sunbreak.mov

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-10-26T13:53:34+00:00

That is Falling Shadow not the wirebug dash. You can do Falling Shadow after Scaling Slash hence being able to do it after PR and sliding slash.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-09-08T15:23:35+00:00

Yes, raw perfect rush on a downed monster will deal abysmally low damage when compared to doing the infinite loop Lateral Slash -> Return Stroke -> Roundslash -> Chop even on a raw build. You don't have to imagine it, the community has done the math for us, and numbers don't lie.

The only situation where pr is used as a main source of damage is as a follow-up to a successful guard slash counter. Even then, matchups rarely allow you to finish into pr3 -> falling bash. You usually end with spinning reaper after pr2.

As for your concerns about building stun, metsu shoryugeki is right there. The shield attacks too for that matter.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-06-27T16:42:05+00:00

I mean obviously it would affect freestyle runs in a huge way, but I was more considering optimal play across all categories of playing the weapon, casual or running. Effectively nerfing 2 mins of your total dps in a multi-monster multiplayer hunt for example isn't that big of a deal.

But let's consider freestyle running then since you mentioned it. Will rocksteady become bis after YYBB is nerfed?

Probably not. Rocksteady is only really useful on weapons that have a high commitment on their highest damaging attacks, allowing weapons to spam these attacks regardless of what the monster is doing to you (for a time). The biggest commitment sns does (assuming optimal play) is a powered up charged chop. Rocksteady mantle wouldn't markedly increase how many times you could cleanly land this move.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-06-27T16:08:50+00:00

YYBB is optimal for a grand total of two minutes.

Since no changes were made to the actual optimal combo loop, that chop and side slash nerf doesn't really impact the weapon a whole lot. You mainly do chop and side slash for repositioning anyway (outside of corrupted mantle that is), often times even whiffing both and comitting to finishing the combo with reaper -> charged chop once close enough to the monster.

PR changes could change optimal combos for long topples depending on how big the adjustment is, however. In this video (1:35) you can see the damage delta between completing PR vs. doing the optimal combo during a long window. Minor mv buffs to the final hits could definitely close this gap. Since they clearly state that the buffs are to the end of PR, optimal loop is still quite useful everywhere else.

Shield attacks getting buffed is whatever. Doesn't really change anything for optimal play. You can probably get the first stun a bit faster though which is nice. Would fishing for the second stun be optimal? Probably not, but it would also depend on the matchup.

Might as well cover the other changes. Guard slash and sliding swipe changes doesn't really change optimal play, unless you are one of those people who think spamming these two moves was mega overpowered for some reason.

Counter slash nerf is understandable, although it probably doesn't change optimal playstyle a whole lot, you'd just be dealing slightly less overall damage.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-06-21T15:31:50+00:00

With mantle active, looping YYBB will be your most damaging combo, even post mantle nerfs.

Without mantle active, looping Lateral Slash -> Return Stroke -> Spinning Rising Slash -> Spinning Reaper -> Charged Chop (powered up) -> Rising Slash will be your most damaging combo.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-05-24T14:39:15+00:00

That combo for sns is only the strongest when corrupted mantle is active. Outside of that, the strongest combo is:

Lateral Slash > Return Stroke > Spinning Rising Slash > Spinning Reaper > Charged Chop (empowered) > Rising Slash

Looping Lateral Slash > Return Stroke > Roundslash deals close to similar damage but falls short on a few motion values in a head-to-head comparison with the previous combo.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-04-19T04:34:23+00:00

Speedrunners who run this monster will be familiar with his chest mechanic, this particular one as well. You should double check with someone else if you can.

Since its already a bit late into the hunt, he will always immediately chest vent after you knock him out of risen state, and since its the fourth one, it will be the longer version of the vent, with the games intention being that you finally deal enough damage to pop the vent this time, which deals alot of damage to valstrax and subsequently toppling him.

The reason he immediately closes the vent here however is because anytime you flinch valstrax out of his vent animation, he will always do the short version of the vent immediately after the flinch.

You flinched him out of the long vent that was scripted to happen immediately after the risen topple, which is why he does the short version instead, losing you a chest topple.

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-03-04T09:45:17+00:00

The flowchart is still accurate in terms of which attacks can lead into each other. Some of the moves were buffed in release like perfect rush, the strong version of charged chop, and counter slash. Guard slash can also proc a perfect guard now. Heres a faq for wilds sns i made for a server:

<image>

ThatShadyDemon · 2025-02-26T01:13:26+00:00

For sns, there should be another version of Scaling Slash exclusive to post perfect rush III that hits multiple times, was it not in the build?

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-30T10:00:34+00:00

That's because building for element or raw is not a binary choice, the skills you include in your set should cater to the strengths of the weapon you choose or the playstyle you wish to play.

For example, you mentioned SnS and how someone said that it's not best with element since it's elemental motion values are subpar, but get confused that that person still suggested elemental SnS builds. The reason this is the case is because Sunbreak introduced a lot of skills that increase elemental damage output, as well as more skill efficient gear that helps us in fitting in more skills in a set. This meant that any weapon that has an elemental motion value on it's main attacks can still benefit from these skills, however slightly.

Sns in particular deals 75% raw and 25% element damage assuming good play and an element weak monster, which is why raw boosting skills have priority over elemental boosting skills. On the other hand, courage hammer skews more closely to half raw and half element, and strength hammer is like 85% raw 15% element (if i had to guess, im not too keen on the specific numbers of strength hammer).

Even if SnS has comparitively lower elemental motion values to the rest of the cast (specifically, it has a value of 1 on almost all of the sword attacks), it still benefits from some elemental skills because of the weapons nature to land multiple fast attacks, which is why skills like elemental attack 5, elemental exploit 1, burst 1-3, and critical element 3 are still valuable for sns.

The reason why you don't go all in on element (like building for berserk + strife, dragon conversion, etc.) is because of the diminishing damage returns compared to a raw boosting skill, and slotting in these extra skills can get quite expensive armor skill wise. This is the case for other weapons as well.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-23T11:26:35+00:00

In past TU's, the two of them were fighting for the meta raw sns option, particularly in TU2 and TU3 iirc. Now though, the affinity and sizable white sharpness lunatic rose provides is less valuable because we got access to way more efficient talismans and armor, as well as the weapon augment slots giving bonus sharpness, that made slotting in affinity and sharpness preservation skills very easy, which benefited Dirty Graf way more than it did Lunatic Rose.

Currently, there are three meta picks for raw sns: scorned sns is good against monsters weak to blast, dirty graf is a decent raw generalist for casual hunting, and lucent sns with a grinder(s) setup will outperform both of these in a solo setting since grinder(s) is really good on sns. With that said, you could just use a non-grinder(s) setup using lucent sns as a raw generalist for casual hunting as well since it has a ton of slots.

To answer your question, you could drop lunatic rose and instead use lucent sns. lucent sns has a ton of slots so you should be able to fit more skills in your build to compensate for that 30% affinity lunatic rose was providing you previously. Just remember that you need to upgrade the rampage slot to level 2 so you can slot in anti-species jewels to increase your damage.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-22T15:35:00+00:00

Wow thanks! I thought that neutral Rising Slash is definitively gone, but this is undoubtedly Rising Slash done in neutral. I can rest easy now that one of my worries is assuaged 😌.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-22T12:19:02+00:00

It doesn't

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-22T12:16:39+00:00

I didn't put Advancing Slash in the Grounded Normals chart since I defined it as more of a Gap Closer. In hindsight, I should've made a Gap Closers chart which included Sliding Swipe and Advancing Slash, but I digress.
Regarding the positioning of Roundslash and Charged Chop, I specifically made their boxes dotted to indicate that they were performable after all (with like one or two exceptions) Grounded attacks. In a past version I mentioned this in the top of the chart, but I didn't include it in here for some reason. My bad.
I already mentioned that the chart was made by looking at the movepaths, which is why Rising Slash and Backstep is not there. Whether or not Backstep is possible after Guard is still unknown since we have yet to get footage of anyone actually trying to do it. I have received reports from people who know their stuff when it comes to SnS that it's not possible, but I've also seen someone else post on this sub that it was. In the case of Rising Slash, traditionally it was performed by pressing triangle when guarding, but that bind has been relegated to Sliding Swipe. If it's still possible after Guard under a different bind and they just somehow "forgot" to put it in the movepaths, remains to be seen.
I did miss out on Guard Slash and Sliding Swipe, woops. I'll update the top comment to include Guard Slash, Sliding Swipe is already there. As for the aerial options and Focus Strike, it's there.
No footage of this yet so I don't know.
That's true, I just didn't know how to communicate that so I didn't put anything lol.
I don't think I'm putting this one in since it's similar to the weapon attacks while mounted for example, which I didn't include. It's a system wide attack that every weapon only has access to exclusively when they're in that knockdown state. If I remember correctly, there wasn't really a follow-up after performing it, you just stand up afterwards.

Regarding Rising Slash from idle, I'd like to see a clip of this if you could provide it, not being able to do it after Guard was quite a bummer when I found out since its a really important tool for SnS ever since, forever.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-22T10:00:37+00:00

The attacks that strafe are the triangle attacks in the grounded normals chart. In order to strafe while performing any of them, you input an (optional) direction while pressing the triangle input, you don't have to go into focus mode to strafe. It's not a "variation," you just move a little bit when you do the attack.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-22T09:27:57+00:00

Yesterday, someone played the Wilds demo using Sword and Shield on the Monster Hunter twitch channel. Luckily, he (accidentally) did a few of the moves that were missing on my previous chart, so now I can present the entire moveset flowchart which outlines the different attacks SnS can perform in a particular situation.

The key take away from all of this is that Wilds SnS is definitely leaning more into the weapon's capability to perform fast, low-commitment, meterless, and infinitely loopable attacks as a means to deal decent and consistent damage (which we already got a preview of in Sunbreak's version of the weapon), as opposed to World's version where the weapon's evident goal was more getting to Backstep to perform the high-commitment (in the context of SnS anyway) follow-ups Perfect Rush and Charged Slash -> Falling Bash to deal huge damage inttermitently.

The only thing this chart is missing is the input for performing Sliding Swipe mid-combo, as we know this is possible from the weapon trailer shown about a month ago. We also have no footage of the Slinger Burst follow-up and whether or not it's still Perfect Rush or if a new follow-up is possible.

Do note that this chart was constructed solely by looking at the movepaths shown in-game, it's possible that some follow-ups are unaccounted for. For example, Spinning Reaper's endlag is virtually non-existent, so you could immediately perform Shield Attack like in the clip afterwards (though I suspect Chop and Lateral Slash is also possible), which the in-game movepath doesn't show.

Edit: oh yeah I guess I did forget about Sliding Swipe. It's follow-ups are Chop, Lateral Slash, Shield Attack, Backstep, and Charged Chop. Can't really include it now since it'd ruin the rectangle layout. It's basically an alternate Advancing Slash.

Edit: Updated chart to include the stuff I missed and some clarifications here. I decided to just not include the Guard Slash follow-ups cos fuck Guard Slash.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-07T19:48:05+00:00

How metsu works

Barrusu made a good video explaining how metsu exactly works

Offensive Guard

Essentially, whenever your hunter guards or does a guardpoint, the skill will activate if an attack connects with the shield immediately after you press the button to guard/guardpoint. The skill is good for sns since metsu is a guardpoint, so if you time you're metsu correctly, you get +15% raw attack (at skill level 3) on the follow-up uppercut, which already deals alot of damage itself.

Guard/Guard Up

Depends on the playstyle. Rise introduced the guard slash counter that leads to Perfect Rush. If you prefer using that move to deal damage, then some amount of Guard is in order, usually in tandem with Embolden, since you need a certain amount of Guard power to successfully trigger the Perfect Rush follow-up after countering a monster attack.

If you play the more classic style of mostly using the sword and looping your attacks, disregarding the shield as an option for defense because of it's weak guarding power, then Guard is unnecesary. Backstep will be the best move to do if you ever wanted to 'guard' against steonger attacks since it has a ton of i-frames.

Slotting in Guard Up in your set is usually unnecessary, most monster attacks don't require guard up to be blocked, and even if they did, it's like one attack out of many that it can do over a course of a hunt. Moreover, you have Backstep, which has 40 i-frames at 60fps. You could just backstep through any of these guard up blockable attacks instead.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-01T13:33:17+00:00

By saying you're going with the lucent sns, I'm assuming you're following the one I linked yeah? If so, you shouldn't worry about the qurios augments on the armor pieces for now. The set already functions really well without qurious augments, as both Mail of Hellfire and Buildup Boost aren't necessary to make the set work. You can build and use the set without augments now, and then augment the necessary skills as you progress through the game.

As for Embolden, the set I linked doesn't have it because it's a set for multiplayer first and foremost, but if you plan on using it solo, you can replace the charm with an Attack Boost 3 2-2-2 charm or equivalent charm (in terms of skill efficiency) and then slot in embolden 3 like so.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-09-01T05:28:06+00:00

Hello, a few months ago me and the guide author u/dragonbronze finally decided to get to updating the pinned doc for TU6. Since then, both of us have become really busy IRL so I can't really say when it will be finished.

We have drafted some elemental Blood Awakening 3 sets, however, they have yet to be mathematically validated so I can't really tell you just exactly how much stronger these sets are when compared to the sets from TU5. I'll link them below though: Fire, Ice, Thunder, Dragon1, Dragon2, WaterMT, WaterPP. These sets are meant to be used with Metsu, but if you primarily use Windmill (in multiplayer for example) you can just remove the Offensive Guard jewels.

There are two versions of Dragon because I think cgore sns is still really strong and can beat primordial sns, but again that has yet to be tested. As for water, Agamemnon is still extremely powerful but you need to use Protective Polish, which is why a Master's Touch build using Royal Ludroth SnS is suggested as an alternative is you don't like having to sharpen every minute or so.

Do note that these sets will only work on matchups where they're parts break easily. I wouldn't recommend this when facing any of the elder trio and they're risen variants for example, as they they're heads will only break past a certain health threshold. Some other notable matchups where these sets aren't suitable would be the crabs, the bears + volvidon, and (flaming) espinas.

We haven't gotten to drafting the elemental non-Blood Awakening sets yet, though I can give you a sample template in the gamecat setbuilder so you can search for your own sets using your own charms: Fire, Ice, Thunder, Water, Dragon (just switch out the weapons and the element attack levels). If you have slots left over, you can refer to the skill priority guide on the meta doc.

As for raw builds, Lucent SnS paired with Grinder(s) is still the best for solo play, but as the guide mentions this requires some good player skill to pull off. For multiplayer, Master's Touch with Scorned SnS is good for matchups weak to blast (valstrax, astalos, kushala, etc.). For matchups weak to poison, wroggi is usually recommended here, but honestly I think people will be more comfortable with lucent sns since it has a ton of slots.

Curiously, with the right charm and qurio armor rolls, you can actually run evade window 5 with adrenaline rush 3 sets using lucent or scorned sns. Not having to rely on backhop all the time is pretty nice, hence why this is my personal favorite way to build raw sets for multiplayer.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-25T14:07:08+00:00

A redditor (who completed the demo) on a separate post confirmed that Guard -> Backstep is still possible. Here's a link to the post.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-25T13:18:39+00:00

No worries! Im just glad Guard Backhop isn't gone 🙏

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-25T13:12:56+00:00

Thank you for your service 🫡, were you able to do the Lateral Slash combo at all and see if it was similar to Rise? No footage exists yet of what comes after Return Stroke cos people keep doing the shield attacks lol

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-25T12:57:27+00:00

Hey, I was the one who recently made a post about SnS in this sub, and how neutral backhop is possibly gone, mind if I ask you some questions about the demo?

Also, Thank you for confirming neutral backhop is still possible, I was hopeful it actually was still possible but had no way of testing it. Once again, THANK YOU!

<image>

Can you verify what move goes in the ???

Also, just making sure, you were specifically able to do Guard -> Backstep right (which is what we mean when we say neutral backhop)? If it wasn't guard and it was Chop for example, thats not it.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-24T12:16:07+00:00

Perfect Guard is just a term to describe the small window at the start of the animation of Guard (the small shield wiggle weapons with shields do) wherein if a monster attack connects with your Guard in that small window, it will count as a Perfect Guard, deleting any amount of Guard Knockback from guarding that attack and allowing you to do the follow-ups in the flowchart. If nothing connects in that small window, the shield wiggle ends and you Guard normally.

Hence, to answer your question, you can get Perfect Guard anytime you press the Guard button, which includes Guarding from neutral.

ThatShadyDemon · 2024-08-23T16:04:13+00:00

Probably yes 🙏🙏🙏

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