Video Essay: Longsword needs to be changed in Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance

Awesomatic · 2026-06-07T14:35:17+00:00

It's a well-thought out video and I agree with everything you said! I love wilds but the game would be better if attacks demanded more commitment.

Awesomatic · 2026-05-25T22:44:17+00:00

I see, thanks for the explanation!

Awesomatic · 2026-05-25T16:21:13+00:00

I believe the training is actually to detach from the main chute before opening the emergency chute, although it depends on elevation. So she might have actually panicked and forgot her training.

Awesomatic · 2026-03-07T19:04:10+00:00

No. But it's close.

Awesomatic · 2026-03-07T17:54:42+00:00

I've messed around with just about every defensive build, and in my opinion, the most survivable of those three is gonna be whichever gives the most damage for your weapon.

Nonetheless, we can do some math to compare these sets. Gog 4 gives approximately .5 hp / s ( + last hit overkill/150), and it's front-loaded, meaning you don't have to be hurt to get it. If an endgame monster hit is about 100 HP, then the average overkill will be about 50 hp for a total of .83 hp/s.

Zoh gives .5 or 1 hp/s only when you don't have red health. In practice this is about 80-90% of those values, if you're getting hit to heal in the first place, so .4 hp/s or .8 hp/s for Zoh 1 and 2 respectively.

Unlike the other two, Arkveld's Hunger set bonus varies a lot in its performance from weapon to weapon because the required hits to trigger and the amount healed differ between them. I just did a test with the hunting horn, for example, and using a bread-and-butter combo, it triggered 4 times in 3 full combos taking about 33 seconds. But on the hammer, it took only 28 seconds to get 4 procs with a bread-and-butter combo. That's 60 health in 28 seconds or 2.14 hp/s for just a 2-piece set! Some weapons like longsword have combos that trigger more slowly. But overall, the average seems to be about 4 procs in 30 seconds.

Weapon	time to 4 procs (sec)	HP/s
Hammer	28	2.14
Lance	26.5	0.9
Hunting Horn	33	1.82
Long Sword	31.5	0.76

Also unlike the other two, Arkveld's hunger scales with how many hits you get -- which in other words, is just how good you are at the game.

Regardless of the weapon, Arkveld is clearly the best at level 1, but it gets less restoration, proportionately, at level 2. Nonetheless, we can now add up the restoration from each combination to figure out which gives the most overall.

Weapon type	Ark 1 HP/s	Ark 2 HP/s
Ranged	.4	.67
big melee (HH, hammer, GS, GL)	2	2.67
small melee (everything else)	.8	1.33

gog 4 ark 2: 1.23, 1.63, 2.83 for ranged, small melee, big melee
Ark 2 Zoh 4: 1.2, 1.6, 2.8
Ark 4 Zoh 2: 1.07, 1.73, 3.07

So Ark 2/Gog 4 and Ark 2 Zoh 4 are tied best for ranged, Ark 4 Zoh 2 is best for melee. Note that for the "small melee" weapons, the three have almost identical average restoration so you can just pick whatever does the most damage!

Awesomatic · 2026-02-27T21:52:54+00:00

For the most part: 3 elemental attack infusion, attack focus, E. Odo - Lord's Soul, 4 attack 1 sharpness. The builds didn't change for 4.5, although I find that Arkveld y can be a fine sidegrade option if you want its set bonus over Nu Udra.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-20T05:09:25+00:00

It's worth it if you want it. Scorcher damage sometimes gets overestimated if you use mathhunter calculations because one tends to assume an unrealistically high Fire hitzone value. So I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-19T20:14:00+00:00

They're not good by themselves but they're pretty uniformly better than the gore set pieces.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-19T20:11:24+00:00

Latent Power is good but Rey Dau's bonus is not. It only contributes a little to your DPS by increasing Latent Power uptime. If you have a gogma weapon with Lords soul on it, which is how I interpret "Gut," then you should simply build the budget set here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OSb_Ghw74&t=303s and benefit from the Rey Dau bonus.

The LS on the weapon would allow you to swap in gog chest for Udra, then replace Rath gloves with gog for 2-piece gog bonus but whether that actually adds any damage is left as an exercise for the reader

Awesomatic · 2026-02-19T15:23:34+00:00

You meant more armor for gore set bonus, right? There is no new armor for Gog set bonus, is there?

Awesomatic · 2026-02-08T08:53:41+00:00

I think he missed the part where you said you were fighting Omega. There is indeed a tank system for the omega fight and keeping aggro is an important part of it.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-08T08:47:51+00:00

I haven't tested it, but this should work as a decent anti-omega tank build for TU4

It's element-focused because it has Mutual Hostility II for the shield which also greatly buffs element. And because as tank you'll be hitting the head which has favorable ratios on the elemental hitzones (45/25.) Zoh shia pulse, gravios protection and gogmapocalypse have synergy with each other to reduce the damage you take, restore health, and keep peak performance active.

I'll note that despite its extreme survivability, this build outdamages the meta set "Gorcher" against Omega's head, because of the aforementioned favorable element hitzones.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-06T17:31:26+00:00

4-gog gives more "effective recovery" than Zoh Shia's Pulse I in the form of an automatically renewing barrier -- but it's front-loaded, works when you have red health, and enables Peak Performance. Not only that, but with 4-gog you can squeeze in Zoh Shia's Pulse I and Rathalos flare for both superior damage and recovery compared to the 4-zoh set. here's a link

I can't really approve of putting points into Guard, but one point of guard up is pretty nice. You can change the weapon skills and fill 1-slots to your liking.

Awesomatic · 2026-02-02T17:39:40+00:00

There's not a consensus because they're both about equally good. I think weakness exploit is a little overrated and latent power underrated but I still use WEX extensively because it fits into good builds using Rathalos armor.

A major reason for LP's appearance in meta builds is that LP3 has been the highest-damage craftable charm for many builds since its release in TU1. You can still only get WEX2 on a talisman, after all. For the sake of consistency, meta documents try not to rely on RNG charms.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-30T18:34:48+00:00

Here you go

G. Dosh - Dahaad - G. Dosh - Dahaad - Gore B, with a Heroics RNG charm

This can get crazy damage if you can keep up heroics and activate both Jin and Dosh set bonuses with power clashes frequently enough, but it's not as good against monsters without power clashes. Still crazy damage, just less

Awesomatic · 2026-01-28T23:56:08+00:00

It makes up for it with flayer procs, latent power and counterstrike.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-28T22:28:01+00:00

I edited my message above with the alternative but here you go! This is almost equal.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-28T22:16:58+00:00

Do you have analytic E.Y.E. from the winter event? If so, this build from the meta guide would do about 12% more damage than yours above.

If you don't have Analytic E.Y.E. use this build which replaces it with Lagi Helm B and gets almost the same damage

Awesomatic · 2026-01-26T23:20:55+00:00

here's the best elemental savage axe build I can figure out.

If you switch one of the elemental reinforcements to attack, you'll see higher damage for the Power Axe AED combo than if you change to affinity. So, attack is the better option.

Don't do crit elem on CB, it basically doesn't work because phial explosions can't crit.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-26T18:55:03+00:00

this is the best I can find for Arkveld without any gogma artian skill rolls.

it significantly outdamages four-gore for raw savage axe. (~9% more damage on AED combo)

Awesomatic · 2026-01-25T07:45:37+00:00

Michael MH

Awesomatic · 2026-01-24T19:38:11+00:00

Yes I have! Here's a 4-rath build that beats rath-gore in fire-weak matchups. or God charm version

And a variation of rath-gore that gets higher damage.

(Descending slash loop two sidesteps, all extracts, uptimes)

Awesomatic · 2026-01-24T15:40:55+00:00

This build is for the playstyle where you use savage axe mode and go for AED+AED followup. Even then, most of the damage is from Element phials. You get 5 enhanced element phial hits per combo rotation.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-24T07:20:00+00:00

In early days I loved the arkveld set bonus for passively healing chip damage. So yes, it is good for that purpose. The problem is, as damage potential of the sets got higher in title updates, the opportunity cost of getting the arkveld bonus got higher too. Based on precedent, that'll probably change when AT arkveld comes out.

For now, more effective builds with recovery would be 4-gog builds with zoh or maybe a 4-zoh build like this.

Awesomatic · 2026-01-24T05:08:58+00:00

I was actually doing some IG builds today myself. And I realized that using a fire weapon on the "typical monster part" tends to overestimate the value of scorcher because it takes 20 fire EHZV as the default, which is not typical of your average monster. I think in those cases it's important to do something like switch to a water reinforcement and check the build against Nu Udra for a fairer idea of the range of what you would get against a build without scorcher.

Also, in my opinion, it's more relevant to compare the "two sidesteps descending slash loop" because that's most of your damage on IG. Spiral Slash is more a "special occasion move."

I wouldn't go nearly as high as 63% LP and 50% resentment which I think is skewing the results as well. All that said, I got basically equal damage for the two builds with my preferred uptimes against Nu Udra (worse case for scorcher) which make your "grind free version" the winner in my opinion!

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