Are Earplugs worth the materials/money?

[Deviantwolf]

i've made earplug armour at least 3pieces of it and it doest seem to do anything agaist large monsters, that i've encountered. do i seriously have to get five pieces of armour to have my earplugs actually work or is there another way to avoid the roars of monsters?

[Sui Generic]

Because you say that you've made armour, as opposed to slotting decorations, I'm going to assume that you're in low rank or just recently entering high rank. MHW is my first time playing the series and I found monster roars extremely annoying as well and for quite a while I worked towards getting armour with 5 points of Earplugs to negate it. By the time I got the armour I realised I'd actually got used to the roars and there were other skills I valued more highly.

Whether it's worth it depends on what QOL skills you need to enjoy the game. If monster roars detract significantly from your enjoyment of the game then it will always be worth including max Earplugs in your builds. The people saying 'no, just block/roll through it' likely have a lot of experience with the series and prioritise damage-dealing skills over ones that make the average player's game experience more comfortable.

Capcom put a lot of deliberately frustrating game mechanics in Monster Hunter, but they also give you convenient ways to circumvent that frustration, and it's up to you to choose which are most valuable to your play style. If you take Earplugs, it might mean that you aren't taking points in tremor resist or stun resist, but maybe monster roars are more irritating to you than being stunned. My advice is to make a build which works for you and ignore anyone who might look down on you for taking QOL skills.

[ThisGuyRSick]

Are they worthless? No. Are they point efficient? Definitely not. Are they worth it? That depends on what you're going for...

For comfort, and for your sanity, it can be nice to have on weapons with big attacks, such as GS. I typically would never use them, but if you simply want a build where you're not getting knocked out of your big attacks by a roar, it can be nice.

Outside of this, I'd recommend learning to use your dodge i-frames (it's not as hard as some people make it sound, especially for roars). If it's simply too difficult for you at the moment, a few points into Evasion (you don't need all 5) will help with rolling through them. Then, as you get better at using the rolls, you can remove more points of Evasion over time. Learning this will be especially useful for weapons with no defensive options, such as SA or DB.

[Rotheilm]

Originally posted by J. Carmine:

I am and always will be a fan of max earplugs. Especially in master rank, when MR monsters roar, they will almost always have a follow up attack that cant be dodged if you're right beside them. And I'm a GS main, I can't to tell you how much times I was robbed of a TCS final blow because of a roar

Yeah, Lunestra is a [censored]

[Washing Machine]

Only ones where it's worth it are ones where they can oneshot combo you off the stun, ie. Tempered Kush. Think I ran EP5 on AT Teo too, but haven't bothered with it in MR since he hasn't OHKOd me there.

[pirate]

I think if you're playing Hunting Horn (or Hammer), Earplugs is one of the most important comfort skills, but is otherwise just an extra to have.

Having a monster roar interrupt your HH's triple-melody-stack Encore only needs to happen once before you realize how necessary Earplugs are for that weapon. Great Sword's TCS takes like ten seconds to setup; HH's melody bar can take over 30 seconds to setup.

[Juno Brier]

Originally posted by Bash:

https://monsterhunterworld.wiki.fextralife.com/Earplugs

This page shows which monsters' roars require which level of Earplugs. It might be worth it if the monster you're fighting doesn't require more than 3 levels but any higher than that makes it too expensive.

Wow they nerfed the ♥♥♥♥ out of Earplugs compared to previous games.
In previous games Earplugs had two levels, just nullification with no weakening, the first was good enough for most monsters, and only a handful of monsters needed the second level.

For reference like half of the old monsters on the "needs high level earplugs" list in World only needed low level earplugs in previous games.

[Tenebris]

How "weak" monster is determined is basically all monsters that would be considered below Rathalos/Diablos from a progression standpoint, so level 3 really doesn't cover much, but if you know the monster you're gonna be hunting fits the bill, you can save a few slots by not slotting level 4/5

[Hare+Guu!]

I've never seen anyone online that has ever rolled through a roar. They all cower whenever it happens. Most players online clearly aren't skilled enough to do it, despite what these responses would like you to believe.

[Mr Compassionate]

It's definitely worth it. While I'm sure a pro player can I-Frame through everything that doesn't change the fact that you have to stop attacking, stand there are await the roar to I-Frame it.

[William_Shakesbeard]

Two options for your consideration.

If you are familiar with every monster well enough, you can ignore earplug, that can give you more option on other skills. I'm a bow player, so I didn't mind earplug at all, I can avoid the roar most of the time.
But if you are playing like greatsword or hammer, etc, having at least earplug lv 3 will be nice. But that will definitely cost some downgrade on the skills about damage.

[SkipLegDayBoi]

Originally posted by Lioness 西施:

CaoSlayer made an argument for Earplugs when long shelling. They do help you manage WSB, and they don't eat into your damage skills.

But even then they're optional because you can block the roar with enough practice.

Earplugs are just too costly for most builds. More DPS = more staggers = more control over the fight, which means no matter what, damage skills probably come out ahead in almost all cases.

This only applies to fights you're in control of, though. You lose a lot of control when you start doing things with groups (or when you're learning a monster, or when the AI misbehaves, etc.) I can imagine situations where Earplugs would be better than Attack Boost, for example (charm + jewel).

TBH Long shelling build is probably the most earplug-friendly build since you only need 3 skills to hit the dmg cap so you can just run all other QoL skills that you want

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Hare+Guu!:

I've never seen anyone online that has ever rolled through a roar. They all cower whenever it happens. Most players online clearly aren't skilled enough to do it, despite what these responses would like you to believe.

Obviously a random player is not good enough to do it. It's a random player, they are all pretty bad. But it doesn't mean they can't learn and start doing it, most of them don't even realize they could.

[Greb]

I used to be pretty good at rolling roars when I no-lifed the base game to death (when I was playing non-stop trying to get at least 100 uses of every weapon, etc) but now the layers of rust has rendered that particular skill of mine absent once again.

I'm less inclined to care now there's an Earplugs IV charm, as I mentioned before. Building into / activating Earplugs sucked before this thing came along, and now it's pretty easy to slot in and "fire and forget" on most builds, considering I don't much care for Handicraft or Agitator, etc. In fact the only charms I seem to wear now are Spare Shot/Razor Sharp, Guard V and Earplugs IV, even though I've crafted every one to the bitter end.

It just suits my lazy, casual playstyle too much. I do wish Earplugs got an Earplugs V charm though, the skill is annoying enough as it is, but thankfully Earplugs/Whatever decorations exist too.