My thoughts Gun/lance, and HBG (Bit of Charge blade too.)

[Kinesis]

So my story goes like this:

Originally a gunlance main, played through all of worlds as either gunlance (which I realized is basically a hard mode difficulty multiplier now...) or charge blade if gunlance felt too inept to win the fight. I like the shield and counter gameplay, and I like the mechanics of ammo management and accumulation both CB and GL have. Issue was, gunlance felt so horridly inept at not getting fly-swatted between every single attack. I basically found it impossible to play iceborn because I got could not get enough damage in to beat the gate fight mission. CB also suffered a bit in Iceborn from the same problems, as monsters had so few openings that SAED felt like a "just hit me for half my health" button every time I used it. So I never finished iceborn, and left resenting it.

At the time, I never played lance, because I heard it was the "charge around" weapon, and not the amazing hard-counter weapon it is in wilds.

So anyway, in wilds I played through all of the campaign on gunlance, which even at the altered difficulty and more counter-points still felt like I was ham-strung down to poke-shell or the even more META but boring shell-sweep combo. So I basically just got beat up the entire campaign because I still like the counter-overhead-shell combo or the old wyrmstake method and the new faster wyvern bast.

But after the campagin I tried some new weapons, and found out again that GL is still either boring META only or hard mode.

I tried CB, and found out that the shield is now ornamental because the new design REALLY, REALLY discourages you from being in sword/shield mode for more than the time it takes to charge phials. Then it wants you to stay forever in axe mode, so much so even a counter attack puts you in axe mode. Makes you wonder why you can still charge your blade anymore. So CB is no longer for the likes of me.

HBG turned out very interesting, but ultimately very mundane. I like that it has a dedicated guard button, but your typical ammo has really long attack animations now. Scatter shot is asking to get hit mid animation, reloading special ammo is asking to get hit mid animation, even normal ammo can animation lock you into getting hit if you fire it a second too late. Special ammo also suffers from being too low total ammo count, and too difficult to stock useful quantities of craftables to make more. But HBG was still serviceable, but the damage feels lacking outside of corrupt mantle abuse.

But then I tried lance, and I realized what all of the other weapons were missing. Holy wow Lance feels like easy mode by comparison (not that it actually is easy, it just has reasonable access to countering, and I am good at perfect counters when I am not constantly animation stun-locked by basic attacks...)

Just switching from GL/HBG to Lance practically halved the time it takes for me to hunt tempered monsters. You never feel punished for having to block as lance, but having to ready up to block an attack with CB, HBG, or GL all feel like wasted potential.

Honestly, GL could really use some of that counter attack potential lance has. Like honestly why cant the counter attack for GL be a quick wyrm stake poke? Why cant the GL charge up a counter if you hold down the reload? Then the counter could be a charge up wyrm stake and shelling? The GL just feels like an infinitely worse lance with its lengthy animations and lackluster countering.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Sure people will show up with the "get gud don't touch my GL META" now or something.

[zmanbuilder]

I used to be a GL main but switched to Lance and i combo it with HBG.

I stopped liking GL for the same reason you stated, i felt punished for blocking, and the meta combo is boring. I switched to Lance because i wanted to be rewarded for blocking, and it really delivers.

I do not know how far you are into wilds, but if you can, i suggest the arkvulcan beta set, it has the agro draw passive and heals you on hits, making you a powerful tank.

[Kinesis]

Diposting pertama kali oleh zmanbuilder:

I used to be a GL main but switched to Lance and i combo it with HBG.

I stopped liking GL for the same reason you stated, i felt punished for blocking, and the meta combo is boring. I switched to Lance because i wanted to be rewarded for blocking, and it really delivers.

I do not know how far you are into wilds, but if you can, i suggest the arkvulcan beta set, it has the agro draw passive and heals you on hits, making you a powerful tank.

Hit HR 88 today, so I would say I have been at it for a decent while.

I don't have any kit issues, as I know I am not one to run META. Most of my kit is around gimmick negation, so anti-bind, anti-stun, anti-blight, anti-stagger and the like. I run 4 arkvald beta and 1 jin for the anti-bind.

I used the same armor set for all weapons, and I run the offense guard for that 15% damage on perfect counter regardless of weapon. With GL it meant a lot of overhead slam full bursts, if I didn't get smacked out of the long animation for doing so.

Still, monster hunter being monster hunter, even at nearly 400 defense, a 5 star temper will smack you for a large portion of your health on nearly every attack if you mess up a counter, and you have no hope of evasion on GL.

Honestly though a charge up counter for GL would make it so much better. So many weapons have offsets too now. I mean the great sword has gaurd, offset, and reasonable dodge now. Wouldn't be too much to ask to give the GL a lance like harder counter to make blocking worth the effort.

[EnderYoshi]

With the GL, I just treat it as a walking tank, and I just like running around with a lance that explodes, just shields up and if the monster misses or I perfect guard, I slap them, biggest problem is when you do Wyvern's Burst (I think that's it's name?)on accident because you want to reload and get slapped across your battle ground.

I do find it weird there is next to no range on something with Gun in it's name though.

[zmanbuilder]

The meta for GL was and still is evade extender.

[EnderYoshi]

Diposting pertama kali oleh zmanbuilder:

The meta for GL was and still is evade extender.

Honestly, the normal sidestep is not worth pressing without that, plus good for getting in/out combat quick.