to what we've seen in previous generations additionally the hack and slash or wild swing combo can now perform the overhead heavy slam finisher which will power up axe form for a short period afterward allowing it to i think do more damage and flinch monsters easier also performing a slinger burst to cancel out of the wild swing will send the hunter flying backward for a good evasive opportunity if you're wondering why i didn't show the fade slash animation when talking about it that's because it was replaced completely in iceborn instead of simply slashing away the hunter will now evade backwards with an upward slash the animation is much faster than the move in base world also if everybody's getting fade slashes i am now starting a petition to improve the fade slash for the long sword and rise another part of the petition says that they need to send me a free copy so be sure to sign thanks capcom onto sword form it should be mentioned that the clutchclaw mechanic introduced to all weapons works as an axe form specific attack for the switch axe however the elemental discharge ability can now be comboed into a clutchclaw attack now this functionality of this move is weird like i said it basically cancels your elemental discharge into a clutch claw grapple which is fine but if you enter the amped state while grappling you'll perform the elemental discharge as soon as you cling to the monster i don't know i feel like i'm missing something about this mechanic as it seems really weird finally we can move on to ryze and as always i can point out that one this is the demo and not the full game and two we are only going to be given two out of many potential silk bind attacks so what i mention here won't be everything the weapon has available to it anyway there's nothing particularly crazy that's been changed in rise in comparison to iceborn once again if you're familiar with the previous entry you'll probably feel right at home with this one what ryze does contribute is more of an incentive to utilize axe form rather than just seeing it as a means of entering sword form take the charged up effect that would be bestowed on the weapon after performing the overhead slam from wild swing the move is now called max potency and while i'm unsure if the effects from iceborn are the same one new effect to it is that it can speed up charging the amped state gauge while in sword form hunters can now enter maximum potency in axe form switch to sword form and have a much easier time building up the amp's state potentially the biggest addition aside from the silk bind attacks is that the amp state now applies file effects to not only the sword form but the axe form as well and that's pretty cool if for some reason you find yourself running out of sort gauge and you switch back to axe the effects of your finals will still apply making reverting to axe form much less of a chore and much more effective overall now the first silk bind attack invincible gambit seemed pretty useless to me but who knows maybe it can be better utilized by people that main the weapon it launches the hunter forward in a combo that seems to have an effect similar to the rock steady mantle where you can't be knocked back but will still take damage so it could be potentially useful as an evasive option or if you absolutely must power through towards a monster hunters can also combo out of it leading to high damage but it didn't feel right to me switch charger the second silk mine attack seems a bit more useful on top of launching you forward slightly it also recharges your gauge by a fixed amount and prevents it from depleting for a finite period of time this is particularly useful for when you want to stay in sword mode for as long as possible and get as much damage dealt as possible invincible gamut can be swapped out with another silk bind attack known as soaring wyvern blade which launches the hunter in the air and performs an advancing slash towards the enemy if the attack connects the amp gauge fills and a large explosion will be produced overall this seems like the better of the two options in my opinion for other switch skills forward slash can be swapped out for forward overhead slash which seems to be good at reaching high up hit zones like wyvern's heads if you perform a sword morph attack out of this you'll get a double slash so it seems good for damage output as well the final switch skill is swapped with finishing discharge and aptly named compressed finishing discharge which has super armor and performs a high damage elemental finisher that is independent of the amp gauge for a weapon that was first released in generation 3 there was a surprising amount of content about it to cover i think that's because the weapon packed so much functionality and utility within it straight from the get-go and then added small improvements through each game release and each generation comparing one release to the next you may not see a large amount of changes to the weapon but from the start of generation 3 to where we are now in rise the switch axe has built up a surprising amount of depth from a weapon that seemed complicated to use at first glance but was actually fairly simple to utilize to a destructive force that takes a bit longer to master but is much more interesting to play in my opinion anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the switch axe back in the days of the original monster hunter game on the ps2 there were only six weapons to choose from seven if you count the inclusion of the dual blades in the western release one of these weapons is the hammer one of the most iconic impact weapons in the series and a popular option for hunters looking to knock the ever loving [ __ ] out of an unsuspecting monster a simplistic weapon but one not without its own appeal the hammer has a long history of being part of any effective hunting team and as an impact weapon is highly sought after for making sure all parts can be broken on monsters especially monsters like barroth who have incredibly durable ridges on their head unfortunately not every monster part is weak the long sword i know i know it's a travesty but we'll have to suffer through it for now and please consider liking and subscribing so youtube's algorithm will bless me in the future they've kidnapped my family and refused to give them back to me unless my video has a high engagement rating so fingers crossed in the meantime i'm super rad once again joined by flyanne and this is the history of the hammer a good portion of the weapon changes seen between generation one and two are fairly minimal but they are there for that reason we're going to bundle all of them into one section covering the start of generation 1 and looking at how the weapon advanced all the way to freedom unite similar to the great sword in generation 1 the hammer mostly functions under a hit and run playstyle the hunter would see the most benefit through attacking and then generally rolling or repositioning out of the way in order to engage briefly once again the big difference between the greatsword and hammer however was the type of damage each applied while the greatsword was one of the best weapons at applying high slashing damage the hammer was one of the best and almost only ways of applying high impact damage which was not only effective at breaking specific monster parts ones generally more dense than say a tail or a wing but also had the added ability of stunning or knocking out monsters in later generations however in generation 1 the ability to stun these monsters was not yet implemented into impact weapons meaning your main reasoning for selecting this weapon was both the high damage and the ability to break monster parts you may not typically be able to to go over some of the attacks briefly some of the main moves include a short jab attack that is quick to perform but low damage an overhead swing that's slower but a little stronger and a pound combo that can be performed by consecutively pressing up on the right analog stick in the ps2 releases and on the triangle or x button in subsequent releases now if you remember from my greatsword video the weapon didn't actually receive its charge mechanic until generation two but the hammer not only had a similar charge mechanic already implemented in the ps2 game but has multiple sub mechanics that make it incredibly useful and more versatile than you may expect first there's the level one charge which performs a quick attack with little damage then the level 2 charge that will perform a double hit and finally the level 3 charge that performs one of the most powerful attacks for the weapon the super pound which has a large build up but deals such an excessive amount of damage that it's especially useful when you have a monster downed what makes the hammers charge mechanic truly unique is what hunters can do while charging specifically the hunter gains the ability to move while charging at the cost of stamina making it one of the most mobile weapons in the game for the amount of damage it can produce not only that but if the hunter is moving when they release the level 3 charge they will enter the spin attack which has its own sub-mechanics based on everything we've already discussed while spinning the hunter has the ability to press up on the right analog stick and depending on how many spins have taken place a specific finisher will be produced if the hunter presses up on the second or third spin they'll perform the double attack i mentioned before where they'll lunge forward slightly and then hit with an uppercut swing but if they press up on the fourth spin they'll produce the golf swing attack which is the most powerful attack in the hammer's arsenal simply letting all of the spins finish will lead into an upswing motion that is meant to act as a long animation to punish for not ending the spin early so really the golf swing attack is the most effective funny enough i was recording some of this footage on a japanese copy of the ps2 game and i realized that some of the move set is different depending on if you were playing the western version or the japanese release as an example the golf swing mechanic can actually be performed by simply pressing up on the right analog stick three times producing a double pound into golf swing combo but this isn't possible in japan just something i thought was cool and something that stopped being a factor with the release of monster hunter g onward throughout the first and second generation the weapon also has access to multiple draw mechanics including a traditional draw attack and the ability to charge out of the draw with a proper button combination other than switching to button attacks instead of the analog stick the real major change in generation 2 was introducing ko damage and the ability to stun monsters leaving them open for heavy damage hammer was definitely a defining part of this mechanic and while it was introduced early it wouldn't be until freedom unite that the stun visual was actually implemented i'm specifically talking about how the weapon will shoot off yellow sparks when hitting the monster on the head visualizing that the hunter is contributing to knockout damage this would become the main focus of the hammer and its main identity the weapon was and still is known for being a knockout king and how it can utilize the opportunity of a knocked out monster rippled throughout each generation taking a simplistic weapon but making it a dominant factor in the meta of monster hunter now let's take a look at generation 3 and see what small amount of changes were added [Music] one of the biggest changes in gen 3 would be how the level 2 charge attack has been reworked instead of performing a double strike maneuver the hunter instead now performs an uppercut swing and most of the charging moves including this new uppercut swing can be comboed out of easily allowing the hunter to output damage at a much higher rate than was previously possible in the previous generations on top of the new move the swinging mechanic changed the type of finisher that would be performed if the hunter canceled out of it early originally the hunter would perform the lunging double swing attack but now would perform the more useful uppercut swing that was faster safer and overall a better option to use within a hunt but still not better than the golf swing the uppercut launches the hunter forward slightly and is great for closing distance on a monster it really is a weapon that benefits from its simplicity and allows it to be effective and accessible within every generation up to and including this point luckily there are some other big mechanical changes we can discuss to start similar to how the hunter can press the main attack button triangle in most cases three times to produce the pound into a golf swing combo they can now also start the combo off with the circle button for a quick side swing and to pound into golf swing adding a little bit more variety to the weapon overall when it comes to attacking comboing is so effective at this point that the hammer also has several infants it can perform generally following one of the main combos into a golf swing followed by level 1 charge attack and then back into the original combo the weapon can perform and weave through these moves with little to no down time it was a serious game changer within its generation and made the weapon so much more versatile and welcoming to use upping the damage output considerably it should also be noted that gen 3 introduced the exhaustion mechanic which allowed hunters to slow down monsters and keep them in place by physically exhausting them forcing them to recover over time and weapons could now inflict this type of damage for example the super pound move was much better at inflicting exhaust damage than the uppercut while the uppercut was better at stunning or kaoing monsters now i know what you're thinking this sounds short it seems like while there weren't that many changes made to the hammer and gen 3 the ones that do exist were incredibly effective the quality far outweighs the quantity in this generation and if that doesn't sway you there's one more thing we're gonna talk about here the goddamn gronga gas stop right there you hammer wielding [ __ ] casual do you see this do you see this [ __ ] that's right [ __ ] it's the god damn grand gig ass but it looks like an ergo and testicle on a stick you pour yourself a nice hot cup of shut the [ __ ] up and take a look at the stats on this mean son of a [ __ ] you're reading that right it's 1508 raw that's higher than any other hammer scratch that any other weapon in the goddamn game oh and what's that plus 25 defense thanks gronga gas what a [ __ ] bro and yeah the negative affinity is lame uh life's not fair monster hunter certainly isn't g get over it what's that you want to max this [ __ ] as far as it can go well there missy you just try not to soak through your pooky print panties while we crunch these numbers the hammer's modifier is 5.2 you [ __ ] scrub learn the damage formula pleb you got the goddamn grand gigas you got aul or honda blade you got the power charm you got power talon demon drug mega demon drug note that these don't stack might seed and might pell also these do not stack with all these juicy buffs we get up to 1856. what's that someone's got a big dick playing like a real manly man are we alright then curl up your mustache and roll up your sleeves while we activate feline heroics 2506 did i [ __ ] stutter [ __ ] 2 500 and [ __ ] 6 but look at that sharpness what am i supposed to do with blue sharpness you take another sip of that shut the [ __ ] up because yes you'll need sharpness plus one or honed blade for this bad boy to make him any good because then what purple that means his sharpness modifier goes from 1.2 to 1.44 which on top of being the best possible return for your 10 skill points means a nearly 25 increase in damage what's that you're running a set with awaken there's a good little boy now this soul crusher has 400 slime plus 80 with bombardier plus 40 with pyro maxing at 520 [ __ ] that [ __ ] will slime your little sister and won't even call her in the morning i'm probably gonna cut this part out i'm sorry that's it's in the script but where slime is cheap and it's better to use elemental weakness you bite your tongue [ __ ] wit hammer's elemental modifiers are utter [ __ ] anyway slime explosions equal staggers for days and when you're grinding four point or pack mentality get your scrawny ass to hr 125 you'll take all the damage you can [ __ ] get once you get yourself this beautiful lump on a stick you'll never have to run to the marina to change sets ever [ __ ] again you'll get to stand there in the tavern get drunk as [ __ ] and prance like the [ __ ] badass you are so get ready to break some chins [ __ ] you'll be farming feel the heat g2 for a while because once you go god damn gronga gas you never go back moving on to generation 4 we can see how verticality and the ability to use aerial attacks affected the hammer spoiler alert it didn't do much not much at all really all of the combo abilities are still there for the weapon and now when you're jumping off a ledge you can perform an aerial attack which you can also combo out of each charge level also has its own aerial attack that can be performed the first charge level will allow you to perform a strong pound attack that can be comboed out of but generally won't be used by any hunter in the game chances are you're going to be in charge level 2 or 3 whenever you jump off the ledge because charge level 1 is such a short time frame the level 2 charged aerial attack is a stronger pound it can't be comboed into as easily and its only follow-up is an uppercut but it's fairly powerful regardless the level 3 charge is even more powerful and gets followed up by a golf swing making its damage output much higher than the previous options one important feature introduced in this generation is the ability to climb ledges while charging which continues the tradition of the hammer being surprisingly mobile throughout each game onto generations we can take a look at some of the arts and styles that helped flesh out the weapon overall guild and sometimes adept style were probably the most actively used versions within the original release of generations and valor and alchemy became useful factors within the ultimate release guild style is exactly what you expect it to be and focuses on the core mechanics of the hammer we have seen in each previous generation since the weapon is so simplistic it's already incredibly effective at what it does meaning guild style is perfect for anyone looking to optimize damage while i don't want to focus on a depth style too much it is interesting to note that it introduces the supercharged mechanic which provides the hammer with three new charge attacks that are generally stronger than your traditional moves the supercharge can only be activated after a successful evade and also charges the charged jumping attacks as well alchemy style mostly functioned as guild style with a few added benefits namely being able to slot in an extra art and the overarching abilities of alchemy barrel some moves are slightly limited but overall it's a great option for hunters that like guild style with added abilities once again valor's style dominates another weapon in terms of effectiveness the valor sheath cancel moves include a powerful upward swing or a side smash attack and easily build up meter to put the hunter into the valor state once in the valor state the opportunities for high damage really begin to open up rather than simply charging from level 1 to level 3 hunters can now attack out of level 1 charge charge to level 2 attack again charge to level 3 and end things with a strong finisher or once in level 3 hunters can begin a second tier of charge that will allow them to perform an even more devastating finisher similar to what we see in a depth style and if you knock out the monster oh baby it's over for them on to hunter arts the spinning meteor art is probably the most utilized out of all the possible options with absolute readiness not far behind the move is incredibly powerful not so much in its build-up of five spinning hits but in its absolutely absurd finisher which has some of the highest motion values the weapon has ever seen it's a great ability to use when you've knocked out or trapped a monster and it's just so ridiculously powerful that you'd be crazy not to slot it in another art that doesn't see as much use is the impact press introduced in generations ultimate it's an overtime ability that adds shockwave effects to charge attacks on the hammer this can be especially beneficial on valor style as the hunter will be performing multiple charge attacks in succession these shockwaves act as extra hits and contribute mostly to knockout damage meaning you'll have a much easier time knocking out a monster and opening them up for high damage finishers and with that i think we've covered everything of note within generation 4 all that's really left is to move on to generation 5 and see what world iceborn and ryze have in store for us like most weapons world began a large rework on both controls and mechanics the side smack move that was assigned to its own button can now be performed with triangle and a directional input so then what does circle do now well introduce a brand new move known as big bay which as long as the hunter hits the monster each time can be comboed consecutively up to four times before ending the combo with the big bang finisher each hit is stronger than the last and the finisher is absolutely bonkers in the amount of damage dealt truly the most unga bunga move i've seen up to this point in terms of sliding attacks the most notable is the charge slide maneuver which has many options for actions out of it the hunter can press triangle to perform a powerful aerial slam or simply release the charge to perform this crazy spinning aerial maneuver to be the most effective however the hunter will need to utilize a brand new mechanic to this iteration the power charge while charging the hammer players can press circle to cancel out of the charge and enter the power charge state and this state will stay active as long as the hunter's weapon is unsheathed or until they get hit by either the monster or another hunter when performing a sliding charge hunters can press the circle button to quickly enter the state it benefits the player to always be in the state as damage outputs will be higher and ko damage is also increased honestly i can't stress enough how much some moves benefit from the state some of the finishers and charged attacks did exponentially higher damage in comparison to an uncharged attack and had new animations so what about iceborn well hunters can perform a slinger burst while charging and this will not interrupt their charge state meaning they can use this to flinch a monster and still get off a full level 3 charge additionally after the level 2 charged up swing hunters can press the clutch claw attack to grapple onto the monsters and tenderize it this can also be performed after that crazy spinning aerial move and now when grappling toward the monster the hunter will continue with extra aerial spinning hits for higher damage now the big differences in monster hunter rise mechanically are how power charge functions rather than being a temporary state that the hunter activates it's now a permanent state that the hunter can switch between and is denoted by the color of the hammer icon beside their sharpness gauge the traditional style will be known as yellow default charge as it will have a yellow glowing hammer icon on the hunter's ui meanwhile switching into the strength or power charge state will change the icon to blue animations change in between each of these states and the hunter can perform an evade step while switching between them if the hunter shies their weapon or gets hit they will not revert to their previous state meaning it is a completely manual now and rise in comparison to how it was in world additionally swapping from power charge to default instantly gives you a max charge making it useful for quickly firing off a level 3 charge attack or one of your silk bind attacks that relies on the level of charge you currently have another notable change is that the default stance can perform the big bang finisher out of the spinning attack now generally hunters will probably always want to stay in the strength state as it's a slower but more powerful option for hunters that allows them to quickly fire off a level 3 charge attack when switching back to yellow while in blue you get access to a level 1 charging attack that allows you to reposition in place a level 2 gap closer and a level 3 charged to brutal big bang if the hunter is moving while using this they'll perform the spinning bludgeon while in yellow and the step smack attack while in blue the first silk bind move is simply the spinning aerial attack we saw introduced in world silk bind spinning bludgeon instead of needing to slide down to activate it it can now be used on demand as long as you have the wire bugs to activate it i personally think turning this attack into a silk bind mechanic is a little lackluster as it was perfectly usable as an environmental mechanic however it does have decent motion values when used against large monsters and can function as a gap closer the charge level you activate this in would determine the amount of potential spins possible and the move costs one wire bug the second silk bind attack impact crater is the move where damage specifically is determined based on the charge level you activated on the hunter will launch themselves into the air and come down with a powerful smashing attack the higher the charge level the more effective this move is going to be overall so swapping into a level 3 charge from a power stance and activating this ability is highly useful a level 3 impact crater could be close to double the motion value of no charge silk bind spinning bludgeon can be swapped out for another skill known as dash breaker which has the same general function of a gap closer while producing damage the main differences lie in the fact that dashbreaker can be charged before launching the hunter forward and it negates enemy damage while advancing for the switch skills the a button side smash can be replaced with the new water strike attack which is by far one of the most effective skills for a weapon it is specifically an active counter mechanic you can use at the push of a button as long as you're in a default state as you can't combo into it from what i understand that being said it blocks pretty much anything including roars meaning you can open the monster up at any opportunity the blue strength state of the hammer can be swapped out for the courage state another mechanic scene and generation ultimate that allows and requires the hunter to combo their charge attacks meaning charge level 1 must be used and then can be followed up with charge level 2 etc while this is a nice gameplay change i believe it's underutilized except specifically for elemental and status builds that are good for the additional hits provided with all the silk bind abilities and switch skills out of the way i think we're finally done with monster hunter rise if there is any weapon within the series that has managed to hold onto its simplicity the most it's definitely the hammer mechanically it very gradually changed throughout each generation and while many of the changes were incredibly useful they weren't very substantial it was a true quality over quantity scenario comparing it from generation 1 to generation 5 the weapon is almost identical on the surface to what it was in the past and that's probably because it didn't need many improvements overall in order to keep up with every other weapon in the series it was great from the get-go and that hasn't changed anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the hammer thanks so much to my friend flyanne for participating in this video you can find their information in the description and i highly suggest checking them out for all of your jrpg content out of all the weapons in the monster hunter series we've already talked about some of the most iconic everyone knows about the greatsword the hammer even the longsword is incredibly popular but there's another weapon with a long history one most players know about because it's generally the default selection at the start of various games a weapon that has been around since monster hunter's inception but from a surface level looks fairly ineffective its high utility and effectiveness are hidden behind the weapon's low raw damage but i promise you there's much more to this weapon than what first meets the eye underneath the hood is a deadly elemental contender that can be set up for almost any scenario fast attacks high mobility and incredible utility the sword and shield can really surprise you if you give it the chance and we're going to take a look at that today and please consider liking and subscribing youtube still has my family held hostage i recently received an ear in the mail from them and i'm starting to lose hope please susan if you're watching this please give me my kids back i promise to produce better content for the google overlords in the meantime i'm super rad and this is the history of the sword and shield there's a good chance that if you're introduced to monster hunter for the first time that the sword and shield will be the weapon you try out before anything else it's generally the default equipment on the hunter and potentially has one of the most easy to understand and inviting playstyles to start with in a game where most weapons are slow methodical clunky and require a large degree of patience the sword and shield help alleviate that slightly by going more in the opposite direction let's talk about attacks first the main combo you'll see hunters using is the combo slash which allows them to attack three times in a row by pressing up on the right analog stick consecutively this is probably the most used attack when fighting generally as it allows for consistent damage overall but most hunters would cancel out of the final hit to begin again and may even start the combo with the jumping slash i will mention shortly the combo can also be ended with the second move in the sword and shield arsenal the spin slash which can be activated by pressing left or right on the analog stick this attack can be used by itself any time during the typical combo attack to cut it short while it offers higher damage it comes at the cost of a longer animation generally it's better to save this for if you have a big opening after a combo and probably shouldn't be used on its own as a combo attack will do more overall damage than a single spin slash the jumping slash can be performed either as a draw attack or by pressing down on the right analog stick while unsheathed the nice thing about this attack is that using it beforehand allowed the hunter to weave it into the combo maneuver there's also a rolling attack that can only be performed after an evasive roll which is great for starting combos over additionally there is a final move that is weak but allows the user to attack while keeping their shield up players can also perform a bit of a pseudo-infinite by attacking after an evade into their triple slash combo and then evading again to start the combo over rather than waiting for the ending animation i don't know how effective it is overall but it's there as an option maybe good and yeah that's right there's a shield similar to the greatsword the sword and shield has the ability to block incoming attacks these don't completely prevent damage but can heavily mitigate it at the cost of stamina and that's really where this weapon begins to shine it's utility the main advantage of choosing this weapon over others is its agility not only does the weapon have the ability to block but hunters can still actively move at full speed with it unsheathed unlike other weapons that slow the hunter down while carrying them think of it as taking the utility of the greatsword block and hammer charge movement and mixing them together to make a defensive but highly mobile combination there's a key downside to this weapon to help even it out in terms of effectiveness generally how weak it is in comparison to any other weapon within this generation seriously due to its low raw if you're only managing to get one or two hits in you're dealing virtually no damage to a monster at all and even if you are managing to get in a large amount of attacks due to how often the weapon was hitting a monster its sharpness would plummet excessively leaving hunters in a situation where they would find themselves bouncing more often than not well that sounds awful right and i don't blame you for thinking so honestly sword and shield was probably at its all-time weakest this generation on paper but outside of utility it did make up for its low raw damage and low sharpness in a major way elemental damage which was incredibly effective against the right matchups in generation one for example there's a weapon called eternal strife and while it has the lowest draw out of any sword and shield in the game it has the highest elemental damage as well and it just so happens to be dragon elements something incredibly useful against some of the harder matchups in this release compared to raw elemental damage is going to be much more consistent in its damage output due to modifiers meaning the right sword and shield could seriously go a long way i also want to point out that while sword and shield on paper seems like it's not particularly great in given situations the inherent clunkiness and brokenness of monster hunter 1 allowed it to shine alongside other bonkers weapons like lance which we'll get to in another video now i know you're saying to yourself but super rad we're forgetting that the weapon can use items while unsheathed well slow down king because while that is a staple feature of sword and shield it wasn't added into the series until generation 2. let's take a look now there's not too much specifically changed for the weapon within this generation aside from the inclusion of a new attack and a new key feature first is the new upward slash that can be performed by pressing r and triangle at the same time on the psp you know r1 on ps2 the player can perform an upward slash that can reach higher vertically than most attacks by performing a jumping slash and pressing triangle again the player can combo into an upward slash out of it and extending that combo into the triple slash seen in the previous generation this move can also be done after a roll it should also be pointed out that using its standalone as a combo starter wasn't very viable until later on in the series something similar to this maneuver was first seen in generation 1 but really began to get fleshed out here and again the final attack of the three-hit combo wasn't very effective most players would find themselves cancelling out of the animation with a roll before the final hit and quickly get back into the start of the original combo i should also point out that the jumping slash gained super armor in this generation so while you can still take damage it's not interruptable and great for pressure while a new attack is great it's great the biggest addition in this generation is the weapon's ability to use items while unsheathed by pressing iron square the hunter will use whichever item they currently have equipped similar to if they didn't have their weapon unsheathed at all they can drink potions set traps and sharpen though some of this will sheath the weapon after use this is surprisingly huge as a mechanical inclusion because it helps boost the overall utility and balance of the weapon allowing it to better compete with the other options that focus on higher damage and like the great sword it can even block attacks like gypsarose flashes sword and shield really did have it all in perfect play you'd be doing your best to not get hit potentially never taking any damage if you're some sort of godly player but the majority of players aren't at that level and if any weapon cushions taking damage or finding yourself in a risky situation it was sword and shield okay so a major change for generation 2 but not a lot of changes overall what about generation 3 well we're going to head over to moga village and see for ourselves so try comes out and with its sword and shield gains multiple changes in its moveset the tried and true triple slash combo still exists but the button dedicated to the round slash has been altered instead of the typical round slash you can instead press the button twice to perform a new horizontal slash into a vertical slash combo that's good for hitting above the hunter the nice thing about the inclusion of this new combo is that all of these moves can now be chained together jumping slash into triple slash into the new upper swing combo and finishing off with a round slash is now possible and really complements the flow of the weapon especially when an opening presents itself again you can perform a sort of pseudo-infinite by canceling the animation with an evade and immediately re-entering the combo i don't do it very well in the footage that you're watching and don't forget that some of these attacks were better than others in motion values and animations meaning players may cancel out of specific hits and continue on with others try continued with the additions by adding a shield bash maneuver by holding a direction and pressing the a button twice the hunter would first swing their shield and then follow up with a forward thrusting shield bash attack which also gains a round slash finisher if you continue it in portable 3rd and 3 ultimate the new combo that leads into an upper slash now has its own finisher making it a secondary triple strike combo now the hunter will perform a quick horizontal slash into an upper slash and finish with a stronger round slash these two forms of triple slash combos can be woven together slightly to perform a variety of combos depending on the hunter's preference or the situation at hand for example during the triangle attack you can begin the circle combo whether you do a full combo or not however you can't start the circle combo and mix in the triangle combo at this time these changes would carry over from portable 3rd into 3 ultimate which outside of water combat didn't really add anything to the sword and shield formula you know what did add a lot to the sword and shield combo though generation four baby at least i hope it did since i haven't actually looked at it while writing this line in the script [Music] turns out i was right we got some new [ __ ] on the block for you right here ladies and gentlemen say hello to the a brand new evasive option that can be activated after almost any attack in the sword and shield arsenal by holding back on the left analog stick and pressing a the hunter will jump backwards allowing them to get clear of any close range monster's attacks the cool thing about this is that it can be followed up with many options first a charge slash attack by holding the a button which outputs a rather high amount of damage for the sword and shield the combo also gets the upward slash finisher by pressing x after a charged strike upward slash doesn't that mean you can immediately go into a combo afterward yup and what's that damage output from my sword and shield this can't be possible well guess what king you're going to be destroying monsters with this weapon from gen 4 onward utterly obliterating them it's almost unfair want to get right back into the fray after a backstep instead of holding a to charge the hunter can perform a run-in attack similar to their draw attack to close the distance and get back into the fight as quickly as possible finally is the monster advancing on you despite the back step keep the aggression coming by backstepping and following up with an upward slash in place the world is your oyster oh did i mention this puppy has iframes that's right on top of giving sword and shield everything every other weapon had at this point they also built in an iframe dodge mechanic into it did they give iframes to the long sword fade slash no but they did give them to the sword and shield backstep time to start another petition your mobility options are gigantic now there's nothing this weapon can't realistically do and your only real drawback is requiring the right weapons for the right scenarios elemental options are still incredibly important to this weapon type more so than most others but sword and shield make up for it with more and more mobility and utility with each release but super rad what about the jump attacks sit down champ i got you covered you got your basic jump attack boom and yes you can combo out of it so go nuts you know what else you got charge in attack off the ledge yeah you saw that right it sends you flying forward off the ledge for a quick slash can you combo out of it you betcha isn't that dumb yes it is what's more dumb though attacking up a ledge by charging towards a ledge or pressing the a button while climbing up you can perform a jumping upward slash maneuver you're just going to be swinging this stump on a stick around willy-nilly the entire hunt and guess what it's going to work because this weapon is so open-ended in its options moving on monster hunter 4 wasn't the only game in this generation to bring a lot to the table just like every other weapon generations and generations ultimate introduce plenty of new mechanics styles and arts for sword and shield to make use of and one very unique mechanic oils what are oils they're a brand new mechanic that help diversify the options the hunter has in battle when it comes to how their weapon will act when applying them they'll last for two minutes and add a colored glow to the hunter's sword but what are each of the oils and what do they do well there's four in total starting with the affinity oil that will add 30 affinity to the hunter's weapon for the duration of the effect next there's an exhaustion oil that not only deals more exhaust damage over time but also ko damage when attacking a monster's head say goodbye to the hammer because we don't need it anymore we're stubby boys now next up is park breaker oil that makes it easier to break parts on a monster and mine's eye oil which prevents the hunter from bouncing off of them doesn't that sound nice on a weapon like the sword and shield that attacks rapidly sword oils opened up the door for what was possible with the weapon and made it a true powerhouse in comparison to the other options out there but many may still consider a beginner weapon with no depth was now arguably one of the most mechanically diverse weapons in the series surprisingly this weapon was not one that focused on the valor style released in generations ultimate instead it was guild and striker styles that really shined and we'll take a look at them both now of course guild style is what you would expect from previous entries in the series it focuses on keeping the weapon similar and moveset to what returning players have experienced already and allows for two arts to be applied at a given time the reason people may choose striker style over guild is due to how powerful the earth selection is for this weapon and being able to equip three arts at a time that charge faster than normal really gives you a boost within a fight the main aspect you lose in striker style is the backstep maneuver which is a popular option amongst sword and shield mains so let's see what the best arts are and what they do that's so appealing first and arguably the most important art is chaos oil which was introduced in generations ultimate this is seriously a bonkers ability and one every sordid shield hunter should be using remember all the oils i mentioned before while this ability will apply each of their effects at one time for a given duration tier 1 and tier 2 of this art have the abilities be a bit weaker than if you just used the oil by itself but tier 3 offers the full effects of each oil on top of all of this you get extended duration with tier 2 but a shorter duration with tier 3 to balance it out you also have the ability to stack an additional manual oil to boost the effect further it even applies faster while the art is activated imagine activating chaos oil 3 and applying affinity oil for a 60 affinity boost without any armor skills good luck getting that third tier though as it's locked behind a hyper golden and silver loose quest that will have you pulling your hair out for weeks on end round force is the other major inclusion essentially making you invincible during its animation it's a spinning attack with a wide range and deals high damage making it useful for keeping up dps against particularly aggressive monsters i've been told this is a contested statement but the main portion of your damage output can come from this ability and you can really [ __ ] yourself as a sword and shield main by not utilizing it if i didn't mention a particular style or art that you use within this section i apologize but these were the most effective and heavily utilized of the group and deserved the main focus within this video next we'll move on to generation 5 and see what world iceborn and ryze bring to the sword and shield table so to get this out of the way similar to how the hammer can slide down slopes while charging the sword and shield can perform an advancing slash on a slope and begin the sliding animation with their weapon out this allows them to guard while sliding which is a nice little inclusion but you'll most likely be using it to perform jumping slashes so whether your weapon is out or not doesn't really matter there is a new helmbreaker move however which will output multiple hits on the way down and can be performed by using the advancing slash into a runnable wall there's a few new moves added as well namely the spiral slash which is activated during any combo by pressing triangle in a direction the hunter will face the direction selected and quickly swing their sword toward it this move can be followed up with a quick thrusting motion for decent damage or many of the other moves in the sword and shield arsenal then there's the hard bash which can be performed by continuing through the shield bash combo with the circle button the ability to weave all these moves together begins to give the sword and shield true infinites without needing the evade rule meaning the uptime of damage has increased significantly in world the backstep's charge mechanic has been updated slightly as well now if the attack connects the hunter will automatically perform the scaling slash and launch themselves into the air from here they can choose between the aerial jumping slash or a new falling bash attack that uses the shield also by performing the power combos or shield combos and pressing circle afterward you could automatically enter the backstep stance funny enough this weapon could use the slinger without the weapon on sheath before iceborn so at the time of writing this i'm pretty curious what it got in the expansion to make up for that luckily we're going to move on to iceborn right now the main additions to every weapon in iceborn are the slingerburst and clutchclaw mechanics sword and shields specifically get the ability to press l2 after an evasive roll to perform a launching uppercut attack with the clutchclaw out if it connects the hunter automatically grapples to the monster this is advantageous due to it not only being an incredibly quick way to grapple onto the monster but makes it so that it only takes one clutch claw attack afterwards to tenderize now slinger bursts function slightly different in comparison to the other weapons due to the fact that the sword and shield can already use the slinger with the weapon unsheathed by pressing r3 you can change the mode the slinger is in if you want to use it normally keep it in the default mode but if you want the ability to use the sling or burst switch it and it'll be a burst every time no combo starter needed now that's not all the weapon has to offer there's a brand new mechanic introduced in iceborn for the sword and shield as if it didn't have enough going for it already i'm talking about the perfect rush combo and honestly wow it's insane the move is activated by pressing the triangle after either a backstep or a sling or burst and seems to be designed to promote appropriate timing of button presses as the hunter performs the combo well-timed button presses will reward additional raw damage elemental damage and status effects making it incredibly useful for big openings on whatever you're hunting moving on to rise the infinite from the previous entry has been reworked slightly now inputting a round slash at the end of a combo will perform the spinning reaper move and is essentially the same mechanic as seen in world but with higher motion values this is done via xna rather than the directional input the other main mechanical changes are how perfect rush functions as it can finish the combo in two ways first by performing the combo regularly the hunter will now be launched off of the monster and into the air this is the same animation we see when performing a scaling slash in world if you'd rather not commit to a launch you can instead press a to perform a round slash which is quicker and doesn't send you into the air additionally a guard point counter has been added to the guard slash maneuver meaning well timed attacks will automatically block monster advances and can be followed up with perfect rush on to silk bind moves the first is falling shadow and i feel like this is a running theme at this point as it mostly functions as a gap closer to stay near the monster if you connect with the monster you go into a scaling slash which lets you perform your typical finishers now the windmill silk by an attack is great it's like round force which i talked about previously from generations and continues to have iframes at the start of the animation making it perfect for evading an initial attack and then slaughtering the monster with high damage i love it it's perfect it makes sense as an inclusion and complements the weapon greatly good job capcom while windmill is a nice addition it can be swapped out with metsu shoryu gekki which was another ability scene within monster hunter generation's ultimate the hunter will jump to uppercut the target before being able to land with a falling bash or plunging thrust i believe that while windmill is a great option sure you gekki ends up trumping it overall for switch skills the hard basher combo used via the a button after a shield bash can be swapped with the drill slash combo which will thrust the sword into the monster before performing an attack that has a multi-hit property while it's a good option for elemental or status builds the normal hard basher seems better for raw damage sets advancing slash can be swapped out with a new sliding slash but outside of gap closing properties i don't really know what you would use it for that being said it performs two hits and can be followed up with the jumping slash that's all i really have on ryze one thing i can mention is that the ability to simply hold a after a power charge combo for an automatic back step has been removed and instead now forces the player to hold back on the analog stick similar to a traditional backstep if i haven't made it clear throughout the majority of this video the sword and shield is not what you expect from a first glance even today the weapon seems to not be given the credit it's due it's truly a jack of all trades and master of some offering almost every major utility mechanic other weapons focus on while bringing many of its own unique mechanics to the table on top of that it has high mobility and ways to utilize its elemental advantages to become truly monstrous in the amount of damage it can output anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the sword and shield okay so what i basically understand about this weapon going in is that it's the switch axe mixed with sword and shield and if we've learned anything from those two videos it's that [ __ ] is busted incredibly incredibly busted so is the chargeblade going to be the same does the comparison even fit this weapon probably not this is a weapon that showed up first in generation 4 alongside the insect glaive making it pretty new in terms of weapons to be released in the series a lot of people expressed that this weapon video would probably be shorter due to this fact and i'm imagining the same but there's still a lot of depth and nuance to the charge blade to discuss and even its development between monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate saw major changes i'm still waiting to get my family back from youtube susan has been sending me weird videos of a gun to my kid's head it's really messed up i'm not happy about it please please please feel free to support me and support my channel it's really appreciated in the meantime i'm super rad and this is the history of the chargeblade introduced in the japanese exclusive monster hunter 4 for the nintendo 3ds the charge blade also known as the charge axe in japan even though you'll only really be using the axe to blow up monsters with finishers was an interesting inclusion due to its general flair and ridiculousness similar to the switch axe for a monster hunter try it's a weapon that may get compared to switch acts or a sword in shield regularly but has many unique mechanics to make it not only stand out from the rest of the possible weapon selections but also make it incredibly effective and satisfying to use to start off on the basic attack and functionality there's a draw attack that launches the hunter forward into a slash and this move can be performed while unsheathed by pressing x plus a at the same time pressing the x button while on sheath performs a traditional slash and this can be comboed up to three times similar to the sword and shield unlike sword and shield chargeblade can perform a sidestep after any of the attacks in this combo for quick repositioning without the long rolling evade animation making it very useful for moving around a monster while keeping up time to briefly mention the shield the r button allows hunters to block at the cost of stamina and mitigated damage if attacked while guarding hunters can cancel out of the end frames of the animation either with an evade or attack making it great for countering monster advances the a button will perform an upward slash and can be held down and charged to perform a double slash attack with super armor this move can also be followed up with a round slash finisher and the entire charge combo can be repeated indefinitely hunters can even sidestep after the initial two slashes and then still follow up with the round slash making mobility a large factor for this weapon players can press r and x at the same time to activate an attack that switches into axe mode which comes with its own move set and unique abilities it's a much slower option but comes with the benefit of increased damage pressing a direction and x at the same time will perform the same morphing attack but keep the weapon in axe mode this form has its own dedicated infinite with the x button that will start with a high reaching upward swing perfect for attacking tall monsters and finish with a downward slash rinse and repeat for easy damage alternatively the player can press the r button during a combo in either form in order to perform a morphing attack that will switch their stances this can also be done infinitely and allows for easy switching mid combo pressing a will perform a quick chopping slash and pressing a again and the combo will perform a large swinging attack with a long animation the second attack can also be performed after moves like forward slam adding to its versatility now there's a final attack in this combo and using it will automatically switch from axe mode back to sword mode the damage and effectiveness of this move and all the moves mapped to the a button in axe mode are dependent on files which we'll get into shortly and you'll never really be using it unless you have them charged up and ready to be unleashed however it's important to note that many of the moves in sword mode can morph you into axe mode and either perform the second part of the elemental discharge combo or put you right into the finisher for terminology we'll use throughout the video the first hit of the a combo is elemental discharge 1. then elemental discharge 2 and finally amped elemental discharge for the finisher so what are files and how do they relate to the weapon and its effectiveness if you look under the sharpness gauge you'll notice that there are 5 identical icons these are the weapons files and are used in conjunction with elemental discharge for extra damage you first need to charge up the files by attacking monsters as i mentioned previously attacking with the charge double slash will make this go faster soon your files will glow yellow signaling that it is possible to hold the r button and press a to load three out of five files this can be charged further from yellow to red and then when loading the hunter will get a full five files you need to be careful when charging however if you don't load the built up charge into the files whether they're full or not the weapon will overheat and begin to bounce off of the monster while in sword mode these files come in two categories impact and elemental impact files will offer a damage boost and also perform ko damage while using discharge attacks the elemental files will offer specific elemental damage depending on the weapon elemental files are generally more beneficial when the monster is exceptionally weak to a specific element if the weakness is mostly on one part of the body like ian garuga players will generally spam aed but if they're weak all over saed would be a better option and we'll discuss the saed inclusion in monster hunter 4u shortly it's more efficient impact files are better for when a monster has hit zones typically the head that are particularly weak to raw damage due to the usually higher raw on an impact charge blade and the benefits of ko damage impact files ignore hit zones making them particularly useful when performing the super amped elemental discharge ability that we're going to go over shortly just keep it in the back of your head i know i'm already talking about it it's not even in this game yet jumping attacks are pretty self-explanatory you can either perform a normal aerial attack based on which form you are currently in or perform an aerial morphing attack to switch forms on the fly there's one final topic to mention within the weapons inclusion and that's the mechanic of guard points which will allow the hunter to automatically guard under specific circumstances there are multiple moves in the arsenal where for a brief window of time the shield will automatically guard an attack this is different from super armor which lets you keep attacking while taking damage and instead will physically block an attack and send the hunter back with the blocking animation this state would be active at the end of the sword round slash and at the start of the morphing attack from sword to axe guard points also have increased guard strength over traditional guards making them even more beneficial now i feel like i've mentioned a lot about this weapon so far we've discussed its core mechanics when it comes to sword mode and axe mode the ability to load and charge files how files work and the elemental discharge abilities we've even talked about guard points on paper it sounds like a lot especially for the first inclusion of the weapon but believe it or not playing the weapon is actually fairly simplistic and these mechanics are pretty bare bones when put to use so much so that the weapon received an extensive amount of additions in the for ultimate release so monster hunter 4 ultimate gets released and western players finally get to experience what japanese players already had but with multiple upgrades not only did ultimate add in new and returning monsters new weapons and g-rank but it also reworked or built upon some weapons from previous entries the most obvious and noticeable being chargeblade a lot of western players never would have experienced the original monster hunter 4 due to it only being released in japan and would never realize that a lot of the features they have come to know and expect from chargeblade never existed in its original inclusion arguably the biggest addition is the ability to charge your shield when you're about to unleash the final elemental discharge attack amped elemental discharge you can instead press the r button to cancel out of the animation morph back into sword form and transfer the energy directly into your shield if done successfully a new red shield icon will appear to the right of the sharpness gauge the length of the effect is dependent on how many files you had while activating it if you have all five filled the length will be at its longest duration at some point during the duration the shield will change from red to yellow to signify it's running out the first notable effect is that your shield will begin to glow red and the guarding will become enhanced similar to lance the blocking animation will be shorter the hunter will barely move backward and they can begin attacking again incredibly quickly however this is still based on the power of the attack that they are blocking some attacks are so strong that they will knock you back regardless of if you're in normal shield state or charge state the big issue with the charge blade in monster hunter 4 was that there was virtually no reason to use the axe mode unless you were specifically using it to finish a combo with the discharge attacks it was incredibly slow and clunky and the higher damage didn't really make up for that so how did monster hunter 4 ultimate try to remedy this well switching into axe mode after charging your shield would cause the entire weapon to glow and all axe attacks will get a boost to damage making it much more viable when an opening presents itself even better there's an upgraded elemental discharge finisher known as ultra amped elemental discharge or super amped elemental discharge see i told you i told you we would get to it eventually just it took a while this replaces the normal finisher and will use up all files and kick the hunter out of the charged shield state it's incredibly powerful and especially useful when using impact files to unload ko damage if you don't want to use up all of your files and lose your charge state you can still perform a normal aed by holding back on the analog stick and pressing x as the attack begins guard points return and utilizing them when in charge shield mode will automatically file burst leading to extra damage again especially useful for impact files on top of that if your files are charged yellow you automatically get guard plus 1 and guard plus 2 if they're charged red essentially turning your auto guards into counter attacks if utilized properly new to this entry is a move called shield thrust that functions as a follow-up attack to any of your traditional options while in sword mode for example i can press x to start my combo then follow up with the shield thrust then move into any other combo and shield thrust at any point again this opens up the offensive options and infinites for the charge blade but the functionality doesn't stop there using this move while you're in the red shield charge state will allow you to output file damage while in sword mode meaning not only do you have an infinite but you're also outputting high ko damage or elemental damage regularly you'll mostly be using this to easily enter into aed or saed as it can immediately combo into them that's about it for monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate but the changes don't stop there while there may not be many mechanical changes to the base of the weapon in generations or generations ultimate we should still take a look at the most popular styles and arts used within those entries of the series before i discuss styles and arts it's important to point out some minor mechanical changes to the charge blade from for you to generations mostly just that it's now possible to enter a yellow shield charge by pressing x plus a during a shield thrust instead of gaining red you also don't enter the yellow state when running out of time like you did in 4u however this is weaker than your normal red shield charge and from what i understand is almost never used quick charge also no longer goes into saed with aed still being possible but that's okay because both aed and saed received big nerfs s-a-e-d so much so that it's relatively useless and almost never utilized in this game and for people that are using the charge blade right now i know that sounds insane but bear with me also guard points are never really used for counter-attacking anymore instead your animation will just continue after the guard connects so why is saed never used because the most viable style for this weapon is generally striker and striker removes the ability to shield thrust and therefore the ability to instantly use aed or saed in order to provide two things first when in the red shield charge state you'll gain a 20 boost to all axe attacks instead of the 15 boost all other styles receive i believe this matches up with 4u which apparently also offered this 20 boost so overall it was nerfed but striker retained the original buff next like all weapons you get access to three arts that charge faster than if you were utilizing other styles generally the players will fill the first two slots with something like absolute readiness and evasion and then the only actual chargeblade specific art that's worth using is the ripper shield ability which was introduced in ultimate specifically so i actually don't know what gen players were doing back then i assume using one of the other abilities the ripper shield ability is a multi-hit buzz saw attack that quickly builds up file charge and allows the hunter to perform a shield charge by pressing the r button after the initial attack they can then combo out of this as they see fit it's high damage and leads to full files with the higher tiers making it one of the best arts to use on this weapon and realistically the only one you're really gonna utilize while i don't plan to go over each style in each art i can point out that the aerial style actually received a bit of a utility boost between jen and jen ultimate originally in generations first release the weapon could only perform an saed in the air and as pointed out it's been nerfed so much to the point that you're worse off using it than not generations ultimate fixed this by allowing hunters to use either the aed or saed when in the air with all that out of the way we can finally move on to generation 5 and see how the charge blade began to change between world iceborn and monster hunter rise alright so what's new in world first of all there's a new move that allows you to perform a sliding slash by holding a direction with the left analog stick and pressing circle the hunter will slide in said direction and finish the animation with a slashing attack the next new move is the condensed elemental slash while filling or charging files specifically the hunter can press and hold the triangle button to charge a new slashing attack that crashes downward just like the normal charge slashes can be overcharged so make sure you time it appropriately now the cool thing about this is that your sword stays charged and you'll actually output file damage while it's in this state and you gain the effects of mayan's eye absolutely ridiculous to further buff this weapon while saed still eats up all of your stored files it won't automatically knock you out of the shield charge state meaning it's only a timed base duration now and you can keep all beneficial effects of the charge until it runs out this heavily increases damage up time overall sliding attacks are what you'd expect you can attack out of a slide to perform an aerial slashing maneuver and you can even forward slash to begin a slide with your weapon out similar to the sword and shield that i mentioned in my previous video you can even forward slash into a runnable wall just like the sword and shield but you don't get a special ability like the helm breaker so i'm not completely sure why you would do that there's probably a reason but what about iceborn well the biggest addition is the savage axe slash right before an amped elemental discharge or a super amped elemental discharge a hunter can press l2 to cancel out of the animation and perform a new move that will buff the axe form significantly it requires filled files to be used as it will drain them over time but it makes up for this by turning the axe mode into a walking buzz saw similar to the ripper shield art from generations ultimate all axe mode attacks now deal extra hits and damage elemental discharge attacks will still drain files like normal and once completely emptied the new form will deactivate obviously this is most useful when everything the weapon has to offer is activated so shield charge axe charge and full files it's important to note that the type of file being used determines the time it takes to drain elemental files will last longer than impact files overall and this is more noticeable when using skills like power prolonger 3. this move also buffs the axe's motion values but motion values were already nerfed between world and iceborn so while it's beneficial to use savage axe you shouldn't expect insane numbers coming out of world like all other weapons the charge blade can perform a sling or burst while the weapon is unsheathed you do this by activating the slinger after a successful guard and it can be comboed out of either with a sword attack or by shifting immediately into elemental discharge too finally we can move on to monster hunter rise and see what has been reworked added or removed i did have it pointed out to me that certain moves have been adjusted ever so slightly like the final damage from saed having lower hitboxes and making it difficult to hit the head of arathian as an example but it was hard for me to test something like that so i can't completely verify this information we'll start with morphing advance which launches you forward and morphs your weapon from sword form to axe form if not already utilizing the axe form it has super armor and you can combo out of it so it seems great for closing distance and keeping the pressure on honestly closing distance is more important than i give it credit a lot of people pointed out that one of the sword and shield silk bind attacks i didn't understand the utility of was actually very good for this this move readies you for an aed or saed so it's very good at positioning you when all of your files are filled next is counter peak performance which acts as a dedicated guard point maneuver the crazy thing about this move is that not only do you not take damage but if a monster hits you all of your empty files will be filled at once and on top of that it only costs one wire bug to utilize meaning it is very easy to consistently and repeatedly use this ability to fill up files without the need to combo and charge manually luckily manually charging still has its benefits as it's necessary for sword and shield charging next is axe hopper which can be swapped out with counter peak performance that allows the hunter to slam their weapon down in axe form before being launched into the air and allows for a mid-air elemental discharge for switch skills more slash can be swapped out for counter morph slash which removes the guard point when morphing from sword mode to axe mode but offers an instant extended guard point when switching from axe to sword mode the downside is that the animation is longer but can be bypassed by morphing via other attacks the upside is that a successful guard allows for a follow-up morph attack or an elemental discharge that will be stronger than normal condensed element slash can be swapped out with condensed spinning slash which i believe is similar to the savage axe form from monster hunter world iceborn in the original version of this video we didn't know if savage axe was even coming back so it's good to see its inclusion here players can hold the attack button during certain moves to extend how many hits are produced and the buff will last until the hunter exits axe mode and that's it for the charge blade and rise in generation 5. honestly going in i didn't know what to think about the charge blade it's a weapon released in the 4th generation one of the newest weapons released in monster hunter so i didn't think it would have a lot of mechanical history or changes to go over while the switch from world to rise didn't add or remove much the changes from 4 to 4u alone were simply massive and a weapon that was actually overly simplistic and four turned into an intricate powerhouse that requires hunters to heavily utilize resource management efficiently to be effective with it's a very engaging weapon and one i highly recommend you give a chance going forward if you haven't tried it already anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the charge blade hey everyone did you know that there's another weapon class besides blademaster in monster hunter called gunner i didn't i mean to be fair i didn't even know there were other weapons past longsword this series has been really eye-opening for me on top of melee focused weapons there exists ranged weaponry including the bow light bow gun medium bow gun and heavy bogun today we'll be focusing on the first i listed the bow and seeing when the weapon appeared in the series as well as what it brought to monster hunter overall you might be surprised on its impact and effectiveness especially with a versatile and agile weapon that allows you to attack from the comfort of a safe distance the bow brings a lot to the table and we're going to explore that today in this history video so buckle up lads because we're about to explore ranged weapons and monster hunter for the first time on this channel i hope you're ready because i'm certainly not i know nothing about this going in i'm honestly sweating it's hot in here anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the bow originally released in monster hunter dose the bow was a weapon that heavily promoted skilled play and yeah most weapons do that but the bow is designed with the skilled hunter in mind it's tactical versatile and fast very fast you're going to be attacking and repositioning constantly with this bad boy and if you get really good at it you could be cheesing monsters easily through the various generations of monster hunter for the sake of making my life and editing this easier all gen 2 footage will be shown through freedom unite but again the weapon has existed since dose and made appearances in all games leading up to generation 5. except for tri which made the odd decision to remove multiple weapons for that specific entry only to have them return in 3 ultimate first let's talk about basic mechanics and moves since this is a ranged weapon you're not going to be getting up close and personal with monsters this time around instead you'll unsheath your weapon and press triangle to shoot out an arrow however if unsheathing while moving you will automatically knock an arrow into the bow meaning you're still technically performing a draw action even if not attacking right away unlike some other ranged weapons that have limited ammo the bow comes with unlimited arrows meaning you'll be stocked up in any situation holding triangle will allow you to charge the shot to multiple levels and each level will produce more damage against the monster similar to hammer you can move around while doing this there's an uncharged staid also known as charge level 1 then charge level 2 and finally charge level 3 for most bows see in monster hunter freedom 2 a fourth level was added to some bows and this would continue into future generations keep in mind that it drains stamina so you should be lining up your shots efficiently otherwise you may find yourself firing off shots preemptively stamina management is especially crucial considering you won't be able to fully charge your attacks if your stamina is too low now circle is going to perform melee attacks but you'll never be using this at least as far as i can see in generation 2 it's effectively useless and considering you're a bow user fighting a giant monster it's incredibly ineffective to try and utilize for the sake of being as detailed as possible you can combo this move by attacking two times you can draw attack into this but again you'll probably never be doing this so best to push it to the back of your mind for now next the weapon has a dedicated backup maneuver when unsheathed that uses up stamina this can be used for simple evasion but can also be used to cancel out of a charged shot without attacking further on is the aiming mechanic by holding r you'll go into an over the shoulder view that produces a trajectory line that helps signify where the arrow will land if shot by charging your shot you'd think you'd be applying more velocity to the arrow when fired however it seems like the trajectory line doesn't take this into account at all and your shots will follow the same trajectory regardless of the level of charge additionally the time at which the arrows hit within their trajectory seems to determine how much damage will be dealt and is shown visually through the sparks that appear when colliding with the monster this means bow users have to properly space out their attacks for optimal and efficient damage moving on we have the types of shots available that vary from bow to bow there's three main types including scatter rapid and pierce scatter shots shoot in a horizontal line and range from two to five arrows the closer the arrows are to the middle of this spread when fired the more powerful they'll be similar to scatter rapid fire in a vertical stack and the arrows spread out more as they fall in their trajectory these arrows are strongest when they are at the top of their trajectory and weaken as they fall finally pierce arrows will fire a single arrow but it will deal multiple hits upon connecting with the monster the number of hits arrows and damage for these different types is dependent on the shot level assigned to the weapon and the type of shot and the type of level is dependent on the bow and charge level they get assigned to i know that sounded confusing but for example some bows might have charge level 1 and 2 be assigned to rapid level 1 and only charge level 3 will produce rapid level 2. maybe charge level 1 is spread 1 and charge level 3 is pierce 5. one more note on the different shot types is that they can each individually range from levels 1 to 5 with 5 being the most effective finally we have the weapon's other big mechanic coatings which are used to provide additional utility to the weapon with one of the coatings selected while out on a hunt the player can press triangle and circle to apply one onto their weapon by using your arrow while it has a coating applied it will begin to deplete the total amount of coatings you brought with you each type having its own maximum amount to be able to be brought along so what are the various types we'll start with the power coating which provides additional attack power or damage to each shot this is effective with most of the bow types as they fire multiple arrows and it also allows you to bring a total of 50 coats meaning you can unload a large amount of damage throughout the hunt next is close range coating which changes the distance in which optimal damage will be applied to arrows when they connect with the monster i don't think this actually became useful until it's reworking generation 5. maybe generation 4 so keep that in the back of your mind for now next are the status codings like poison paralysis or sleep each of these have the ability of applying their dedicated ailment to the monster something to note is that melee attacks don't actually expend applied coats in your pouch meaning if you really wanted to like really wanted to you could melee a monster until the ailment applied and you wouldn't use up any additional coats in the process paint coating also exists but there's no real reason to use this since it's very easy to bring paintballs along with you like very very easy why would you even bring pink coatings something important to note about coatings is that bows would only allow you to apply specific coats usually limiting you on your selection in some capacity for example maybe your boat would let you use power coning but not paralysis or sleep coating for some reason finally certain bows can be boosted by certain coatings and this is different on a bow by bow basis when the coating type is outlined in green it means that applying that coating to your bow will offer a boosted effect on top of the normal ones for example status coatings will boost their ailment effect with each hit however this changes later on in generations and gen ultimate to simply being a damage boost now i know that's a lot to take in generation 2 added a lot with the bow and it really is a weapon that already promoted skilled play and proper positioning but don't think you can rest yet it's time to move on to generation 3 and see what was added in monster hunter portable 3rd and 3 ultimate [Music] as i mentioned earlier monster hunter tri removed several weapons from the entry and even locked some weapons off through progression meaning if you were a longsword main or you wanted to try the switch axe you had to progress to a certain part of the game to be able to try them beau was one of the weapons that didn't make it into try but it would reappear in monster hunter portable 3rd with a new mechanic the arc shot if you recall you can take manual aim with the bow by holding r1 or the right shoulder button on the psp doing so now would lead to the new arcshot mechanic by fully charging the bow while in manual aim mode a new indicator will present itself to the player covering a circular area of them based on how they are aiming by continuing to hold the charge and pressing the circle button the hunter will perform this new arc shot mechanic which comes in three flavors all of which do ko damage within the generation if hitting the head first is focus which will cause multiple pellets or coconuts there's a million names for these things to fall onto the location from above it's a multi-hit move and very condensed so it's great for getting kos next is wide which is similar to focus but spread out more this is better for elemental damage as it can hit multiple parts of the monster's body easier next is blast which effectively causes a high damage explosion within the radius while it does also provide ko damage it seems less effective overall in comparison to the focus or wide shots a new coating was added to the mix as well specifically called exhaust coating which was used for both tiring out a monster and applying ko damage if connecting shots to the head now that's all for monster hunter portable third so what did monster hunter 3 ultimate bring to the table now that the bow was finally set to appear in moga village well let me tell you where wham mommy where monster hunter is too hard artificial difficulty [ __ ] why does my weapon keep bouncing this big sword is so slow i keep triple carting to black diablos devil joe gives me nightmares mommy how is it even possible to dodge that attack i killed the monster twice and i still didn't get a ruby this is dumb i keep getting two shotted hey super ride here g-rank got you down can't manage those multi-monster hunts generally a little [ __ ] is mindlessly button mashing the only thing you've ever intended to do well then kid you're in luck the kelby bow is just for you that's right you could be out there fighting monsters with badass manly weapons made of your quarry's bones scales teeth and [ __ ] brain matter but instead you're going to use a pissant little [ __ ] slingshot made from pissant little [ __ ] deer that has a super annoying sound effect to boot there's a good boy there's a good little boy with a simple unbranching upgrade path that mostly uses materials from herbivores that don't even know how to put up a fight as you slaughter them we're talking the kelby sting shot into the kelby strong shot into the great kelby strong shot even a lazy unskilled prick like yourself will soon be taking down aloe treon without the slightest bit of skill or attention all you have to do to be taking on quests that are meant to be difficult and engaging while expending absolutely no effort nor ever improving your skill at the game is forge yourself an armor set with awaken and bombardier want your rare drops handing d want your rare drops handed to your stubby dorito stained figure want your rare drops handed to your stubby dorito stained fingers on a silver platter then also get high-grade earplugs and destroyer what's that you can get all of those skills super easily on the cedius x set great now you can farm one easy monotonous quest and make all future quests just as easy and monotonous now here's where things get technical so don't forget to take notes [ __ ] the great kelby deershot's level 1 charge that means to simply fire without charging the shot dumb [ __ ] is scatter three that means you fire five pellets forward in a 30 degree spray that's right you dumb uncoordinated bastard you don't even have to aim with the awaken skill and here's the real kicker you get 350 [ __ ] slime add bombardier and you've got 420 blaze it and max out at 460 with feline pyro meat plus booze so you've got your pansy ass all geared up what now you ask just stand 10 feet away from your target and keep pressing x that's literally it spam your way to victory look at all the pretty colors look at all the pretty explosions look at all the cars you totally earned by some freak chance are you not utterly soul crushingly alone get three friends with the same set for maximum cheese watch those end game arena quests become complete yawn fests rack up those guild points you definitely deserve be that guy who's hr 125 using a bow and still has his [ __ ] auto guard talisman equip congratulations you have officially killed a monster with the least amount of effort possible by exploiting the [ __ ] out of a mechanic that was already a little bit broken to begin with doesn't that feel great aren't you just really [ __ ] happy for yourself honestly other than the kelby bow the only big inclusion was the introduction of slime coating which was very limited in the types of bows that could even utilize it it was nice for getting extra blast damage however as slime was incredibly overpowered in three ultimate it guarantees a slime proc meaning you could potentially get more consistent explosions off by applying it after pushing the tolerance of slime on the monster fairly high so using slime coating on something like the kelby bow early on isn't very useful because this weapon already has slime but if you find the fight has gone on for a while and the monster's tolerance to slime has risen fairly high applying a coating may not be a bad idea with all that out of the way it's time to move on to generation 4 where we'll see how aerial style moves have affected the weapon additional mechanics added and in generations styles and arts remember how i said in the generation 2 section that the range in which you shoot your arrows determines the amount of damage they produce further that damage and range is dependent on the type of arrow being shot this ability became known as critical distance and it was made more obvious in monster hunter 4 ultimate now when landing a critical distance shot the player would have their screen shake allowing them to know that they were producing as much damage as possible many seem to believe this was introduced in 4th gen but as we all know through watching this video that isn't the case this is most likely due to it not being as obvious in these previous generations but i promise you it did exist usually you just see larger sparks fly off of the monster and it wasn't always discernible if your attack was at optimal range the next inclusion is the power shot which is an additional function to bose similar to the arc shot in fact this basically split bows into two main groups those with arc shots and those with power shots honestly from a glance these seem incredibly effective and you get two options on how to use them consider that you have a bow with three charge levels and you hold your shot until charge level two by pressing a instead of simply letting go of the shot you will perform what's known as the power shot and the effect of the shot will be one charge level higher than the shot you were previously about to make unless at full charge as it has nowhere else to go but here's where it gets crazy the main utility of power shots isn't simply substituting your original attack with a more powerful one instead you can press a immediately after firing off a normal attack to perform an additional power shot attack imagine firing off a charge level 2 attack and immediately following that up with a charge level 3 attack essentially doubling the fire rate and damage possible for the bow over time an interesting mechanic with seregio spose is that it turns close range coatings into power coatings and using the melee attack with the coating will produce white sharpness level modifiers this made close range coatings gain a lot more utility and use within this generation in comparison to gen 2 or gen 3. the final addition is the ability to perform an aerial melee and ranged attack it's a bow melee attack so it's not going to be super useful however since mounting was so easy in monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate it is worth attempting to get mounts when possible hunters could also shoot arrows from the air as well this was actually spammable near a ledge due to the recoil knocking you back or something i think you could roll around to keep it happening so it could become very useful to deal mounting damage okay so moving on to generations let's take a look at the mechanical differences as well as which styles and arts are best to use for this weapon one of the big changes is the powershot and arcshot can now be used on any bow meaning there is no longer a divide between the two types of abilities a player could charge up and then use their specific arc shot or instead fire off and use their power shot there's also a new base shot type added known as heavy shot which is very useful at breaking monster parts and honestly became king of the meta maybe not in generations because of the teostra bow but definitely an ultimate the heavy shots have a shorter travel distance before drop off in comparison to the other available shot types meaning you had two options you either got really close to the monster bad idea or you learned to better arc your shots to increase the travel distance the critical distance for the shot was during drop off so it was best to keep your distance and arc high there's even a new coating similar to the power coating players can apply elemental coating to improve their elemental damage but the amount you can bring with you is low and generally ill-advised to use in a hunt unless absolutely necessary on top of that the functionality of power and elemental coatings is modified to come in two levels power coding level one is essentially a weaker version of what you had in 4u and power coding level 2 was the normal version you may be used to elemental also came in these two levels now in the original release adept style was absolutely the meta option for bow users it was great because it offered a large amount of evasive options for the class by properly adept dodging the hunter would be granted a max level charge right away so keeping one's distance and then evading as the monster approached was incredibly useful especially when paired with heavy shots and power shots it also doesn't produce an arc shot so you can go straight into a power shot if desired once generations ultimate came out and valor and alchemy styles were introduced there was finally a new option for bow hunters to use valor really walked all over adept and became one of the de facto styles to use you lose access to both power shots and arc shots in this mode while not in the valor state but building up the gauge is fairly easy thanks to the valor sheath and sheath cancel moves the cancel is a valor charge shot that has two levels outside of the valor state and three within and it's really effective at raising the gauge and should be used often to do so once in valor mode the back dive is restored and hunters can now produce two power shots in a row instead of one yeah it's bonkers this effectively meant that the bow can now shoot three shots in succession such as a fully charged normal shot followed by the first power shot and finally finishing with the second power shot this second power shot is known as a regular shot and i'll be using that terminology later on in the video damage output became absolutely insane for this weapon in gen and gen ultimate bow arts were alright but absolute readiness was generally much more useful in a depth style you may have brought along haste reign which improved movement and charge speed and in generations ultimate you may have brought tactical retreat since it worked as a dedicated evade with iframes and allowed you to quickly enter a full charge state which did not account for distance when calculating damage overall though bo really did get the shaft in this department okay i think that's all there is to say for generation 4. let's finally move on to generation 5 and take a look at world iceborn and rise [Music] okay the bow in world is completely reworked like massively reworked in many areas the biggest change is that the shot tapes are no longer dependent on what bow you are using but are instead built into the multiple moves for the bow in fact the only difference really are what coats can be applied to which bows and the damage or element of the bows themselves rapid shots have been reworked to actually be a rapid input used by the player by simply pressing r2 three times consecutively the hunter will produce three tiers of attacks each of these attacks is a higher charge level when done consecutively so it's a great way to build up your charge but that's about it you'll most likely be using it to build charge and then using other abilities to stay in max charge state for as long as possible spread shots now known as quick shots have been moved to the circle button and are fairly effective if all attacks manage to land it doesn't cost stamina to use and is very useful for stamina regen when restarting your rotation this can be comboed into a power shot and then again into an arc shot this is super useful for the arc shot as it's dependent on charge level and the combo will treat it as if it's a level 3 charge we'll get into the arc shots shortly but power shots mostly functioned as you would expect with little changes such as being able to use it after a rapid shot you could do a full rapid combo and then finish off with a powershot if you wanted but i don't think this was the meta or the strategy in any capacity arc shots also have been reworked in that they can be used in any charge level by pressing circle while holding down r2 due to this the effectiveness of the shot is now dependent on the charge level you fire it off at it also no longer eats up a coating but consequently will not apply status effects or be buffed in any way luckily ko damage remains level 3 charges a very long stream of attacks and seems to do roughly double the damage of uncharged so it's highly advantageous to use the level 3 arc shots when possible to clarify about these charge levels more levels means more spiky coconut things which means more ko however this would get nerfed in iceborn this attack can be performed with or without aiming so it's up to the hunter how specific they want to get with these close range coding now comes with all bows and has unlimited uses this means there's no excuse to not use coatings at any point in time as you will always perform more damage with a coating than without the downside with air quotes if you want to call it that is that you'll need to be closer to the monster to get the proper critical distance so while this is more dangerous it's necessary in order to optimize damage there's a huge quality of life improvement introduced in world as well specifically how the reticule while aiming will now show you whether or not you were within critical distance of the monster or if you are out of range when in critical distance the reticle will produce a second circle around the icon this is to tell that any shot will gain the extra damage from critical distance now if you move further away the reticle will outright tell you that you are out of range there's another new move addition known as the dragon piercer attack which is activated by pressing triangle and circle together this attack is very powerful and also uses the applied coding the damage is dependent on charge so you'll get the greatest effect by for example charging up the level 3 by holding r2 and then pressing triangle in circle just to point out though this is effectively where the pier shot has been moved to so it will perform multiple hits depending on the charge level while the move may seem effective to use it's apparently trash 90 of the time so you probably won't be using it very often back diving from generation 4 has been removed and replaced with a new move known as charging side step which allows the hunter to quickly slide around in an inputted direction while charging their bow performing this evasive option comes with utility as it will charge your bow one level each time you use it meaning you're not going to be losing charge by evading when at max charge it will keep said charge level active leading to what is effectively known as dash dancing and knowing when to do this is crucial to efficient bow play there's a jumping melee attack out of this you can use by pressing triangle after the side step and it produces mounting damage so it may be useful i doubt you'd be using it much but maybe you can even sidestep into a wall to produce a unique aerial attack similar to how sword and shield has the ability to do the same thing for helm breaker moving on to iceborn the big slinger burst inclusion is known as thousand dragons and functions effectively like a powerful shotgun for condensed damage while in manual aiming mode you can click the right stick to activate your slinger from here pressing triangle and circle together will activate the attack and fire off both the normal shot and the slinger burst at the same time obviously damage is based on the pods you bring so the move can be situational and from what i understand you're better off using your main rotation like normal and maybe using this move for something like a wake up what really makes this move interesting in my opinion is how the game considers the shot mechanically essentially you're performing a high damage spread shot so by applying coatings you'll actually still get the effects of the coatings applied to all of the slinger hit finally we can move on to monster hunter rise and discuss the new inclusions reworkings and silk bind attacks for the bow in this inclusion the biggest inclusion in my opinion is they seem to have brought back this secondary powershot ability known as a regular shot specifically after a power shot you can perform a secondary power shot by pressing the a button a second time additionally even though things like rapid shock combo from world are still included it seems like variable shot types have marked their return for example the second charge level of the demo bow will produce pierce shots in fact a lot of the bow's uniqueness seems to be back with even power shots potentially being affected based on the bow type in regards to what shot type they'll produce i don't know why i made that sentence so long it's a weird decision for sure since all of the shot types were kind of worked into various different combos and those combos make a return in this entry mostly even dragon piercer is back so it's particularly surprising to see pure shots in a normal charge attack however it should be noted that quick shots seem to have been removed and replaced with the old-school melee attack for what reason i have no idea the melee attacks always sucked and quick shot was a much more beneficial option for bowman's now here's a cool inclusion that probably ties into the custom moves arc shot has changed in the demo for ryze instead of producing multi-hit ko damage within a specific area it now instead creates a buff effect for players within it a lot of speculation was happening within the community about beau taking on a more supportive role in monster hunter rise but i think it might be safe to theorize that the bow will be able to change which type of arc shot it uses by switching out certain moves maybe we'll have the option for multiple area of effect buffs or the originally damaged dealing ko ability we're used to seeing from previous generations herculean draw is the first of the new silk bind abilities it allows the hunter to evade temporarily and gives them a brief buff to attack power i assume the move has iframes similar to the next ability we'll discuss but i'm not completely sure so feel free to clarify for me in the comments an evasive option on top of a damage boost means this ability costs two wire bugs instead of one focus shot is the second ability in the demo i don't know why they call it focus shot because i don't believe you shoot anything during this ability but that doesn't mean it's useless by any means in fact one of the best options for bose is evasive opportunities and focus shot allows the user to essentially wirefall backwards with iframes to get out of sticky situations on top of that the hunter ends up in the new crouch state where their stamina will begin to regenerate rapidly making it very easy to get back into the action next is aerial aim which was shown off recently at the digital event i can't show my own footage for this move as we don't have access to it in the demo but it can be switched out with focus shot and launches the hunter into the air while in the air shots performed by the hunter will receive a boost of damage on to switch skills the bow can swap out its power shot ability for absolute power shot which will cost more stamina than a traditional power shot but also output ko damage i'm not sure on the motion values specifically but even if powershot isn't more powerful the extra stamina cost could mean less damage over time and i'd imagine you're only going to be seeing maybe one knockdown per hunt but let me know if this is off base dodgeball can be swapped in to remove charging sidestep and will allow a hunter to time their evade so that they barely dodge an enemy's attack doing so rewards the hunter with quickly charging the bow and hunters can use something like evade extender to make the distance of the dodge larger hunters can dodge bolt forward and backwards as well as to the sides i believe that's all i have for you on the bow in generation 5 and the generations before it if i missed anything please consider informing me in the comments and i'll make clarifications where i can in a way the bow reminds me a lot of the hunting horn it's a weapon that received a lot of mechanical changes throughout generations but the biggest similarity is how it changed in world and how the hunting horn changed in rise both weapons were heavily streamlined the bow having most of its situational depth instead built into the combo system of every bow while this may seem to take away from the amount of uniqueness per bow it is nice to have all abilities at your fingertips regardless of which type of bow you decided to use it breaks down a barrier when it comes to the selection and crafting and means that hunters gain the ability to try out a larger variety of options with ryze bringing back unique shot types it'll be interesting to see how that works its way into the bow crafting process overall this is potentially one of the longest weapon history scripts i have ever written and that's because this weapon was just introduced with so many mechanics and options in comparison to most other weapons out there it's surprising really because hunters usually suggest that blademasters transition over to beau first if they want to attempt using gunner weaponry but the bow turned out to be one of the most mechanically diverse options i've seen so far anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the bow well folks here it is the final weapon to be introduced in gen 4 possibly considered the face of four and four ultimate i introduced to you an incredibly unique entry in the series the insect glaive in a time where mounting and aerial attacks were introduced into monster hunter as a series the insect glaive fit right in with its uniqueness via aerial mobility but that wasn't the only thing that made this weapon special no the inclusion of kin sex really helped distance this weapon from the other options out there i'm gonna be honest this weapon never really interested me i really wasn't into the idea of having both a weapon to use an upgrade as well as a little pet to do the same but having been working through each weapon within the video series i've began to see many mechanics and nuances to equipment that make me more open-minded about the options available to hunters in this game so i'm excited to get to work and research all of the aspects of both the insect glaive and kinsex i'm on the run right now and uploading this from alaska susan and the youtube squadron of elite operatives have tracked my location but i'm close to finding their head in hq and rescuing my family i will find and defeat the fabled algorithm and i will save humanity from google anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the insect glaive similar to chargeblade the insect glaive was introduced in generation 4 specifically monster hunter 4 and it was the perfect inclusion for this entry as it fit alongside the new mechanics added such as aerial attacks and mounting in fact it was the aerial king at the start of its inclusion and was the de facto weapon for producing mounting attacks to start things off we'll discuss the options provided for you specifically revolving around the weapon itself then we'll move on to the kin sect first up is the draw attack which is great at closing distance you can perform this advancing attack while in sheaths by pressing forward and a at the same time and this can be woven into your traditional x-combo or you can press a again to finish with a two-hit combo by slamming the glaive into the ground there's an x or triple combo you can perform by pressing x consecutively you can either start this combo normally or hold forward and press x to perform a forward thrust first to replace the initial attack of the sequence and then follow up with the rest of the combo next is the backflip maneuver that can be performed out of the forward thrust move by pressing back and a at the same time after the thrust the hunter will perform a backflip attack it can also be performed after the follow-up to the thrust and a finisher can be performed by pressing forward and a or the hunter can start a new x combo similar to the fade slash on longsword this does not have iframes unfortunately you can infinite with some of these moves while on the ground but probably shouldn't be doing so unless the monster's downed generally x into x into a into a for a finisher is the go-to from my understanding but there may be other ways of going about it moving on we have the first aspect of the glaive that leads to its unique playstyle the ability to perform aerial attacks from anywhere pressing r and b while holding forward will perform an aerial jumping pole vault maneuver similarly after a grounded attack the hunter can press back instead of forward to pull vault backwards while in the air pressing x leads to an aerial attack that contributes towards the mounting threshold je sui monte or you can press r to perform a pheromone shot that can mark the monster and work as an evasive option so let's talk about the ken sect this is one of the two aspects of the glaive that make it so unique the kinsect is a customizable utility option for hunters and you can basically think of it as an added piece of equipment exclusive to the insect glaive by pressing r and x together you can fire off the cansector to collide with monsters but even better you can mark targets first so that when you launch your kinsect it will fly to your desired location by holding r to aim you can press the x button to launch your kinsect but if you instead let go of r you'll mark the target there's an alternative charged launch where the bug does a type of piercing attack but i don't believe it was incredibly useful additionally on top of the ways that i previously mentioned you can also mark a target via attacking by pressing the r button mid combo so why even have the kinsect it's not like its damage output is extremely high by any means and as a melee user especially one focusing on aerial attacks you'll probably be more interested in staying close to the enemy well here's the thing buffs big buffs in fact see there's four potential buffs that can be applied to the hunter via the kinsect by having it latch onto monsters in specific areas of their body and suck in the goop juice right out of them the kinsect can then return to the hunter and vomit all over them to bestow a specific color of buff large monsters have all four potential colors available to be drained however small monsters only have one color and said color is specific to the type of small monster these buffs are timed but you can refresh the timer by grabbing the buff again and again that is if you don't have all three buffs active at one time but we'll also get into that soon the game will warn you when the buff is about to run out using the ui element that begins to flash at around 10 seconds so what do the colors do as mentioned there's four colors available those being green red orange and white green is less a buff and just a dedicated way to heal your hunter via the kinsec generally attaching the kinsec to a monster's tail is the means of acquiring this extract when the kinsect returns to you you'll heal for a small amount for the actual buffs we need to first talk about the white extract because it can affect the following colors significantly wipe off is great for its 90 second buff of enhanced movement speed and jump height this will allow you to position yourself better and easily reach the top of most if not all monsters when attacking in the air the other big factor about this extract is that it can mix with the orange and red extracts to enhance each of their buffs you usually get this extract from what the monster generally uses to move so you know maybe the feet the wings etc the orange extract applies super armor to your hunter you'll usually acquire this one from the body or the torso mostly the more armored parts of the body that have low hit zone values it lasts for about 45 seconds now if you have the orange buff active with the white buff they'll mix and you'll gain an additional buff of 6 defense boost as well as the old school rocksteady ability i say old school in this because of the new school rock steady mantle in world which is a little bit different this lasts as long as both buffs are active so if one runs out you lose the mixed effect now red buff applies probably one of the most useful set of effects it changes your attack animation to provide additional hits and effectively allows you to output double the dps with that alone but that's not all no mix it with white and you'll also be bestowed a 20 attack boost it's basically a requirement to have this up at all times because the damage output is just so exceptionally high in comparison to not having the buffs applied finally if you have red orange and white all applied at the same time the buff effect will reset to a 60 second dedicated timer and the mixed effects will all gain an additional boost the defense up will go from six percent to eight percent and the attack up will go from 20 to 25 this is nothing to scoff at and being able to effectively manage these buffs is a big factor when it comes to efficient insect glaive play it should be noted that once in this triple mixture you cannot refresh the timer on any of the buffs until the boosted effect wears off to optimize uptime you'll generally see hunters using red and white buff until the timer on 1 is close to running out and then slot in the orange buff to refresh the timer and improve functionality kinsecs come with their own attacks and can be upgraded by feeding them with food known as nectars that can be scavenged or traded for by feeding the kinsec you can upgrade three stats known as power weight and speed power is the base attack of the kin sect and weight dictates how many times you can command the kin sect before it times out and cools down finally speed it's well how fast the kinsec move and comes back to you it's pretty important depending on your type of insect glaive your kinsek will either be impact or cutting damage meaning you end up with a lot of options going into a hunt upgrading your glaive is directly tied into taking care of your kinsect not only do you need specific monster parts but you need to make sure you put enough points into your kin sect before an upgrade is even possible this makes upgrading the weapon fairly annoying in my opinion as there's lots of aspects to feeding your kinsek to make note of for one you generally have to level them up multiple times before an upgrade and the food you feed them actually both negatively and positively affects stats upgrading one stat may lower another so you need to consider what you actually want to build your kinsect for before feeding it even crazier once you level them up enough you get the option to evolve them with evolving usually focusing on having the kinsex specializing in one of its three major stat groups and may even bestow skills based on this evolution so yeah there's a lot to kinsex especially early on in the weapons introduction having the upgrading of your insect glaive tied to your kinsek would change in later generations but for now this is how it was and how it was was pretty rough now onto generations ultimate we can talk about the inclusions of styles and arts as well as what changes mechanically with the glaive in between these two entries well praise ichinose because the kin sect is no longer tied to the upgrading of your glaive instead you will level up and evolve the kinsek separately from your weapon and don't have to worry about any additional grind for your kinsek if you decide to use a different glaive thank god because that really cuts down on the amount of grinding and cost necessary for the weapon however other than that there weren't many mechanical differences of note to mention so now we can move right into the styles the main styles utilized by hunters that were the most effective included guild alchemy and valor and really these styles would be switched up regularly depending on the match up it wasn't just one style that dominated the rest guild style was good because on top of retaining all of the glaive's functionality it also allowed you to bring two arts arts that were unfortunately not some of the most effective with the glaive so having two instead of one was more than enough as the main mechanics of the glaive persisted the main arts that the hunter would use with this style were absolute readiness and a glaive-specific art known as extract hunter which launches the kinsek incredibly fast towards the monster and will extract all three buff effects at once the duration of this however is fairly low and can be improved with the second and third tier of this ability alchemy style removes the backflip charging kinsect and marking while in the air but that's not really a big deal what is a big deal is losing the ability to perform infinite combos it's impossible to go from an a attack to an x attack but you can roll the cancel out of the combo or press a to do a finisher on top of getting the alchemy barrel effects you can also get access to 300 arts while the first two remain the same with absolute readiness and extract hunter most hunters would bring bug blow along with them as well which is a combo maneuver that is followed up with a pole vault into a slam attack it was useful for preventing limping and just fitting in a bit of extra damage when possible finally valor style is next and you'd only really slot in absolute readiness with it you have no means of performing grounded pole vault attacks while in this style if not in the valor state outside of cancel attacks so building up to that is fairly important there's also the removal of the marking attack that is underutilized the final hit of the triple x combo is also removed in this state but it was also hardly ever used for cancel attacks you can cancel into a double strike with x into a backflip with a and into a forward or backward pole vault with r b this mode was mostly utilized for the evade step and easy extract up time why is it easy well a button attacks now automatically launch the kinsect and allow the hunter to get both additional damage and free extracts while continuing to combo in fact the 8th finisher options propel the kinsec even faster and provide higher motion values so it's a pretty effective choice but you do have the options if pressing the a button while the kinsect is out it will return to you then again will be launched with future attacks alright with all that out of the way it's time to move on to generation 5 and see what world iceborn and ryze brought to the [Music] table for the most part world seems to have kept the majority of the grounded options the same or at least very similar in comparison to their old school counterparts where the main glaive attack differences really lie are in the aerial attacks similar to previous entries you can hold a direction and press x to pull vault into the air and there are now several new options a hunter can use while in this state of course you can simply attack with triangle and this will be what was most familiar to hunters at the time of release but moving on from that you can also press the x to perform an air dash for extended mobility while in the air this is great for repositioning to make sure you can actually hit the monster you're hunting you can even perform the air dash as long as you have stamina which is drained with each activation on top of that pressing the circle button while in the air will perform this dash as well as an attack known as a jumping advancing slash and this is the main ability used for keeping the glaive hunter airborne as long as possible see by connecting with the monster using the attack you will be launched upward into an ability known as vaulting dance and it is a great way to regen stamina while outputting damage so you can air dash again however this vaulting ability is limited to four consecutive attacks meaning after the fourth jumping advancing slash instead of vaulting upward the hunter will land on the ground and this is regardless of stamina onto kinsec changes there was a quality of life feature added where the hunter can now see the stamina bar of their kinsec this is useful for knowing when the hunter can and cannot utilize their kinsek for more efficient play busts generally function the same but there's been general nerfs or changes throughout in terms of the percentage of certain values and the duration i won't go into all of them but one major change is that there is no way to get the rock steady effect from orange buff anymore and this is most likely due to the existence of rock steady mantle which can now be activated at any time as long as the cooldown hasn't expired and gives you hyper armor now instead of super armor from old gen additionally red bus still upgrades the animations and hits of all of your attacks and should be kept up as long as possible even the new aerial moves have been upgraded like the jumping advancing slash which becomes a longer multi-hit maneuver that can still launch you while jumping attacks are nice for mounting damage hunters will still be outputting more damage from the ground but the nice thing about mounting as a glaive user is that moving around the monster will cause the hunter to provide additional damage during the animations you probably won't be moving around too much and simply be mashing triangle to try and down the monster but it's a nice little boost to glaive users who used to be the mounting experts if you do choose to move around a bit more for extra damage you're in luck as the buff timer on your extracts doesn't actually deplete during this mechanic there's a brand new mechanic tied to marking by pressing l2 and r2 the hunter will be able to mark their target like normal and while the kinsect will go and grab the extract for you it will also stay around the monster to deal damage over time and apply a cloud of tiny insects that can have various effects the kinsect will perform these attacks until you call it back or it runs out of stamina but i believe that the cloud of insects are placed right at the beginning in fact it seems optimal to use this damage over time as a means of optimizing total damage once you have all three buffs applied as you won't need your kinsek to extract again until the timer runs out the most useful effect of leaving the kinsect on the monster seems to have been impact kinsex attached to the head in order to provide a ko or maybe attaching a cutting insect to the tail in order to sever it the clouds place are activated by attacking them and they can come in four varieties including poison paralysis healing and blast poison and paralysis are exactly what you expect and allow you to build up their specific status ailment healing is similar to green extract meaning glaive users can now have more options for keeping themselves topped up finally blast is great at providing extra damage overall and breaking parts similar to the change in generations you no longer need to worry about upgrading your kinsect in order to upgrade your glaive but it's been simplified even further instead of feeding and planning out the stats of your kinsek it works even more like a traditional weapon upgrade tree well it's a traditional weapon upgrade tree in that you can view all the possible kinsek options at the smithy each upgrade to the kinsek takes specific monster materials exactly like how any weapon would so it is much much easier to build towards whichever kinsect you want they're mostly broken up into two main trees with one tree focusing on sever and the other on blunt and you may have noticed that those names have changed between generations and then within them you can build towards specific dust effects so if you want a ko blast kin sect and a sever poison can sect both options are possible you can even assign specific elements to your kinsect within a separate menu at the smithy this will nerf some of your kinsex stats at the cost of giving them a desired element when attacking but it's almost always better to give your kinsek an element than not as the stat decrease is minimal for what you're getting out of the element in fact it seems incredibly useful to have a set of five of your favorite kinsek and apply a unique element to each one so you can swap between them depending on what you are hunting at the time now there's some big changes to the glaeve and iceborn we'll start with the ability to enhance your kin sect using sling or ammo by aiming with l2 and pressing the triangle and circle together the hunter can feed whatever slinger ammo they have to the kin sect in order to enhance it doing so allows the kinsec to grab two extracts instead of one before returning to the player so you could have it move in to attack one spot of the monster for a red buff and then another spot for white then have it returned to apply the mixture effect immediately the type of slinger ammo used can put your kinsek into different states the power charge for example is denoted by a red icon and will allow the kinsec to deal more damage when attacking the marked target as well as placing multiple clouds for the hunter to attack you can acquire this buff by taking slinger ammo directly from the monster fieldslinger ammo on the other hand will provide the spirit charge effect and a yellow icon to the kin sack on top of increasing the duration of the triple buff effect when activated however both states will increase individual buff durations moving on to a more important and incredibly useful mechanic introduced insect glaive users gain access to a new marking attack where once in the air they can press r2 to perform a piercing downward stab attack known as descending thrust on top of having some of the weapon's highest motion values the fact that it marks mid combo means you won't find yourself stopping combos in order to properly mark the target on top of this having your kinsek recalled on your arm while performing the attack will cause it to detach and stay within the position that you are starting the animation in only returning at the end of set animation on the return path the concept will pierce anything in its trajectory for extra damage this bug pierce move may not have been first considered very important but ended up being highly utilized throughout iceborn later on another benefit of the glaive is that it can clutch claw while in the air but the actual effects of the grapple seem to be the same whether it's done in the air or on the ground now i need to give you guys a spoiler alert well at the time of writing the script i am personally not very far into ryze's content in order to give you as much info as i can about the changes to the insect glaive i have to go over progression-based mechanics you've been warned and if you want to skip to the non-spoiler specific section basically the outro i'll leave his time stamp in the description also keep in mind that this is being written uh day one of the game's official release so certain aspects of the weapon will unfortunately be limited and i can't go into crazy detail about every single thing the acquisition of kinsex has been extremely streamlined in this entry specifically you no longer are required to upgrade them via crafting like in world where they were more similar to weapons instead the hunter will unlock nuke insects to purchase as they progress through the game each with unique features and stats these stats are then influenced by the type of kinseclave being used each kinsect will have a level from 1 to 8 and this level is based on the insect glaive the hunter currently has equipped on top of the stats being influenced by the glaive the kinsect element is now determined by the weapon as well meaning there is no longer a penalty to kinsect elements or need to make multiple of the same kin sec just to have a variety of elements applied while the base archetypes of sever and blunt mark the return for each kinsect there's multiple new subtypes to discuss and bonuses that range from kinsec to kinsec first we have the four subtypes that consist of normal speed powder and assist normal doesn't introduce new mechanics to the kin sect but is missing features and some of them have been moved to a specific kinsect subtype see the powder subtype is now tied to kinsex that can release the dust clouds we are familiar with in world each of these powder subtypes will fall under one of the typical dust categories meaning the other types including normal would not have access to it speed has a new mechanic where while recalled the kinsect will build up a charge until it flashes blue when shot out the kinsect will have higher mobility and will deal more damage than you'd typically notice finally assist allows the kinsec to attack as the hunter does while recalled which sounds pretty good since it'll lead to consistent extra damage over time there's a part in the hunter's notes that explain how they assist kinsect will also make use of the various extract types but how this works mechanically i'm not completely sure about if you have a better understanding of this specific mechanic please let me know in the comments and i'll update it in the description hey guys so i do actually have some more information about the glaive that i didn't have when i was originally writing the script i mentioned there's things about the kinsec that i don't understand specifically the assist type and how it utilizes the extract but eric's actually has a really good video going over that about the different kinsek types and apparently having the kinsect have all three of the kinsek extract types will allow it to attack with you and that that's when it attacks with you in assist mode so yeah i wasn't exactly sure what it meant by utilizing them but it seems you have to have the triple buff effect in order to properly use it there's even more uniqueness tied to the kinsex in the form of bonus effects these are extra buffs or mechanical effects tied to the kinsek that can help boost your play or influence your decision on what kinsek you plan to bring for example there's the triple up time buff that will increase the duration of extract effects when all three are active in unison there's also the dual color bonus types that come in three flavors defense attack and speed each of these will allow the kinzeke to gain an extra color while extracting from the monster attack provides red extract on top of the extract gained from shooting out the kinsek and defense and speed provide orange and white respectively there's many other bonus types and i won't get into them all here so be sure to check out your options as you unlock new kinsex while progressing additionally while i won't get into specific values the extract buffs mostly remain the same however the effects of the old school rock steady seem to be applied to the orange buff once again and do not require a mixture of orange and white to activate instead simply grabbing orange will give you the rock steady effect from my understanding moving on to the new switch skill abilities you have the tornado slash which can be swapped with tetraseal slash and leaping slash which can be replaced with advancing round slash tornado slash we've seen previously and is a very effective move one that i'm unsure you'd want to switch with tetraseal which performs four attacks in succession with the ability to generate powder or dust effects you can access both of these moves after a strong wide sweep or strong double slash meaning you need to have red extract active to utilize them as a reminder for leaping slash it's activated by pressing forward and a on the gamepad you can replace this with advancing round slash and can combo out of the ram slash into reaping slash for extra damage advancing round slash also works as a type of parry where when activated we'll shrug off an incoming attack and launch the hunter upwards potentially allowing you to set up an easy in for one of the new silk bind abilities finally we can move on to the stealth bind abilities first up is silk bind vault which allows you to perform an additional jumping motion either forward or upward and is great for both mobility and uptime when wanting to stay in the air for aerial attacks additionally hunters can combo out of this ability in a variety of ways next up is recall kinsect which seems fairly effective from a utility standpoint on top of acting as an evasive option the move also allows you to recall your consect from midair which is not usually possible on top of this it will attack anything in its path as it returns similar to the descending thrust attack we've seen in iceborn once we're called it will even heal the hunter as a non-insect glaive player i find it difficult to comment on the usefulness of certain abilities but from an outward glance recall kinsex seems highly viable last but not least is the diving wyvern silk bind ability which seems to function similar to downward thrust from iceborn i don't know how much damage it does specifically but if it's anything like descending thrust it will most likely be highly useful and utilized often the move even allows you to activate it while grounded meaning a wire bug will pull you up before you thrust downward in terms of mechanics it seems like the attacking recall effect is now specifically assigned to recall kinsek while the thrust move has been applied to diving wyvern so make of that what you will oh additional note about diving wyvern uh and thanks to cups for showing me this and allowing me to use his footage for both this and the advancing round slash maneuver diving wyvern will actually do more damage the more attacks you perform while in the air the longer you're off the ground and actually using your abilities to make contact with the monster the more damage you'll do when you actually decide to use diving wyvern so you know plan ahead for that or whatever as i mentioned there's multiple new mechanics involving weapon customization and the rampage which can allow you to change various aspects of your equipment these can not only be specific to class but specific to each individual weapon within them so i won't be going into too much detail here to give you an example some glaives may let you change their element type to a new category with a 10-point boost obviously as the game has only been out one day as of writing this i'm working with what i got so far if there's any mistakes or clarifications please let me know and i'll update the description as i said previously until then i think that's all there is to talk about in regards to monster hunter rise the insect glaive was potentially one of the hardest weapons for me to cover in terms of research and reaching out to the community to have the script looked over it's a very interesting weapon and the features extend much further than simply being able to jump the kinsect has evolved over each entry and generation and has slowly become more and more streamlined with each release it always seems like it's the gen 4 weapons that create some of the longer scripts but i believe that's because they are honestly so mechanically diverse and evolving that the weapon requires me to go even more in depth than usual hopefully i did insect glaive justice here and if i left anything out or got anything wrong i encourage you to clarify for me in the comments anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the insect glaive in the history of the monster hunter games there has been a surprisingly large focus on guns you have the lightbow gun you have the heavy bow gun there's even a medium bow gun in one game you have a hammer that looks like part of a gun and even have dual blades that look like two guns but in monster hunter dose early on this was taken a step further what if the design of a weapon wasn't just visual what if a melee-based weapon was taken and turned into a gun have you heard about the lance well let me introduce you to its more ballistic sibling the gun lance taking the defensive state and potential from the lance and combining it with the explosive damage of heavy artillery or maybe more accurately a sawed-off shotgun you're not going to be sniping enemies from long distances with this bad boy but you will definitely be kicking down doors and point blank firing away to white monsters out of existence it's a seriously ridiculous concept but one with a lot of merit hell you can even fly across maps and rise thanks to one of the weapon's latest abilities it's a crazy and stylish weapon and one that's been requested constantly in the comments of the weapon videos so i'm happy to finally be talking about it today and please consider liking and subscribing so the all-seeing eye of the youtube algorithm will bless me and return my family i'm currently traveling down the seven levels of hell to try and find them with some weird roman poet as my guide and he's really pretentious and i'm starting to lose my sanity anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the gun lance [Music] gunlance was introduced in monster hunter dose on the ps2 a game released in japan only but would appear again in monster hunter freedom 2 and freedom unite and while skipping try would appear in each subsequent release after it for the sake of the video when talking about generation 2 gunlance i'll be using footage from freedom unite so keep that in mind with anything that i'm discussing here gunlance is interesting for a multitude of reasons but one of the more unlikely aspects of it is that it focuses more on cutting or slashing damage instead of piercing damage that the lance would see until monster hunter freedom unite that means on top of the artillery or shelling moves that we'll get into shortly this weapon was great for hitting weak zones susceptible to cutting attacks or even cutting tails hunters could attack in succession up to three times with this weapon either with three forward pokes or if guarding three upward pokes this was accomplished by pressing up or down on the right analog stick in dose or the triangle button and the psp releases the upswing is especially useful for reaching the head or tails of monsters that keep them raised while remaining in a defensive state and was considered the bread and butter of the weapon all the way up to a world where the animation was made significantly slower there's also a draw attack for the weapon that can be performed while unsheathed by holding forward while pressing triangle and an upward swinging move by pressing triangle and circle at the same time there is also a quick guard mechanic where hunters can guard immediately out of a draw by pressing r and triangle at the same time the weapon improves on the dodging mechanic by allowing hunters to sidestep after an attack by pressing the x button while holding either side direction alternatively they can even backstep by pressing the x button while unsheathed and not moving this can be used in conjunction with the reloading mechanic of the gun lance's shelling mechanic for efficient play the weapon has a set of ammo which is displayed under the health and stamina bars by pressing circle players can fire off close range explosions for high fixed damage with portions of fire damage for a limited period of time once out of ammo the hunter needs to reload by pressing circle while guarding but by side or backstepping and pressing circle following this animation the hunter can reload much quicker while also repositioning you'll generally be using these shelling attacks in conjunction with the base attacks of the gun lance and they come in a variety of styles specifically normal wide and long long as you may assume has longer range while wide shots cover a wider but shorter range both of these shell types are stronger than using normal and to make up for this normal shots offer 5 shells per reload in comparison to the 3 per reload for long and the 2 per reload for wide using the load up skill would boost each of these values by 1 but seems generally underutilized in early games each gun lance will come with a specific shell type and they aren't interchangeable they also come with shell levels from 1 to 5 with the maximum level changing between different games in each generation for example in freedom unite some lances have a shell level of 5. hunters will see higher damage at higher levels however spamming this ability may seem advantageous but comes with a large downside and that's the fact that it will eat through your sharpness gauge like it's a two bite brownie specifically it will eat two points of sharpness with the normal and long types and 4 with wide though wide was changed to 2 as well in the devil joe patch for monster hunter world making it highly useful in generation 5. overuse of the shelling mechanic will ruin the sharpness of your weapon and lead to a lot of downtime with whetstones and getting tossed around by whatever you're fighting it's more useful to attack up to three times with a generic stabbing mechanic and then fire off a shell which will reset the combo and allow you to keep attacking while not infinite it can lead to very long combos ones that will almost definitely be cut short because you would end naturally due to the movements and attacks of the monsters that you're hunting it should be pointed out that the shelling comes with a small super armor effect to prevent flinching from weak attacks and while hunters could spam the shelling attack and freedom unite future entries would see more of a recoil effect making this impossible in monster hunter dose and freedom 2 this mechanic of shelling even had iframes but whether or not that was intentional i'm not sure i should also point out that while in red sharpness the hunter couldn't shell at all and would see penalties to damage based on how low their sharpness color was yellow and orange saw a time 0.85 damage multiplier and anything from green onward was the normal damage value but that's not the only way to completely obliterate the sharpness of your weapon on top of having the ability to fire off shells gunlance can obliterate monsters with a special cooldown mechanic known as wyvern fire and is potentially the key aspect of the weapon that makes it so cool and appealing to the players that mean it by pressing the triangle and circle button together while holding guard the player will begin to build up a large amount of energy at the tip of the gun lance barrel before firing it off in a short range large explosion that both deals almost quadruple the normal amount of damage and also sends the hunters sliding backwards from the recoil hunters can even aim this attack within a 180 degree angle it's ridiculous and seriously looks so cool and fun that i found myself wanting to solely use this mechanic when possible but it's not possible to spam it for a multitude of reasons for one it has a cooldown effect something like two minutes or lower before the hunter is allowed to use the mechanic again adding to that it absolutely rips through your sharpness gauge and leaves you susceptible to incoming attacks due to the long recoil animation while there's no timer to let you know when the wyverns fire is available again there's a visual change on the barrel of the various gun lances to indicate this and the sound effect will play once the cooldown period is over it also has a huge stagger modifier so could often be used to force flinch monsters and interrupt them guarding with the gun lance is one of the strongest defensive options in the game along with the lance and will allow you to safely block most attacks many of which can't be blocked by other weapons like the sword and shield this allows the weapon to follow a very slow moving but methodical state of play where you utilize things like side steps and back steps to stay as mobile as possible while getting damage where you can and that damage will count for a lot in the end utilizing mobility options and extending combos with shelling made this weapon much more versatile than it may have seemed but even though those options were available most hunters would be better off performing shorter combos like the poke poke upswing or upswing into poke into another upswing let's move on to portable third and monster hunter 3 ultimate to see what generation 3 added to the equation as i mentioned previously the gun lance along with many other weapons didn't actually make it into monster hunter try a decision that we wouldn't see happen again in any future release and all the changes we see in portable 3rd are carried over into 3 ultimate for that reason i'll be using footage specifically from the wii u release but everything i talk about is representative of the weapon in generation 3 as a whole one of the more noticeable changes is how the traditional three-stab combo has been changed i guess now instead of a final third stab during the combo the hunter will instead perform an overhead slam attack that requires additional build up and animation time but there's a lot that can be done with this move before that we need to talk about an additional new mechanic the quick reload if you remember from the previous generation the hunter would run out of ammo after a certain amount of shell usage forcing them to reload on the spot or a reload after a sidestep or backstep maneuver this is still possible but with the added opportunity of quick reloading after firing off a shell shot hunters can now automatically reload their shells with a quicker animation and even immediately fire off another shot following this meaning it's possible to fire quick reload fire again and quick reload again indefinitely as long as the hunter has the opportunity to do so but the hunter doesn't have to fire a second shot after the reload in fact it's actually a second way to enter into the overhead slam attack and there were actually many ways to get into the upswing which would allow you to follow up with the new slam so there's many ways of going about this either through the traditional triple combo or weaving it out of a quick reload or many other opportunities but what's so good about the overhead slam the main advantage is that it leads into a brand new attack called full burst where the hunter can perform said overhead slam and then follow up with an explosive attack that will expend all of their remaining ammo dealing damage based on how much was used further the hunter can combo into the wyvern's fire attack out of this slam instead of a full burst if they have it available charged shelling is another new mechanic that helps weave shelling into normal combos as i mentioned previously hunters could throw a shell into their combo to extend it now hunters can press r and circle after any attack to actually charge the attack before firing it off for extra damage and this combo can be performed after a multitude of attacks that change its behavior slightly basically allowing the hunter to either charge forward slightly upward or almost vertically these attacks have about a 20 increase in damage but can be affected by shell type as we will see in a second oh and you can even combo charge shots into charged shots if you want to and can unload some quick damage within an opening and you can cancel advancing thrust or unsheathed attack into a shell or charged shell starting in this generation shelling causes the player to lose less sharpness than the previous generation making it a more viable option than ever before in fact something that i didn't mention yet is that shelling ignores hit zone values and has fixed damage meaning no matter where it hits it's going to have the same effect each one of the shell types is a bit more unique than before due to the normal shells having a higher number of total shells available before a reload this type is actually more effective for full burst it even gets a modifier when using set ability meanwhile the long shell type actually has a stronger wyverns fire in comparison to the other two options and wide-shelled types get a 45 damage boost with charged shells rather than a 20 boost on top of a stagger boost fun fact there was actually a glitch in portable third that required an auto guard talisman reward that you received for completing the village quests by equipping the talisman the hunter will begin to automatically guard during a quick reload as if it was a guard point and this would only be possible with the talisman specifically having auto guard through other means would not allow this to happen it's hilarious because this would be added to the gun lance purposefully in later generations overall generation 3 looked to up the viability and damage output of the gun lance in comparison to its generation 2 predecessor but overall fell kind of flat unfortunately for the weapon the design and damage output forced hunters to rely more on melee gun lance outside of very specific matchups but with all that out of the way we can now move on to generation 4 to see what monster hunter 4 and generations brought to the table there's not too much to talk about with four and four ultimates specifically but it did introduce a few new mechanics for the weapon including an entirely new move and ways to create finisher opportunities through jumping attacks as with all weapons in monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate gun lance now has the ability to perform aerial attacks that lead to mounting damage the gunlance specifically gets the ability to perform its overhead slam attack that was introduced in generation 3 and upon doing so follow up with a full burst or wyvern's fire attack wyvern's fire's cool-down mechanic is also more noticeable now as the weapon begins to smoke during the cooldown period there's even a new move that hunters can perform where they dash forward before firing off the shell by guarding and pressing the shelling button this move can be implemented into a jumping attack by performing the dash off of a ledge leading to the shell being activated mid-air which can be then followed up by an aerial overhead slam allowing for the hunter to then perform a finisher overall there isn't much here the ability to use aerial attacks really didn't do much for the gun lance and monster hunter 4 was another game where melee gunlance remained the king of the weapons options there was also the introduction of the artillery gods skill which was a third tier for the artillery series and was a good start on moving the weapon forward in terms of shelling strategies one final thing to note for monster hunter 4 is that every entry before generation 4 had the hunters start with empty shells and required them to reload monster hunter 4 changed this to have all shells loaded at the beginning of a hunt it makes sense since there's no reason for the hunter to start without having their ammo loaded now generations brings with it an obviously large amount of changes with the inclusion of hunter arts and styles but that's not all the biggest change in mechanics was the introduction of the heat gauge arguably one of the more unpopular changes to a weapon imagine if you took all of the destructive power and by destructive power i mean slightly more than hunting horn of the gun lance and for you and locked it behind an arbitrary mechanic that required you to watch over and maintain it regularly just to do the damage that you were given for free in previous entries within the series ass that is the heat gauge by shelling regularly you build up a gauge value from yellow to orange and finally to red when in red your damage would be at its highest but by raising the gauge too high you'd find yourself overheating and be locked to yellow for around 2 minutes which is highly detrimental to efficient play this meant hunters had to work up to red gauge and keep it balanced by using a combination of shelling to raise the gauge and lance attacks and dodging to reduce it mechanics like wyvern's fire were useful as they would lower the heat gauge but then lock it in place for a short period of time meaning the hunter would have more free reign over what abilities to use while hunting a monster shell types would also directly affect the size of the gauge meaning different shell types would require different amounts of attacks for reaching the next level to help with this people would often slot in artillery novice as it gave a 10 damage boost to shelling and also affected how the gauge was raised and depleted a move like wyvern's fire would decrease the gauge less if the hunter was running artillery novice meaning that there were more opportunities to use it and lock it into red gauge on a more positive note the gun lance gained the ability to backstep or sidestep at a full burst meaning hunters could cancel out of the recoil animation to quickly get back into the fight and stay out of danger out of all the hunter styles adept and valor were probably the most used for efficient play a depth style was particularly useful hunters that used this would sacrifice the ability to quick load but gain the ability to adapt guard most weapons in the game will allow you to adapt evade but weapons with large shields like the gun lance or are a little different instead guarding at the right time functions as a guard point and allows the hunter the opportunity to counter-attack with an upward thrust that reloads the weapon making it highly useful for damage and resource management the first attack in this counter would do additional damage if the hunter had full shells this guard point is great for abusing full bursts as well but was more useful for the built-in counter attacks as the motion values were so absurdly high on them by hitting the guard point and getting the counter attack the hunter will now have full ammo pressing x follows up the counter attack with an overhead slam maneuver meaning that each guard point can lead into a max ammo full burst and this is highly abusable for great dps there's a large recovery animation on the burst so again simply counter-attacking was usually best valor's style is also highly utilized due to the fact that the quick reload now has a guard point similar to what was seen in a depth style gunlance benefited a lot from valor sheath because it was a quick way to put away the weapon while also having a defensive option in a weapon that lacks both wyvern's fire and the ability to fully reload are activated through the valor sheath cancel mechanic but the quick reload seems to now be possible at any point by pressing r plus a meaning that you have the ability to quickly replenish resources while also potentially countering an attack pressing x out of valor sheath will perform an upswing and also perform a quick reload but there's no guard point with this mechanic when the valor gauge isn't full the reload will only offer one shell but when full it offers four for normal three for long and two for wide additionally the hunter can press a during valor sheath to perform a quick shell attack once in valor mode you unlock the ability to perform an infinite with the normal x combo meaning players can poke twice perform an overhead slam and then begin poking again over and over and over and over and over and over and over on top of that the quick reload isn't just for a single shell but will replenish a number of shells depending on which type you are using hunters can spam shelling attacks one after the other by pressing the a button and each successive attack will be stronger and faster than the last meaning it's a great way to output a ton of damage in a short period of time this is called rapid shelling and can only be started after an initial attack or from a stationary shell small note but the striker style actually brought back the triple poke combo from generation 2 and world would later reintroduce this as well moving on to hunter arts some of the more popular options included dragon's breath anti-air flare and blast dash dragon's breath specifically is great for keeping the heat gauge high without having to worry about it as a mechanic it also boosts the damage to shells themselves meaning for one to three minutes you'll be a complete powerhouse and it ignores if you overheat locking you into the max red gauge value blastash was a great gap closer that propelled the hunter forward and could be followed up with an overhead slam it was so popular that it ended up being reworked into monster hunter rise so we'll go over it more within that section new to generations ultimate specifically is the anti-air flare which is an incredibly powerful combo maneuver generally designed around knocking enemies out of the air but can be used without caring about that specific tactic on activation the hunter will guard point into full reload into aerial full burst into wyverns fire into a second guard point where you reload once more this move is useful due to the high damage it outputs while managing to keep a full set of shells after all is said and done and this wyverns fire doesn't actually lower your gauge and will instead lock you wherever your gauge is at currently it's worth noting that this move cannot overheat you so it is very very useful overall the gun lance and generations was limited heavily and most of its abilities seem to attempt to subvert this arbitrary limitation due to the insane power creep of this generation of monster hunter gunlance suffers greatly and just becomes a turtle standing in one spot adept countering the harder monsters but with all that said and done let's finally move on to generation 5. monster hunter world generally either completely reworks a weapon or brings with it a lot of changes whether they be advantageous or not and the gun lance isn't an exception here for one quick reload was made much more viable and could be activated after all melee attacks and reloaded all shells instead of some arbitrary amount one change to mobility is that the gun lance has the ability to forward hop on top of back and side hopping and hopping in general is much more fluid and advantageous hunters can perform up to two back cops consecutively and follow back hops with side hops similarly to how you can side hop after an attack there's also a brand new melee attack one that is potentially the most powerful option outside of shelling after an overhead slam hunters generally only had the option to full burst or wyverns fire but now by performing said slam and pressing triangle afterward the hunter will perform the wide sweep maneuver which has great horizontal range and high damage it can even be performed after a full burst if desired moves like the forward dash thrust are still available and the overhead slam can be followed up out of it for an easy means of leading into your new wide sweep or your traditional finishers additionally the charge shot has been streamlined slightly only requiring you to hold down the circle button after an attack in order to begin charging it now all of those changes are fairly massive and useful the gun lance is more mobile than ever and has the ability to perform high damage infinite combos with the lance when possible white sweep adds a massive motion value and a combo finisher when the weapon lacked both before and the forward hop addresses the issue gunlance had in every other game that being mobility but what about the big mechanical changes well there's a brand new attack known as the wormstake cannon shelling has been given a more traditional combo within this entry hunters can press the circle button up to three times performing two shelling attacks and finishing off with this worm stake mechanic as a finisher the attack will connect for decent damage but more importantly will leave a shell attached to the monster's head to deal damage over time before exploding this was situationally good at best in base world due to the long animations and long reloading times this attack can also be used as a finisher out of full burst or out of the new wide sweep attack the attack would also scale with raw which is pretty big for damage and an interesting point as the scaling was removed in rise this new mechanic has its own icon underneath the sharpness gauge to let you know when it's possible to use it basically it'll turn red once used and can be reloaded along with your normal shells through the full reload animation meaning quick reloads will not reload the worm stake finally the hunter can perform a jumping attack while sliding and either follow this up with an aerial thrust maneuver or an aerial full burst that covers a wider area aerial attacks can also be completed by performing a dash attack into a runnable surface similar to the other weapons that have this mechanic now iceborn really added one major mechanic for the gun lance that being the worm stake blast attack which allows the hunter to load field sling or ammo into their weapon by holding l2 and pressing triangle and circle together this attack was the first time shelling became the best option gunlance had for damage its explosions also had massive stagger modifiers which benefited all gunlance styles excluding slap the point of this mechanic is to offer a target on the monster for shelling generally where the hunter shells the monster doesn't matter but now the hunter can target wherever they mark the monster for additional explosions on each attack this means attacks like normal shelling charge shelling full burst and wyvern's fire will all deal additional damage if you hit the marked area i've been told long shell types at level 6 made the most use of this mechanic and yeah you heard that right while the cap in previous entries was a maximum of 4 in high rank releases and 5 in g-rank releases iceborn actually brought shell levels all the way up to 6-7 worm stakes blasts even synergized with other gun lance players meaning that you could team up to increase damage output to some pretty insane values moving on to ryze the animation for wormstake is sped up when used after a charged shell speaking of charged shells they now have an additional mechanic by adding an extra charge level all three shell types will have the red charge state which provides times 1.5 damage to the normal and long shell types as well as times 1.4 to wide but wide comes with an additional yellow charge state which provides times 2 damage but they are virtually useless due to how long they take to charge up at this state there's still multiple ways to perform the ground slam maneuver and this can still be followed up as you expect with full bursts wide sweep and wyverns fire a bigger inclusion would be the introduction of aerial shelling which allows the hunters to remain in the air by continuously firing their shells and gaining height with each attack moves like the overhead slam or the newer aerial full burst can still be performed out of this mechanic but it seems like a great way to reach parts of the monster that you may have had a harder time doing so before shell types also received a few additional changes for one wide shell now has the ability to stun via warm stake and long shells wormstake and wyverns fire can do additional damage normal also gets a full burst bonus for the three silk bind attacks they all mostly focus on benefiting your shells or wormstake in some capacity first is guard edge which acts as a full counter mechanic by activating the ability before an attack the hunter can absorb all damage and follow up with a quick worm stake if loaded a slam or wyverns fire on top of mitigating damage and allowing for a counter attack it will also sharpen the hunter's weapon slightly and only cost one wire bug hail cutter is the second default ability and launches the hunter upward into the air with an initial attack before having them land with the slam that can be followed by a finisher like full burst the slam is actually stronger than any other physical move the weapon has the benefit of this ability is that it will not only completely reload your shells but also reduce the cooldown period of wyvern's fire the downside is that it costs two wire bugs to use and they actually increased the base cooldown of wyvern's fire just so that this ability could lower it nice one capcom ground splitter is an unlockable silk mine attack and is good for advancing on aggressive enemies due to its inherent super armor hunters will still take damage and can die but there's rarely going to be anything hitting you that hard if you've been keeping up with your equipment upgrades though it should be noted that the hunter can still succumb to status effects and things like paralysis or sleep can interrupt the move this attack can be followed up with a slam quick stake shell or charged shell ground splitter will also add a green outline to your shells and wormstake icons temporarily increasing the damage output of both but this effect is both finite being based on time and requires the user to keep their weapon out it's a 20 boost and is used to compensate for the lack of rank modifiers in this game normally your shelling attacks are fixed damage based off of a modifier that's set for whichever rank you are playing in but that isn't the case in rise at least not for gun lance for switch skills the classic charge shell ability can be switched out for a mechanic called blastash that is similar to one of the abilities from generations ultimate by holding a the hunter can charge their gun lance and propel themselves forward and can do this up to three times in succession while changing directions in between however if you blast ash after an aerial shell it can only be done twice it can inflict uncharged shell damage but will mostly function as a gap closer and hunters can attack out of it with most aerial options and the slam out of it has a higher motion value it also costs a shell per blast to use so even though it can be used up to three times you'll need at least three shells to do so considering its mobility it could also be considered a replacement for the palomute and allow you to bring two pallicos instead the quick reload mechanic can also be switched out for the new guard reload ability that will allow the hunter to automatically guard while performing a reload out of an attack at the cost of receiving three shells per reload regardless of type instead of a full reload however to make up for this the worm state can also be reloaded in this manner meaning it's possible to perform a guard reload follow up into a charged or base shell attack into worm stake and then guard reload again if one desires the angle that the lance was at before the guard reload is maintained during the process most of the gun lance's defensive options are pretty bad and these defensive editions and ryze are a massive help to the weapon with all that said i have nothing else to really mention about generation 5 for the gun lance [Music] honestly overall shelling never really seemed to be that much of a factor for gun lance through the early stages of its lifespan the weapon lacked mobility it had poor defensive options despite its shield and overall prioritized the lance aspect of the weapon over the gun aspect which is pretty sad considering it was supposed to differentiate itself from base lance using this new mechanic that being said the weapon began to change more dramatically within generation 5 and slowly but surely shelling became more and more useful and expected for the weapon while still allowing multiple styles of play players that wanted to focus on melee or slapping with their weapon could do so effectively and players that wanted to get more out of the gun aspect could do so as well while gun lance may not be the most effective out of the 14 options hunters have to choose from it's definitely on the path to getting there with many new options and a large amount of versatility added to it anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the gun lance if there's one weapon in the series that is considered to be as weeb as the long sword it has to be the dual blades which function as two long swords but short and held in each hand is that a good analogy i think so the dual blades are great for players who want to break free from the slow methodical struggle of some other weapons and in turn gain the ability to rush across the map using their stamina for extra attacks damage and mobility they were even a weapon type i considered using before ultimately choosing to dedicate my life to the long sword cool quick and flashy the dual blades are great for anyone looking to start in the series or try something new and we'll finally be looking at them today in this history lesson also please consider liking and subscribing so the all-seeing eye of the youtube algorithm will bless me and return my family i entered the door to darkness thinking it was kingdom hearts and now i'm currently stuck here with some old blonde man and a blue-haired girl who's slowly losing her mind the vibes are really off here so any help is appreciated anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the dual blades dual blades honestly have some of the more interesting early history to go over at least in my opinion that's due to the fact that they showed up as early as monster hunter 1 for the ps2 but not in japan they were actually exclusive to the usa retail version of the game this is something i've gone over in my mainline history series and i suggest you give it a watch by clicking the link above there was a small selection of weapons within the release and they didn't come with their own tree instead they were integrated into the sword and shield tree but don't let that confuse you as the weapons still functioned differently from sword and shield and had their own mechanics also the weapons were originally known as dual swords but would later be renamed to dual blades in later generations for the sake of clarity i'll be using footage from monster hunter freedom unite and i'll be condensing generations 1 and 2 into the same section there are minor differences between the two generations that i'll go over when they come up but for the most part the weapon remains relatively the same because the weapon really doesn't have that much depth to it overall at least on the surface despite the flair it's actually pretty simplistic in its game plan and design and remember i said that when you get to the outro dual please function like this you have your basic draw attack that works as a gap closer of sorts and can be used while unsheathed by pressing triangle and circle together while moving pressing triangle after this attack will allow you to perform an upward swinging attack but it doesn't seem to have any crazy follow-ups it can be done after a roll to get a quick hit in however now your basic combo is going to be performed by pressing the triangle button and this is what you would generally expect from any weapon in the series right right the difference now is that while most weapons will perform one to three attacks in their triangle combo the dual blades will actually get up to six total however the triangle button only needs to be pressed up to three times and each of these individual hits have their own motion values there's also a round slash attack that can be performed by pressing the circle button in generation one you couldn't influence the direction of this attack and you would always move slightly to the right starting in generation 2 you could actually hold left to move in the opposite direction slightly during the animation on its own the round slash is all right but it really shines when combined with a triangle combo in between any of the three triangle presses you can interrupt a normal combo to follow it up with a round slash attack now where the weapon really gets its anime flare is from the demon mode ability which is activated by pressing r or r1 while unsheathed it could also be activated wall sheaves by pressing triangle and circle and are together it's a cool ability because it unlocks extra attacks for the player potentially higher motion values however it's at the cost of stamina and can run out fairly quickly if you aren't paying attention things like getting hit by a monster's attack will also knock you out of it but you do gain a small amount of wind pressure resistance and super armor to help try to minimize this slightly things like dash juices are also somewhat effective at keeping the mode activated but while they have a specific activation period set amount of time is shortened when using the demon mode meaning you'll actually burn through your dash juices faster than normal all of your attacks are going to be stronger in this mode about a 33 motion value increase and some moves contain different animations this motion value increase would get nerfed heavily in later generations now the round slash attack gets an extra spin at the end of its animation and there's a brand new move the hunter can utilize by pressing triangle in circle while in this state this attack is called demon dance and is a 10-hit combo that if it manages to fully connect unleashes a huge amount of damage on the monster and is something that can even function as an opener when entering into demon mode due to its long animation you might think it's better to focus on your normal arsenal when fighting in this state and only use the demon dance during big openings or opportunities but that isn't the case the attack had extremely high damage over time and a good chance of flinching the monster meaning it was relatively risk-free and kind of overshadowed the rest of the weapon's arsenal additionally generation 2 added a mechanic where pressing circle again during the first part of the round attack would immediately have you enter into the demon dance combo if in demon mode there are actually many things you can cancel out of the round attack such as the dodge roll by pressing x and either left or right or the weapon's dash attack by pressing triangle you can even perform this dash attack by pressing triangle immediately after entering demon mode one final thing to note the dual blades have an incredibly detrimental elemental modifier associated with them using about 70 of what's actually shown on the weapon this would be the case until generation 4 where a large rebalancing effort would take place like i mentioned the weapon is incredibly simplistic in its design and while effective doesn't have as much nuance in comparison to some of the other weapons out there at the time that being said we'll head over to gen 3 and see what extras were added like many other weapons the dual blades did not show up in tri but did reappear in portable 3rd onward starting with some basic additions the round slash attacks have been reworked into a combo maneuver instead of circle performing said round slash attack you would first perform a slashing attack that is much quicker however this slashing attack can be followed up with the second circle press to lead into the traditional round slash attack you may be used to just note that when in demon mode a circle press would automatically start the round slash attack with the extended animation the traditional combo with triangle while in normal mode also became slightly faster a demon mode specific move was also added called demon dash allowing the hunter to dash forward by pressing the x button at the cost of stamina it's a pretty costly ability considering your stamina is already being drained while running demon mode so it makes it even more important to utilize things like dash juice hunters can also strafe by holding left or right before pressing the x button either after an attack or after a forward dash making them highly mobile remember how i mentioned that you could cancel out of the round slash attack while in demon mode well instead of canceling into a dodge roll you will cancel into the demon dash and if you want to cancel into the demon dance you need to press triangle and circle together instead of just circle this change would persist throughout future generations onto the brand new mechanic in this generation portable third introduces the demon gauge to the dual blades while in demon mode landing attacks will contribute to this gauge slightly by filling up this gauge the hunter will be placed into arch demon mode a state that is independent of demon mode entirely and doesn't drain stamina over time instead by attacking or using evasive options the hunter will drain their demon gauge instead so what's the point of archdemon mode well it essentially allows you to play within normal mode and without stamina loss while also bringing over some of the aspects of the traditional demon mode for example the hunter can still use the new demon dash while in this state and while it will still drain stamina it is much easier to manage thanks to stamina not being constantly drained by the demon state on top of that attacks are faster and a hunter can even weave into a few hits of the demon dance combo through their traditional combos and while the circle button will still perform the new downward slash attack before the rand slash said round will perform the full combo scene in demon mode it seems like archdemon mode was added as a means of getting players to focus less on prioritizing being in demon mode that being said while slight changes to attack animations and attack speed are nice it's hard to not want to focus solely on the new demon mode moves that have higher motion values there's also no inherent boost to motion values within this generation or the next meaning that the point of entering demon mode is solely to get access to the new moves that are not available otherwise with that out of the way let's check out generation 4 and how it changed the formula [Music] overall monster hunter 4 ultimate seemed to re-balance dual blades heavily while still adding in a few mechanics here and there to help incentivize players into utilizing archdemon mode for the most part the weapon is slower than before and sharpness depletes about twice as fast from what i understand but it tries to make up for this with boosted elemental damage raising the modifier from time 0.7 all the way back up to times 1 and reworking the demon gauge so that it depletes slower than in previous generations for jumping attacks there's two major mechanics the weapon can perform while in the air first is your traditional attack by pressing the nintendo x button after a jump the hunter will perform a double attack that can be followed up with an upswing alternatively you can demon dash off of the ledge in order to perform a four hit spinning attack that can function as a gap closer pressing x during this specific move will allow the hunter to land with a grounded spinning attack that can also follow up with an upswing by the way the grounded part of the spinning attack still causes mounting damage there's also a new option for cancelling out of the round slash attack while in demon mode originally the hunter compressed triangle or x on nintendo consoles to perform the dual blades attack but this has been reworked into a brand new move now hunters can perform a spinning multi-hit gap closer for high damage this move will also replace your dash attack while in archdemon mode and also gets built into the combos of archdemon mode you can press x plus a during a combo to tap into the shortened version of the demon dance and then press x to do this new spinning attack from what i can tell players seem to be fairly outspoken about disliking the dual blade changes in monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate mostly revolving around the rebalancing issues despite that the new mechanics to the weapon made it much faster than before and allowed it to more easily stick closer to a monster for long periods of time overall boosting its effectiveness via playstyle in my opinion moving on to generations ultimate we can take a look at not only the mechanical changes but also some of the styles and arts that really helped make the weapon shine for highest dps striker style was king but both the dept and valor styles were pretty much tied for a close second with valor being slightly better for that reason we'll take a look at striker and valor to see what each offered you may be surprised to hear striker style is so good since it completely removes archidema mode and the demon gauge from your arsenal to make up for this there's more of a reliance on spamming devil's dance and also offering a means of evade cancelling out of its recovery animation which hasn't been possible in previous entries this means one of the best moves in the dual blade arsenal was now much safer than it ever had been and hunters could bring three styles with them on a hunt specifically you'd see hunters bringing spiral slice wolf smaw and the generic but effective absolute readiness spiral slice in particular was a great ability due to it dealing damage regardless of where it hit on the monster but it was truly effective when hitting a weak zone on the monster as the player would latch on for additional damage the other unique hunting art for dual blade's wolf's maw paired nicely with spiral slice when activated it would allow the hunter to perform double the amount of hits per attack without an increased loss to sharpness however these attack hits were somewhere around 20 to 30 percent the damage of a normal attack depending on the tier of the ability this carried over to hunter art's like spiral slice that would also get the double hit effect now what made valor style different was that it replaced demon mode in arch demon mode with the valor state in fact you can't go into demon mode at all while building up the valid gauge instead of going into demon mode pressing r will actually have you sprint forward at a high stamina cost this is somewhat similar to an ability seen in the extreme style from monster hunter frontier where it was possible to sprint with the weapon drawn for sheath cancelling pressing the x button will do a forward slash attack similar to the dash attack alternatively you can press x plus a to perform the first few hits of the demon dance attack once in valor mode the new valor dash will gain a counter-attack effect that sharpens the weapon and allows the hunters to continue their combo meaning it's a great way to keep sharpness up and therefore dps uptime active additionally the traditional demon dance mechanic can be activated during a combo and the hunter will essentially be in a permanent archdemon state until the valley gauge runs out both striker and valor really allowed the dual blades to shine and abilities that could be used together like wolf's maw and spiral slice really helped push the dps to its limits the core of the weapon didn't see many changes on top of the added generation specific abilities but we'll move on to generation 5 now to see how it chose to adjust the dual blades world takes the dash attack from previous generations and assigns it directly to the circle button meaning instead of doing a downward slash first you instead start with a lunging strike and can then combo into the round slash we've seen previously additionally while the round slash used to lean to the right by default it now instead leans to the left and requires input to move to the opposite direction there's a brand new repositioning tool unique to normal mode known as the turn slash that can be used after a triangle attack by pressing the circle button while holding back left or right on the left analog stick this move is great for keeping the hunter facing a mobile monster without the need to stop attacking demon mode also gains a new repositioning infinite holding left or right on the analog stick while pressing the final triangle input during your normal combo the hunter will reposition slightly in the desired direction and reset their combo this can be performed indefinitely and i mean actually indefinitely because if you are mid combo when your stamina runs out you'll continue regardless probably not advised as you'll be leaving yourself open when the need to dodge presents itself but still a pretty cool inclusion the animation for demon dance has also been changed and you can immediately enter demon dance through the spinning flurry rush attack circle combos in demon mode have also been completely reworked instead of starting with an in-place round slash you'll now immediately go into the lunging spinning attack known as demon flurry rush and this can be followed up with a traditional demon mode round slash attack combo for arch demon mode it's almost exactly what you would expect it to be as it follows the similar tradition of previous generations of borrowing some moves from demon mode while effectively keeping you in normal mode you can press triangle circle to do a shortened version of the demon dance combo into a few demon mode attacks and even perform the demon flurry rush attack into the round slash as a finisher aerial attacks are pretty much the same but if in demon mode and sliding you can press circle to do an aerial sliding slash attack that can combo into your traditional spinning aerial combo this attack is particularly interesting because if it connects with a monster it propels you forward and keeps the spending motion going and damage will continue to output as long as you can travel along the monster you'll output a large chunk of damage acting like a human buzzsaw this can also be activated by demon dashing off of a ledge or demon dashing into a runnable wall iceborn introduces a few brand new mechanics as well mainly a dedicated dodge function that requires slinger ammo after loading ammo the hunter can press l2 in between a triangle attack to perform a slinger burst into a directional dodge this can be used for evading or repositioning while also attempting to get a stagger out of the monster now while some weapons require you to specifically use slinger ammo found around the field dual blades specifically let you use any type as an example you could slot in flash pods then fire them out while dodging to either blind an enemy or maybe knock down a flying wyvern it also gains the ability to grapple with the clutch claw at the end of the circle round combo while in demon mode but when beginning to grapple the hunter compressed triangle to perform a faster dual blade specific attack moving on to monster hunter rise we can take a look at some of the core changes of the weapon as well as switch skills and silk bind attacks this entry already makes some immediate changes to the combos we saw in world for example the repositioning mechanic mid combo while in normal mode is directly tied to the x button meaning holding back on the left analog stick and pressing x mid combo will allow you to perform the turning slash attack which repositions you to face the opposite direction but holding left or right will actually put you into the round slash combo instead of just simply repositioning you the weapon will generally function like you expected to from world however but with small changes here and there some other changes include the fact that exiting out of demon mode is now an attack if performed immediately after an initial attack an archdemon dance has been reworked into a triple attack combo that being demon flurry 1 into flurry 2 into flurry 3. it's actually a bit stronger than demondan it's but longer to compensate you can also change the direction of demon dance to any angle after a spinning flurry rush now the first silk bind ability is piercing bind which functions as an added dps mechanic to benefit your combos the hunter will throw a kunai that attaches itself to the monster that will explode over time dealing a set amount of damage however the hunter can attack during this timer to create two beneficial effects first each attack the hunter lands will deal a small amount of extra damage from the kunai second when the kunai does explode it will deal a higher amount of damage than if you didn't attack at all this move costs one silk bind ability shrouded vault is the second silk bind ability that functions both as a gap closer and a counter attack it won't do any damage of not counter-attacking however so it's best to use it when advancing on an attacking monster for a multi-hit effect this move also costs one silk bind ability tower vault is the unlockable silk bind ability and also costs one wire bug but i'm honestly unsure what the benefit of it is the move will launch the hunter upward and allow them to perform an aerial attack and could be used to combo after a mid-demon flurry flight demon flight is the new switch skill that can be swapped with the demon flurry scene in world when the attack connects the hunter is launched into the air where they will automatically perform an aerial demon flurry following that the hunter can press x to perform a mid-air round slash or press a to perform a mid air spinning blade dance now feral demon mode is potentially one of the larger changes seen in a switch skill considering it replaces your speedy and mobile demon mode with a newer more damage oriented mechanic which is hilarious considering the weapon is already about high dps over time the main difference is that the startup of the effect is a bit longer along with the evasion animations to make up for that you actually deal damage while evading allowing you to keep dps uptime there's one other big difference however and that's the base attack bonus you'll get when entering this mode unlike demon mode feral will actually increase your raw damage by 20 leading to better damage opportunities overall and making it the de facto mode to use within pretty much any scenario it also seems to give the constitution skill for free at some level between 4 and 5 meaning stamina depletion is significantly slower now i think that's all i have for generation 5 to discuss but if i missed anything crucial be sure to let me know in the meantime let's move on to the outro overall dual blades came off incredibly simplistic on a surface level it's not surprising that it can often get lumped in with weapons like the long sword as button-mashing weeb swords used by unga bunga players who don't want to learn the real game but that's stupid and if you think that you were stupid a stupid little poopoo baby man shut up the dual blades like all others in the series have a deeper level of complexity than you may expect while the feature set isn't as large as weapons like the charge blade it makes up for that in active meter management and proper mobility being necessary to get dps uptime hell the weapon basically has stances like a fighting game and actively changes how you play it depending on what mode you're in generation fives seem to heighten the mobility and movement options of the dual blades to help make it shine even brighter however ryze looks to give players the option of slowing down ever so slightly in order to deal an incredibly large amount of damage that was previously not possible the weapon really does shine currently when it comes to player choice and the visual flair of launching off of monsters dealing high damage and running around like naruto during the sasuke retrieval arc can't be understated anyway that's all i have for you today about the dual blades imagine for a second a weapon that was similar to the gun lance but without the artillery aspect that's the lance and the next weapon we'll be covering in this history series focused on all weapons within the mainline monster hunter franchise it's a slow weapon that makes up for its high defensive capabilities but don't think it can't output a large amount of damage as well in fact in the early generations of monster hunter the lance was one of the dominating weapons in how much dps it could output and how fast monsters could be slain by experts of the weapon it even has the ability to block while attacking making you a walking battle tank just waiting to unload a bunch of brain dead baby damage on an unsuspecting monster also consider liking commenting and subscribing so susan and the youtube algorithm will release my family i'm currently entered into the king of iron fist tournament in order to win enough money to save them but i have to fight a bear a panda and an alien in order to do so i also just watched a balding father beat the life out of his demon child and i think akuma from street fighter is here it's not looking good for me anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the lance similar to the dual blades video this lance video will condense the first and second generation of monster hunter into one with me using freedom unite footage to make editing this a bit easier the differences overall are fairly minimal between both generations but we will discuss them lance also has a rich history in generation 1 as one of the best weapons for staggered locking or headlocking enemies for easy kills in the early generations lance is going to be focusing on the head and advancing with the shield the ability to poke upwards with the lance makes it invaluable in attacking the head of wyverns or other monsters where these hitboxes are generally high up you can unsheath the weapon using the right analog stick in the older games or the triangle button in the psb series onward and i'll mostly be using button terminology here you can perform a lunging forward poke as your unsheathed attack by pressing the triangle button while running these are technically called thrusts but i'll mostly be saying pokes just everyone says pokes okay okay once unsheathed you have the ability to block with your giant shield by pressing the r or r1 button depending on the game players can also draw into a shield block by pressing triangle in circle while holding r there's a traditional attack combo that performs three consecutive stabs by pressing the triangle button up to three times and the circle button is used to perform a similar attack that not only is angled upwards meaning it's great for attacking the head but overall has higher motion values than the triangle combo and you can weave the forward and upward thrusts together the shield is one of the best in the games it can fully block all damage with minimum recovery animations allowing you to turtle in place through multiple high damage attacks while still dealing your own damage against the monster this is balanced out by making the lancer much less mobile than many of the other weapon options out there i should note that some attacks are considered unblockable even to the lance shield unless under very specific circumstances in future games and for some really strong attacks you need guard skills if you want to stop them completely now similar to gun lance the lance can't actively dodge while the weapon is unsheathed but they can backhop by pressing x while in place meaning this is your main evasive tool but you'll probably be focusing more on pure defense than evasion in generation 1 this hop can only be performed once but in generation 2 it can be performed up to 3 times in succession and the distance of the hop can be lengthened by holding back on the left analog stick while performing it however long hopping as it's called ends the hopping combo so make sure you know when you want to use it you can also sidestep after attacks just like the gun lance to make the shield an even more alluring option to hunters they can attack while blocking by holding r and pressing triangle or circle which will perform a brief poking attack while hiding behind the shield the downside of this attack is that it has a lower motion value than the normal triangle or circle attacks and it can't be chained together so you do have the option of playing defensive but there is a bit of a reward on going offenses slightly lances also get access to a special charging attack by pressing triangle encircled together this move has the lancer charge forward with their shield and the lance in front of them attacking anything in their path with a few caveats for one the ability drains stamina meaning you need to watch and manage your stamina before actively using this ability otherwise you may find yourself in a sticky situation additionally the weapon will bounce off of the monsters and present a recoil animation before continuing the charge if the weapon is below green sharpness if at green or above the weapon will plow through enemies without any bouncing whatsoever pressing triangle during the charge will end the animation with a forward stab this weapon really breathed simplicity while offering an experience that was overall different from the majority of other weapons available it helped offer a level of selection that wasn't really seen in games like it at the time and the overall simplicity would try to stay at the forefront of the weapons design while adding in new mechanics and options in future generations we'll see that as we move on to generation 3 now a lot of weapons were removed from the release of tri but lance was not one of them in fact it has managed to be a staple of the series throughout its entirety along with weapons like the greatsword generation three actually brought a lot of functionality to the lance's arsenal more than you may have expected one of the smaller changes is how triangle in circle or x plus a have changed when used together originally holding x plus a together would perform the charging attack but hunters may notice that this isn't as simple as it used to be instead pressing these buttons together will perform a new arced swinging motion which is good for quickly dispatching large mobs of small monsters hunters can still activate the stampeding charge attack by pressing the typical button combination while guarding and it also has a few minor mechanical changes for one the hunter will deal more damage if they rush forward long enough to see a charged flash appear around their weapon this is new to generation 3 and i believe ups the damage to incentivize hunters into using this from a distance rather than point blank for some reason you could also press the special attack button to do the charging advance it's more convenient since it's a single input and you minimize the chances of doing another attack like the charged counterpoke or the advancing guard which we'll talk about in a second there's actually a lot more you can do with guarding now first is the guard dash or the advancing guard which can be done by pressing forward an axe or triangle while blocking the hunter will rush forward slightly with their shield out at a small stamina cost and anything that hits the hunter during this animation will be blocked at the cost of no additional stamina making it an effective means of pushing forward or advancing on a monster without taking too big of a hit to your stamina overall it can also be followed up with the shield bash maneuver that performs stun damage by pressing x or triangle following the guard dash animation after the shield bash you can also continue your combo with a forward poke by pressing x or triangle however it is impossible to continue it with an upward poke or an arc swipe one of the bigger mechanical changes is a brand new move used solely for counter attacking hunters can press the circle or a button while guarding to begin charging a new high damage poking maneuver after fully charging the attack will fire off a poke to damage whatever it comes in contact with but this isn't what makes the attack unique instead while this charging animation is taking place any attacks against the hunter will be absorbed and they will counter-attack with the poke this isn't just for attacks but anything really including roars meaning it is possible to open up encounters by countering the roar and immediately following up with a combo this was extremely beneficial to the lance and complemented its defensive style while still promoting a level of aggression that may be unexpected while it was more beneficial to hold down the button to charge the ability hunters could also tap the ability to do a quick poke the charging counterpoke maneuver could be used in between any of your combo moves so forward or upward pokes could be followed up with it however while try allowed you to follow up after the final hit in the forward or upward poke combo portable third onward removed this ability hunters can either focus on poking twice into a counter which will reset their combo or sidestepping after the finisher in order to reset generation 3 really added a lot to complement the weapons defensive capabilities but it's time to move on to generation 4 and see what was added via verticality jumping attacks arts and styles one new inclusion in monster hunter 4 ultimate that wasn't seen in the game's original release is the ability to chain sidesteps and guard dashes together hunters can now lunge forward with a protective guard dash and then sidestep out of it immediately for effective evasive options they can also finally follow up with an upward poke or an arc swing after a shield bash if they decide to for jumping attacks the lance can perform a forward thrust while mid-air but hunters can also use guard dash off a ledge to keep their shield out during their descent similar to how guard dash fully protects hunters while moving forward this will protect them while they are in the air and it's possible to follow it up with a shield bash as you land alternatively you can press rx and a together in order to enter into a charging advance from the air or perform the aerial thrust by pressing x the charging advance also received a small new mechanic where the hunter can hold back and press the x button in order to do a turn around wide sweep maneuver it's good for repositioning if overshooting the charging advance and can help make sure you're facing the monster as often as possible additionally similar to the insect glaive the lance can actually jump during this charging maneuver by pressing forward and b the hunter will jump while running forward meaning it has the ability to perform mounting damage without the necessity of a ledge making it very useful for mounting monsters in this generation now generations ultimates seem to have the lance dominated by a specific hunter style that being striker outside of styles and arts there weren't many large mechanical changes to the weapon so we'll focus on the generation's specific conclusions stryker allowed the hunter to bring up to three hunting arts while keeping almost every base mechanic of the lance intact the only thing you actually lose is the wide sweep the jumping charging attack and the turnaround sweep which is hardly a loss considering how much extra you're bringing to the table while striker benefits from having most of its moveset and up to three arts where it really shines is in its charging advance mechanic because the poking finisher you can do out of said charging attack has its motion values boosted to something like 67 which is ridiculously powerful in comparison to the rest of the weapons moveset this leads to the main strategy being to spam said finisher as often as possible another reason players preferred using this style over the others is due to the game changing the final poke within the triple combo to a multipoke that wasn't as effective as the original striker keeps the original poking combo making it much more beneficial to use absolute readiness is one of the general hunting arts that will fit into one of the three striker slots but you'll still be bringing two lance specific arts if you want to be the most effective the first is corkscrew jab which leaves you defenseless during a large charge up animation but makes up for this with a high damage long range attack when i say long range i mean that the attack extends past the length of the lance slightly meaning your position can be a bit safer overall as well i assume this would generally be best used during big openings to get off a large portion of damage in between combos or charging advances it's a multi-hit move as well meaning it's great for fishing for flinches or staggers the second big ability for lance would have to be the enraged guard which is an amazing ability due to the amount of attack boost you can get out of it which is based on the attack that you deflect see enraged guard will allow you to block an incoming attack and in turn absorb said damage and apply it to your lance the amount of damage you intake will be within something like three tiers meaning weak or medium hits will give you a smaller damage boost overall in comparison to some of the meteor hits a monster can throw out a red aura around your weapon is the lowest boost at 10 percent followed by orange at 20 and then finally yellow at 30. the tier of this ability will also lengthen the duration of it with three tiers lasting somewhere around three minutes meaning that if you couple it with corkscrew jab or with high motion value abilities like your charging advance finisher you're going to be absolutely decimating monsters in very short periods of time if you're disappointed i didn't cover more about the lance in generations ultimate please keep in mind that i like to focus on whatever the meta was at the time to give you an idea of how the weapon could function at its highest potential if you want to learn more about the other styles there's full guides out there on youtube that i can recommend in the meantime let's check out generation 5. like all weapons that have a sidestep mechanic world improves on it by making the sides stepping faster and more fluid while also allowing the hunter to forward hop as in addition to back hopping back and forward hopping are still available within the neutral position while side hopping must be used as a follow-up from either a previous hop or an attack guard dash is now multi-directional while you can still perform it at any time with its forward motion you can use it as a follow-up to a move or sidestep and guard dash to either side or backwards there's a new move out of gardash called leaping thrust performed by pressing forward in circle during the guard dash animation it's a good opener due to its multi-hit properties and it counts as the first hit in your triple thrust combo meaning you can follow it up with two more pokes world also introduces a brand new addition to the lance's charged counter mechanic by pressing the x button while charging up the counter the hunter will enter into a new mechanic known as power guard this ability can last as long as your stamina does and will be depleting it at an incredibly fast rate but this is useful for two reasons first is the fact that the guard is potentially the most powerful in the game with minimal chip damage second the attack will pause stamina drain as long as you are being attacked meaning multi-hit attacks from a monster can be fully blocked by this attack with no stamina loss and the gauge will begin to drain again afterward you can do a few things out of this mechanic as well such as manually activating the counter thrust with circle or pressing triangle to perform the new leaping thrust attack you can even perform a charge out of the power guard if you feel like it something i haven't mentioned yet but may have seemed obvious is that the shield only protects you from the front but the benefit of power guard is that it has a 360 degree radius the charging advance has also been upgraded in an interesting way specifically the speed in which you run forward will increase after a set duration of the advance allowing you to quickly sprint towards monsters with your weapon unsheathed holding back an x will allow you to turn in place without ending the charging advance and you can even charge into runnable surfaces like the wall in the training area in order to leap off of them and continue your attack from the air you can even side hop while moving forward and finally if performing the thrust finisher while moving at the enhanced speed you'll perform a finishing twin thrust maneuver instead this twin thruster maneuver can also be activated while sliding if the hunter starts the slide with the weapon on sheath by performing the charging advance downhill in iceborn the additions to lance all focus around the new guard mechanic while lance can traditionally hold r2 in order to guard holding l2 will now cause the weapon to not only guard but ready the slinger for a sling or burst the downside of this guard is that you can't move while using it but the upside is that the slinger burst can be used out of it and followed up by either a leaping thrust or entering into a new counterclock stance the counterclock stance is a unique way for alliance players to grapple onto a monster allowing them to easily tenderize a monster while mitigating damage in fact while grappling on through this method the hunter cannot be knocked away unlike traditional grappling seen on other weapon options you don't need to sling or burst to activate this counter however you can simply press circle while in the new slinger guard stance or you can activate it out of the charging counter mechanic a final additional mechanic is that the new power guard mechanic can gain a boosted effect over time specifically if holding the mechanic long enough the hunter will be able to gain guard up allowing them to block anything even attacks considered unblockable traditionally now monster hunter rise doesn't just add new abilities through the silk bind attacks and switch skills it also reworks and adds to a few of the existing mechanics for example the wide sweep attack can now be charged for a higher amount of damage making it more worthwhile to use on the hunt target rather than just a fly swatter for small monsters the first of the switch skills is twin vine which has the lancer attach a large kunai to the monster tethering them together similar to how the dual blades did it which you can see in my previous video since the lance is so tanky it makes sense that this ability will help aggro the monster to the lancer while tethered the main benefit of the kunai being attached is that hunters can perform a guarding leap at almost any distance and will travel the entire distance in the air to reach the monster while in the air you can perform a generic aerial thrust attack or begin a dashing attack to be honest if the lance takes any l twin vine is absolutely the biggest the fact of the matter is that while the ability has utility overall it pales in comparison to the other lance options and the fact that you can't switch it out hurts the lance the most in rise overall anchor rages the next silk bind ability and is essentially just the enraged guard ability from generations ultimate meaning you'll gain a temporary attack boost by blocking an attack and the level of said boost is dependent on the damage of the attack you take the overall damage of the boost has been nerfed significantly i believe a full attack boost is something like 15 in comparison to gu which was 30 the final silk bind attack is spiral thrust which has a few levels of mechanics around it the basic gist of it is that the skill will launch you forward with an attack but you can quickly input a direction during the animation to perform a follow-up now the added level of complexity and viability is that the startup of the attack is with a guard point and if said guard point is hit the attack will not only perform extra damage but apply a blue aura around the weapon for a short period of time while the blue aura is active the weapon will deal additional damage on to switch skills the charging advance attack or dash attack can be swapped out for the shield charge which will produce a shorter finite dash but with the shield kept out to block incoming attacks the finisher of this motion is a shield bash for high ko damage making it viable for knocking out the monster the traditional guard of the lance can even be switched out for an instant block maneuver which acts as a guard point counter attack allowing the lancer to follow up with the cross slash ability a move that hits twice and has high motion values this is a tight counter but effectively makes it so that the lance player doesn't need to guard for long periods of time and can instead use a skill based system to reward themselves with more overall damage output the lance gained the ability to be a little more proactive and less of a turtle as it made its way through each generation and we saw that calm the nation rise with the instablock maneuver and an overall boost in maneuverability with generation 5. but with that i believe there's nothing else to really talk about overall the lance feels like it was possibly one of the weapons to stay the most untouched throughout the generation some weapons see big mechanical changes but the lance stayed fairly simplistic overall and each addition was a nice touch to the weapon that didn't add too much depth to make it confusing it's very simple but you can tell it has a high skill ceiling to be effective which is what makes a weapon great in my opinion it's always good to see something that is deceivingly easy turn out to take a lot of practice to become adept at and i think the lance comes off as a fairly rewarding experience for any hunter that is willing to put the time into it anyway that's all i have for you today in regards to the lance if you know anything about monster hunter whether new to the series or a veteran it should be pretty obvious that there are only 14 weapons in the series we started with a smaller minuscule selection of six in generation one and then seven with the inclusion of the dual blades we saw the introduction of long sword gun lance hunting horn and bow in generation 2 followed by the switch axe in gen 3. and finally the charge blade and insect glaive in generation 4. that's a total of 14 weapons but astute hunters will tell you that that's not necessarily the case while some may make the argument that tonfa's magnet spike and excel axes exist within games like monster hunter frontier or monster hunter explore there's actually one mainline weapon that was only ever seen in one entry in the series i'm of course talking about the medium bow gun a weapon that was designed for monster hunter tri specifically and never saw the light of day outside of that even failing to reappear in three ultimate which was the g-rank expansion of tri this is going to be the last entry in the weapons series it was a long road and some weapons were more popular than others but we're finally here today we're going to be talking about the bow guns including light medium and heavy we'll look at them within each generation their differences and their similarities and see what the general meta may have been for them within said entries while mostly focusing on mechanical changes and evolution for the weapons as we progress throughout the years as i mentioned in previous videos i'd like to take your opinions into consideration when it comes to which weapon i will cover next unfortunately this is the last weapon video so instead let me know what other type of monster hunter history videos you'd like to see or just videos in general focusing on other series you may enjoy also consider liking commenting and subscribing so susan and the youtube algorithm will release my family this is it i finally tracked down the algorithm headquarters located near that one spiral staircase in dust2b tunnel i'm going to climb the staircase without clipping and finally face off against the algorithm to save my kids anyway i'm super rad and this is the history of the bowguns to get something out of the way early you'll notice that a lot of the features within one gun type are also features of another that's one of the main reasons these videos have been combined because the light and heavy bow guns have so many similarities but that doesn't mean there aren't any differences starting with the lipogun this was possibly the most popular option for hunters in the early generations due to its high mobility and ease of use due to its lightweight nature the light bowgun allows hunters to jog around the map unsheathed at a smooth pace and she then unsheath the weapon fairly quickly compare this to the slower and more methodical heavy bow gun that has the player walking around at reduced speed and also has a long animation for unsheathing or sheathing the weapon light bogun also has a bigger focus on elemental damage meaning there's an overall set of better options for monster weaknesses and generally they were easier to craft in comparison to their heavier alternative but outside of effectiveness and speed there actually weren't many mechanical changes between the two guns light bogun could be considered more effective but the overall complexity and work that went into a bogun was so dense that it was actually a fairly unpopular option for hunters within the first two generations at least rather than breaking down their moves first let's actually talk about what makes a bow gun a bow gun each bow gun is broken up into multiple factors outside of whether or not they are light or heavy for example many of the guns have different reloading speeds ranging from very slow to very fast with a few options in between however i only ever really saw the normal reload speed on light bow guns the guns even have recoil types but when i looked at every selection offered to me in monster hunter freedom i only ever saw moderate as the sole option that being said these are the following types listed strong moderate light weak very weak and weakest however we'll soon discuss ways to remedy this if necessary for the player the upgrading process for the boguns isn't as simple as other weapon types in the series especially in gen 1 the name of the game is upgrading through modification and customization the light and heavy bogan have multiple upgrades and modification options to choose from to fine tune it to one's liking depending on the situation first is the attack modifier which can be upgraded from level 1 to level 5 and acts as a pure attack damage boost next is the zoom scope traditionally the hunter always has a scope on their gun that allows for precise aiming and can enter into this mode by pressing the r or r1 button with a zoom scope installed hunters gain the ability to change the zoom on their view with either the d-pad or the right analog stick which can lead to more precise aiming but i highly doubt this was useful in early generations more useful are the silence and long barrel weapon modifications hunters would have to choose between one or the other depending on the situation and play style the silencer function as a way to lessen the amount of aggro on the monster but unfortunately less aggro is equivalent to less damage output the upside of this is that it is also a means of lowering the recoil which can help players having difficulty with some of the more ballistic ammo options or animations additionally it helps in multiplayer because while you will be outputting less damage you'll also find yourself being interrupted less as well the long barrel has the opposite effect it's another means of getting a damage boost on top of the attack modification and is good for solo play since you'll have the monster's full attention regardless however i'm not completely sure if it raises the recoil on the weapons it's installed on regardless there's a good chance that the long barrel was one of the more useful weapon modifications on top of the attack modifier on top of these modifications the bogan used a large amount of finite ammo that either needed to be actively purchased or crafted it's not surprising why this weapon may not have been popular considering how much grinding would be necessary to make preferred ammo types in order to be as effective as possible let's get one thing out of the way every bow gun whether it is light or heavy is different and each different bow gun has different ammo it's allowed to use one that can use dragon might not be able to use thunder and one that uses pierce may not be able to use pellet some might use level 2 ammo while others use level 3. there's a lot of depth and nuance to each gun the effectiveness of combat specific shots are based on their shot type shot level and the range in which they connect with the monster for example this chart shows the effective range for normal and pierce and monster hunter freedom unite but the same could be said for games in generation 1. normal shots were the base ammo type that was available to hunters being the absolute cheapest and easiest to obtain but also being the least effective overall they had a mid-range of distance effectiveness or critical distance and would fire a single round per shot other combat types included pierce pellet craig cluster and disc pierce was great for its multi-hit properties and long effective range meaning you could play it a bit safer when using the ammo and stay away from the monster as much as possible pellet acted as a multi-round shotgun style that would start with three pellets per shot but gain an extra pellet per level meaning level 3 shots had the potential of shooting 5 rounds craig was useful for breaking monster parts because it would latch onto them like a sticky grenade before exploding i believe in monster hunter 1 this would do a base level of fire damage followed by true damage with the explosion and from what i understand it may have had both sonic bomb and ko properties but i haven't been able to verify that cluster would break off into multiple smaller projectiles on contact and then have them all explode it was considered one of the strongest and most useful ammo types within this generation monster hunter 1 specifically introduced a special ammo type called the disk shot which would fire a disc with the ability to ricochet around for multiple hits this didn't appear in freedom but would show up again in various ways later in the series unlike the other combat types discs didn't seem to have multiple levels monster hunter 1 introduced dragon element ammo which could only be used on very specific bow guns but freedom would introduce other elemental specific ammo like fire thunder and ice though this would be a mistype as ice wasn't even in the series yet as an element the actual element being used was water in generation 1 flame and dragon both acted as normal shots while ice and thunder acted as pierce on top of the various combat ammo options the bogan actually has many support types to utilize while in a hunt recovery as an example is great for healing party memories and monster hunter 1 specifically had an antidote type that would cure poison it has demon and armor shots that could bestow attack and defense boost as well as multiple status ailment bullets like poison stun and sleep recovery demon and armor were pellet types in this generation while the status shots were normal but that's not all there were paint shots for marking the monsters on the map tranq shots to capture monsters and even dung shots to get rid of invading species or any annoying monster that you weren't hunting at the time okay so those are all of the options for the bow gun but how do you actually use it focusing on psp controls you could use the triangle button to achieve your weapon but you'll either have to be stationary or you'll be forced into a stationary position this isn't a melee weapon you can't do a draw attack here the weapon starts unloaded and you'll have to press the triangle to load in whatever ammo you have selected to select a specific type of ammo you brought with you you'll need to hold l and use triangle and x to cycle through your options once loaded the weapon is as simple as can be you simply press the circle to shoot that's it wow i know i know but the power scene within something like the heavy bow gun or cluster spamming light bow gun is actually fairly impressive within this generation even if it's not some of the best options for you out there you can press the r button to enter into scoped aiming mode and as i mentioned previously if using a zoom scope you can zoom in and out however you're completely stationary while in this mode so it's ill-advised to stay here for too long if dealing with any advancing monster especially solo there's also a melee attack that can be performed by pressing triangle in circle but this is effectively useless especially in the early generations finally under the health insanity gauges you'll see how many shots are left in your clip while you can hold something like 99 normal shots you can only load six at a time and the game will let you know that you need to reload by either saying so on the empty clip or on your reticule while using the scope one final thing to make note of of this generation onward all the way up to and including generation four is that the gear was originally separated by class by that i mean that you had blade masters who used any of the melee weapons and gunners who used bow light bogan or heavy bow gun each set that came from a monster or gathering item would have two versions one for melee and one for range with melee having armor skills that benefit those types of weapons as well as having higher defense overall on the opposite end gunners would have lower overall defense as a way of balancing the range equipping a ranged weapon while wearing blademaster gear would unequip all of it except for the helmet despite there being blademaster and gunner specific helmets they remained equippable regardless of which weapon you were using now that's only generation one let's head over to generation two to see all of the mechanical changes as well as the additions to the light and heavy bogun throughout each entry in the series [Music] one of the biggest mechanics the second generation brought to boguns was the ability to aim over the shoulder by pressing the r button instead of tapping it to enter first person mode the advantage of this over-the-shoulder perspective is that not only do you have the ability to aim but you can move around while doing so unlike first person which forces you to be stationary this is a nice option but especially with the psp controls it's rather awkward to use effectively and you'd probably find yourself staying stationary anyway quality of life improvement was also added allowing hunters to have infinite rounds of normal shot level 1. in the original games not bringing any ammo into a hunt would effectively leave you powerless the bogun absolutely had to have some sort of preparation in order to make it at all useful generation 2 is a bit more lenient with this now that the hunter has infinite normal shots running out of ammo while not ideal is also not the end of the world normal level 1 is so pathetically useless though so i really can't stress enough how important it is to prepare beforehand and even then you still actually need to bring normal level 1 and have it in your inventory so the preparation is still kind of there elemental ammo also mark the return in this entry and are surprisingly not affected by range an interesting tidbit meaning bringing them as a means to utilize monster's weaknesses can really make your life easier on top of that some of the shot types for elemental have been reworked while the fire element will function as normal shot level 2 all of the other elements function as pierce generation 2 also introduced shot deviations which would change the trajectory of your shot per round fired you may have a gun that has bullets traveling slightly to the left or slightly to the right or a combination of both there's also been some larger deviations made to help distinguish between light bogun and heavy bogun while light continues to have the upgrades you'd expect from generation 1 including the zoom scope silencer and long barrel the heavy bogan now has access to the shield and power barrel power barrel will add a 10 attack boost to the base attack of the weapon and apparently also increases precision according to this game facts damage guide i'm reading here the shield allows the hunter to block while idle and the guard up armor skill will actually affect this allowing the gunner to block even more attacks than you may expect one brand new mechanic is rapid fire which is only available on select light bow guns and allows the hunter to fire off multiple shots at the cost of one with a power modifier for example the hunter could fire a normal shot level 1 and it would produce 5 shots at 80 the normal damage output but if they all connect would effectively output the damage of four shots per round i believe i'm not a mathematician so i may be misunderstanding the numbers and charts i'm looking at if that's the case feel free to correct me in the comments the downside of the ability is that the recoil is huge and you may be better off firing normally due to how much more consistent and fast you can be when recoil is manageable this is a hard-coded recoil value that can't be affected by any skills or upgrades so if using rapid fire you're stuck with it finally time to move on to generation 3 and take a look at an entry that boosted the level of customization for the boguns to new heights and introduce a fan favorite to the series i'm sure you know what i am talking about monster hunter tri really went above and beyond with the customizability of the bow guns specifically allowing you to essentially craft any type of gun you wanted with many varying effects based on how you set it up let's start simple enough you do not simply buy or craft a light or heavy bow gun instead you have three pieces that are necessary to make the gun functional those being the frame the stock and the barrel the frame is the base for all of the stats on your weapon that will be modified slightly by the other options that you choose from the frame's main factors are the weight range reload recoil and deviation deviation was introduced previously but is now made more obvious to the player in terms of how their shots will travel for example a high level r deviation will always travel to the right at a sharp arc while a low level lr deviation could go left or right on a shorter trajectory this is a big factor when choosing which gun you plan to make as it is beneficial to know the trajectory of your shots ahead of time in order to be consistent frames come with many variations but one major thing to watch out for is whether or not the frame requires a folding stock think of this like unsheathing a heavy bow gun in previous generations it's slower and there's a bit of an animation build up until you actually are able to use this weapon using different frames that don't have this aspect will be faster overall than achieving them it should be mentioned that the frame is also the determining factor in what types of shots can be used barrel is specifically set up to modify the range of your weapon meaning you can affect the critical distance of your shot types to figure out a comfy distance that best suits you this acts as the older generation barrel mods and can have additional factors like the shield seen in generation 2. additionally some modifications including the barrel and stock that we'll touch on in a second can have decoration slots meaning your options for armor skills can be widened stocks on the other hand affect recoil and reload speed and are generally used to lessen the effect of these stats some stocks will lower the recoil specifically some will lower the reload time and some will even do both while offering decoration slots there's a lot of options so is it just the frame that dictates what type of bow gun you're using not exactly if you remember i mentioned that the frame has a weight well this is not exclusive to that aspect of the bow gun the barrel and stock also have weights and once fully put together all three pieces will contribute to your weight total to dictate what type of bow gun you are using any gun below a weight limit of 30 is considered a light bow gun anything above 30 but below 70 is a medium bow gun and anything higher is a heavy bogun both medium bow guns and light bow guns have the same movement speed and general animations depending on the frame but the light bowgun gains this new side step hopping ability that can be utilized for positioning purposes and is performed in between shots similar to sidestepping in between attacks meanwhile heavy boguns act as you would expect having the hunter move slowly and methodically the advantages should be obvious you get more mobility the lighter you go but less effective damage meanwhile the heavier your weapon is the more damage you'll be outputting per shot that being said stronger isn't always better and just like in previous generations sometimes the faster and more mobile option can be more consistent and effective some new shot types include wyvern fire which is similar to the gun lance it requires a charged up animation and fires off a shot that is one part fixed to fire elemental damage and one part modified damage based on the bow gun being used at the time there's also the sub type that is made to be utilized by the game's underwater mechanic it functions light pellet but gets additional hits when underwater and is a more effective option than pellet when doing so slicing functions like craigshell but offers cutting damage meaning gunners now have an actually viable option for cutting tails exhaust is another new shot type that is strictly for ko and exhaust damage while most elemental shots remain unchanged dragon became more of an arc shot that falls over time and deals multiple hits while falling this is potentially the most convoluted the bogun has ever gotten and will ever get the amount of customization and options while interesting required much more work and preparation in comparison to any other weapon type in the series and most likely turn players off of using it luckily this would change semi-permanently with portable third onward portable third and onward into three ultimate reintroduced the classic definitions of light and heavy bogun while removing medium bogun entirely and reintroducing the normal customization mechanics we've come to expect from generation 1 and 2 including shields and power barrels one new inclusion introduced in portable third is siege mode for heavy boguns which allows the user to hunker down and fire off specific ammo types usually two types that are dependent on which heavy bow gun you were using at the time when in this mode recoil is significantly lower and the clip size is much higher meaning it's a great opportunity to get large swaths of damage if the monster is not actively aggro to you for the light bogun sidestepping and back hopping remained included from tri most ammo types from tri carried over as well aside from wyvern's fire which skipped portable 3rd and returned in 3 ultimate on top of the gen 3 ammo types 3 ultimate also brings slime shots into the equation and i'm sure you can guess what they do come on it's it's slime now try alone was a lot for bogans but let's take some time to move on to generation four and see what verticality hunter arts and hunter skills offered to each weapon [Music] monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate's biggest mechanical changes had to be the limiter removal which removes certain mechanics from the light and heavy boguns in exchange for some new ones the light bogun will lose the ability to rapid fire and sidestep or backhop but in turn gains the ability to reload all of its ammo types at once this gives light bogun the ability to swap between shots without the need to reload again meaning that the amount of shots that can be fired off before a reload has increased significantly this reload can be performed by pressing x and a together and the traditional reload can be performed by just pressing x for heavy bogun the limiter removal slows you down even further removes siege mode and prevents the hunter from being able to roll after a shot but offers a huge raw boost and offers the siege clip increase to all ammo types that would be used within siege mode for jumping attacks the lightning heavy bogan can perform a jumping reload attack by pressing exwell midair it'll reload the clip and perform mounting damage like bogan can also chain two side steps or back cops in a row as always for monster hunter generations and generations ultimate i'll be focusing on the key aspects of the weapon meta rather than listing every style and every art possible there's better guides for that and i suggest you check them out in your free time if it interests you in the meantime we can take a look at some of the more effective options for killing monsters as fast and effectively as possible also while this may have been a function in previous games it's good to note that the bogan would reload bullets at the start of the reloading animation meaning you could start the animation and then cancel it via a bomb pledge or screen transition in order to save time overall starting with the lipo gun the weapon was heavily dominated by a depth style due to its high mobility via adept dodging as well as a mechanic known as power reloads which could be utilized through this style at the cost of losing their side and backstep mechanics hunters can now follow up the adept dodge mechanic with a power reload or power run power reload specifically reloads the selected ammo type instantly and gives it a 5 damage boost for a period of 10 seconds power run can be performed before or after a reload has started and causes the hunter to run in a specified direction at a high speed for a long period of time the hunter can cancel out of the run with a roll and if they power run while power reloading they get the effect of both mechanics however power running before a power reload will make it impossible to perform the power reload until another successful adept dodge a depth style was way more aggressive in comparison to some other options due to the ability to shoot after a power reload to cancel the recovery frames some changes to the game's control settings even made it possible to turn around aim and shoot after the reload for styles there weren't many worth utilizing on a depth light bogun outside of absolute readiness so full house could be seen if striker style was being utilized full houses is the exact same mechanic as removing the limiter from the light bow gun in monster hunter 4 allowing the hunter to reload all of their ammo types at once making switching between them much faster tier 1 and tier 2 would reload everything and accept rapid-fire ammo while tier 3 would reload everything including rapid-fire ammo activating this once in a hunt will give you the permanent ability to reload an ammo type switch to another ammo type and not lose the previously reloaded bullets moving onto heavy bogun this is another weapon that was absolutely dominated by valor mode now while not in a valor state the hunter isn't going to be able to enter siege mode but there's some great aspects available to you from the get-go specifically the ability to power reload out of the sheath cancel by pressing x while sheathing this will perform a valor reload similar to the light bogon adept reload which can be timed to be slightly faster and gives the five percent damage boost now the light bow gun actually also has the ability to power reload through valor but it should be noted that power reloading the lipogun while inadept gives us a 5 damage boost but while in valor it does not it's a common misconception within the two styles back to the heavy bow gun the valor power reload will offer a damage boost and fill the valor gauge slicing ammo was one of the most beneficial shot types for building gauge due to its multi-hit properties and could help save on piercing ammo once in valley state the heavy bogun hunter gains an inherent invasion plus two skill and can once again enter siege mode while also gaining the ability to roll out of siege mode siege mode is even more powerful while in this state as well and the hunter's fire rate will increase over time as you fire off shots while firing out of siege mode you can hold bn in a direction to begin a power run at high speed at no cost to stamina making it highly useful due to the heavy bogun's lack of mobility generally you wouldn't see any heavy bogun specific hunter art applied to the weapon while in this state instead mass combiner a general art would be brought along and allows the hunter to get the most out of their combinations while increasing the combination's success rate fun fact since combining during a hunt is such an important aspect it's actually advantageous to combine during the valor sheath as a safer option as if you do get hit you'll only take 30 of the damage outside of weapon specific mechanics geo introduced many new ammo types the biggest change is the new internal ammo feature which is a generic default ammo that the hunter brings on every hunt without the need to restock there's a lot of internal ammo and a lot of it is effectively useless some of the major inclusions include internal element ammo that was useful due to elemental weaknesses like pierce water 3 or pierce fire 2 etc however slicing level 1 and 2 were also internal and mechanically useful as they could be used for cutting damage into separate tails and like i mentioned they could be used in balor mode now with all of that out of the way let's move on to the final generation of monster hunter generation five and see what changed for light bogun and heavy bogun in world iceborn and monster hunter rise there's some generic mechanical changes introduced in monster hunter world for both the light bogun and heavy bow gun the biggest change however is the overall feel of the boguns with how they move and act in the game it is a much more fluid over-the-shoulder third-person experience now in comparison to the previous games and aiming has become much easier on top of that the hunters can now move while shooting and even move while reloading which heavily upgrades their mobility overall and turns monster hunter into a glorified third person shooter fortnite [ __ ] another example of mechanical change is the ability to hold down triangle to reload this will begin reloading your currently selected ammo and then follow up by reloading all other ammo in order from top to bottom there's also the inclusion of special ammo types and multiple other features mods have changed drastically since old school entries and there's multiple new mods and factors that you need to understand before utilizing them for example the rarity of your gun dictates how many mods you can actually apply to it rarity one and two guns can apply one mod and some higher rarities can apply two and then the highest rarities can apply three at least in world's base game additionally these mods don't seem to be based on the location they would be placed on the weapon anymore meaning you can simply fill up each of your available slots with whichever mod you want without worrying about overlap the mods have also been meshed together meaning light bogan and heavy bogan have for the majority the same options with the only difference being that heavy bogan is still the only weapon that can equip the shield mod mods can even be applied multiple times to amplify a desired effect if you don't care about variety reload assist and recoil deviation suppressors are pretty self-explanatory as we've seen them in previous entries but they offer good bonuses close range up and arranged attack up or attack bonuses for close range and long range respectively meaning they complement specific ammo types better than others speaking of specific ammo types there's a few new options in monster hunter world basically pellets seem to have been substituted for spread which has a similar shotgun effect and craig has been replaced with a new shot type called sticky let's talk about the lipo gun first pressing circle will load a special ammo and allow the hunter to place down a new special ammo type unique to the bow gun called wyvern blast it's a ground-based mine that can be detonated by a hunter attacking it or having a monster run over it the special ammo types are shown above your traditional ammo type and have a finite number of rounds wyvern blast also doesn't disappear after an explosion rather the hunter can force them to explode multiple times based on how much damage is inflicted to the mine at a given time weakly hitting the mind multiple times could cause it to explode up to five times but slightly stronger attacks can cause larger and more damaging explosions up to three times finally very powerful hits can cause an even larger explosion from the mine which can be detonated twice additionally the sliding dash from monster hunter generation's ultimate makes a reappearance and has been integrated into the side step of the light bow gun by pressing x in a direction after a shot the hunter will sidestep if they press x again during this animation they'll perform a sliding dash the sliding dash is very similar to the previous entry and does have iframes making it highly valuable for effective mobility moving on the heavy bogan this weapon type actually has two special ammo options those being wyvern heart and wyvern snipe and which option you have is dependent on which heavy bogan you are using wyvern heart effectively turns the heavy bow gun into a machine gun where the damage ramps up over time while you hold the trigger down you load it by pressing circle and can unload it at any time by pressing the same button you aren't locked into using the full clip and can save some of wyvern heart for later if you need to get out of a sticky situation however fully using it is the main means of getting it to begin recharging so that you can once again have a full clip now wyvern snipe is a little more simplistic loading this ammo will cause the hunter to go into a prone stance while aiming once fired the shot will perform piercing damage in the monster before exploding for additional damage since this is a piercing ammo type you'd use it like you would on any other monster trying to get the bullet to pass through in a way that it gets the most damage during its trajectory jumping in aerial attacks are still what you would expect and sliding attacks have been incorporated but is effectively the same as a ledge jump that being said you can unsheathe and fire while sliding if desired now iceborn doesn't bring much in the form of changes to the base weaponry but it does add some new lipogun and heavy bogun specific mods and also allows the hunter to switch to their slinger while aiming for light bogun you get evading reload and wyvern blast mods the evading reload will allow the hunter to reload a small amount of ammo while performing the sliding dash after a side step and this mod can be stacked to reload more ammo with each dash meanwhile the wyvern blast mod is set up to allow the hunter to fire a wyvern blast mine forward rather than simply placing it on the ground i believe this has good stagger potential so it's possible to utilize it as a counter option on advancing monsters it should be noted that the wyvern blast mod doesn't stack and can only be equipped once for heavy bulgarian you get wyvern heart mod and a new sniper scope that can be equipped and unequipped manually while in the field the wyvern heart mod is simply a damage multiplier change raising the overall damage that continuous wyvern heart firing ring can ramp up to only one of these can be equipped at a time for the wyvern snipe mod you gain access to a special scope that you can equip or unequip at well and also gain access to the new super critical distance mode when aiming down your new scope you can line up your shots so the reticle glows orange and gets a large damage multiplier additionally the sniper no longer performs piercing damage naturally instead providing higher damage overall especially on weak points to make up for this you can now super critical distance with any ammo type even the sniper type for some pretty insane damage numbers we can now move on to monster hunter rise and discuss the various changes that were made to the world light bogan and heavy bowgun as well as the additions of multiple silk bind abilities and switch skills for each there's a lot to go over so buckle up one of the bigger changes is how ryze tries to limit movement for light bogan and heavy bogum based on the additions made to world now only certain ammo types will allow you to move while shooting or reload while shooting and they are denoted by an icon beside the description or when you have them selected on the field there's also an icon for single fire reload which seems to be new it's a blue triangle that denotes that a weapon will reload immediately after firing a single shot you can move around during this animation even if the ammo type doesn't have the move while reloading icon active finally there's also an icon for rapid firing which is two orange triangles this was actually technically a mechanic in world and iceborn mobile shooting and reloading was tied to the ammo's recoil and reload stats recoil reload plus one and plus two the lowest and fastest enabled movement while plus 3 and plus 4 kept you stationary when firing and reloading mechanically these weapons are very similar to their world predecessor with heavy bogan finally gaining the ability to sidestep instead of rolling in between shots it can even chain the side steps at the cost of stamina and gain the ability to hold down the shot button in order to charge a shot before firing while it is an option it's not highly utilized and only really good for when a monster doesn't align with your original shot it should be noted that the wyvern snipe on heavy bogun also has the piercing damage again on top of that the typical bull gun mods you would expect from previous entries have marked the return and the setup and world has been removed completely starting with light bogen let's go over the silk bind attacks and switch skills first is silk buying glide and from what i can tell it is not highly utilized it functions mostly as a gap closer but allows the hunter to fire off one high motion value shot at the end of an animation that performs cutting damage instead of shot damage meaning it could be used for severing tails the downside is that it forces a reload every time no matter what so you'll end up finding yourself stuck if used improperly this ability costs two wire bugs next up is fanning vault which launches the hunter into the air and allows them to perform a few aerial attacks including attaching a wyvern blast to a monster it's a cool looking move but also not heavily utilized due to it being swappable with the next ability that is arguably more effective i'm talking about fanning maneuver which will shoot out a wire bug and allow the hunter to travel in an arc around a radius which is great for adding maneuverability while staying within critical distance both fanning abilities cost one wire bug for switch skills like bogan can swap out its traditional reload for a slower option called elemental reload while it may be slower it will boost the damage of all elemental shots making it highly useful when fighting monsters with big elemental weaknesses finally the forward dodge on light bogen can be swapped out for a new quick step evade it's really personal preference on this one as the quick step is a bit shorter and faster than the normal dodge however if you fire immediately after the quick step it will have increased damage moving onto heavy bogun it has a similar silk bind glide to the lightbow gun called free silk buying glide so i won't talk about it too much but more importantly it has the counter shot ability that nullifies all damage and can be followed up with a high damage round that launches the hunter backwards very useful and most likely more utilized over its swappable ability the character charger which is a parry counter that speeds up the charging on charged shots since you'll be rarely using charged shots anyway the choice seems pretty clear here for switch skills the generic melee attack that is rarely if ever utilized can now be swapped out for a shoulder tackle that has some super armor elements to it meaning you may not get knocked back but will still take some damage it's probably also going to be barely used but it does seem to have more mechanical advantages over the melee attack finally there is the healing mech wyvern snipe skill if you are confused about what mech wyvern snipe is just know that this is a mistranslation in localization and actually means wyvron heart wyvern snipe the ability will turn your damage dealing special ammo into a support based ammo and allow you to heal teammates by riddling them full of holes with world and rise the distinction between light bogun and heavy bogan was strengthened slightly and the two weapons have different advantages and disadvantages that are more noticeable than in previous generations however that's finally all i have to say about the bow guns in generation 5. [Music] the bogens have always been a fairly complex weapon option for hunters it can be daunting to want to try ranged weapons when melee can sometimes feel like it requires much less preparation overall generally you'll see melee players first try out the bow thanks to its ease of access before moving on to the meteor alternatives while the older generations may have been excruciatingly painful in the amount of preparation and crafting that was required for the guns making them highly unappealing the weapons slowly formed into true powerhouses thanks to multiple quality of life improvements they have never been more accessible or easy to get into and try out this marks the end of the weapon series in terms of monster hunter history videos so i'll just take a quick second now to say thank you to everyone that watched them each one of these videos took anywhere from one to two weeks to create through research writing proofreading getting others to proofread recording footage from each game and so much more i know these videos don't cover absolutely everything but i feel like at least they've covered the big mechanical changes of each weapon were possible if there's something i missed feel free to let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this video consider liking commenting and subscribing let me know what your favorite weapon is and what kind of monster hunter video you want me to cover next i'm also streaming regularly on twitch now and our discord is growing rapidly so if you want to join the community and maybe participate in viewer hunts feel free to stop by hey you made it to the end of the video thank you so much for watching this is the patreon section but i just do want to give you a special shout out if you made it this far because this is a i believe 4 hour and 45 minute video of weapon history so it is really insane that you made it this far and i really do again want to uh thank you from the bottom of my heart because this took months and months and months to make it was crazy it was nuts but yeah you're in the patreon section right now so i'm going to go ahead and just have some credits probably here going up and down and i'm going to shout out some people that are doing the special g-rank tier over on patreon if you want to participate in patreon head over you can find a link down in the description and where i will shut you out or i will put you in the credits and you get and you get a cool discord roll which allows you to like participate in viewer hunts and stuff like that thank you to rotarex for the g-rank tier i really appreciate it thank you to ibm 200 for the g-rank tier thank you to per gunner ericsson for the g-rank tier thank you so much thank you to atomic weapon for the g-rank tier thank you to karen tall for the g-rank tier thank you to carl the crab for the g-rank tier appreciate it thank you to void paradox for the g-rank tier amazing super cool super super cool i am kanan thank you for the g-rank tier maz thank you for the g-rank tier moal kasemi thank you for the g rank tier agatosh thank you for the g-rank tier we do a little gaming thank you for the g-rank tier kinky king thank you for the g-rank tier ryan marion thank you for the g-rank tier very nice cyber worm thank you for the g-rank tier appreciate it magbit thank you for the g-rank tier kathleen medja thank you for the g-rank tier crunchy kauru thank you for the g-rank tier jonathan thank you for the g-rank tier strange lee thank you for the g ranked here appreciate it ben vb thank you for the g ranked here i really appreciate it hope you're having a great day lude hafumi thank you for the g-rank tier preesh rosa leo thank you for the g ranked here justin regal thank you for the g-ranked here and mr janky the man the myth the legend one of the first patrons thank you for the g ranked here appreciate it guys thank you so much for watching this video and i will see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: SuperRAD

Views: 363,216

Keywords: monster hunter, monster hunter lore, monster hunter world, Monster, Hunter, World, Freedom, History, Kokoto, Minegarde, Flyann, unite, poogie, mh, monhun, all monsters, monster hunter games, evolution of monster hunter, monster hunter franchise, monster hunter series, history of monster hunter, monster hunter history, monster hunter game, mhw lore, iceborne lore, monster hunter explained, monster hunter movie, monster hunter rise, monster hunter rise review, monster hunter rise gameplay

Id: WWsXhBlMxt8

Length: 287min 2sec (17222 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021