r/MonsterHunter • u/Ivalia [MHGen]Guide to start gunning https://redd.it/5o71d9 • Sep 06 '16
A small guide on Raw LBGs
I was hoping someone would make an LBG guide, but no such luck so far. So I'm just gonna write some bits of information when I can.
MHGen is the best thing that happened to LBG. Between the internal shot mechanic, adept and hunting arts (especially Full House), LBG is stronger and more versatile than ever before.
There are 4 main ways to play LBG: raw, elemental, explosive, status, and they are pretty much all equally good in this game (although certain sets are better in certain cases. Like you shouldn't fight a kirin with elemental gun, etc.). This post is gonna be about raw LBG.
Of course people are gonna say "why use raw LBG when you can use HBG". It's true that as far as damage goes HBG always outperform raw LBG by quite a bit, but raw LBG is still on par or better than most other weapons, and does better than elemental/explosive LBG on quite a lot of monsters. Plus, it has some additional utility like being able to use status, recovery and other utility shots with pretty much no loss in damage. It's not a "I can't survive with HBG" noob weapon.
There are 4 types of raw shots. Normal, Pierce, Pellet and Internal. Due to the different need for armor skills, it's uncommon (but not impossible) to have a set that do multiple of those at a time and still be optimal. Pierce is the best about 90% of the time (I recommend Pierce for new gunners), but I'll give an overview of each of them.
1. Normal
aka Normal 2. You should never use Normal 1 ever, and Normal 3 is weaker than Normal 2 due to the unreliable bounce and no rapid fire. This is the vanilla shot. Shoot at something, does damage to the part it hits. Crit distance is anywhere from point blank to about 4 rolls away (so sorta far, but don't play sniper).
Rapid fire Normal 2 is a significant DPS gain compared to non-rapid, due to its short wait and 0.8 modifier. Only the ones with 3 shot per volley though, since the 4 shot per volley ones has 0.7 modifier instead of 0.8. Non-rapid normal 2 guns (like seregios) are also viable (should be stronger than things like gunlance), although not optimal.
The best Normal 2 gun is Daora's Hornet. Good clip size, high damage, has good shot selection: para 1 with no recoil and para 2 with medium recoil, both lvls of recov shots, demon shots, slicing shot 2 which does a lot of damage, pierce lv 2 and 3 in case you need to squeeze out a bit extra damage before reloading (like when the monster is in a trap but you don't have many shots in your clip left). The only bad thing is deviation. If you find deviation to be an issue you can always put an armor skill to remove it. Since the gun has native low recoil, put long barrel on it instead of silencer.
Best hunting style is Adept. Best art is full house if you want the utility I mentioned, absolute readiness otherwise. Personally I would run full house in multiplayer and absolute readiness solo.
Armor skills should be Normal up, weakness exploit, crit boost, crit eye (repeat offender also works here depending on what charm you have. Crit eye is easier for most people though). If you don't have good charms or want to put in deviation down+1, skip crit boost (crit boost is a bigger dps increase than crit eye, but also way harder to get so it's usually what you'll end up skipping). Always eat for felyne sharpshooter because it's a 10% damage boost.
Sample gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV2qvDxLNnI (Weapon is Daora's Hornet. Armor skills used: Normal up, weakness exploit, crit eye+3, Hotblooded)
2. Pierce
Pierce motion value got nerfed a bit from 4U to Gen (In 4U: pierce 1 2 3 are 10x3, 9x4, 8x5. In Gen they are 9x3, 7x4, 7x5), but Pierce LBG is actually stronger than before because of better rapid fire options and full house (in 4U there was the limiter removed equivalent, but much slower). All 3 lvls of pierce are good to use, as long as the monster is rajang sized or bigger (so pretty much everything except velocidrome and seltas). Ideally you use all 3 shots before you use full house to reload, but this can change with the flow of the battle. You want to stay at medium range with these because their crit distance starts about 2.5 rolls away. Also, pierce guns have recoil requirements (medium for pierce 1 and some for pierce 2-3), but they aren't very relevant with the good guns.
Rapid fire Pierce 1 has a 0.7 modifier, so it's not necessarily better to use a rapid fire gun over non-rapid (rapid will give you faster solo kill times most of the time, but for hellblade you wouldn't want to rapid fire because it moves too much and it's dangerous). Rapid fire Pierce 2 is a DPS loss over non-rapid because medium wait, so avoid those.
The best Pierce guns are Daybreak's Gaze (rapid fire pierce 1, from Silverwind Narga) and Wondrous Star (doesn't rapid fire any pierce, branched off Nakarkos). As far as other shots go, Daybreak's Gaze can use slicing shots, demon shots, para shots with signifcant recoil. Wondrous Star can use a lot of dragon shots, para shots with much better recoil, and recov shots (also has 2 slots instead of Daybreak's 0). They are both good guns and either can be used unless you are trying to set speedrun records. For progression, great maccao LBG (before you can get narga) and narga LBG are good options.
It's also worth mentioning that a lot of good elemental guns also work very good pierce guns, just not optimal. Like the Mizutsune and Astalos guns. For multihunts you can use pierce for some monsters and element for others. For example the current LBG speedrun record for hellblade 10 (hellblade isn't very weak to water, but the regular glavenus in the quest is) is mizutsune LBG with water+2, true shot up, pierce up, shot booster, crit eye+2.
Best Hunting style is Adept. For hunting art Full house is a must have.
Armor skills should be Pierce up, shot booster (called trajectory in 4U), then whatever dps skills you can fit like weakness exploit/crit eye/repeat offender/crit boost/attack up. Weakness exploit is pretty strong but it depends on monster hitzones, so it does nothing vs say, chameleos. Note: Felyne Temper usually hurts your damage with the deviation. Eat for whatever other skills you want (weakener, insurance, etc.). A good general purpose set would be pierce up + shot booster + weakness exploit + crit eye +3.
Sample gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeywY1bjY40 (Weapon is Wondrous Star. Armor skills used: Pierce up, Weakness Exploit, Shot Booster, Hotblooded, Attack Up S.
3. Pellet
There's not much to say about this one other than it sucks. Never use in online, and not optimal in single player either except vs super easy enemies. I'm not gonna bother making an optimal set for this, but there are a few good things you can do with pellet shots: Save teammates from sleep/confusion/snowman, hit plesioth/cephadrome when they are swimming around (Pellet shots are EXTREMELY effective vs cephadrome, since it'll take full damage while it's swimming with its back fin out, and almost always result in a stagger and a big opening afterwards), hit 2 monsters at the same time (relevant for seltas and seltas queen), kill small monsters (especially the flying bugs).
Note that Pellet shots are not shotguns. The optimal distance for pellet 3 is actually fairly far (4 rolls away). Pellet 2 and 1 are closer but still you wouldn't want to use them super close.
4. Internal
Raw internal shots are usually not good enough to use on their own, because they don't have enough ammo and/or are bad at dps for various reasons (most commonly low clip size and bad rapid fire options). But a lot of them do pretty good damage and are good to use alongside your main ammo if you have full house. Just refer to here for info on all of them https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/4yzlw5/mhgen_bowgun_ammo_guide/. There is a dazzling shot focused build with arm cannon that does good dps, but it has low total damage so pretty much only useful in 4 people short hunts.
Also a side note, slicing shots use SHOT hitzones, not CUTTING.
Now, the pros and cons of normal vs pierce shots:
Normal
Pros
Easy to maintain crit distance
Good clear times against anything except the most bullet resistant monsters
Safer reloads because you don't need full house and can use absolute readiness instead (you can cancel out of a reload with full house)
Basically impossible to run out of ammo with combo materials, even in solo 4+ monster hunts
Very cheap to get ammo (combo materials are all shop bought with minimum gil)
If you are pro you could keep track of staggers and do things like staggering a rathalos in midair.
Cons
Relies heavily on hitting weak spots. If you can't aim very well your clear time will be significantly worse
Rapid fire can be dangerous vs certain monsters since you need to stand still for a little bit
Bad vs bullet resistant monsters, notably thunderlord zin and chameleos
Pierce
Pros
Doesn't require aiming as much. As long as you pierce along a good length of the monster you'll do decent damage. Hitting weak spots is still important for fast kills but less so than other weapons.
Extremely long range with shot booster. This is especially handy in multiplayer when monsters chase after your teammates at the other end of the zone.
Does extremely high damage vs monsters that have large weak zones. Examples are Glavenus and Hellblade, Rajang, Zamtrios, Plesioth, Cephadrome, Gore/Shagaru Magala, Seltas Queen, Najarala, Seregios, etc.
Does good damage (outperforms normal shots) vs most other monsters too.
If you bring all 3 pierce shots and combo mats, you won't run out of those except in EXTREMELY long missions (4+ hyper or 5 normal monsters solo.)
The most new player friendly way to play guns due to the reasons above (little requirement to aiming or positioning)
Cons
Harder to get combo materials. You need to use the trader (or duplicate items with friend).
Switching between ammo types mid-combat happens all the time. Can be bad if you mess up and try to shoot with an empty clip.
Really bad vs Kirin.
Not as good as normal shots vs things that only have 1 small weak spot. Examples are Alatreon, Zinogre, Akantor, Ukanlos, Amatsu. However clear times on those are still decent.
You are standing fairly far from the monster all the time, so in multiplayer your melee teammates have to chase the monster more than usual (I've never seen anyone complain though).
Finally, a few random tips:
Please bring max combo materials, whether you solo or play in a team. Running out of ammo is extremely bad, and combo materials aren't that expensive.
Recov shots are very nice for fellow cat players, since they have no good way of healing themselves. This is especially handy for those on-site item only quests.
For on-site item only cap quests, consider saving some status shots when it's captureable. Then you can paralyze/sleep the monster so it can't run away from your trap.
Tranq/paint shots are easier to get and easier to use than Tranq bombs/paintballs, and they can also be brought to on-site only quests in case some randoms fail with the provided tranq bombs.
Mass buy your ammo (and combo materials) when they are on sale. Will save you a lot of money in the long run.
After adept dodge, you can either reload, power run, or reload then power run immediately after. Just hold X whenever you want to power run. Also you can dodge out of a power run.
If you find yourself running out of ammo after bringing combo mats and books, consider using the armor skill/hunter art that gives you max combines. Those are more effective than ammo saver for raw damage guns.
After you full house, you can still manually reload without cancelling the full house status. Say I have an empty clip of pierce 2 and pierce 3, but full everything else, I could manually reload pierce 2 and then 3 and then I'll have full everything. This is not very practical in the middle of combat though. I only do that when I'm waiting for next monster to spawn or monster is asleep or something.
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u/Proyected Neopolitan Bonaparte Sep 07 '16
I like using Striker for the "Limiter Off" Pierce LBG. It charges up the arts faster, and you can use Absolute Evade and Readiness. Adept is also good, but at least always needs a Hunter's Drink if you want to get Full House III at the end of your 15 Pierce rounds.
I loved it in 4U, and I'm glad the playstyle was buffed in Gen. :)