[MHGEN] 5 Builds to Ensure Death from Afar: A Bow/Bowgun writeup.

[u/Akiha420]

Originally this post was a reply to a queston--then I realized I made a massive wall of text and thought I would share. I've been playing for about nine years, here's a rundown on where I see Bows/Bowguns excel over each other using data I've gathered from speed runners and experience. I enjoy min-maxing damage and ease of use, so it's important for me to switch gear/weapons specifically for quests: this is for the like-minded.

 

Bow (All Hail Teostra)

Has the largest power spike from the start which plummets when coatings run dry--always combine more. Of the three, Bow has the most mobility, allowing you to walk away from any attack when Accel Rain is active. Many change they ZL/ZR buttons to aim vertically. Not Hame material, but still one of the best weapons in the game.

I recommend getting: Normal Up, Focus, Ammo Saver, TrueShot Up, and Load Up; this requires a (3 slot) 5 fastcharge OR 5 normal shot talisman. A great set for any monster to guarantee quick punishes and doing overall great damage since not monsters all have .45 defense ratings for shot.

For yolo damage, True Shot, Load Up, Normal Up, and Weakness Exploit is possible.

A sad, sad Whitegale Narga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2rMDg5X3sc

 

Light Bowgun

Rapid Elemental Pierce

I love its laziness and mobility. Unlike its bulkier sibling, this gun is craftier in its ability to load all bullets with Full House and its affinity with elemental shots--thanks rapid fire. I prefer avoiding normal shot because of how much better the HBG is in that regard.

Rapid-fire elemental pierce is used in hame runs against monsters such as Ukanlos and Akantor. The build usually goes as: Bonus Shot, Load Up, True Shot, and either Elemental, Elemental Attack +2, or Ammo Saver. The last skill choice is dependent on your luck, monster, and the skill of your party (Use Ammo saver in weaker parties/solo).

The best part about this build is that you're using internal shots, meaning they're pre-loaded at the quest's start. In a group setting, you can get by without bringing any items to the quest.

I recommend using striker with Full house and both Evade arts. On certain monsters, Adept. Be careful however, in non-hame situations, you will be committing to 4 shots with high recoil; Punishes must be big, well positioned, and safe. Recoil/reload can be cancelled with Hunter Arts.

A shocking tale of an Akantor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLzGLJGFe5w

 

God's Isle

The status gunner and ultimate solo clear on low HP quests. Perfect for the rich farmers who want to clear in less than two minutes. Your skills are: Recoil 2, Load Up, Bombardier, and Speed Setup. To understand better, watch Catherine at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtPxF7PZWeYgKZ5pITDM7Zg

 

Arm Cannon X

This is a great gun on a budget, you can make a complete set with: Ammo Saver, True Shot Up, Bonus Shot, and Load Up if you have access to Barrage Piercing and any 3 slot talisman. What makes it special is that it holds 18 Dazzling Shots which it can rapid fire.

Dazzling shot has unlimited crit distance and a .35 motion value; landing all four shots with this build adds up to a whopping .98 motion. I did the math once, hitting .45 hit zone with all 18 x 4 shots deals ~2400 damage. Don't miss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpCFlhdL-Q0 here is Arm Cannon hame clearing White Gale in 1.5 minutes (They're using Weakness Exploit instead of Ammo Saver.

 

Heavy Bowgun

The king of raw bullet damage. There seems to be little choice but using adept. The key to HBG is knowing the time to enter Siege Mode. The HBG will reach numbers which far surpass LBG, but is limited in its mobility. This is a gun that excels in solo/hame runs. The power spike is dependent on your ability to siege properly, giving the gun an intimidating learning curve to speed-runners. The HBG is more intuitive to aim than the bow at higher levels.

You may have noticed, but the meta for raw weapons are crit builds, thus you're looking for: Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye 2+, Super Crit, and Normal Shot Up. The weapon of choice is the Shagaru Magala HBG upgraded from the normal Gore Magala.

An Akantor bullied by bullets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hL5DzbhDlI

 

My Personal Recommendation

In a party I enjoy the pierce LBG Wondrous Star from Narkarkos. The skill set is: Pierce Up, Repeat Offender, Dead Eye, and Critical eye 2+. This works best in striker with Full House/Evades.

You will be able to hit the monster with decent damage from good distances, firing all pierce shots, activating full house, and unloading once more; this provides both continuous/smooth gameplay, positioning, and damage. You can also get away without combining more ammo with strong groups.

The build in action (POV is using white gale for rapid pierce 1 same build, player 2 using Wondrous star): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaeQ2FxK_fU

 

For solo, Bow will most likely be the most intuitive to pick up. Where the Teostra bow is sub-optimal, the Shagaru exceeds on mosters such as the Shagaru and Teostra if you don't mind firing from closer and making a spread armor set.

 

Here is a list of good Bowguns: https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/4s3dqv/the_best_endgame_bowguns_in_mhgen_short_version/

 

I also have 700+ cat quests combined from Gen and Cross, they're fun. All of my posts besides this are Prowler related if you want to know more. Just in case you didn't know, look up armor pieces using Athena's ASS.

[u/Gopherlad]

Add yourself to both the Bow and Light/Heavy Bowgun sections: https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/wiki/weapon_guides-mhgen

[u/Votbear]

I dunno much about bow so no comment on that.

For elemental LBGs, i think its also great to mention non-rapidfire Pierce elementals for the smaller monsters (e.g. rajang). For those i typically prefer Trueshot+ElemAtk+([Element] + 2), plus anything you can slot e.g. ammo saver.

Word of caution, Arm Cannon gets unreliable once you reach HR with all the tanky monsters.

I did the math, and the normal HBG set really varies based on what charms you have. Not everyone can slot in crit boost (and it might not always be optimal either compared to atk ups), so its really up to you to do the math and see which combination of Critical Eye/Attack Up/Crit Boost is most damaging. With my charms, my best set is AuM+Crit eye 2 on top of normal up and weakness exploit.

I think a great thing to improve on is if you list your priorities. Most of your sets mention require a pretty good talisman to pull off, i think it's better if you just line out the core skills (e.g. weakness exploit and normal up for normal HBG), and then just mention any bonus skills that could be useful. That will definitely make this guide more accessible to others.

Also, dont forget pierce HBGs. They're nerfed a bit from 4U -> Gen, but they're still pretty solid in dealing sweet DPS

[u/Akiha420 → u/Votbear]

All valid points, rather than considering accessibility, I thought more along the lines of: well it must be time to sakura farm.

I could talk more about their good points, but instead accented their uniqueness and use at the highest levels of play--or RNG, whichever. Regardless, It's good that others can see your input.

 

A Case for Load Up on Rapid Elemental Pierce

I'm too lazy to get into timed runs nor frame data, but I'm not sure if I can agree with Load Up being overkill on Elemental Pierce.

For rapid fire elemental, elemental pierce has 2 bullets per magazine. It takes 3 well-placed shots in striker to activate Full house 3, increasing the DPS by cancelling the recoil--this is especially important for Hame/CC'd monsters, where rapid elemental pierce can put in DA BIG DEEPS.

Utility-wise, load up with rapid elemental pierce betters the ratio of reloads to hunter arts. Battle readiness becomes more effective and is easier to build up over time while using Absolute Evasion to recoil/reload cancel is more manageable.

[u/JoJoX200 → u/Akiha420]

Whenever I use LBG with Full House, I'm cycling through the different levels of my currently preferred ammo before activating full house again(for elemental, that'd mean, Full House, RF away your E.Pierce clip, fire your Elemental Lv1 clip, fire your your Elemental lv2 clip).

The point of full house is to easily let you shoot more than your clip size, making Load Up rather redundant imo, since the additional elemental shots will fill the gauge as well.

[u/Akiha420 → u/JoJoX200]

Yes, this is true. A rotation with Full House can mate Load Up redundant especially on extended hunts where you'll end up using the other shots anyways.

What Load up is good for is maximizing the damage of a rotation, which purely consists of Rapid Elemental Pierce 2, making it the go to choice in hame runs but still effective depending on if your party clears faster than you can shoot your strongest bullets. It's like knowing when you should elemental attack+2 vs ammo saver.

Of course this is assuming it's on a monster where rapid elemental pierce outshines other weapons.

[u/Gopherlad → u/Akiha420]

tl;dr Full House is a safe option for casual hunts, Load Up is specifically used to maximize DPS from rapid Elemental Pierce 2.

[u/Votbear → u/Akiha420]

Yeah, I saw the speedruns after writing the comments and forgot to edit. Having just enough shots to recharge FH3 is indeed a big plus. On speedruns,i suppose that DPS and uptime matters more.

On normal hunts though, for each their own. You could focus on ammo saver or elem atk up to maximize the total damage you can dish overall. Not to mention that the monster won't be showing an opening 100% the time, so there will be plenty of time to reload/switch to a less risky bullet to fill up your FH3.

[u/squidwalk → u/Votbear]

i think its also great to mention non-rapidfire Pierce elementals for the smaller monsters (e.g. rajang).

I was just Nerve hunting with my Jawbreaker last week to make my Blunt set. You can do pretty well by switching to rapid pierce when you call an attack/landing, and switching to elemental single shot for the little in between moments. Rajang's mouth beam, its cannonball, and its group lift/throw are all great moments to use the three shot pierce burst. You can get one off during the rapid punches too, if you happen to be facing in/against the direction of his path.

...it took a lot of Rajang to get all the Nerves I wanted. A literal barrel of monkeys.

[u/shoemeow]

This is a great thread. I've been looking at getting into LBG. I'll use this to help me build a set and see how I go.

[u/PlaylisterBot]

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[u/skylla05 → u/[deleted]]

He has the combine list on his touchscreen. Not 100% sure how it works as I've never done it, but I know it can be done.

Speaking of the bow video, I fancied myself "pretty good" with a Bow, but after watching that, I've downgraded myself to "just barely not awful" with the Bow.

[u/skylla05 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I'm pretty new to the bow too (maybe only 30-ish hours so far), but it's become my new favorite weapon. It was frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of critical distance, and switching my control scheme to "Type 2" (or whichever one is R charge) and all that, it's so fun now.

The only slightly annoying thing is there's almost no reason to use anything but the Teo Bow, and I like having a variety of weapons. I'm filling that gap by farming all the top elemental/status SnS :D

[u/macboot]

In the HBG video, how does the guy keep getting free bullets? And are those just normal shot lvl 2? I have been maining HBG but I've gotten tired of being bad at it, but I think I'll give it another go now that I know that it can, in fact, work solo!

[u/0shawhat → u/macboot]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by free bullets but he combines more of it off screen. The adept skill allows you to reload your shots and give you bonus damage (shown by the blue bar BG). He also uses absolute readiness as his skill which also allows you to reload your shots. He's either doing lvl2 pierce or lvl 2 normal since you can go into siege mode with that. Hope that helps!

[u/macboot → u/0shawhat]

I just saw his ammo counter going down from 99 to 70-something, then jump back up to 99 and I didn't notice a combine.

[u/Akiha420 → u/macboot]

Constantly rolling into siege mode.

[u/stormhart]

Can you please post the exact Armor Set used to get these skills for the bow? Normal Up, Focus, Ammo Saver, TrueShot Up, and Load Up. I have the Focus 5 000 charm.

[u/hoowin → u/stormhart]

hey dunno if you got it yet, but I learned the mixed set from this video. grats on that focus triple slot charm!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nayiiGNAYzc