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Adept Bow Specific Gameplay
Adept Bow is the most popular Style-Weapon combination for the Bow, and is also the strongest combination for the weapon. As a result, I will be devoting this section specifically to mechanics that are worth considering for Adept Bow, covering both basic things to pay attention to and advanced mechanics that may be of interest to different people.
Gameplay: Adept Bow Control Schemes
Type 1 and Type 2 controls are still relevant for the Adept Bow. The specific Adept Bow controls to note are as follows:
- The Adept Bow loses its backhop; all "B" inputs are Evade Rolls
- All Adept Bow Evade Rolls are able to activate a "Perfect Evade". If you pull this off, you get into a run and if you hold R (Type 2) or X (Type 1), you will get a charged shot. Note that during the run you do not have any invulnerability frames
- Adept Bow loses its Arc Shot. In other words, if you hit A before or after firing a shot, you will throw a Power Shot
Adept Evades
Adept Bow Gameplay is focused on exploiting the Adept Evades to chain attacks and the use of Power Shot to output damage. This functions both in defensive and offensive manners. I will briefly outline how to effectively use the Adept Evades here.
To pull off an Adept Evade, you want to roll a little early and into the incoming attack. You want to roll a little early because the timing window to activate the Adept Evade is quite generous; if the monster's attack connects on your hitbox during a majority of your roll, you will activate the Adept Evade. You want to roll into an incoming attack because it increases the likelihood of the monster's attack hitbox connecting into your hitbox. If you roll away, it is possible that you won't activate the Adept Evade, or worse, get hit by the attack because the hitbox connected on you after the activation window.
The Adept Evades strengthen the Bow by mitigating many of its weaknesses. For example, the Bow is usually unable to charge shots during an evasion roll, meaning you lose out on damage if you have to do an evasion roll. The Bow has low armour values and takes a lot of damage from attacks. If you use a Power Shot with the Bow, you are rooted in place for a short duration, making you vulnerable to getting hit by a monster. If you position poorly after a Power Shot, you are unlikely to avoid a monster's head-on charge at you. All of these weaknesses raise the skill floor of the Bow and make the weapon challenging to use.
The presence of Adept Evades eliminate many of the above weaknesses. Defensively, Adept Evades can be used to do many of the following things:
- If you roll into an attack that's coming into you, you activate the "Perfect Evade" mechanic. If you hold R or X, you get a charged shot. Traditionally, Evade-rolling an attack is a damage loss because you aren't charging a shot. The Adept Evade animation results in some damage loss, but much less than tradtitional Evade rolling.
- The low armour values of the Bow can be mitigated by good Adept Evades; attacks that are difficult to avoid and could have carted you can be avoided with Adept Evades
- If you are rooted after Power Shot and are positioned poorly, you can roll into the incoming attack with the Adept Evade and avoid damage. Positioning mistakes can now be converted into attack opportunies
Offensively, Adept Evades give you a lot of flexibility in keeping up your aggression. For example, if you do a Shot + Power Shot, you can Adept Evade an incoming monster's attack and turn around to do another Shot + Power Shot on the monster. This increases your damage output significantly. Chaining shots through the use of Adept Evades to avoid monster attacks is very valuable.
Mechanically, without Focus and/or Haste Rain active, a successful Adept Evade will give you a Charge Level 3 shot. With Focus and/or Haste Rain active, you get a Charge Level 4 shot.
However, given the strength of the Adept Evade, do remember that some monsters have attack chains that are deliberately designed to punish Adept users. For example, Silverwind Nargacuga has an attack chain where he will slam his tail inth the ground to cause a vertical arc of wind, then follow up with a spin that causes a horizontal arc of wind. If you Adept Evade the tail slam, you will be vulnerable to the horizontal arc because you do not have i-frames during your Adept Evade animation.
An additional thing to note is that Adept Evades do not replace charging normally for shots. It may be tempting to use Adept Evades to get charged shots and avoid the use of the armour skill Focus, but this is unwise. In a multiplayer setting, it is unlikely that a monster's attention will stick on you long enough to enable to use Adept Evades consistently. Waiting for a monster to attack you before you counterattack limits your damage output. Additionally, the Adept Evade animation are a little long and can result in some damage loss if you focus only on using these for your shots. In a single player setting, you can rely more on Adept Evades and drop the use of Focus, but with Haste Rain active you want to focus more on normal charging than depending on Adept Evades due to the limited Haste Rain duration. Uptime for Haste Rain is not permanent.
Generally, the best case scenario is to not rely on the Adept Evades too much because if you miss pulling off an Adept Evade, you get hit. It is generally better to stay safe if you are unsure about whether you can Adept Evade an attack than to attempt it and risk carting. A dead hunter does no damage.
Advanced Power Shot Play
I am going to outline here the specific reasons for why Adept Bow is very powerful in the hands of an experienced player. Much of this content is going to assume an acceptable proficiency with the Bow and my explanation is going to focus on demonstrating how Power Shot heavy play is what makes the Adept Bow so powerful.
One of the reasons Adept Bow is strong is the lack of Arc Shot. In Guild Style, the only way to fire a Power Shot is after you have first fired a shot. In Adept Style, you can fire a Power Shot by hitting A without first having let your currently charged shot fire. This mechanic, when combined with the fully upgraded Teostra Bow (Bow of Light & Courage), TrueShot Up, and Load Up, results in a powerful skill combination that is used to great effect in MHX speedruns.
The armour skill TrueShotUp gives you a 20% damage boost on all Arc and Power Shots. Load Up is used because it unlocks the Teostra Bow's Level 4 shot. This gives the Teostra Bow a shot selection of a Charge Level 3 Rapid Shot and a Charge Level 4 Rapid Shot.
As a direct result, this creates the following shot opportunities for the Teostra Bow:- Charge to L2, hit A for L3 Power Shot without firing L2
- Charge to L3, fire, hit A for L4 Power Shot
- Charge to L3 and hit A for L4 Power Shot without firing L3
- Charge to L4, fire, hit A for L4 Power Shot
- Charge to L4 and hit A for L4 Power Shot without firing L4
- Charge to L3 and fire, no follow-up Power Shot
- Charge to L4 and fire, no follow-up Power Shot
This high variety of shot options creates large diversity in offensive option of the Teostra Bow. Depending on the length of your opening, you can adjust your shot options to your advantage. Some such examples include:
- You have a L3 shot charged and ready. An opening is available, but it is not long enough for you to do a L3 + Power Shot, nor is it long enough to charge to L4. You Power Shot without firing your L3 shot.
- You have a L2 shot and the opening is there; you Power Shot without firing the L2.
- You have an opening for a L3 shot + Power Shot; you take it
- Without Focus, you just finished an Adept Evade, giving you a L3 shot. The opening is just small enough to get the Power Shot but not large enough to charge to L4, so you take the Power Shot
As mentioned in the above section, without Focus and/or Haste Rain active, a successful Adept Evade will give you a Charge Level 3 shot. With Focus and/or Haste Rain active, you get a Charge Level 4 shot. With this, one option is to run a set with Focus, TrueShot Up, and Load Up to be able to get Charge Level 4 shots from an Adept Evade. You still do not want to rely excessively on Adept Evades to get your shots, but your offensive options and armour skill selections are varied in MHGen.
Do note, however, that a focus on Power Shot play means putting emphasis on Power Shot usage and thus puts creates a high stamina cost. Consequently, this demands the use of Mega Dash Juice and/or other inifinite stamina options. Even with Focus, a Power Shot heavy gameplay strategy benefits heavily from infinite stamina. Without Focus, Mega Dash Juice is mandatory to be able to utilize a Power Shot-heavy gameplay strategy effectively.
The high focus on Power Shot means a large majority of your shots must be Power Shots. For example, if you follow up every shot you fire with a Power Shot and land all shots cleanly, your effective Power Shot usage is 50%, which translates to about a 10-12% damage increase per shot, which is about the same as the armour skills Rapid Up and Weakness Exploit. However, in practical circumstances, following every normal shot with a Power Shot will result in missed Power Shots and will dramatically reduce your damage output. Missed shots waste Power Coating for no damage. Sometimes, a Power Shot may not land cleanly on a hitzone, which also results in a damage loss.
What this means is that you must put emphasis on throwing out a majority of your shots as Power Shots. You will be relying on charging normally but instead of firing the charged shot, hitting A to fire the Power Shot instead. On the other hand, you don't want all of your shots to be Power Shots, because the lengthy Power Shot animation will negatively impact your damage output.
These nuances paired with a lack of specific timing information for Power Shot animations, Adept Evade animations and Shot Charging Durations makes it difficult to mathematically pin down how how you should prioritise Power Shot usage with Adept Bow. This is something that is learned from experience and can differ from player to player.
Finally, do note that this heavy use of Power Shot as a gameplay strategy is most effective in single player, and requires a significant amount of player experience to execute. Speedrunners are capable of using these armour skill combinations effectively because of their expertise with the weapon. I personally caution against using these armour skill combinations in online play and for general circumstances. The reasoning for this is that a typical Bow set comprising of Focus, RapidUp and additional skills will suffice for multiplayer use; the skill floor to make such a set work effectively is lower than with a TrueShotUp-centric set.
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