Is latent power trash?

[Dandelion]

Is it any better than weakness exploit

[nicken chugger]

Latent power is pretty good in this game. Determining if its better than wex or not is a lot of "depends".
It activates after either 2 minutes have passed while in combat or you take 130 damage, and it lasts for 2 minutes. 50% uptime from just timer is acceptable, and if you can proc it early either by guarding/tackling or you just get hit a lot, it's quite good. However on short hunts it's worthless since the monster would just die before latent power can activate.

In general, I would say that wex is probably better since the 30% part from weak points is effectively always active, but the 20% from wounds is rather unreliable. The scaling on early levels of wex is also rather poor, so I would suggest going all or nothing on it.
Maximum might is better than both if your weapon (and playstyle) can use it, so max it out and fill the missing space with another skill of your choice depending on how much more affinity you need. Latent power also improves max might uptime, even with just 1 point.
If your weapon starts with low affinity and can't use max might, you will probably end up using both wex and latent power. E.g. 5% base affinity, 25% from frenzy/antivirus, 20% from latent power 2, and 50% from wex 5.
Latent power can also be used to compensate for the inconsistent uptime of the wex affinity from hitting wounds. Ditching wex entirely for latent power is also viable if you can proc it early.
The rey dau set builds latent power rather easily. Either the helmet, gloves, or boots can be mixed in with 4 pieces of gore armor for 1-2 points of latent power alongside wex and frenzy. The rey dau set bonus also improves latent power duration by quite a bit.

[chuchuTrain]

I have never liked this skill, if i play good it activates when the monster is running away.
If im garbo, its not usefull because im garbo.

I better just use peak performance.

[Aoitenshi]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dandelion:

Is latent power trash?

I don't like anything with less than 90% uptime, so I never use latent power in my build. I use weakness exploit for the 30% affinity anyway, the 20% on wound is just bonus.

[The Debauchery]

Latent Power is a bit iffy to use because it is basically on a timer, and the description has always been needlessly cagey. I prefer almost any other boost because for the others you know full well when it is going to be active and when it isn't.

Wex is practically mandatory, and will be all the moreso when Master Rank rolls around.

[Casval Zem Daikun]

For Wide Gunlance it is.

[skald]

It is
You just never see builds or speedruns with it

[Khergit Horse Archer]

im not a speedrunner nor am i even good but i prefer max might over this or even agitator cuz uptime, also i use wex

[Toyosatomimi no Miko]

It's really good, and the only affinity skill that wasn't nerfed from prior games.
50% affinity at half uptime = 25% affinity across hunt without forcing you to hit soft bits like wex does. So you can be a team player and not yet another cutting weapon clogging the head. Also, because it's a larger boost during a specific window the effects are much more pronounced which means more monster staggers from damage.

People just aren't willing to give up wex for it and you usually can't run both and gore at the same time. If you're going to run it I suggest 4 Gore 1 Rey Dau and use a latent power charm.

[Echo2Omega]

Oprindeligt skrevet af skald:

It is
You just never see builds or speedruns with it

Wonder how come?
NOT REALLY.

Oh yeah.
1. takes 2 minutes to activate. Most speed runs are over in under 2 minutes.
2. can also be activated by taking damage. Speed runs [almost] never take damage.

[Gamefever]

Latent power is sort of trash.

2 minutes OR you gotta take almost enough damage to one shot you.

Well there are a lot of skills that work better than LP.

WEX
Burst
Counter Attack
Mighty
...
...
Agitator
Latent Power <---Somewhere down here

[Gamefever]

Burst
Counter Attack
Earplugs

Possibly the best gear skills for a lot of situations and really helpful for most players and keeps damage pretty high.

Late game content just bring Earplugs unless you can down the Monster before it roars aka speed runner know what you are doing.

[Nobody watches your TTV]

The damage is added up, not requiring 1 hit of 180.

issue with wex is the nerf and the fact that not every part that you might want to break is considered weak

[SandrocK]

LP (latent power) isn't that trash, but if you compare it to Weakness Exploit I think you may wish to check your dumpster.

WeX is always activated if you hit a weakspot and gives you 30% affinity; +extra 20% if you smack a wounded part.

LP on the otherhand gives 50% affinity and 50% stamina depletion on activation, this looks better on paper but it has a 2min uptime and 2min downtime. But that's not the worst part, the worst part is the activation method. To activate it you need to get smacked with 120 up to 150 dmg in health. Let's say sure you get hit a lot in multiplayer, but at this point I think your priority is to either master your weapon and learn the monster. Getting hit for 150 sure is an easy feat, but how long do you think you can accumulate 150 hits worth of damage unto you?

so in conclusion, we can't really compare WeX5 with LP5, because it doesn't justify the downtime it has. IIRC LP5 has an average uptime of 63% (with ray2). The hunt wouldve been over 5min ago, if you didn't get hit in the 1st 30s up to a min; and that all depends how long you planning on getting hit.

[BunnyBunny]

If you have no use of stamina reduction, don't take latent power.

There was a time where stamina comsuption reduction was tedious to get, where having 4 hunters on the same weak part was problematic because of friendlyfire and where hunts lasted more than 5 minutes.

[Knavenformed]

Latent power is nice if you can slap it on your build after getting a more consistent damage focus going first

But sacrificing any conditional but constant skill just to max latent power is going to be suboptimal