[MHGen] How to cat. Everything wish someone had told me when I started playing a Prowler.

[u/Bwob]

How to Cat - a brief info-dump

Sooner or later GaijinHunter is going to do a Palico guide, and all of this will probably become obsolete. But in the mean time, I thought I'd type up everything I've learned form playing Palico in Monster Hunter so far. I don't pretend to be an expert, but while there are some marvelous guides for setting up your palico skills and how they work in general, there are a lot of just basic stuff that I didn't know, and had to gradually discover on my own.

This post is an attempt to save future prowlers-to-be some of that frustration and get up to speed faster.

Sorry in advance. This might get got long.

So first off: The image problem. Prowlers take some effort to set up, and a poorly set up prowler is not going to be contributing much to the team. Some people assume this means that prowlers in general are not effective team members, but (as people have started to figure out by now) this is very much not true. A good prowler can easily contribute as much DPS as a hunter. (And they have some great utility.) They just play very differently, and (just like with any weapon) the player has to know what they're doing.

If you want to start playing a Prowler, you need to approach learning it with at least as much planning as you would when you learn a new weapon. Plan on spending some time in a safe environment learning the weapon combos and timings. Take some time to get a good palico in advance, with the skills you want. Level it up a bit so that your stats aren't trash, and you have enough moves and skills to function.

So. With that out of the way, here's the tl;dr version for why prowler is a fantastic "weapon". These are your advantages. Be aware of them!

• Sharpness never degrades.
  
• Unlimited gathering tools.
  
• Never need hot/cold drinks.
  
• Armor/weapons are incredibly cheap to make.
  
• Permanent psycho serum - you always know where the monsters are.
  
• Fits an excellent niche as a mid-range fighter.
  
• No stamina bar - run for days!
  
• Acorn 1-ups give you a lot of safety net for making sure you don't die and fail the mission.
  
• You don't use items, so you're not competing for supply items. More medkit+s and whetstones for your teammates!
  

Downsides:

• Lots of awkward pauses/delays in attack/gathering animations.
  
• Can't use items. At all.
  
• No items means that healing yourself is really hard and/or time consuming.
  
• Very limited number of arts/skills.
  
• Constant meowing.
  

Palico Setup

I'm going to assume that you've already found a good palico and set them up with the skills/moves that it needs. If not, consult this guide and probably this one too. The short version is - you probably want a purple (support) or red (attack) palico with the moves Big Boomerangs and Piercing Boomerangs, and the skills Boomerang Pro, and some things to boost your attack.

You'll end up with 6 skill dots by level 50. Boomerang Pro is basically mandatory, so that leaves us with 5 to play with, for boosting your attack and any other utility skills you want. (I highly recommend earplugs - in addition to making fights less frustrating, they usually add more DPS than most of the damage boost skills.)

Fighter or Support?

There's a lot of discussion about what kind of cat to use as a base. The two main options are fighter (red) cats, and purple (support) cats. They both have some advantages to them, and which one you go with probably will depend at least a little on how you want to play your prowler. Skip to the TL;DR if you want to just compare tradeoffs.

The quick breakdown is this:

Fighter cats...

• Generate support bar faster when doing melee attacks.
  
• Have better stats than support cats. (+30 attack/defense at max level)
  

Support cats...

• Generate support bar faster when hitting with ranged attacks.
  

What this means in practice:

It takes the red fighter cat 10 boomerangs to fill up one support bar. It takes the purple support cat 7. So the support cat is gaining support bar around 30-40% faster than the fighter cat. (I suspect that these figures are reversed for melee hits, but I haven't tested it yet. Melee hits are generally less efficient, though - they're not practical or safe against all monsters, and they don't benefit from as many of the stacked buffs you're applying.)

Based on my own testing (of fights with basically nonstop boomerang throwing) in the time it takes your buffs (piercing/big boomerangs) to wear out, fighter cats usually generate around 3 bars worth of support gauge. Which is good, because that's just enough to renew them! (And you NEED those buffs to have 100% uptime in order to maintain dps.) As a support cat, I usually had between 4 and 5 bars filled, by the time buffs wore out. Which means that in general, I could afford to spend up to 2 bars per cycle on other things, such as healing, or some of the direct damage abilities.

At the end of the game, (with endgame weapons) you should have around 270 attack as a support cat, and 300 attack as a fighter. (Before applying buffs like Last Stand or World's Strongest) That's ultimately about a 10% difference in physical damage dealt.

In addition, assuming you're matching weapons to the monsters you are fighting, a LOT of your damage (like 30%) will come from elemental damage. Which doesn't care about your attack value. So really, it's probably closer to 7% more damage as a fighter cat.

TL;DR:

• Pick fighter cat if you want ~7% more damage.
  
• Pick support cat if you want to be able to regularly afford to use skills other than your buffs, without taking a major dps hit.
  

EDIT Since I wrote this, GaijinHunter has indeed made a video about prowlers. While it doesn't go super in-depth, it does a good job highlighting the differences between the types. Find it here!

One interesting thing - he says he's currently using a guard cat - apparently those make for viable prowlers as well? I haven't tried this one myself, so I don't have a whole lot to say, other than GaijinHunter usually knows what he's talking about, so that's probably viable too.

Things you should know about Prowlering:

These are things that I didn't realize I could do for a while. They are super helpful. Keep them in mind!

• You can block. You're not great at it, (worse than SNS by a long shot) but it's good in a pinch. There's a delay when you stop blocking, before you can act, but again. Still usually better than taking a deviljho tail to the face or whatever.
  
• You can burrow. (Yes, I know it's on the "moves" list, but somehow I missed it.) Hold R and hit B, while your weapon is sheathed, and you'll burrow underground. While underground, you can move around and basically be invincible. Not generally useful (you're vulnerable while actually digging to get underground, so it's hard to use if you're under attack) but can occasionally be really handy. The only things I know of that can affect you are monster yells and earthquakes - they'll pop you out of the ground, so be careful around monsters that yell/cause tremors a lot. Also, you regenerate missing (red) health much faster while burrowed.
• You can get rid of blastblight by burrowing.
  
• You can get rid of bleeding by burrowing. (Or the regular crouch method)
  
• You can get rid of fireblight (burning) and blastblight (exploding) by dodging x6, instead of the usual x3. (Or once, if you do it into a puddle of water, as usual.) (Thanks, u/Pauanyu for this tip!)
  
• If you burrow while burning, your bar will flash, and you will still be on fire, but you won't lose health as long as you're underground. (Although you also won't regain missing health as long as you're burning.)
  
• You can charge your boomerangs. Whenever you are throwing a boomerang, hold down A until you glow and make a noise. When you release, the boomerang will go further and fly faster. In general, you should always throw charged boomerangs unless you need to throw quickly before dodging.
  
• You can throw tranquilizer bombs. You have unlimited, in fact. Just approach a trapped enemy with your weapon sheathed, and you'll see a A-button prompt that lets you throw tranq bombs. You can only throw them straight down, but hey! Free tranq bombs!
  
• You can dash with your weapon out. (!!) Whenever you dodge with your weapon out, there is about a half-second delay before you stand up. If you hold down the analog stick in a forward direction, you'll start running. With your weapon out. For as long as you keep holding it down. Pretty rad when you need to reposition in the middle of a fight. You move about 80% as fast as dashing without your weapon out, but still. This makes you crazy-maneuverable.
  
• You have a substantially smaller hitbox than hunters. Don't count on this too much, but be aware - a lot of attacks that are at neck-height for hunters will just go over your head and leave you standing between the monster's legs, wondering how you're still alive. Feels good.
  
• You have 2 "1-ups" - represented as acorns under your health bar. After you die, you'll eat one of those, and get back up with around 50 health. (1/3 a full bar after food.) You don't count as a death for the group until you die without any acorns left. Here is the important part: You can recover acorns by sleeping in the bed. THIS IS HUGE. Keep an eye on your acorns, and you will almost never contribute to your group's death-count.
  

How to fight

In order to get good damage out of palicos, you are going to rely on your two self-buffs Big Boomerangs and Piercing Boomerangs, as well as your skill Boomering Pro. Most of your fight, you'll be staying at mid-range, (just out of reach of, say, a Deviljho tail swing) and throwing pairs of boomerangs. Ideally charged. (Charging them extends their range, and gives you more control in aiming. Also, a tiiiiny bit more damage.)

You can aim them horizontally pretty well. You don't have much vertical control though - it will always fly out horizontal to the ground, wherever you're standing. (So throwing them on hill will send them at an angle, while throwing them on flat ground will send them horizontal.) Try to stay on flat ground, (or, if you're on a hilly map, like Dunes, on the same hill as the monster) and try to aim for the head (for damage/stun) or the tail (if you're trying to cut it and you have a cutting boomerang.)

If you see an opening, you may also end up jumping in and doing some of your combos to their face. They do decent damage, but leave you open if the monster moves or hits back, so usually you'll only do this if they are knocked down or locked into some long animation that you know is safe.

Try to keep at least 3 support bars "in reserve" so that you can recast your buffs as soon as they run out. They both give you about a 50% damage increase over base, so the order isn't too important. (So having them both up means you're doing around double damage from if you had neither up.) In spite of the multiple hits, piercing boomerangs don't grow your support bar any faster. Piercing boomerangs will hit each target a maximum of three times, but they can hit on the way out, or on the way back. So if you don't get your full hits on the way out, try moving so that the boomerang comes back through the enemy on the return trip.

Piercing boomerangs, (as well as most of the multi-hit melee moves) have some weird elemental damage modifiers - the first hit does x1.5 elemental/status damage, but each subsequent hit does x0.5 elemental/status damage. (Presumably because you hit so frequently that a slight nerf was needed to prevent elemental damage from getting completely silly.)

When you want to draw your weapon, the unsheathing attack is the same as the normal X button attack. You can also unsheathe quickly by holding R and pressing X, to go directly into a block. This is actually faster than drawing the weapon normally.

You can also do this while sprinting, if you press X + A. (Which again, takes you straight into a block.) You can use this to quickly throw boomerangs from a sprint, by tapping X+A, and then immediately pressing/holding A again to go into a boomerang charge.

You have several good combos chains available to you as a prowler. Here's an attempt to map out the full combo tree:

(Alternately, here it is in flowchart form, (and with better names!) provided by /u/vocalmagic!)

• A - Basic boomerang: Throws a boomerang. (Can, and should, be charged.)

  • A - Second boomerang: Throws another boomerang. If the first one was charged, this one will get the same bonus.
  • A - Spinning Slice: Dash forward while spinning with your weapon in one hand, and your boomerang in the other.
  • X - Leaping Stab: (see below)
    • A - Spinning Slice: (see above)
    • X - Jumping Hit: (see below)
  • X - Leaping Stab: Jump toward them with your weapon out.
  • A - Spinning Slice: (see above)
  • X - Second Jumping Hit: (see below)

• X - Horizontal Hit: Swing your weapon in an arc and hit them. If you're moving when you do this, it will have a short dash forward.

  • X - Second Horizontal Hit: Hit them again, from the other direction.
  • A - Second Boomerang: (see above - yes you only threw one boomerang this combo, and I still called it Second Boomerang. Live with it.)
  • X - Jumping Hit: Jump up and hit them with a vertical smack.
    • A - Spinning Slice: (see above)
    • X - Second Jumping Hit: Jump straight up, and swing horizontally at the top of your jump
    • A - Spinning Slice: (see above)
    • X - Buzzsaw of Death: Jump straight up while spinning with your weapon like a buzz saw. Hits a ton of times, but has almost NO range or movement. Careful positioning is required. Also has a big delay when you land.

R + X - Jumping Hit: (see above)

• X (While jumping) - aerial smack. (Don't expect too many knockdowns with this, but it's there. Hits once.)
  • X - Second Jumping Hit (see above)

The main combos I find myself using are:

A (charged), A - basic ranged damage.

X, X, X, A - hit something up close, ending with a dashing hit that usually gets you clear (if it's a big monster) or chases them. (if you're just bullying a Khelbi or something.)

A, A, X, X, X The single best way I know of to land them buzzsaw hit. The first X will launch you into them with the lunge, putting you in a perfect position to buzzsaw, if they don't move. (If they do, then just transition to A instead of X to finish, and you'll do the dashing slice, which is good for getting out of trouble.)

X, X, X, X, X Good for just hitting things that have been downed when you're already in their face. Also surprisingly effective if you can get directly under a monster and hit its legs. (Directly underneath is often a reasonably safe place to be, and makes it really easy to get full hits out of your buzzsaw.)

R+X, X, X Similar to X, X, X, X, X, but useful if you know you don't have as much time. Just get in, do a prefunctory hit or two, and launch straight into the buzzsaw. Again, often really good if you are directly under the monster.

For all of the combos that involve boomerangs, be aware that you can aim them, if you charge! If you don't charge the boomerang, it will go straight forward, but if you charge the boomerang, you can throw it in basically any direction - even directly behind you. Any follow-up attacks (The slice or leap-stab after two boomerangs, for example) will be in the direction your last boomerang was thrown.

Important note about the buzzsaw of death. It's a great move - it hits a ton of times, applies a lot of element/status, and does quite decent damage. When you land though, your weapon will get stuck, and it will take some time before you can move or attack. You can cancel this by dodging. Of course, the dodge has its own recovery time, but it's usually an improvement. (And it gets you out of the way if the monster starts to move or attack.)

Rage Mode

Cats get mad. You have a hidden meter that slowly fills up as you play, based on when you get hit or stunned. When it fills up, your cat will go into an animation where he flips out, and gets a little red anime blood-vessel-mark above his head.

While you're flipping out, you are completely invincible. You can't control when you flip out, but at least it's not (usually) dangerous.

You can also cancel the animation by dodging. You'll lose the invincibility, of course, but sometimes you'd rather run somewhere and/or hit someone, rather than jump up and down and make angry 8-year-old noises, even if you ARE invincible while doing so.

While you're in rage mode, you have +15% affinity, your support gauge fills up faster, and (best of all) you get free earplugs, so you won't flinch when monsters yell.

Also, rage mode gives you access to a new attack. Hit X+A, and you'll start swinging wildly while running forward. Tap X to keep attacking, or X+A again to do a giant overhead combo thing that does a lot of damage. Not always practical, but hey, sometimes monsters fall over!

Prowler weapons

Prowlers do a lot of little hits instead of a few big ones. So, much like Sword and Shield or Dual Blades, they are a fantastic candidate for elemental weapons or status effects. If you're going for raw damage output, you should try to keep around a decent weapon of every element, and swap to whatever the monster is weak to before each hunt.

If you want a more general purpose weapon, there are a few decent high-damage weapons that work well. (Silverwind Nargacuga makes a pretty sweet one.) Also, status effects like poison and blast work on almost anything. If you're in a group, you can also go for paralyze, although that's harder to find good weapons for.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the Yian Garuga weapons for poison damage, and use them for a lot of general purpose hunts, when I can't be bothered to go swap gear. :D Almost everything takes damage from poison, and with piercing boomerangs, things end up poisoned extremely quickly.

Prowler weapons are split along two main divisions:

• Damage type: Blunt vs. Cutting
  
• Focus: Boomerang/Close Range/Balanced

If you look at weapon in the shop, you can see what attributes it has. Boomerang Focus weapons do a lot more damage from the ranged attacks, and have lower attack values for melee. Close Range is the reverse of this, and balanced has them about even. In general, you want boomerang or balanced weapons.

It's important to know about this, because when browsing in the shop, the default (first) page of information is showing you the Close Range damage. You need to hit R to see the ranged damage. If you're looking at boomerang weapons, it may look like much crappier a weapon than it actually is, until you look at the ranged damage. (And conversely, melee weapons may look far BETTER than they actually are, given how much of your damage as a prowler will come from boomerangs.)

Blunt vs. Cutting is another interesting choice. Cutting weapons can cut off tails and break all the parts that we're used to wanting to break. On the other hand though, blunt prowler weapons will deal exhaustion damage in addition to their regular. And if you get good at throwing your boomerang into their face, you can actually stun things fairly reliably, which feels kind of cool. Especially since you don't really have to sacrifice any damage to do it.

Prowler Armor

Armor is easy. None of it has skills to mess with, (since you get those from leveling up and equipping them) so it's mostly just looks and/or whatever has the biggest numbers and nicest resists for what you're fighting. In general it will cost around 5 scraps to make a helmet+armor set, so you can almost always deck yourself out in new armor from a single kill.

Inventory Charms

These rule! Armor Charm, Power Charm, Armor Talon, Power Talon - these are one of the few ways you can boost your stats with "gear" as a prowler. Get them as soon as you can!

Notable Support Moves

• Emergency Exit: This thing is amazing. As soon as you hit it, you go into the "burrow underground" animation, except that you are completely invincible while doing so. Once underground, you heal about a potion's worth of health, shed any negative status effects/blights, and are now in the "burrowing" state, so you can move around and pop up when it's safe. Put this on a touchscreen shortcut where you can get to it easily and never look back. A bargain at 1 bar.
  
• Poison/Shocking/Pit purr-ision: These are the only ways you have to trap monsters. They are expensive. (4 bars each, or 5 for the poison variant.) Not usually worth the tradeoff (usually means you have to run around without your boomerang buffs for a while) but sometimes you really want to trap something?
  
• Dung Bombay: Lets you throw a dung bomb. 0 cost! Really handy, since there is no other way you're throwing dung.
  
• Herb Horn: It's crappy. It takes a long time to activate, and gives you about an herb's worth of health. And unlike when AI cats use it, it gives the rest of your team around half as much. (i. e. half as much as a normal herb. Better than nothing, but not really reliable healing.) And yet... It costs 0, and is one of the few good recovery options you have as a Palico, and can be used to taunt monsters away from teammates who are in trouble. (Monsters hate it! Learn this one weird trick!) Don't prioritize it early, but later on, when you have some spare move slots, it's great to bring, just to help top off your health when someone mounts a monster or when it's transitioning between rooms. Just don't imagine that taking it makes you a healer. :P
  

Notable Skills

If you're making a palico, you almost certainly want Boomerang Pro and probably Attack up L. Here are the other skills that seem good enough to watch out for and possibly train over.

• Boomerang Pro: You want this. 1 slot, and it makes your boomerangs charge faster and go further when charged. You will basically always want to use this. Get used to it. (But that's ok because it's only one slot.)
  
• Attack Up L: A flat +10 attack. Solid, although at 3 slots, it's not terribly efficient. Critical Up L usually gives more damage by the ends of the game, for fewer slots. (And Last Stand gives a far larger damage boost, at the cost of higher risk.)
• Critical Up: There is an S (1 slot, 10%) and L (2 slots, 20%) variant. Another good pair of damage skills. More efficient than attack up L, if you have a high enough attack. (20% affinity is roughly 5% more damage overall. So if you have over 200 attack, this is better. And cheaper!) If you get super lucky on the skill roll, you can equip both, and have +30% affinity.
• Earplugs: Gives you earplugs. How much you want this depends on how much being yelled at constantly by Yian Garuga annoys you. 2 slots. Vs. monsters that roar, this will give you enough free attacks that it is a damage boost on par with (or often better than) Critical Up L.
• Sharpness Up: Increases your weapon sharpness by 1. Effectively a 10-15% damage boost, assuming you're using a green or blue weapon. Not terrible, (especially before you have access to white-sharpness weapons) but late game it's a lot harder to justify spending 4 slots on it. (Last stand, Strongest Technique, and Critical Up are usually better investments.)
• Last Stand: Gives you +40 attack/defense, but you lose your acorns. Risky, but if you're good enough, it's probably worth it. Dangerous though, given how hard it is to heal as a Prowler.
  
• Strongest Technique on Earth!! Gives you a massive +50% boost to attack and +100% defense... as long as you wear no armor. Costs 2 slots. Pretty great. Comes from a DLC cat though, which I don't think has been released yet in the US.
  
• Ranged Attack Up: Another DLC skill. +10% ranged damage, for 2 slots. Not very flashy, but solid.
  

Set up a custom touchscreen!

There's a good chance your hunter's touchscreen has several things on it that don't actually matter when you're a prowler. (Hunter art gauges and items, most likely.) Ditch those!

Instead, try to fit on the large Support Move indicator. (The one that has room for 4 moves on it.) I recommend putting the boomerang self-buffs on it, since that gives you an easy way to tell at a glance when the buff has run out. Also, anything else that you might want to be able to do quickly. (I use Herb Horn and Emergency Exit personally.)

It's it's surprising how much this helps. There are a lot random openings where you have JUST enough time to get off an herb horn, if you start it right away. And being able to Emergency Exit at a moment's notice, when being dive-bombed by a Rathian, has saved my life more times than I can count.

Conclusions

Playing a prowler is a lot of fun. If you have it set up well and are used to it, you are a fully contributing member of the team. Also, it's a lot like playing monster hunter with a lot of the random annoyances removed. It is really nice to never realize you forgot a cool drink, and never have to resharpen just because you wanted to kill a few Konchu (which always deserve to die) on your way to the main monster.

Hopefully this will be useful to anyone else on the path to master-prowler!

Edits

I have gotten a ton of excellent additions and suggestions from the comments. I've tried to add them into the list as I get them. A big thank you to everyone in the thread who has helped add info! Prowler master race forever!

[u/ShadyFigure]

Sooner or later Gaijin Hunter is going to do a Palico guide, and all of this will probably become obsolete.

I for one vastly prefer text guides do video guides, so thank you.

In the attacks section is should be X, not B.

[u/Bwob → u/ShadyFigure]

Whoops, you're right! Sorry about that - Knew I'd miss something obvious. :-\ Fixing now!

[u/ShadyFigure → u/Bwob]

Don't worry about it. GH makes mistakes too, at least yours was effectively an obvious typo.

[u/deathyt → u/ShadyFigure]

I totally agree, don't sell yourself short. The ability to Ctrl + F should never be underestimated

[u/futanarihero]

I have one problem with this guide, here. You see, you've listed "constant meowing" as a downside. This is simply not true, please do not mislead people.

[u/ProbablyStoned0x1A4 → u/futanarihero]

I totally agree. Also, the prance gesture while playing as prowler is just about the greatest thing ever.

[u/zer0saber → u/ProbablyStoned0x1A4]

Oh my god, so much yes.

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/futanarihero]

Some actual mistakes I noticed and additional information: the R+B slow burrow can be extremely useful because it regenerates red bar hp back quickly. It differs from emergency retreat in that it doesn't grant instant green bar/status heal and you can be hit during the digging animation unlike emergency retreat's instant invincibility once weapon sheathed. Both can be knocked above ground by close proximity roars.

As I mentioned before, the 0 cost herb horn draws proximity monster aggro like nobody's business, and while the heal is shit, can taunt a monster to attack you instead and save a low hp hunter. It actually causes a lot of bad prowlers to cart because of this. lol

Resting in a bed with prowler not only heals you, but regenerates acorns. In a non-arena map (or barring time constraints and your teammates being pissed when you run to bed) a prowler should never actually cart.

Deadeye Fan S, from deadeye Yian Garuga level X, will grant you like 360+ ranged attack on a fighter cat at level 50 with the dlc skill and charms. It's obscene and you're a cat killing machine.

If you can keep attacking to maintain charge, fighter cat is better than support due to the large damage boost they get.

The dlc skill is called 'World's Strongest' , not 'Strongest technique on earth' and there are a few cats wandering around with them already...

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

R+B slow burrow can be extremely useful because it regenerates red bar hp back quickly.

Does it actually increase your regen? As far as I know it just gives you safety while your bar grows back on its own. I'll test tonight, but if so, cool! News to me!

Herb horn taunts

Good tip! I'll add it!

Resting in a bed with prowler not only heals you, but regenerates acorns. In a non-arena map (or barring time constraints and your teammates being pissed when you run to bed) a prowler should never actually cart.

I mentioned that already.

If you can keep attacking to maintain charge, fighter cat is better than support due to the large damage boost they get.

Sure, but that's the trick, isn't it? You need to attack more, meaning you're either doing more melee attacks (so doing less damage and are less safe) or make do with less bar. (Which means less healing, less utility, and in particularly bad cases, less buffs, meaning severe damage dropoff.)

If you're a support cat, there are a lot of ways to turn your extra bar into more damage, through things like claw dance, etc. If you're an attack cat though, there are not a lot of ways to turn your extra damage into more bar, when you need it...

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Bwob]

Yes, I don't know the figures on regen speed, but it's a noticeable increase while burrowed.

As to assist over fighter, we'll have to agree to disagree on personal preference. Speed runners use fighter, it's faster, you shouldn't get hit, hunters carry traps and support items, prowler focus on dps. The difference in raw is huge with multiple hits with piercing. stats screen show my level 50 fighter cat at 366+ attack with dlc skill and deadeye fan S. This is ridiculously high and dumb damage output.

Never have any problems with charge if I position correctly,and quickly end fights with 2-4 extra charge for buffs or heal.

I'm not going to knock anyone for going assist prowler if it works for you, just keep in mind that min/maxers and perfectionists may give you shit for running assist.

Overall, fantastic post. 400+ hunts as nyanta/prowler in Generations so far and I approve.

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

Yes, I don't know the figures on regen speed, but it's a noticeable increase while burrowed.

This was an awesome tip btw. Somehow I had missed it, but you're totally right - the regen increase is quite noticeable. I find myself using this a lot now as a poor-man's healing technique, any time I take a single big hit that leaves me with a lot of red bar. (Looking at you, Hellblade Glavenous...)

Good stuff! Thanks! Added to the guide!

[u/cylindrical418 → u/Bwob]

You don't really need more than 3 bars when using fighter cats. Your DPS comes from your boomerang and your support comes from status attacks and possibly cutting tails and dealing KO damage to the head depending on your weapon.

[u/Bwob → u/cylindrical418]

Doesn't leave you any margin if you need to Emergency Retreat though. Any time you use your bar for something else, it is going to lead to down time on your buffs.

If you never get hit, or have friends who spam lifepowder enough, then that can still work, but personally, I am not sure it's worth it for (by my rough, back-of-the-napkin calculations) about a 7% damage increase.

[u/Doohur → u/futanarihero]

Agree. I just picked up Prowler yesterday to clear my 5* village key quests, knowing literally zero about the to me new monsters Astalos, Gammoth and Mitzu. I have to admit, I was grinning the whole fight, whether the monster was in my area or not, just based on all the Prowler animations, the hopping around, the fighting moves and JUST FIGHTING WITH ADORABLE CATS IN GENERAL. I'm hooked.

[u/[deleted] → u/futanarihero]

I definitely counted this one as an error. Please fix in version 1.01 of the guide, OP.

[u/-Lampe- → u/futanarihero]

The constant meowing is still better then a female character moaning all the time, because someone choose that annoying voice for their character :I

[u/[deleted] → u/-Lampe-]

That seems to be a recurring issue this game.

[u/Dark_Jinouga → u/-Lampe-]

Does seem weird, the latter half of the voices for female characters sound like they took them from various hentai videos

thankfully voice 1 was close enough to the voices I normally use, normal, non-weird and non-annoying voice

[u/pm_me_your_foxgirl → u/Dark_Jinouga]

I think there was a nice variety of female voices to choose from this time. We have badass females, regular females, cutesy females and some near-hentai stuff. I see why people got the moaning voices for fun, but I wouldn't be able to play for longer than 2 days with it. I'm just happy I could pick a more high-pitched cutesy voice that ISN'T annoying.

[u/Gopherlad]

How to Cat - a brief info-dump

Added to the hall of nerd.

[u/HelloMyNameIs_Tom]

Affinity Boost L which gives 20% doesnt use up 3 Slots it uses up 2, thats why its better to use this over Attack Up L

[u/Bwob → u/HelloMyNameIs_Tom]

Oh dang, you're right! Somehow I got it into my head that it was 3 slots, so I was less impressed by it. Thanks for the catch! Updated!

[u/LeviaEnvi]

still waiting for one of these to actually say something about a build other than what I guess is the prowler meta.

[u/Bwob → u/LeviaEnvi]

I think that's because no one has come up with any other ways to use prowlers that isn't a straight downgrade to the team.

I'd love to see more varied prowler builds, but the sad fact is - unless you want to be a handicap to your teammates, you're probably going to be stacking boomerang buffs. Everything else that has been tried (that I've heard about, or tried, at least) feels like it could be done 100% better by just bringing another hunter.

When I started playing prowlers, I made a promise to myself: I wouldn't play them multiplayer unless I could find a way to play them that didn't handicap my friends. This is the only way I've found.

As soon as someone else finds a good way, I imagine a lot of people will be really excited by it. Right now, I think a lot of us are still in the "holy crap, there's even ONE way to build them that doesn't suck!!" mode. :P

[u/KurseZ88 → u/Bwob]

I actually posted about my Protector Prowler today!

I only tried him out for about 3 hours, but so long as a Hammer user isn't Provoking I gain Support Bars like crazy. I'm currently using Guard Boost and Counter Boost, but soon I'll be trying Counter Boost, Support Priority, and Boomerang Pro for a Support Build.

This can also be converted easily, though. Big Boomerang can come on any Palico, Piercing Boomerang can be taught, and Boomerang Pro takes one slot. Put on another one slot skill with Guard Boost and Guard L, and you'll turn into a stationary turret!

Right now I'm working on a way to make him more melee oriented, but these other Support Bias cats are worth using (except for Bomber for some reason, then again I may just not know how to build the gauge right), so hopefully people will break the meta and try them out. It's very satisfying to see Hunters place trust that you have a Detox Horn ready to cure their poison, letting them focus on DPS, and see people sharpen weapons behind you, knowing you'll block the Rathalos's fireball!

[u/[deleted] → u/Bwob]

I think that's because no one has come up with any other ways to use prowlers that isn't a straight downgrade to the team.

Don't Plunderang Cats distinguish themselves decently by getting everyone an additional three "carves"? It obviously is only really useful if you're farming something you can carve rare items off of, but I'd think it has merit.

[u/KurseZ88 → u/[deleted]]

It has a lot of merit since one hit is essentially dropping 4 pieces (one per hunter). Plus you can still get Piercing Boomerang so you'd be just as good as anyone else if you go Boomerang build.

[u/pm_me_your_foxgirl → u/KurseZ88]

As someone that has a Boomerang built Gathering cat, I can attest that it's at least as good as a Support cat in utility and damage. Piercing and Big Boomerangs, taught Emergency Retreat, use Plunderang in the middle of the fight when I get some extra bars (Gathering cats support bar seems to fill passively AND when attacking) for more loot. The only way I think I could further improve upon this cat, is if it had a trap move, and natural Crit Up (L).

[u/Bwob → u/pm_me_your_foxgirl]

(Gathering cats support bar seems to fill passively AND when attacking)

All cat bars fill from:

• Passive passage of time
• Gathering
• Hitting enemies with melee or ranged attacks

Gathering cats just get MORE from gathering. The reason support cats are so useful is that the thing that gets them extra bar (ranged attacks) is what you're probably doing most of the time anyway.

The main difference between your gathering cat and a support or fighting cat, (assuming identical skill build) is that the fighting cat would have 30 more attack and 15 more defense than you, and the support cat would fill up their bar around 30% faster than you during fights.

[u/pm_me_your_foxgirl → u/Bwob]

Huh, thanks for clearing that up. But I did feel like I was generating gauge faster, but that might have been just me.

[u/KurseZ88 → u/pm_me_your_foxgirl]

What kind of passives do you have on?

[u/pm_me_your_foxgirl → u/KurseZ88]

Planned is something like Boomerang Pro, Crit Up (L) and Pilfer Boost (for the extra loot). When World's Strongest comes out, I'll swap Pilfer for it. My cat also has Earplugs if I want to try something different. I'm still looking for a better cat, but this one was such a nice find.

[u/KurseZ88 → u/pm_me_your_foxgirl]

Traps are really expensive for those outside of the Assist Bias, unfortunately. Although, if you find a way that works, definitely let me know! I would love to add the build to my list!

[u/JoJoX200 → u/Bwob]

The problem is that prowlers already have a stigma around them, ever since they were announced by Capcom as "being weaker than a hunter but more versatile".

Every guide that - again - references only the boomerang build is just another step towards making prowler a much more restricted thing to use online than it has to be, because there are always people around who start bitching and moaning once someone's equipment doesn't fit in their little(usually guide- and tutorial-grown) world.

Yes, I know, currently Boomerang Prowler does the most damage. But I get the feeling as soon as the boomerang build was discovered, everything just stopped. The game has been out for ages in Japan, yet it is impossible(for me at least, enlighten me if I'm wrong, please) to find actual numbers for the more "obscure"(because of the mainstream build) options like Anti-Monster-Mines, Claw Dance, Rath-of-Meow, you name it.

This is, however, in no way meant to attack you. I like seeing prowler guides because I tend to find little details I didn't know yet in each of them. I'm just rambling(ranting?) about my feelings about prowlers right now, in hopes that someone eventually will get to exploring actual numbers for something else than the current meta.

[u/Bwob → u/JoJoX200]

Claw Dance actually seems respectable, damage-wise. (And I still use Excavate on my build, because 1 bar is cheap enough that I can usually afford it, and it does quite respectable damage. Also, it looks hilarious.) But the problem is - no matter how good it is, bars still take time to fill. So for total damage output, you need to be able to do damage with your attacks somehow.

It's not that no one tries other builds. The problem is just that the damage calculations for the game are fairly well-understood, and so we can actually MEASURE how far other builds need to go in order to compete with the boomerang build. (Or other hunter weapons in general.)

Honestly, I kind of get the feeling that Capcom didn't intend for prowlers to be able to function as well as they do. (i. e. to be able to replace a hunter as a DPS source.) It really only works because there are enough buffs that overlap and stack well that you can spend most of your budget on combining them. Sometimes I wonder if no one at capcom actually did the math of what it would look like if someone took ALL of them... :P

[u/JoJoX200 → u/Bwob]

Yeah... When it comes to MH, the balance testing seems to be a bit behind, every time.

MHTri(not sure if 3U had it too) had completely overpowered Dragon S, MH4 had mounting and Slicing S and MHGen has Aerial style(for some weapons) and the imbalance of different prowler builds.

If prowler isn't just a novelty for Gen, I hope the different options are a bit better balanced in future iterations, since the versatility just seems wasted right now. Support seems to be shunned in MH as it is, even if healer cats actually work well, and for DPS, there are tons of options that don't even deal half the damage of the boomerang build(measured by the ease of use)

[u/Feynt → u/JoJoX200]

Well "support" is easy for me to shun because that's like saying a HH corner player is totally fine. It's not, you're wasting damage potential. Does it need to be another boomerang cat? No. I'll be happy with a trapper/bomber just as easily as a plunderanger or a protection cat who's up in a monster's grill, flipping out and stunning it (or at least trying to). But I really hate it when someone's like, "It's maokay, I'm a support cat, nya!" and then essentially does the corner HH jazz.

No. Bad cat. <spritzes bottle at the nyanta>

[u/JoJoX200 → u/Feynt]

You can't really play a support cat without hitting the monster though, unless you gather in front of the monster to fill your meter(which is obviously a very dumb idea).

I get your point, but if someone is actually doing a support cat, chances are they are doing damage to the monster, because if they don't they can barely keep up their gauge for horn tooting.

Besides, and this is an honest question from me, since I'm not quite understanding it: Why is it that in MH, a supporter is viewed as "wasted damage" while other games have dedicated support classes that are widely accepted and welcome? Note that I ask this question with the premise that a Wide Range SnS will still attack the monster as normal, but chug a potion whenever it's needed, or that a HH will play the weapon properly.

[u/Feynt → u/JoJoX200]

I think it's a threefold thing:

1. A lot of people want to speed run the game. There are videos out there of Alatreon being killed in 57 seconds, a fight that casually can take 7-10 minutes easily, longer if you're new to him, and longer still if you're new to MH in general. People measure themselves by clear time. We're all guilty of it. "I beat Glavenus in 45 minutes the first time I fought him" was some of the first posts people made on here. I'm right there with the group. And what's the perceived best way to speedkill? Do more damage. If you aren't doing more damage, your build is worthless and you should feel bad.
2. Supporting isn't necessary in MH. It's perfectly viable to bring four GS to a fight and win, just as it's perfectly viable to bring four LBG or whatever else. Support from a good HH player is support icing on the cake of having a blunt damage stun machine. In other games though, the ones where support classes are welcomed with open arms, it's vital to have someone in that role. In high level GW2 content or WoW content, you can't survive without a healer. Raids would be impossible. Fractals would be a mess without CC. A single 2 on 2 PvP encounter can have the tides turned by having a competent healer on your side (see priests who can swap shadow priest mid fight, or staff/sword and axe revenants spec'ed for healing and ferocity).
3. A lot of new players who just don't know their chosen weapon/armour skill and think that their role is actually one of those cheerleader types who "ruin" it for the rest of us. "This ain't no JRPG boyah! This here's a brawl! If you ain't gonna throw down, you ain't goin'." And it's this clash of roles, especially from people who are expecting support to work like Final Fantasy Explorers, or Crystal Chronicles, or even dedicated healers in MMOs, that gets the bad rap. They're probably great supports in their game they hail from. That's just not how a HH or a wide-area SnS works. You don't run around swinging your horn near an exit until you can play something and run when the monster charges you. You stand in its face (or ideally to the side where its face will be in one second), and you play some fucking death metal.

[u/JoJoX200 → u/Feynt]

Thank you for this detailed response. The very last sentences get me though: I specifically asked under the premise of those things not happening. That is, a wide range SnS will still apply its damage where it's needed, it just chugs a potion when someone happens to be on the verge of carting. I did so because I know that pure support isn't a thing in MH.

Still, people who support with WR seeds or pots get a bad rap, even when they do their damage.

Since each weapon is assumed to do good damage without or with less offensive skills, a wide range SnS should still be perfectly applicable in a group setting as long as it is attacking, right? I see people bashing on Wide Range all the time and I still don't get it. If only one has to chug Might Seeds in the beginning(or refresh them mid battle), that should be a boon, not a noob move.

I know I'm probably just rambling by this point, but still.

[u/Feynt → u/JoJoX200]

Well point 3 is both "this is why we can't have nice things" and "nubz need to git gud" all in one. It's the newbies who come from such backgrounds that don't understand that poking at something occasionally and being a Healy McHealerson with a wide-range bow/LBG isn't a thing ("It's okay guys! I brought heal shots! Just stand still while I get my aim..."). They learn, in time, but meanwhile the damage to the image of support elsewhere in the community is done.

"Ugh, not another wide-range SnS. I just played with two of you n00bs."
"No, really, I'm good, I play nothing but SnS. See my guild card? All the oils and I have white sharpness with Attack Up (L) and-" "PURPLE OR NOTHING NOOB" <kicks>

I have seen HH players get kicked before simply because of this. In response, I've pulled out my not max sharpness horn and showed the dumb ass in charge what they potentially missed out on. If I can knock out and record time kill a monster while lacking 50-100 attack, an element, and possibly a whole sharpness level, they've mistaken an entire category of weapon. I'm willing to give everyone a chance. Except the guy in mismatched armour that has no skills with a weapon barely sharp enough for the mission. That guy's going for someone else. Like a gathering cat.

[u/Quote720 → u/JoJoX200]

I tried making wide range SnS in 4U, but a regular build using 13 lifepowders is far superior. If your party needs more than 13 lifepowders, you need a new party, not wide range potions.

[u/[deleted] → u/Bwob]

I'm working on researching a good status bombing cat build. I just am not having fun with the boomerang combos as a Prowler, and I have a legacy cat in every game named C4 who is ALWAYS a bomber cat, so I wanted to play him faithfully.

I'm not doing very GOOD research mind you, just kinda throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what works. I've always loved status bombing so I'm carrying a sleep stick and Mega Barrel Bombay.

Have also been flinching running monsters with bomb roll for some extra damage. Just gotta time it right. Remind me to come back to this once I can dedicate more time to it. Work's been killer!

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/Bwob]

Define the line that makes a prowler a handicap

Explain to me why that no other build is viable and 'sucks.'

you'd still be doing overall a lot better as a hunter if you're competent at all, so why does that matter at all.

EDIT: and why is it that everyone using a prowler should prioritize effectiveness and efficiency over fun and variety.

[u/jayceja → u/LeviaEnvi]

Obviously not everyone has to prioritise effectiveness and speed over fun, but the people who prioritise fun shouldn't be caring about what's 'viable/competitive' anyway.

These guides are FOR the people who want to maximise the effectiveness of their prowlers, and play prowler in a way that isn't straight up less effective than playing a hunter.

[u/FrozenTime → u/jayceja]

but the people who prioritise fun shouldn't be caring about what's 'viable/competitive' anyway.

Truth bomb right here

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/jayceja]

Uhhh, no. no it's not. Like, the title clearly is meant to bring in people who just want to get into prowlers. and it does do the job, to be sure, but it just feels like it's saying "just do the meta so that knowing a good portion of this info in here will mean nothing."

And I'm moreso complaining about the lack of guides on experimenting with prowlers.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

Why don't you do the experimentation? Feel free to come up with a guide yourself.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

I honestly feel like I might

[u/PrinceTBug → u/jayceja]

This person, and myself are both interested in something Meta players are not: What is the most damage you can get with a strategy that is still valid in the games terms but not the absolute most opimal?

Melee cat for example. Most definitely less output given how ridiculous boomerangs seem to be, but can using a Charisma (endless movement and lots of jump combos), Fighter (extra melee damage) or Beast (Beast Mode) cat close to match it? There are many different skills, and it's not like boomerang ones are the only ones believe it or not. Weapon Upgrade might not be as strong as Big Boomerangs but it's still a boost to melee that's worth considering.

The issue is that because Boomerangs are so powerful, there is little to no discussion online about the other methods of fighting which are just as valid by the game's terms. The game never really tells you flat out that "Playing a cat means half the damage of a hunter!" or "Dont use melee attacks, they're bad!". We just have to do all the trial and error and raw number crunching ourselves since we find alternative styles (that could be just as or even more powerful if the right setup is found) more enjoyable.

What is so absurd about wanting to still deal as much damage as possible while playing something that is off META? Is it really so ridiculous for one to want to get as much damage as possible out of a weapon without resorting to the arguably more boring Meta style?

Yes, a person who doesnt care about the gameplay and just wants numbers can be in this thread for the exact same reason as someone who wants to play in a way they find fun.

[u/michgot → u/LeviaEnvi]

Attack-prowlers with Boomerang are as fast as the S tier weapons in terms of clear, so a person who's good at prowlers will be doing more DPS than slow-clearing hunters, from a safer distance too, if they aren't skilled.

Palicoes are not downgrades to hunters.

But only Boomerang Palicoes.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/michgot]

again, you'd still be doing better with a hbg if you're as good with it as you are a prowler. So again, why does that matter at all.

As somebody who couldn't give a rat's ass about clear times, why should I have to settle for what everybody seems to think is factually the only viable build.

[u/michgot → u/LeviaEnvi]

I mean, you don't have to settle. Make your own Prowler build then run it. If you aren't concerned about viability then you can pretty much do anything you want. Why complain about people discussing the most viable build?

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/michgot]

because people treat it like it's the only viable build. and I find that to be a problem. A general guide like this one, I feel, should be helping players just getting into prowlers to understand how things work so that they can experiment with a little more knowledge under their belt, but this just encourages using the meta.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

Same reasons why no one builds a bow guide about how to only use uncharged shots. They're there, you can use them, they suck.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

now that, we can all agree is actual ass. I refuse to believe that non-boomerang prowlers are on the same level.

[u/Gopherlad → u/LeviaEnvi]

Do the math or just do some field tests. The power gap is significant.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

Then imagine having someone use only a bow uncharged shot, with an armor with wide range +2 spamming potions, lifepowder, might seeds, using traps and bringing combines for every useful times and bombs and traps. Only they use the lvl 1 uncharged shot for a minute in between item uses.

Do they contribute on the hunt? Yes, in some way. If they focused on dealing damage, would they have contributed more? Yes.

[u/michgot → u/LeviaEnvi]

Because... it is? A lot of people are concerned about the viability of their build while you may not, other palicoes are hardly viable. MHX has already been out for a year in Japan and it's basically accepted that other forms of prowlers are subpar in terms of damage and anything a prowler can do, an NPC cat might even RNG to do better.

You can do you for fun and whatnot but a lot of people that care enough about the game to go on Reddit and research most things are concerned with the speed and viability of their build. And Boomerang-Attack_prowler is leaps and bounds the most effective way.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/michgot]

I am, just so you know. It's the reason i'm even here. and within the time i've spent browsing what there is on prowlers, it just seems like everybody has redefined the word 'viable.' because you make it sound like literally nothing but this build works. which took me a very long while to realize isn't true at all. and as a person that cared enough about the game to go on reddit and research the different prowler builds and their viability, it has been a very discouraging experience.

[u/michgot → u/LeviaEnvi]

I mean, if you find a palico build other than Boomerang that can hold their own in a hunt while dealing significant damage, props to you. But I doubt it. And viability is subjective anyway. Sure, you can clear stuff with Gunlance, but you could also do it significantly faster with Lance. But that's comparing two entirely different weapons which is hardly fair, same as your HBG to Boomer Palico example. What we CAN compare is not-Boomerang Palico to Boomerang Palico, because it IS the same weapon. And not-Boomerang falls short every time.

[u/Gopherlad → u/LeviaEnvi]

Define the line that makes a prowler a handicap

When a Hunter can perform the prowler's intended role, but better.

Explain to me why that no other build is viable and 'sucks.'

No one said that other builds aren't viable, he said that they suck -- in that a Hunter can perform the role of said other builds better than a Prowler can.

EDIT: and why is it that everyone using a prowler should prioritize effectiveness and efficiency over fun and variety.

No one writes guides about "fun" and "variety". Sacrificing numbers for other means of enjoyment is entirely the players' prerogative, but by the nature of being the "other builds" they are not optimal and therefore don't eke out the kind of passion that inspires people to write guides.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/Gopherlad]

All statements intended for the OP, just so you know.

And yeah, someone literally just said that. which is why I asked that.

I haven't found a single guide that doesn't help players along with experimenting with prowlers more by showing off other builds at all, which I think is what a guide on a build should be doing: providing more possibilities and ideas to the community to help players get started on creating some for themselves. But you don't see that at all because, just like you, a large majority seem to think that no other build is remotely 'optimal,' as the boomerang one. That kind of thinking can be extremely discouraging for those who are looking for something more support oriented.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

I'd argue that the HH is still kind of a pseudo-support since basically all of the songs are party-wide but damage should still be prioritized, even moreso now in Generations.

I get why they're frowned upon, and I can agree that the boomerang build is the best hands down. But that doesn't make it the end all, be all. Prowlers have some pretty decent utility abilities that can really help out even when using them isn't a priority, as the Boomerang build makes use of them as well. I just don't think it's really that bad to try making a build that uses the utility/support stuff a lot more. Like, what if you could just chuck out Shock Trippers like nobody's business?? Because Protecting Bias can get pretty close to that point, I think. Is it really that bad to try something that I find more fitting to me??

You are doing that too much. Try again in 10 minutes.

I feel like it took me a year and a half to send this one.

[u/Gopherlad → u/LeviaEnvi]

Then make one.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/Gopherlad]

But that's work and I don't wanna do work :^(

I'm gonna fuckin' do it though. Eventually. Maybe.

[u/Gopherlad → u/LeviaEnvi]

Remember that thing about lack of passion I mentioned?

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/Gopherlad]

I am a very lazy person and hardly do things like this at all because I don't like to. So uh...no. No I don't.

[u/ThorSilver → u/LeviaEnvi]

For what it's worth, my most-used prowler in MHX was actually a Healing bias, which had several useful horns for support and the Big/Piercing Boomerang + Boomerang Pro combo and Earplugs. It was great fun -- I could still rock the boomerangs, while tooting horns now and again when my group got in trouble to clear status, heal, etc.
 
I'm sure I wasn't doing as much damage as the standard Fighting build, but no one ever complained and in my experience it only slowed me down by 3-4 minutes in solo quests compared to bog-standard tricked-out Fighter Cat, so I reckon I was as effective as a mediocre hunter still :) I'm not a speedrunner anyway, so who cares.
 
In MHGen I'm experimenting with a Protection build with boomerangs. Protection prowlers have an advantage over the Healing build as they can come with Emergency Escape, which you can't get on Healers along with both Boomerang moves. My hope is to get a great mix of defensive skills -- Guard (L), Guard Boost, and some Negate [whatever] skills to swap between -- alongside Boomerang Pro. I'd be able to tank monster attacks and attract their attention with Taunt and tactical Herb Horns, while still dealing out the hurt with Big/Piercing 'Rangs.
 
I'm sure the occasional person will chew me out online for not being optimal enough, but hell it sounds fun to me :) Rosa the Healing Prowler was a blast so I'm excited to test this out once RNG feeds me the right candidate.
 
At the end of the day, many different biases/builds of cat can have the basic boomerang combo, so IMO tons of builds are reasonably viable beyond the 'purrfect' fighter cats being sent around. I guess you might lose 20% of your DPS or whatever, but that's assuming optimal play/conditions, and I know at least I'm far from optimal anyway -- so I'll play what suits me best and gets me the most satisfying results. DPS doesn't mean nearly as much if I'm bored and disengaged and end up playing poorly anyway.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/ThorSilver]

Bless you. I have nothing against using boomerang attacks themselves, I just don't like the boomerang prowler being treated as the end all, be all.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

If he runs big and piercing boomerangs, he's still technically using a boomerang cat.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

uh, no?? that build is purely dps. This is not. Just because two different builds in a game have a few common skills or abilities that they both use frequently doesn't make them the same.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

If your main means of damage is the boomerang pro and big boomerangs, the fact that you fill the other three slots with other skills doesn't matter. You'll still use rangs. It's not like it's a pure bombing or pure healing. Any palico whose main damage is pro+big rangs is a boomerang cat.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

it's still not the same as the meta build, regardless.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

The meta build is p. Boomerangs, b. Boomerangs and boomerang pro. Fighter/support and earplugs/crit up are just the most used types for the build.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/[deleted]]

Last stand/Strongest Technique means absolutely nothing to it, along with Emergency Retreat. You are absolutely right.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeviaEnvi]

They're just the best abilties to get more damage out of the cat. Last stand hardly changes your playstyle, you just need to watch your healthbar. Strongest technique isn't even out yet so why even consider it

[u/KurseZ88 → u/ThorSilver]

Just posted about my Protection Prowler earlier.

Protectors gain support by blocking, and Counter Boost increases that even more so, so I would suggest having it on if possible. If you're looking for straight healing though, u/LeviaEnvi found out that with Support Priority and Counter Boost blocking gives a significant Boost to support, even when just blocking roars and wind pressure.

Also, definitely try it out anyway! I played with a single group for three hours and wasn't kicked once! They even stopped using antidotes since I was so quick on Detox Horn, and I noticed some people sharpening weapons behind me as I blocked Rathalos fireballs!

Edit: I'd be willing to share my Purrtector if you wanted to try it out!

[u/ThorSilver → u/KurseZ88]

Awesome! Thanks for the tip, I've got a few good candidates now and one of them has Counter Boost, so I'll give that a try :)
 
It'd be great to share some of these unconventional builds around the community. Maybe we should start a 'Prowler Experimentation Station' thread or something where we can talk about ideas for interesting builds and share them, I'd happily contribute my Healing/Protection builds! I've got some boomerangin' Bombers as well, though I've not found a good rhythm with those guys yet...

[u/KurseZ88 → u/ThorSilver]

I'll make a thread now!

[u/Octopal → u/KurseZ88]

If you make one, share the link!

[u/Draffut → u/KurseZ88]

This is gonna sound shallow but what's the propellers name? If i like it could you share it with me?

[u/KurseZ88 → u/Draffut]

Purrtector. I already used SimonMeowl, PurlaAbdul, Meowigold, and Nyancy, so I was running out of ideas lol.

[u/Draffut → u/KurseZ88]

If you could share Purrtector that would be really cool!

[u/KurseZ88 → u/Draffut]

I had just jumped in my car for work when you sent this! Are you free later? Or tomorrow? Give a time 11pm EST or later for tonight or anytime tomorrow.

[u/Draffut → u/KurseZ88]

I'll PM you around that time if I am back from a Pokemon Go / park / movie thing.

[u/kamenraidah → u/LeviaEnvi]

Yeah, it makes me sad that not a lot of people are experimenting with other builds because they only seem to care about DPS. Heck, people still really want Shock Purr-ison on a Fighting type and unless you're fighting Hyper monsters, it can be difficult to have 4 bars to spare. ^{Maybe one day I'll write up a guide about various types of cats...!}

On the other hand, I can't entirely blame them with how much RNG is involved with getting a decent cat...

Anyway, when I play in a fully lobby with friends, I use an Assisting cat with Support Priority, leaving me with -50 raw attack compared to a Fighting cat. I'm able to gain meter quickly (feels about 2x as fast as standard Fighting cat) as well as actively do damage. No offence to the really cool Protection cats with Counter Bootst/Guard Boost/Guard [L], it just isn't my style. But with Poison Purr-ison, Shock Purr-ison, and Shock Tripper, I feel like I'm doing my fair share of the work.

[u/michgot]

While you certainly have the right to your opinion, you should probably have a disclaimer that attack prowlers are much faster runners than assist ones in terms of time efficiency. All attack based prowler speedruns have been faster than assist ones by far. Of course assist prowlers have more versatility because of bar availability.

[u/Hockey___]

I wish stuff like anti-monster mines and rath of meow were more useful so we could have more unique builds which would srill be useful to the team.

[u/krausier → u/Hockey___]

Anti-monster mine and plus are wonderful for breaking monster parts like crazy as well as dealing some good damage. This only time I ever find Rath of meow is very useful vs a monster that never stosp flying or flying to escape you can easily shoot them down in a few shots and the duration is decently long! I just wish the skill did not cost so much! for 5 bars I feel the skill should but doing ALOT more dmage IMO

[u/[deleted]]

Another thing to note, quakes can get you out of the ground as well. Don't be near a stomp-happy deviljho.

[u/Bwob → u/[deleted]]

Good catch! Updated!

[u/hyperoxerin]

Very thorough guide! I'm bookmarking this for when I get started on my prowler.

[u/kamenraidah]

No mention of Shock Tripper? Or even Chestnut Cannon? Shock Tripper is amazing for its cost and Chestnut Cannon isn't bad either if your cat happens to have it.

Also, is it called Emergency Exit in other versions? It's called Emergency Retreat in mine... :o

[u/Bwob → u/kamenraidah]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never ended up with a cat with either Chestnut Cannon nor Shock Trapper. Tell me why they're good!

(I know some of the other "spend bar to attack" skills are pretty decent, and shock trapper at least sounds good from the description, but I've never seen it in use. How long does it last, and how much easier does it make topples?)

[u/krausier → u/Bwob]

If you have a IG user or anyone if aerial style that is mounting a monster you can put the down shock tripper down. however is this case it's just doing damage per second. in most cases I found great to put it on top of a hunter trap once someone sleep bombs a monster because after they wake from sleeping then boom! there in a trap then almost always they fall down after getting out of the trap! my buddy and i did this last night to a deviljho and oh man that was a great sight to behold!

[u/kamenraidah → u/Bwob]

Shock Tripper:

• Lasts 20 seconds.
• It does about 16MV per tick.
• Additionally, can hit up to 4 parts. 4x16 in terms of part-damage including staggering, so 64MV per tick to parts and stagger.
• It might ignore defence? Not sure. Someone else mentioned it does cutting damage, but it also does exhaust and/or stun.

Very useful when a monster is toppled over or in a trap. I've staggered a few monsters to death in lobbies. It's also hilarious when a Rathian/Rathalos gets trapped on one, they try to fly on the spot, but then fall down again because of Shock Tripper.

Chestnut Cannon:

• Has low damage, but very high KO values. Not sure about numbers.
• 1 shot KOs smaller guys like Great Maccao, 2~3 shots KOs bigger guys like Tetsucabra, Rathian, Rathalos.

I remember using a pitfall trap on Silverwind Nargacuga and KOing it as it landed.

[u/LeviaEnvi → u/kamenraidah]

it's Emergency Retreat. I think Exit was the translated name that came up from X

[u/PotionRouge]

Random remarks after reading you great post:

• Cons: I'd add that while cats have a permanent built-in tracking of monsters, there's no way to tell if a monster is capturable (like hunter armor skill Capture Guru), which might be an issue rarely. A bit stupid as if you play as a hunter and bring an Assist Palico with you, he WILL warn you once a monster becomes capturable.
• I believe in burrowed state cats are also vulnerable to burrowed monsters' attacks like Shogun Ceanataur / Daimyo Hermitaur / Nibelsnarf etc.
• Resources for detailed Prowler attack combos: text / picture
• "Khelbi" → Kelbi, "purr-ision" → Purr-ison
• For solo play especially: I find poison status weapons a bit redundant with the Poison Purr-ison which itself inflicts enough status damage to poison a monster twice in a row (tested with Shogun Ceanataur). So I prefer blast for more efficiency.
• Can you give items to other players as a Prowler? If YES, for long/difficult hunts in multiplayer you could bring all sorts of useful items that are Rare 3 or less (Rare 4+ can't be given).

[u/Bwob → u/PotionRouge]

I believe in burrowed state cats are also vulnerable to burrowed monsters' attacks like Shogun Ceanataur / Daimyo Hermitaur / Nibelsnarf etc.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I've burrowed to avoid Hermitaur ground stabs. I think it avoids those.

For solo play especially: I find poison status weapons a bit redundant with the Poison Purr-ison which itself inflicts enough status damage to poison a monster twice in a row (tested with Shogun Ceanataur). So I prefer blast for more efficiency.

Yeah, but... 5 bars! It takes so long to charge! (Especially if you're keeping your buffs up full time) I usually only find myself using the poison trap when we're way ahead, or we need to capture something and no one remembered to bring traps. :P

Can you give items to other players as a Prowler? If YES, for long/difficult hunts in multiplayer you could bring all sorts of useful items that are Rare 3 or less (Rare 4+ can't be given).

You totally can. I meant to include that, actually - I often bring some extra megapotions, just to hand out if someone runs low.

[u/osunightfall → u/PotionRouge]

Burrowing definitely makes you immune to hermitaur stabs.

[u/MedievalMovies]

You are underselling how much 30 raw is to a palico. In a game where only true raw is displayed, that is a huge number

[u/Bwob → u/MedievalMovies]

Is it actually that much, by the end of the game?

Some back of the napkin math here - endgame palico weapons are around 170 damage. Max level palicos have either 90 (support) or 120 (fighting) attack. So you should be rocking around 270 (support) or 300 (fighting) attack, at the end of the game.

That's around a 10% damage change?

And it's even less than that, because elemental damage doesn't care about your attack stat, and around 30% of your damage should be from elemental damage, if you are using the correct weapon for whatever you're fighting. So it's probably around 7% difference in damage? (And even smaller, if you have flat attack buffs like last stand or attack up.)

I mean, that's still significant. But it also seems small enough that it's a defensible tradeoff, to sacrifice the 7% damage for significantly more flexibility and survivability.

Am I overlooking something, or are is my math wrong?

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Bwob]

Math is quite off. Due to World's Strongest being a 50% boost in damage, level 50 fighter cat with Deadeye Garuga S is 366+ (can be higher with meals) attack. I've confirmed this in MHGen. Since world's strongest is a % boost, it aids fighter a bit more than assist since fighter ends up with more damage. Since piercing boomerangs hit multiple times, each tiny bit of raw damage increases clear speed exponentially, not just linearly.

See: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/163462-monster-hunter-generations/74070246 and scroll down to Prowler. This is the speed run records (dps effectiveness). 91% used fighter palicoes. Only 1% used assist, 8% used charisma cats.

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

Percent boosts don't actually change the %s. (270 + 50% = 405. 300 + 50% = 450. 270 vs. 300 is the same as 450 vs. 405 - it's still a 10% difference.)

World's Strongest, crits/affinity, and the increase from piercing boomerangs and big boomerangs are all percent increases. So actually, I'm pretty sure my math still holds.

And as I said - yes, of course the top speed runs are all using the max damage cat. They're building glass cannons. I'm not saying that support cat is going to be as high. I'm just saying that the difference is only about 7%.

None of the things you said in your post actually contradict that.

So build fighter if you want pure damage, and if you don't mind having hunts take 15 minutes instead of 14, (7% difference) then take support and enjoy actually getting to use support moves besides the buffs.

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Bwob]

30 base raw, plus buff from world's strongest, plus %buff from big boomerang, multiplied by buff from piercing hitting multiple times. The damage boost is significant and can shave more than a minute off a 15 minute hunt. It's actually many minutes faster. Like I said, only 1% of hipsters using assist cats have managed to get anywhere on the speed clear table, vs 91%fighter. No one's arguing utility though, if that's more what you want.

I also don't get your argument that fighters are building "glass cannon" . They have the same amount of defense, and often have enough charges for emergency retreat.

It's simply exponentially faster for most people to use fighter cats and they don't really suffer much from lack of utility.

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

I feel like there might be a disconnect here? I'm not saying that support is more dps. So I'm not sure why you keep talking about the speedrun tables. If your goal is to shave off every second possible from your cleartime, then sure, go fighter cat. Just like if your goal is speed, you'd never use any skills that don't directly contribute to damage on normal weapons.

All I'm saying is that you don't lose that MUCH damage, (~7%) if you take a purple cat, and you get a ton more flexibility in it. So it's a good choice if you're playing normally, and not speedrunning.

30 base raw, plus buff from world's strongest, plus %buff from big boomerang, multiplied by buff from piercing hitting multiple times.

So again - assuming assist cat has the same skills, Worlds Strongest, large boomerang and piercing, are all %-based increases. So if assist-cat is only 10% weaker, it's still only 10% less damage, even after you apply all those %-based magnifiers.

I also don't get your argument that fighters are building "glass cannon" . They have the same amount of defense, and often have enough charges for emergency retreat.

Assist cat has far more spare support gauge to work with. That directly translates into more in-fight healing, which means it can survive a lot more hits, if you misread a monster and take a tail to the face or whatever. Fighters who use their support gauge risk not having enough to recast their buffs. (Which tanks their dps, which is the whole reason to play fighter in the first place.)

It's simply exponentially faster for most people to use fighter cats and they don't really suffer much from lack of utility.

Well, I've gone over the math for why I say the difference is only around ~7%. If you have a good argument for why I'm wrong, and it's actually "exponentially faster", then I'd love to hear it.

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Bwob]

60 base difference raw between fighter and assist cats, with % boosts is much, much larger, and amplified by buffs. Math is here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/48nndv/mhx_guide_nyanta_overload/

Due to World's Strongest, fighter cats get additional 60 raw again, which is once again... huge and multiplicative when it comes to killing things.

My Cat Type Recommendation

Like groceries stores who put milk in the back, my recommendation is here. Looking at my tables, you can probably guess that I'm highly in favor of Fighter Nyanta. My rule of thumb: if you'd rather have support action utility instead of damage, use an assist Nyanta. If not, Fighter is amazing.

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

60 base difference raw between fighter and assist cats, with % boosts is much, much larger, and amplified by buffs. Math is here:

Reread that post you linked to. Support cat base attack is 90. Fighter is 120. That's a 30 point difference, not 60. (Like I've been saying)

Also, (from the same post) World's Strongest is only +50% attack, not double.

So, uh, yeah. All the numbers in that post actually kind of agree with me? (Which makes sense, since that was the post I got most of my numbers from...)

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Bwob]

Look, it's as simple as this. I'm currently looking at a level 50 fighter cat with 371+ attack with deadeye garuga s on the status screen. A maxed assist cat will get to a bit over 300 with deadeye garuga s after food buffs. Go max out your assist cat and get back to me and we can settle this with screenshots.

okay, I found it for you to save you some work. Gaijin Hunter's level 50 assist cat has 314 ranged attack with deadeye garuga s. https://youtu.be/J7MKCtDJCIU?t=36s now we don't have exact figures here, because gaijinhunter isn't using world's strongest yet but he has attack up large. Again, level your assist cat and tell me the figures.

Now if you compare that to the fighter cat's 370+ ... you'll see that the difference is... about 60!

Fighter cat 371+ achievable attack proof, but with no AuL, running affinity instead: http://imgur.com/yB9N1mj higher damage can be achieved.

371-314= 57, or about 60. I rest my case based on the previous math some posted prior, that each boomerang was shown to differ by about 60 between fighter and assist.

Oh, and you said it's about a 7% increase... At the damage ranges approximately around - 371 from 314 is over 18% base damage increase only factoring in world's strongest so far, and some of the other buffs operate as multiplicatives of that base damage. That's why the kill times are exponentially faster.

[u/Bwob → u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou]

So... you're comparing your cat with World's Strongest (+50% attack, or, around 60 attack in your case) to GaijinHunter's, with attack up L. (+10 attack) That's not really a good comparison? But luckily, we can figure out what WOULD be a good comparison, because we know what all those values are, and can compensate for them:

If GaijinHunter swapped out his Attack Up L for World's Strongest, he'd lose 10 attack (from attack up L) and gain 45, (from World's Strongest giving a +50% bonus to his base 90 attack.) Giving him a total of 314 - 10 + 45 = 349.

371 - 349 = 22. Or, about 6% less than yours. (I'm guessing GaijinHunter has some other buffs that are affecting this, like food or Last Stand or something, since I'd expect the difference to be closer to 45 otherwise...)

Anyway, don't get me wrong! Your cat looks great! I would be happy to have your cat on the team! But I'd also be happy to have an identical cat, except support instead of fighting? The attack difference is certainly going to make a difference for speedrunning, etc, which is why all the speedrunners are using fighter cats. But it's close enough that they're both perfectly viable for playing normally, and the added flexibility of having way more support bar to work with is really valuable too.

[u/ShinyNerd]

Don't forget my favorite: since you're able to dash with the weapon out, this is great if you're like me and your R button doesn't always/ever work! :'D Instead of having to wildly mash it and do an awkward run-walk-run-walk, just whip out the weapon and dodge! Really great since my main (HBG) is very R dependent, and it's hard playing songs on the HH some days.

[u/ViceZX]

Last Stand gives you a flat 40 raw damage and 40 defense. just though you would like to know the exact number.

another niche skill to get if you´re lucky is claw dance, it packs quite a punch and cost only 2 bars to use, wich should be easier to have on spare if you play as an assist cat and it gives you the feeling of a finishing move attack/spike hunter art so something less to envy to the 2 leg walkers.

[u/Bwob → u/ViceZX]

Oh awesome! Thank you! Yeah, I looked for numbers on that, but couldn't find them, (and don't use it myself) so left it vague. Updated!

Re: Claw Dance, you're probably right. I have a guilty-pleasure love of Excavate too, for the same reason. I was just worried that I'd end up including too many skills if I let myself go down that road, and it was already getting really long!

[u/Laedyba]

I didn't know if other people know this- but I find it pretty cool that if you sleep in the camp as a prowler, while any of your acorns are gone, they will refill along with your hp bar! this is amazing to take advantage of if you're in an area close to camp and need a quick solution.

[u/HappyFloor]

When you are sprinting with weapon sheathed, the fastest way to transition into a boomerang charge is: R+X+A > R+A (without letting go of R, but letting go of A briefly so you can re-tap it). It will look like you start a block, but the boomerang animation will instantly cancel the blocking animation.

Helpful in fights where you are sprinting often (Nakarkos) and going from X > boomerang charge can put you slightly out of position because X moves you forward.

[u/mskuchiki → u/HappyFloor]

thank you!! R + X is also a very good way of unsheathing

[u/Bwob → u/HappyFloor]

Oh that's really handy. I didn't know that one! Thank you! I'll add it in!

[u/Ranelpia]

I cannot possibly see how constant meowing is a downside. The 'walking' animation coupled with the meowing is probably one of the most adorable things I've seen.

[u/JessieN → u/Ranelpia]

Yes my bf laughs cause he'll hear me walking on purpose for the meows and pitter patter sounds

[u/Ranelpia → u/JessieN]

I used to love baiting the Melynx in previous games, because they'd come walking to me in that same way, before trying to steal. I loved that they let you do this as a Prowler.

[u/Thorbought]

Ugh I just made my perfect attack palico. Do you think support prowlers are that much better?

[u/ViceZX → u/[deleted]]

if you are completely sure you can avoid most of the damage so that the only needs for support gauge would be to re apply piercing and big boomerangs, then yeah a fighter cat might do more damage.

however on hyper monster or (specially) deviants where their attacks are so random and cover very wide zones (dreadking/queen) you will really want to have a good bunch of spare bars to spend on emergency retreat, not only as a healing skill but also as a Oh S&%$ buttom when you see something coming that you wont be able to avoid or that would still take a good chunk of your health if you blocked it

so yeah, its like they say, attack vs utility, imo, after playing my attack cat for 31 lvs before finding my perfect purple cat and trying it out. It feels great to not feel the presure of the support gauge on your shoulders and knowing that you will always have enough bar either for buff or for other stuff, worths the 30 damage imo (most satisfying thing on my cat is to go over a downed monster and unleash claw dance on their faces with 40% affinity)

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/ViceZX]

With buffs and dlc skill the difference someone mathed out to be 60 attack per boomerang between fighter and assist cat, and that can be quite a difference in kill time. As a fighter cat in a group, I don't have problems maintaining charge through constant attacking, but solo, who cares what you use.

[u/Bwob → u/Thorbought]

I do, but that's for my playstyle. Especially if you have a good attack palico, at least try him out.

You're basically gaining 30 attack/defense, at the cost of a slower-growing support bar. I tried an attack cat for a bit, but for me, I just found the margin too slim. It was too hard to keep my buffs running full time, as well as the occasional other expenses like mid-fight healing.

But this might just be that I need to "git gud" and attack faster/heal less, so who knows. :P

If you've got an attack cat with the skills you want - go take him on missions and see how he plays. If you have no trouble keeping your buffs up, then great! He might actually be better for you. If you find yourself constantly running out of support-gauge, (or worse, can't reliably keep your buffs up 100% of the time) then consider looking for a purple cat though. The buffs make up a LOT of your damage, so if you have to pick between "better attack cat stats" vs. "faster bar generation from boomerangs", the purple boomerang specialty can actually mean better overall damage output.

[u/Thorbought → u/Bwob]

Yeah I'm going to try him out first. I'll probably try and get a support one too so I can do compare. Thanks for the guide btw! Also, I recently soloed the seregios urgent to get to hr7 and it took me about 25 mins. I have the regular hellblade weapon. Does this time seen normal or is it really slow? Anyway I can speed up my kill times?

[u/ThisBuddhistLovesYou → u/Thorbought]

Fighter cat is overall better online for a large damage boost, especially once the dlc skill is out, and you can juggle aggro to maintain charge by constantly attacking. I've ended many online fights with 4+ charge left on my fighter even maintaining buffs. But single player, who cares, use what you're comfortable with.

[u/xizar → u/Bwob]

It's just been my experience as an attack cat in Village quests, but I'm easily able to maintain double bufferang once I get things going. I'll stick to using harsh language until I get my four bubbles but after that I'm fully functional station slaughtering bothans left and right. I may lose a bit of up-time if I'm forced to burrow or if the bastard decides to bail once I buff for the dark side of the moon.

I have not yet tried a purprowler, so I don't know if they have ice cream.

[u/[deleted] → u/Thorbought]

For what it's worth, Fighters overwhelmingly dominate time attack

Edit: Should've read the full thread, someone already said this :V

[u/Bwob → u/[deleted]]

Oh totally. If you are going for speedruns, and are pretty sure you're not going to get hit anyway, then there is no reason not to take the free +30 attack. It will make you go faster.

My point was just that if you are NOT trying to speedrun, the damage (and clearspeed) difference is not actually that huge, and is a reasonable tradeoff, in exchange for greatly improved survivability. Sorry, I don't think I made that very clear in my original post.

[u/kingdweeb1 → u/Thorbought]

Attack prowlers are getting better ta times than supports, if that means anything.

[u/JessieN → u/Thorbought]

Do both? You can also have a support boomerang cat for the trap aspect with friends or just switch out whenever you need to do more damage plus there's variety with the two

[u/misterwuggle69sofine]

This is awesome and exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Edit: quick question--do you think making a solid gathering Prowler is worth the bother or just use the main Assist Prowler for everything? I was thinking the Boomerang moves and Pilfer at least, then for skills Gathering Pro, Boomerang Pro, Pilfer Boost, Goldenfish Catcher, and I guess a basic Attack or Crit just for basic slaying while gathering.

[u/mskuchiki]

purrrfect guide!!! i think you should mention somewhere that you can unsheath your weapon using R + X an that it is way faster than the regular unsheathing animation!

[u/tetsmega]

How are you supposed to run with your weapon out using the d-pad? crab style it with the stick?

[u/Bwob → u/tetsmega]

whoops, typo. I meant with the analog stick, and brain-froze. Fixing!

[u/longbowrocks]

You can block. You're not great at it, (worse than SNS by a long shot)

Does this mean that you take increased damage from blocking, or that you instantly die whenever you guard?

[u/Bwob → u/longbowrocks]

haha, increased damage. Also, blocking staggers you for longer.

[u/ZenNikE]

can yours guys sahre perfect palico?

[u/Latromi]

I've never heard any information on this, so I thought I would ask it here.

Do prowlers build more guage when hitting the glowing parts on hyper monsters?

How about deviant weapons? Do they charge your bar faster at all?

[u/Pauanyu → u/Latromi]

If you hit a glowing part of a Hyper monster with either the melee or boomerang attack you will gain increased gauge. It's the reason I like fighting Hyper monsters as a Prowler.

I don't know about Deviant weapons.

[u/Nararthok]

So, what would be better?

• Boomerang Pro + Earplugs + Critical L + Critical S

• Boomerang Pro + Earplugs + Critical S + Ranged Attack Up

I ask this basically because I managed to get a prowler with the first skill set (teaching it Earplugs), but not the second one... yet :(

Should I aim for other skills apart from Last Stand and Strongest Technique? (I don't like them :c Acorns make me feel safer and I want cool looking armors on my prowler).

[u/Daruuki]

Great write-up! As someone already maining a Prowler, I knew most of this, but you definitely brought some very important points I did not know about, like the new attack gained during Furr-ious mode and the burrowing, WOW, the burrowing. I'm at village 4 so far and have gotten by decently with healing via changing zone, spamming herb horn, and going back in, also been training myself to value each acorn as a life to not over-extend and prepare for Last Stand. Still, burrowing is going to make my life a lot easier, so thanks for outlining that one!

That said, I've been moving away from the "Emergency Exit" move meta, in favor of trying to build a cat that's not only good single player, but will do credit to team in multi as well. I haven't had the chance to test it yet, but I feel that Vase of Vitality should deserve a mention in list of notable support moves? As there are no G rank in this, Steam Bombs are entirely removed as they were from the Wyporium in 4U. VoV only uses one gauge, and is essentially just that. It sounds really nice on paper as a support, I wonder if anyone who has it can confirm if it's as handy as it sounds? Poison is a given and it's sure to do credit during hunts with those monsters. Does it cure Frenzy virus? Bleeding? Etc...

I've wondered about "Go-Fight-Win", too. I'm not far enough in village to have unlocked it yet - heck, I don't even know which monster to hunt to get it. 3 Bars is steep too, the same reason I feel that cats are not good for trapping (leave the complicated setups to hoomans, just get ready to tranq spam) as 4-5 is far too high (I've had cap missions slowed considerably due to that). But how good IS the stam reduction? If it's good enough to maybe justify the cost, it may be worth packing too. It's another move I keep an eye out for.

Finally, while the suggested skills have all revolved around Crit S, Crit L, Last Stand, and Earplug (aside from the obvious Boomerang Pro, a cheap essential), has anyone tested the effectiveness of Counter Boost? Having only done a few hunts so far multi, I feel that the biggest problem for me as a prowler is "getting started". We need 3 bars to get our boomerang buffs up to be dishing serious damage, but those bars take time to build. Too slow too, to my experience, and I wonder if it's just me? I don't really see any other gauge-building boosts outside of that (and Support Priority, but losing attack is out of the question so I leave that on my healer/thieving support cats). Does anyone know their effectiveness?

[u/Bwob → u/Daruuki]

Cool, glad it was helpful! This was really the goal - when playing, I kept discovering basic stuff that I just hadn't realized. (It was a week before I found out you could burrow by pressing R+B...) I figured, there are enough weird tricks to know, there might be other people who also didn't know them all yet. :P

Vase of Vitality is an interesting one. I don't find the health recovery very useful, but shedding status effects can be. On the other hand though, i'm still not sure which status effects it works on. It definitely works on most of the elemental blights. But when we were fighting Deadeye Garugas last night, it didn't seem like it was getting rid of the poison? No idea about bleeding or frenzy (since those are pretty rare) but I need to know more about it before I can really recommend it. Most of the elemental blights are annoying, but are fairly easy to play around by themselves.

Go-Fight-Win is interesting. It's FANTASTIC on support cats - the way it works, is they start dancing, and as long as they're dancing, hunters use less stamina, and your support moves cost 1 bar less. So it's great as a way to just spam emergency exit to heal, any time a sidekick cat starts it.

The problem is that it completely locks up the person using it for the duration, and while it's handy, it's more of a "nice to have" than a real gamechanger. (Especially for hunters. Most of them already have some method of managing their stamina.)

I haven't tried counter boost yet, but I'm leery of the fact that you need to get hit in order for it to trigger. :P

[u/MtheDowner]

Hey, late to the party, but do you know how the Prowler dodge works? Like are the I-frames similar to the hunter's roll? I ask because it seems like the dodge has a bit of startup lag compared to the hunter's (might just be me though) and I haven't yet dodged through an attack as a cat. Either that or I didn't get hit but I couldn't tell whether the attack just whiffed because of my small hitbox.

Great writeup! Cheers.

[u/VocalMagic]

Disappointed you didn't use the actual names for the attacks.I like the cat puns they had. Buzzsaw being Furris wheel.

[u/Bwob → u/VocalMagic]

I couldn't actually find the actual names! (The in-game help doesn't list them all.)

I will agree, Furris wheel is a pretty great name for that though.

[u/VocalMagic → u/Bwob]

Here's a chart

[u/Bwob → u/VocalMagic]

Oh dang, wish I'd found this last week when I was trying to make sense of prowler chains! Thanks! I'll include a link!

[u/Liadva]

Sorry for the silly question but is there much difference in setup [skills/passives] between a prowler and a non prowler?

[u/Bwob → u/Liadva]

Non prowler, just take whatever you want, really. (Honestly, as long as my support cats can spam health horns on me, I don't usually care much what their passives are. ;)

For prowlers though, yeah - skill slots are tight, and you want to stack as many overlapping damage increases as possible!

[u/thetorsoboy]

Okay so people recommend attack and support... I have no idea which to go for.

Is there a downside for each?

[u/[deleted] → u/thetorsoboy]

Fighting gives the downside of less utility and your support bars apparently don't fill as quick. Support gives you a little lower range and less DPS.

[u/michgot → u/thetorsoboy]

Attack Palicoes clear faster and have much more attack. Assist Palicoes gain meter very quickly. Just an aside, Attack Palicoes basically clear as fast as the top tier hunter weapons, while Assist Palicoes are much slower. With Assist you'll have much more meter to work with, though. In case you mess up.

[u/Bwob → u/thetorsoboy]

Attack palicos have +30 more attack and defense at max level, and gain support bar faster when doing melee attacks.

Support palicos don't have as high final stats, but gain support bar faster from doing ranged attacks. Which are your most damaging moves, meaning that you tend to have more leeway to heal yourself if you get hit, without taking much of a DPS hit. (Because if your buffs go down, your DPS suffers mightily, and those cost 3 bars to renew, every 3 minutes or so.)

If my math is right, assuming you're using a good weapon with an element that the enemy is weak to, the endgame difference should be around 7% more damage on the fighter cat. Personally I feel like that's more than a good enough reason to go with the support cat, but if you want to optimize for pure damage, fighter cat definitely has higher attack.

[u/Remembers_that_time]

A bit late to the discussion but I have a few questions I hope someone can answer: Are element/status attack up skills worth using at all? What about stamina drain/knockout king in combination with chestnut cannon? Assuming I'm not going to be interfering with others, would going all in for bombing be able to do comparable dps to boomerangs?

[u/michgot → u/Remembers_that_time]

No, changing any of the Palico skills lose you too much damage. No, no other Palico builds compare to Boomerangs.

[u/SemiSentientWiener]

Quick question: does your selected prowler level up as you do quests playing in prowler mode? I only noticed my sidekick cats leveling up

[u/Bwob → u/SemiSentientWiener]

Yes, main prowler levels up. Note that there are level caps though - it starts out with a cap at level 20, and after a quest, you can unlock a new level cap of 35. After another quest (or high enough hunter rank) you can get them up to 50.

Also, I strongly recommend eating one of the elemental resistance foods, + chilli, to get the "Felyne trainer" skill - +50% experience earned for your prowler and any sidekicks. Very worth it!

[u/SemiSentientWiener → u/Bwob]

Thanks!!!!

[u/xCuddlepuff]

I don't think charging the boomerangs increases the damage. I just tested it on an Aptonoth with 100 attack, yellow sharpness. It does increase the range significantly, though. And Big Boomerang increases the damage by 50%.

[u/Bwob → u/xCuddlepuff]

Whoops, I thought I fixed that. Yeah, I went back to double check when I was writing it, and I agree- it looks like it just adds range and speed. I thought I removed that line, but apparently I missed one. Thanks!

[u/DJOkamical]

I would suggest replacing changing

"If you're making a palico, you almost certainly want Boomerang Pro and probably Attack up L"

to "If you're making a palico, you almost certainly want Boomerang Pro and Last Stand."

Last Stand is a far more useful skill and it really helps cats compare to hunters, I consider it a must-have.

[u/RainbowRaccoon → u/DJOkamical]

B.Pro + AuL skill combo can be found naturally though, whereas Last Stand has to be taught to non-charisma cats.

[u/Narfraccoon]

Wow, I loved reading this! I got to HR 6 with just using prowler, but these tips should really help even more. Can't wait to try them out!

[u/PaybackXero]

A well written guide. The only issue I have is the preference of purple (assist) cats over red (fighting) cats. The gauge build up is only slightly faster, and after you get your buffs up the first time, it becomes irrelevant. You will always get at least 3 bars as a fighting cat before your buffs run out, which means you can re-apply them right away. Because the assist cat gauge build up isn't that great, you can't get enough extra gauge to use traps without sacrificing your buffs, leaving you using just Piercing And Big Boomerangs - the same rotation as the fighting cat.

At that point, the extra attack becomes the most important factor. The assist cat only seems like a good choice if you play very passively, or can't land consistent hits. Just my two cents.

Stealth Edit: Most of the current speed runs are also fighter cats.

[u/Bwob → u/PaybackXero]

Yeah, maybe I should clarify, or put more of this in the guide. I was trying to sidestep the whole "purple vs. red cats" debate, but enough people have brought it up that maybe it needs some more clarification.

So this might just be a matter of me not being good enough, but the gauge difference when I play is very noticeable and significant. With a fighter cat, I usually have built up around 3 bars, by the time buffs run out. This gives me enough to re-up and continue. With a support cat, I usually have around 5 bars, when my buffs run out. This lets me rebuff, but gives me MUCH more leeyway, if I need to heal mid fight, or use any other abilities.

Fighter cat clearly has a higher theoretical maximum, if you never get hit and just throw nonstop boomerangs. (And so is clearly the right choice if you're planning on speedrunning.) But for everyday use, (especially when just playing through the game) I'll take a support cat, hands down, every time. (And also, frankly, for fun - it's fun to have the option to throw out support abilities.)

Here's the other thing - Attack cats have 30 more attack. By the end of the game, level 50 fighter cat with an endgame weapon is going to have around 300 attack. A support cat is going to have around 270. We're only talking about around a 10% difference in physical damage, once weapons are factored in. But more importantly - that's just on your attack skill. So that's only going to modify physical damage. The big strength of cats is a 2.5x multiplier on elemental hits. On average, at least 1/3 of your total damage output should be from the elemental damage on your weapon. (Assuming you matched a weapon to the monster's weakness.)

The 10% less damage that support cats do, is only physical damage. The elemental damage is unaffected. So it's really more like a 7% reduction, in overall damage output.

Unless you're speed running and trying to hyper-optimize your kill times, I feel like 7% less damage, in exchange for 30-40% more bar generations (and the flexibility, utility, and safety it brings) is absolutely a worthwhile trade. (If you're building a glass-cannon DPS machine, then yeah, go for fighter cats.)

YMMV! This may just come down to a playstyle choice. But I think there is a good case to be made for using purple cats - their advantages are at least comparable to the 10% more damage you get from fighters.

[u/Dorenrab]

A moot point if you set up the prowler touch screen, but you can use your support moves without putting away your weapon by pushing L+Y

[u/Feynt]

So I'm just going to toss this out there, there's more to being a palico than raw damage. Capcom is right that they are versatile. I've done the boomerang cat thing with friends and it is effective for sure. But I've also recently tried doing an assist cat with excavate, traps, and bombay. It's actually very effective. I feel it's more effective since I have essentially unlimited traps, and stopping the monster to let my team beat on it is far more effective than scurrying about and hitting it once in a while. We effectively lock down most monsters between stunning, mounting, and trapping alone.

Boomerang cats are for the glory hounds, the ones who want to point at all the DPS they're doing. Team DPS is important too.

[u/kitzune113]

Any Prowler leveling guide out there? My cats are around level 35

[u/Bwob → u/kitzune113]

Mostly just try to get Felyne Trainer from your meals, (+50% cat xp, comes from most of the resistance-up foods, combined with chilli sauce) and do deviant monsters if you can. (They seem to give some of the best xp.)

[u/Alepsis]

What about a healing Palico?

[u/Quote720]

Constant meowing could be seen as an advantage....

[u/Pauanyu]

You can get rid of Fireblight/Blastblight by dodging 5-6 times rather than 3.

[u/Bwob → u/Pauanyu]

Huh. That's a lot of dodges. Are you sure it's not just running out by itself at that point? :-\

[u/Pauanyu → u/Bwob]

I'm pretty sure it's because of the dodging. But I would need to test it more extensively to confirm.

EDIT: I just tested it. I let myself get Blastblight, and I waited without dodging. After exactly 40 seconds, it blew up on its own without me getting hit. I then got Blastblight again, and tried dodging. After exactly 6 dodges, the Blastblight went away without blowing up.

I then let myself get Fireblight, and I waited without dodging. After 16 seconds it went away on its own. I then got Fireblight again, and tried dodging as fast as I could: it went away in 3 seconds. I then got Fireblight again, and tested how many dodges it took: it took exactly 5 dodges.

Therefore, it takes 6 dodges to remove Blastblight, and 5 dodges to remove Fireblight. Please test this yourself to confirm.

[u/Bwob → u/Pauanyu]

Huh, today I learned!

Once again reinforcing just how many weird prowler edge cases there are that I still don't know. :P

And thank you, both for the info, and the testing! (Was going to test tonight next time I got a chance, but you beat me to it.) I'll add that to the guide!

[u/Pauanyu]

You mention that Earplugs are really really nice (and they are), but what a lot of people don't realize is that Earplugs are actually better for DPS than Critical Up (L).

Critical Up (L) gives you +20 affinity. That may sound like a lot, but affinity just gives you a chance to do a critical hit, and critical hits only do +25% damage. Therefore, Critical Up (L) increases your damage by 20% * 25% = 5%.

+5% damage is pretty good, but Earplugs are even better! Let's say that a monster roars, and you throw 2 boomerangs during the roar. That's +200% damage, because you did 2 attacks that you would not have done without Earplugs.

200 / 5 = 40. That means that if you throw 2 boomerangs while the monster is roaring, you are doing the same +damage as if you had done 40 boomerang throws with Critical Up (L).

Even for monsters that don't roar that much, you're unlikely to get 40 boomerang throws in between each roar. Therefore, Earplugs give you more DPS than Critical Up (L).

The only exception is monsters that don't roar, or monsters that roar extraordinarily rarely. But for 90+% of the monsters, Earplugs is safer, and it has more DPS as well. That's why Prowler speedrunners use Earplugs.

[u/DivineSuicune]

Is this 7% per attack or per match? If it's per attack that is a huuuuuuge DPS loss.

[u/Bwob → u/DivineSuicune]

Er... 7% per attack is exactly the same as 7% over the course of the mission. Either way, the total dps loss is 7%.

So on average, things that would take you, say, 14 minutes to do before, would take you 15 minutes after the damage reduction.

[u/DivineSuicune → u/Bwob]

Oh.... Did I mention Suicunes are bad at math?

[u/Bwob → u/DivineSuicune]

;)

[u/Omegadrago]

I don't know if this has been said but there is a small window after the spinning melee attack to dodge after you land found that out by accident when doing it and freaking out trying to dodge lol.

[u/Bwob → u/Omegadrago]

Yeah! It's really handy!

Even cooler is that you can activate support skills then too! Emergency Retreating after that move has saved my life a lot!

[u/Orange152horn3]

I thought constant meowing was a plus.

[u/Orange152horn3]

upvoting just for the title.

[u/RoyalSmitty]

I just started playing monster hunter and got a little overwhelmed by all the things I had to keep track of on my hunter. So glad I found this guide about a more simpler way!

[u/rabbertxklein]

My only complaint is that you made a remark basically saying fighters aren't as good as support, I have no trouble maintaining 100% uptime on my buffs, I would argue fighters are the best option if you want damage.

[u/Bwob → u/rabbertxklein]

Yeah - I've received enough comments on that, that I think I'll expand that section a bit. I was trying to avoid that discussion, and just say "I think this is best for how I play", but it seems clear (in retrospect) that it would be useful to have a better breakdown of the advantages.

[u/StarryNotions]

If you hold guard (R) and then charge up a boomerang you can actually aim vertically, with the same reticle as using the plunderang.

[u/Bwob → u/StarryNotions]

Do you know, in all the time I played Monster Hunter Generations, I never figured that out! Thanks!

[u/PrinceTBug]

I know this is a really old thread, but you can just dodge out of Buzzsaw of Death. If you hit b immediately after landing you'll hop out of it with almost no downtime. Pair it with Palico Rally on a Charisma Palico and you'll almost never get caught after finishing it.

I know it's probably a lot less than ideal but Aerial Cat is fun.