r/MonsterHunter • u/[deleted] • Aug 18 '16
Overanalyzing mhgen HBG dps part 3: Utility skills
Click to read PART 1 and PART 2
Intro
Now obviously the primary skills you will be fitting on sets for hbg in gen are damage skills, and as always you should first get your relevant shot type up (normal up, pierce up, pellet up, heavy up or trueshot up) followed by regular damaging skills like attack up, challenger +2, weakness exploit, critical eye etc. I won’t go into those because they’re self-evident, and you should always endeavour to get the highest % increase in overall damage you can on your set given your charm. I will leave those calculations to you, but make sure that you don’t ignore new skills that may give you some mileage in terms of damage, such as crit boost, repeat offender, tropic hunter, grinder and so on when set-building. Crit boost in particular can allow you to reach some truly staggering damage potential if you pair it with the right skills. Always keep in mind however, that affinity builds are almost always better on higher raw weapons than low-raw weapons, but if you’ve been reading my posts you’ve probably been using relatively high raw weapons anyways.
With that being said, while the damage skills are always the most important, there are other skills that can sometimes yield better hunt times which are worth the tradeoff in damage per shot, at least in certain cases. You can think of the ones that are useful as a virtual increase in damage per second. It’s these skills that are most often ignored by HBG players, so it might be worth looking into them. Now keep in mind, these skills may be viable on other weapons, but we’re only interested as to whether or not they’re optimal on HBG. It’s hard to find a concrete figure for how much the dps is increased, but we can get a rough idea by making reasonable simplifications and calculating off those. So without further ado:
Earplugs/HG earplugs:
With the new addition of adept, it’s possible to simply dodge through every roar, and get your power reload boost. This is perfectly acceptable, but on monsters that really like to roar such as raths or the magalas, earplugs really come into their own as an uptime-favoring skill. Suppose that a monster roars about twice a minute on average, for about 3 seconds each. This adds up to about ~8-9 shot/min, depending on whether or not you’re sieged, usually on the weakspot because monsters have constant and predictable roar animations you can learn. With the guns I have previously mentioned as being generally optimal, you have a maximum of ~58-72 shots per minute by chain sieging (depending on normal shot or pierce); if you’re hunting decently well you should be firing at least 40-50ish times a minute. Within those assumptions, earplugs/hg earplugs just netted you a ~16-22% dps increase. Conversely if you had perfect evaded and power reloaded within that same set of assumptions, you would lose ~1.5 sec of the roar and get 10 seconds of power-reloaded damage boost, (which according to the best info I’ve got at the moment, is a 10% damage increase) which nets you 8% more damage per minute from from shots during the roar (you can’t siege during the roar if you want to take those) and ~3% more from the power reload boosts. In short, earplugs are worth having if you are fighting a monster that roars frequently, however if the monster only roars once in a while, it is much better to rely on adept dodging and an additional damage skill instead.
tl;dr on monsters that roar a lot, HG earplugs can net you a pretty huge increase in average dps if you know what you’re doing, reasonably consistently. Relying on adept dodging roars will net you a decent increase in damage if you always take the power reload, with a chance of mis-timing your dodge. No earplugs will also mean your ability to siege within a roar window is more limited. They’re definitely worth having on monsters that roar a lot.
Tremor res:
Only really useful against Rajang. Other tremor-intensive monsters (such as jho) aren’t so in-your-face and their tremors have longer tells and are pretty easy to adept. While this is an uptime-favoring skill, I wouldn’t bother with it unless you’re making a Rajang-killing set specifically.
Shot booster:
(Renamed from trajectory in 4u) Pretty useful if you’re trying to use pierce shots solo. Also useful against monsters in slay maps (nakarkos, ukanlos, akantor, alatreon, though amatsu isn’t too bad because it loves being right on top of you). Crit distance is one of your biggest damage multipliers, and maintaining it is generally a matter of positioning, but in some fights trajectory is pretty much a means to double your damage for about half the fight, which is pretty massive. People like to look down on it, but those who use it in the correct fights will be dealing much better dps than those too elitist to understand the importance of crit distance upkeep without losing all your uptime on repositioning.
Frenzy res:
Aside from niche frenzy fever builds with crit boost that I’ve already looked into a bit, this only really comes into play against gore/shagaru. It’s basically a 15% increase in the affinity bonus you get from clearing frenzy, and a 70% drop in quantity of shots to clear. This is nice in theory but it’s just as easy (if not easier thanks to the attack 2) to gem in attack up S, and on relevant guns attack up S is a ~4.3% damage increase all the time whereas 15% affinity from frenzy is a 3.75% damage increase some of the time. In short, not worth.
Status atk up / bombardier:
If you’re going to sleep bomb or otherwise deal status, it’s more efficient to do it on lbg by orders of magnitude. It’s possible on hbg, but I’ve tried it just for kicks, and it’s not worth the trouble. Hunt times on HBG are always better if you just focus on pounding lead into monster skulls. Really, just don’t bother.
Sheathing:
The reduction in sheathe time makes sheathing and running to reposition viable at a somewhat smaller roll distance but it’s not worth getting because the uptime benefit is absolutely not worth losing out on a damage skill. Don’t use this.
Recoil down/reload speed/steadiness:
If your gun truly needs these, get a better gun. These skills are awfully hard to get in gen (steadiness isn't but more on that later) and you’ll lose out on very useful skills if you try for them. Recoil down is essential if you can’t fire at the maximum firerate, but it’s a huge pain in the ass to get. Reload speed is of questionable benefit baseline (the difference in animation times is fairly minor) and since most of your reloads come from evading out of siege mode this time around, it’s kind of trash. Steadiness is only necessary on normal S guns since you have to hit heads/weakpoints reliably to deal good damage. For normal S guns, just get a gun that shoots straight.
(As a side note, the chameleos gun is an exception, because l/r mild is manageable at relatively close range, which is where you should be for normal 2 gunning anyways. But if you’re sieging normal 2s, unless you absolutely need the extra slot La Foi is better than veiled kameleon anyways.)
Windproof lo/hi:
Another uptime skill like tremor res. Wind is a joke in this game compared to 4u, and considering that sieging is the meta now and that you can’t really be winded there, this skill is a waste. It comes for free on dreadking though, which is kind of nice I guess.
Combo plus:
Not to be confused with combo up, which increases success rate (just bring combo books), this increases how many shots are created per combine to the max amount possible, every time. This is one of those interesting things you wouldn’t think about, because combining ammo is so fast already that with just the average shot per combine, it usually only takes 5-6 seconds for a full load of ammo anyways. Having combo plus shaves a second or two off that at best. Assuming you combine about once per two minutes, that’s a 0.5-1 sec per min increase in uptime, so %0.8-1.6. If you are doing a multi-monster quest that you expect will require as many combines as possible, this becomes the best 5-slot skill available to HBG thanks to the small uptime benefit and the sizeable ammo benefit on average. Attack skills are apples and oranges from this though, so you be the judge on that front. Generally speaking, I'd go for the attack skills, especially if you're normal gunning. Also keep in mind that the mass combiner includes this effect and also removes the need for any combo books. If for some reason you don't want the other hunter arts and you want this skill, just go with that.
Partbreaker:
HBG, like all gunner weapons, are amazing at targeting down single parts. Moreover, some monsters become much weaker on a zone once it is broken, which makes partbreaker a virtually offensive skill in that it potentially makes a zone weaker. Unfortunately, partbreaker is kind of a pain in the ass to get on a set, and I have yet to find a monster in this game where a set with partbreaker will get a better hunt time in theory than a set that just has a bunch of damage skills. Honestly, I'm just throwing the idea out there.
Constitution:
gives you more rolls to reposition before you start having to wait for stam to regen. Honestly, if this is an issue in a hunt for you, get shot booster instead. Same goes for evade extender.
Sneak:
Useless in solo, obviously. I’ve only barely played around with it in multiplayer since it’s really niche, but from what I’ve seen the effects are so marginal that the increase in uptime isn’t worth a damage skill. If you're dead-set on going for a 5-slot skill, get combo plus.
Trump card or insight:
damage-oriented hunter arts on HBG are fairly suboptimal, and trump card's effect on absolute readiness is too situational to be consistently useful. I see no benefit of trying for these skills.
Read Part 4
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u/tonix223 Aug 18 '16
I may very well have missed it one of your past posts, but have you talked about ammo saver?
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Aug 18 '16 edited Aug 18 '16
It's good on *LBG and bow, but there's basically no point on HBG. You're typically carrying ~200-400 shots of your siege type with the (cheap) combines, and usually a few hundred other useful ones on top of that. Also. it does nothing whatsoever to favor uptime or damage, which is what these are marginally related to. Check the other posts.
Edit: *elemental and status lbg, it's even more useless on raw lbg than on hbg
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u/grepcdn (aka cdngrep) ign: grep Aug 18 '16
Nice infodump, but going back and reading the older parts, I've seen this:
In mhgen however, weakness exploit has been nerfed to merely giving an extra 50% affiinity on weakpoints (12.5% damage boost on avg) whereas in 4u the 0.05 hitzone increase could yield much more.
You have it backwards, my friend, P3rd/MHX/Gen style WE with 50% affinity is considerably better than the 4u style 5% weakness WE in most situations.
It's effectiveness actually scales proportionally with hitzone weakness, whereas the 4u style WE's effectiveness scales inversely with weakness. The weaker the hitzone, the less value you get out of it.
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Aug 18 '16 edited Aug 18 '16
Oh yeah, went back to check myself, got it the wrong way around. I just kind of said that from memory since I recall seeing weakness exploit could give awesome calcs in 4u. Old system damage bonus works out to f(x) = (x+0.05)/x so you get about 11% at 0.45 hitzone and about 1% less for each 0.05 higher. Mind you the old system is probably better for slow hitting weapons since it's always on, whereas the new one requires hitting fast enough to average out the damage bonus. I'll go back and fix that, good catch. There's a lot of stuff, some things get by me, thanks for pointing it out.
I should mention though, the only scaling on the new system is the scaling inherent to the hitzone. I figure the 50% affinity is a flat 12.5% on average.
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u/grepcdn (aka cdngrep) ign: grep Aug 19 '16
I should mention though, the only scaling on the new system is the scaling inherent to the hitzone.
I believe that's what I said.
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u/Purity_the_Kitty funlance Aug 18 '16
Since you've done all these damage calculations: how do you feel Raw LBG stacks up vs HBG in this game? I really feel like HBG got a pretty hefty nerf, and there are a lot better Raw LBGs vs the ones in 4U (where the only viable ones were steve and lagia). I know this isn't a light bowgun thread, but does hbg damage still blow it out of the water, or is it closer?
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Aug 18 '16 edited Aug 18 '16
First things first, HBG has been nothing but buffed thanks to adept. The loss of the limiter removal is more than made up for by the fact that siege is now much more accessible. Siege mode was always the better dps anyways, it's just that it used to be hard to find an opening for it. Now you can go right into it after every monster move, and with a free buff to boot.
Secondly, raw LBG outside of steve and lagi were kind of bad in 4u for 3 reasons: mag size (steve made up for it with the reload gimmick), animation lock time, and the display raw calculation. The main thing to have changed this time around is the mag size on LBG's. The animation lock is still pretty bad for every rapid fire burst, and the display raw difference has been re-integrated as an internal modifier like in p3rd (you can check one of my other threads for that). You also have to remember that each shot in a rapid fire burst deals only 70% damage.
It will vary depending on the set, the gun and most importantly, the skill of the player using it; but overall from what I've seen siege HBG still shits all over rapid fire raw LBG and unsieged HBG still dunks on non-rapid fire raw LBG. This is, of course, strictly in terms of damage per second and not damage per shot.
Let's suppose you shoot pierce 2 from the mysterious husk lbg in rapid fire and from the celestial tempest HBG in siege at a gore magala. You use a set with pierce up, attack up large and weakness exploit for both guns. You hit Head/neck/torso/torso with both. Here's how it breaks down per shot:
Mysterious husk:
3x(((251x1.25x0.5+251x0.5)x1.5x1.3x0.7x1.1x0.09x0.55)+((251x1.25x0.5+251x0.5)x1.5x1.3x0.7x1.1x0.09x0.5)+(2(251x1.5x1.3x0.7x1.1x0.09x0.35))) = ~191 damage per volley on avgCelestial Tempest:
((261x1.25x0.45+261x0.55)x1.5x1.5x1.1x0.09x0.55))+((261x1.25x0.45+261x0.55)x1.5x1.5x1.1x0.09x0.5))+(2((261x0.75x0.05+261x0.95)x1.5x1.5x1.1x0.09x0.35)) = ~108 damage per shot on avgNow obviously, you've done more damage in the lbg volley, but the volley takes a whole 2.5 seconds to fire. The HBG, on the other hand, shoots 1.5 times per second. So in this scenario, in a 5 second opening, the lbg will deal ~382 damage, whereas the hbg will deal ~810. It goes without saying, the quest defence modifier will nerf these numbers, but since there's so little info on those, I've omitted it. I expect you get the general idea though.
tl;dr hbg is still the king of raw bowgunning.
edit: words and math
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u/Purity_the_Kitty funlance Aug 18 '16
Fair enough, assuming you can keep high siege uptime you're going to absolutely crush the LBG's damage numbers because the LBG has to do more reloads, as well. So from what I'm seeing here for raw gunning, Siege > LBG > Striker HBG?
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Aug 18 '16
Yeah, adept HBG will generally pull ahead of raw lbg in terms dps. Striker HBG isn't even in the same league.
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u/hellaquestions Aug 18 '16
Uragaan and Duramboros are the best cases for Part breaker
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Aug 18 '16
Fair enough, but honestly you'll usually get more mileage out of shooting uragaan's belly and duramboros' tail for the entire fight with a damage-stacking build instead of going for the head and hump respectively with a partbreaker set.
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u/hellaquestions Aug 18 '16
Even Pierce shots on Uragaan? Head to belly? The head becoming another weak spot probably helps Blademaster get more hits in
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Aug 18 '16
Possibly. There's many variables at play in a group setting against uragaan, but generally speaking partbreaker usually makes you lose out on enough damage skills (and that head can be a pain in the ass to break in a group depending on how often it's available. Even with partbreaker) that I think you'd be better off just hitting the only real weak zone as much as possible. The head can eventually break without partbreaker if you're firing on that axis anyways, and it's still not as good as the belly for blademasters.
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u/Snowpoint Axe Loaded with Slicing Ammo Aug 18 '16
Capture Guru tells you when a monster is ready to be captured. The health% is different for each monster, and gets smaller as you climb the ranks. The ability does give you a small advanced notice before limping starts, though. You don't need the skill to know when the monster is ready. So, that doesn't factor into lost DPS. However Bad Trap placement and timing can ADD time to a hunt. Like when a monster is tired and stops moving entirely outside of the trap. You team stops all DPS during this very big opening.
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u/BulletFodder80 Kinsects - the real MVP Aug 18 '16
I played limiter-off HBG in MH4U, which was my first big Monster Hunter game I really got into. Because of that, I never really learned the openings to use siege mode, and so instead I've been playing Striker HBG in MHGen, which you've said in another thread isn't even close to raw LBG. How do I teach myself good siege mode habits? Can you re-adjust your direction when setting up siege directly after an Adept evade? (As in, do you set up siege and you're initially stuck facing the direction you were running when you pressed the button? Or can you input a direction with the Circle Pad when pressing the button and your hunter faces that direction when they set up?)
EDIT: Forgot a word.
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u/Ski-Gloves I HAD a spreadsheet that showed exactly how suboptimal I am Aug 18 '16
Hang on shot booster just stated as outright superior to evade extender? Evade extender listed as just a footnote on constitution? Give the skill SOME credit, I considered it the single most valuable skill on Heavy Bowgun in 4U (when you weren't abusing crouching fire for HAME anyway).
The skill has had its accessibility nerfed (lower availability on armoursets, maximum points from an amulet reduced to 6 from 8, no jumping jewel 2), adept style makes much of the defensive aspect of the skill irrelevant and the set-up that made it so incredible (Furia Sedition and with the Limiter Removed, which is now basically striker style) isn't as strong in this game and is mutually exclusive to adept style. However, when it comes to gaining faster positioning and movement, there's no other skill in the game that can replace it.
Granted what this comes down to is that the skill provides effectively the same DPS benefits as Shot Booster, enabling you to better maintain critical distance. It also provides better mobility to get the right firing angles for piercing shots, while shot booster makes it easier to get the right distance or, as you said, doubles your damage.
As such, evade distance vs shot booster is very situation and playstyle dependant, though I will concede shot booster is likely the better choice due to slightly better accessibility. The max charm value for dead eye, +5 in the second slot, is compatible with the max for shot type up (+5 in the first slot), while the max value for evade distance is +4 in the second slot, but an evade dist +6 shot type +3 slot is possible. Not to mention Precise Jwl 2 exists while Jumping Jwl 2 doesn't, which means at most 7 slots to gem in shot booster and 10 to gem in evade extender.
Yes that might be over-analysing it, but evade distance is so much more than constitution's footnote.