Question for Insect Glaive Mains

[ORIMU]

When it comes to Armor Skills, do you guys focus on Survivability build? or Offensive build? or a Mix between the two? which do you think is best for Insect Glaive?

I love fighting in the air most of the time. I only attack on land when the monster is either down, or not moving. I have Airborne and Jump Master and I will never get rid of these two in my Set.

[Lin]

With IG, when you get orange buff and triple extract active, you get a defense boost anyway. So you generally will take less damage when you get hit compared to most.

Especially when you get health augment, you can use your kinsect as a ranged heal while spamming for damage too. No green extract needed.

And with each point of brace/flinch free providing a point of tremor resist, wind resist, and earplugs when you have triple extract, you have plenty of safety and comfort in a typical offense setup.

Thus, you should generally go pure offense, with your health boost 3 at minimum of course, and with a focus on raw damage. This is because your IG attacks itself benefit more from raw than element. Plus your kinsect, when powered up with monster slinger ammo (red icon by kinsect gauge), will do lots of element damage. And that makes your dive attacks horrendously strong, provided you use a slower bug.

Aerial should mostly be used for repositioning purposes, since even if you specifically build for aerial damage, it's only going to keep up with ground/dive IG at best. And that's considering largely element weak targets, such as Velkhana.

The final few fights are very unkind to aerial IG too. Not saying you can't aerial. Since I get it, it's fun, it's safe, numbers pop up, mounts, etc. And of course, the dive requires being in the air anyway. Just you will need to understand the ground game to not get hard walled. That helicopter move has a very long animation while using up stamina after all.

[makinaccion]

Originally posted by Lin:

With IG, when you get orange buff and triple extract active, you get a defense boost anyway. So you generally will take less damage when you get hit compared to most.

Especially when you get health augment, you can use your kinsect as a ranged heal while spamming for damage too. No green extract needed.

And with each point of brace/flinch free providing a point of tremor resist, wind resist, and earplugs when you have triple extract, you have plenty of safety and comfort in a typical offense setup.

Thus, you should generally go pure offense, with your health boost 3 at minimum of course, and with a focus on raw damage. This is because your IG attacks itself benefit more from raw than element. Plus your kinsect, when powered up with monster slinger ammo (red icon by kinsect gauge), will do lots of element damage. And that makes your dive attacks horrendously strong, provided you use a slower bug.

Aerial should mostly be used for repositioning purposes, since even if you specifically build for aerial damage, it's only going to keep up with ground/dive IG at best. And that's considering largely element weak targets, such as Velkhana.

The final few fights are very unkind to aerial IG too. Not saying you can't aerial. Since I get it, it's fun, it's safe, numbers pop up, mounts, etc. And of course, the dive requires being in the air anyway. Just you will need to understand the ground game to not get hard walled. That helicopter move has a very long animation while using up stamina after all.

Very good advice, all I can add is that you also absolutely want to put in all your IG sets Power Prolonger, a must-have QoL for IG.

[ORIMU]

Originally posted by Lin:

With IG, when you get orange buff and triple extract active, you get a defense boost anyway. So you generally will take less damage when you get hit compared to most.

Especially when you get health augment, you can use your kinsect as a ranged heal while spamming for damage too. No green extract needed.

And with each point of brace/flinch free providing a point of tremor resist, wind resist, and earplugs when you have triple extract, you have plenty of safety and comfort in a typical offense setup.

Thus, you should generally go pure offense, with your health boost 3 at minimum of course, and with a focus on raw damage. This is because your IG attacks itself benefit more from raw than element. Plus your kinsect, when powered up with monster slinger ammo (red icon by kinsect gauge), will do lots of element damage. And that makes your dive attacks horrendously strong, provided you use a slower bug.

Aerial should mostly be used for repositioning purposes, since even if you specifically build for aerial damage, it's only going to keep up with ground/dive IG at best. And that's considering largely element weak targets, such as Velkhana.

The final few fights are very unkind to aerial IG too. Not saying you can't aerial. Since I get it, it's fun, it's safe, numbers pop up, mounts, etc. And of course, the dive requires being in the air anyway. Just you will need to understand the ground game to not get hard walled. That helicopter move has a very long animation while using up stamina after all.

I see, this is very helpful. I didn't know that Orange buff also has free Earplugs, Tremor resist and wind resist. I thought it was only pure Defense buff. Thank you for your input!

[ORIMU]

Originally posted by makinaccion:

Originally posted by Lin:

With IG, when you get orange buff and triple extract active, you get a defense boost anyway. So you generally will take less damage when you get hit compared to most.

Especially when you get health augment, you can use your kinsect as a ranged heal while spamming for damage too. No green extract needed.

And with each point of brace/flinch free providing a point of tremor resist, wind resist, and earplugs when you have triple extract, you have plenty of safety and comfort in a typical offense setup.

Thus, you should generally go pure offense, with your health boost 3 at minimum of course, and with a focus on raw damage. This is because your IG attacks itself benefit more from raw than element. Plus your kinsect, when powered up with monster slinger ammo (red icon by kinsect gauge), will do lots of element damage. And that makes your dive attacks horrendously strong, provided you use a slower bug.

Aerial should mostly be used for repositioning purposes, since even if you specifically build for aerial damage, it's only going to keep up with ground/dive IG at best. And that's considering largely element weak targets, such as Velkhana.

The final few fights are very unkind to aerial IG too. Not saying you can't aerial. Since I get it, it's fun, it's safe, numbers pop up, mounts, etc. And of course, the dive requires being in the air anyway. Just you will need to understand the ground game to not get hard walled. That helicopter move has a very long animation while using up stamina after all.

Very good advice, all I can add is that you also absolutely want to put in all your IG sets Power Prolonger, a must-have QoL for IG.

OOhh, I'll remember that. I looked up what Power Prolonger is, and it does look very convenient to have Level 3 of this, almost double Kinsect buff duration. Thanks for this info.

[Anoyun?]

IG is one of the weapon that is so skill intensive you can play it cheap like LS with buff (base game game play) or you can play it ON AIR or you can do both but you need alot of skill to make it viable or powerful.

[R_AFR]

Generally i do full offense except for some weapon that needs some QoL skill

I only use specific skill to counter monster when they got annoying
For example :
I use switchaxe when facing gold rathian, but her tail and poison is annoying
So i use poison res 3 and part breaker 3
And eat ele res L meal

Her fight become a lot more manageable

[robruckus65]

Critical eye, critical boost, weakness exploit, agitator, health boost. when you can fit it power prolonger and attack. in master rank 2 piece teostra armor bonus takes care of your sharpness pre fatalis and before that you can use the master's touch talisman. An airborne damage deco if you can fit it can be a decent damage boost too if you do the dive attack a lot. When you can get one and have room for it the clutch claw boost deco is incredibly helpful. The Jump master is imo a waste of a skill on armor or deco slot. You do way more damage on the ground and are incredibly vulnerable to the massive wonky vertical hitboxes a lot of attacks have.

[kingjames488]

didn't think the orange buff gave earplugs anymore?

[FuyuNoSora]

It depends on your personal skills against certain monsters. Flight for IG is a must to do 30% more damage in the air, it also very important to land the last hit on a weak part of the monster, this way one can gain high DPS and in my personal tests they are the same as ground IG DPS (unless you try to copy speedrunners).

The problem is, you can't go air against all monsters. Aerial VS. small monsters does not work well, it works best against large monsters. Against small monsters one has to use ground + air attacks. If you fly a lot you need also at least one gem that helps out your stamina, like "Physique". Against very hard monsters, things like Evade 3-5 and at least 1 Evade extender are a must, as you won't be able to stay in the air all of the time.

Unless your skill is very high and you will train for many hours on end you can't go all out offense against really hard monsters, but you can do so against easier ones like Rathalos for instance. If you like mounting monsters than you should also use the Glider mantle, it makes it easier to mount monsters and with Jump Master you can mount a monster at least 3 times, maybe even 4 times in a quest. Like others already suggested you also need more sharpness, because aerial eats up your sharpness like crazy, but it also does break monster parts much easier, thus part breaker 3 is a great addition.

[jekz]

Aerial IG is unfortunately pretty bad and as stated above should be only used for reposition purposes or mounting. Although if you enjoy playing the weapon this way by all means keep doing so even if its not optimal. The aerial attacks do terrible dmg and burn through sharpness really quick. That being said one of the hardest hitting IG moves, Descending Thrust requires you to be in the air it also allows you to follow up with your 2nd hardest hitting move tornado slash. Airborne skill is still worth to slot in though cause it boosts DT first hit dmg and playing this weapon optimally means you spam DT quite a bit.

When it comes to skills, IG is quite is quite versatile. Depending on what gear you have access to just slot in your typical raw dmg skills: Attack boost (at east 4 for 5% affinity), agitator, crit eye/boot and weakness exploit. As for defensive ones health boost is probably the best one. I personally like evade extender 1 and evade window 3 but might be hard to slot in pre Fatalis gear. QOL skills by far my favorite is Power Prolonger, means less time gathering extracts more time actually fighting the monster. Especially since I run slower kinsects for more dmg but if you use a faster one its not that tedious to get the extracts so you could skip it.

Also shaver is a MUST to get tenderize with only one claw attack. Good luck!

[FuyuNoSora]

Originally posted by jekz:

The aerial attacks do terrible dmg and burn through sharpness really quick.

Can you prove that "terrible dmg"? Because without any solid proof what you are doing is spreading misinformation.

[jekz]

Originally posted by FuyuNoSora:

Originally posted by jekz:

The aerial attacks do terrible dmg and burn through sharpness really quick.

Can you prove that "terrible dmg"? Because without any solid proof what you are doing is spreading misinformation.

Go into the practice area, start a timer for 1 minute do only aerial attacks then do the same doing the most damaging ground combo and compare the results.

[Mr. September]

Originally posted by FuyuNoSora:

Originally posted by jekz:

The aerial attacks do terrible dmg and burn through sharpness really quick.

Can you prove that "terrible dmg"? Because without any solid proof what you are doing is spreading misinformation.

The aerial spin and that other spinning descending attack are worthless as damaging moves. They are great if you are trying to mount a monster, though. By the way, you straight up don't need any testing when you see a grounded attack hitting twice or more on average per hit when the conditions are right (Agitator and etc).

If you actually want a source, you can have my values. The aerial spin attacks deal 50-100 damage on Fatalis (wings and back way lower, while head and chest are good when wounded). Of course, only the last hit hits the most (somewhere around 120-150, iirc). Now, wait for it... The grounded combo starts with a 150 two-hit attack and escalates to 200-300 depending on the conditions, and you can use it infinitely without cancelling it, if you have the opportunity. Descending Thrust hits way more per hit than your grounded combos, and the Tornado Slash alone out-damages most of your kit in just 2 hits (adds up to 500-600 damage). Except Descending Thrust, obviously. That alone hits like... Dunno, 700? 800-something if you got the right Kinsect. Maybe more, since the initial descent alone deal a massive amount of damage to begin with, and you have like 5 more hits of 80 (which adds up to 400) if you use one of the slow-ass Kinsects.

The "best" moves are the infinite ground combo or the Descending Thrust. Everything else is situational at best, and useless at worst. I think the skill that buffs aerial attacks also buffs Descending Thrust, so it's worth getting. At least the build I got a long time ago has it, so past me must have either checked it online or asked around. Odds are, it's both.

The only handicap of your most damaging move, Descending Thrust, is that it's hard to aim it to critical places (like Fatalis' head) if you lack practice. The grounded combo is surprisingly easy to execute and maintain, does not require breaks, and can be stopped anytime.

[FuyuNoSora]

Originally posted by jekz:

Originally posted by FuyuNoSora:

Can you prove that "terrible dmg"? Because without any solid proof what you are doing is spreading misinformation.

Go into the practice area, start a timer for 1 minute do only aerial attacks then do the same doing the most damaging ground combo and compare the results.

I already did the test with the practice area years ago and it produced the same numbers for both attacks. To make sure I did the test right now again. For Aerial I did the helicopter 4 times in a row never missing the pole and then Descending Thrust in the end + two hits after landing on ground as it belongs to the combo after Descending Thrust. Don't forget that for optimal Aerial you need Airborne equipped, maybe your build does not have it.

[SotiCoto]

IG isn't meant for tanking. You've got high mobility. Even higher with Evade Extender. THAT is your defence... along with Orange Extract of course.
The only things that should be hitting you when you IG are invisible aerial hitboxes, because those are just ridiculous sometimes. Besides that, you should be chasing the monster and dropping in to infinite-combo it on the ground whenever the opportunity presents itself, then getting the hell out the moment it decides to try hitting you.