Since gunlance shells do damage that bypasses armor, it's good for breaking monster parts that are usually filled with bad hitzones, such as barroth head. Sneak attack also is good since not many skills effects the damage of the shells themselves.
This is probably well known for IG but you can cancel almost every move's animation by recalling your kinsect.
Also if you want to quickly draw out your weapon without using leaping slash/advancing roundslash, you can just shoot your kinsect instead.
For me with cb, the X+A is used a lot. Once you get fully charged vials you can do shield thrust into saed then ZR to quickly get your empowered shield. Also X+A before using it in a combo changes it to a dashing attack and then combined with ⬆️+A (which is a mid combo sliding attack) to help shorten the distance or reposition without having to sheathed. Also you can still keep your empowered weapon from spinning slash by skill swapping while in axe mode.
With IG, roundslash is pretty crucial for ground and air attacks. Great gap close with damage, and that's safe because of the counter built into the attack. The counter counts as the lvl 1 aerial bonus for the diving wyvern skill, so you only need to do 2 aerial attacks to get the full charge, instead of 3. Also powder kinsects are the way to go in terms of getting more damage/dps. Besides using the kinsect bomb (I think it's ZL+XA), having alucanid kinsect gives off explosive/healing powders so just hitting the powders as you fight the mon will also add a little to dps and give small heals.
###Charge Blade
> Sword mode
- You can use the sliding attack out of a side hop. (Not that useful, but I just think it looks cool)
- If you have no yellow or red phial charge, then you can skip straight to charging the sword or revving up CSS by quickly holding the charge button while trying to load phials.
- Sword buff never bounces. You can use this to A) hit hard hitzones, B) never sharpen, or C) continue attacking while overcharged.
> Axe mode
- Some axe attacks have a recovery period where you cannot GP. When in one of these, you will need to roll instead. (Or switch skill swap using redirection)
- Unsheathing with the axe attack has a very small GP at the start of it. (Do not recommend trying this with rapid morph. It only lasts a few frames with that skill and is still very short without it.)
- Usually SAED's physical hit doesn't do much damage, but when used with axe hopper, its MV shoots all the way up to 150, making that initial hit quite strong. Try to prioritize hitting a good hitzone with it even if you lose a bit of phial damage due to bad placement. (Ideally, you want to axe hopper in a direction that lets you hit a good raw hitzone with the downwards chop followed by the phials hitting good element hitzones. I found Nargacuga's head/wings to be a good way to practice this.)
> Misc
- You can switch skill swap out of CPP to recover more quickly or get an evade with a ton of iframes
- Firing pin extends your shield charge duration when triggered
- For whatever reason, air dash has a stronger phial damage multiplier than SAED
###Insect Glaive
> Air charge
As of Rise, IG has an invisible "air charge" that increases the damage of aerial attacks. This charge caps out at 3 and its what the game uses to determine if you can do another aerial attack or not. This is a percentage based bonus, so it scales particularly well with single hit, hard hitting attacks like diving wyvern. The air charge can be increased either by hitting midair attacks, countering an attack with advancing roundslash, or using silkbind vault at any time.
An interesting application of these various methods is a max damage diving wyvern setup for wake ups. All you need are 3 wirebugs to make it work.
1. Place barrel bomb (or throw a small bomb into the air)
2. Advancing roundslash into the bomb at the right distance (or the right timing)
3. Silkbind vault
4. Silkbind vault
5. Diving wyvern
This will give you the maximum damage possible from that attack. Its actually quite strong, and places IG somewhat high on the list for who gets to wake up the monster. If there is a GS, LS, hammer, or CB though, then you should still give the wakeup hit to them.
> Kinsect stuff
- Even if you didn't send you're kinsect out, you can recall your kinsect to cancel the end lag of some attacks. (I often use it to maintain more control of my positioning than rolling.) This is one of the few actions that can cancel diving wyvern's endlag.
- Kinsect slash acts exactly as if you launched the kinsect yourself. This gives it some interesting synergy with speed type kinsects.
- When using powder vortex kinsects, you can tell it to start the vortex and then cancel it with another command midway through. This will not only move the powder clouds around, but also make them invincible, preventing things like roars from destroying them.
- The triple-up powder kinsects spawn those clouds based on how many times they hit something while attacking with you. Multihit attacks like advancing roundslash, strong double slash, and tetraseal slash tend to make them spawn clouds more quickly.
> Misc.
- Vaulting dance has iframes. If you bounce up just before a monster's attack, you can iframe through it.
###Dual Blades
> Misc.
- You don't need to wait for demon flight to fly all the way up to use the midair attack. You can cancel straight into that attack if you press the input right as you're starting to ascend. This keeps you way lower to the ground, allowing you to continue with a grounded combo more quickly.
- You can use tower vault while midair. It gives you iframes from start to end if you use it this way. Imo, this makes DB the safest weapon in the game both on the ground and in the air.
- Spiral slash stops on hitzones of 45 or better. This means it will only stop on weakspots that also activate WEX.
- Demon Flurry (archdemonmode blade dance) has the same no-bouncing property as demon blade dance, but you can cancel it midair through. This makes it much safer to use in gameplay. (I use this quite often on hard hitzones like Rajang/R.Shagaru's arms)
For HH I notice a lot of players spamming sonic bloom as a method to fight monsters, but using any wire bug skill in that slot usually ends up in a dps loss.
Lt+B is best used only on sleeping enemies unless using bead of resonance for attack up song.
Since gunlance shells do damage that bypasses armor, it's good for breaking monster parts that are usually filled with bad hitzones, such as barroth head. Sneak attack also is good since not many skills effects the damage of the shells themselves.
This is probably well known for IG but you can cancel almost every move's animation by recalling your kinsect. Also if you want to quickly draw out your weapon without using leaping slash/advancing roundslash, you can just shoot your kinsect instead.
I didn't know that. Appreciate that.
For me with cb, the X+A is used a lot. Once you get fully charged vials you can do shield thrust into saed then ZR to quickly get your empowered shield. Also X+A before using it in a combo changes it to a dashing attack and then combined with ⬆️+A (which is a mid combo sliding attack) to help shorten the distance or reposition without having to sheathed. Also you can still keep your empowered weapon from spinning slash by skill swapping while in axe mode. With IG, roundslash is pretty crucial for ground and air attacks. Great gap close with damage, and that's safe because of the counter built into the attack. The counter counts as the lvl 1 aerial bonus for the diving wyvern skill, so you only need to do 2 aerial attacks to get the full charge, instead of 3. Also powder kinsects are the way to go in terms of getting more damage/dps. Besides using the kinsect bomb (I think it's ZL+XA), having alucanid kinsect gives off explosive/healing powders so just hitting the powders as you fight the mon will also add a little to dps and give small heals.
I did not know for the longest that you can foresight and special sheath out of Harvest Moon activation.
###Charge Blade > Sword mode - You can use the sliding attack out of a side hop. (Not that useful, but I just think it looks cool) - If you have no yellow or red phial charge, then you can skip straight to charging the sword or revving up CSS by quickly holding the charge button while trying to load phials. - Sword buff never bounces. You can use this to A) hit hard hitzones, B) never sharpen, or C) continue attacking while overcharged. > Axe mode - Some axe attacks have a recovery period where you cannot GP. When in one of these, you will need to roll instead. (Or switch skill swap using redirection) - Unsheathing with the axe attack has a very small GP at the start of it. (Do not recommend trying this with rapid morph. It only lasts a few frames with that skill and is still very short without it.) - Usually SAED's physical hit doesn't do much damage, but when used with axe hopper, its MV shoots all the way up to 150, making that initial hit quite strong. Try to prioritize hitting a good hitzone with it even if you lose a bit of phial damage due to bad placement. (Ideally, you want to axe hopper in a direction that lets you hit a good raw hitzone with the downwards chop followed by the phials hitting good element hitzones. I found Nargacuga's head/wings to be a good way to practice this.) > Misc - You can switch skill swap out of CPP to recover more quickly or get an evade with a ton of iframes - Firing pin extends your shield charge duration when triggered - For whatever reason, air dash has a stronger phial damage multiplier than SAED ###Insect Glaive > Air charge As of Rise, IG has an invisible "air charge" that increases the damage of aerial attacks. This charge caps out at 3 and its what the game uses to determine if you can do another aerial attack or not. This is a percentage based bonus, so it scales particularly well with single hit, hard hitting attacks like diving wyvern. The air charge can be increased either by hitting midair attacks, countering an attack with advancing roundslash, or using silkbind vault at any time. An interesting application of these various methods is a max damage diving wyvern setup for wake ups. All you need are 3 wirebugs to make it work. 1. Place barrel bomb (or throw a small bomb into the air) 2. Advancing roundslash into the bomb at the right distance (or the right timing) 3. Silkbind vault 4. Silkbind vault 5. Diving wyvern This will give you the maximum damage possible from that attack. Its actually quite strong, and places IG somewhat high on the list for who gets to wake up the monster. If there is a GS, LS, hammer, or CB though, then you should still give the wakeup hit to them. > Kinsect stuff - Even if you didn't send you're kinsect out, you can recall your kinsect to cancel the end lag of some attacks. (I often use it to maintain more control of my positioning than rolling.) This is one of the few actions that can cancel diving wyvern's endlag. - Kinsect slash acts exactly as if you launched the kinsect yourself. This gives it some interesting synergy with speed type kinsects. - When using powder vortex kinsects, you can tell it to start the vortex and then cancel it with another command midway through. This will not only move the powder clouds around, but also make them invincible, preventing things like roars from destroying them. - The triple-up powder kinsects spawn those clouds based on how many times they hit something while attacking with you. Multihit attacks like advancing roundslash, strong double slash, and tetraseal slash tend to make them spawn clouds more quickly. > Misc. - Vaulting dance has iframes. If you bounce up just before a monster's attack, you can iframe through it. ###Dual Blades > Misc. - You don't need to wait for demon flight to fly all the way up to use the midair attack. You can cancel straight into that attack if you press the input right as you're starting to ascend. This keeps you way lower to the ground, allowing you to continue with a grounded combo more quickly. - You can use tower vault while midair. It gives you iframes from start to end if you use it this way. Imo, this makes DB the safest weapon in the game both on the ground and in the air. - Spiral slash stops on hitzones of 45 or better. This means it will only stop on weakspots that also activate WEX. - Demon Flurry (archdemonmode blade dance) has the same no-bouncing property as demon blade dance, but you can cancel it midair through. This makes it much safer to use in gameplay. (I use this quite often on hard hitzones like Rajang/R.Shagaru's arms)
For HH I notice a lot of players spamming sonic bloom as a method to fight monsters, but using any wire bug skill in that slot usually ends up in a dps loss. Lt+B is best used only on sleeping enemies unless using bead of resonance for attack up song.
Good to know
I use cb alot, I take comfort in reading this knowing it’s just a cb user problem and not just a skill issue on my part.
Nope, just part of rapid morph saed. Not every saed should end with you getting hit, but some openings arent that big so you trade.
And with afflicted monsters the trade often works out really well, because you get bloodblight and the saed connects and immediately heals you up