TU4.5 Version
In an unexpected turn of events, with the final major content update Capcom decided to (partially) free Insect Glaive of the awkwardness of its charge based gameplay. Now the weapon plays as close as possible to its MH4 version both in terms of freedom of movement and of combo flow, but with an infinitely small brain power expenditure and an infinitely large damage output. The future is just past forgotten when you’re on the road to braindeadness.
While I’m signing this work under my own name, this whole work would not have been possible without the active contribution of many other people. I would like to thank in particular all the people in the Mathalos Nest Discord server for all the work they have done in terms of testing, idea sharing and feedback, in particular Awenth, kookaburra, KT, Mopop and NoahIvaldi, as well as all the other people who worked on meta albums for other weapons and who helped me fix my ideas. Thanks finally to Famas for his testing on IG combo duration and to Pilgrim for providing the amazing tool that is MathHunter.
I would also like to warn you that I may or may not be able to update this guide very frequently in the following months, so if a new title update comes out please be patient until I find the time to do so.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Gameplay & Combos
- Kinsects
- Endgame Sets
- Disclaimer
- Skill Priority
- RNG Talismans
- Endgame Weapons
- Endgame Armor Sets
- Rathagore (G. Rathalos 2p + Gore Magala 2p)
- Poverty Arkgore (Arkveld 2p + Gore Magala 2p)
- FAQ
General Gameplay
The way you play IG in Wilds is rather simple: first you do a charged kinsect attack (RT+hold/release Y) that pierces through the monster and gathers as many extracts as possible; once you have all three extracts, you attack until the extracts run out for one reason or another, then you start all over again. There are other convenient ways to get your extracts back; the most important one is probably the Focus Strike on wounds, which if successful will automatically gather all three required extracts for you.
Note that while you need all three extracts to have access to your full moveset, the red extract by itself will already give you access to the weak version of all of your charge moves, i.e. Descending Slash and Descending Thrust, as well as the offset counters that are tied to them.
The glaive is EXTREMELY dependent on Focus Mode, for 1. you will get extra kinsect attacks on your Y attacks that will both deal damage and grab extracts back (often healing you just for attacking), and 2. your strongest attack (see below) also requires you to be in Focus Mode. If you don’t play drums in a progressive metal band and/or evolution didn’t grant you with extra limbs, I highly recommend to set the Focus Mode on “Toggle” (see the FAQ for a more detailed explanation on the recommended settings).
Main Combos
The highest damage attacks on Insect Glaive by a very large margin are all ground attacks or attacks that start on the ground (see FAQ about aerial glaive). I will cover here only the main combo sequences you should be using to maximize your damage; if you want to know more about the IG moveset I encourage you to look up some video guides you can find on the internet, which will do a better job of displaying the moveset than this text guide.
All notations below are using Xbox controls.
Strong Descending Slash Loop: any Y > any Y > Y+B
Your standard combo you should be using most of the time.
Detailed Explanation & Data
The TU4 update introduced both a new Y+B input for Descending Slash/Thrust and a new mechanics for how to gain charge levels for Descending Slash/Thrust. The way it works now is that chaining any regular attack into Y+B will automatically give you a lv2 Descending Slash if it’s one of the “follow-up only” attacks (Reaping Slash, Sidestep Slash Combo, Double Slash & Tornado Slash) and a lv1 Descending Slash otherwise. In practice, this generally means that doing a two-attack combo on the ground will let you go into a lv2 Strong Descending Slash without the need of holding any buttons (yay!).
If you just press Y+B from idle you will get a lv0 Descending Slash instead, which has a higher damage penalty than the lv1 version (0.60x vs 0.75x; lv2 deals full damage) but the same amount of parry frames as the lv2 version. This means you have access to easy Offset Attacks pretty much at any given point without any charging required.
The highest DPS loop is currently left+Y > back+Y (1 hit) > Y+B. This is about 25% faster than a Y > Y > Y+B loop and uses two attacks that got buffed in the TU4 patch in their triple up version (Sidestep Slash and Sidestep Slash Combo).
Some additional notes:
- It’s technically always better to start your combo with a lv2 SDS (which requires to charge by holding B) since that’s where most of the combo damage comes from. The hold B input also lets you get a lv2 SDS in situations you wouldn’t get it otherwise, like if you have to stop attacking or if you need to extend your combo with an attack that doesn’t charge it up to lv2.
- While SDS doesn’t benefit from extra kinsect attacks in Focus Mode like all your Y attacks, you still want to be in Focus Mode because it lets you adjust the attack pretty freely during its long animation.
Rising Spiral Slash: Y+B or release charged B (ground or air) > B (in Focus Mode)
Special high damage attack to use on a big opening.
Detailed Explanation & Data
Glaive MVs: 64/hit (9 max) | Kinsect MVs: 24/hit | Avg Ele Mod: 0.8x | Sharpness: 0.2/hit
Your biggest payoff from doing SDS repeatedly comes in the form of Rising Spiral Slash (RSS), a move with the potential to unleash a ludicrous amount of damage. RSS can be done after either of your Y+B/charged B attacks, but unlike these it can only be performed if you have all three extracts. As of TU4 the move has full hyper armor, so it’s effectively unstoppable except by lethal damage.
As strong as this move is, there’s a few important caveats that make you not want to spam it after every Strong Descending Slash:
- It spends all of your extracts, and while the kinsect hits during the attack animation will also gather some extract backs it’s almost impossible to control which extracts you’re gonna get back – sometimes they will just give you back your Triple Up, some other times they will just give you three orange extracts and you’re gonna be thankful for it.
- If the monster is too small or it’s moving around you may whiff part of all the hits of the attack, which not only deals little damage, but leaves you extractless (unfortunately for you).
- Due to its long duration and recovery, even if you could somehow manage to regain all three extracts after every RSS, if you’re not landing at least 5 hits with it every time your dps is still gonna be worse than by doing a regular ground combo.
For all of the reasons above, you should therefore try to use RSS only if a big enough monster is sitting in place (like after it stands up from a topple) or if your extracts are about to run out anyway. It’s better also to make sure that there’s an open wound to pop with a Focus Strike to get Triple Up back immediately in case your extract gathering RNG during the move was particularly bad.
Recommended Kinsect: Arkmaiden
Since your full moveset is locked until you get all three extracts (also called Triple Up), you’re very much encouraged to use a kinsect that can get all three extracts quickly and efficiently. The main way to do this is to use the charged kinsect attack (RT+hold and release Y), which will gather all extracts it can carry in a straight line and give priority to picking up triple up or any extract you don’t currently have.
This leads us to the two best kinsects bonuses for extract gathering, which are Harvest Extract and Fast Charge. The former allows the charged kinsect attack to carry up to 3 extracts, which lets you potentially acquire Triple Up with a single shot (without it it will be able to carry only 2 extracts except after a Focus Strike follow-up on a broken wound), while the latter halves the time required to charge the kinsect attack (from 0.8s to 0.4s).
There are only two kinsects in the game with both of these bonuses, i.e. Arkmaiden (blunt) and Fiddlebrix (sever), which are identical in terms of stats and only differ by their damage type. Since however there’s no actual upside in using a sever kinsect other than a 10% raw damage bonus on the kinsect (which is negligible) and making tail cuts a couple frames faster, while the blunt kinsect can actually get you at least one stun per hunt if you’re hitting the monster’s head, Arkmaiden is gonna be the recommended option.
If you feel like Fast Charge isn’t necessary or if you want another type of powder, here’s three alternative blunt kinsects with Harvest Extract you could use and how they compare with Arkmaiden:
- Foebeetle (+ Power/Speed, – Stamina, Poison Powder): the more balanced kinsect of the bunch, it also still retains a damage based powder
- Gullshad (- Power, ++ Speed, Recovery Powder): the fastest one, with the additional upside of granting extra healing
- Ladytarge (+ Speed, Paralysis Powder): more or less identical to Arkmaiden, but trades blast for para
P. S. As of Akuma patch, kinsects now display no element anymore when equipping a status weapon, meaning that it was a UI bug and that they weren’t meant to apply status to begin with.
Set Building Assumptions
All the builds on this page assume that you have access to the full endgame (HR51+).
The sets assume Powercharm and Triple Up. Weakness Exploit is mostly considered as if the monster wasn’t wounded (so only 30% affinity). The baselines for skill uptimes are as following (skills not mentioned are taken as 100% uptime):
Agitator: 75% – Maximum Might: 80% – Counterstrike: 50% – Latent Power: 40% – Coalescence: 38% – Azure Bolt I/II: 35/40% – Black Eclipse (Frenzy): 75%
These sets do NOT assume that you’re using Corrupted Mantle; even if you can in theory now have the mantle at the beginning of every quest by resting at camp, I don’t want to shoehorn anyone either into wasting their guild points to rest or into always using a specific mantle. Consider therefore the mantle just like an extra buff on top of what you already have.
Methodology
The math of these sets has been checked by using MathHunter (I unfortunately don’t have the time anymore to update my custom calculator). They are also tested extensively on the field by myself (unless stated otherwise) to make sure that everything works as expected in regular gameplay, i.e. farming (and not speedrunning).
Other Notes
- The Frenzy virus from Gore set bonus is overcome after connecting with attacks for a total of set amount of MVs regardless if they come from the glaive or the kinsect. Every time you overcome Frenzy it will increase slightly the amount required for the next Frenzy overcoming (up to a maximum of 600 MVs).
- Being under the effect of a Hot Drink will decrease the required amount of MVs to overcome Frenzy by ~6%.
RNG Talismans
The RNG talisman system that got added with the August patch lets us add Attack Boost 4 at little to no cost. In order to achieve this, you need to find any talisman with all the following characteristics:
- Weapon skills: Attack Boost 3 or Airborne + Attack Boost 1
- Armor skills: Burst/Agitator/Weakness Exploit 1 or Earplugs/Maximum Might/Counterstrike 1
- Slots: lv2 armor slot or lv3 armor slot or lv1 weapon slot*
*with a lv1 weapon slot you’ll be able to gain Attack Boost 5, but at the cost of one point of another skill. The trade is only worth it if the skill in question is Agitator, Latent Power or Counterstrike.
Examples: Airborne, Attack Boost 1, Earplugs 1 + lv3 armor slot; Attack Boost 3, Weakness Exploit 1 + lv2 armor slot, etc. (Note: not all combinations are possible. You can check this table to see which ones are).
Once you have it, you need to change your weapon decorations as following:
- Artian weapons: Airborne/Handicraft -> Airborne/Attack or Attack III
- Craftable weapons: Critical I -> Attack I
Airborne -> Attack II (only if talisman has Airborne+AB1)
You will lose 10 sharpness on Artian weapons and one level of Crit Boost on craftable weapons, but you will always gain more than that in the exchange.
Please note that what is mentioned here is only the “best” theoretical talisman. You can still gain free extra points of weapon skills with much weaker talismans, e.g. a charm with Airborne, Counterstrike 1 + lv2 slot. I recommend using the armor set searcher to check what kind of improvements you can make with the current charms you own.
Skill Priority
This is an indicative skill priority list for the weapon. You can use it to get a rough idea of which skills you can ditch while waiting to get all your decos, armor pieces and talismans to complete the set.
Set/Group Bonuses
| Priority | Skill | Description |
| 1 | Lord’s Soul (AT Apex 3p) | The only group bonus in this list, it grants you a 1.05x raw bonus for having any three AT Apex pieces as long as the cart protection from Guts hasn’t triggered yet (it does reset upon carting). By itself it’s already the highest damage boost you would get on endgame weapons, and since it doesn’t overlap with any other set bonus you’re taking it in almost every situation. |
| 2 | Burst Boost I/II (G. Ebony Odogaron 2p/4p) | Ebony Odo skill rewards you with +8/+18 attack just for using a skill you were already using (Burst) all while making it less likely to lose the second tier of the bonus. It’s also on rather efficient pieces thanks to transcendence and Gog armor, so it’s very hard to lose anything by running it (at least for the 2p version). |
| 2 | Scorcher I (Rathalos/G. Rathalos 2p) | Rathalos set got improved not only by armor transcendence, but by the balance patch as well, which buffed Scorcher’s damage output and proc frequency. It’s now a very competitive skill on its own and it’s basically a must on any fire weak monster – like, say, the last two that have been added. |
| 3 | Black Eclipse I (Gore Magala 2p) | Grants +25% affinity after overcoming Frenzy (as long as you also have Antivirus 3), which means it will be active during 2/3 of your hunt in general. While it’s a great boost, it’s unfortunately tied to rather inefficient pieces, which means you pretty much always want it on your Gogma Artian to be able to skip one Gore armor piece. |
| 3 | Powerhouse I (Doshaguma 2p) | Gives +10 attack for 3 minutes (refreshable) after every successful Offset Attack, even if it doesn’t topple the monster. It’s a pretty free bonus, but it’s almost always a loss of efficiency if you take it with the terrible Dosha pieces; thankfully though it’s now viable thanks to its presence on Gog armor and Gogma Artians. |
| 4 | Mutual Hostility I (Gogmazios 2p) | This is effectively elemental Agitator, granting you a 1.2x + 20 element boost when the monster is enraged. Like Burst Boost, it’s just a reward for doing things you were already doing (attacking monsters), and it can often come for free while you’re building other sets thanks to the efficiency of Gog pieces. It’s possible that it will climb in priority on this list once more math on elemental has been done. |
| 5 | Azure Bolt I (Lagiacrus 2p) | +15% affinity for 20 seconds and a small damage burst every time it procs (and also a slight element increase on Thunder weapons). The 30s cooldown after it wears off unfortunately caps its uptime at 40%, which means it’s rather low priority compared to anything else. Its only upside is that it’s tied to rather efficient armor pieces. |
| 5 | Second Wind I (G. Fulgur Anjanath 2p) | This set bonus adds a bit of stamina bar on top of your regular one that is ignored by Maximum Might, which means that you could stay at full stamina the entire time even if you roll or dodge. Unfortunately, despite the boost received through armor transcendence and its present on Gog pieces, there’s simply much better stuff to put in your armor set nowadays than a skill that only provides some rather marginal increase in MM uptime. |
Armor Skills
| Priority | Skill | Description |
| 1 | Maximum Might 3 | Since all of your ground combos on IG don’t use any stamina, Maximum Might (or MM in short) is gonna be the most efficient way to get affinity, and even if you happen to dodge or vault the buff will come back rather soon anyway. |
| 1 | Agitator 2-5 | Agitator is a pretty good source of both attack and affinity, and can often be better than Weakness Exploit with enough enrage uptime. The more skilled you are at the game, the more Agitator will become valuable. |
| 1 | Weakness Exploit 2-5 | Even in its nerfed state, Weakness Exploit (also known as WEX) is still one of the most reliable sources of affinity in the game. While it’s currently taking a backseat due to the armor sets favoring Agitator and Latent Power, it would probably only take a small change (like, say, a WEX3 charm) to push it back into the sets. |
| 1 | Burst 1+ | For a single lv3 slot, Burst provides +8 raw/+6 element for attacking the monster 5 or more times within a few seconds, which is an unsurprisingly good buff for a weapon that does a lot of repeated hits, and it also enables the pretty bonkers Burst Boost set bonus. It’s basically always worth to make space for it. |
| 2 | Counterstrike 3 | The skill says that it activates when an attack sends you flying. What it doesn’t tell you is that it also activates when you hyper armor through an attack that would’ve sent you flying. And you know what hyper armors through attacks on IG? You guessed right, literally your main combo starter that you will be spamming through the entire hunt! Basically, because Counterstrike buffs you both if you’re playing well and if you’re not, it ends up being a free buff most of the time, so there’s little to no downside to having it on your build. |
| 2 | Latent Power 2+ | We’re pretty starved for affinity in this game due to WEX nerfs, and Capcom unfortunately decided that we should use skills that reward you for being bad at the game, so Latent Power has become a regular consideration for many sets. Even if you don’t intentionally try to activate it you will usually end with at least 40% uptime on it, which is often good enough to push it above other skills point by point. |
| 3 | Earplugs 1 | If you have triple buff up, 1 point of Earplugs will ignore the roars of every monster in the game except for Gravios, Jin Dahaad or Gore phase 2. This is a rather efficient buff for IG considering it only costs you one lv2 slot. |
| 3 | Flayer 1 | Flayer used to be mostly a meme skill that was overhyped because we didn’t know how it worked (here’s how it did, by the way). Now however that they removed its main limitation – i.e. not being able to proc it on parts that can’t be wounded anymore – and they finally added the ability to proc it with SDS it’s definitely a valid consideration on many sets, although it’s still probably worth not investing too much into it. |
| 4 | Convert Element 1 | This is a very interesting skill that allows you to basically have access to unlimited blast-type damage bursts for about 2/3 of a fight against any monster with frequent enough elemental attacks. The only major issue is that the damage bursts can’t be procced by most of your main attacks (see Flayer below, which shares the same table), so it’s unfortunately much less viable on IG than on other weapons. |
Weapon Skills
| Priority | Skill | Description |
| 1 | Critical Boost 3/5 | Despite the nerf, Critical Boost is still the single most solid damage boost on sets that have a high crit rate – which is exactly what we’re running, as you might have guessed. |
| 1 | Airborne | Unlike what the skill description suggests, this skill doesn’t gives a 10% damage buff only to aerial attacks, but to any hit where the character leaves the ground even for just a split second. On IG, this includes Leaping Slash, Dodge Slash and Tornado Slash, but more importantly Rising Spiral Slash and (Strong) Descending Slash (minus the final hit), which are part of your main combo rotation. Getting a 10% buff to 80+% of your damage output is pretty much unbeatable, so make sure you have Airborne on every single glaive you own. |
| 2 | Attack Boost 4/5 | Up to lv3 this skill is generally worse than Critical Boost, but at lv4/5 it becomes competitive and sometimes even better than it. As long as you get a good RNG talisman for it you should consider prioritizing it over Handicraft. |
| 2 | Handicraft 1 | Since Artian weapons run on a rather small amount of hits of white, using an Airborne/Handicraft deco is an easy way to get some extra juice for your blade. It’s not mandatory however, especially if you’re using Gogma Artians. |
| 3 | Critical Eye 3+ | Our main sets hit very close to 100% affinity by themselves already, so there’s really not much need for extra affinity. However if you manage to get a good Critical Eye 3 charm it’s still a good replacement for Attack Boost. |
| 4 | Master’s Touch or Razor Sharp 3 | The current meta weapons have enough base white sharpness to avoid dropping down to blue while fighting the monster in most situations, so we don’t really need any extra sharpness management. If however you feel like you’re hitting blue way too often, you might consider then replacing some Crit Boost with one of these two skills. |
WEAPONS
(Gogma) Artian Weapons
Infusions: 3x Attack (with the same element) | Focus (Gogma only): Element
Reinforcements:
• 1x EX Sharpness, 2x EX Attack, 2x Attack III (Gogma Artian)
• 2x Sharpness, 3x Attack (regular Artian)
Set/Group Bonuses: x (set dependent) + Lord’s Soul
Weapon Skills: Critical Boost 5, Airborne, Handicraft 1 (or Attack 1)
• Critical Jewel III
• Critical Jewel II
• Flight/Handicraft Jewel (or Flight/Attack Jewel)
“You can have any glaive you want, as long as it’s Artian”
– Ryozo Tsujimoto (probably)
Artian weapons have reigned supreme since launch, and the Gogma upgrade makes them the undisputed BiS in every situation. Thankfully Gogma Artians also let us reroll reinforcements freely, so you don’t have to worry about being locked with bad rolls anymore.
The base weapon should always be specced for attack exclusively through Attack Infusions and Element Focus* (Attack Focus is very close, while Affinity Focus has just too many downsides to matter). As for which element/status to choose, you can craft a blast or poison glaive if it’s your first IG or if you don’t care about minmaxing too much, but once you do you want to have a glaive for each element starting with fire (I wouldn’t recommend crafting a para or sleep Artian glaive at all, as they will have abysmally low base status compared to the craftable ones, and those statuses have been severely nerfed anyway). Regardless of the element you pick, make sure that all three parts are of the same element, otherwise you will be missing on a free +20 element/status bonus.
In terms of sharpness, you want at least 50 hits of white to be relatively comfortable, which can be achieved either with 2x Sharpness (regular) or 1x EX Sharpness (Gogma). You then want to make sure to have 2x EX Attack reinforcements; after that you can choose any between Attack III and EX Affinity: while the latter is very slightly better on paper (we’re talking 0.05% difference), the former will suffer less losses in case you overcap affinity.
Concerning the set/group bonuses (available only on Gogma Artians), the only relevant group bonus meta wise is Lord’s Soul, so you always want to roll it no matter what (if your set doesn’t use Lord’s Soul you can completely ignore the slot). As for the set bonus, depending on which one you roll you will get access to different builds, so I recommend to report directly to the Endgame Armor Sets section.
*IMPORTANT: There was an unknown mistake in the calculator that accidentally added some amount of element to Attack Focus for IG, which made it look better than it actually is; after correction, it appears that Element Focus is always better. The difference is rather small however, so if you already made Attack Focus glaives you don’t need to lose your mind over it.
Craftable Weapons
Skills: Critical Boost 4, Airborne
• Critical Jewel III
• Flight Jewel
• Critical Jewel I
Zoh Shia’s glaive Blazing Katir is largely uncontested as the best craftable glaive in the game. It has the same base raw, affinity and sharpness as an optimal non-Gogma Artian glaive, and the semi-blast effect granted by Whiteflame Torrent (which can proc once per combo) adds enough extra damage over the course of the hunt to perform close to an Artian blast/poison glaive for general play. This is the only glaive I recommend until you’re able to farm Gogma Artians.
If you’re looking for glaives to use until you’re able to farm Zoh Shia, Artian or Gogma Artian, Queen Regalia (Rathian tree), Lala Stromatopeln (Lala Barina tree) and Stealth Glaive Redux (Nerscylla tree) are all good choices, and the latter two are also good secondary weapons if you’re looking for some extra CC.
ARMOR SETS
Rathagore (G. Rathalos 2p + Gore Magala 2p)
Gogma Artian Bonuses: Gore Magala’s Tyranny / Lord’s Soul
The (presumably) final meta update for Wilds confirms the Sgorecher combo as the top dog, now able to run at its full potential. This set has pretty much everything you need and it’s highly consistent regardless of how you play. Turns out the previous four title updates were all but a dream, and you’re now waking up once again in your bed, covered in Gore pieces and with cold meds on your nightstand…
Convert Element Variant: Udra Miremail γ → Arkvulcan Mail γ
By swapping the chest for the new AT Arkveld chest you can exchange two points of Agitator (Agi 5 → Agi 3) to gain Convert Element 3. This obviously requires the monster to be able to deal elemental damage to you pretty frequently for it to even be worth it.
Poverty Arkgore (Arkveld 2p + Gore Magala 2p)
Gogma Artian Bonuses: None
As it turns out, the second best set you could make is using neither Odogaron nor Doshaguma. For some reason Capcom thought Gore wasn’t good enough, so they decided to give us some new better pieces for Tyranny through Nadia set, which allow you to make a pretty competitive meta set without having to roll a single good set/group bonus on your Gogmartian. This set even straight up beats any set you could make with OdoSoul or DoshaSoul rolls (unless you have pretty high Latent Power uptime, in which case you can make a marginally better set), so if you didn’t roll exactly the GoreSoul combo for the Rathagore set you might as well consider your glaive as if it didn’t have any relevant set/group bonus and use this one.
P.S. I will not provide any intermediate set between this one and Rathagore – you can simply use the available set searcher and math tools to figure out how to build it by yourself. I don’t intend to work on a meta set to help you clear AT Arkveld either, so if that’s your current issue I suggest to look up online for progression or comfort sets.
Q: Should I use raw, elemental or status glaives?
The endgame elemental glaives (Artian) are very slightly ahead of their poison or blast counterparts in the majority of matchups, as they get the benefit from both the glaive and the kinsect attacks dealing elemental damage (kinsects inherit the base element of your glaive, but NOT its base status currently). However, the difference is overall very small due to the relatively low base element and the relatively low elemental hitzones when the monster isn’t wounded. If you’re playing mostly multiplayer and/or you’re minmaxing to the limit you’re gonna get the most off elemental glaives, otherwise you’ll be fine with just a poison or blast glaive.
There is no benefit at all in using a pure raw glaive – not only you will be losing on damage or status procs on the kinsect hits, but also Artian glaives give no bonus for not having an element on them. Literally any kind of status on your glaive will just be better than running pure raw.
Q: What armor or weapons skills affect kinsects?
None. Not a single skill affects anything about the kinsect or kinsect related attacks (and it never did). And yes, that includes Focus: it does nothing to your charged kinsect attack. The only parts of your set that affect the kinsect are the glaive kinsect level and the glaive element (not the status), and that’s it.
Q: I don’t have three hands. How do I make playing Insect Glaive humanly manageable in Wilds?
Glaive controls are notoriously awkward in this game, as they require you to be able to hold multiple face buttons while being able to move the camera. Here’s a few changes I would recommend to make its design more human and easier to use:
- Set the Focus Mode to “Toggle” instead of “Hold” (Options > Controls > page 2 > Aim/Focus Mode Controls > Press LT/L2 to Toggle Mode). You’re gonna be in Focus Mode the majority of the time, so it’s better to just disable it in the few cases where you don’t need it.
- Disable the Focus Camera, i.e. the equivalent of the “lock-on” camera in other games (Options > Camera > page 2 > Focus Camera > Disable). This type of camera doesn’t really work well in Monster Hunter as the monsters will just jump around you all the time, and it even have the very annoying tendency of following the monster for several seconds while it’s leaving the area. You’ll feel much more free once you got rid of it.
- Get used to the tapping the left shoulder button (LB/L1) to recenter your camera on the target monster. Not only this is often faster than using the right analog stick, but it allows you to keep using your right thumbs for attacks instead. You will find all the Target Camera settings in page 3 of the Camera options.
- Increase all the Camera Speed settings (Options > Camera > page 1) as much as possible. This will make it feel a lot less sluggish to control.
- Set the Camera Pan to 7 (Options > Camera > page 2 > Camera Distance: Pan). This will actually center the reticle on top of your character while in Focus Mode, which makes it much easier to aim the charged kinsect attacks.
- If you’re on PC, you can consider using the Steam controller settings to bind your right trigger to RT+Y/R2+Triangle (it is recommended to set a slight delay for the Y button press – like 10-50ms depending on the controller – so that it doesn’t conflict with the vault input). This will allow you to fire the charged kinsect attack with just RT. You will lose access to the marking attack by doing so, but it serves no purpose anymore on IG, so it’s a good trade. (Thanks to Vladimir Gluten for pointing out this possibility!)
- If you aren’t on PC and you want a pay-to-win option, just purchase either a controller with gyro controls or an an elite controller with back paddles (you just need to be able to bind Y/Triangle to one of the back buttons); both of which will solve your biggest problem, which is being able to aim your charged kinsect attack. I wouldn’t advise to do so just to play IG however, as it just gives an excuse to developers not to figure out a better control scheme for their games.
Q: Why are there no aerial sets?
A: Aerial focused builds are not gonna be optimal damage-wise for a lot of reasons. First of all, the main way to boost your damage in this game comes from increasing your crit rate (affinity) and your crit damage, and of the 3 main skills we use for that two of them cannot really be used for aerial attacks: Maximum Might because you’re never gonna be close to full stamina, and Weakness Exploit because you’re unlikely to hit weak spots up in the air except on already wounded parts. The second reason is that the motion values and elemental modifiers on aerial attacks are pretty terrible compared with your ground attacks, even with the buffs on repeated bounces. And finally it’s very easy to get slapped off the air by any of the huge vertical hitboxes of many monsters’ attacks before you even get to touch them.
It’s very obvious that in Wilds (like in most of the previous titles) IG was designed to be played mostly on the ground, and that its aerial moveset was not meant as a damage tool, but mainly as a way to reposition and dodge; indeed, in the Beta they even geared down a lot of the aerial stuff that was added since Monster Hunter World, and they only added it back after people complained about it, but without really caring to make it particularly strong or competitive. For this reason, I recommend to newer players that want to learn to play the weapon optimally to try to ignore the aerial part of its toolkit as much as possible and to play it as a normal weapon but with the additional upside of being able to close the gap quickly or to jump over attacks that are otherwise hard to dodge. If you do that, you’ll have access to what is probably one of the top 3 strongest weapons in the game; if you don’t, it’s likely gonna be bottom 1.
At any rate I don’t intend to spend my time attempting to minmax aerial sets anytime soon (and I will decline all requests in that regard), but if the helicopter life is so dear to your heart you’re totally free to do that all by yourself.
MHWS Sets 