#but ig the vault songs did push it up

[lingeringscars]

[retphienix]

BETA Weapon impression thing for posterity more than anything else, as such it’s a readmore to avoid spam lol.

Great Sword: My poor baby. Alright, so GS got a couple new toys, namely a shoulder tackle that can interrupt most actions to skip you ahead in the “charge” order, and a third charge attack.

But honest to god it just doesn’t feel on par with the improvements made to the other weapons, and the third charge is awkward. It’s cool, it hits REALLY hard, but there was a fluent motion to the 2nd charge. The 2nd charge felt like a stronger charge attack and had that awesome (optional) sweeping slash after it landed that did THE SAME damage as the 2nd charge (resulting in big damage and good feelings for all).

The third charge is isolated from all the fluent motion of the previous 2 charges (and sweeping slash). Isolated, it feels pretty alright, but it being the 3rd charge instead of some R2+triange+circle new super move kind of ruins the flow.

The first strike of the new charge attack does pitiful damage, the second strike does UNGODLY damage. But there’s no follow up swipe and getting to the 3rd charge requires (at best) spamming shoulder tackle awkwardly until you do it and (at worst/best for damage) doing ALL 3 charges back to back WITHOUT using the 2nd charge swipe and dedicating 25 seconds to this entire endeavor.

It just feels... not great. I think if it was a new super move that you could go directly into (like wyvern fire R2+Triange+Circle) it’d feel better simply because it’s got terrible flow with the other great sword attacks.

The weapon still feels alright, but it doesn’t feel as meaty as it used to and the new charge is kind of crap. The tackle’s cool. I like having options and the tackle is basically a free fluid motion attack to skip to whatever move you want to in your combo.

Sword & Shield: HOLY COW THEY MADE SNS FEEL SO MUCH DIFFERENT WITH MINIMAL CHANGES.

So basically the charge attack where you jump back and charge a jumping slash became an ACTUAL mounting attack and propels you into the air to hit again.

Really that one new move made SNS feel so much more aerial, mobile, and devastating. It's amazing.

Dual Blades: Feels like Dual Blades. Honestly I had to look up what was new because it feels just as simple as it always has. Hit the monster, activate demon mode, use the demon mode rapid slash combo. It does a lot of elemental/status so it's good. But it feels almost exactly the same as it used to to me, and the playstyle still isn't remotely interesting to me. It's fine/good. Not for me though.

Long Sword: HOLY COW LS GOT HYPE. LS was one of my first mains, but I fell out of favor of it in 4U/Gen. The new moves are so hype though, it's nuts. I built up to red and found out you can just SPAM the new "stab and anime slash" attack like crazy for like 40 seconds.

If you do that it's a little one note-y but it just feels so darn good. And the rest of the moveset is still pretty good so having a "rush and spam" phase doesn't feel like it ruins the rest of it. LS is just so hype to use now.

Hammer: Hammer got more flashy, and the power-charge buff that changes your combos into more flashy-higher-damage combos is pretty cool too. If anything I'm just glad it got more flashy because it makes it more interesting to new hunters. Hammer, once upon a time, was my main, and I don't feel like I see as many hammers now-a-days because everyone is busy shoving charge blade and insect glaive in my face.

I'm hopeful that the new "SPINNY AIR HAMMER SLAM" and other hammer gems will entice players to play hammer some more. I certainly enjoyed playing it more.

Hunting Horn: COOL! The new hunting horn is built around making songs much easier to stack and play in a way that lets you focus on hitting the monster without coordinating your pounding with song prep. It 'feels' like it naturally pushes horn users to actually hunt instead of feeling like they need to sit in the back like a bard (Newsflash, that's not how any weapon works, please stop sitting in the back yelling "I'm the support" that's not how horn works).

It pushes you to actually hunt, which should put a small dampening on "support horn" users and instead have people play the weapon more correctly.

That's good stuff, and it's really fun to boot! I almost made it my main, so it'll probably be my main melee in World.

Lance: They upgraded the charge attack, added a super shield defensive move, and added shield-dash and triple-injection-stab which suddenly made lance RIDICULOUSLY mobile in the right hands.

Surprising that the slowest moving weapon can become so mobile in a few upgrades. It's pretty interesting to see, and pretty fun to play (though I seem to get drunk on power and start shield dash triple stabbing like mad in a reckless and dangerous way).

Pretty darn cool.

Gunlance: THEY ADDED A HEAVY COMBO INTO PILE ATTACK AND THAT'S ALL WAS NECESSARY.

I *think* the quick reload didn't use to reload the entire clip? So maybe that's an upgrade? But really the addition of a heavy combo pile attack just made gunlance feel like a DPS hose. You just pour pain out of that thing, it's amazing.

Switch Axe: Switch Axe fell out of favor with the addition of Charge Blade, so in World they made Switch Axe like 10x as flashy as it used to be.

All in all, good additions,good tweaks, and now Switch Axe feels quite a bit better than it used to.

The infinite axe slap was made easier to access (from what I remember), the sword got a buff'd up mode that comes from repeated attacks, the elemental discharge can now pseudo-mount you to the monster for bonus damage, and the sword got some super flashy combos added.

All in all SA got some nice updates that make it a lot more fun to wield.

Charge Blade: I don't care.

Okay, the new things are nice. My first hunt was garbage because it's a little unintuitive to figure out how to power up your shield/sword outside of looking it up in the hunter notes (It 'makes sense' but it feels terrible the first few times).

The new additions are neat. Specifically, I like being able to power up my sword so that sword and shield mode becomes a viable option instead of just using Axe when I can and unloading phials constantly.

It feels pretty good like this. I still harbor terrible feelings towards Charge Blade simply because it came out overtuned intially and I had to deal with hundreds of hunts with CB users who don't know what the heck they are doing but since they seem to do big damage thanks to the elemental discharges and phials they think it's fine.

It got tedious, not as tedious as dealing with inexperienced "Vault vault vault vault" IG users, but still.

I lost the thread there so tl;dr, the additions are cool, I like powering up the sword, I hope we don't have another entire game where everyone plays CB poorly and refuses to use any other weapons.

Insect Glaive: That sure is IG.

Since 'styles' aren't a thing anymore, I'm glad IG got some more identity put into it thanks to the aerial 'puff' move and self propelled combos in the air.

Now only a few weapons are actively 'aerial' and IG deserves to be the 'most' aerial. They did a good job of it. No complaints.

Light Bowgun: The bowguns as a whole just feel so much better because they've been adjusted for controllers. Shields are more valuable and useful, aiming feels great, mobility is MILES above what it used to be.

LBG specifically, it benefits from all the upgrades, but I don't really like the new mines special ammo. I really hope there are other special ammos for LBG because I really, really don't like this one.

Stop shooting, run up, plant mines, back up and continue shooting? No thanks. I know some people like them so that's great! Just really throws me off my tempo to the point where I just stopped using them.

Heavy Bowgun: HOLY COW. So it benefits from all the same things as LBG which I admit I didn't go into but here's some of it.

All ammo is loaded at once instead of needing switched out between shots, mobility is godlike even for HBG, shields work better since you can move/aim independently, aiming feels better etc.

The special ammos feel great for HBG, though the sniper shot feels undertuned compared to the gatling gun. It does amazing damage, but it feels like it can't match/outdo the gatling and it's the harder special ammo to efficiently use?

The harder to maximize ammo can't reach a point that outdoes the easier ammo? That feels off.

HBG feels so good that it's going to be my first main in World, so that should say something about it. It's worth mentioning that a lot of this comes down to all the ammo types feeling more viable than they used to be.

HBG used to be PIERCE and only PIERCE, but now it honestly feels like anything is viable and seeing gunners use a plethora of options instead of just one sounds like it might become the norm.

Bow: Feels alright, I like the new super shot a ton. Otherwise it feels pretty normal, charge a shot and follow it up with a quick shot.

I still feel like bow shouldn't be the "go-to" link between ranged and melee, LBG and HBG feel so much better to me, but of course that's opinion.