Incline Monster Hunter 4U - Game is out NOW

[Hobo Elf]

Well, again, status works much better for SnS. The difference between a raw longsword and a paralyzing one is way too big for the tiny paralysis to add up. Ditto for poison, really. Look at the difference between the longswords in the bone tree. The raw path hits 672 damage while the poison one slides back all the way to 528. Thats more like whiffing every 4th attack, (78.5% as much damae) which is a pretty huge deal.

The stat shown on the weapons is not indicative of how much damage they actually do when you hit with it. Moreover, The damage is also calculated differently depending on the weapon type. So, a LS with 500 raw will not do the same damage as a Lance with 500 raw, per hit. I'm not sure how it is calculated, but I suspect that it is % based, with each attack doing a different % of damage. The high numbers are just added in for a 'wow' effect. Shit is hella dumb.
With all of that said, you are right to not use LS with a status effect, solo, although it really does depend on the weapon (I mean LS, not all weapons). Some paths have good raw and less status, some favore more status over raw. LS as a whole favors raw damage and sharpness over pretty much everything else due to its spirit combo mechanic.

Also, why on earth do greatswords even have versions that inflict status effects? How the hell are you going to ever inflict poison with a greatsword that does less poison per hit than a SnS?

afaik GS didn't even inflict status when you used a charged attack in the old games. This has been only just now fixed in MH4U. Previously it was useless, now it's apparently somewhat decent, but you'll still be better off with high raw and good sharpness.

 

[Damned Registrations]

There are a lot of modifiers but none of them are logarithmic so 600 is still double 300 when you're talking about a single weapon type. The actual formula is something along the lines of:

Weapon power
x (modifier for type of hit, (, ranging from about 10% for the wekest hits from dual swords to 100% for full charge slashes or hammer hits)
x (modifier for monster hitzone, ranging from 1 on things like a kutku's head to .10 for things like a gravios face. These are also different for cutting or impact, impact is almost always better, even when you'd think otherwise. Also, generally if the hitzone is only .10 you'll just bounce anyways, most hitzones are between .25 and .40)
/ (modifier for weapon type. SnS and dualswords get divivded by 1.4, lances 2.3, hammers 4.8 and big swords 5.2)

The last step is redundant of course, they could have just tweaked the first step for the various weapons. The only reason it's there is because it's a general ratio that gets used when applying buffs (longswords get more attack from a demon flute than dual swords) and they used the same number in the formula.
There are a bunch of other little modifiers too (sharpness and hitting with the centre of the blade, etc.), but they're generally in the ~10% range and very situational so they don't matter much. Even affinity is basically a joke. 50% affinity is like 12.5% more damage on average.

Elements ignore most of that crap. They still have the hitzone, but the type of weapon doesn't matter (except dual swords get a penalty so they aren't OP... which is retarded because they could have just given them less) and the type of attack doesn't matter (charge slashes and sword slaps do the same elemental damage.) Because they ignore all that crap, the 450 lightning on a greatsword and on a SnS add the same amount of damage per hit, regardless. Which means it's worth sweet fuck all for the greatsword, which does a shitton of physical damage, and it's really good for the SnS, which is plinking away for sweet fuck all. Status effects are the same way.

Lances lie somewhere in between, and tend to be pretty balanced either way. Hammers are an odd case, because you can rack up lots of hits with the spinning attack which is good for elements, but the big slow hits are way better with raw. Then there's the whole dizzy thing they have (which I can never seem to make happen, shit always dies before it ever gets dizzy.)

 

[Hobo Elf]

One thing you forgot to add that changes weapon power is Sharpness. Green Sharpness does normal damage; anything above adds incrementially more and anything less does the same in reverse.

Okay so I've been playing a bit with my Poison SnS and I got a slightly better idea of poison damage and of status effects vs elemental damage. So far I think Poison is a good lazy man's weapon special. Even if you look online and see that it'll do something like 150 damage to the monster (varies from monster to monster) and it doesn't seem too impressive, there are some factors you have to take into consideration that will turn this tiny amount of damage into a bit more impressive number. I think the most important factor is that even if monsters have elemental weaknesses, it is only certain body parts that may have these weaknesses. Even if you take a fire weapon against a monster weak to fire, there are places where it will take 0 fire damage. And even against the spots where they are weak to fire the damage will not be nearly as high. It depends on the weapon, as everything does, but I'm guessing that on average you'll be doing 10-20 elemental damage per hit with SnS, in Low Rank (and honestly with enemies getting hire resist values I doubt that the damage will go up by that much). So, unless you are only hitting the weak spots, you aren't using your weapon to its full potential. And this kinda brings about the problem where Elemental weapons really are pretty rubbish if you don't play with meta knowledge. They will severely outclass anything else if you do have that meta and are willing to make the effort, but if not, poison is a reliable status effect to lean back on.

I used a Bone Tomahawk+ and a Shadow Saber, both have equal sharpness and damage, but Bone Tomahawk does +120 fire damage and Shadow Saber does +210 Poison build up. Against monsters weak and not weak to fire (but still had varying weaknesses to it in certain body parts) I had better kill times with the Shadow Saber since I was only going for the spots that were weak to raw damage.

Of course these are just observations and suspect to scrutiny.

Honestly, fuck Capcom for trying to make this shit pointlessly convoluted with meaningless number bloat and "obscure" damage calculations.

 

[Perkel]

I'll wait for cintra emulator.

3DS is like the mostly ugly son of a bitch shit i ever saw both console and IQ of its games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sharpness is included in the 'mostly irrelevant' part of damage. Here's the chart:

Raw Sharpness Multipliers:

Purple: 1.50
White: 1.30
Blue: 1.25
Green: 1.125
Yellow: 1.0
Orange: 0.75
Red: 0.50

Elemental Sharpness Multipliers:

Purple: 1.20
White: 1.125
Blue: 1.0625
Green: 1.0
Yellow: 0.75
Orange: 0.50
Red: 0.25

Now, purple is actually a pretty major boost, but by the time you have that, you've already killed everything pretty much. Yellow sharpness just isn't viable because of bouncing, and the difference between blue and white is tiny. So the only real spot you're going to notice a change is between green and blue, which is ~11% more damage. Pretty meh. Certainly doesn't make it worthwhile to use something like the insect weapons, which suffer a huge lack of attack power in exchange for their sharpness. And that's all for raw damage, for elements it's even less relevant. It's also hard to quantify the value of sharpness of a lot of weapons, because you'll keep fighting with a weapon that has fallen down to green just so you don't give the monster a chance to fuck off, or let your longsword combo expire, or status damage wear off, etc. I'm using a tigrex sword with blue sharpness right now, but probably half the hits I get in are with green sharpness anyways, so you can't really say it's doing 11% more damage than another longsword with only green sharpness but the same power would. What you gain in damage from the blue sharpness you lose in time spent sharpening the sword back to blue instead of getting free hits in.

 

[Hobo Elf]

It doesn't matter much in LR and HR but in G-Rank it definitely is worth keeping your weapon up to snuff as much as possible, unless your weapon has just a tiny sliver of white / purple and degrades after a few hits. Consider getting Sharpness +1 (if you haven't already) as it really helps your DPS skyrocket. Higher sharpness levels are also nice since there is less bouncing. I always get fugged when I bounce and make a huge opening for the monster.

 

[Machocruz]

So the raw vs. elemental argument: does it apply to ranged too? I watched a few Utube vids on MHFU (which I'm playing currently), and every time he used a bowgun, he used elemental shots. This could be because all the monsters he fought had elemental weakness. But the damage gap between BG and HBG isn't as wide as between SnS/DS and GS/Hammer from what I've seen, so the situation where elemental benefits one more than the other may not apply.

 

[Damned Registrations]

For bowguns it's really really situational, since some guns can rapid fire certain elements, and some monsters have spots you can easily hit that are weak to the element, while others don't. It really comes down to the metaknowledge thing again. If you don't know /where/ the monster is weak to the element, you're better off just pelting it with normal3 or pierce shots. OTOH, unlike with melee, a single bowgun can handle multiple elements, so it's more flexible in that regard.

Also, the way elemental shots work with bowguns, they completely scale with the attack power of the gun, unlike with melee where they're only partially elemental.

Example of the elemental weakness on a monster (closer to 100 is weaker defense)

Rathalos
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Hitzone  | Shot | Fire | Watr | Thdr | Drgn | Ice | | Stagger Limit |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Head     | 55   | 0    | 30   | 15   | 30   | 40 | | 180 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Neck     | 40   | 0    | 20   | 10   | 20   | 30 | | 100 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Back     | 40   | 15   | 20   | 15   | 20   | 30 | | 160 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Stomach  | 55   | 0    | 15   | 15   | 10   | 25 | | 160 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Tail     | 30   | 0    | 10   | 5    | 20   | 20 | | 150 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Wing     | 30   | 0    | 30   | 15   | 20   | 40 | | 100 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------
| Foot     | 45   | 0    | 10   | 5    | 5    | 20 | | 160 HP |
------------------------------------------------------ -----------------

So, if you're just firing at random without a plan, raw might be better here. But then there are monsters where the right element is decent across almsot all parts while the shot weakness varies a ton.

Safest bet is to just spam the shit of of cluster/crag shots. Those do damage like bombs, it doesn't even matter how strong the gun is, let alone where you hit.

 

[Hobo Elf]

So I was watching a youtube video for weapon honing (weapon enchantment system they added in MH4U) and this came up on the video

So, yeah, pretty much what I expected. All the weapons do somewhat equal DPS, they just come in different bursts.

 

[ultimanecat]

I've been playing MHFU (on an actual PSP) recently after playing a ton of 3U. I'm not sure if it's just the smaller screen making it seem like I have less control, or the animations/hitboxes of the monsters making the head a harder target, but using the hammer isn't nearly as rewarding as it was in the later game. I went from knocking out everything consistently to basically unfocused pounding on the feet and body.

Now I'm mostly sticking to LS since that seems to work better for just wailing away.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I find it easier to target specific parts on a larger screen as well, but your problem may also have to do with the craptacular hitboxes present in MHFU. 3U has probably the best hitboxes out of all the games. I honestly think that the Hammer works better in coop. Unless you are hitting the head you aren't using it effectively, and even when you do KO a monster it's a far more useful effect when you have more people with you, much like paralyze. Then there's the fact that if you have a set with Critical Draw and Punishing Draw you can get the same KO effect rather reliably with a GS which has superior reach and damage compared to the hammer, not to mention you can cut tails as well. Unfortunately neither of those skills is present in MHFU.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pretty sure MHFU has some sort of critical draw skill actually.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You're right, it does. My bad. Still doesn't have Punish Draw tho, which is a hilarious skill to have.

Edit: fuck Duramboros

 

[Hirato]

You're right, it does. My bad. Still doesn't have Punish Draw tho, which is a hilarious skill to have.

Edit: fuck Duramboros

Duramboros isn't that hard, he's just very, VERY hearty.

 

[Hobo Elf]

You're right, it does. My bad. Still doesn't have Punish Draw tho, which is a hilarious skill to have.

Edit: fuck Duramboros

Duramboros isn't that hard, he's just very, VERY hearty.

I know. That's the problem. Huge ass HP sponge. I had to kill him 3 times last night to get 3 tail cases for a weapon upgrade. Breaking his tail is a far more tedious job than what it may seem like. Only in the 3rd and final time did it occur to me that the EZ Pitfall Trap they provided you on the quest was, in fact, NOT so that you could get freebies on him, but so that you can capture him, since that's faster than outright killing him.

 

[Mr. Pink]

What's your weapon and skills?

Weapon:
poison relic lance that looks like a flag

Skills:
Guard +2
Autoguard (why not)
Spd sharpener
four gem slots open. not sure whats a good skill for lance. Feels like I got everything I need besides Guard-Up

 

[Hobo Elf]

Full Kushala X gear with Evasion +3, Sharpness and Elemental Crit. I alternate my weapons between Daora's Regulus, Ruthless Grislance and Asclepius. I have a bunch of other sets for different weapon types but mainly I just Lance.

 

[Desktop Commander]

What's your weapon and skills?

Weapon:
poison relic lance that looks like a flag

Skills:
Guard +2
Autoguard (why not)
Spd sharpener
four gem slots open. not sure whats a good skill for lance. Feels like I got everything I need besides Guard-Up

I have yet to play 4U and am basing the following on my experience with MHP 2nd G and 3rd + I use mainly GS, so take what I say with a proportionately sized grain of salt.

Anyways, lances usually work better with Evasion and - depending on your playstyle - with Evade Distance Up. Turtling is better left to Gunlances, but even there I prefer Evade over Guard sets. Autoguard is a waste of space. Also, you are completely lacking in damage increasing skills, which is bad if you want decent kill times. Poison is ok at low rank but quickly loses usefulness once you rank up, unless a Monster is really, really weak to it (Uragaan is among those iirc).

tl;dr: Lance users shouldn't turtle, get attack skills (atk up, sharpness+, affinity+, exploiter)

 

[Mr. Pink]

What's your weapon and skills?

Weapon:
poison relic lance that looks like a flag

Skills:
Guard +2
Autoguard (why not)
Spd sharpener
four gem slots open. not sure whats a good skill for lance. Feels like I got everything I need besides Guard-Up

I have yet to play 4U and am basing the following on my experience with MHP 2nd G and 3rd + I use mainly GS, so take what I say with a proportionately sized grain of salt.

Anyways, lances usually work better with Evasion and - depending on your playstyle - with Evade Distance Up. Turtling is better left to Gunlances, but even there I prefer Evade over Guard sets. Autoguard is a waste of space. Also, you are completely lacking in damage increasing skills, which is bad if you want decent kill times. Poison is ok at low rank but quickly loses usefulness once you rank up, unless a Monster is really, really weak to it (Uragaan is among those iirc).

tl;dr: Lance users shouldn't turtle, get attack skills (atk up, sharpness+, affinity+, exploiter)

I did evade lancing in tri, but i dont believe it's objectively superior to guard lancing, especially in multiplayer. My main gripes with evade lancing is the lack of early good evade armors and teamplay being a fucking nightmare because teammates can and will take every opportunity to trip you when you hop. I find guard lancing to be much more reliable in general, especially against the lamd based chargy type monsters that 4u tends to be full of. I don't even bother with lances on anything that flies though, too much of a pain.

my relic lance does 440 raw, so it's still a lot better than the latest available raw lance I can build. The poison is irrelevant but still kinda useful in high rank hunts. autoguard is useless but nothing good dropped for me yet.

goals before i G-rank:
guard +2, guardup, sharpness+, spd sharpener or razor edge, maybe sheathing speed
a better para lance
finish my S rathalos set for charge blade/longsword fun times.

 

[Desktop Commander]

Ah, I see - I had somehow automatically assumed you were soloing. In this case you should be fine, since the most important thing in team hunts is to a) not cart, as you'll always be able to finish the quest in time and b) not get in the way, as you stated.

Seems like you lucked out on that relic lance - 440 raw seems really, really good for HR, so this should easily carry you into and through low G rank. Para is good, especially if you have gunners on your team (I assume that this is still true in 4U).

I don't know if you're aware of its existence, but there is a handy tool called Athena's ASS for calculating armor sets wrt. skills you want them to have. You can check it out here and see if your desired skill combo is achievable at HR.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Ah, I see - I had somehow automatically assumed you were soloing. In this case you should be fine, since the most important thing in team hunts is to a) not cart, as you'll always be able to finish the quest in time and b) not get in the way, as you stated.

Seems like you lucked out on that relic lance - 440 raw seems really, really good for HR, so this should easily carry you into and through low G rank. Para is good, especially if you have gunners on your team (I assume that this is still true in 4U).

I don't know if you're aware of its existence, but there is a handy tool called Athena's ASS for calculating armor sets wrt. skills you want them to have. You can check it out here and see if your desired skill combo is achievable at HR.

oh great. this is just what i was looking for.

the lance get was super lucky. one of my first relic items, got it back in low rank HR3 and it carried me this far.

 

[ultimanecat]

Moved on to Portable 3rd, stopped with the hammering and am now futzing around with bows. Actually surprisingly fun considering the one time I tried bowguns made me walk away from the game for a week.

Going back to 3-era though reminds me how many quality-of-life improvements were made to it.

 

[Declinator]

I've been playing Monster Hunter for the first time (Portable 3rd) and I have to say that so far the game seems incredibly tedious.

Is the game simply heavily multiplayer-oriented or is there another reason why the monsters seem to have an absurd amount of health? I've played hp bloat games before but this seems to easily take the cake.

It has also been surprisingly easy, what with some people saying it's harder than Dark Souls but I suppose the difficulty comes later (or this particular MH game is easier). Are there any monster fights that are truly intense or are they all more like endurance tests?

 

[Desktop Commander]

Guild quests are meant for multiplayer but can be soloed (which is what I usually do - I don't really enjoy playing mulit).

The point of the game is, more or less, to maximize your damage output and come out on top in a battle of attrition. Once you get better at fighting certain monsters, learn their attacks and their openings, you will radically improve your kill times. But yes, the Monsters are not like fights in other games - they are meant to challenge you and require consistent skill to take down. Getting lucky once or twice and defeating them like that won't happen; the HP bloat is by design (though Monsters in 3rd have actually less HP overall than they had in previous gens).

3rd is overall a bit easier than the rest, but still no pushover by any means. The early monsters have laughable HP and trivial attack patterns, but things should get more difficult as you advance. Sadly, there is no G rank in 3rd, but if you are looking for a challenge, try doing some of the DL quests. Monsters in these generally hit a lot harder than their non-DLC counterparts. Unfortunately, they also have a lot more HP (I actually timed out on the DLC Akantor when I tried the quest a few days ago), which might be a problem for you.

Alternatively, try some of the dual quests, as the monsters in them have less HP individually. Not dung-bombing them and fighting both monsters at the same time is also a very fun thing to do if single hunts bore you (Dual Raths in the Arena was one of my favourite quests in 2nd G).

I also find Zinogre a very well designed and fun monster to fight - have you gotten up to him yet? Tigrex is also fun to fight imo, albeit a bit too easy to figure out.

 

[ultimanecat]

Generally, the HP curve of monsters means that as you get better gear, "earlier" monsters begin to die much faster while the battles with ones you need to progress remain somewhat protracted. There's also the matter that as you learn a monster's patterns and weaknesses, it becomes easier to take out.

For instance, in an early village quest in P3rd, a Zinogre appears once you successfully hunt a Bulldrome, and it's up to you to try and take it on. While it's certainly possible to beat at that point, your gear is not going to be ideal that early on unless you've been doing Guild Quests. Regardless, even if you can manage not getting one-shotted in your early armor, it's going to take some time to wear it down. Even more likely, you haven't fought any monster as aggressive as Zinogre at that point, and you just die.

In P3rd, I wanna say maybe Barroth is the first wake-up call monster, because it's the first where many of the properties of later monsters come together and need to be dealt with.

Ultimately, yes, the game is a timesink. Things start slow and generally become moderately quicker, but the new, next step on the horizon will probably take just as long or longer.