I saw the IG reveal and it's looking rough for Insect Glaive enjoyers ;_;

Has slop become a slop-word?

And when everybody's the Longsword, no one will be😭

If someone is going to try and rely solely on offsets in Ascendance, they're going to have a rough time. We aren't going to be constantly toppling the monsters left and right. I think people forget that resistances go up when progressing to thr next rank. There's  a decent chance we won't even offset monsters more than a few times in master rank, particularly in endgame master rank.

I can’t agree enough about old Gen. I’m playing through GU right now and I haven’t found any of the monsters to be particularly difficult. The hardest thing about that game is bloated health for guild quests, combined with needing to pose for healing and blight clearing. The sad truth is if you’re willing to waste the time of walking out of the zone you can literally do all of those things for free. So the main difficulty of the game comes from whether or not you’re willing to inconvenience yourself.

Your content is really good that I was genuinely surprised to see that you just started this channel
Keep up the work

Offsets and dodges have become necessary because monsters attack very differently in this game compared to other MH titles. Monsters are more relentless, move faster, has more AOE and sweeping attacks. Hunting Horn had its hilt stab given superarmor because of this, and is practically mandatory against Gogmazios if you want to hunt it with decent times.

Parry slop? Sure, maybe. A better take is that hunter movesets are evolving alongside the monsters.

Offsets aren't even really a parry completely. You still take damage a lot of the time, and if you try to do it on a multi hit from the monster you'll get clapped. Not to mention there are 9 and 10 star monsters that you can land the offset on, but instead of getting the knock back and the effect you just hear a thud and your hunter kinda stumbles bc the attack can't be repelled. Most of the new offset moves are locked behind boost too, they don't just get one they can use whenever

My question is will this make the doshoguma armor top tier?

everyone wanna talk about how weapons are losing identity and it’s party slop the same mfs who’d get whooped by any 10 star monster. people alr getting stretched and gaped by 10 star arkveld imagine what the dlc is gonna do. i’ve been spamming sos flares recently in various difficulties and people are FAINTING against 8 star monsters people faint in duo 9 star quests so imagine how they are in 10 stars. these “critics” will see one guy master the ins and out of a weapon then are surprised they are rewarded  during a fight. but god forbid they pick it up. instant death

I don't think parry slop has much of an impact when used on Ascendance so far, we have too little information on any possible changes they might've done to the offset attacks and the mechanics behind them. If the minimal to no changes are done, then what we'll see is the effectiveness of offsets being frontloaded since the more abundant offsets will quickly build up the offset resistance from the monsters. I don't really play with offsets as much as some other players since most of the weapons I play in base Wilds don't have an offset, but I do know that not every offset is on an equal playing field when compared to each other. A great sword and switch axe offset experience are completely different when compared to a hammer and insect glaive offset experience. The first two can be used either from neutral or within a combo while the latter needs to either be charged or used in the middle of a combo to be used as an offset. I would argue that of all of the counters in Wilds, offsets are the only true parries within Monster Hunter. I do think the term of parry gets overused and overgeneralized for counters within games. Ironically one of the best baseline examples within games is within the Souls series of deflecting an attack and opening the opponent to taking a critical attack. I do think that offset attacks are one of the better forms of parries in games since they do have drawbacks and can't be chained to completely lock down the target.

For Ascendance, some things I would like to know is if boost drivers can be used within boost mode, and if using a boost driver while already boosted will use a gauge to use the boost driver. Depending on how it's implemented, then boost drivers will be significantly more or less available for combat since we know that focus strikes and guard clashes both regenerate boost gauge and refreshes the timer while boosted. The more reliable option of the two are focus strikes since not every monster was able to be clashed with and the downtime between clashes are significant and are less abusable when compared offsets against monsters. Another question is the likelihood of skills that can affect boost bracer actions and traits, such as the base active time, gauge recovery, and so on. I would like more monsters to be able to have a guard clash with the hunter. Around 2-3 guard clashes are fine to get within a hunt imo, which is around what I normally get with the weapons I play with.

I think one of the major problems when it comes to parries within video games is if the parry has a comparable downside when compared to other actions that can be taken. With the abundance of counters/parries nowadays, just taking normal damage might not be a good enough downside for them since the upside is far too great compared to the risks of missing the timing to execute the parry. When it comes to dodge rolling or guarding, you have to take into account the positioning to a far greater degree compared to a parry since you need to take in on how much both you and the target has moved within the attack you dodged, along with possible stamina used. With guarding, stamina, chip damage, guard position, and target positioning are all needed to make good use of guarding. Parries don't tend to have as much to take into account when compared to the lower risk options and imo has less risks compared to them as well. If they do share the risks that other forms do, then it's not usually to the same degree as other options.


As for the section on aerial combat for Insect Glaive, a lot of the iterations has been relatively weak in general. 4th gen most likely had its weakest appearances since spamming aerial moves only benefitted to getting more mounts and you didn't really have a ton of damage with the aerial moveset in the 4th gen. The best version imo would be in Sunbreak with all of the tools and traits that aerial glaive got within that game along with a good grounded moveset to compliment the aerial gameplay. The kinsects were already simplified before Wilds. By World, all you needed are monster parts to upgrade the kinsects, specific extracts like speed, power, and stamina were taken out and left you with leveling up the kinsect within tiers until you could go into the next kinsect type down the tree. I will agree that both of the kinsect trees in Rise and Wilds are more simplified, World's version isn't that far off from the current iteration of the kinsect trees we have in the most recent game. You just need less monster parts since you don't have the different levels between kinsects. Imo, I find it best and the most fun when playing Insect Glaive when you can fluidly combine grounded and aerial combat together when fighting a monster. My favorite iteration of the kinsects would be from GU. It still had the different extracts to customize the kinsect, but you could get different stats base on what kinsect you were using. I personally think the worst thing that can be done is regressing a weapon to doing a very specific loop and deviating from that loop becomes the "unoptimized way of playing the weapon." Considering how monsters are more actively moving around and have more ways to flank or try to put you on the defensive, the one true loop isn't viable unless you can flinch lock the monster, trap spam, or stun the monster in place and make it more akin to a target dummy than an engaging dance between monster and hunter where both are actively positioning themselves against each other to gain the edge in combat. That said these do need preparation and planning to do and is respectable to the people that strive to push their limits to pull off impressive hunt times and moments. While base Wilds Insect Glaive didn't quite hit the ground running, from the current generations of Monster Hunter, it's second compared to Rise for my liking and goes down one when taking GU into account and the older generations with the weapon. I do want to see how the Insect Glaive will play out in Ascendance, I do think the moveset is promising enough to be great, it just needs to hit its stride to get there and get the right balance spread in its kit.

I do like this video, and it gave a lot to think about within the state of Wilds and the possibilities that could arrive in Ascendance.

Edit: I went to try out the Insect Glaive's offset in Wilds. It can be done from neutral as long as you have the red buff, ground or aerial. I thought you needed to be in mid combo or charged for it, but this definitely makes it better even if I'm still really bad with the offset with Insect Glaive.

Parry slop?

Sounds like Dark Souls 2 or 3.

I don't think most gamers are really capable of having an actual deep conversation about defensive mechanics.

The short answer is yes though the incorporation of the word slop kinda detracts from the argument. But being "parry slop" is already a design direction wilds was leaning into, and it's not inherently bad but it is there to make the game more approachable and flashy. We've moved away from positional awareness and moved towards simple timing minigames that broader audiences are used to, and with ascendance they're doubling down which makes sense.

Love the video

There’s no point in the monsters being a big bad if you can just parry damn near ALL the time , it would be more fun in my opinion if the monsters could monster again 😂.  It needs a nerf or a cooldown tbh, not even anything major but you should only be able to parry ever so often on shieldless weapons , a little more often if your weapon has an actual shield . That’s not irrational

If wilds is parry slop, old gen is positioning slop

I heavily disagree about Wilds Greatsword not losing a lot. It lost a lot of what made the weapon fun, not just the identity of being a positional weapon.  My biggest issue with Wilds Greatsword is how the skill ceiling of the weapon isn't there, how they didn't even bother accounting for how to make focus mode fun with the weapon, and how the damage of this god forsaken weapon is complete garbage.

I speedran with both Wilds GS and Iceborne GS to the highest level, and one of the biggest things Wilds GS killed is the creativity of the weapon. While this isn't talked about much, but in Iceborne, if you learn positioning and how the monsters work to a certain degree, you will be able to hit TCS hits that shouldn't hit, consistently. You're not just stuck to waiting for what a monster does to do something and "hit and run", as a lot of supposedly Greatsword mains like to claim, you actually can say "Screw you, it's my turn", stand on one side, dodge the incoming move with a slinger burst that pushes your character back along with the TCS animation further moving you backwards, then hitting the monster's head before it does the next move. In Wilds, that's not a thing. That's not a thing. And i've tried. I've tried drive by offsets in multiplayer. I've tried using focus mode to force interesting moves. But there's nothing. Nothing there. It's just offset>guard cancel>offset>repeat/roll into offset/roll tackle>offset. And that might be fun, for like first 10 hunts.

And then there's focus mode. Capcom either could've just made focus mode not as broken as it is where you can do a quick 360 with it, or they could've made it incorporated into moves a lot more. One of the things i was excited to try was the magnetic aspects of focus mode, only to quickly realize it only worked when you're aiming the focus mode towards a monster. Why. If this was just a natural property of focus mode, people would actually have to think when using focus mode. And GS mains could actually do really creative TCS with a change like that.

But here's another issue : the damage outside of offsets is complete garbage. I have no idea why they nerfed TCS for such an asinine reason(to make charge slashes in line with each other damage wise for some reason). Hey Capcom, why not do that shit to weapons instead, why tf is lbg allowed to reach 1000dps while GS playing optimally can reach 100. Screw you Capcom. But i digress. Nerfing TCS just means the optimal way to play GS is to offset. You are forced to offset. Some smartass is gonna say that "Well, you can always just not play optimally", but here's the thing, there's no real incentive to not play optimally. There's no fun new tech where you can use TCS, there's no fun way of using offsets, there's no interesting maneuvers you can do where you can seamless use offsets into TCS predicts.

This weapon has nothing. This weapon is a complete disgrace. It has lost everything that made Greatsword fun to play in the first place. Losing positioning is a big reason, but it could've salvaged something that made it satisfying to play. But no, you're just a LS and Lance lovechild that's a temu version of both.

Edit: Also no, tackle in World does not push Greatsword into the counter weapon territory. You use tackle as a 2nd to the last resort when about to take a hit that could cart you, or when you know you can hit a charge slash afterwards. It is not a primary defensive tool for the weapon at all, the main one being walking, second rolling.

ITS NOT EVEN OUT 😭

an f-35 fighter jet would beat any boss in monster hunter

By everyone having offset... no one does. Even one GS user in a 4 man team rapidly exhaust offset's utility due to rapid offset resistance buildup, let alone every single weapon for all 4 members.

This also counteracts the supposed "power" of having an offset as your driver attack. Picture this: you're about to power up for roughly 20s into Boost Mode™️, you want to maximize every second, and you fish for an offset to get that small window of going all out against a ragdolled monster, but due to resistance buildup, you failed to get the offset, and the monster just continue business as usual. You end up getting hit once or twice and lose a lot of boost mode duration.

My point is: the offset will more than likely end up be unused. You will simply use boost mode when the enemy is CC'd, like a paralysis, topple, trap, etc. That way you can use the powered up versions of your normal kit.

Eventually, offset simply becomes an aura farm tool, not to be relied upon.