Topic: Monster Hunter Rise

@Ralizah I've been tempted to return to the Hunting Horn after looking at the Master Rank versions because they look really good. Besides, it's always nice to have an HH buddy in the group. Right now I'm a bow user and aside from the aesthetic of the one I use, I'm pretty happy with my build. It's not meta or anything but it allows me to make mistakes without getting karted even with the strongest monsters while still doing nice damage.

@TeeJay I think that you'll have a pretty good time with that one, I really enjoyed the fight. It has been one of the coolest I've had until now.

lol, usually it doesn't bother me much either, but during that quest Fio just kept repeating the same line during a certain attack/event in that fight.

Wowww I beat the main final boss at MR6. Credits rolled. What a fun fight!! He's challenging with hugely intimidating attacks, but not like Allmother ridiculously hard. Felt like a sweet spot: not too frustrating, with extra mechanics thrown in, but not too convoluted. One of my favorite storyline bosses. Great design too.

This game! It's just so amazing. And now I still have MR50 and MR100 to look forward to, plus Anomaly hunting! Not to mention all the other content I was neglecting until I unlocked my hunter rank.

Been going real hard on that MR grind. I've already completed all the A Star quests available to me (up to A3) and now I'm working through the Follower quests. I'm up to MR 49 now, just one more quest and I'll hit 50 I think.

You know, the follower quests have really turned my opinion around on Utsushi, the mentor tutorial guy. In base Rise when I was starting, he just kinda came off to me as someone who gave himself way too much credit for "teaching" things I mostly already knew or could have figured out on my own anyway. And also some of the forced tutorial quests didn't help my opinion.

But the dialogue he has before, after and during these follower quests makes it more clear that he's just really genuinely proud of you and how far you've come as a hunter and I think that's sweet. When I get the chance I'm gonna take Utsushi and Arlow out on a support survey together, I bet there will be some interesting dialogue between us all considering there's 3 generations of mentors and pupils together.

Sunbreak moan time:

I am at the wall point I think, that you reach with any Monster Hunter game. I am up to A3, and melee just seems completely non viable at this point, in most fights.

There is Khezu at like A2 or something and I just can't beat it, it paralyses me with the first hit and then finishes me off with the second. I dunno how the hell you can avoid this, I could spec immunity for this status, but it would kill my build trying to deco it in somewhere. Thankfully, since they change the way upgrades work at A rank, I really have no reason to keep banging myself against this so I just moved on and beat monsters at the tier above way easier.

Balance is really poor in Sunbreak, any status basically breaks the difficulty paradigm and makes something absurdly hard that would otherwise be easier. I am basically just skipping every fight at this point that isn't just a trade of raw damage.

But in general, the windows for attack are tiny, the damage from monsters is absurd, I feel like I die 99% of the time because I need to face tank so much damage to do any damage myself. However, I can clear A3 quests with my Horn in like 10 - 15 minutes, so the misery is over fairly quickly.

I swapped to the light bowgun, as the game seems to beg you to play at range, and admittedly, it is a far more pleasurable experience. You will occasionally get these weird bursts of agro but ride those out, and you can generally just enjoy chilling at that backline and pewpew away.

However, while it is a more pleasurable experience for me, the flipside is I seem to be doing absolutely no damage. I mean if I look at all the damage numbers flashing on screen, it seems like I should be doing way more damage than my HH, but I am doing MR3 (not a typo, I meant to say MR3) quests and they are taking me almost half an hour. So 10 - 15 at A3 on the Horn, or 25 - 30 minutes at MR3 on the LBG. Yikes.

The other issue with the gun, at least for me, is that you need to be weirdly precise on some monsters to get your yellow numbers (I swear the weakspot for the LBG on Rathian is like the teeth or something). This might be fine if I was playing on mouse and keyboard, but I feel like I have to play the game on a controller, because binding all the various mechanics and modifiers to the keyboard makes the game feel horrible to play without going through the faff of dedicated macros.

I haven't really had any issues progressing. I've been using the Switchaxe all through those A ranks and I have a pretty defensive build, which I think is needed. I have Defense +7 (which probably isn't THAT needed but my build allowed for it so I thought why not), Evade extender + 2 and Evade Window +4.

I have a bunch more skills than that including more offensive ones but those are what I've got defense-wise and they've been serving me well through all those fights.

That and of course eating, spiritbird collecting and chugging my mega armorskins means I'm plenty defensive enough to not get two shotted most of the time at least.

Anyways I beat the MR 50 monster. It carted me once while I learned its moves, and then after that I gave it more respect, got my hits in when I could and played patiently, and it ended up being a really tense but fun fight. I'd say it's the first fight so far that I felt demanded I actually pay close attention to what's happening and not just slash away however I please. I have Bladescale Home lvl 3 and that thing was proccing every other second, lol. It's also so aggressive that I can reliably counter it a lot of the time with my Switchaxe counter.

@teejay I think I have found a middle ground in the lance. It is still slow, but not LBG slow, and I figured if I have to face tank regardless, I may as well go for a big shield with counters. I stacked basically all of the Guard moves and it means I can make up for low damage, by being able to keep on almost constant pressure, since I can basically block everything, and take no damage.

The lance is more complex than it seemed on paper, but it has quite a low skill entry and the shield/counters are very forgiving. Plus, while I know Anchor Rage is meant to be the meta, I feel like I have enough Guard with the three non-wirebug guards and so I threw on Skyward Thrust and maybe it sucks in a meta sense, but it is a lot of fun.

Just a cycle of turtle. Poke poke shield bash. Turtle, counter. Poke poke shield bash. Then the most probably falls over, so I can hit some big damage charged sweeps. Now they are probably big angry, but I don't care, because I can just turtle, counter, skyward thrust and so on. Or and charging in with the shield is really fun, too.

It also feels quite nice in that I am not really wirebug reliant. The wirebug move that pulls you backwards, and the Skyward Thrust, are both nice. But I can get by with my shield and poke, so I feel like I never get caught out.

Admittedly, my damage isn't crazy high, as I am focusing more on guard to offset all the crazy damage, but I can do up to like 300 damage with a charged sweep and anywhere from like 50 to a 200 with a poke depending on how far into the combo I am in. It ain't much, but it feels like more than what I was doing with the LBG, and I feel like I am more consistently breaking parts, adding fatigue and knock over value etc - even if the numbers on the LBG looked way higher.

@Pizzamorg Hey man whatever works for you! There are no wrong answers in this game when it comes on what weapons to pick.

...Meanwhile I'm loving the Gunlance's Bullet Barrage way too much...I hate when I end up missing with the entire attack. lol

Also recently I found out that I didn't have to wait for Wyvern's Fire to recharge to use the move, making the attack even better. xD

My friend switched to the Gunlance in response toe enjoying the Lance. He seems to be enjoying himself, but now I'm spending more time blocking his friendly fire than I am the monster.

...Yeah don't hunt with me if you don't want to constantly be blown away from my bullet barrage spamming. xD

Made the Guardian armor (which is the same as the Defender armor from World) and the Kamura Great Sword. Had to upgrade the sword which needed Bishaten hardclaws. Had to go hunt him twice. And had to hunt Pukei Pukei to get the last armor piece.

But now I'm ready to roll, about to do the Magnamalo MR3 quest which should unlock the Urgent to MR4.

Not doing any extra Quests from MR3 on up, since they won't count toward unlocked MR rank yet. Will come back and do them all after the cap is lifted.

Love this armor and weapon though. I got

• Earplugs +5
• Good Luck +3
• Defense +7
• Focus +3
• Quick Sheath +3
• Stun Res +3
• Speed Sharpening +3
• Blight Res +3
• Evade Extender +2
• Guard +5
• Guard Up +1
• Flinch Free +1
• Diversion

The Guard skills don't do much for me with GS, but they were a package deal so ya.

...Anyone have any tips on dealing with Allmother's damn dragonator attack in Master Rank? Because holy crap.

In high rank there were only like, 6 of them and they were kinda easy to avoid...in MR it seems like the number was doubled and they're just like all over the place. lol

When the Dragonators come up from the ground, you just run to the middle. You gotta wait a few seconds, as they will put an energy ball down which knocks you back. But once that goes down, you just run for cover in that little crater under them until it is over.

Like I said, in MR there's a tons of them, I've tried and rarely get to the middle, other times I just die from being hit constantly.

Oh that is weird then. I felt like I had enough time to get to the middle, wait for the ball to disperse and then cower under them before I ever had to think about dodging around the dragonators.

I didn't have any more issues than normal running to the center when she does the dragonator attack. If there were more of them I really didn't notice.

I usually just use a Farcaster whenever she uses that attack.

....I probably might just do that now instead of just dying.
I've rarely used farcasters, lol

I run to the left, and stick as close to the middle layer of dragonators as possible. I realized that there's always enough space between the middle row of dragonators and the outer ones to run just in between the rows.