MHW - Why △△○○? (SnS Combo Stuff)

Channel:

Invertex

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Published on February 20, 2018 6:57:28 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvOoVUOpQYE

Game:

Monster Hunter: World (2018)

Duration: 1:20

10,180 views

110

Please read the description too, there's important info here. Mostly if you want to understand why people suggest the combos that often crop up.

tl;dr - (Rising Slash (R2+△ or Roll, △) or Spiral Slash - Thrust(Direction+△△)), △, △, ○, ○, repeat.

So to get right to the point, this is a lot of inaccurate math to mostly prove stuff that everyone already knows. The footage I used for timing is old beta footage that I recorded 2 months ago for a SnS analysis video I never got around to doing. Due to that I can't confirm if I was inputting combos as quickly as possible, I also don't do each attack in a vacuum so it doesn't really accurately display cancel timings and all of that. I counted 0 as a frame for some moves and not for others. Also Spiral Slash was hitting the pillar, there's not significant hitstop in this game but there's probably still a frame or two. All in all it's a giant mess. But that's okay cause the actual number doesn't really matter.

If you really care about all that text I throw up in the first few seconds, use Youtube's playback speed function to slow things down. It's mostly just to give myself a base to argue from.

The Motion Values I used were from https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/7v0pp3/mhworld_motion_values_compiled/

Damage formula is the same old Monster Hunter damage formula, 300 was an arbitrary raw value based off what endgame builds with buffs get to. Blue sharpness is a lot more common than white in this game as well. 45 is the cutoff for a weak spot, but I just used 40 since I'm lazy.

Now I know what people are going to be saying. 9.36 DPS translates to 540 damage over the course of a minute! That's a lot!

Yes it is, but that assumes a minute of uptime. Any downtime doesn't really count for this. Also we're ignoring element, which (to simplify things) does a flat damage per hit. So you could calculate each combo's hits/min and use an example case for element damage to calculate a gap for that. Then add up the raw and element damage and you'll get some true theoretical DPS gap -
which is going to be negligible.

But the real reason that none of what I said above matters is how the combos work for SnS. Essentially you can string most actions into a light combo into a heavy combo, and a heavy combo into a roundslash. But from there your only options are either.

1. Backhop
2. Spiral Slash
3. Pause and reset to neutral

Spiral Slash is new to MHW. This is the major new tool. In previous games you'd pause for about half a second to reset your combo, then start a new one. In MHW you can use Spiral Slash to eliminate all down time and get more hits in. It's pretty much universally more powerful than doing nothing. But since Spiral Slash has a slightly lower MV/s, you want to use it as little as possible. So you extend your combo string with Light to Heavy.

This is exactly where △△○○ Spiral Slash repeat comes from.

Roundslash was not used in previous games simply as it had an exceptionally long recovery that you could not cancel into anything besides a roll or backstep. As a reminder charged backstep wasn't good in older games. This meant that the only time it was optimal was if you were going to dodge immediately after using it. In this game, you can now cancel it with Spiral Slash. This means it's actually more usable, except the damage output is more or less on par with all your other options so it doesn't really matter if you use it or not.

Now I didn't bother calculating 2 general moves. Charged Backstep and the Shield combo. Charged Backstep is by far the best damage, to the point that it's not really worth demonstrating. The Shield Combo has lower damage than the standard heavy combo, less reach, and generally should only be used to secure KOs. I didn't include it cause I got lazy after editing the first 6 seconds.

As for when you backhop, I'll paste a comment I made on another video. In scenarios where you can somewhat consistently land all hits on the monster's weak spot while not getting punished for the long animation lock (due to being in the air) - it's really good. As a note Rocksteady more or less gives you a giant 90 second window for this.

As for why you use Rising Slash, it's just a fast extra hit that does decent damage and also comes out after most actions anyways (like a roll). It was used more in older games, but you pause and go into this when you want to keep your position as hitting the weak spot is more important than getting more Spiral Slashes off.

Advancing Slash and rolling into Rising Slash should just be used when you need to reposition.

But more or less, as long as you keep hitting the monster you'll be in pretty good shape. In nearly all practical situations adding or dropping attacks changes next to nothing. In fact in old games you'd sometimes leave out attacks purely to keep timing in check, watch some of Inomate's Zinogre solos if you want a perfect example of that.

Song is Mind Mapping (ag Remix) by ag.

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