The game has a few balance issues.

[Fast]

Punish Windows are too small. Nothing much to say here. For a solo player the game is frustrating as hell and whilst i understand the co op encouragement , its nice to play alone sometimes.

Monster Enrage is too frequent and creates player down time without the ability to punish

Monster run away too frequently - its tiresome - stop it

Weapon balance - Only Bow and Claw blade is any good. The punishment windows make the slower weapons significantly less dps, and the staff even when mastered will still perform worse due to the rng nature of it and punish windows subsequently being missed.

Bugged/broken building - occasionally when you build things , if you are too quick they will stack inside eachother and if you are too slow you get punished by monster, please fix.

Stamina even with gear can be quite punishing because of the amount of space you have to cover to get to monsters for you then have to recover so you can dodge/slide etc. I dont think this is horrible but some small tweaks to base stamina would be nice.

The ball is useless garbage, buff it.

EDIT : I have capped out 5/8 weapons at this point, and stand by everything here.
The Bow and Claw are the most consistent best clear times.
The staff is extremely powerful, but still a bit rng based and can do better than the bow or claw or worse depending on the monster, and a bunch of variables. All other weapons are mediocre.

The ball is still trash. I maxed him out. still trash.
Monsters outside of the ultra red ones run too frequently. The enrage is just annoying.
|Punish windows are too small on some monsters not all.
Stamina is annoying and needs changing.
building needs fixing in co op particularly.
Monsters diminishing returns on karakuri mean building becomes obsolete too quickly in 3 player co op on the volatile stuff especially when the co op members have low damage.

[Rena Ichigawa]

Only bow and claw are good? Don't make me laugh. I've been smashing in monster skills since launch with hammer, and nodachi. Is now and claw easier? Well duh, one is ranged with no movement restrictions. The other is all about flying around like a crack addled chimpanzee. Does true melee take more thought, and setup? Definitely, but it's far from imbalanced. Especially when I'm hitting enemies for thousands, while friends can barely touch 100 with charges on their bow. Not to mention the constant complaining about the claw's unnecessarily weird jump attack to latch the wire onto smaller monsters. If you can't play with true melee, just learn to dodge. The game is insanely forgiving about i-frames, and even has things like sidestep for distance, and something else that directly increases your i-frames, yet I don't need either to make even things like amitrerasu collapse to the ground with my slowest weapon in the game hammer.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Rena Ichigawa:

Only bow and claw are good? Don't make me laugh. I've been smashing in monster skills since launch with hammer, and nodachi. Is now and claw easier? Well duh, one is ranged with no movement restrictions. The other is all about flying around like a crack addled chimpanzee. Does true melee take more thought, and setup? Definitely, but it's far from imbalanced. Especially when I'm hitting enemies for thousands, while friends can barely touch 100 with charges on their bow. Not to mention the constant complaining about the claw's unnecessarily weird jump attack to latch the wire onto smaller monsters. If you can't play with true melee, just learn to dodge. The game is insanely forgiving about i-frames, and even has things like sidestep for distance, and something else that directly increases your i-frames, yet I don't need either to make even things like amitrerasu collapse to the ground with my slowest weapon in the game hammer.

If you do less DPS and less damage over the fight...it is weaker.
Sure they are fun, i enjoy the nodachi a lot, but im not gonna lie to myself about how much weaker it is than the faster weapons with much higher dps outputs and much more consistent dps.

in a 6-7 minute fight a bow or claw will pull almost double the damage of a nodachi or maul and about 1.5x that of the staff.

The umbrella is actually reasonably good, but still marginally weaker than the bow and claw.

The katana is a slightly worse umbrella dps wise and will consistently pull less dps than those 3.

The maul and nodachi suffer with small punish windows and require setup which doesnt make them bad, but it does make them weaker than other weapons that dont require the same amount of setup for an overall less dps and less damage across the fight.

[Myrrdinn]

I do play Bow but I always have if its available but have soloed pretty much everything up to Golden Tempest. Now that damn Lion is SEVERLY overtuned. I realize it should be hard to solo but hes damn near impossible if you get hit and need to heal RIP cause he never stops attacking in solo and that worthless ass roller ball is just that pathetically worthless.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Myrrdinn:

I do play Bow but I always have if its available but have soloed pretty much everything up to Golden Tempest. Now that damn Lion is SEVERLY overtuned. I realize it should be hard to solo but hes damn near impossible if you get hit and need to heal RIP cause he never stops attacking in solo and that worthless ass roller ball is just that pathetically worthless.

I have solo everything in the game and yes, some of the monsters are hugely overtuned for solo play and are not fun, but frustrating.

[Rena Ichigawa]

I dunno about that. When I'm constantly at the monster hitting hundreds, two hundreds, then thousands breaking every part, I'm pretty sure the bow behind me isn't doing nearly as much without their arrow rain, or charged pierce they can't even get off half the time. Being able to make yourself unflattering with a giant weapon tends to be pretty busted strong compared to having to pincushion a monster from afar.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Rena Ichigawa:

I dunno about that. When I'm constantly at the monster hitting hundreds, two hundreds, then thousands breaking every part, I'm pretty sure the bow behind me isn't doing nearly as much without their arrow rain, or charged pierce they can't even get off half the time. Being able to make yourself unflattering with a giant weapon tends to be pretty busted strong compared to having to pincushion a monster from afar.

If you want to do big damage but not be consistent the staff is literally just a better maul/nodachi.

Its damage output is really mediocre(still better than maul or nodachi base) across all the forms except its finisher. but the finisher can drag its damage output up massively.

[Geist]

I think you just want a different type of game.

[Rena Ichigawa]

Oh I'm well aware. I love using the staff, it's such a fun weapon, but I don't play in the form of burst damage. Yes my third swing is miles stronger than everything else, but more often then not, long as the monster doesn't suddenly sprint across the battle field, I can usually keep them pretty heavily stunlocked with my maul. Hitting fully charged smashes over, and over again. God forbid if I setup repeating crossbows to keep the monster flinched till that first connection hits. As for everything else though, I 100% agree. Stamina doesn't last long enough for anything, and the buggy building ruining the making of walls, cannons, or whatever else gets old fast. Now when it comes to VOLATILE and so forth monsters I have no idea. I'm still only against mighty, and making a cake walk out of all but that sand tiger.

[Alex]

Only bow and blade? You're missing out on the hand cannon. Runs are done in 2-4 minutes. It's freaking OP.

[Grimzy]

Originally posted by Haru:

Only bow and blade? You're missing out on the hand cannon. Runs are done in 2-4 minutes. It's freaking OP.

Not just that, the staff is also amazing and so versatile....

Also, if OP is having issues soloing it just means he is not as good as he thinks he is.

[Ito]

Everyone is talking about the weapons balance here, but let's be honest, can we all agree with the fact that monsters are running away 3 to 5 times a hunt, sometimes you just have 1 minute to fight it before it leaves, it's sooooo frustrating for me as an MH player.
It's not even justified because the monsters does not have to eat or to go to sleep to recover health, and honestly sometines it's taking me more time to run after the monsters than to fight it, that's exhausting..

+ the monsters are constantly entering and exiting their Enrage mode, just, why ?? That's frustrating too..

I'm 20 hours in and monster variety is very low..
Mouse/Poison Mouse
Monkey / Ice Monkey
Boar / Ice Boar

I don't know if these varients count for the 20 kemonos thing, but's that's not much, honestly I was expecting 20 DIFFERENT Kemonos

[Rena Ichigawa]

Originally posted by Ito:

Everyone is talking about the weapons balance here, but let's be honest, can we all agree with the fact that monsters are running away 3 to 5 times a hunt, sometimes you just have 1 minute to fight it before it leaves, it's sooooo frustrating for me as an MH player.
It's not even justified because the monsters does not have to eat or to go to sleep to recover health, and honestly sometines it's taking me more time to run after the monsters than to fight it, that's exhausting..

+ the monsters are constantly entering and exiting their Enrage mode, just, why ?? That's frustrating too..

I'm 20 hours in and monster variety is very low..
Mouse/Poison Mouse
Monkey / Ice Monkey
Boar / Ice Boar

I don't know if these varients count for the 20 kemonos thing, but's that's not much, honestly I was expecting 20 DIFFERENT Kemonos

To be fair Monster hunter does the exact same thing. Plus has years of games to keep adding to the list. Rathian gets kinda not fun after rathian 4.0, because why just one varient if you can have several? Wild hearts is a new IP, with a new style of game for the company. I'm not surprised it's not nearly as polished, let alone have such a massive monster list as of yet. They plan to give free updates adding more quests, and monsters to the game at least that isnt locked behind a paid dlc.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Grimzy:

Originally posted by Haru:

Only bow and blade? You're missing out on the hand cannon. Runs are done in 2-4 minutes. It's freaking OP.

Not just that, the staff is also amazing and so versatile....

Also, if OP is having issues soloing it just means he is not as good as he thinks he is.

imagine being able to download a mod that shows dps and overall damage and seeing which ones are best. ...

Actual delusional.

The cannon is really bad.
The staff can pull the highest burst in the game, but due to building up the meter it cuts right down on its consistent dps which pulls its overall fight damage below that of the bow or claw.

I have finished the game, and cleared every single monster solo.
But what that has to do with anything regards to balance i dont know.

The game isnt hard. Its just frustrating.
My OP was about game balance. There is none. The weapons are imbalanced , leaning into faster more consistent weapons due to small punishment windows and enrages further decreases those punishment windows. Those weapons that require setup simply become weaker because the consistent damage issues are further made worse in the latter part of the game.

You then have problems with stamina which can be offset with gear somewhat and perks, But are still present.

[CookingMaMa]

That garbage ball can give u infinite thread for karakuri.
Dodge cant safe your life when fighting most end game monster, try use Celestial Anchor or Spring to dodge those attack and counter the monster at the same time.
Both of these karakuri have a quite long invincible frame.
of cause there is a learning curve for this, we all were noob to this game.
Karakuri is a very very useful on both offensive ,defensive or control
Manage your remaining thread is part of the fight

My main weapon is katana, so far no issue on solo any monster.
But yea.. weapons balance is not very good, claw blade gen threads sooooo fast
and threads make the game easy alot

[Ito]

Originally posted by Rena Ichigawa:

Originally posted by Ito:

Everyone is talking about the weapons balance here, but let's be honest, can we all agree with the fact that monsters are running away 3 to 5 times a hunt, sometimes you just have 1 minute to fight it before it leaves, it's sooooo frustrating for me as an MH player.
It's not even justified because the monsters does not have to eat or to go to sleep to recover health, and honestly sometines it's taking me more time to run after the monsters than to fight it, that's exhausting..

+ the monsters are constantly entering and exiting their Enrage mode, just, why ?? That's frustrating too..

I'm 20 hours in and monster variety is very low..
Mouse/Poison Mouse
Monkey / Ice Monkey
Boar / Ice Boar

I don't know if these varients count for the 20 kemonos thing, but's that's not much, honestly I was expecting 20 DIFFERENT Kemonos

To be fair Monster hunter does the exact same thing. Plus has years of games to keep adding to the list. Rathian gets kinda not fun after rathian 4.0, because why just one varient if you can have several? Wild hearts is a new IP, with a new style of game for the company. I'm not surprised it's not nearly as polished, let alone have such a massive monster list as of yet. They plan to give free updates adding more quests, and monsters to the game at least that isnt locked behind a paid dlc.

I know that and I don't ask wild hearts to be as polished and refined as MH, because I know MH has 20 years of experimenting behind it, just pointing out the problems I see and things that I don't like, I'm having fun with Wild hearts, and the game has so much potential, but right now it's hard for me to not feel frustrated by some design choices ahah