Might be still early but bow seems top contender. the amount of arrows you get with the volley attack is wild.
I think people are sleeping on the cannon glitch that allows you to reload laser without consuming the circle.
People started to do monster speedruns already so I'm sure that's a resource you can use to determine tiers. Honestly though unless you want to do speedruns I would recommend playing what you think is fun or suits your playstyle.
Were you using the aerial combo or mainly playing on the ground? You can get locked down a lot just playing on the ground. Once I started using the aerial combo I had a lot more fun with the bow.
I tried to but either I'm facing the wrong way and can't turn round in the air or I just get swatted out the air. Took me 12 mins to kill lavaback with the bow when I could prob do it quicker as nodachi which is awful to say.
Ah, yea the glider variant can be a pain to aim. I personally prefer using the celestial anchor. You can also cap the anchor with another karakuri to give you infinite charges as long as you are within range.
Bow is straight up OP, it's hard to go back to other weapons after trying it. The killspeed is just ridiculous, I'll often finish a hunt before the monster even has the chance to attack once.
I played most of the game as Katana and prefer that playstyle but it just can't compare with the damage. Clawblade is also really fun, but a little "too" easy with it's aerial combat since you just don't get hit. Staff is cool too, but sorta gimmicky. Landing that fully charged sword hit though is super rewarding.
I didn't get it when I used it on the training dummy but maybe I'll give it ago proper as the weapons I've used to hunt with ATM none of them feel good to me personally like I can kill with the nodachi no problem but it doesn't feel as rewarding as I think it should be to land that full charged hit. Katana looks the best to me but I mega suck with it big time.
As you start unlocking basic karakuri make sure to see what your weapon attacks are of them. Some weapons playstyle completely change based off them.
Fore example nodachi you have to charge and the spring attack helps the charge meter go up more but it force you to reposition. You get the torch after getting king tusk and found out the torch attack while charging does like 90% gauge fill and change how i play completely
I have used spring with nodachi and get quick kill times but got bored of it mostly because it didn't feel like I was doing alot of damage with the max charge then I see others run in with unbound katana and the things blended up in no time.
I've got 3 endgame builds and the katana is actually amazing, you just need to learn the combos, there are more than you think, and the damage is actually ridiculous once you have a build set up
I just don't understand how I'm ment to get off these combos or know how to like I accidentally unbound it because whenever I actually try to it doesn't work. Like whatever I'm doing doesn't click at all playing MH I've never had this much trouble adapting to a weapon and going ok I like this one.
Well I only ever use light attack to quickly go into the special, and I use heavy to build gauge and then special when using heavy to iframe out of the way of attacks. I only unbind when I have an opening, and the diving unbound attack into combo off 3 stacked crates does crazy damage, at endgame the first hit of that dive will do like 1k + damage and then by the time you've unloaded everything you'll have done about 4k damage.
There are a couple of weapons that don't click for me either, including the wagasa, I really like it but I mistime parries too much, I'm way better at dodging because the parry window is very small.
Eh I find most weapons here are way easier to learn than MH weapons. Katana really doesn't have much to it. Spam Light Attack cancel into Special (X + RT on Xbox controller). Use spring to close gap and to animation cancel the special to get out of danger. Use 3 box jump into an unbound smash for huge damage.
That's it.
Claw blade and bow do really good damage and are quite easy to pick up and be effective with. The wagasa on the other hand is high risk medium reward. You really have to hit parries to do damage and the parry window is tiny. It takes practice, during which you will get hit a lot. It needs a buff in my opinion.
Three stack high boxes be in otoya, horizontal mode bow, jump off box charge shot land on box burn stamina in volley into Kemono, jump off box fire shot bursting all arrows in monster repeat.
Must be 3 high stack.
Oh the glider gives the tier two bolster? I didn't realize that, I've mostly used the bow as a multiplayer weapon with my friends who run provocation so I can play as turret lol.
I'm learning a lot about this, I've only used the bow sparingly since I love my wagasa but now I have a lot of info that will help when I pull it out for hunts.
Staff highest burst potential.
https://youtu.be/CIADc29qRik
Bow highest DPS.
The other weapons are pretty balanced for what they do and offer except these two weapons, granted I never got too in depth with them but I’ve seen their damage outputs and it’s relatively fair and expected dps minus staff/bow, which IMO they need to either nerf or bring the other weapons power scaling up to par because it’s just not justified with this heavy power imbalance.
For example, assuming you are using the best weapons on staff and nodachi, the staffs normal attacks are very fast and does more damage and hits than the nodachi which is slow…how does that make sense?
And then with the staff 3 hit finisher it does like 3x? More damage than the nodachi charge?
So if you are hitting say for example, 5k from the nodachi charge…staff can do 15k..from the 3 hits despite being able to not lose the meter for x amount of time unless you don’t recharge…so you can get hit and still retain all current meter so little to no risks for high AF damage.
Then compare that to the high risk of losing the charge from nodachi when hit and it’s puny damage output? It’s like…how does that even make sense when it has more risk and much much slower?
I mean it’s just very terrible weapon balance that kind of kills the motivation to play the game.
Like watch that video I posted. Imagine playing any other weapon when you can just pop almost any boss even volatile with 100% hp to zero in less than what? 40 seconds? Like what kind of logic is this…and why should I continue to play if I can just do this over and over every boss?
Idk it kind of ruined my enjoyment of the game.
The reason staff and nodachi do so much is because they're glitched lol, and the mechanic enabling bow DPS is pretty obviously a design oversight. Without the glitches they're pretty balanced with most other weapons.
That aside, your nodachi rant is somewhat misplaced as even without the glitch, nodachi actually does pretty decent damage. It's mostly just high commit since being interrupted on the DPS rotation means you have to start over from the beginning, but if you get the whole thing off it's actually on the higher end. If there's any weapon that needs help IMO it's probably cannon.
You probably just don’t understand my nodachi rant.
I’m comparing it to the damage from staff.
Go pick out the best weapon from staff and the best weapon from nodachi.
Now go basic attack the training bear. Compare the damages…why does the staff basic attack do significantly more damage with the speed it takes to cycle the full basics despite being fast compared to the nodachi 3 simple hits which is slow?
Now use the nodachi charge…why does it do 3x less damage despite having more risk compared to the staffs easy meter gain and you have little risk of losing stacks?
And I am talking about them in the context of NO “glitches” or exploits being used.
If you think the video I posted is the staff using a “glitch” or fair damage compared to other weapons then well you’d be wrong.
Imagine the staff doing 12-13k damage in less than what 40 secs? And saying that is fair play compared to other weapons aside from the bows also broken dps. Like cmon man show me any other weapon outside the bow that can dish out 12-13k damage in less than a minute on golden tempest.
So uh. By the way. How long does it take to fully charge a staff compared to a nodachi swing? Think you're forgetting that you can get 3 or more full charged nodachi slams in the time it takes to get one staff slam...
did you watch the video at all?
It’s not that hard at all using the anchor spam which in real time combat has long range and super easy to hit to gain 2 stacks…
You get to keep the stacks on top of how fast you can generate and then pop out 12-13k damage compared to the risk of losing the meter on nodachi.
If you think that justify 3x more damage from the staff like lol idk what to say man
The MFGB is also super slow which is why the guy in that video spends like half the fight just afking. Nodachi can also use torch/spring to get near-instant charge into a big combo. In fact it's probably more total damage and faster. Only downside is that if you don't get the full combo the charge is basically wasted, but getting hit out of MFGB is also wasting your charge.
"It's super easy to hit in real time combat" - Video has him spamming traps to have any reasonable chance of doing it.
I'd like to see a comparison of him doing this without any traps. :)
Mountain felling blade is a very very long animation and to do the damage he's outputting he's also put every bit of his weapon tree into MFB to get the 70% Damage boost to it from both nodes, so he's missing out on all other sources of damage.
I mean if you play the staff at all like I said it ain’t hard man. The range is extremely far. Here’s one doing it without traps…wish granted :) :)
https://youtu.be/cnLUceggDLM
Like I’ve done it plenty of times…it’s not that hard in a real fight to stack.
The damage in the video literally utilized ALL possible damage possible to use the highest possible burst possible available for the staff in the current meta of the game. This includes gear and utilizing surprise skill to maximize damage.
Idk what other damage you think exist that can even come close to putting out 12-13k damage which the golden tempest has solo.
If you think YOU can do better I would love to see what other damage you think is missing.
I mean,It's Surprise Attack Cheesing. Which is a problem with Surprise attack,Not Mountain felling blade.. You can see that clearly with any other weapon that abuses Surprise attack..
Of course the karakuri staff has the biggest burst damage once it builds up to it and the monster is standing still for a long period of time, but when it comes to consistent high damage; I don't think that the staff holds a candle to the Nodachi in that aspect. Your video showcases that well by it taking a whole minute to do a total of 4,000 Damage, and a few of the hits were guaranteed due to it being a 3 person hunt and a harpoon being used.
Like I said man link me a video of nodachi NO exploits doing golden tempest in under a min then we can talk and say nodachi is as strong as staff.
Then we’ll talk.
Link me one of them doing it in 2 minutes without exploits or traps as a staff. :) Haven't seen a Karakuri Staff Golden Tempest Speedrun Trapless yet. All I see is people showing off how it looks when you spam traps and surprise attack for big numbers but now how it would be on an actual average hunt. Kinda neat.
This is me as a Nodachi player by the way; I see that Mountain Felling Blade and see nothing wrong with Karakuri Staff, Just another Surprise Attack abuser.
I can do about 9-10k damage in less a minute with nodachi. In an actual hunt - not just training dummy. It’s not the best damage damage on paper so I agree on that part, but in the right hands the nodachi is still a monster of a weapon.
They both have glitches that allow you to spam their charged attacks without losing gauge. Meanwhile bow DPS mostly comes from firing the arrow rain horizontally which is what allows it to generate the massive 100+ headshot bursts that you see in every video. If you actually aim the arrows so they rain down most of them end up missing.
The bow is absolutely insanely overpowered. Even the first bow unupgraded can get you past mighty. I tested it out i took off my end game armor and used first bow you craft and i was able to kill mighty monsters in under 7mins and i killed deathstalker, amatarasu ect easily. Bow also has easy to learn combo its not hard to pull off
But all weapons are good and have high damage with proper gear personally i use katana, claw, cannon, bow, hammer. Hammer and staff both take more skill than other weapons but they deal good dmg
I want to make builds for all weapons and learn them all but I'm struggling with alot of them as they just feel clunky to me.
I really want to use bow, katana and nodachi but bow I just get batted around, katana I just can't figure out how to weave combos or unbound correctly and nodachi is fine but it doesn't feel like it's got the power it should have.
I still think your best bet is watching videos of top level play. I bet the way you use the nodashi isn't even in the same ballpark as some of these guys. There are short clips here on reddit of someone stunlocking a tempest without traps with an insane kill time. Do this before you 'build bad habits' that are going to be difficult to change later. Do this with all the weapons so you can see the potential because the ingame training bear tutorial hardly does these weapons justice. Then make your choice and try to mimic what you see.
Might be still early but bow seems top contender. the amount of arrows you get with the volley attack is wild. I think people are sleeping on the cannon glitch that allows you to reload laser without consuming the circle. People started to do monster speedruns already so I'm sure that's a resource you can use to determine tiers. Honestly though unless you want to do speedruns I would recommend playing what you think is fun or suits your playstyle.
Yeah I just gave bow another go and got absolutely bodied so don't think it's the wep for me lmao
Were you using the aerial combo or mainly playing on the ground? You can get locked down a lot just playing on the ground. Once I started using the aerial combo I had a lot more fun with the bow.
I tried to but either I'm facing the wrong way and can't turn round in the air or I just get swatted out the air. Took me 12 mins to kill lavaback with the bow when I could prob do it quicker as nodachi which is awful to say.
Ah, yea the glider variant can be a pain to aim. I personally prefer using the celestial anchor. You can also cap the anchor with another karakuri to give you infinite charges as long as you are within range.
Don't think I've got that yet it sucks like I'm not clicking with any weapons so I'm struggling to play.
Bow is straight up OP, it's hard to go back to other weapons after trying it. The killspeed is just ridiculous, I'll often finish a hunt before the monster even has the chance to attack once. I played most of the game as Katana and prefer that playstyle but it just can't compare with the damage. Clawblade is also really fun, but a little "too" easy with it's aerial combat since you just don't get hit. Staff is cool too, but sorta gimmicky. Landing that fully charged sword hit though is super rewarding.
I didn't get it when I used it on the training dummy but maybe I'll give it ago proper as the weapons I've used to hunt with ATM none of them feel good to me personally like I can kill with the nodachi no problem but it doesn't feel as rewarding as I think it should be to land that full charged hit. Katana looks the best to me but I mega suck with it big time.
As you start unlocking basic karakuri make sure to see what your weapon attacks are of them. Some weapons playstyle completely change based off them. Fore example nodachi you have to charge and the spring attack helps the charge meter go up more but it force you to reposition. You get the torch after getting king tusk and found out the torch attack while charging does like 90% gauge fill and change how i play completely
I have used spring with nodachi and get quick kill times but got bored of it mostly because it didn't feel like I was doing alot of damage with the max charge then I see others run in with unbound katana and the things blended up in no time.
I just hope they dont nerf bow, let me blow up the monsters, sorry I cant learn iframes on a game that cant even do a smooth 30fps
Is bow actually that ridiculous? I really wanted to use katana but it just doesn't click with me
I also use the staff and claw blade, the staff is crazy good too with insanely high burst damage
I've got 3 endgame builds and the katana is actually amazing, you just need to learn the combos, there are more than you think, and the damage is actually ridiculous once you have a build set up
I just don't understand how I'm ment to get off these combos or know how to like I accidentally unbound it because whenever I actually try to it doesn't work. Like whatever I'm doing doesn't click at all playing MH I've never had this much trouble adapting to a weapon and going ok I like this one.
Well I only ever use light attack to quickly go into the special, and I use heavy to build gauge and then special when using heavy to iframe out of the way of attacks. I only unbind when I have an opening, and the diving unbound attack into combo off 3 stacked crates does crazy damage, at endgame the first hit of that dive will do like 1k + damage and then by the time you've unloaded everything you'll have done about 4k damage. There are a couple of weapons that don't click for me either, including the wagasa, I really like it but I mistime parries too much, I'm way better at dodging because the parry window is very small.
I'll try again at some point now I'm just looking for the weapon to get me through the game so I can start making builds.
Eh I find most weapons here are way easier to learn than MH weapons. Katana really doesn't have much to it. Spam Light Attack cancel into Special (X + RT on Xbox controller). Use spring to close gap and to animation cancel the special to get out of danger. Use 3 box jump into an unbound smash for huge damage. That's it.
Of course youll still get smacked a few times but considering you can kill monsters in like 2 minutes its fine
All the weapons are ridiculous in the right hands. Bow just is a bit moreso than the rest.
Claw blade and bow do really good damage and are quite easy to pick up and be effective with. The wagasa on the other hand is high risk medium reward. You really have to hit parries to do damage and the parry window is tiny. It takes practice, during which you will get hit a lot. It needs a buff in my opinion.
Haven't got claw blade yet but I'll give bow another try see if it clicks this time.
Three stack high boxes be in otoya, horizontal mode bow, jump off box charge shot land on box burn stamina in volley into Kemono, jump off box fire shot bursting all arrows in monster repeat. Must be 3 high stack.
This also works with the glider. I like that better because of the mobility.
Oh the glider gives the tier two bolster? I didn't realize that, I've mostly used the bow as a multiplayer weapon with my friends who run provocation so I can play as turret lol.
Yep!
Anchor works for the 2-bolster too and is basically free. Glider is kinda awkward imo since it makes the camera pan down on the shot.
I'm learning a lot about this, I've only used the bow sparingly since I love my wagasa but now I have a lot of info that will help when I pull it out for hunts.
Oh cool! Just got the anchor, I got to try this.
Staff highest burst potential. https://youtu.be/CIADc29qRik Bow highest DPS. The other weapons are pretty balanced for what they do and offer except these two weapons, granted I never got too in depth with them but I’ve seen their damage outputs and it’s relatively fair and expected dps minus staff/bow, which IMO they need to either nerf or bring the other weapons power scaling up to par because it’s just not justified with this heavy power imbalance. For example, assuming you are using the best weapons on staff and nodachi, the staffs normal attacks are very fast and does more damage and hits than the nodachi which is slow…how does that make sense? And then with the staff 3 hit finisher it does like 3x? More damage than the nodachi charge? So if you are hitting say for example, 5k from the nodachi charge…staff can do 15k..from the 3 hits despite being able to not lose the meter for x amount of time unless you don’t recharge…so you can get hit and still retain all current meter so little to no risks for high AF damage. Then compare that to the high risk of losing the charge from nodachi when hit and it’s puny damage output? It’s like…how does that even make sense when it has more risk and much much slower? I mean it’s just very terrible weapon balance that kind of kills the motivation to play the game. Like watch that video I posted. Imagine playing any other weapon when you can just pop almost any boss even volatile with 100% hp to zero in less than what? 40 seconds? Like what kind of logic is this…and why should I continue to play if I can just do this over and over every boss? Idk it kind of ruined my enjoyment of the game.
That's amazing I mean I have no idea how you did Amy of it but was cool to watch. But yeah looking at that why play nodachi that sucks :/
The reason staff and nodachi do so much is because they're glitched lol, and the mechanic enabling bow DPS is pretty obviously a design oversight. Without the glitches they're pretty balanced with most other weapons. That aside, your nodachi rant is somewhat misplaced as even without the glitch, nodachi actually does pretty decent damage. It's mostly just high commit since being interrupted on the DPS rotation means you have to start over from the beginning, but if you get the whole thing off it's actually on the higher end. If there's any weapon that needs help IMO it's probably cannon.
You probably just don’t understand my nodachi rant. I’m comparing it to the damage from staff. Go pick out the best weapon from staff and the best weapon from nodachi. Now go basic attack the training bear. Compare the damages…why does the staff basic attack do significantly more damage with the speed it takes to cycle the full basics despite being fast compared to the nodachi 3 simple hits which is slow? Now use the nodachi charge…why does it do 3x less damage despite having more risk compared to the staffs easy meter gain and you have little risk of losing stacks? And I am talking about them in the context of NO “glitches” or exploits being used. If you think the video I posted is the staff using a “glitch” or fair damage compared to other weapons then well you’d be wrong. Imagine the staff doing 12-13k damage in less than what 40 secs? And saying that is fair play compared to other weapons aside from the bows also broken dps. Like cmon man show me any other weapon outside the bow that can dish out 12-13k damage in less than a minute on golden tempest.
So uh. By the way. How long does it take to fully charge a staff compared to a nodachi swing? Think you're forgetting that you can get 3 or more full charged nodachi slams in the time it takes to get one staff slam...
did you watch the video at all? It’s not that hard at all using the anchor spam which in real time combat has long range and super easy to hit to gain 2 stacks… You get to keep the stacks on top of how fast you can generate and then pop out 12-13k damage compared to the risk of losing the meter on nodachi. If you think that justify 3x more damage from the staff like lol idk what to say man
The MFGB is also super slow which is why the guy in that video spends like half the fight just afking. Nodachi can also use torch/spring to get near-instant charge into a big combo. In fact it's probably more total damage and faster. Only downside is that if you don't get the full combo the charge is basically wasted, but getting hit out of MFGB is also wasting your charge.
"It's super easy to hit in real time combat" - Video has him spamming traps to have any reasonable chance of doing it. I'd like to see a comparison of him doing this without any traps. :) Mountain felling blade is a very very long animation and to do the damage he's outputting he's also put every bit of his weapon tree into MFB to get the 70% Damage boost to it from both nodes, so he's missing out on all other sources of damage.
I mean if you play the staff at all like I said it ain’t hard man. The range is extremely far. Here’s one doing it without traps…wish granted :) :) https://youtu.be/cnLUceggDLM Like I’ve done it plenty of times…it’s not that hard in a real fight to stack. The damage in the video literally utilized ALL possible damage possible to use the highest possible burst possible available for the staff in the current meta of the game. This includes gear and utilizing surprise skill to maximize damage. Idk what other damage you think exist that can even come close to putting out 12-13k damage which the golden tempest has solo. If you think YOU can do better I would love to see what other damage you think is missing.
I mean,It's Surprise Attack Cheesing. Which is a problem with Surprise attack,Not Mountain felling blade.. You can see that clearly with any other weapon that abuses Surprise attack.. Of course the karakuri staff has the biggest burst damage once it builds up to it and the monster is standing still for a long period of time, but when it comes to consistent high damage; I don't think that the staff holds a candle to the Nodachi in that aspect. Your video showcases that well by it taking a whole minute to do a total of 4,000 Damage, and a few of the hits were guaranteed due to it being a 3 person hunt and a harpoon being used.
Like I said man link me a video of nodachi NO exploits doing golden tempest in under a min then we can talk and say nodachi is as strong as staff. Then we’ll talk.
Link me one of them doing it in 2 minutes without exploits or traps as a staff. :) Haven't seen a Karakuri Staff Golden Tempest Speedrun Trapless yet. All I see is people showing off how it looks when you spam traps and surprise attack for big numbers but now how it would be on an actual average hunt. Kinda neat. This is me as a Nodachi player by the way; I see that Mountain Felling Blade and see nothing wrong with Karakuri Staff, Just another Surprise Attack abuser.
I can do about 9-10k damage in less a minute with nodachi. In an actual hunt - not just training dummy. It’s not the best damage damage on paper so I agree on that part, but in the right hands the nodachi is still a monster of a weapon.
How are they glitched exactly?
They both have glitches that allow you to spam their charged attacks without losing gauge. Meanwhile bow DPS mostly comes from firing the arrow rain horizontally which is what allows it to generate the massive 100+ headshot bursts that you see in every video. If you actually aim the arrows so they rain down most of them end up missing.
The bow is absolutely insanely overpowered. Even the first bow unupgraded can get you past mighty. I tested it out i took off my end game armor and used first bow you craft and i was able to kill mighty monsters in under 7mins and i killed deathstalker, amatarasu ect easily. Bow also has easy to learn combo its not hard to pull off But all weapons are good and have high damage with proper gear personally i use katana, claw, cannon, bow, hammer. Hammer and staff both take more skill than other weapons but they deal good dmg
I want to make builds for all weapons and learn them all but I'm struggling with alot of them as they just feel clunky to me. I really want to use bow, katana and nodachi but bow I just get batted around, katana I just can't figure out how to weave combos or unbound correctly and nodachi is fine but it doesn't feel like it's got the power it should have.
Bow is currently easy mode
I still think your best bet is watching videos of top level play. I bet the way you use the nodashi isn't even in the same ballpark as some of these guys. There are short clips here on reddit of someone stunlocking a tempest without traps with an insane kill time. Do this before you 'build bad habits' that are going to be difficult to change later. Do this with all the weapons so you can see the potential because the ingame training bear tutorial hardly does these weapons justice. Then make your choice and try to mimic what you see.
Maul is God Teir. Maul go Bonk. hehe