Wind Element and More

         Hello! Probably gonna be short, maybe. Hopefully. I just wanted to talk a little bit more in depth about wind element being added to Monster Hunter. You know, “in depth” isn’t saying much for me. My initial thought to add wind was because it’s the only common element that we don’t have in the game but I thought for like two more seconds and realized “earth” isn’t in the game either. But when I think about it earth could just be considered weapons that have raw damage only. Weapons and armor form the hardiest of monsters, Diablos, Duramboros, Uragaan, those sorts.

            So as I’ve mentioned before, most of the monsters I would consider “wind based” usually have their element as water/ice (because wind can be cold and wet I guess?) or nothing at all and be put into raw damage. I know wind elements in other games tend to make the weapon hit more than once so maybe that could be the wind gimmick. Not be overpowered or anything just one slash of your weapon might actually hit the monster three times. Or maybe it could be slightly overpowered in that sense as long as it’s not every hit. Like it builds up, you time it right and you end up hitting the monster three times or you hit it once then it jumps away and the spot it left has the wind effect going cause you whiffed. (Just popped into my head; the whole idea for wind half comes from the Monster Hunter manga Orage and I’m sure wind element/buff is talked about but I’m not gonna sift through it to find out this very moment. If you know off the top of your head or something let me know in the comments what wind dual blades do in the manga.) The other thing is the weapons themselves especially when talking about something like the Zamtrios. I love dual blades that have two elements, I think it’s cool, but they could have several weapons from the same monster. They could have dual blades that are water/ice and then one that was wind from the Zamtrios that look similar but are unique in their own way. And even other weapons could have a couple variations from one monster. One water great sword, one ice, no wind and something like the hunting horn could have a wind variant and maybe that’s it. I don’t know, mix it up. It was really annoying for me in World; my friends and I drew weapons from a hat and were using a wheel to choose what weapons we used on each hunt. So I was trying to make three or four weapons from the same monster and they all needed the same exact amount of each part.

            As far as weaknesses for monsters and armor I think that it’ll depend on the monster themselves but overall if it’s a flying type monster it’ll be weak to lightning and maybe ice. Any monster that is fire based would have a high resistance to wind. I keep seeing in my mind the scene from Shippuden when Naruto finds his element is wind and that it’s kind of not a great match versus fire and then I’m also reminded of Lunastra and Kushala Daora in World/Iceborne doing moves at the same time and creating fire tornados. I think more things like that would be cool where monster moves enhance each others.

            So from what I’ve gathered from Monster Hunter YouTubers is that elemental damage in MonHun has always been weird. It’s never acted the way you’d assume it would. Slower, heavier weapons still value raw damage over elemental even if it’s the monsters weakness. I grew up with Pokemon and it’s very straight forward, very easy to understand. But at this moment in time, I just don’t care. I’m just going to do whatever. Fuck it y’know? I’m just going to use whatever weapon I like the most and not care. So what if I don’t do as much damage as I possibly can? Why are we trying to do these hunts as fast as possible? I understand that not doing significant damage and a quest taking longer than you were anticipating could be not fun but if you’re in a group of four I’m sure you’re going to finish the hunt in the allotted amount of time with no problem. I mean, I’m just a filthy casual, I’m over here matching my weapons and armor together and giving myself significant handicaps. I’ve also heard that the devs nerfed certain weapons base damage and you have to manage a silkbind move to get your damage back to base which is pretty lame.

There’s a lot of skills that I don’t know what they do or what they’re good for but there are some that I know are good for certain weapons. When I see the Bazelgeuse armor has Artillery I know that is good for gunlance, maybe the bow guns also, so I see that and it’s like “okay, this is obviously gunlance armor.” I can understand that, the difference between long, normal and wide shelling on a gunlance, not so much. It’s like watching the Magnamalo zip around in the sky, clearly that’s an insect glaive move set, clearly he’s an insect glaive based monster but his armor is not helpful for IG, as far as I know. I’d like things to be a little more straight forward in that regard. (laughing to myself) Honestly I tend to gravitate towards whatever has gobbler or whatever it is that makes you eat potions faster. I think back in 3U the Niblesnarf had that skill. It’s just like “ohshitohshitohshit I need to heal, thank you, ow, ohshitohshitohshit.”

I kind of see Monster Hunter as a fighting game. You got your Street Fighters and Tekkens that have the same characters forever with some new ones thrown in or less popular characters swapped in and out but the ones that stick around still play relatively the same. I could probably pick up Tekken 7 and still be able to do a few of Yoshimitus’ moves because they’re still using the same inputs from Tekken 3. That’s why I find myself bored with fighting games. I don’t understand how someone can play the same franchise for years and years as the same character. So I see the weapons of MonHun the same way, kind of. People don’t want the weapons to change too much but at the same time they do want something different. Honestly I think I wouldn’t mind if the weapons didn’t change much but the monsters did and/or the way we interact with the monsters. One thing I do like from World was using the environment more. Running on trees, getting monsters caught in vines, with all these other things to use to our advantage I wouldn’t mind if the weapon combos were a little more simplistic. The thing with games is every game is going to be someone’s first experience with that franchise be it Street Fighter or Monster Hunter. When I started 3U everything was new, everything was exciting, but now it’s like “okay, I know what you’re going to do for the most part” especially with returning monsters so I’d like it if they changed the monsters and their moves more than the weapons themselves. Also Street Fighter 6, next Monster Hunter will technically be “6,” coincidence? I think not. I think the MonHun fighter is more likely then ever!

What do you think? The last two paragraphs or so weren’t supposed to be here, I was gonna tack them on to my last post but oh well. What was my main point? Oh yeah, wind. Do you think we’ll see wind next game? Ever? Do you think it’s likely we’ll see a new weapon next game or even a weapon removed to make room? Can you think of a different element or effect you’d like to see? Let me know below and I’ll take up more server space and bandwidth sometime in the near future, bye bye!

@AztecSauce