Rathalos question as a hammer user

[Dex]

So I'm currently about to take on Rathalos for the first time. I have the blazing hammer I (anjanath hammer) Raw damage: 780, fire: 210 and -20 affinity. Rathalos is obviously resistant towards fire and I guess he's weak to dragon.

I was thinking of using the Dragonbone Basher II: Raw: 572, dragon: 360 with 0 affinity.

Would the 360 dragon element make a difference when I'm losing 200 raw damage?

[Is This Your Card? 69]

Rathalos is weak to dragon attribute.

Here's a pic of all the monsters regarding their elemental weaknesses:
https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Monster-Hunter-World/mhw_monster_weakness_chart.png?v=1518928217472

[Dex]

Originally posted by Unveil:

Rathalos is weak to dragon attribute.

Here's a pic of all the monsters regarding their elemental weaknesses:
https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Monster-Hunter-World/mhw_monster_weakness_chart.png?v=1518928217472

Yep, and he's even weaker to dragon element. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if the difference between 360 elemental damage at 3 star weakness is worth losing 200 raw damage.

[SmallGespenst]

Well you're going from your element being dead weight to actually useful, and droping the anti-crit chance is a good idea too, one of the core gameplay features is makking new equipment for different situations, you should make the new hammer, dragon damage has a lot of utility

[Is This Your Card? 69]

Originally posted by Dex:

Originally posted by Unveil:

Rathalos is weak to dragon attribute.

Here's a pic of all the monsters regarding their elemental weaknesses:
https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Monster-Hunter-World/mhw_monster_weakness_chart.png?v=1518928217472

Yep, and he's even weaker to dragon element. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if the difference between 360 elemental damage at 3 star weakness is worth losing 200 raw damage.

No no, I mistook the icon and changed it to dragon like a minute after. But I still think the picture will be of use to you in the future.

Since I didn't know the answer to your question and you were kind of unsure about the Dragon weakness, I thought I'd post a pic about the elemental weakneses.

[Xilo The Odd]

for the moment, the raw damage is gonna be more beneficial on the hammer over elemental. later on elemental hammers can be a fun thing. my fav is a kulve taroth hammer that awakens to ice element.

early game though high raw damage over element on the slower swinging weapons is a solid choice.

[Hurricane]

Dragon damage reks all rath types massively.

So yes the dragon hammer even losing raw will do way more damage to raths

[dyne2alex]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

for the moment, the raw damage is gonna be more beneficial on the hammer over elemental. later on elemental hammers can be a fun thing. my fav is a kulve taroth hammer that awakens to ice element.

early game though high raw damage over element on the slower swinging weapons is a solid choice.

maybe all he does every fight is hold r trigger while moving then let it go and spin to win or do the spinning move using dem jumping ledges :p in those cases where there's lots of procs, it could be worth XD

[Dex]

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

for the moment, the raw damage is gonna be more beneficial on the hammer over elemental. later on elemental hammers can be a fun thing. my fav is a kulve taroth hammer that awakens to ice element.

early game though high raw damage over element on the slower swinging weapons is a solid choice.

That's kind of what I was thinking. I have a feeling people overestimate just how much damage elemental does (especially on hammer). I wish there was a way we could test out the different elemental weaknesses on different training dummies with different weaknesses.

[Dex]

Originally posted by dyne2alex:

Originally posted by Xilo The Odd:

for the moment, the raw damage is gonna be more beneficial on the hammer over elemental. later on elemental hammers can be a fun thing. my fav is a kulve taroth hammer that awakens to ice element.

early game though high raw damage over element on the slower swinging weapons is a solid choice.

maybe all he does every fight is hold r trigger while moving then let it go and spin to win or do the spinning move using dem jumping ledges :p in those cases where there's lots of procs, it could be worth XD

....hmmm....I might do that sometimes...lol XD

[Draescan]

Also I don't see people mentioning your current anji hammer's AWFUL negative affinity. As a rule of thumb, if it's below -10% affinity, don't touch it. It's not worth losing 1/4 of your damage output that often and since you're using a hammer, those hits NEED to count. Hammer's generally don't have positive affinity weapons if 3u and 4u are anything to go by, but with that being said, elemental weaknesses are usually a safe bet presuming of course the monster you are fighting is critically weak to it. If you're exploiting a 2 star weakness and don't have a crit build, it's usually just a waste and would be better to shoot for the " weak to raw " approach.


I mean think about it right now you have a 1/5 chance of your weapon randomly losing 25% of its damage. Ouch

[Draescan]

As an added note I forgot to mention, it's not like you can't use the negative affinity weapons. It's 100% possible to counteract it if you really wanted to, but is it worth it to you to use up skills or deco slots on a weapon with " let's face it " poor fire attributes and a focus on sheer damage output. It's like using the diablos hammer expecting the ice element it obtains later on to be the focus. It sort of defeats the purpose. To clarify I say it's poor because typically speaking you want your elemental weapons to be more like the bow builds, lots of crits, weakness exploit and some tasty tasty element attack up. Not a lot of sets for hammers that support that, and if you DO gear that way, you're steering yourself away from the hammer's intention, the bonks.

[Dex]

Originally posted by Mantis:

Also I don't see people mentioning your current anji hammer's AWFUL negative affinity. As a rule of thumb, if it's below -10% affinity, don't touch it. It's not worth losing 1/4 of your damage output that often and since you're using a hammer, those hits NEED to count. Hammer's generally don't have positive affinity weapons if 3u and 4u are anything to go by, but with that being said, elemental weaknesses are usually a safe bet presuming of course the monster you are fighting is critically weak to it. If you're exploiting a 2 star weakness and don't have a crit build, it's usually just a waste and would be better to shoot for the " weak to raw " approach.


I mean think about it right now you have a 1/5 chance of your weapon randomly losing 25% of its damage. Ouch

Actually it's not really that bad, my overall damage comes out to 740 instead of 780 with the negative affinity. Unless my calculations are totally off lol

[Draescan]

Originally posted by Dex:

Originally posted by Mantis:

Also I don't see people mentioning your current anji hammer's AWFUL negative affinity. As a rule of thumb, if it's below -10% affinity, don't touch it. It's not worth losing 1/4 of your damage output that often and since you're using a hammer, those hits NEED to count. Hammer's generally don't have positive affinity weapons if 3u and 4u are anything to go by, but with that being said, elemental weaknesses are usually a safe bet presuming of course the monster you are fighting is critically weak to it. If you're exploiting a 2 star weakness and don't have a crit build, it's usually just a waste and would be better to shoot for the " weak to raw " approach.


I mean think about it right now you have a 1/5 chance of your weapon randomly losing 25% of its damage. Ouch

Actually it's not really that bad, my overall damage comes out to 740 instead of 780 with the negative affinity. Unless my calculations are totally off lol

It's a 25% decrease when it procs if what I've read is to be believed.

[Dex]

Originally posted by Mantis:

Originally posted by Dex:

Actually it's not really that bad, my overall damage comes out to 740 instead of 780 with the negative affinity. Unless my calculations are totally off lol

It's a 25% decrease when it procs if what I've read is to be believed.

You're correct but it's actually not as bad as it sounds when you calculate the overall damage.

my 780 raw damage hammer for example has -20 affinity.

The calcuation is (from someone smarter than me) Damage(780) X Affinity (-.20) X .25 (that 25 percent) (this will get you how much damage you're losing or gaining from affinity) + Damage (780) = 741

[Draescan]

Originally posted by Dex:

Originally posted by Mantis:

It's a 25% decrease when it procs if what I've read is to be believed.

You're correct but it's actually not as bad as it sounds when you calculate the overall damage.

my 780 raw damage hammer for example has -20 affinity.

The calcuation is (from someone smarter than me) Damage(780) X Affinity (-.20) X .25 (that 25 percent) (this will get you how much damage you're losing or gaining from affinity) + Damage (780) = 741

Correct me if I'm wrong though but this is pre monster resist calculations too. So we're not seeing the inevitable damage dropoff on the weapon afterwards, and if affinity is calculated before the monster's resists are your damage would be much much lower than that would it not?