Lances progression

[sturmishes]

Hey guy! Being curious i am trying to find a sorta list of choices of lances to pick as progressing, low rank, high rank etc I'm being curious, i don't wanna go crazy on all the backdoor math behind all the stuff, and the more i find post the more opinion varies, some says lance are good with raw dmg focus then, some says poison is good with lance because of the 3 poke attack, some says poison, paralyse, dragon.... i am pretty much crafting all i can when i can jsut for the heck of it and because i love it, but i am curious what should i focus more to choose, so far i love the baroth one (carapace lance 3) with it's higher raw dmg and defence, which looks like the hard bone lance 2, these are the most i can craft as where i am at HR 9 and the equiavelent for elmeent are stil a bit weaker...

So as of you who played with lances, which ones you aimed for? Asking cuz all mostly we can find is « what is the best lance sin MHW » but i don't wanna nknow yet for the end, but a si evolve what try to aim for.

I will admit i am tempted to use the oens with elements or status, because they all look cool but the basics one seems to have higher stuff so far :(

[Shark]

For lance i mainly used the Odoggo one if i remember correctly. Not sure if its super good or anything just had great sharpness and i think affinity too so i liked it

[dyne2alex]

If you're going through story, I'd recommend Gama Pilebunker from dodogama. In end game you can get a better blast lance, but dodo's the best blast lance when you're still going through the story imo.

Why blast? Blast is strong, blast helps damage parts so you can break (helps even damaging tail so you can cut with physical damage of lance), blast rewards you for playing aggresively (because status effect buildup can disappear if you don't reapply fast enough) while lance itself gives you tools to stop enemy counter attacks.

Poison can also be good, but early game poison lances tend to focus more on the poison than the raw, and imo this is a waste because you can't keep adding poison status effect while it's poisoned. It would be easier to play defensively, but eh.

[Leon]

I started playing with the lance too , and created a topic sometime ago about the best raw lances for low rank , i got some good advices and ended up using Kulu and Pukey lances , then i got Garon lance for HR

Kulu has affinity , good damage and good sharpness. Pukey don't have affinity but have good raw and sharpness too, i was using it against monster with 3 stars poison weakness

Garon lance have good affinity , up to +30% , great damage at 391 and white sharpness, tho you have not much hits with white, blue and green sharpness .It have fire hidden element

Kulu final upgrades have +25% affnity and 391 damage too , doesn't have white sharpness but decent blue and gigant green .It have sleep hidden ailment

If you get the hang of the lance's offensive side to be almost always poking you can proc ailments , like poison or paralysis , quite often but i didn felt the need to use ailments on the weapon itself and gave the Palico those .

[Xenos]

Since Lance doesn't attack very fast, and doesn't have high damage values, Elemental is pretty wasted on it.

You'll want to focus on affinity for crits to augment your raw damage or a damaging ailment like Blast or Poison. Blast can help break parts and will proc fairly often early in a fight, but monsters become practically immune to it if the fight drags on too long, and some monsters are 100% immune to it. Blast weapons tend to have negative or 0 affinity as well.

Poison procs fairly reliably for an entire fight, and the weapons using them tend to have good sharpness and acceptable affinity. There is only one monsters in the entire game immune to poison, being Zorah Magdaros. Most are neutral or weak to it, so you dont have to change weapon often.

You can easily do a crit/poison build for maximum tankiness with passive poison helping keep pressure even when blocking.

[sturmishes]

Originally posted by Leon:

I started playing with the lance too , and created a topic sometime ago about the best raw lances for low rank , i got some good advices and ended up using Kulu and Pukey lances , then i got Garon lance for HR

Kulu has affinity , good damage and good sharpness. Pukey don't have affinity but have good raw and sharpness too, i was using it against monster with 3 stars poison weakness

Garon lance have good affinity , up to +30% , great damage at 391 and white sharpness, tho you have not much hits with white, blue and green sharpness .It have fire hidden element

Kulu final upgrades have +25% affnity and 391 damage too , doesn't have white sharpness but decent blue and gigant green .It have sleep hidden ailment

If you get the hang of the lance's offensive side to be almost always poking you can proc ailments , like poison or paralysis , quite often but i didn felt the need to use ailments on the weapon itself and gave the Palico those .

I just fought my first Odogaron and grabbed the first Garon lance i could. I got to admit the dmg / dmg system in this game kind of confuse me overall, read for exemple witt elements, you do 10% of the element dmg it says, then you do 10% of that 10% per stars of the monster weaknesses, so ends up pretty low, then for poison that it proc once the threshold dmg done of indicated on the infos has been reached, ailmen are applied as chances on hits or something like that, and not even sure what dragon is about.

So for exemple where i am at, weapons at rarity 4, the one worth is the Hard Bone Lance 3 at 345 dmg, or the Carapace Lance 3 at 345 / -20 % aff. and +10 defence, while all others are like 322 + 150 thunder, 299 + 360 poison, 299 + 270 ice, 299 + 180 fire, 322 + 210 water and the dragon bone which i can upgrade but for now mine is at 230 + 300 Dragon/low.

I used the ice one with Odo, but not even sure if we would had dropped faster with my Hard Bone Lance or even poison as he would get doted while running all over the place..

[Leon]

I don't know how exactly elemental damage works cause i never really used elemental weapons but i know you cause the element damage with each hit against enemies weak to that , how the stars will affect the damage i don't know too

For ailments it have a 1/3 chance to proc for melee weapons , and i think it always procs for ranged
The number for the ailment on the weapon is the build up rate, and it's 10% of that number that you get when when it hits, so a 240 poison means 24 build up . When you reach the build up threshold the enemie is affected by the ailment but it gets resitent to that too, so the threshold goes up .

[sturmishes]

Originally posted by Leon:

I don't know how exactly elemental damage works cause i never really used elemental weapons but i know you cause the element damage with each hit against enemies to that , how the stars will affect the damage i don't know too

For ailments it have a 1/3 chance to proc for melee weapons , and i think it always procs for ranged
The number for the ailment on the weapon is the build up rate, and it's 10% of that number that you get when when it hits, so a 240 poison means 24 build up . When you reach the build up threshold the enemie is affected by the ailment but it gets resitent to that too, so the threshold goes up .

Thanks, explained like this it makes all more simpelr to understand than all post i found with formulas and all technical stuff. So as people said, that is why slow weapon is not a good choice, since the threashold raise, it takes longer to afflict them.

[Xenos]

Originally posted by sturmishes:

Originally posted by Leon:

I started playing with the lance too , and created a topic sometime ago about the best raw lances for low rank , i got some good advices and ended up using Kulu and Pukey lances , then i got Garon lance for HR

Kulu has affinity , good damage and good sharpness. Pukey don't have affinity but have good raw and sharpness too, i was using it against monster with 3 stars poison weakness

Garon lance have good affinity , up to +30% , great damage at 391 and white sharpness, tho you have not much hits with white, blue and green sharpness .It have fire hidden element

Kulu final upgrades have +25% affnity and 391 damage too , doesn't have white sharpness but decent blue and gigant green .It have sleep hidden ailment

If you get the hang of the lance's offensive side to be almost always poking you can proc ailments , like poison or paralysis , quite often but i didn felt the need to use ailments on the weapon itself and gave the Palico those .

I just fought my first Odogaron and grabbed the first Garon lance i could. I got to admit the dmg / dmg system in this game kind of confuse me overall, read for exemple witt elements, you do 10% of the element dmg it says, then you do 10% of that 10% per stars of the monster weaknesses, so ends up pretty low, then for poison that it proc once the threshold dmg done of indicated on the infos has been reached, ailmen are applied as chances on hits or something like that, and not even sure what dragon is about.

So for exemple where i am at, weapons at rarity 4, the one worth is the Hard Bone Lance 3 at 345 dmg, or the Carapace Lance 3 at 345 / -20 % aff. and +10 defence, while all others are like 322 + 150 thunder, 299 + 360 poison, 299 + 270 ice, 299 + 180 fire, 322 + 210 water and the dragon bone which i can upgrade but for now mine is at 230 + 300 Dragon/low.

I used the ice one with Odo, but not even sure if we would had dropped faster with my Hard Bone Lance or even poison as he would get doted while running all over the place..

The elemental system is complicated in the code but easy to understand conceptually if explained right:

Physical attacks always work, 100% of the time. However, they are subject to affinity, positive and negative. Negative affinity means you have a chance to deal LESS damage on hit. Physical is reliable, but depending on how tanky the enemy is, or how tough their hide is, it might not do much by itself.

Elemental damage is a static damage number added on top of your physical damage. The downside being it cannot be normally impacted by critical hits (The Critical Element skill changes this) and it can be resisted by an enemy. An enemy with 1-Star elemental weakness means that most of the body parts remove a portion of that static elemental damage. 2-Star implies neutrality, meaning the elemental effect does its normal damage. 3-Star implies most body parts are weak to that element, letting it inflict further damage than normal. However, a red X for an element means that monster takes absolutely zero damage from it across all parts of its body.

A good example of this is Diablos, who has an absolutely massive crippling weakness to the Ice element, with all his body parts being horribly weak to the element. You'll do nearly double your normal damage by bringing Ice element to that fight.

Ailments work similarly, but instead of dealing more damage, the monster's natural resistance to their buildup is higher or lower. Enemies weak to Paralysis for example, will get paralyzed multiple times per fight, where enemies resistance to it will get paralyzed maybe once during the entire hunt. Unlike elemental damage, ailment buildup only procs about 1/3rd of the time when used on a weapon. This means faster weapons benefit from ailment, as they deal less elemental damage per hit due to their low damage on average, but can much more rapidly inflict status effects. The opposite is true for slow, hard hitters like the Greatsword; since you won't be hitting as often, the multipliers for elemental damage give you a LOT more damage per hit.

Once an ailment activates on a monster, two things happen:
- Their resistance to the ailment increases every time, until it caps eventually
- Depending on their resistance or weakness to it, the ailment lasts longer and does more damage.

For example, once a monster is poisoned, you will very clearly see them start drooling purple goop. If a monster is weak to poison, the poison will both deal more damage per second AND last longer. If they are resistance, it deals less damage, and won't last as long. For Paralysis and Sleep, a monster stays down longer. Unlike Poison, Blast doesn't get more damaging, it is just easier to proc the weaker a monster is to it. When it activates, it causes the closest compatible part of the monster to "detonate", dealing 120 damage to all nearby parts. This increases to 300 damage in Master Rank in Iceborne.

Technically "Stun" is an ailment, but ANYTHING that inflicts blunt damage causes buildup. This even includes stuff like SnS/Lance shield bash, as bad as those moves are.

Hammers and the Hunting Horn are the most effective users of Stun because they exclusively deal Blunt damage, meaning any attacks they deal to the head causes buildup. They can also run a second status, but for Hammers this isn't always useful.

Enemies can be immune to Paralysis and Sleep, but cannot be immune to Stun, Blast or Poison, the exception being Zorah Magdaros, who is immune to ALL ailments, likely because he would be difficult to program them for, and Fatalis, who cannot be KO'd, because he's just built different.

The Lance has very low natural damage values, as it is designed to be an absolute WALL that monsters cannot breach, but the downside being you can't go on the offensive very well. However, it has a deceptively FAST attacking speed, because the triple poke attacks faster than most weapons in the game. This means the Lance is a surprisingly fantastic status weapon, since it can very easily build up minute amounts of status over the course of a fight due to relentless poking and easy point-blank turtling.

An especially excellent damage method for the Lance is to charge an enemy while they are down, which inflicts INCREDIBLY rapid low damage pokes as you get stuck against them. This attacks faster than any other weapon capable of dealing status ailments, save almost exclusively for Dual Blade Demon Dance. Because of this, tripping an enemy is a chance to inflict a LOT of status buildup, making Lance itself a great status weapon. When I used to use Lance, I would use Poison, and could reliably inflict it 4-6 times every fight for a lot of extra DOT damage.

Affinity is useful on any weapon, although I personally think it helps the Lance very little. 25% extra damage on a weapon with such low base damage like the Lance doesn't do especially much.

[dyne2alex]

Originally posted by sturmishes:

Originally posted by Leon:

I don't know how exactly elemental damage works cause i never really used elemental weapons but i know you cause the element damage with each hit against enemies to that , how the stars will affect the damage i don't know too

For ailments it have a 1/3 chance to proc for melee weapons , and i think it always procs for ranged
The number for the ailment on the weapon is the build up rate, and it's 10% of that number that you get when when it hits, so a 240 poison means 24 build up . When you reach the build up threshold the enemie is affected by the ailment but it gets resitent to that too, so the threshold goes up .

Thanks, explained like this it makes all more simpelr to understand than all post i found with formulas and all technical stuff. So as people said, that is why slow weapon is not a good choice, since the threashold raise, it takes longer to afflict them.

xenos explained it, but yea lance is actually quite fast if you're using it properly. triple poke into sidestep and repeat, hop + thrust (which is multiple hits and reposiitioning with block), charge (lots of little hits while charging), etc. That said, the charge move he's talking about does require setup and sharpness for it to actually be effective and efficient.

Preferably when monster is downed so you can keep charging without simply slipping past it, preferably with skills so you lose sharpness slower or with the skill that gives you a time limited no sharpness loss after sharpening (I forget the name), etc. The main downside of the charge move is that it eats your sharpness (which is a huge issue when you're still in story), but as long as you can mitigate that aspect and are able to keep charging, you're good.

[Leon]

The lance can be used in a very agressive style , with fast counters and great mobility but defense is where it really excels.

If you are planing to go with the lance to the end of the story as i did , i would recomend you to focus on buiding up defensive skills

Xenos, the other guy posting in this thread, gave me good advice about it

- Focus on getting the Guard skill , it will mitigate chip damage ( damage you take for blocking) and lessen the knoback from heavier attacks.Some people says you are good with Guard 3 , but i think guard 5 is worth your first run

- Guard up skill it will make so that you can block unblokable attacks, such as pin attacks and explosions or gases. It's a little hard to get cause the easier way to have it on HR( you can only have that on HR , and it's a single level skill) is to get at least 3 parts of Urgaan armor. The goods thing is that some of Urgaan armor parts have Guard skill too, so you can have both

- Recovery speed and Health boost skills Recovery speed will make you recovery the red portion of your healt bar faster and the Health boost makes what it's names says, so you will last much longer

That way i was able to pass most hunts in HR in my first try

[sturmishes]

Originally posted by Xenos:

The elemental system is complicated in the code but easy to understand conceptually if explained right:

Physical attacks always work, 100% of the time. However, they are subject to affinity, positive and negative. Negative affinity means you have a chance to deal LESS damage on hit. Physical is reliable, but depending on how tanky the enemy is, or how tough their hide is, it might not do much by itself.

Elemental damage is a static damage number added on top of your physical damage. The downside being it cannot be normally impacted by critical hits (The Critical Element skill changes this) and it can be resisted by an enemy. An enemy with 1-Star elemental weakness means that most of the body parts remove a portion of that static elemental damage. 2-Star implies neutrality, meaning the elemental effect does its normal damage. 3-Star implies most body parts are weak to that element, letting it inflict further damage than normal. However, a red X for an element means that monster takes absolutely zero damage from it across all parts of its body.

A good example of this is Diablos, who has an absolutely massive crippling weakness to the Ice element, with all his body parts being horribly weak to the element. You'll do nearly double your normal damage by bringing Ice element to that fight.

Ailments work similarly, but instead of dealing more damage, the monster's natural resistance to their buildup is higher or lower. Enemies weak to Paralysis for example, will get paralyzed multiple times per fight, where enemies resistance to it will get paralyzed maybe once during the entire hunt. Unlike elemental damage, ailment buildup only procs about 1/3rd of the time when used on a weapon. This means faster weapons benefit from ailment, as they deal less elemental damage per hit due to their low damage on average, but can much more rapidly inflict status effects. The opposite is true for slow, hard hitters like the Greatsword; since you won't be hitting as often, the multipliers for elemental damage give you a LOT more damage per hit.

Once an ailment activates on a monster, two things happen:
- Their resistance to the ailment increases every time, until it caps eventually
- Depending on their resistance or weakness to it, the ailment lasts longer and does more damage.

For example, once a monster is poisoned, you will very clearly see them start drooling purple goop. If a monster is weak to poison, the poison will both deal more damage per second AND last longer. If they are resistance, it deals less damage, and won't last as long. For Paralysis and Sleep, a monster stays down longer. Unlike Poison, Blast doesn't get more damaging, it is just easier to proc the weaker a monster is to it. When it activates, it causes the closest compatible part of the monster to "detonate", dealing 120 damage to all nearby parts. This increases to 300 damage in Master Rank in Iceborne.

Technically "Stun" is an ailment, but ANYTHING that inflicts blunt damage causes buildup. This even includes stuff like SnS/Lance shield bash, as bad as those moves are.

Hammers and the Hunting Horn are the most effective users of Stun because they exclusively deal Blunt damage, meaning any attacks they deal to the head causes buildup. They can also run a second status, but for Hammers this isn't always useful.

Enemies can be immune to Paralysis and Sleep, but cannot be immune to Stun, Blast or Poison, the exception being Zorah Magdaros, who is immune to ALL ailments, likely because he would be difficult to program them for, and Fatalis, who cannot be KO'd, because he's just built different.

The Lance has very low natural damage values, as it is designed to be an absolute WALL that monsters cannot breach, but the downside being you can't go on the offensive very well. However, it has a deceptively FAST attacking speed, because the triple poke attacks faster than most weapons in the game. This means the Lance is a surprisingly fantastic status weapon, since it can very easily build up minute amounts of status over the course of a fight due to relentless poking and easy point-blank turtling.

An especially excellent damage method for the Lance is to charge an enemy while they are down, which inflicts INCREDIBLY rapid low damage pokes as you get stuck against them. This attacks faster than any other weapon capable of dealing status ailments, save almost exclusively for Dual Blade Demon Dance. Because of this, tripping an enemy is a chance to inflict a LOT of status buildup, making Lance itself a great status weapon. When I used to use Lance, I would use Poison, and could reliably inflict it 4-6 times every fight for a lot of extra DOT damage.

Affinity is useful on any weapon, although I personally think it helps the Lance very little. 25% extra damage on a weapon with such low base damage like the Lance doesn't do especially much.

Simply amazing and really helpful, helps me a lot to understand now, and you make me realise whn the monster is down instead of going Counter thrust + High trust 2 + high trust 3 i might try this out with elem or poison, i'm also starting to understand more the sharpness, didn'T cared much before, but since i'm getting clsoe to HR i think, things will get more improtant. Thanks a lot

[sturmishes]

Originally posted by Leon:

The lance can be used in a very agressive style , with fast counters and great mobility but defense is where it really excels.

If you are planing to go with the lance to the end of the story as i did , i would recomend you to focus on buiding up defensive skills

Xenos, the other guy posting in this thread, gave me good advice about it

- Focus on getting the Guard skill , it will mitigate chip damage ( damage you take for blocking) and lessen the knoback from heavier attacks.Some people says you are good with Guard 3 , but i think guard 5 is worth your first run

- Guard up skill it will make so that you can block unblokable attacks, such as pin attacks and explosions or gases. It's a little hard to get cause the easier way to have it on HR( you can only have that on HR , and it's a single level skill) is to get at least 3 parts of Urgaan armor. The goods thing is that some of Urgaan armor parts have Guard skill too, so you can have both

- Recovery speed and Health boost skills Recovery speed will make you recovery the red portion of your healt bar faster and the Health boost makes what it's names says, so you will last much longer

That way i was able to pass most hunts in HR in my first try

For now i am using Guard 3 (2 armor+charm), very helpful to learn Lance, as it also allow mistakes or should i say help learning monsters, it made my second encounter with Diablo almost a joke versys using shirld and sword. Thanks for the tips, very helful... i am getting a bit nervous about HR closing in.

[Xenos]

A few random tips about the Lance to round it out:

- Counter Hit actually gets weaker the longer it charges up, which seems kinda weird when looking at the animation. Ideally you treat it as a "parry", activating it just before you get hit.

- Since Lance deals slashing damage, its an excellent part breaker. Due to its length and ability to poke high, its one of the few weapons that can consistently hit flying monsters or elevated body parts like tails and wings. Take advantage of this feature, crippling body parts in turn cripples the beast.

For example, a Rathalos with both wings broken may stumble to the ground if it attempts to fly during a fight. Breaking Diablos's horns significantly reduces his charge damage. Cutting off a Rathian tail removes its ability to poison you.

Use your high and low thrusts to aim at specific monster parts for easy triple stab damage. With your shield, you can stay on top of monsters for the whole fight, unlike other weapons which have to dodge and evade to avoid getting run over. Be a constant stinging nuisance to a monster: abuse your defensive power!

- The Lance charge is easily the fastest moving thing a hunter can do in the game, and it only stops if you bounce off an enemy due to sharpness loss or hit a wall. This is a PHENOMENAL rundown tool, as it outruns a lot of monsters and lets you harass them without retaliation for easy damage and status buildup.

Its also fantastic for easily repositioning as it can be cancelled immediately into a guard, allowing you to quickly run in or out of a fight.

But also, the jumping charge attack deals mounting damage, giving Lance an on-demand mounting method some weapons are very jealous of.

- Use and abuse guard dashing, by pressing dodge with your shield up. Lance is the onoy weapon that can do this, and it lets you close the gap easily without even being threatened by damage. Tapping attack after a guard dash chains into a leaping thrust, which does okay damage and hits multiple times. This thrust can be chained into guard dash again for an infinite, gap-closing combo that blocks attacks, inflicts damage, and moves you forward all at the same time.

[Leon]

Originally posted by sturmishes:

i am getting a bit nervous about HR closing in.

There's no need for that.
I think HR is much easier then LR. At the begnning you have nothing , no armor skills, not many tools to aid in the hunt , few resources and you are learning the game
By the time you get to HR you have mantles, charms, start getting decorations, armor gives you much more skills and deco slots and you have more then enough resources to always have traps, tranq bombs , flash and dung pods stocked

Xenos covered a lot in his posts, i would add some advices tho.

Give an ailment weapon to your Palico , either Radobaan sleep weapon or the paralysis one (Kitty-of-the-Valley Rod) it will be really helpfull .

There is a special damage boost when a monster is sleeping , The first attack you land before it awakes up will cause 2x the damage and if you use explosives , the explosion will cause 4x ( if i'm not mistaken )
But as lance doesn't have a "nuke attack" that causes massive damage i would advise you to go with paralysis to get as much fast and free hits as you can

[sturmishes]

Originally posted by Leon:

Originally posted by sturmishes:

i am getting a bit nervous about HR closing in.

There's no need for that.
I think HR is much easier then LR. At the begnning you have nothing , no armor skills, not many tools to aid in the hunt , few resources and you are learning the game
By the time you get to HR you have mantles, charms, start getting decorations, armor gives you much more skills and deco slots and you have more then enough resources to always have traps, tranq bombs , flash and dung pods stocked

Xenos covered a lot in his posts, i would add some advices tho.

Give an ailment weapon to your Palico , either Radobaan sleep weapon or the paralysis one (Kitty-of-the-Valley Rod) it will be really helpfull .

There is a special damage boost when a monster is sleeping , The first attack you land before it awakes up will cause 2x the damage and if you use explosives , the explosion will cause 4x ( if i'm not mistaken )
But as lance doesn't have a "nuke attack" that causes massive damage i would advise you to go with paralysis to get as much fast and free hits as you can

WE'll soon see. last night i cleared up the Ratheos and Diablos ques, tonight i'll do some material quest i got (exeot the Kirin one, it says it's an Elder Dragon, guess i'll wait a bit :))

For my Palico, he had Ladybug one (Paralysis) for quite a while, just love it.

I got to get used to use more my Mantle, rather than swear because i clumsy died, waiting too long to heal or anything...

Got to admit i got some nice tips in the thread, like hitting Ratheos wings to break them, why didn't i thought of this, it made it a bit less a pain when i got his quest last night, versus the time i was hunting him in explorationa nd he kept flying away all the time. I also started to use more the dash attack than ends with the 3 fast poke.... I try to think mor,e than spamming all buttons... i never was skiled for these type of game, reason why i hated fighthing games, but i am starting to do better now in this game.

Out of subject and dumb question, once HR, is raw meat the same as LR, i wanted to hunt a few to restock, but if well-steal are obsolete i will cook them for nothing...