Iai Spirit Slash Kinda Useless?

[Eguzky]

1. I have to counter an attack. Which is pretty difficult on some monsters.

2. It only raises my Spirit Level. Seems good...except I use Silkbind Sakura Slash, which ALSO raises my Spirit Level and does not require me to time it to a monster's attack.

3. Even if I do git gud and counter monster attacks; 99% of the time, the attack carries the monster past me,and the multi-hit counter-attack is centered on ME, not the monster. So I end up countering, dashing past the monster (who's momentum carries them away from me), and end up not doing any damage.

Points 2 & 3 are the sticking point; I'm trying to counter an attack and my reward is Spirit Level, which I can easily get in other ways, and damage, which rarely ever hits because monsters are so mobile that they are not where the damage procs.
Unless, even with git gud timing; I'm still doing something wrong? Why does it seem like every monster just waddles out of the damage zone due to their momentum?

[Taiga]

In SB? Yeah, it is kinda useless. It used to be good for 3 reasons: Fastest way to charge Spirit, High Damage and it being a counter.

In SB Sakura Slash is the fastest way to charge spirit while also being 10 times easier to use and the new Sacred Sheath is the highest damage ability for LS.

So in SB spamming Sakura slash+Sacred is, by miles, the best and highest combo. It charges the spirit gage the fastest, deals the most damage by a lot and its brain dead easy to use, as you don't need to time a counter or jump at the right time to land a helm breaker. Just, zip, zip, zip, sacred, easy 2k damage.

Don't get me wrong, you can still play LS as a counter weapon if you want, but the effort vs reward is no longer there when you can use a new brain dead combo and deal triple the damage.

[Egro]

Well there is that charge Iai slash which drain your entire spirit gauge. Useful against down monster and deal a fair bit of damages. The vanilla Iai is only there for cool factor.

[815|Shouldabeen]

The skill cap was raised for ISS quite a bit in SB. You have to use Harvest Moon in order to get back the power they nerfed on it. But then you're locked in an area with a monster that can freely move out of it. As Taiga said, it's just easier and just about as effective to just use Sakura Slash with Sacred Sheathe. I wouldn't write off helm breaker, but you can get pretty starved for wirebugs. I started using Redirection recently and it helps more than WBW3 if you can utilize it's counter, but even still wirebugs get tight.

[Nerevar]

it would still be good if harvest moon wasnt utter trash design wise. nobody uses it in regular hunts. speaks for itself. same happend with ISS in iceborne. nobody but speedrunners ever used it. reward vs effort is just off way too far into effort for it currently.
this thing has no buisness costing 2 wirebugs for example. absolutely none. and the area should be alot bigger aswell to prevent the monster simply running out of it constantly.

they really didnt think this move trough at all. sigh.

inb4 they nerf SSS aswell to force people to use the counters again.

weapon is way to dependant on wirebugs now tbh. you are constantly out of them even with ww3 with the playstyle tc discribes. and yet monsters still get thier forced "must use wirefall or die" combos.

i really hope they start removeing some devs from the mh teams. some of them are clearly biased. they nerf melee weapons all the time but never really nerf ranged weapons for once aside some ammo types here and there so people just switch ammo type and still go pew pew pew.

doesnt help that SSS+SSC for LS is ALOT better to use in multiplayer as getting counters in mp simply sucks. everyone knows why...

[Veritas]

Iai spirit sheathe is still preferred for countering, it's consistent and has many strong follow ups. Getting the most out of it however requires harvest moon, and the vast majority of ls players are going to be average schmucks that need to sheathe way too often to be worth it. So the low skill sakura slash + sacred sheathe is better for them.

The esception is monsters like Mizutsine, they move far too much and/or have dramatic topples that send them flying away from you. Harvest moon is pretty terrible on those monsters if you don't have them in a very small part of the map.

[ggAkatsukiP]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i really hope they start removeing some devs from the mh teams. some of them are clearly biased. they nerf melee weapons all the time but never really nerf ranged weapons for once aside some ammo types here and there so people just switch ammo type and still go pew pew pew

I know its sad to remove some of the dev team, but they really should do it.

Even the og street fighter team Yoshinori Ono get yeet out of the team. The street fighter v only then finally pick up and take a better turn, but its way too late for the game already. They are learning past mistake of Ono and making the better sf6.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by ggAkatsukiP:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i really hope they start removeing some devs from the mh teams. some of them are clearly biased. they nerf melee weapons all the time but never really nerf ranged weapons for once aside some ammo types here and there so people just switch ammo type and still go pew pew pew

I know its sad to remove some of the dev team, but they really should do it.

Even the og street fighter team Yoshinori Ono get yeet out of the team. The street fighter v only then finally pick up and take a better turn, but its way too late for the game already. They are learning past mistake of Ono and making the better sf6.

These are some of the most stupid comments I've read in a while... People, the devs do not decide the weapon balance, what are you even talking about? You have a problem then take it up with the designers of those weapons or whatever their role at Capcom is called. Devs just make the game, they don't decide how weapons work.

Also, you hope they GET FIRED? Lost their jobs over, what, some random guy from the internet who doesn't like how they did something? How self important can you get? Oh my god...

[awanderingswordsman]

Because they put too much of LS's power budget in the incredibly poorly thought out harvest moon.

[ggAkatsukiP]

Originally posted by DaBa:

Originally posted by ggAkatsukiP:

I know its sad to remove some of the dev team, but they really should do it.

Even the og street fighter team Yoshinori Ono get yeet out of the team. The street fighter v only then finally pick up and take a better turn, but its way too late for the game already. They are learning past mistake of Ono and making the better sf6.

These are some of the most stupid comments I've read in a while... People, the devs do not decide the weapon balance, what are you even talking about? You have a problem then take it up with the designers of those weapons or whatever their role at Capcom is called. Devs just make the game, they don't decide how weapons work.

Also, you hope they GET FIRED? Lost their jobs over, what, some random guy from the internet who doesn't like how they did something? How self important can you get? Oh my god... :mhwhelp:

Sorry that I know nothing and you know more.

Thanks.

I hope you are happy.

[Laughing kookaburra]

Originally posted by Taiga:

In SB? Yeah, it is kinda useless. It used to be good for 3 reasons: Fastest way to charge Spirit, High Damage and it being a counter.

In SB Sakura Slash is the fastest way to charge spirit while also being 10 times easier to use and the new Sacred Sheath is the highest damage ability for LS.

So in SB spamming Sakura slash+Sacred is, by miles, the best and highest combo. It charges the spirit gage the fastest, deals the most damage by a lot and its brain dead easy to use, as you don't need to time a counter or jump at the right time to land a helm breaker. Just, zip, zip, zip, sacred, easy 2k damage.

Don't get me wrong, you can still play LS as a counter weapon if you want, but the effort vs reward is no longer there when you can use a new brain dead combo and deal triple the damage.

you are wrong
every SB LS speedruns are running with ISS + SHB loop
its damage is garbage for sure but it's not useless

[Max]

Not really useless, it still good in solo. But in co-op Sakura slash is more easy.
I wish the harvest moon is the buff on weapon not a damn circle, is impossible to use in co-op lol

[Shae]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

it would still be good if harvest moon wasnt utter trash design wise. nobody uses it in regular hunts. speaks for itself. same happend with ISS in iceborne. nobody but speedrunners ever used it. reward vs effort is just off way too far into effort for it currently.
this thing has no buisness costing 2 wirebugs for example. absolutely none. and the area should be alot bigger aswell to prevent the monster simply running out of it constantly.

they really didnt think this move trough at all. sigh.

inb4 they nerf SSS aswell to force people to use the counters again.

weapon is way to dependant on wirebugs now tbh. you are constantly out of them even with ww3 with the playstyle tc discribes. and yet monsters still get thier forced "must use wirefall or die" combos.

i really hope they start removeing some devs from the mh teams. some of them are clearly biased. they nerf melee weapons all the time but never really nerf ranged weapons for once aside some ammo types here and there so people just switch ammo type and still go pew pew pew.

doesnt help that SSS+SSC for LS is ALOT better to use in multiplayer as getting counters in mp simply sucks. everyone knows why...

Melee damage is pretty good right now, I know GS is sittin pretty, BB Full burst seems to be doing well for Gunlance. People are discovering the HH and I have even seen some switchaxes and a few CB but I see WAY more LS than anything else.

[awanderingswordsman]

Of course you see way more LS. It's always been that way, even in games when LS was terrible. People like long anime swords.

[Eguzky]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

Of course you see way more LS. It's always been that way, even in games when LS was terrible. People like long anime swords.

Longswords are a win/win for me:

1. Either I SSS a charging monster, slide past them, do multiple hits, & stagger them. Feels anime.

2. Or the stagger does not happen and the monster flings my skinny arse 50 yards in a hilarious example of 'reality ensued'. Makes me laugh my arse off sometimes.
Had it happen on the 3-star to 4-star Rampage: I SSS, the monster flung me straight up, then punched me into a wall.
My Hunter would have been upset, if he were not so heavily concussed from the impact.

[DaBa]

Also, to the actual point of the thread, Iai Spirit Slash is far from useless. Yes, you can spam sakura slash and yes, you can use sacred sheath, but in practice the most effective playstyle is still the good old Iai spam + helm breaker to use the gauge, especially since it's made even better by Harvest Moon. At least that's how it looks right now. Why? Few things.

Sakura slash has a lot of drawbacks: it forces wirebugs on a really long cooldown so it's not very spammable, you still have to dip into other moves to get back to red when wirebugs are on cooldown, even if you run wirebug whisperer. Plus, it makes using wirefall something that you never want to do since every single wirebug ties to your sword level. Plus, it's a very long move that you can often miss with because of how much it moves you, and if you only hit once with it you're barely doing any damage. All in all, might be a super easy to level up your sword, but it's not efficient at it. Iai slash is still way better: can be spammed over and over, when combined with harvest moon does comparable damage and does it faster, is a faster move, does not cost wirebugs, can be used to iframe attacks as well. Iai slash is still overal a superior way to get to red.

Now for spending red gauge. Helmbreaker seems like the superior option still. Sacred Sheath seems extremely powerful. On paper. If you've played with it in practice you'll know that it is a really hard move to pull off correctly on a monster that is not incapacitated in some way. If you hit the same part with all 3 moves (harder than it sounds actually due to how wide the hitbox is) it technically can do over twice the damage of a soaring kick, but it's way less impressive if you actually look at the move more closely.

Firstly it's REALLY SLOW, even if you run quick sheathe the time required to pull of this move completely is probably like double of the whole animation of soaring kick + helmbreaker. That alone makes it so much harder to pull off in a lot of situations. That is somehow remedies by the fact you can reposition yourself, but doing that also wastes a lot of time, remember that dashing around for a few seconds to dodge an attack and line up yours is time wasted, in that time you could've done an additional Iai slash and be in the process of doing next helmbreaker probably. And that's just one thing. If you make a mistake and get hit during it you're royally effed because your sword is back to being uncharged, mistakes are extremely costly. If you fail a helmbreaker at worst you go back to yellow. Thirdly, the fact you have to use up all your sword levels to get the most out of it. It stings, it stings even more if you cannot get free white immediately after sacred sheathe, can happen sometimes when you cannot do a follow up. And again, helmbreaker only drops one level, which you can recover immediately with an Iai slash.

So in conclusion, Sakura slash is still very meh and loses to Iai slash completely. I would actually prefer to run tempered spirit slash than sakura slash even. Sacred sheathe is in theory extremely powerful, but it reality it needs absolutely perfect setups and perfect execution to actually shine, helmbreaker is simply faster, more versitile, and still a very powerful move so I cannot imagine it ever being completely replaced by sacred sheathe. The best use I can find for it right now is to have it on the second scroll, and switch to it if you can get a topple or some kind of a long window to pull it off safely. But for general LS gameplay it's still the same old Iai Slash + Helm Breaker combo, with some added spice in form of Harvest Moon. But, who knows, people are still learning things, maybe next year the players will figure out things so well Sacred Sheathe will turn into an actual staple of LS gameplay.