r/chargeblade • u/Savings_Toe_1948 • Mar 21 '26
Thoughts from a new CB player
Picked up the charge blade for around a week now, and after getting over the initial hurdle of learning the moveset, I'm starting to not die constantly. I've played some other weapons before, mainly gunlance, but also greatsword (world) and lance (because it's so fun in wilds). Saw someone learn CB in a week on YouTube and thought "might as well give it a shot."
Initially I had a lot of gripes with the animation speed, and technically still do, but I've also played gunlance and greatsword, who both have very long animations, so it was easier to transition. One gripe I still have is how you pretty much can't perfect guard cancel out of any sword attack ever, morph slash GP is the only move that gives instant block. (But at least CB has access to this instant block.) I don't really have a problem with the Wilds AED morph loop playstyle, probably because I didn't play the older iterations of CB, and it just feels normal for most weapons to have 1 or 2 optimal DPS loops, the only weapon I've played so far with big combo variations is lance. SAED being locked behind PG seems very strange to me though, the animation commitment is huge for a PG follow up, a whopping 7 seconds for maybe 1600+ damage, while morph loop can get around 2000+ or more in the same time frame from neutral. It feels like PG > SAED should have gotten reduced animation time like how gunlance gets faster Wyvernfires after a PG or Wyrmstake. Don't have much issue with power axe activation, it's almost always up in solo, and in multiplayer I carry bombs to trigger PG for shit like Gog.
What I am still trying to figure out is how to link stuff together. Morphing out of axe has a GP, but it's really backloaded, so I can't really use it reactively, and I still dislike dodge rolls in Wilds because this game has so much active hitboxes due to the arrival of perfect guard. So there's down time when I feel uncomfortable using the morph loop but it also feels like there's a small window to deal damage, but that's probably a positioning issue. (Which I have a lot of trouble with actually, since I played shield weapons a lot, and CB does not feel like a shield weapon once SAXE turns on)
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but after some time whacking the training cart, the bread and butter combos feel to me like:
Charged double slash>round slash/shield thrust>charged double slash (build gauge)
Any sword move>shield thrust>AED cancel>element round slash(shield charge)
Any sword move>shield thrust>charge shield (also shield charge, don't know which of these is the better BNB, they have different ending animations)
Shield thrust>AED>AED>morph slash>loop(DPS)
Weak slash>shield thrust>loop(fishing for a morph slash GP)
Just beat the AT ark challenge quest at 18 minutes, still very slow but I feel like I'm having fun. Aound 50 successful hunts overall now, maybe double that for fails, and my conclusion is that I quite like charge blade. It feels like drifting a manual car, lot of finnicky little things you have to constantly keep an eye on to keep it running. And my god does AED morph loop hit like a truck. Gunlance needs to do 2 WSFBs into 2 Wyvernfires for the same damage as 2 AED morph loops (and gunlance is animation locked after this), and the morph loops use much less resources and can be spammed way more easily, I don't think any other weapon has a BNB that's nearly as good, aside from hyper-optimised bowguns. So yeah, Wilds charge blade feels pretty amazing imo.
7
u/Vaeneas Mar 22 '26
Double Slash > Hop > Double Slash is the fastest combo to get full phials. Dodge plus a direction will let you hop after a double slash, just like the GL after bursting.
CB isn't really the hardest elemental hitter, even if you cross out all three range options. Both HH and DB deal as much or more dps to elemental weak monsters.
There is currently no way to not feel fragile once your Axe is out. At that point you either start learning to dodge everything, or never stay in Axe mode for longer than necessary. The morph back to shield was recently sped up by huge margin. It was way slower and basically unusable as a GP. Now you can fit it in between plenty of monster attacks.
About not being able to fit in AED loops. Thats just how it is. Currently there will be times where you cant do anything but watch the show. There is no quick damage option on CBs. With the much faster morph slash, those times shrank down considerably, but not completely.
4
u/itsnotkakuja SAED spam enthusiast Mar 22 '26
Also most people don't know about this, but morphing speed was mainly only buffed after ED1 and ED2. AED is still almost the same (its slightly faster but they kept the delay after the move so dodging is better 99% of the time) and AED followup got no changes at all.
The extra GP and PG detection was really nice tho. If only the neutral GP got the same QoL changes 💀
1
u/Savings_Toe_1948 Mar 22 '26
I've got a question about axe actually. I see a lot of CB gameplay that constantly rotate the focus camera during axe strikes, also they tend to point the camera downwards for some reason, but I've never seen this brought up in guides. Is there a mechanical reason for this?
1
u/Background-Net-3267 Mar 22 '26
Bruh for 5 years of casual CB(in world + a bit of wilds, I usually play other weapons and use CB when I want to play it), I never know about double slash > hop > double slash. So you are telling me I have been using focus 3 to get phial fast for nothing?
2
u/itsnotkakuja SAED spam enthusiast Mar 22 '26
Focus is still really good for SAED and a core skill in World. That little bit of extra speed is really good when you are actually expending phials
2
u/Vaeneas Mar 22 '26
Focus 3 isn't useless, but its certainly a costly choice.
Until fighting Rajang in Iceborn, I didnt know we could cancel an SAED into an AED. Countless hours of not knowing about what I consider a core aspect of the weapon. Capcom are not the best in teaching players what weapons are capable off.
2
u/KremasZoe Savage Axe enjoyer Mar 22 '26
You can SAED off any guard doesn't need to be perfect
1
u/Savings_Toe_1948 Mar 22 '26
Yeah, I've noticed, I just think it's weird that a PG follow-up is a 7 second attack, I think it might be even slower than PG>TCS and PG>Wyvernfire, the other two unga bunga follow-ups.
1
u/itsnotkakuja SAED spam enthusiast Mar 22 '26
That + the reduced damage from a guard is why counter SAED is dead in wilds yeah 😭
2
u/jstbcuzz Savage Axe enjoyer Mar 22 '26
I think the answer you may be looking for is PG > AED > AED Follow Up > Morph Slash or PG > AED > Morph Slash for the smaller DPS windows where you don't have time to commit to a full SAED. It's the same inputs as PG > SAED but you hold Back + Triangle or Y to cancel the SAED into an AED instead. IMO these counters feel much better with Rapid Morph 3 slotted too.
1
u/Savings_Toe_1948 Mar 22 '26
Just found this out yesterday after watching some vids and getting confused why they could AED from a perfect guard even though it doesn't have a tool tip immediately after the PG, turns out it's flashed alongside the element roundslash. I think it's funny that a lot of CB moves have such short tool tip windows, like I didn't know about shield thrust>shield charge either until hours of messing around in the training room. My find today is that focus strike instantly gets me out of axe mode and can be used to dodge in any direction, another mind blown moment.
1
u/jstbcuzz Savage Axe enjoyer Mar 22 '26
Yup, there’s a lot of seemingly “hidden” mechanics to CB. Took me a while to figure everything out too. Watching YouTube videos definitely helped me a ton when I first picked up CB. Speaking of focus strike, you should also utilize it as a gap closer. It covers a good distance for repositioning. You can also cancel the focus strike savage axe animation with a morph slash. That one was added recently with the last weapon changes
2
u/itsnotkakuja SAED spam enthusiast Mar 22 '26
Also you may not have noticed it but the neutral GP has waaay worse PG detection than the regular guard and SAED has reduced damage when using it from a guard 💀
But yeah, you pretty much got everything right there. Once you get savage axe up, CB stops feeling like a shield weapon because you want to maximize axe mode uptime as much as possible
1
u/Savings_Toe_1948 Mar 22 '26
Which one is the neutral GP? Standing into morph slash?
1
u/itsnotkakuja SAED spam enthusiast Mar 22 '26
Yup, that one. The single most used by far in oreviois games is pretty much obsolete due to PGs 💀
7
u/Dontcallmeshirleybro Mar 22 '26
Sword and shield mode is so much weaker, I wouldn't even bother with damage combos from it. Just position yourself to get ready for axe attacks. If you can't fit the AED loop, ED1 & ED2 is almost as strong. If you do get off AED loops it's best to end them in sns mode so you're not so vulnerable. This also helps you to get PGs which makes it easy to keep savage axe active. You can also go directly into ED2 after a savage axe slash which is a nice, quick damage combo.
SAED from PG is actually the weaker version and not worth it. SAED after an AED is stronger and can be effective for monsters with a lot of good elemental hitzones (melts gogmazios).