Calling for veteran input: Greatswords?

[Null Winter]

So, greatswords seem to have this niche of huge burst damage. Charge up when the monster is vulnerable or targeting someone else, smash one body part, and then decide whether to charge into the next part of your limited combo or bail out.

In most hunts, does this burst style realistically keep up with the DPS of similarly tiered faster weapons, though? In the time it takes me to go through the greatsword's entire combo once, a longsword user has entered their enhanced mode, countered a monster attack to soft stun them, and used their entire movelist, and a dual sword user has entered and exited Archdemon mode for their weapons' entire sharpness gauge while beyblading across multiple body parts, AND the heavy bowgun user has pumped out two entire magazines from beyond the monster's retaliation range. And all that is hoping the boss has not decided to simply move out of the greatsword's reach, negating potentially the entire charge chain.

What about utility? Yeah, the greatsword can block at the cost of sharpness and now has Power Clash and Offset interrupts to serve as a tank role, but the lances both do that better and the greatsword's low attack rate output means they generally aren't holding the monster's aggro enough to properly tank. The hammer also has a more mobile charged burst movelist, with the ability to easily cause part breaks on blunt-vulnerable parts and full stuns.

[Türknauf]

my take is that you pick whatever weapon you get the best overall feeling from.
unless you join a hyper specific lobby where people use a dedicated strategy (old MH4U HAME), play what you are comfortable with. remember, low dps will not end a hunt, the 3rd cart will.

if you really want to decide solely based on dps potential, here is a link to a reddit post showing a graph of the kill times against the hardest monster from the first Open Beta Test, one weapon only and no cheese with enviromental damage (like boulders):
link

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by Türknauf:

my take is that you pick whatever weapon you get the best overall feeling from.
unless you join a hyper specific lobby where people use a dedicated strategy (old MH4U HAME), play what you are comfortable with. remember, low dps will not end a hunt, the 3rd cart will.

if you really want to decide solely based on dps potential, here is a link to a reddit post showing a graph of the kill times against the hardest monster from the first Open Beta Test, one weapon only and no cheese with enviromental damage (like boulders):
link

I didn't ask about feel because I got the feel back in the open beta; I was asking for input on efficiency experiences. The link helps somewhat with that, though it's a bit biased with an apex that spends a small amount of time in the air and has many committed "railgun" attacks where it happily sits still for whatever you want to do to it.

[Tenz]

The appeal of greatswords in monster hunter milds is that it can both block for power struggles and counter for counter attacks, both of these are new ways to fight the monsters.

Not every weapon can do both.

[Scriggleton]

Historically, blocking with a greatsword is more of an emergency "panic button" sort of thing, and something smart positioning, timing, and skill make almost unnecessary.

You might be able to out-damage a GS with a heavy bowgun (and I appreciate everyone I've ever hunted with who comes along with highly specialized HB builds and ammunition) but the same can be said for any weapon in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing or someone who doesn't but is running a cheeky meta setup.

I never run anything other than GS and don't plan on changing that for Wilds. Greatswords let you play aggressively, and they're simple and put out huge numbers.

[Poyzo]

For efficiency purposes, GS is behind all of the ranged weapons and Dual Blades. Slightly above mid.

[★ Moonlight ★]

Greatsword is fairly consistently one of the highest damage dealing weapons, IF you don't miss. You mention the Longsword specifically, which is actually typically lower in dps output compared to the Greatsword, but TBH all weapons are close enough to be viable.
Wilds has increased its consistency by letting you aim the charge attacks better with focus mode.

[zmanbuilder]

Become a lance main.

[Zulban]

Greatsword has other options other than trying to go straight for the TCS in every situation. Try using some of the greatsword's other moves or try hitting with just the first charged attack if you think the monster is about to move out of the way, your damage numbers might be lower but they'll ideally be more consistent. When the monster is incapacitated in some way is when you really should be aiming to hit the TCS.

Then again I don't primarily play greatsword, but with these big-hitting weapons it's often tempting to try to go for your biggest damaging moves and forget that the rest of the weapon moveset even exists.

[Nix]

I see this question pop up here and there with every new game, and the answer is always the same: don't stress it, play whatever you enjoy. I've extensively played all the weapons in MH3 and every title after it, and none of them have ever felt unloved or unviable for any tier of content.

Look at it this way; that longsword hits for 50-100 per attack. Dual blades, 10-50. HBG, maybe 800 per magazine? Assuming they're using ammo appropriate for the monster, and from the correct distance.
In that same power tier, you're swinging for 2k on a true charge.

And sure, the monster might move out of the way. That's true for all weapons, they all have varying degrees of prediction, commitment, and general risk/reward.
Greatsword has some surprisingly quick and wide- or high-reaching attacks, and they still do good damage in the same windows where any other weapon would also only get 1-2 attacks in.
Once you figure out a monster's moveset, you can learn to predict their position a few seconds ahead based off where and in which direction they start an attack (knowing how far they move with that attack, you'll know with certainty where they'll be at the end of that attack). Once you have that down, you can start setting up true charges with ease.

All of that said, choice of weapon type only matters for the specific monster you're fighting. Ex, Rathalos spends a lot of time flying; hammers, sword/shield, dual blades are going to struggle to hit him effectively. Uragaan is heavily armored, you can only hit his underside effectively. That invalidates most weapons, but sword/shield and dual blades can perfectly tuck in under him and hack away at his belly.

[Velber]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

Originally posted by Türknauf:

my take is that you pick whatever weapon you get the best overall feeling from.
unless you join a hyper specific lobby where people use a dedicated strategy (old MH4U HAME), play what you are comfortable with. remember, low dps will not end a hunt, the 3rd cart will.

if you really want to decide solely based on dps potential, here is a link to a reddit post showing a graph of the kill times against the hardest monster from the first Open Beta Test, one weapon only and no cheese with enviromental damage (like boulders):
link

I didn't ask about feel because I got the feel back in the open beta; I was asking for input on efficiency experiences. The link helps somewhat with that, though it's a bit biased with an apex that spends a small amount of time in the air and has many committed "railgun" attacks where it happily sits still for whatever you want to do to it.

its pretty effiecent, only downside is charge time for special hit combos and making sure to aim it correctly

[Imrayzo]

U already answered urself but this version of the GS its the best ever to play in multiplayer because:
-TCS its still your most powerfull move but the other charges are strong now to, even uncharged attacks now do more damage.
-Offsets are really easy to pull off, the timing and the hit boxes are really generous.
-The weapon dont depend on wounds as much as others.
-Gs can pop wounds in the air like IG and SnS.
-Focus mode.
(Watch some rey dau speed runs the weapon its not doing sub 4s but ive seen some sub 5s without using any rocks the core of the weapon its the same, if u know well the monster u will destroy it)

[Veritas]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

So, greatswords seem to have this niche of huge burst damage. Charge up when the monster is vulnerable or targeting someone else, smash one body part, and then decide whether to charge into the next part of your limited combo or bail out.

In most hunts, does this burst style realistically keep up with the DPS of similarly tiered faster weapons, though? In the time it takes me to go through the greatsword's entire combo once, a longsword user has entered their enhanced mode, countered a monster attack to soft stun them, and used their entire movelist, and a dual sword user has entered and exited Archdemon mode for their weapons' entire sharpness gauge while beyblading across multiple body parts, AND the heavy bowgun user has pumped out two entire magazines from beyond the monster's retaliation range. And all that is hoping the boss has not decided to simply move out of the greatsword's reach, negating potentially the entire charge chain.

What about utility? Yeah, the greatsword can block at the cost of sharpness and now has Power Clash and Offset interrupts to serve as a tank role, but the lances both do that better and the greatsword's low attack rate output means they generally aren't holding the monster's aggro enough to properly tank. The hammer also has a more mobile charged burst movelist, with the ability to easily cause part breaks on blunt-vulnerable parts and full stuns.

You're overthinking it.

In almost every game it's been in, greatsword has been pretty consistently in the top 6 spots of measuring weapons by DPS alone, usually only beaten by gunner weapon(s) or a specific instance i.e. insect glaive and charge blade in MH4(U). Of course, there's way more nuance to monster hunter than that-- greatsword does tremendous bonus buildup towards causing trips, flinches, staggers and part breaks, more than any other weapon in this regard for example.

Monster Hunter is also a game you don't really divide into roles. Using your example, "tanking" with lance is not really what it's about, the shield just substitutes evasion to enable counter attacking and aggressive positioning when most other weapons would need to reposition entirely. Turtling up and just standing there taking a bunch of hits accomplishes nothing, and there are plenty of ways to be proactive with lance.

Very few fights are built around one hunter holding aggro, and both examples I can think of are from monster hunter world-- behemoth with its enmity gimmick, which is entirely unrelated to tanking and simply a way to keep it from spamming AoE moves and more about not running around like a headless chicken so it isn't running around the map constantly. Safi borrows the enmity mechanic in Iceborne, and once again, it's more about being able to direct where Safi moves than it is about aggro.

[Tenz]

behemoth is not a real monster hunter fight.

[awanderingswordsman]

GS has the highest average speedrun times across all games in the series for a melee weapon.

Will GS be good in wilds? Nobody knows. Balance in these games tends to be very good with the worst performers only being a little worse than the best melees (guns are broken OP in every MH game). Additionally, the balance changes from game to game so it's entirely possible this will suddenly be the one game where it's bad. Beta tierlists are effectively useless. Not only will some values be changed, potentially a lot, but the weapons don't have the armor skills you'd generally want to run on them. These can make a huge difference like quick sheathe on LS or frostcraft on GS, or rapid morph on CB. We don't know the skills and their availability and their values so it's very difficult to predict what will end up being strong.

Also no weapon is going to fulfill any role but DPS. That is the only role in these games. Agro is not generated based on damage or attack frequency, it's random with 2 skills in some games that effect your weight in the pool of targets but those skills generally aren't worth running on purpose (sometimes you'll just have em on a piece of gear you are using anyway) and their effect is pretty minor.

Even more additionally than all that, weapon balance is usually only considered at end game (where you will get 95% of your playtime). At end game, it's pretty reasonable to just make sets for every weapon that remotely interests you. During progression, the tier list would be different (like guns wouldn't be OP and actually probably kinda weak, part of what makes em OP is they just get more damage boosts from their armor skills). However, progression is very easy (and frankly endgame of a base game is also pretty easy) so really, it's not worth optimizing until you know more about the game anyway.