Affectionate Diary

I discovered something last night while building my Lagiacrus armour (one more horn to go!) You probably already know there’s two types of shield bash, one from unsheathed with the + button and one from a hop forward in block that you can follow up with a shield bash that can combo straight into a horizontal poke. And then there’s the counter.

The counter blocks one hit as long as you haven’t struck out with it yet. I thought it was a charged move, like the Great Sword’s charge or the Hammer’s charge, but it’s not. Well, it maybe is, but it’s also a kind of stance that you can block from while charging. If you get hit once during the block then you immediately come out of it into a vertical poke. Which means no block stun and the start of a new attack run. I only figured it out as I was finishing up, but I think it means that as long as your weapon is sheathed you can run into a monster about to roar and go immediately into block>counter, block the roar and instead of being pushed back you’re poking it in the face. Which makes the Lance SUPER aggressive, and not just the tank class it was before.

Need more testing! Hopefully tonight. I *LOVE* the Lance, and not just because it’s basically a massive cock you carry around on your back.

You are probably using your weapon in the wrong way, on the wrong part. That’s because you’re a fucking idiot. I’m not, I’m ace. Here’s how to be less shit.

DISCLAIMER - most of this theory is top line and uses damage calculations based on the PSP rules. Which I’m presuming are the same. There are some changes to how much different weapons do on different hits (Hammer’s double blow from partial charge on the run is massively reduced) but if you already know your way around the hammer you don’t need this. You just need to play.

Hammer
This weapon is The Business. Ace damage output, can dizzy monsters and is pretty easy to use. No block, you need to be handy with rolling. Focus on attacking the head, the complete head and only the head. Your role in the group is to dizzy the monster so that everyone can get free hits in. Feel free to abuse the fully-charged overhead pound all the time, as long as you’re on the head. If you smash other hunters away then that’s their own damn fault. They shouldn’t be near the head when there’s a hammer user. Unless they’re also a hammer user, I guess.

If the monster’s down then switch to using the basic triple pound. Don’t ever use the big spinning thing, it’s proper rubbish except for dealing elemental damage to a breakable part of a monster that requires elemental damage to be broken. Otherwise, you’re doing no damage for AGES. And don’t use the fully charged overhead pound anywhere other than on the monster’s head, because then you’re smashing away other hunters with no justification.

Great Sword
OI! STOP THE FUCKING UPSWING IN CLOSE! Don’t flail around, run in and do an unsheathe attack, maybe follow up if there’s time and then roll cancel into safety. If you are flailing (by switching between either of the buttons or both buttons together, never doing the same move twice in a row) then you should be using overheads and side swings on the tails until they’re off, and then you stay behind and nip at the legs. And you have LOADS of range, but get a bonus for hitting with the exact centre of the sword. So er on the side of caution and keep back and stop knocking other hunters all over the fucking shop, you massive cunt.

All three swings have roughly the same damage, and three consecutive swings has roughly the same damage as a fully charged hit, but a full charged hit will not knock anyone else away. You need a pretty good understanding of how the monster moves to use the charge, though, and now that Rathian and Rathalos no longer land reliably I’d say be wary of this one except on dizzied or sleeping monsters. Doing a full charge on a sleeping monster is ace because of the 4x damage bonus.

When you’re not hitting the monster you are putting your sword away so that you can run around quickly. You can instant block from sheathed so you’ve no reason to ever be hit by anything ever again. Especially Diablos’ crazy dive attack.

When building Great Swords ignore the element and focus on raw damage and sharpness. Affinity is nice, but can be fixed with skills in a variety of ways, so really sharpness and raw is king.

There’s also a new side swipe and wild charge, but ignore them for now.

Lance
The weapon of kings. You get in close and you stay in close. You have a tiny hit box on your strikes so you should never be trouble for other hunters. Upwards stab does more damage than a long ways stab but covers less ground, so you really do need to stay in close. The unsheathe attack does even more damage than an upwards poke, so when you’re not stabbing you should be sheathing to get back your mobility and to deal more damage when you get back in. While doing the counter strike you seem to be able to block, though I think not everything. I’d test it, but that would mean getting hit. I never get hit.

The lance is an odd one. It deals either slicing or blunt damage depending on where you’re striking. It chooses the best damage type, basically, but doesn’t ever deal dizzying blows like the hammer. Which is a shame. But if it could, it would be massively imba, so I’ll let it slide.

A lance player should really be filling in the gaps in the group. He can reach all the breakable bits and do so without knocking everyone away. He stays in close and so is always the first man on the scene, so he needs to know if there’s a hammer player coming in for the head, or a sword and shield guy about the dive in on the tail. They get priority because they have one clear role. The lancer doesn’t, so often the lancer should be on the wings/arms/claws/body. Depending.

Lances are also pretty decent at dealing elemental damage and status damage, so take that into account when building something.

Sword and Shield
YOU ARE SUPPORT. You can use items without putting your weapon away (Lifepowder, Flutes, Antidotes and Potions with the Wide Area ability) so you should be prioritising that above DPS. You can do ok damage as long as you match the element to the monster’s weakness and you can inflict poison, sleep and paralysis statuses faster than anyone else, but you also commit to a physical area for AGES and during that time you stop anyone else from attacking that’s near you. So what I’m saying is, fuck off. Or, because you’re so mobile, use the jumping attack to get in first and then slash and roll away before the cavalry arrive to do real damage. Unless the team needs a poison status, obviously. Then everyone makes room for you, because you’re the daddy.

Long Sword
You do BARE DAMAGE. You also have range and the bonus for hitting with the middle of the sword. You can also, if precise, deal all this damage in a narrow line without hassling your fellow hunters. Please be precise! Though if you’re not I guess that’s *kind of* alright since you’re doing so much damage, but your team could be doing more. And you’re on the tail till it comes off, and then you’re on the legs and body. You should be building spirit meter with constant aggression, and then when it’s full rinsing the spirit combo with the shoulder button. That then builds a second level of charge that never seems to drop, and your sword will glow and look REALLY FUCKING COOL. Your spirit combos will push everyone away, but since you’re doing the most damage that’s probably fine. Fuck ‘em. And let’s face it, if you’re on Long Sword you don’t give a fuck about them anyway.

That’s the thing about using the Long Sword - it’s primarily associated with dicks. Like Paladin class in WoW, you’re doomed to a lifetime of abuse and stigmatisation. If you’re cool with that (and dicks usually are) then go for it.

Switch Axe
I have NO IDEA. I’ve not played it even once. What I have noticed, though, is that switch axe players get in close and do massive swings that cause EVERY OTHER HUNTER to be interrupted. Yeah, thanks. So this weapon can fuck off. For now. Until I learn how to make it sing in a way that works in a group and then it’s on like Tron.

Bowguns
LOL

I have genuinely tried to write reviews for all of the following, but in a feat of procastrination, I have spectacularly failed to finish any of them. Instead, here’s a roundup!

Borderlands:

As if you got a gold-standard AAA cinematic action FPS and had all the bullshit stripped out and replaced with gleeful proceduralism and a million guns. Pretty much the best FPS in the last five years, Borderlands offers a stripped-down hybrid of two things that really should have borne such fruitful offspring A LONG TIME before late 2009. Although skewed too heavily in support of its MMO aspirations, Borderlands offsets its frugal concessions to player customisation, or highly specific player builds, with raw fun in abundance and, as already mentioned, enough guns to make you piss raw happiness for hours at a time. Sadly, in the post-completion afterglow, the criminal lack of dress-up options and a decent stealth spec leaves you feeling like you’ve been grubbily exploited, but you fucking loved it, you fucking cheap whore. 21

Mass Effect 2:

In a world where no Sci-Fi trope is out of bounds and where everything feels clumsily bolted to everything else (including the kissing), it’s heartening to know that your hard-spent cash has at least bought you the option to have sexual relations with more NPCs than ever before in a tawdry, imaginatively-derelict lumbering clusterfuck of confused RPG and 3rd-person shooter mechanics set in the most tiresome multi-humanoid Sci-Fi universe ever designed. Excelling in stylistic and design mediocrity, Mass Effect 2 is a grand celebration of near-obscene linearity masked by much the same vague gesture at open-universe spacefaring as its prequel. In reality, Mass Effect has become Resident Evil, in the sense that it does many things in exactly the worst way you could have possibly imagined. It’s immensely confusing, then, that I feel mildly compelled to play it properly. The list of player interaction howlers is as long as the stupendous inconsistencies and idiocies that plague the Mass Effect universe, yet the action has enough punch to drive you forward and the vague gestures at RPG progression are just enough to keep going. Really, all I care about is the Captain’s Cabin, where I get some room to dress up and customise a place I can call home. The moral here is that I will do just about fucking anything in a game if it gets me a dress-up option or a choice of pet for my persistent lesbian space marine with a completely random moral code.

Mass Effect 2 is like a Kinder egg where the toy is really quite cool, but the white chocolate is mustard gas mixed with open-heart surgery and the milk chocolate is rabies and child pornography with a party-political manifesto. In some alternate reality, I’m actually frothing at the gash over Mass Effect 2, as it’s a stoically rigid game of astronomical wonder, with immense tech trees and huge weapon selections, rocks a trillion different hats and hangs together with the effortless grace that a misty-eyed amalgam of Damocles, Hired Guns and Elite could spontaneously create. Fuck KOTOR. Seriously. 21

Infinite Space:

Should only be played on a DS that isn’t on the verge of having a screen hinge break. Even though it makes almost no sense and despite having the funnest spaceship equipping screens ever, its lack of Elite-level commodity trading strikes a chasm along my heart. That said, I fancy the spacemilf so fucking much, I did have a full and intractable breakdown when my DS’s right-hand hinge finally broke, making the top screen ropey as fuck. Certainly ropey enough that I can’t possibly risk playing it on the tube, which is the only place I’d play Infinite Space anyway. Surely some iPhone cocksucker can remake this relatively fun space fighting game with load of that Elite shit and coin it the fuck in? On second thoughts, make it Android and low-spec. 21

Just Cause 2:

There’s a lot to be said for sprinkling your delicious world with freeplay objectives aplenty, and even more to be said for making them all the same, enforcing a shit player character on me and not giving me any dress-up options at all. What I actually say is ‘FUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK’, over and over, because if Just Cause 2 had dumped its imbecilic pretensions and gone truly player-centred , or maybe asked what would be brilliant fun inside its brilliant tech, we might have had the greatest terrorist-cum-tourist thrillseeker simulation of all time. Please pay A LOT MORE attention to Saint’s Row 2, Just Cause 3. You can do more activities at the average Centreparcs resort, FFS - and they don’t even have helipads. A common thought I had while playing Just Cause 2, either when blowing stuff up or traveling somewhere, was: “why aren’t I earning some XP for this shit?”. I guess after Prototype fucked that right up, everyone else has been to fucking pussy to really go for it. I can only hope that Saints Row 3 remembers why Saints Row 2 was so fucking awesome. My abiding memory of Just Cause 2 is that the dude looks like Lewis Hamilton in the loading screen, but a cross between Clive Owen and Ian McShane in-game. Harrowing. 21

Splinter Cell Conviction:

I can’t even get started writing about this. Such is the bile I want to spill. If it wasn’t for Afterburner Climax, murders would have happened. 21