The State of Endgame Heavy Bowgun

[Scorlos]

I want to go over a few things that have been bugging me about Heavy Bowgun for a long time now, the release of Alatreon has only served to further these issues IMO.

I'll start with Weapon and Ammo Diversity, Ever since the start of my 580 hour journey into MHW I have been playing Heavy Bowgun almost exclusively with some brief playtime on Dual Blades and the Light Bowgun. I love the weapon type wholeheartedly however using the same weapons and the same ammo types over and over has been getting on my nerves. I thought Iceborne would serve to help the issue but still to this day the most viable ammo type are still Spread and Sticky 3. As much as I love shooting sticky at the monsters head for 15+ minutes at a time per Safi Run, I would love to see other ammo types become just as viable if not better. I don't want them to nerf sticky AGAIN but maybe some other weapons getting buffs to their ammo stats and having viable alternatives to the current meta bowguns would be greatly appreciated so I don't feel trapped in the same build and the same ammo types for months at a time.

On the topic of Alatreon, I've noticed something that has been a major problem for Heavy Bowgun and sometimes Light Bowgun as well. I love that the release of Alatreon has somewhat broken up the monotony by encouraging the use of ELEMENTAL AMMO! I am very happy that these underused ammo types are getting some attention and use for once! However...why can I not carry more than 20 Snow/Fire Herbs. I could understand with how powerful and easy to use Sticky 3 is, it needed a nerf to how much you could make, but in the case of Freeze and Flaming ammo, I don't think the low ammo count is justified. There is no feeling worse than being in the middle of an Alatreon fight and suddenly realizing that you are completely out of ammo. Suddenly becoming a liability for my teammates and knowing that I can not help them reach the damage threshold in time is the worst feeling in the world. This can be somewhat circumvented but using rapid fire on Light Bowgun, but Heavy Bowgun is completely out of options besides use one of the other less optimized ammo types on the weapon, that usually aren't even worth using.

I hope that the elemental ammo types get some sort of buff in terms of how much you can make/carry because it has made Heavy Bowgun a liability for teams and would hopefully help bring some more diversity to end game Heavy Bowgun Builds. Another option I have considered would be allowing the use of farcasters in the quest. This change would be beneficial for ALL weapon types and solves the issue.

If you are still reading thank you for listening and please share your opinions! I would love to hear what you think in the comments.

Thanks!

[Seamus]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย (｡◕‿◕｡):

HBG is one of my favorite weapons and I've clocked around 1k hours with it just on pc.

The bowgun meta has shifted wildly since launch. At one point slicing ammo was the most OP. In many ways no other ammo comes remotely close to what it was. Then came the massive slicing nerf. Then the cluster nerf. Then the sticky nerf. Then some more mat stack nerfs.

Now they've moved on to a new way to nerf heavy gunners, intentionally leaving them out of the power creep. That's why we now have 4 gluttons but only one high rarity bolt-action sticky.

Spread is easy asf but it's not going to out damage a competent cb/gs/hammer bro. Neither is pierce or elemental hbg. That's why capcom has focused on these 3 ammo types in the current endgame.

I mean, properly played and geared, Pierce can wreck certain fights. Alatreon included.
https://youtu.be/dnPJYzDRGiY

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ragosta tin Dei:

What they could do is allow Elem ammo to pierce for more ticks when using Long Barrel. So you have LBG's that have to circle strafe from medium range and you got HBG's that can fire further away with a comparable pierce tick to LBG sans the mobility.

I really like this idea actually, idk how much it would shift the effectiveness of elemental ammo in general play, but it would be very helpful for Alatreon.

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Seamus:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย (｡◕‿◕｡):

HBG is one of my favorite weapons and I've clocked around 1k hours with it just on pc.

The bowgun meta has shifted wildly since launch. At one point slicing ammo was the most OP. In many ways no other ammo comes remotely close to what it was. Then came the massive slicing nerf. Then the cluster nerf. Then the sticky nerf. Then some more mat stack nerfs.

Now they've moved on to a new way to nerf heavy gunners, intentionally leaving them out of the power creep. That's why we now have 4 gluttons but only one high rarity bolt-action sticky.

Spread is easy asf but it's not going to out damage a competent cb/gs/hammer bro. Neither is pierce or elemental hbg. That's why capcom has focused on these 3 ammo types in the current endgame.

I mean, properly played and geared, Pierce can wreck certain fights. Alatreon included.
https://youtu.be/dnPJYzDRGiY

Ang back at it again lol, I'll have to look into this set for solo runs!

[Tregrenos]

Back in the older generations I used to like the ranged weapons. In MH4 I preferred the LBG, in Generations I liked the HBG. It was more of a playstyle regarding how the weapon functioned in groups, at least in terms of not having to crowd around the target critter. In World, however, they became such an overpowered meme that the weapons just seemed dirty. Maybe I was playing the weapons wrong before, but they didn't seem overpowered back then.

I still felt group orientation was a large part of MH and became more of a support player in World and Iceborne. To me, the end-game of HBG and LBG is a dead-end. You've chosen a weapon associated with the most broken playstyles in the game and unless you're using said broken playstyles the weapons feel sluggish and weak. It's kinda like Bow in Generations in that there was only 1 Bow you'd ever see anyone using.

Not sure why this series strikes this kind of cord with me. I just don't like feeling overpowered here and focusing 100% on DPS. Sure, I don't want to be a pure healer and pull my own weight in terms of DPS, but I'd rather see the rest of the group "get better" as the fight progresses while being a buffer against mistakes.

In the next game I hope they do away with mantles and grapples, opting to instead focus on a straight forward fighting experience with less means of cheesing the monsters.

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Tregrenos:

Back in the older generations I used to like the ranged weapons. In MH4 I preferred the LBG, in Generations I liked the HBG. It was more of a playstyle regarding how the weapon functioned in groups, at least in terms of not having to crowd around the target critter. In World, however, they became such an overpowered meme that the weapons just seemed dirty. Maybe I was playing the weapons wrong before, but they didn't seem overpowered back then.

I still felt group orientation was a large part of MH and became more of a support player in World and Iceborne. To me, the end-game of HBG and LBG is a dead-end. You've chosen a weapon associated with the most broken playstyles in the game and unless you're using said broken playstyles the weapons feel sluggish and weak. It's kinda like Bow in Generations in that there was only 1 Bow you'd ever see anyone using.

Not sure why this series strikes this kind of cord with me. I just don't like feeling overpowered here and focusing 100% on DPS. Sure, I don't want to be a pure healer and pull my own weight in terms of DPS, but I'd rather see the rest of the group "get better" as the fight progresses while being a buffer against mistakes.

In the next game I hope they do away with mantles and grapples, opting to instead focus on a straight forward fighting experience with less means of cheesing the monsters.

I think you said it perfectly, When you aren't using the meta set the weapon feels sluggish and weak, that's mainly why I wanted to start this thread in the first place. I'm tired of having to use Sticky 3 or Spread 3 for 95% of the fights in the game to be as optimal as possible. I would love to see the weapon get some changes that would shake up the meta and maybe see some unusual set come into play that actually factor in a monsters weaknesses rather than just use Sticky because every single monster is a cake walk and fighting them any other way is actively just making the game harder for yourself.

[heronumber00]

I feel you, I'm also main Bowgun (both types).

Just want to state some of my opinion:

1. Actually, for HBG, apart from Sticky and Spread, I find that Pierce is also very good in Iceborne, depend on the monster. Monsters with big and long body, Pierce works wonderful. For example Deviljho, I find that Pierce works better for me than Sticky and safer than Spread.

2. I feel you so much on the point about running out of elemental ammos for Alatreon, when I first start to fight him.
But when you are able to craft the Alatreon lbg, it's much better. It can shoot all types of elemental ammos, and I carry all elemental ammos and all crafting materials for those ammos. By switching between ammos depend on the active mode of Alatreon and the skill Spare Shot, I find that I often have plenty of ammos with that gun for that fight.
The only time I find that I might run out of Ice and Fire ammos for that fight is only when my teammates don't deal enough damage. But then at that point, it's almost certain that it's a fail attempt anyway.
But I do think it would be nice if they increase the number of materials we can carry for elemental ammos.

3. I don't think they will let ever you use farcaster in this fight due to the design of Alatreon's ultimate (for the elemetal DPS check).

4. I heard some people mentioned that the Alatreon hbg is really good and strong with elemental ammos. I haven't try it myself though.

[Tregrenos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Scorlos:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Tregrenos:

Back in the older generations I used to like the ranged weapons. In MH4 I preferred the LBG, in Generations I liked the HBG. It was more of a playstyle regarding how the weapon functioned in groups, at least in terms of not having to crowd around the target critter. In World, however, they became such an overpowered meme that the weapons just seemed dirty. Maybe I was playing the weapons wrong before, but they didn't seem overpowered back then.

I still felt group orientation was a large part of MH and became more of a support player in World and Iceborne. To me, the end-game of HBG and LBG is a dead-end. You've chosen a weapon associated with the most broken playstyles in the game and unless you're using said broken playstyles the weapons feel sluggish and weak. It's kinda like Bow in Generations in that there was only 1 Bow you'd ever see anyone using.

Not sure why this series strikes this kind of cord with me. I just don't like feeling overpowered here and focusing 100% on DPS. Sure, I don't want to be a pure healer and pull my own weight in terms of DPS, but I'd rather see the rest of the group "get better" as the fight progresses while being a buffer against mistakes.

In the next game I hope they do away with mantles and grapples, opting to instead focus on a straight forward fighting experience with less means of cheesing the monsters.

I think you said it perfectly, When you aren't using the meta set the weapon feels sluggish and weak, that's mainly why I wanted to start this thread in the first place. I'm tired of having to use Sticky 3 or Spread 3 for 95% of the fights in the game to be as optimal as possible. I would love to see the weapon get some changes that would shake up the meta and maybe see some unusual set come into play that actually factor in a monsters weaknesses rather than just use Sticky because every single monster is a cake walk and fighting them any other way is actively just making the game harder for yourself.

One of the skills featured in older games associated with Crimson Fatalis is "Steady Hand", which "Increases the power of Normal, Pierce and Pellet shots, and Rapid, Pierce and Spread-type arrows." It's my hopes that whatever version of Fatalis they add to the game his armor comes with this set bonus or something similar as I can see this giving the lesser used ammo a viable boost. Possibly a skill that combines Minds Eye with a boost to Normal/Pierce as well as a Raw damage boost for melee.

[Raven]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ragosta tin Dei:

HBG is all about raw damage. Sticky, Pierce 3, Spread 3, CWS, etc. There aren't any rapid elem HBG's and you'd think maybe Alatreon should've been a great time to introduce them but nope. With the introduction of clutch claws, you now have a special variant type: Clutch HBG.

Rapidfire wouldn't even be needed if we could carry adequate amounts of combines. In fact RF lowers your DPS while getting more damage per ammo, so if we could carry a whole ton of ammo then RF would become a bad thing. IMO they should still boost ammo counts to the point where we can hunt comfortably with at least RF ammo types without restocking, because that's the point of being able to RF in the first place.

This has been an issue for as long as I remember, even in previous titles. Elemental ammo users would always have to rely on other people to supplement their damage output (soloing with bowguns was actually a lot worse in previous games because there was no SP scaling whatsoever in the hub) unless they were using significantly overtiered meta sets and/or had Gog tier aim.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย (｡◕‿◕｡):

HBG is one of my favorite weapons and I've clocked around 1k hours with it just on pc.

The bowgun meta has shifted wildly since launch. At one point slicing ammo was the most OP. In many ways no other ammo comes remotely close to what it was. Then came the massive slicing nerf. Then the cluster nerf. Then the sticky nerf. Then some more mat stack nerfs.

Now they've moved on to a new way to nerf heavy gunners, intentionally leaving them out of the power creep. That's why we now have 4 gluttons but only one high rarity bolt-action sticky.

Spread is easy asf but it's not going to out damage a competent cb/gs/hammer bro. Neither is pierce or elemental hbg. That's why capcom has focused on these 3 ammo types in the current endgame.

HBG is still the top speedrun weapon, and people still abuse spread there. But to abuse spread to the utmost extent requires you to use that awful super scope at point blank range, so it's easier and less nauseating to just learn how to use GS or Bow properly (also FYI Hammer and CB are roughly mid tier, with Lance at the rock bottom as it has been for all of IB).

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย heronumber00:

I feel you, I'm also main Bowgun (both types).

Just want to state some of my opinion:

1. Actually, for HBG, apart from Sticky and Spread, I find that Pierce is also very good in Iceborne, depend on the monster. Monsters with big and long body, Pierce works wonderful. For example Deviljho, I find that Pierce works better for me than Sticky and safer than Spread.

2. I feel you so much on the point about running out of elemental ammos for Alatreon, when I first start to fight him.
But when you are able to craft the Alatreon lbg, it's much better. It can shoot all types of elemental ammos, and I carry all elemental ammos and all crafting materials for those ammos. By switching between ammos depend on the active mode of Alatreon and the skill Spare Shot, I find that I often have plenty of ammos with that gun for that fight.
The only time I find that I might run out of Ice and Fire ammos for that fight is only when my teammates don't deal enough damage. But then at that point, it's almost certain that it's a fail attempt anyway.
But I do think it would be nice if they increase the number of materials we can carry for elemental ammos.

3. I don't think they will let ever you use farcaster in this fight due to the design of Alatreon's ultimate (for the elemetal DPS check).

4. I heard some people mentioned that the Alatreon hbg is really good and strong with elemental ammos. I haven't try it myself though.

Fully agree, I personally love pierce on certain monsters and I think it's a really fun ammo type, I'll have to see about making a more open ended build with the Alatreon HBG.

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Valvraven:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ragosta tin Dei:

HBG is all about raw damage. Sticky, Pierce 3, Spread 3, CWS, etc. There aren't any rapid elem HBG's and you'd think maybe Alatreon should've been a great time to introduce them but nope. With the introduction of clutch claws, you now have a special variant type: Clutch HBG.

Rapidfire wouldn't even be needed if we could carry adequate amounts of combines. In fact RF lowers your DPS while getting more damage per ammo, so if we could carry a whole ton of ammo then RF would become a bad thing. IMO they should still boost ammo counts to the point where we can hunt comfortably with at least RF ammo types without restocking, because that's the point of being able to RF in the first place.

This has been an issue for as long as I remember, even in previous titles. Elemental ammo users would always have to rely on other people to supplement their damage output (soloing with bowguns was actually a lot worse in previous games because there was no SP scaling whatsoever in the hub) unless they were using significantly overtiered meta sets and/or had Gog tier aim.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย (｡◕‿◕｡):

HBG is one of my favorite weapons and I've clocked around 1k hours with it just on pc.

The bowgun meta has shifted wildly since launch. At one point slicing ammo was the most OP. In many ways no other ammo comes remotely close to what it was. Then came the massive slicing nerf. Then the cluster nerf. Then the sticky nerf. Then some more mat stack nerfs.

Now they've moved on to a new way to nerf heavy gunners, intentionally leaving them out of the power creep. That's why we now have 4 gluttons but only one high rarity bolt-action sticky.

Spread is easy asf but it's not going to out damage a competent cb/gs/hammer bro. Neither is pierce or elemental hbg. That's why capcom has focused on these 3 ammo types in the current endgame.

HBG is still the top speedrun weapon, and people still abuse spread there. But to abuse spread to the utmost extent requires you to use that awful super scope at point blank range, so it's easier and less nauseating to just learn how to use GS or Bow properly (also FYI Hammer and CB are roughly mid tier, with Lance at the rock bottom as it has been for all of IB).

Agreed! I know that we can use different types of elemental ammo when we run out of whichever is optimal for the phase, but having the issue of running out, even with spare shot, shouldn't be an issue in my opinion. Having to rely on spare shot takes away the potential of being able to run Alatreon with an even more optimized damage build to help your team reach the DPS check. And oh god I feel you on the spread w/ super scope, I hate that just because HBG is one of the best speed running weapons, people think that HBG doesn't need any change when the two best meta sets I can think of either A. require you to sit in one spot shooting sticky at a K.O.d monster or B. Deal with the Headache of trying to use the super scope at close range for the free huge damage boost. Just because the weapon is good, does not mean the best ways to play it are fun or interesting in any capacity.

[Stronk]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Scorlos:

I'll start with Weapon and Ammo Diversity, Ever since the start of my 580 hour journey into MHW I have been playing Heavy Bowgun almost exclusively with some brief playtime on Dual Blades and the Light Bowgun. I love the weapon type wholeheartedly however using the same weapons and the same ammo types over and over has been getting on my nerves. I thought Iceborne would serve to help the issue but still to this day the most viable ammo type are still Spread and Sticky 3. As much as I love shooting sticky at the monsters head for 15+ minutes at a time per Safi Run, I would love to see other ammo types become just as viable if not better. I don't want them to nerf sticky AGAIN but maybe some other weapons getting buffs to their ammo stats and having viable alternatives to the current meta bowguns would be greatly appreciated so I don't feel trapped in the same build and the same ammo types for months at a time.

PSA: Pierce and normal ammo still do more DPS than most of the weapons in the game, especially pierce in fights where it's good in. Normal 3 HBG even out DPS's half the weapons in the game, easily.

On the topic of Alatreon, I've noticed something that has been a major problem for Heavy Bowgun and sometimes Light Bowgun as well. I love that the release of Alatreon has somewhat broken up the monotony by encouraging the use of ELEMENTAL AMMO! I am very happy that these underused ammo types are getting some attention and use for once!

Yeah, no. Let CB and DBs do the elemental damage, if I bring a gunner it's pierce 3 HBG for Alatreon. At most, they need to land one elemental check before the first nova, because he's not living long enough to get a 2nd one off if I'm running a pierce gunner. If I do 55-60k damage in 8 minutes with pierce 3 ammo, and as long as 3 other players on the team only let me do 50% of the team's damage, he dies in 8 minutes, well before he gets the 2nd nova off. It's pretty sad when I point to 3 players and ask them at a minimum "you 3 do at least 50% of the damage", so we at least get an 8 minute kill. And that's about the best I can expect from an average player who's not too terrible at the game.

It's possible for just one player attacking with elemental to hit the check on a 4 man team, I've done it before with everyone else running raw, and me running ice DBs for example. If I can do it, other people can do it, because DBs isn't exactly one of my better weapons. So I legit don't understand why people are crying so hard about this "DPS check" which is hardly a challenging mark to meet. If I can carry elemental damage on a 4 man team using a weapon that's my 6th best, then a whole team should be able to hit that no problem. If they can't then they must be running around chugging pots and just not attacking the monster at all, if so they deserve to lose not just once, but every time until they git gud. This is what happens when you give a bunch of noobs defender gear, they get carried to Master Rank and get slapped around by the new monster, and they piss and moan about it. And they beg people like me to carry them on discord. I have to tell them you gotta learn how to play the game at some point, and stop riding other people's coat tails.

[Scorlos]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Stronk:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Scorlos:

I'll start with Weapon and Ammo Diversity, Ever since the start of my 580 hour journey into MHW I have been playing Heavy Bowgun almost exclusively with some brief playtime on Dual Blades and the Light Bowgun. I love the weapon type wholeheartedly however using the same weapons and the same ammo types over and over has been getting on my nerves. I thought Iceborne would serve to help the issue but still to this day the most viable ammo type are still Spread and Sticky 3. As much as I love shooting sticky at the monsters head for 15+ minutes at a time per Safi Run, I would love to see other ammo types become just as viable if not better. I don't want them to nerf sticky AGAIN but maybe some other weapons getting buffs to their ammo stats and having viable alternatives to the current meta bowguns would be greatly appreciated so I don't feel trapped in the same build and the same ammo types for months at a time.

PSA: Pierce and normal ammo still do more DPS than most of the weapons in the game, especially pierce in fights where it's good in. Normal 3 HBG even out DPS's half the weapons in the game, easily.

On the topic of Alatreon, I've noticed something that has been a major problem for Heavy Bowgun and sometimes Light Bowgun as well. I love that the release of Alatreon has somewhat broken up the monotony by encouraging the use of ELEMENTAL AMMO! I am very happy that these underused ammo types are getting some attention and use for once!

Yeah, no. Let CB and DBs do the elemental damage, if I bring a gunner it's pierce 3 HBG for Alatreon. At most, they need to land one elemental check before the first nova, because he's not living long enough to get a 2nd one off if I'm running a pierce gunner. If I do 55-60k damage in 8 minutes with pierce 3 ammo, and as long as 3 other players on the team only let me do 50% of the team's damage, he dies in 8 minutes, well before he gets the 2nd nova off. It's pretty sad when I point to 3 players and ask them at a minimum "you 3 do at least 50% of the damage", so we at least get an 8 minute kill. And that's about the best I can expect from an average player who's not too terrible at the game.

It's possible for just one player attacking with elemental to hit the check on a 4 man team, I've done it before with everyone else running raw, and me running ice DBs for example. If I can do it, other people can do it, because DBs isn't exactly one of my better weapons. So I legit don't understand why people are crying so hard about this "DPS check" which is hardly a challenging mark to meet. If I can carry elemental damage on a 4 man team using a weapon that's my 6th best, then a whole team should be able to hit that no problem. If they can't then they must be running around chugging pots and just not attacking the monster at all, if so they deserve to lose not just once, but every time until they git gud. This is what happens when you give a bunch of noobs defender gear, they get carried to Master Rank and get slapped around by the new monster, and they piss and moan about it. And they beg people like me to carry them on discord. I have to tell them you gotta learn how to play the game at some point, and stop riding other people's coat tails.

If I'm reading this correctly it sounds like you're running in pre-made 4 man teams? I can understand your argument from that point of view, having a coordinated helps in every fight of course however from my experience most of the time when I join a lobby specifically for Alatreon and/or SOS flare I cannot rely on my team to pass those elemental checks. For the general player of MHW I feel that they usually never coordinate to such a degree to where this would work well enough in general lobbies for Alatreon, being as most people just run whatever Dragon/Fire/Ice weapons they have and play the way they usually do rather than being aggressive. I also don't think most people have the required skill to meet the required DPS check regardless like you said. My argument is mostly towards letting HBG player be useful enough to general teams that can't reach that check in order to lessen the headche of playing with less experienced people and allowing players who prepare in advance to be able to succeed in the fight regardless of the coordination of the randoms you usually find. My problem isn't necessarily the check itself, it's more that partway through the fight, say I'm playing with people I don't know or I'm running SOS flares, I stop being able to carry my own weight not because of my performance, but because the game simply does not allow me to have enough ammo to keep contributing to the elemental check. Relying on your teammates to save you IMO is not fun, and I would argue that allowing the use of more herbs during the fight would make the fight more enjoyable for gunners and allow them to contribute more to teams who are less experienced and can't pass the check without the contribution.

I am interested in the loadouts you had for Pierce in a coordinated stack however if you wouldn't mind sharing. It's good to know that Pierce is viable in the fight, and I would greatly appreciate some more details about that and what I should be running to be effective in that situation. Thanks!