How A Forgotten Mechanic "Broke" Monster Hunter

wait... do people not do this?

This is why im a Bow main with at least 3 QoL skills (evasion, earplugs, etc), its just easier for me to manage everything else regardless of how i intend to prepare/fight the next monster.

I managed to bruteforce through Alatreon the first time, even tho i carted twice. Im a very passive hunter but that doesnt mean i wont exploit openings when it has to count.

Excellent video. I stand by the premise that Alatreon would be an absolutely fine boss for its position in the game if you just removed Escaton, but replacing Escaton with a phase is easily the best solution if the goal is to maintain that sort of punishing flow break.

ngl i would probably make him "rage" just to brute force it

Furious rajang is like barioth to me, still am trying to learn to fight it because the time i beat it was pure luck

The only thing a true hunter does is "adapting", either to the situation or the monster itself.

Yes prepwork is such a core game mechanic in mh and also makes it somewhat unique .... consideirng dual fights in the tower arena mad you work very VERY throughly on the prep

Alatreon .... hmhm - i dislike the fight - i fight aggressively but i really really hate time gated dps checks - that makes you lose the quest basically - kinda takes the enjoyment out of the fight and makes it stressful (and i play dual blades which has like the fastest run on alatreon - if that one was legit) - AND YES I LOVE THAT CONCEPT OF YOURS - holy that would make it so much better

turn based ... and then there is rise LS - where every turn is also your turn xD

When I first encountered Furious Rajang as HBG player, he kicked my ass a lot.

He was too mobile and did too much damage, so i decided I was gonna stop that.

I brought materials to craft a ton of traps, brought the impact mantle, maxed out on slugger, switched to spread ammo, and just stun locked him to death.

No joke it went, trap>stunned>trap>stunned>sleeped>stunned>para>stunned> super saiyan 2 Kaioken monkey now immune to all forms of cc> Dead

The only issue with this is that we know the reason so many monsters had these one shots, it’s because Hunters are just so strong it’s the only way to realistically equalize the fights. Players have proven you can beat Alatreon without using elemental weapons and players will hate this boss for just being too hard without even seeing Escaton, there isn’t a right way to change Escaton because the Hunters are the problem in the example. Imagine you implement the dragon phase instead, skilled hunters will cook Alatreon with one hand and bad players will still cart, avoiding this phase changes nothing as well because there’s no need to actually try and break the horns beyond skipping a phase that makes the monster different from the others while also diminishing the threat that this monster is supposed to pose to the hunters as he’s simply now a dragon that does different elements.

TLDR, changing Escaton turns Alatreon from unique and horrifying to Elder Dragon with extra elements.

Rajang is way more terrifying than Alatreon imho. that beast gave me nightmares

I'm all for removing the nuke from super bosses, but it def should apply towards event/crossover scripted fights.

Alatreon still proceeds to be the monster i struggle to learn due to his strict requirement to have a specific playstyle/build. Your suggestion would not only make Alatreon easier but make her doable for anyone given good mechanic understanding.

Great video!

I love how you say “Let’s not just remove escaton judgement” and then decide to remove escaton judgement, lol.

Jokes aside, DPS check wipe mechanics suck! Shorter time limits suck! If I need the full time to fight a monster, I would appreciate having the full time to fight a monster.

vitality mantle + healing fog + jerky
you can survive escaton without doing elemental damage

also you literally describe elderseal.

I think it depends on what you're running. I'm a Hunting Horn Mushroommancer player & making sure I'm 100% prepared before every hunt is part of the routine as MM sets aren't very strong so you HAVE to learn to dodge and play defensive otherwise you're going through ALL your shrooms within 5 minutes of the hunt. Even in the newer entries you still have to prepare with this set up but it also frees up players your with to have more offence options.

Cool alternative my guy 👌

Great video! Although comparing the combat to turn based combat made my skin crawl (I despise that genre but have loved every MH game I got my hands on).

I see it more as a dance, or a conversation. Yes, the monster and the hunter will "take turns" so to speak, but it's so fluid it can't compare to the rigidity of TbC. To me it's always been a dance, where you and the monster both compete to outdo the other.

Probably because I'm a dancer, but I just feel "dance" fits more the fight style of MH than "Turn based Combat"

Great vid anyway! gonna redownload MH and hit Alatreon with a big sticc now, thanks.

Rajang was a first try in iceborne for me.





I've had 20 years of practice....💀

Biggest problem with alatreon is you have to google his hitzones because a regular player would never guess his front arms are like 3-4x weaker to element than his head which is the main weakspot.

At least they finally invented the ability to see the exact hitzone values in rise.

I find it interesting that his solution to furious rajang was evade and mine was tremor resistance with the same end result of winning

What you said would have been true if it weren't for the pierce HBG. You can clear Alatreon with minimal skill or element in about 5-10 minutes, tho making that set still counts as preparation I guess?

I wouldn't even speed up Alatreon. Put him in rage mode for that phase permanently, give him ALL the attacks including flying, and remove all the openings you had before, so his combos flow seamlessly, denying you basically 90% of attack opportunities. Even one minute of that will be a challenge to most players.

Capcom tried this already on a smaller scale and it's called primordial malzeno's third phase. And not surprisingly, it was another controversial mechanic, especially for hyper adhd rise enjoyers who want to counter everything.

Maybe make a video on primordial as well, it has quite a few mechanics to talk about like massive increase in demand for guard and guard up, phase 3, several fully unblockable moves that are not novas, and his whole moveset in general.

I hope wilds unnerfs flash bombs

I liked using the torch pods to burn away effluvium when I was doing experimental runs.
Changes the way you fight Val and makes it more engaging than a simple passive!

A bit late but here's my two cents as a long time LBG main (you may have seen this comment from another video - I just copy and pasted)

Preface that I judge a fight’s balance relative to the expected gear we would have had when we first fight the monster on release. In Alatreon’s case, this means Safi or Raging Brachy/Teo or some specific set. With this said…

This fight is terribly designed. I main LBG, and let me tell you that, with the exception of one very specific setup that feels terrible to play, there is no way you can have enough clip size to finish the fight without dying. That a fight necessitates any one weapon to die to beat even in ideal play is terrible design. Yes not all weapon suffers from this issue, but is one weapon suffering from this issue not already enough to signify the problem?

Oh right, I did say there is one LBG setup that I’ve heard can defeat Alatreon without needing to die. Safi fire gun but you max both ice and fire attack and bring both ammo types. Subjectively, this feels terrible to play, as you have to overload elemental attack and leave no room for any personal customisation skills. Second, a more objective problem is that, this solution still involves LBG forgoing the horn break requirement. You can argue it is a sign of flexibility, but to me it feels very terrible to be forced to deal with a monster in such a convoluted way. Imagine you are blind and you slowly learn about this monster. You learn about the elemental threshold from looking at dialogue, great, so you bring elemental weapon. Then you learn that breaking the horn makes it stay in the same element, so you get better at it, only to realise doing it the normal, “elemental” way as an LBG will make you run out of ammo, so you just have to ignore the things you’ve learned and find a cheese. It sucked, hard.

Oh and for those who say “use a different weapon", god forbid me for only enjoying LBG, right?

Also I completely agree with your insights as well and really love your idea at the end to change the fight! Would much, much rather tackle that Alatreon as LBG

I really thought i was a terrible player, i kept getting hit by attacks i had learned a thousand times and doing attacks without hitting anything. To the point i would sometimes give up on that hunt for a while.
But then i saw a lot of people who couldn't deal with Vaal Hazak without gear just for him, because of the efluviun or his REALLY predictable attacks. How can you not dodge them?

The thing that bugs me about Escaton Judgment is you get punished regardless if you meet the check or not.

Yeah it doesn't instantly wipe you and your team out but it still costs you healing to survive the weakened version.

I get the devs didn't want Blast element to be the "end all be all" of builds but they didn't balance the game to make other elements competitive.

I'm sure if elemental weapons had a small chance to deal their respective Blights alongside the bonus elemental damage, players would gravitate towards them for that.

Honestly I like the idea of a berserked Dragon element phase better. Maybe even lowering its duration depending on how much elemental damage done before it enters that phase. So even if you fail at stopping it, you lower the length of the incoming onslaught.

Good vid, where I disagree is not the oversimplified argument strawman mentioned earlier. But I think that a lot of people hate Ala’s ult because they can’t meet check which is not even that bad.

I feel people rush to these fights too fast and feel they need to be able to do it “now” and when they can’t they complain and call him broken and busted.

The ult isn’t a problem what is the problem is bad builds, the rushing because of a culture based around carrying people, and one fight that isn’t for those types of players. 1/2 hunts in the entire game.

If I were to change anything it would be to make alatreon and fatty not story quests and instead make them stand alone special assignments.

So that you wouldn’t have to kill them to feel like you’ve “finished the game “. So ppl with unminmaxed builds can say they finished the game so the pressure to kill them wouldn’t be as bad.

Tbh I think it's possible to defeat Alatreon with Raw if you can manage to not get killed by anything EXCEPT Escaton. Then it comes down to a DPS check about beating the monster before the 3rd Escaton. With stuff like Tool Specialist, Divine Blessing and the Vigorwasp Palico Gadget you can risk being more aggressive without playing perfect all the time.

I do think it's definitely tuned a bit too much into the "USE ELEMENT" category but if you don't want to you still can work through it. My only negative about it is really that it wants you to use ice or fire element depending on the phase it starts but really strong element weapons only really come from Kulve and Safi RNG grinding... So the preparation part boils down to just being lucky and playing forced multiplayer hunts over and over again. For ice I guess Frostfang or Beo with the right augments and Silverlos set bonus can work but for fire the pool is drastically less helpful.

But in the end you can brute force it with a Raging Brachy weapon, knowledge of the fight and some defensive skills to grant you more room for error

I 100% think it'd be cool to have a viable method to beat Escaton where just letting it elementswap and rage freely was acceptable or even desirable.

Just imagine the possibilities.

damn. this sounds 10x more interesting than the "use element or lose" mechanic. i was a spread heavybowgun player and the game literally forced me to pick a new weapon to build and sets to make in order to even try to win. ended up making a greatsword set for it.

I too have been feeling that the whole "Preparation for a hunt" aspect has been diluted in the 5th gen games, even if I absolutely LOVE Sunbreak. And yeah, I really like your proposed solution for Alatreon. He could even still have an elemental nova attack, but not one that instantly kills you, just deals a lot of damage and is telegraphed in some way (like Teostra's nova, but not necessarily Lunastra's)
to give one example of what the whole "preparation" thing means, I've had to replay base Rise recently to get to Sunbreak, when had initially played it on console. I wanted to get done with all the base game monsters and the last one was Valstrax. With basically nobody playing this game online anymore, my only solution to do this "early" was to bring a regular high rank set and try to solo the event quest version of that monster. You know, the one that oneshots people with half of it's moveset and is super aggressive. After triple carting a couple times, I devised my preparation: a Wide shot Gunlance, with my set put up for Artillery, Razor Sharp, Guard and Guard up. Basically I decided I was going to be an M1 Abrams and just tank that bitch, using quick poke-shell combos to deal reliable and safe damage in between it's attacks. Sure it took me a while, but I did it without carting even once. The game gives the player many tools to solve encounters, and finding out which ones you're going to use is half the fun.

World Alatreon and Fatalis are what happens to the series when players thirst for DPS too much. It makes the game worse for everybody.

You’re here to hunt monsters. The fun part is smacking them with your weapon of choice. So why are you trying so hard to reduce that time and increase the number of loading screens you see?

Defense is viable, and now CapCom is forcing that upon you.

Meta players will be like “using ear plugs and other quality of life skills bad”

This video reminded me of something I thought about because I play Hunting Horn, depending on the kind of horn you have you can replace some items with a song in your horn, there are songs that can supplement/replace potions, hot drinks, cold drinks, sound bombs, dash juice, and even some skills like earplugs and tremor resistance. There are likely other songs that I can't remember or haven't encountered yet that could be used alongside or in place of some other items or skills. I don't think that these songs can completely replace these items or skills, especially since it's highly dependent on what color notes you have access to making it so you can't have every single one of these songs on one horn, but I do find this kind of discussion interesting.

Funny enough, the removal of play agency is why I hate the Fatalis fight.

What Alateron, I had multiple ways to play. I wasn't forced to use the clutch claw and I wasn't forced to play the Meta. I could fight in my terms.

The only thing I would change was required items to survive eschaton judgment. If you hit the elemental damage cap, you should survive that Massive Attack without items.

what the mechanic again? is it prep?

This would've been my suggestion:
instead of replacing Escaton Judgement, we modify it such that both parties are affected depending on each other's actions, whereby if you don't do enough elemental damage, you suffer the judgment. However, if you do enough elemental damage when Alatreon tries ES, it instead backfires on him and he takes or is stunned for a good while. And maybe to raise the stakes, you not only have to do elemental damage, but also knock out one of it's horns

tho this is my opinion, feel free to agree or disagree

This video explains perfectly why the prep in monster hunter is so great. You are a HUNTER, hunters KNOW their prey intimately. It almost feels like the game wants you to cycle between weapons and elements depending on the specific monster (even if you dont necessarily have to because you CAN kinda brute force most things)

My only grip with Alatreon is that it's a hard requirement. Hit the DPS check or die. I get a super tough big bad monster needing something that TELLS you its a super tough big bad, but this just feels like ramrodding people into one build. It just leaves me unsatisfied even if I like everything else about Alatreon.

to fight fight against the idea of the phase and the judgement i have some things to say

first, the dps check makes sense to me because its a black dragon after safi a fight that is a rush, one you can't camp out and its a fight for the best of hunters so having a fight on agro makes sense to me and next is a 30 min fight that uses almost all the time for most people

second, the check is irrelivent to player that play well, i beat alatreon without safi gear and i failed a judgment and died once randomly yet i still killed it, so the agument of you need to use element is just wrong but is recommended

third there is evedence of people beating a full power judgement however yes with 4 people but you can deal damage and not dealing damege is your fault

forth the speed up phase you said has the poroblem of being to quick making a pure survival phase anyways like what will great sword do... wait... however this is just my opinion in fact i play duel blades so im just a bit biased to element anyways also every one can have there own opinion and no, not killing alatreon in time is not a skill issue but not prepared, i agree that it only allows you to do high dps but the 50 min timer is just to mkae sure you aren't just camping, fights are ment to be 10-15 min (for the most part) if done well... im not disagreeing on your points or any ones opinion but my thoughts and just why it does make sense, also the last three fight people dont like for one reason or another, safi is a bad fight, alatreon's judgment sucks, fatalis is artifitial difficaulty or unfair and i for the most part think that is just untrue, i did however spend 3 hours killing sofi that is the only time i do that

My solution was felyne insurence and raw dps, YOU CANT MAKE ME PLAY ELEMENT CAPCOM!

my strat is damage on top of damage = flinch = win

i hear preparation and already my brain is mush.

just balling it wont work on games like this , so it's going to take a while to adapt to being prepared. my memory is as good as wet tissue paper and i already default to calling any instant healing item a health potion.

i dont think that builds are a forgotten mechanic but i know what u mean with alatreon

That Super Sayain Ape is the ONLY Monster to give me game PTSD, like I will go stright for the Head against nearly any Elder Dragon and other Monster, but that one managed to make me hit the "Nope" button.

Alatreon's release was basically just a "git gud" moment. And everyone who was whining and bitching about it were having a big temper tantrum and a skill issue moment.

Note that you cannot actually make the amulet to help you if you are stuck on Vaal. Because the amulet needs Vaal parts to construct.

I feel that sunbreak really reviewed the flaws in MH Iceborne. Monsters get a super phase (delerium or Frenzy for example) that makes them do more damage and their speed becomes obscenely fast. However, by applying enough pressure you can knock them out for a good punish window. Similar concept with CGValstrax and his engine, and PriMal and his Bloodied state.

Essentially reward aggressive play by allowing you to push through a monsters super-enraged state. I feel that they got it right with Fatalis, where you dont instantly lose if you dont break a horn but it makes the fight MUCH harder.

Another great video! I agree with your sentiment regarding Alatreon, keeping the player's agency and allowing them to tackle challenges their own way is one of the main reasons I am addicted to the series lol. I hope with Wilds we will have more encounters that encourage you to strategize your approach towards things!

Also, thanks for the credit and shoutout! 💙