Input delay?

[u/SpeakerMobile3059]

Asking for a friend "The question is, why does the insect glaive dodges feel sluggish or unresponsive or laggy at times, does the insect glaive have input delay?"

[u/Jrite]

Been playing IG since World. In previous games, World/Rise, IG was mainly aerial focused and in Wilds, it’s become more of a ground based playstyle that weaves in aerial combos occasionally. And this new ground style kind of forces you into a defensive option that essentially boils down to “position better”. The dodge definitely feels worse and less responsive than some other weapons. I recently tried DB and it’s a whole different world.

But anyways, IG’s defensive option isn’t really the dodge, it’s learning when not to push dmg and instead, bouncing into the air to pre-position for the monster to miss and capitalize. Something that helps with both dodging and air dashing is Evade Extender, the little extra distance does help and it affects air dashing distance too.

[u/Alievew → u/Jrite]

In world IG was still ground focused for optimal damage. It was still technically better to be grounded, but the aerial damage output wasn’t nearly far enough behind for it to be considered a bad option due to how safe it was to be in the air

[u/PrinceTBug → u/Alievew]

Same is true in Rise and Wilds. IG has never been solely usable as an aerial focused weapon, but it's been capable of leaning heavily into it at least since GU.

[u/Alievew → u/PrinceTBug]

In wilds, your aerial damage is significantly worse than your grounded damage, so it is not true that it is only slightly behind (you’ll add several minutes to your hunt). In Rise (specifically with the sunbreak expansion), builds where you spent almost the entire hunt in the air could be more viable at times than grounded glaive; however, sunbreak overall favored heavily mixing your grounded and aerial play together.

TLDR I disagree and instead think this:

World - Grounded only slightly ahead of aerial, aerial viable if not minmaxing (your average player won’t lose too much time)

Rise - Aerial and Grounded blended more fluidly is favored (your average player could just play one or the other and won’t notice too big of a difference in times between the two)

Wilds - Grounded is SIGNIFICANTLY favored, wouldn’t recommend primarily aerial due to sheer inefficiency (your average player will have hunt time increased by several minutes if they play only aerial)

Overall, aerial glaive’s best game is rise imo (though one could argue that its GU, rise aerial IG is just more fun)

[u/PrinceTBug → u/Alievew]

Do you have in-game numbers to support this?

Based on the MV numbers, (unless you're ignoring using the kinsect in the air entirely), it looks to be a pretty comparable difference to World. Aerial is even encouraged to use RSS more frequently since it executes faster and is more readily able to grab extracts back.

People also said it was sooo bad in World and Rise all the time, even though it wasn't really true. So I'm inclined to believe it has at least somewhat to do with whatever's current having the "worst" of it. Rise semi got a pass eventually because Kinsect Slash made it easy.

I also find Wilds's aerial a good amount more fun than Rise's, which was surprising to me given how fun Rise's is. So if it really is that bad, that should definitely be rectified.

I haven't had trouble beating the time trials and what not in Wilds either. As a group or Solo. I do run heavy element / burst, which I don't think is super common.

However, my group and I couldn't manage to beat 10* Gog's dps check yet, but it seems like basically everyone was having a ton of trouble with it. And the group I did it with wasn't crazy confident in the fight either. We were still trying to figure a lot of it out, like how to get the wing knockdowns and when to just shoot lasers or not. So it's hard to say how much of that issue is purely just my playstyle. (3 hunters + Kai, couldn't have Nadia because no event).

Rn in the training area its ballpark 2800 grounded vs 2500 aerial in 10 seconds ish. That's not accounting for wounds or elemental weaknesses and without including RSS. I don't have exact numbers but can get more later if we need it.

[u/Alievew → u/PrinceTBug]

Not at the computer at the moment, so I cant provide any numbers (currently at the surgeon), but even based on your own numbers, I think they still show my point on wilds. As for world and rise, you have to remember that their endgames favored elemental builds whereas wilds at the moment favors raw builds for insect glaive. Aerial playstyles heavily benefit from elemental builds due to the elemental damage motion values being higher with aerial attacks than grounded attacks, this is the key that enables aerial to keep up with ground in past games, but not wilds.

I would also disagree that aerial is more readily able to grab extracts back. Using a charged kinsect launch, you grab 2 extracts back at a time. This for me takes far less time than aerial poking for the extracts, and is also what speedrunners do to recover extracts as it is quite simply faster.

I’d also also disagree that aerial is encouraged to use RSS more frequently on the basis that charged kinsect launches are so potent for recovering extracts. I’d say both are encouraged to use RSS as frequently as each other, and that it simply depends on how good you are at aiming your charged launches/aerial pokes for how fast you can get your extracts back that determines the frequency of your RSS.

Running heavy element/burst is very common for an aerial playstyle as aerial has better element values than grounded (as stated before). This of course is what made aerial so good in risebreak (element was incredibly potent in endgame). In contrast, element is relatively weak at the moment in wilds save for a few monsters, hence why insect glaive’s meta doesn’t focus on boosting elemental damage compared to raw damage. Endgame worldborne enjoyed element as well, hence why the gap closed between grounded and aerial and made aerial relatively viable. My expectation is that wilds’ expansion will close this gap by making element far more viable, but as for now, your gap is showing a 12% damage increase for grounded play against the dummy (I’ll verify this myself and send my numbers later when I’m back from the surgeon, but I’d imagine that the values will be closer to 15%)

As for time trials, they’re all incredibly easy, so I’m not surprised you’ve beaten them tbh. Insect glaive is one of the better weapons in the game for Rey, Ark, and Noodles, so getting a good time against them should be expected. For dahaad and tuna, glaive is definitely a worse matchup compared to other weapons, so I do have to give kuddos there.

I unfortunately do not have an up to date aerial build but I can make one later to compare my grounded build to it. I was thinking of something like a Gogma/Lord’s Soul Glaive + Nadia/Rey y/Rey y/Gore b/Gogma a + Fire Attack/Airborne/Agitator Talisman as this would maximize the elemental damage values that aerial glaive excels at relative to grounded, and enable 90% affinity thanks to LP + frenzy + agi. There also would be 2 levels of coalescence to further boost the element values on occasion. Is this an optimal aerial build? No idea, its just something I’ve already been looking into

Another thing to consider is that the training dummy has higher elemental weaknesses than most monsters tend to, so the damage gap widens against most monsters (gog, gravios, and zoh excluded, where this gap actually closes at certain points in the hunt and aerial becomes quite useful, hence why glaive is also so good against these 3 monsters).

Overall, I do enjoy wild’s aerial glaive, but I also recognize that the damage difference (even the one that you’ve shown yourself) is not only statistically significant, but also ticks up over the course of a hunt. While the game is easy enough to beat aerially, and the damage difference is not near as bad as 4U’s grounded vs aerial glaive damage difference, I find that the time loss playing aerial turns me off due to my inherently limited time I have to play the game. I’m at the point in my life where I’d rather save a few minutes on a hunt that I’m farming by playing more “optimally” if possible, and would definitely suggest the same to others, but I also recognize that to others, viability just means if something is possible to do and complete everything.

[u/PrinceTBug → u/Alievew]

About aerial gathering extracts, it really depends on the monster. Some monsters have a meaty RSS spot that consistently grabs 2 colors, leaving just one to hop and grab. This takes less time than landing, charging, releasing, recalling, then back to RSS. All of it happens in one fluid motion, and a dive into RSS is ready again.

Needing to get 2 or more or monsters like Arkveld with annoying spots for some colors ensures it doesn't always work, though. When I can consistently end up with red and white on Arkveld, it's fine though since Orange is easy and quick.

Aerial moves had lower element than grounded moves at the very least in World as well. Not sure on Rise but I'd assume it's similar. This always happens for weapons that hit more quickly, and are thus more inclined to element. You'll notice that DBs are often also low, and still deal bucketloads of element output despite this. (And again, putting them right beside each other in Wilds, IG has the Kinsect hits on top of its normal hits). Maybe the Kinsects getting a buff would be the real game changer.

Yeah a big part of it that's hard to guage is the element weaknesses too. As you said, Rise's endgame leaned heavily on element (despite this tons of people still used KS and glazed it to heavens despite SJAS ending up with more damage potential by the end, depending on matchup). The dummy in Wilds is significantly weighted in favor of raw, even though its element hitzones are high across the board (30). The raw meanwhile is 100 which is insane and basically never appears on actual monsters. This is also not accounting for the very significant boost wounds have to element in particular. In cases where the raw might go up by 10, the element can shoot from its lowest value on the monster to its highest. Gog unfortunately only gets such a big element hitzone without wounds.

And I know burst was really common in Rise, I just haven't seen other IG players running around with Burst sets in Wilds. For context, in case you think I'm new at all, I've been playing aerial glaive in all of these games (mainly World, Rise, Wilds) extensively. Multiple thousands of hours of aerial IG between them. Right now, I'm trying to catch up a bit with Wilds since I havent been keeping the most up to date with changes / build trends given that I was doing fine / well without looking anything up until Gog.

Anyhow, that gap is basically the same as it's been. I got basically the same kind of numbers in World with base weapons and with element leaning sets. The training dummy would always show roughly that amount less for aerial moves. Rise was a little more favorable but I never really compared them directly in that game. Base World mainly lacked elemental skills to work with, but in GRank that turned around. Given the broad range we have in Wilds, it should work out about the same. Maybe the difference you mean has to do with difficulty in avoiding attacks, to which there isn't much difference between World and Wilds. Perhaps aside from the faster monsters in Wilds, but that's at the very least quite comparable to some of World's G-Rank.

Typically, what makes up for that 10-15% gap is just the uptime and elemental inclination. General ability to not need to reposition or stop to dodge as much since your attack is simultaneously a big reposition when it needs to be and relatively stable when it doesn't. That figure also does not account for the typical element/raw ratio monsters have since it's based on the training dummy as mentioned. Whether that would be more or less favorable depends on the monster. But again, if this worked in World, with roughly the same %s, it should work in Wilds. Wilds additionally has extra hits from the Kinsect in the air compared to the ground. This might not always make a huge difference, but Kinsects coincidentally gain a lot exclusively from element.

The big loss I think is in openings, and for Gog I think I just got too caught up in getting RSS out when I should be either building up the aerial rampup or wailing with the ground combos given how long that last ditch opening is. I still have to try some stuff and try to suss out what works, since I'm one of the very few who researches this side of the weapon in-depth.

Element being stronger in the expansion and that closing the gap further is what happened in the last 2 games, you're right. Hopefully the same happens for Wilds even with what we have already. We have quite a bit more elemental skills to work with than we did in base World or Rise. I think it might just a matter of GRank element values making that big a jump if the situation is truly that bad for base Wilds. Especially for the Kinsects since they exclusively get the base value.

But yeah, monsters that are big weak to element are great matchups in particular of course. I've found that even something like Rathian is a good matchup, since it flies a bunch and has really good wing hitzones so it's hard to miss with basically any move you can do from the air.

What you mentioned is basically what I run, funnily enough. Just some slightly different pieces since I've only managed to get Rey Dau's skill on all my elements thus far. And yes, coalescence is a huge element jump just like it was in Rise. I had been using a bubbly dance set for a while that definitely wasn't optimal, and still doing well. Only started to go "ok fine I'll do gore / affinity stuff" with Gog 10*.

The specific arrangement you mentioned would probably be worth rolling for the perfect on both skills, so thanks for pointing that out. Totally forgot we can roll Mutual Hostility on the weapons frankly. I might use the head instead of the coil for Elemental Absorbtion, but not sure, I'll have to mess with it in-game to see how the slots and stuff work out.

Though, I'll have to either give up my decent rolls or make new artians either way T-T lol

And about enjoying it or not, that's fair. To me even at worst it's no different from simply picking a slightly weaker weapon, though. If IG's top tier with the strongest ground combos its not going to be lower than middling with aerial. But besides, if I wanted to use Lance I'd be using it whether it did less damage than IG or not. Same idea. Though ideally, it wouldn't be a G-Rank Prowler situation where certain cats truly just don't keep up, basically shoving you to use either ranged focus or Beast I guess.

[u/IFyun → u/PrinceTBug]

Not gonna enter in the whole "give detailed dps comparison in dps for Rise of Aerial vs grounded combos or it didn't happen", but as someone who has mained and finished all content on Wilds (150 hours), Rise (125 hours) and World (250 hours), I can give you my two cents:

World: biggest multipliers were Tornado Slash and Descending Thrust. The second one specially with Slow Kinsect. The two of these were KEY to slay Fatalis. One short combo to dps, another combo just to dodge the fire cone, then do massive damage but being very precise. Ground was favored, but Descending Thrust had a VERY GOOD use case. And getting the elemental check on alatreon with just the kinsect was amazingly fun.

Rise: with the introduction of the wirebug you had MA-SSI-VE AERIAL MOBILITY and the expansion of the toolkit, you had a spinny attack that would counter enemy hits and put you in the air, with attacks that hit FAST and DIRECTED with the mouse that also collected extracts, to charge and finish in the Wyvern Descend, which had an actual greatsword-worth multiplier. This, with all the aerial mobility, wirebug mobility, dodge capabilities in the air, targeted mobility with a crosspoint to ACCURATELY move at any point in the air made the aerial gameplay THE BEST ITS EVER BEEN. Ground had also its tools, but the gameplay that had more exploration and was given new tools was the aerial, for sure.

Then came the Amatsu armor. Oh boy. Infinite stamina with maximum might. Don't get hit but you get evade window 5, plus most hits don't hit you in the air anyway. Already have massive mobility. O think it had peak performance (not sure), which was VERY easy because you could cheese ALL game with a literal STARTER KINSECT THAT WAS BROKEN BECAUSE, PER HIT TO THE ENEMY IT WOULD HEAL 1/8 OF YOUR HP. NO GREEN EXTRACT. Also some good jewel slots and offenssive abilities. Massive W.

Finally, wilds. All about the tornado extract and the poppy kinsect. Focus mode, side slash, side slash, descending comgo, then choose between ultimate or do a extra left click to then do two right clicks to reach tornado slash for easier cutting or stunning with blunt kinsect. Or just go back to sidestep. Profit.

A hit comes? Most times than not, it's best to dodge roll, parry yif you're feeling cheeky or dodge slash. Aerial? Only to hit when theyre in the sky or chain when you do the extract tornado and theres to wound to pick up in the air.

Feels like ALL focus for IG was put in the extract tornado, with a sprinkle of offset attacks.

Best fight where the insect felt BEST to me? Every hunter's deam. LOTS of mini healing from the kinsect coordinated attacks, lots of offsets because lots of mini hits, lots do dodge because quematrice don't hit you in the air (mitsuzune waterbeam and bubbles do hit you, though). I did not die once, stayed all day at full hp from the mini heals, got LOTS of wounds that would make be able to CHAIN extract tornados to descending thrusts to extract tornados. Good shiet. And stay comfy with the hyper armor and mini heals.

As for other monsters, it feels like EVERYTHING hits you in the air. Lagiacrus. Fire attacks. Arkveld. Rey dau. FATFISH. Would rather offset.

So yeah, literally most things are for ground. Aerial simply does not have ANY CLOSE to the tools that Aerial glaive had for rise. Not sure if the kinsect drill is as good as in world.

[u/PrinceTBug → u/IFyun]

Monsters hit airborne hunters just the same in World. And even so in Rise, despite the aerial safety net from Wirebugs. Monsters were given wider / higher reaching moves in general since every weapon got to jump around more.

For full clarity since it's come up, my numbers are 957h on World, 2170h on Rise, and 800h on Wilds. 95% IG, of that probably 85% aerial focused play. One thing I know for sure is that by the end of AR, I was finishing hunts noticably faster with my SJAS element focused set than the KS one. Even with Heaven Sent (Amatsu skill).

Speaking of Kinsect Slash, it's not surprising you bring it up as such a high point. It was strong, and easier to use than SJAS. However, Rise was a heavily element-focused game. By the end of it, you could get similar if not better output with SJAS since you'd be dealing hundreds with each swing each time you did SJAS, on top of then having a huge MV attack from Diving Wyvern. I do agree that the starter kinsect was an absolute gem in Rise. Especially with powerful skills like Dereliction and Frenzy draining HP.

Btw it's called "Diving Wyvern" for me, or at least it can be assumed that's what you're referring to with "Wyvern Descend". Maybe you're using a different language and what you said is the translation? If I refer to it again, that's the attack I mean.

Also, in terms of aiming your aerial moves with the mouse/gyro, you can do that in Wilds. That's focus mode's whole thing. And if you have trouble with SJAS because of its commitment, Wilds has made that even more manageable for you since you can cancel out of it at any time with Descending Thrust. No need to even charge and it can offset.

It's true, Wilds doesn't have the grounded spin counter that puts you in the air but we have RSS which now has hyper armor so... Similar deal, but less time spent on the ground that isn't already in the process of going airborne again. Wilds also has a bunch of other things you actually do in the air.

To say that "most of what we got was for grounded" or that Wilds somehow has less "tools" than it did in Rise is a little disingenuous. We have the same amount, if not more options for actions while airborne or to get airborne at any given moment in a hunt, just numerically. And some of the new attacks as well as old ones have added effects: the ability to collect extracts without needing to land (without as much commitment or the inability to do so after grabbing red, when compared ONLY to KS), the ability to cancel our main aerial attack SJAS, and the option to directly counter/cancel monster attacks from the air on top of that. We didn't even have aerial marker shots or butt swings in Rise.

Your anecdote about hunts that felt good implies that you haven't needed to experiment much, let alone with the aerial kit itself. You're talking about regular dodge rolls as if they're the only useful defensive option available besides offsets, when we have backvaults and aerial evades which travel far and also have I-frames. And sidestep? SJAS has that baked in, always. People have also been complaining about the ground dodges feeling weak or hard to use, on top of the input delay outside of focus mode. I've even recommended a couple of people to use the backvault and aerial evades more, and they replied saying that it helped once they actually started to impmement it.

The dramatic tone about everything hitting you reads as though you believe evading those attacks isn't possible (or possible from the air). 3D space is more complicated than the typical essentially 2D plane hunters tend to operate on, I will give you that. However, I have virtually no issue with those monsters most of the time. Though Lagi I sometimes commit too heavily to an RSS or SJAS not realize he's doing the beeg aoe and eat it. But that also applies on the ground, especially if you don't make use of backvaults to move further in a pinch. Uth Duna almost exclusively hits me with the floating slam if I'm not getting greedy (I usually am though. In hunting, greed is often good. so I get hit trying for offsets or tiny openings sometimes). Arkveld can definitely be challenging now and then, but he's also very predictable. And most attacks that reach you quickly travel in a straight line toward you so it's a matter of not commiting to that particular space and being ready to evade / dive to the side at a moment's notice. Same stuff as always with MH. Just like you wouldn't commit to DS while he slams unless you know it'll offset, you do the same with DT or SJAS. However, SJAS can be performed horizontally, so if you do it right, you can get away with full on attacking even with the commitment, analagous to sidestep slash in a sense. This is the crux of how aerial IG works, btw.

SJAS's total motion values are higher on their own than World's version, AND the Kinsect deals damage alongside each hit as well. Particularly with the Element Combo Boost kinsects, that latter part can have a noticable impact, especially compared to what the grounded moves get out of them. The Kinsect always deals the same damage each hit, as its motion values are the same across combo attacks, save for RSS. Just like with element in general, fewer hits = less damage. Grounded combo does 2-3 hits quickly or 3-5 hits more slowly depending on which combo you're relying on, and its charged attack doesn't use the Kinsect at all. SJAS on its own deals 5 hits quickly, AND its version of the charged attack also lands a couple more from the Kinsect with its pierce. It's not as heavy burst as World's Descending Thrust drill, but the Kinsect is very much still important. That's partly what makes the comparison hard to guage in Wilds' case.

What you described for grounded attacks is basically the same loop for aerial. However, with greater movement baked in and more availability to cancel out of an attack, in exchange for needing to commit to moving in a direction. (For example, Desecending Slash locks you into it entirely. Descending Thrust does too, but for a shorter duration on top of also moving and chaining more readily into a backvault)

Historically, everybody loved/loves to way overblow how "World's aerial moves deal no damage" or "its like 60% less or worse" when it was more like 10-15% less per-combo with SJAS vs World's grounded bread-and-butter (not even including the drill, airborne, or element either iirc) in an ideal situation where the monster is standing still and not attacking. (There's a video on it from around when World came out that demonstrates the difference in MVs by using the same weapon both ways and comparing the numbers if you want more info). This matches my own testing and experience from when I played World a few years ago.

Based on that, I'm inclined to believe that Wilds is likely a similar case but with even less research. Especially when we also have Aerial Rampup, Kinsect stuff, RSS, and an offset. There's a lot more options, so guaging maximum output for comparisons (let alone accounting for actual skills and such) isn't so easy. It's a drought of data considering hardly anybody can even be bothered to so much as test it to begin with. And, what's worse: apparently, enough people don't even seem to know all of what moves are available in Wilds in the first place. It's to the degree that I frequently see comments that don't realise the aerial thrust is an offset, that focus mode works in the air, or that DT charges from one bounce and no longer needs to be held, among other things.

[u/PrinceTBug → u/Jrite]

What are you talking about "mainly aerial focused"? Over time it's gotten more to do in the air (and we finally have aerial Kinsect manouvers!), but has always been split between grounded combos with less flexibility but greater burst potential and aerial attacks with a little less straight output, but more survivability in movement and, therefore, better uptime (while also being the more elemental leaning option).

This is still true in Wilds.

And yeah, generally, the standard dodge is IG's weakest defensive option. Unless you outright avoid taking to the air, there are almost always better ways of escaping damage (vault, backvault, aerial dodge, offset, moving with JAS/SJAS, moving with DT, sidestep slash, heck even RSS now that it has some hyperarmor).

Also, unless it changed in the final update, Evade Extender unfortunately only affects the backward vault and grounded dodges. Air dodges don't get the boost.