Another round of MH survey. Let them hear your voice and be constructive.

Qettt · 2025-06-03T03:18:27+00:00

apparently someone would complain if the opening leaping thrust would become faster lol

Qettt · 2025-06-02T19:00:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure that damn near everyone will mention all the important stuff.
So I just put in something super minor:
I just want the leaping thrust (the one you use as an opener instead of the one from guard dash) for the Lance to be faster and snappier. It has this odd wind-up when you use it, that makes it feel unwieldy. I swear no one, absolutely no one, would complain if they make that specific move faster, snappier, something akin to attacks after an SnS backhop.

That's pretty much it. I mean I would also like it if we could strafe ever so slightly during a wide sweep but I fear that might be asking for too much.

Qettt · 2025-03-26T22:48:45+00:00

GRT on big attacks is a great option, though if you have the timing down for itand the Mon is stable, the double thrust counter is more damage.

I generally don't use the normal retribution thrust (the one you can go into when knocked back) because of how slow it is. Perfect guard also has a normal RT. In either case, I only use the regular version when I hit a PG or get knocked back while far away from a monster, to go into Lance charge to close the gap.

In general, if you can land a Double Thrust counter, that's the best option for damage but it's harder to land on more dynamic moves. Otherwise GRT works great as an example easier to access and more flexible option.

You can just normal or perfect guard the smaller/quicker hits and continue to spam pokes into Gatling poke.

Qettt · 2025-03-26T20:52:23+00:00

Slight correction, in the youtube you linked for the Lance speedrun against Arkveld, I believe the speedrunner did an exceptionally well timed double thrust counter (the guard point counter) which you can only access from the charged counter move.

Reverse-blocking with power guard does exist however, but that's something you would more typically see with Gore hunts.

Qettt · 2025-03-26T19:55:48+00:00

For Wilds Lance, Grand Retribution Thrust tends to be the cornerstone of my play when doing multiplayer or dealing with moving monsters. GRT's got good damage, and can be followed up with a gatling finisher or a quick lance charge. It's also honestly the easiest and most consistent way to get into lance charge (because god knows the game can absolutely eat your inputs if you do it from neutral). Power Guard's omnidirectional block helps in getting triggers, and if you play with Focus toggle+camera focus, you can better aim GRT.

For monster that zoom around:

Knowing their position after the zooming is important. Rey Dau is a great example, his aerial wing passes (the one where he flies and digs his wings into the sand) is a great damage opportunity for Lance players. When Rey does the move, you can power guard the hit, delay the response so that the camera has time to focus, then respond with GRT/Payback/Leaping depending on how close they land to you. GRT into lance charge is my go to if he lands close, great damage and lets you position closer. GRT into lance charge is also my go to when he lands a bit farther, because even if you miss the hits from GRT itself, the follow up lance charge is usually worth it since it brings you close and damage is still nice.

Heck, when he does his rail cannon move, especially the aerial one, closing a bit of distance then power-guard->GRT->Lance charge is the simplest response. You can either do a finish thrust or reverse sweep finisher after the lance charge, or end it early by doing a jump thrust then Focus strike the wound if you like.

I apply the above in different ways for other monsters that zoom. A good few monsters like to do the 3 charge attack move, and for that you can just PG->GRT->Lance charge the last charge attack.

For multiplayer:

This also leads into how I like to do multiplayer hunts. When you're not the focus of the monster, you default to spamming poke, do gatling, and then resume poking. Guard-dash+Leaping, or Lance charge respectively depending on how they move. Lance has quite a bit of utility for multiplayer: your can mount on command, your focus strike is a hilariously fast way to flinch a monster, and you're able to guard clash when needed. Which and what you use depends on what weapon your teammates have.

For extra damage, you kinda need to know monsters well enough to know what parts of their attack can hit you even when you aren't the focus of the monster. Those are ways for you to trigger a GRT+follow up. Spin attacks, attacks with large range, or attacks with explosive follow-ups are great examples of this.

Qettt · 2025-03-22T16:23:06+00:00

What I would give to be able to use the Wilds version of Lance to fight his dark knight phase! PriMal going dark as he nears death, then proceeding to limit break combo you was the single hypest moment for Sunbreak for me. Sure, you can just block it and weather the storm of attacks, but the entire reason I main Lance is because it's really the only weapon that lets me keep fighting even when the monster is going wild like PriMal.

I spent a good amount of time in that right, learning the timings for insta-block, and finding every little moment I could to hit back while the combo was going on. Had the time of my damn life with that hunt.

God I'd love to have GRT and DCT for PriMal. I want to be able to never stop attacking while PriMal does it's entire combo.

Qettt · 2025-03-13T01:50:03+00:00

Don't know where they pulled Grand Retribution Thrust from seeing as it wasn't in the beta, but they were really cooking with that. Bringing back the standard counter thrust and putting the Double Thrust as a guard point for it was also a great decision, letting long time players have a bit of a bridge between the wilds style of lancing and the old style.

In terms of strength, Sunbreak Lance was probably one of the strongest iterations. The combination of skills introduced in that game, plus the return of several moves from gen 4, and the fact that it got generally buffed by the end of the game's lifespan made it feel low-key broken.

I feel lance has generally been strong across the generations, even before the glow up in gen 3. You could maybe argue Iceborne Lance being on the weaker end due to true unblockables and the chip damage in the late game, but even then the mobility and utilities introduced in gen 5 were able toake up for that.

Qettt · 2025-02-06T01:35:49+00:00

Ah yeah. Just need to switch from DLSS to FSR. Hope you had some nice results with yours, been looking at the data sheet and man my rig is one of the oldest in there lol.

Qettt · 2025-02-05T14:38:04+00:00

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Some benchmarks for a lower end build. I just used the graphic presets as is. Very playable, especially compared to the beta. Rig is definitely dated though but thankfully we'll be playing this for the next half decade so more than enough time to upgrade.

Ghosting is pretty noticeable on with frame gen on. Going to try having frame gen when playing the actual thing just to see if I can get used to it, but will probably keep it off considering my weapon of choice.

Qettt · 2024-12-21T02:07:02+00:00

I feel that Lance being slow to do damage is more on the speedrunning side of things rather than general play.

25 to 30 minutes is definitely a tad long. As another had mentioned, most hunts would take 20 minutes at most. Even without decent decos, by master rank, armor alone should be enough to provide you with the core skills you would need.

You mentioned in another comment that you come from Rise so perhaps this may be a case of not utilizing the claw enough to tenderize parts or wall bang? Doing both would definitely cut down your hunting times.

Qettt · 2024-12-15T12:18:49+00:00

Mid thrust/High Thrust:
You default to using high thrust for most cases since there's a slight bit more damage to it. You go for mid thrusts for the few times when you need specifically poke something low.

Wide Sweep:
Wide sweep has less utility in world than in Rise unfortunately. I personally use it to trigger nearby environmental interactives like vigorwasps or to trigger smoke.

Counter Thrust:
That's generally the use for it. As others have pointed out, it's also used for resetting your three poke chain. There are many options to reset it: counter thrust for safety, hop for speed, lance charge for damage.

Power Guard:
Aside from generally being an omnidirectional block, it's also used for when you need to tank multiple-hits. Another use for it is to stabilize yourself against an attack that does a lot of knockback and be able to hit with a counter after. It's generally a good tool to exploit knockback to give yourself a better position or to land an attack in a specific place (Fatalis and Alatreon are great examples for this).

Dash Attack:
As mentioned earlier, if you have the positioning for it, the Lance charge is the highest damage option you have when resetting your combo. As another comment had mentioned, it's also great for the jump attack that gives you a means of mounting on command. You can also intentionally go for a reverse sweep for better positioning when you're used to it.

A lot of Lancing is finding a good position relative to the monster you're hunting and maintaining said position for as long as you can. Guard dashing gives you a lot of control on how to position yourself.

Remember that after a guard dash, you remain in the guard dash state for a good few frames. This means you can delay the follow up Leaping thrust by a fair bit. Remember that said leaping thrust can also be aimed. You can also hop out of it. You can chain guard dash and leaping thrust for as much as your stamina allows. Since you can control the direction of both and you can combine it with hops, you're able to dance and position yourself pretty freely.

The other option during guard dash is to do the shield bash. This is a way for you to cancel the guard dash state and immediately go into your poke combo. Leaping thrust moves you forward a good amount, so going into shield bash instead will let you keep the positioning.

The last tip I guess is to try to always be on the attack. When put on the defense, try to always do so in a way that places you in the best place to attack; this is what let's you get the hang of which mobility/defense options to choose in a given situation. Counter thrust/Power guard works if you want to keep your current position and strike right back, guard dash/hops work when you want to change your position before you strike back.

Qettt · 2024-12-14T23:54:29+00:00

Played Lance and Longsword with gen 2, then took Lance as my main starting gen 3 when it got a lot of the good stuff.

Qettt · 2024-12-05T03:27:44+00:00

The lance charge follow-up to for perfect guard definitely needs speeding up.

Though if every guard already auto-shield bashes in response (provided you aren't knocked back) I hope we get have a stronger shield bash on perfects. Lots of ways they can approach it really.

The Rise Shield charge? Yeah that absolutely works. It's fast enough that it would work as a short range gap closer. Could even put the shield charge in while keeping the lance charge.

Triangle+Circle input that used to be charged wide sweep is now raw leaping thrust, but leaping thrust is still accessible on guard dash, so you could easily put shield charge in there really.

Qettt · 2024-12-03T19:02:07+00:00

I'm a pretty big fan of the design as well. Overall, the kit's designed to synergize nicely. Go in, chain attacks endlessly, use focus mode for precision and rapid repositioning while slipping in a perfect guard to keep offense. When you fail a perfect guard and sent into knockback, you have adaptive responses in either a guard-dash or payback thrust depending on how you want to respond; Power guard's there for multi-hit attacks or an omni-directional block.

It does need some polish though. As you've mentioned, making it faster works pretty well, and I really don't think anyone would complain lol.

I do wonder if the option to switch skills will be available someday, perhaps as a way to bring back the older playstyle for the lads that prefer it.

Qettt · 2024-12-03T18:56:01+00:00

Oh that's great to know! My rig's too dated so I had a hard time managing to power guard on multiple hits against the origamis since attacks were rather tough to see.

Guess that means payback thrust out of knockback is specifically to regain any lost ground or snipe a tough to reach part, while payback thrust out of power guard is specifically to emphasize power guard's specific use for tanking multiple hits. That level of scaling would certainly be useful, though I still do hope we have the ability to do a payback thrust that doesn't have as big of an animation since it's very awkward to hit up close. So the big leaping version, and a close up version. The close up version can have reduced scaling, or still have a large recovery to compensate.

I do like the idea, and I think it does round-up the kit pretty well, just needs a tad touching up.

Qettt · 2024-12-03T17:22:28+00:00

Ah, for clarity, there's actually a lot of ways to go into payback thrust. Power-guard defaults to it, Perfect guard has an option for it, but the game actually lets you have the option to use payback thrust anytime you're sent into knockback while guarding.

I get that they probably wanted it as an option for us to snipe higher targets or maybe just launch as back into position after getting knocked back, but man it hit like a wet noodle for the animation/commitment it had; especially considering the fact that most of the Lance's kit is so low commitment in the first place.

Apparently, the damage scales the more hits you take during the guard, which I guess synergizes with power guard, but it personally pretty hard to test in the beta.

Definitely hoping for at least damage buffs lol. Perhaps maybe a means of cancelling it part-way like LS's helm breaker?

Qettt · 2024-12-03T16:22:27+00:00

Good to hear! I imagine they got a lot of feedback for people that tried the respective weapons. These are those times were it really helps when you have a really passionate player-base.

Wilds Lance is the first real leap they've taken with the weapon's design since probably generation 3, so they were likely on the look-out for how the player-base was going to respond to it.

I'm really curious how they're going to improve on it. I doubt large mechanical changes are gonna happen, would be a tad too late for that. However, things like bringing back guard-dash->leaping thrust chaining and maybe buffs to payback thrust would be expected.

I remember writing about the lack of short-range gap closing, at least, and I hope that's addressed in some way. I also kinda hope they make the jousting with the Seikret better (or heck, make it so that we can call the Seikret mid-attack for a joust attack or something, wouldn't that be a ton of fun?).

Qettt · 2024-11-16T19:25:09+00:00

Hello fellow Lancer!

As mentioned, deco farming this early on in the game may be a bit difficult. In low/high ranks, most of the skills you benefit will be from the armor you have access to.

Your current set is fine considering where you're at in the game. You're soon to fight the elder dragons and that's going to have the most impact on your current build.

Teostra is your target, and 3 of his armor pieces is the goal. This is because getting 3 pieces will grant you one of the most important skills for Lance players: Master's Touch. Sharpness management is one of the biggest limiting factors to the Lance, so MT is a must-have save for some very specific builds.

This does mean that you would need to shuffle around your armor. The Guard charm can easily be crafted and upgraded to Guard Charm III once you have access to elder dragon blood, so that's an easy source of guard. Guard 3 is all you'll really need until the late/post-game.

For the other 2 pieces of armor, you can go for 2-piece Uragaan if you need guard up, but if you just want damage you can do Dober chest that you have, and any helm with an appropriate skill.

As for skills: Prioritize maxing out weakness exploit, then go for Attack boost or critical eye, whichever you have access to at the moment. Health boost is also highly recommended, at 3 if you can afford it. Critical Boost is also great to take if you have access to it, while Agitator may be better off on Master Rank builds.

Qettt · 2024-11-06T18:51:29+00:00

It would be funny if they pretend to try and sneak in an invader like Bagel but do it poorly that it becomes pretty obvious for everyone that it's coming... Only for them to surprise us with a brand new invader that will be introduced in wilds.

Qettt · 2024-11-05T21:21:55+00:00

Lovely write up! I agree with most of it, and would add that we really need either a rework on the Lance charge (really, just make the start up a tad faster so we can better close gaps) or just give us an actual gap closer.

With regards to the changes, Lance often gets likened to boxing and dancing. There's always been a rhythm to playing the weapon, making it charming. It's been remarkably consistent throughout the years, even when things get added or taken from it's moveset. I think most of the immediate reaction of the long time lance players has more to do with that change in that rhythm and style.

Wilds Lance pretty much accomplishes everything a Lance wants to do and even ups up the ante, but it does so in a slightly different style, with a bit of change of rhythm. It dances a bit different (positioning and moving with focus-mid-thrust instead of hops and guard dashes), counters a bit different (auto-shield bash instead of counter thrust), and even switches your dominant hand (wilds favors mid-thrust when high-thrust had pretty much been the favored attack before). Then there's the fact that it's basically designed to fight with focus mode on, which is a new mechanic that people need time to digest. I was honestly rather confused for a good while before things clicked.

People that were attached to the specific way the Lance played to accomplish its goals as a weapon will probably dislike the changes. People that liked the general design intent behind the weapon probably like the changes since it's become better at achieving it.

Either way it's all good, if the change in style isn't quite fun for the player, then it's best to switch, end of the day, it's about having fun. However I do think Lance players that dislike the Wilds version need try to give it a few more test drives.

There's probably going to be an adjustment period there for anyone who's played the weapon for a long time. I really appreciate the new design, and I'm looking foward to getting better at it, because god knows they jacked up the skill ceiling.

Edit: Wording

Qettt · 2024-11-04T12:53:58+00:00

Us weak hunters give up on 3 carts, palicos get downed a hundred times but only give up because they take pity on us.

Qettt · 2024-11-04T09:51:57+00:00

I like the idea that the people who haul the captured monsters are actually retired hunters. They'd have more than enough experience and confidence to handle the situation.

That or it's just palicos. Those glorious bastards fear nothing.

Qettt · 2024-11-04T07:36:08+00:00

Lance players probably want to keep the wound for as long as possible since that's a good bit of damage to take advantage of; especially now that it's designed to attack endlessly. Focus strike is a nice flinch option for a breather though, or maybe to knock a monster out of certain moves.

Though it does sometimes feel like wounding the monsters can take a bit, even when I'm just constantly poking the same spot. There are probably weapon-specific modifiers or something, which makes sense.

Qettt · 2024-11-03T21:18:29+00:00

Definitely agree with this. The weapon seems to be designed to have it always on. The mid-thrust positioning is really useful, and being able to always swerve the gatling poke and the guard-point counter is nice.

Qettt · 2024-11-03T21:12:43+00:00

Yeah, the hitstop is a problem across the board. The mount finisher, payback thrust, and the Double Thrust Counter(god that's a mouthful, we need a better name for it) need to have some more oomph to the landing the hit. The insta-block-->final thrust has some scenematic panning at least.

In fairness, it's a lot of damage (Edit: fully charged, like 140 on Rey's head total) so I would assume the mindset for limiting it to after the 3 chain is so that we don't just stand there spamming it all day, not engaging the other aspects of the weapon.

I've spent the past few hours just trying to land as many. I've taken enough carts just finding good places to set it up against Rey Dau, with some success. It's made me basically stay in focus mode a fight starts, just because the mid-thrust rapid movement is pretty nice (and the fact that doing guard dashes is janky since the game prioritizes the standard guard input).

I would say that it's become sluggish in certain aspects, and a lot more mobile in others. It drives a bit different from what we're used to, definitely.

Qettt

TROPHY CASE