Charge blade question.

[Kashra Fall]

So just like before when I started fiddling with great sword, a question has arisen! I've recently fiddled with charge blade and love it. The initial complexity of the weapon (At first.) steered me away, but I now have enough hours that I felt confident in my own abilities to use the weapon properly. To my surprise, the damage potential was way higher than I ever could of expected, as well as the survivability.

I do however have a question, as my thread's title implies. The biggest damaging output of the charge blade is without a double the amped elemental discharge (With shield glowing.) I've looked into builds around this and almost all of them say "Artillery, focus, capacity." Capacity I understand, artillery, I also understand, but focus is a hit or miss really. You still "Basically." have to do the combo upwards to three times to get a full charge, right? Anyways! My question is this.

If the main damage output potential of the charge blade's elemental discharge is your priority, but it is a very situational move. Wouldn't it be better to build around crit instead of art/focus yada yada? I'm asking primarily through curiosity as I am sure someone here has far more knowledge than I on the situation and will hopefully help! Thanks in advance, good hunting!

[Shadowskyt]

I believe focus is for people who spam the charged attack.

If you spam only the 3 combo to charge up vials, then focus is unneeded.

Could be wrong though.

[Voodoo]

focus increases both charge speed of your double slash(which is fastest way to charge phials) and how fast your phials start to glow.

artillery also works only on impact phials so if you run elemental one skip on it.

[Kashra Fall]

Alright, yeah, that's the combo I do to charge. Hold B until the click, release to attack twice, hit Y+B to hit with the shield and hold B again. This normally (Even without focus) results in a full charge. At times with focus it results in an overcharge, so it is just curios as to why focus is such a popular choice.

[Ordaeli]

CB can be played without focus, but it adds some nice flow to the weapon. Makes the charge attack faster, faster phial charge. Also very slightly increase the "Sword charge" attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76rU_ptAag

[Kashra Fall]

Originally posted by Cracotte:

CB can be played without focus, but it adds some nice flow to the weapon. Makes the charge attack faster, faster phial charge. Also very slightly increase the "Sword charge" attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76rU_ptAag

Oh I see, thanks for the video. I never knew focus actually increased the time of the charged double slash...hmm. I will look into some things! Thanks for the help guys!

[Shadowskyt]

Originally posted by Cracotte:

CB can be played without focus, but it adds some nice flow to the weapon. Makes the charge attack faster, faster phial charge. Also very slightly increase the "Sword charge" attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S76rU_ptAag

Great video.

But to me, I think I would leave Focus out of my build.

I think I would be better of spending it on more Attack or even Vitality Deco's.

[Nimble Mind]

Using focus or not is entirely depend on your playstyle,
For me, i love to spam SAED on entire hunt, so Focus (2 or 3) is a must for me cuz it charges your phial faster and faster attack charging, I've tried without focus and it's meh, too slow and sluggish.

[Loot Hoarder]

With focus you can get red gauge to fill your phials just by using charge double slash and a round slash. Faster charge = more powerful moves you can use. And the phials you discharge cannot be crit, so using a high raw CB is always better, main reason why in the late game most people only use Diablo CB.

[Voodoo]

Originally posted by PROTECT ME SQUIRE!:

With focus you can get red gauge to fill your phials just by using charge double slash and a round slash. Faster charge = more powerful moves you can use. And the phials you discharge cannot be crit, so using a high raw CB is always better, main reason why in the late game most people only use Diablo CB.

Remember though that impact phials do less damage even with arillery than elemental phials.

If you want to stun monster once in about 6-7 saeds you pick impact, if you want damage though you should still match elemental to monster.

[TyresTyco]

I'm also focus lover. Like the other dude said it adds a nice flow to it. It all depends on playstyle. I also like to spam SAED a lot for the most dmg potential. Capacity boost and arti is mendatory there.

Phails don't crit and are not affected by sharpness multiplers. Thats why I only have handi 2 with the diablos cb. 6x90-100 phial hits are pretty nice.

[My Balls are Cook]

Focus is manditory unless you aren't using SAED.

Having Focus lets you do the combo Weak Slash or Advancing Slash>Charged Slash>Round Slash to have full phials, which is much faster than charged>shield bash>charged. It starts with a better and faster move (choose between weak and advancing slash for mobility, allowing you to block/roll/guard point as necessary) and ends with a guard point (useful once you are good at reading monsters.)

Considering it also speeds up the actual charging of charged slash, it is probably the single biggest damage boost you can get on your gear, over the course of a real fight.

If you need further convincing, watch Rainy, one of the best charge blade players, and study not only how insanely fast he can safely charge his phials, but also how he constantly uses the guard points granted by the faster Focus build combo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7soP2j8SUCE

[Draescan]

Honestly it's situational. Charging the blade isn't a bad idea, it just means more effective sword and board attacks when you're forced to resort to them. Honestly you get so used to doing it after a while that your shield and sword are never NOT charged, so I don't feel focus is necessary in the slightest for my playstyle. I'm almost never without a charge and phials.

I would say there's something to be argued for artillery and stamina thief on an impact phial charge blade. Affinity is nice but unless you're running rathalos I don't feel that affinity builds are particularly worth it. Yeah it's a 25% damage increase when you hit, but knocking the monster over/causing them to stop for a breather is far more utilitarian than simply getting a damage buff. Don't get me wrong, crits are great, I've personally hit up in around the 50 - 60% margin for crits on weapons and it feels awesome, but knocking the monster over or tiring it out gives EVERYONE a go at the thing while it's helpless. Bombs, hammer/horn skull hits, wyvernsnipe all possible in this timeframe. It's also extremely easy to do because the charge blade's phial charges so very quickly.

Let me make something clear in case I get someone mentioning it. Exhaust and KO are not the same thing, no. However, exhaust does make it easier to KO something. So it's never a bad thing to have.

[Draescan]

Honestly it's situational. Charging the blade isn't a bad idea, it just means more effective sword and board attacks when you're forced to resort to them. Honestly you get so used to doing it after a while that your shield and sword are never NOT charged, so I don't feel focus is necessary in the slightest for my playstyle. I'm almost never without a charge and phials.

I would say there's something to be argued for artillery and stamina thief on an impact phial charge blade. Affinity is nice but unless you're running rathalos I don't feel that affinity builds are particularly worth it. Yeah it's a 25% damage increase when you hit, but knocking the monster over/causing them to stop for a breather is far more utilitarian than simply getting a damage buff. Don't get me wrong, crits are great, I've personally hit up in around the 50 - 60% margin for crits on weapons and it feels awesome, but knocking the monster over or tiring it out gives EVERYONE a go at the thing while it's helpless. Bombs, hammer/horn skull hits, wyvernsnipe all possible in this timeframe. It's also extremely easy to do because the charge blade's phial charges so very quickly.

Let me make something clear in case I get someone mentioning it. Exhaust and KO are not the same thing, no. However, exhaust does make it easier to KO something. So it's never a bad thing to have.

[Kashra Fall]

So after spending some time in training and against random creatures in the HR arena. I did multiple builds, both with focus, without, with art, without, with capacity, without and honestly? The elemental won by a land slide. I put a crit build with handi 5, weakness exploit etc all up against the standard (Nukem) build of the vial explosions and the damage was somewhat onpar, but the elemental crit still won in the end.

Granted, this was not designed around swinging my axe around with the super amped electric discharge the entire time, for that? The diablos won hands down, but when you compare the damage numebers of 61 vs 87? Then you take into consideration with capcity, you're only adding one more 87 on there and factor in that EVERY hit is a crit with the crit build, the damage is just not comparable.

I actually tested the damage output of the intial swinging arc and when it crit (Which it always did due to 50% then another 50% from WE) the attack hit for 387 and then 401 white sharpness, then blew up for 61x5. Comparitve without white sharpness on the diablos and no crit, it was 287 and 321 with 6 87's, so by those numbers the diablos wins (Barely) and this is with raw damage, elementless gem etc. I also factored in that the diablos set gives damage overtime with sharpness lost, but the gain was neglible.

What I seem to end up doing with the elemental/crit build is favoring more towards discharge 2, back into sword, to stack again, once the monster goes down then I do the big swing and it seems to do the most in a short time frame, with relatively 0 chance to miss. I dunno though! This is all playstyle and from my findings? Much as the diablos is an amazing weapon for the damage output? It doesn't compare to the elemental builds in the longrun, but it is still a great weapon! Anyways, thanks for the help guys, enjoy the hunt!

[Ordaeli]

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

So after spending some time in training and against random creatures in the HR arena. I did multiple builds, both with focus, without, with art, without, with capacity, without and honestly? The elemental won by a land slide. I put a crit build with handi 5, weakness exploit etc all up against the standard (Nukem) build of the vial explosions and the damage was somewhat onpar, but the elemental crit still won in the end.

Granted, this was not designed around swinging my axe around with the super amped electric discharge the entire time, for that? The diablos won hands down, but when you compare the damage numebers of 61 vs 87? Then you take into consideration with capcity, you're only adding one more 87 on there and factor in that EVERY hit is a crit with the crit build, the damage is just not comparable.

I actually tested the damage output of the intial swinging arc and when it crit (Which it always did due to 50% then another 50% from WE) the attack hit for 387 and then 401 white sharpness, then blew up for 61x5. Comparitve without white sharpness on the diablos and no crit, it was 287 and 321 with 6 87's, so by those numbers the diablos wins (Barely) and this is with raw damage, elementless gem etc. I also factored in that the diablos set gives damage overtime with sharpness lost, but the gain was neglible.

What I seem to end up doing with the elemental/crit build is favoring more towards discharge 2, back into sword, to stack again, once the monster goes down then I do the big swing and it seems to do the most in a short time frame, with relatively 0 chance to miss. I dunno though! This is all playstyle and from my findings? Much as the diablos is an amazing weapon for the damage output? It doesn't compare to the elemental builds in the longrun, but it is still a great weapon! Anyways, thanks for the help guys, enjoy the hunt!

Keep in mind that elemental CB's phial damage will be inconsistent because of difference in elemental weakness on different part of the monster. (example: legiana, having a thdr hitzone of 25 only on the head, and only two of 20 for the wings, everything else being 15 or less, means elemental CB's phials won't be doing much damage in saed, since you are likely to hit the lesser hitzone rather than the big elemental weakpoint.)

Anyway, when it comes to end game, Diablos CB with food buff bombardier+atk up L+ all the items buff and evade mantle can reach more than 110 per phials. And it can KO monsters. Wich is why for endgame speedrunning, you'll see people using Impact more than elemental.