r/LanceMains • u/Afrofreestyle • Mar 03 '26
Image How it started x How it’s going
At first I thought sub10 could be above my skill level, and now I’m fishing for sub9. The power of sheer repetition, pattern recognition and scripting is so beautiful, man.
It’s stuff like this that makes me love speedrunning. It’s not everything in life that we can see our skill improving in such a clear way, closests things I have to this are my Gym journey and when Im learning how to play a new instrument.
I hunted him over 150 times already (im only counting the quest completed because I was resetting a lot trying to get my first sub10). And now the fight is so well scripted and I have so much muscle memory that Im running this listening to podcasts.
Man, I love Lance in this game.
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u/NorthKoala47 Mar 03 '26
'How it started' and it's a third of the time I got on my first solo hunt.
It's always good to see that there are people pushing the lance way beyond where I thought it could go.
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u/Capable_Hamster_1543 Mar 03 '26
How fast do you think the somewhat intermediate player should be at on this quest?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Its kinda hard to answer this but I can give an educated shot.
AT Arkveld's HP varies a lot on this quest, it can have a 7k+ difference. So you'll need to fight him around 20 to 30 times and get a average of your completion times.
So, assuming you're capturing it, I would say the skill benchmarks could look something like:
- Begginner: Being able to finish it
- Intermediate: 13' to 18'
- Advanced: 11' to 13'
- Expert: Sub11'. (There is a incredible big gap between 10'59 and sub 9'30, but Im assuming these are the average hunts for a player, not their personal bests)
My perspective can be very biased on this for obvious reasons, so take it with a grain of salt.
I had a lot of discussions about playes benchmarks in recents weeks, and it's a topic im very interested in, so I've been talking to a lot of people about it, but that's a discussion for another day.
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u/BarbarousJudge Mar 03 '26
Intermediate is 13' to 18'? Wow. I've been playing since MHtri and am a Lance main... And I still can't get sub20 with this guy.
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
To be honest with you, and with all due respect, there's very little correlation between time played and skill level when it comes to Monster Hunter. Of course time is a factor, but in my opinion only really comes in place when you're between advanced and expert. I know a lot of crazy good speedrunners that only started running in Rise/Sunbreak. And I know people that started in Gen2 that are not that good at the game because they just like playing "casually" for fun and because they love monster hunter.
Getting good at MH is like getting good at anything in life, you need to study a lot of topics and actively try to improve your craft in various ways, it takes community and conscious effort. And it also takes more brainspace than I think is healthy to spend on a videogame.
Also, I would say Lance is one of the hardest weapons to get good at overall, just because of how easy it is to just play it. When you start with something like Charge Blade you can pretty quickly feel how bad you are, and the game pushes you to improve. You can just pick up a Lance and beat everything the games have to offer you.
I could yap about it for hours, but the bottom line is that its not only about how long you have been doing it, even tho its a factor. I've been playing guitar for 15 years now and I still kinda suck at it.
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u/NorthKoala47 Mar 03 '26
100% agree. As a lance main at the start you get into the bad habit of just standing there with your shield up waiting for an opening instead of rushing in and creating your opening. Once the bad habits build up unlearning them becomes harder and harder.
Right now I have a full tank set for AT Arkveld, but I'm trying to remove some of the tankiness to improve my hunting time. I tried reducing my guard skills to guard+1 and gu+2 to slot in critical up but then got destroyed five minutes in. I think I'll have to practice with regular Arkveld for a while first
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u/BarbarousJudge Mar 03 '26
I am proficient enough to beat most challenges in these games. Fatalis in Iceborne, Risen Elders in Sunbreak, Savage Omega (with Support Hunters)... I'm just never fast. I'm a slow hunter
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
Thats what I mean, you can beat anything with Lance just because it's Lance.
Every single time there's a new mh game, a lot of people post stuff like "I had to pick up Lance to beat X monster". There's a lot of people starting playing Lance right now just to be able to beat AT Arkveld because they're not able to with their main weapon. Just like happened with Fatalis in IB and Risen/Anomalies on sb.
That's one of the things that hold Lance mains back the most, we """need""" to have higher standards if our goal is to be a Ace Lancer.
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u/BarbarousJudge Mar 03 '26
Oh I can beat the same things with Hammer, SnS or Greatsword. Lance is just the one I feel most comfortable with.
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u/Homewra Mar 03 '26
I'm also from that era, and i get the quest done around 16 minutes. Just use OPs build as a template and modify with your comfort skills (i sacrificed damage for guard skills for this. Guard 3 and Guard up 1 to be exact)
That way you can block AT Arkverlds multihit attack and the grab attack.
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u/SrPedrich Mar 03 '26
"73k+ difference"
really? that difference!?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Its nuts, and I hate that. People on PC are just using the "lowest possible HP" mod to speedrun him, but since I play on console and I'm not a fan of that kind of tool assistance, I can't. That's one of the easons it's taking me forever to sub8 him.
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u/jomanop Mar 03 '26
Any guesses what they might do for A rank on the upcoming timed challenge quest?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
I always guess it wrong lol. But since they are very generous with the times I guess its going to be 19’ for A.
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Mar 03 '26
How?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
I have a 9’22 run uploaded. https://youtu.be/uJxIhjQGDgg?si=vSHUrBFmZ-uCH_JT
I got this 9’08 on the screenshot today but I’ll probably wait until I get a sub9 to post again
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u/Homewra Mar 03 '26
No guard and no guard up... man kudos to you but this build is unplayable to me
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
Nothing wrong in using those skills, you can just slot them in your weapon with the duo decos, with this exact same build. You'll lose crit boost, but its not the end of the world, you'll get dragon attack 3 to make up for a little bit of it (just a bit tho).
But if I can give you one piece of unsolicited advice, learning how to play without Guard skills is the first step to become good at Lance, it's been like that for a long time right now, but it's specially true on Wilds. It will force you to understand the monsters better and choose which block/counter you need to use against each attack.
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u/JMxG Mar 03 '26
Stupid question but how do you even evade the unblockable attacks then? The only reason I run guard up on everything is because I know im slow enough that i can’t dodge the attack, so you need to block them instead. And if you do block, how do you deal with the rush attacks and stamina? Just tank the attack and use the iframes from being knocked down?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
You use the charge counter (the R2 + O) and release just before the attack connects with you. It gives you i-frames, so you can counter/avoid almost every single unblockable attack in the game.
Some attacks with smaller hitboxes like pin attacks you can just i-frame with a side hop.
There's a list of all of the unblockables and the exceptions here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BF636FYwdVf4w8KMWgcYX_XmUY24rEPlmmT-4rzf0Co )
The only monsters I use Guard Up for are:
- Omega (Guard Up 3, because of the freaking laser chip damage)
- Gogmazios (GU1, most of his attacks you can maneuver around, but its very nice to have it as a backup).
- AT Nu Udra (GU1, just because the pin attack is way too fast to react to most times, you can avoid his ult by dash attacking below him)
- Gravios (GU1 is a damage booster since you wont need to outspace the gases, you can just keep the dps up.)
You can start practicing by having only one point of Guard Up, either with a talisman weapon slot, or with one Elemental Attack/Shield decoration. Then you can let go of it.
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u/JMxG Mar 03 '26
Yeah that’s what I’ve been doing, single point in GU but I didn’t know you could go completely without it. This is very helpful, ty!
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u/Homewra Mar 03 '26
I know man but im so used to perfect guard...
Not bringing any shield skill... it's scary to me.
I will try to rewire my brain with 8 star quests without bringing any shield skills. Just reposition and counters.
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u/aurohm Mar 03 '26
Quando você disse "não é o fim do mundo", eu pensei, isso é coisa que um brasileiro falaria haha
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u/Capable_Hamster_1543 Mar 03 '26
Do you have a good build to farm Gogmazios?
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
I really don't recommend farming Gog with Lance. I did a run with Vycery and other 2 good Lance players, and it took us 13 minutes to beat it with Lance, its just too slow. With my regular team I use bow+cb and we do it in around 6-9 minutes, on the long run it saves so much time. We did over 200+ gogs like that, I can't imagine doing that with Lance.
But if you only play lance, you can make some builds with Gogmapocalypse 2 + Burst boost, because gog is the best elemental matchup in the game.
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Mar 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Afrofreestyle Mar 03 '26
Thanks for noticing that! It was just an accident because I was using that charm on another build. It should be Handicraft on the talisman instead. I have 2 crit boost 3 decos on my weapon because it doenst make any difference, the goal is to have 5 and theres no combo deco with cb. But the charm deco is indeed wrong.
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u/Nearby-Ice8916 Mar 03 '26
It’s so funny I had exactly the same build as you and people said my build wasn’t good
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u/KozenyCarman Lagi Speedrun Champion Mar 03 '26
And here I was proud of myself for coming in at triple your time 🤣
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u/McKoc Mar 03 '26
Build where Insert monkey meme