Why I'd like to apologize to all HBG users... 

No worries man, it's been an eye-opening experience after actually trying to attempt what you did. I actually understand what you mean when you talk about the competitiveness of this weapon now! Keep up the hunting, the time and effort that you and other speedrunners put in to perfect their craft is appreciated.

I believe one of the interesting thing's about Bowguns that has gotten more and more ignored as time has went on has been resource management. LBG and HBG have been their since the first game but think MH2Dos 2nd gen. Their weren't farms back then so ALL ammo crafting materials were supposed to be gathered or bought (only the level 1/2 ammos) so as an average player while you were making the decision to shoot things from far away you were also thinking about just how much you're willing to sacrifice depending on the monster. This later evolved into something more time-friendly in 3rd and 4th gen. Now the management came from during the hunt rather than after. Do you want a combining skill or bring combo books? You can only carry 8 ammos and you also have to carry crafting supplies. Sadly because you only really build for one ammo this became more of a necessity than a decision between comfort and damage. World I believe has one of the best modern implementations of management. Because of that games Bowgun Mod system it was not only fun but also thoughtful to hit that balance of what you want and what you need. Unlike Rise; in World you sometimes had to live with bad recoil and deviation and work around that (because no easy to slot in armor skills) which was actually fun but you could also play chill mode stay far away at the cost of damage. Sadly World HBG was horribly balanced so going the full damage route made everything else kinda insignificant. Balancing has always been one of the main problems of bowguns despite them not being easy weapons to use at all.

@@KazuYuuu this is the best RU-vidr apology video, absolutely groundbreaking

i completely understand your frustration as well, i dont speedrun but i get pretty angry sometimes when people say bowguns are no skill. ive honestly been a few steps away from leaving a server a few times because of this. i may not speedrun unlike you, but i still work hard to get my stuff and farm my ammos in as little time physically possible. and above all else, its really fun and i have quite a passion for gunning (especially with cluster bombs on HBG this time around, these imo are the most addicting alongside wyvern shots and sticky) so its only natural that ive also gotten angry a number of times, and seeing a speedrunner whos way better than me get spit on like this i just find that much more distasteful i gun more casually and ive still gotten angry at junk like this so i know your frustration too well

Very epic point Deva and Kazu!

I like to say that while blademasters *fight* the monster, gunners *hunt* them. Gunner make ample preparation so they can get through the hunt with minimal risk and maximum reward. A hunt gone well will not leave their prey the chance to fight back, since it will rip them to shred in seconds. This is not the epic duel between man and monster blademaster like to fantasize about, this is mankind playing dirty against a foe that could one-shot them.

In Multiplayer, they deal crazy amount of damage, like literally

I think Souls games having not-entirely-consensual PvP elements might have something to do with that at least lmao. But yeah for a purely PvE game like MH, there's little reason for vitriol against weapon mains. Doesn't stop it from ever happening, though. Rise Long Sword in particular got so much verbal hatred that they neutered a lot of its strongest moves after the expansion, something I bet wasn't much appreciated by LS players who minded their own business exclusively hunting solo and offline anyway

@@AsuraTheBass I don't condone the LS having been nerfed somewhat, but I wouldn't empathize too much with LS users... Just look at Gunlance, now that's painful. LS, for the past 2 games has been a blessed weapon through and through. Nothing lasts forever, boys ;)

I dunno about that, you saw how little damage those piercing element shots started doing when Valstrax was allowed to stand up and enrage? A lot of speedruns operate on a "rich get richer" kind of snowball where more damage = more topples = even more damage. Forcing Valstrax into two topples with softened hitzones before letting it enrage seems pretty crucial to chew away most of its health in the first 30 seconds. After that, you totally lose the advantage, and possibly control of the fight. At least melee weapons with big burst options can still loop his chest explosion ad infinitum.

@@PerfectDarkly i agree a gs can always stagger a monster to oblivion regardless of were he is. it's mutch more versatile for the average runner, i am currently on valstrax urgent quest and as a main hammer (wich is shitty in sunbreak) i started playing LBG, and had fun for a like 20 hunts or so without failing, still learning the gun and making gear for it but when valstrax came i got 1 shot 2 times in little to no time so i aborted and took a break. Try playing as gunner normally grinding solo if u're blademaster, it's not as ez as it looks.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the video! It really is scary being a gunner and trying not to cart at all in 5-10 minute hunt. I'm pretty good with tackling through roars but positioning is difficult and tackling through monster attacks is hardly worth it most of the time.. So even if my DPS is much higher gunning I have far less survivability than with LS, which has at least 3 different answers for any possible attack a monster can throw at us xD

@@KazuYuuu there’s always 2 answer for any attack from monster as a gunner. First is to jump out of the way and second is to just let go of your controller, make peace with yourself and accept your fate. Which make it kinda fun for me. There’s always something about being a glass cannon that I really enjoy.

RIP Medium Bowgun.

It should also be mentioned that monster aggro prioritizes both players that are doing the highest DPS, and players who are using ranged weapons. So not only are you more vulnerable, but you also tend to take the brunt of the monster’s aggression compared to melee teammates, especially if you’re playing well enough to output good damage

Depends. Granted I'm still going through Rise, so I have less experience with that, but in World and IB I did blademaster for both campaigns. I then got into trying out HBG in base World tempered elder farming (which was the whole endgame at that point). HBG completely trivialised those fights through massive status application and KO + massive damage from cluster mortars. It absolutely took less skill than blademaster weapons as the whole point was that you just CC the monster for the whole fight, and it never got a chance to move. I also hated HBG as gunner players would consistently use clusters, knock their other 2-3 blademaster teammates away from the monster and lower overall team dps hugely. Iceborne came out, I went through all the stuff again as a blademaster, then started messing around with Zinogre HBG. You could either go no shield and do easily 30-50% more damage than with a melee weapon, or go shield, and do the same dps as you would trying you heart out with a melee weapon, but it's absolutely fucking braindead and takes no effort. I then dropped it again for being boring and started experimenting after I'd finished Fatalis. At this point I was much better as a player, and I tried out special scope no shield, max damage setups. It is OBSCENE. I was thinking 'oh I'm a squishy gunner, It's going to be hard to stay alive', but in practice, I did so much fucking damage that I was just chain staggering monsters with partbreaks, flinch thresholds, and completing hunts in around 3 mins generally iirc (which was very close to blademaster speedrunner times). People also went on and on about how hard special scope is to use. I imagine it's rough on controller, and if you aren't used to shooters, but I was primarily an FPS gamer for years, so tracking monsters and flicking to their very large heads was pretty trivial for me.The one caveat is that I didn't use HBG on either Fatalis or Alatreon. I couldn't be fucked to make the elemental setups and I was more concerned with getting good at them using other weapons at the time. The other thing to consider is that these were both without practice at HBG. For any other weapon that's not a bowgun, even bow, you have to learn combos. With melee ones, you have to learn which move you can fit where and it's a dance with the monster that takes a lot of time to get decent at, then even more to perfect. With bowguns, you click the button and do damage. It takes out so much of what takes time to learn, so that mixed with the insane DPS meant I was able to smash my melee blademaster performance with essentially zero effort, where comparatively I had been playing with melee weapons and trying to improve for about 7-800h. I just walked in with a bowgun and immediately invalidated all that practice, outside of learning the monster movesets. The two places this doesn't entirely apply is during story progression, as some weapons simply get shafted for a long time. A good example is Bow in World and IB, it was usually pretty shit in the story, then lategame you got access to stamina management skills, actual builds where you could fit ele attack, and access to crit element, then they suddenly became broken as fuck. Depending on the selection, there could well be points in the story where your damage output isn't high enough to slap monsters around, but with access to lategame gear in World and IB, it was absolutely THE most broken, no skill way to play the game. Now, in the context of speedruns, none of this matters. You could use the easiest or hardest weapon. The difficulty is in being better at it than other people using the same weapon, as there are categories. The only thing that impacts that is the skill floor and ceiling of the weapon. I don't know enough about the scripting of runs, let alone HBG to comment at all on that, I'm purely talking about more casual play.

@@DawnSentinel iceborne is a completely different story tho

While I think the skill floor to do a lot of damage with ranged weapons is generally much lower than for melee weapons, I do agree that it takes some level of skill with ranged weapons to play effectively because you do take a hell of a lot more damage than melee users if you make a mistake

what pisses me off is the philosophy behind the new dumbass silkbinds, yeah use 2 wirebugs to put 2 hoops to shoot through to buff pierce hbg the most boring one note playstyle in the whole game, yeah nice very fun very engaging, such wasted potential. I wanted to get into hbg but I'm not even gonna bother if this is the direction hbg is going.

Its more just a lot of dying until you can effectively move with it out. Then steadily becomes a focus of how and when to position for hitzones. I vastly prefer spread for versatility and still very high damage. Hitzones are generally easier to manage but elemental forces you into a very narrow playstyle. It's satisfying for awhile but becomes tedious when you factor in ammo crafting, needing near perfection to deal the full dps potential, health drain, bloodlust, it all just makes the process tedious. Managing health is not fun when you dont run the quest perfectly

I recommend watching speed runners, it'll open up your eyes on a lot of the nuanced mechanics and strategies hunters use. There's different youtubers for each weapon, so it depends on what you main but that's a good place to start

@@KazuYuuu thanks for the tip!

EBB Rajang armor, it's on nexus mods for MH Rise

@@KazuYuuu thank you!

Exactly. For me playing HBG in Sunbreak is equivalent to me play DS genre of game.

Players are complaining for Gunner weapons dealing insane dps and uptime in newer MH titles. For those who were playing older MH titles, a lot of players were complaining on Great Swords and Lances for stunlocking monsters to death.

One thing people don't take into account when saying crouching shot is useless (not saying you did but it is a popular thought atm) is that you do not have to reload for a crouching shot, so it can be higher Burst DPS during a knockdown to fire your bullets down to 1 in the magazine then go into a full crouching shot volley - delaying the reload and pumping out more shots during a downed window of opportunity.

@@urm9m703 that's a useful tip I didn't know about!

Turns out HBG is the strongest Weapon period followed by Bow and then LBG, I think player bias shifts what people think, but raw data doesn't lie. Greatsword and Swax are the strongest Blademaster weapons as well. In normal play I think they're all about even, in multi-player a Magmadron takes about 6 to 10 mins, and offline at takes me at most 2.

Players in new MH titles were complaining for gunner weapons having insane dps and uptime. In older MH titles, a lot of players were complaining with Great Swords and Lances for being able to stunlock monsters to death although HBG is objectively the fastest killing weapon already.

Did you start with World or Rise? I ask because most what you're talking about really only makes sense in the context of those two games. Prior to World gunners were op, but the animation commitment definitely increased the skill floor(absolutely no shooting while moving). The fifth gen reworks to gunner weapons also simplified stuff like ammo to the extreme. Prior to that different levels of ammo were better in certain situations. Although, Pierce did tend to win out over all other ammo types in most respects(save cost). Gunning was also a lot more expensive, because combines for ammo weren't so easy to get.

@@theoperator3712 Yes I don’t know much about gunning in the old games, but in World and Rise they are pretty overpowered. The hbg can still be pretty dangerous to use though, I wouldn’t want to use it when going through the story where you don’t have access to better gear to mitigate the mobility issue, but certain weapons like safi’s burstcannon were downright broken because you can use such a powerful shield to mitigate all damage and still delete monsters in minutes.

Super late reply but you arent an average player (speedruners are different) . I also play multiple weapons . What I noticed with ranged is that I either dominate a monster or get clapped so hard its not even funny. With melee you can out heal the damage if you struggle with some specific target. With ranged , in lot of cases you just die before you can heal . Ranged are the definition of a glass cannon , high damage but you get one shot by harder targets. Speedruners dont get hit so you dont care about that part , average players do and thats where the balance comes in (even if the balancing is indeed not great)

Less skill? Guess you're a LS bot

@@FrostThorn when u dont read and assume someone as LS bot. Lmao i play all weapon with over 3k hunt during the time of post, git gud kid.

@@OtoriDaisuke oooft only 3k you're definitely new to the franchise probably started in world, 3k is literally nothing 🤣

@@FrostThorn yup, u r either illiterate or troll replying. Go back to school kid, good luck getting more reply kid.

That's a good point, IG and CB were pretty insane when they first came out and balance between the weapons varies between the MH games. Guns are really strong in Sunbreak but that wasn't always the case in previous titles so we should be a little more lenient when it comes to balance or a lack of it xD

back in the days ranged weapons had their own armor sets with half the defense compared to meele armors.

yeah, if you're a bad gunner you get punished a lot more than as a blademaster

It should also be mentioned that monster aggro prioritizes both players that are doing the highest DPS, and players who are using ranged weapons. So not only are you more vulnerable, but you also tend to take the brunt of the monster’s aggression compared to melee teammates, especially if you’re playing well enough to output good damage

@@daltongarrett3393 indeed, when I hunt with my buddies I'm always having to reposition and dodge. HBG especially.

Why does it matter though, it's a PVE game 😂

I'm not sure how speedrunners feel about mods like that which affect the randomness factors in the game, I guess it is similar to using a charm editor for a god charm where you save yourself a lot of time and remove an unnecessary element of RNG in the game. Personally I wouldn't be against it but I'm sure their are runners who pride themselves on playing vanilla or just on switch. Honestly I hardly hunt with randoms since I'm fortunate enough to have friends to hunt with, but I have seen a few "wood tier" players who literally pull single digit DPS in a hunt (which is kind of impressive in how low that is) if you placed MH players in tiers, I think gunners come out way on top for bronze/silver tier players who have a general idea of what they're doing and managed to pull through Sunbreak by themselves. For wood/iron tier players who really are just headless chickens running around, gunners are actually be a lot worse since they won't have proper armor skills, don't know hit zones, get 1 shot, and will probably triple cart the hunt! Using HBG/LBG without the proper recoil down and reload speed is like using longsword without quick sheath 3, it's night and day worth of difference.

tf are you talking about lol

@@pumpkin7446 zinogre hbg

​@@pumpkin7446the Loyal Thunder glutton build that ran 3 shield mods with guard 5. Legit had 12 shots of spread ammo that combined with Spare Shot and the Impact Mantle meant you could guarantee a death via stunlocks before the mantle ran out

@@vikingvarn4919 I wasn't clear. My bad. I know the gun/strategy. My problem is: 'We dislike gunner players because of a design made by the game developers,' always has been and always will be the weakest, and most immature gaming mindset to me. If you separate yourself from other community members (in a PVE game no less..) because of playstyle, it's your right. But flaming other players for weapon choice will always make someone sound like an idiot imo. Or at best childish

@@andreacalcagno1991 okay and

Any of the non-gunner weapons; GL, Lance, HA, LS, CB, SA, etc.

This video is basically giving out common sense advice: Don't hate the player. Hate the game. But at the same time, if you don't care about speedrunning, why do you care about DPS discrepancies? Just fight monster with teammate. Win fight together, etc lol Being rude to other hunters for weapon choices is just immature and pathetic. (not saying you are or have been, but I think this is what the video is addressing)

@@pumpkin7446 I care for game balance reasons, obviously. It's ridiculous that a weapons like Lance, Gunlance, Hammer, Hunting Horn, and now Longsword are weak as hell and put players using those weapons at a disadvantage in terms of questing, while the gunner weapons get to just point and click monsters out of existence. Longsword was the strongest melee weapon and got nerfed HARD, meanwhile the gunner weapons were always stronger than it and are STILL the strongest, no contest. If Insect Glaive were suddenly the strongest weapon and speedrunners used it to get the fastest times, I wouldn't bat an eye because that's just what they do, but if the 2nd and 3rd strongest weapons were nerfed instead while weaker weapons got 0 attention n a major update, then yeah I'm going to wonder what the fuck is going on.

Bruh

Melee is skill less most thing can just one shot you as gunner one mistake normally ends up in a cart. Melee has so much room for error

Stickies were nerfed post-sunbreak, so it actually does take skill investment (dango slugger/bomber, slugger/dereliction blue scroll) to do decent KO damage and you would lose out on big DPS to fit that in. On the other hand, you can do a lot of damage (100-200 DPS) just doing elemental pierce and shooting in a line through the monster without aiming particularly well- but in reality to pull off speedrunner level DPS (which is 500+ damage PER second throughout an entire hunt) you need to be insanely accurate and extremely consistent with shot placement. I figured that out after trying to do it myself xD

@@KazuYuuu I haven't tried much HBG in Sunbreak but Sticky and pierce ammo have been OP since MHW.

At least you admit you're an asshole. Maybe in the future you'll grow a bit. Signed, a Melee Weapon main.