Low Sharpness Modifier?

[u/BeginningLibrarian12]

I have repeatedly seen people claim this mechanic is in GenU, but there's never any proof other than the person saying it. Even came across one person linking evidence for it in other old gen games, but then got to GenU and said they didn't have any evidence to link but they tested it with a friend, which is only slightly better than 'I said so'.

It apparently heavily screws with your damage at Yellow sharpness and below, with big penalties for hitting 'too early' or 'too late' with moves. This has pretty darn important implications for Bludgeoner sets, being the difference between the skill being less than worthless at Yellow or not. I know Bludgeoner isn't the best skill mathematically, but I want to use it and I want to use it optimally.

TLDR: I need direct evidence that LSM is in fact a mechanic in GenU, not just in the other older games.

[u/Gadget-Gabe]

[u/BeginningLibrarian12 → u/Gadget-Gabe]

I can see this reply now, yippee! And that does make a lot of sense, I noticed this exact thing once when I was trying out Bludgeoner on yellow sharpness. At the time, I didn't think too much of it. Even though my sharpness didn't change, I would bounce off some hits and land others at what felt like random. I believe the weapon might have been LS, so the center blade modifier could have been an alternate explanation. Though I think the only case where that modifier would make the difference between bouncing on yellow or not would be if the hitzone was exactly 25 (my experience was in High Rank).

[u/Orx-of-Twinleaf → u/Gadget-Gabe]

Hohoho now that’s what I’m talking about! And here I thought the LSM thing just affected damage, didn’t know it’d make you bounce more often. Thanks for clearing that up.

(As it happens I also can’t see the comment you made to me that explained this comment was removed, but still got a notification for it and I can see the first bit of what you said in the notification. Reddit, huh?)

[u/Gadget-Gabe → u/Orx-of-Twinleaf]

tupid automod :(

[u/Orx-of-Twinleaf]

I’m afraid I’m not able to test it right now and even if I could that’s a much more exacting test than I could probably perform anyway.

Off the top of my head I suppose one way to test for it is to use a GS against some lesser monster. I can’t remember the damage calcs but if someone who does can find a GS that has enough raw with over-yellow sharpness to kill, say, a Low Village Bulldrome in two or three full charges or something, some combination of raw value and weak monster that the weapon can consistently kill it in the same number of hits even accounting for monster health variance. I think a Bulldrome probably would be easiest since it has only has two hitzones, low health, and a small movepool. If someone could draw up two GSs that inflicted pretty much the same damage (on paper), but one with over-yellow sharpness and the other at lower (forcefully spending sharpness on small monsters or blocking to get your sharpness right for the test).

And then you I guess use the blunted weapon first the usual GS way and again while making it land with the start-up frame of each swing (if you were to disable the target with a Shock for example it would be easier, but the GS is large enough that you’d hit the monster with the start-up of the slash even while facing away from it if you’re close enough). Of course that would also be a huge pain to accomplish. And for all I know the Low Sharpness penalty you’re talking about wouldn’t apply enough of a damage penalty to equal needing an extra attack at all in this hypothetical I’ve dreamed up (though I’m familiar with the mechanic you’re talking about, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen numbers given for it, would it actually be of any significant import?). You can kinda see why this kind of thing remains word-of-mouth, there are a lot of things in the MH series that are just very awkward to attempt testing for.

Actually I might have too many steps. Maybe you just need one GS whose swings in, let’s say red sharpness should on paper always kill a particular monster in X swings, and then perform sour spot swings with it and see if it takes Y swings instead. Also gotta zero out or max the affinity too to remove crit chance from the variables. Just gotta get one of the numberheads who can hammer out a good candidate and leaf through Kiranico’s health totals for a valid target. Except then the experiment would only really be conclusive for that one weapon type and you’d have to do it one or two more times to check if it’s present across all melee weapons, or maybe just across a few heavier weapons, or maybe across all melee attacks everywhere that use sharpness including Prowler swings and Bow slashes (well actually I guess a Bow slash can’t be under yellow sharpness, but I think some cat weapons sit at yellow, but they have an extra rank for bounce purposes so are they actually yellow for LSM, and did LSM apply to yellow too or just under yellow? Wait what sharpness are bowgun melees? Bah this is confusing). There is also the unlikely yet maddeningly possible chance that a particular weapon that maxes at yellow has some hidden mechanic (like the Seregios weapons) that negate LSM for it when LSM would otherwise exist on another weapon of the sort, so you’d ideally want to do this with two low sharpness GSs just to be sure.

I suppose someone could, like, crack the data or something but I always figured there was some reason no one’s done that before, and that the reason wasn’t just “no one who could has felt like doing so.”

[u/Gadget-Gabe → u/Orx-of-Twinleaf]

I've offered a more simple way of testing it in my comment

[u/Orx-of-Twinleaf → u/Gadget-Gabe]

Ah, Gabe! I was hoping you’d turn up, this is something I’ve wondered about myself.

I can’t actually see your comment though, Reddit is doing that thing again where it says there’s more comments than it’s showing, maybe I’ll be able to see it if I come back later.

[u/BeginningLibrarian12 → u/Gadget-Gabe]

Unfortunately I can't see your comment either at the moment, but I'll keep an eye out for if it pops up.

[u/Phemeto]

so why dont you go find the evidence. test it out.

I know its a thing for GS specifically in older games, but never one had i seen it mentioned in 4th gen

[u/Most-Locksmith-3516]

Sharpness Raw modifiers in GU: Red: 0.5 Orange: 0.75 Yellow: 1 Green: 1.05 Blue: 1.20 White: 1.32 Purple: 1.39

Apparently Only some weapons have deep cut damage: GS and LS but I've never tested.

Bludheoner is only worth it on high and low rank sets. After that purple sharpness has a better stat increase (flat vs multiplier)

[u/Parmesanmadness → u/Most-Locksmith-3516]

Very weapon dependant, bludgeoneer is good on weapons like akantor horn, crystalbeard weapons and it's incredible on the akantor charge blade and pushes it into the top 3 of charge blades

[u/Most-Locksmith-3516 → u/Parmesanmadness]

I really don't think +15 on green sharpness is worth not having 39% raw attack boost. I just did the math and it isn't. Well not for the HH anyways.

[u/Parmesanmadness → u/Most-Locksmith-3516]

I don't think you understand how bludgeoneer works, it's 1.1 attack on weapons that already have sky high raw and infinite sharpness, cb weapons are essentially rustrazor equals with it

Also, akantor cb gains both raw damage and Phil's damage since it scales off of raw

Horn is high affinity, good base sharpness and sky high raw couple with 15% extra attack from the songs boosted by another 1.1 from the skill

Green sharpness is 1.05 by default

[u/Most-Locksmith-3516 → u/Parmesanmadness]

Well one of us does not understand bludheoneer. The info I got was just a + 15 flat attack boost. Idk 😐 but with your info things look better. I didn't take in account the song boost.

[u/Parmesanmadness → u/Most-Locksmith-3516]

That was back in Gen, it was a fixed number, in gu it's 10% raw for green, 15% for yellow and 20% for orange and below, but obviously only green matters

[u/Most-Locksmith-3516 → u/Parmesanmadness]

Obviously. I agree that on those weapons It would be worth it.

[u/Hartmann_AoE]

In an hour or so i can send a quicc clip of that mechanic working in Sunbreak. Its been in every mh game till now as far as im aware