How to make YOUR optimal mixed set

[u/[deleted]]

This is a guide for players who’ve reached MHGen’s end game and want to create mixed sets tailored to themselves. It’ll be somewhat simplified, since it doesn’t take into account your Hunting Style or Hunting Arts. I will assume that you’re familiar with Athena’s A.S.S.

A few disclaimers:

• Using a mixed set is not the only way to play
• This guide only serves as a starting point for players who wish to make a mixed set and you are free to play however and whatever you want
• Your set may or may not turn out like a speedrunner’s set depending on what you’re looking for
• I’m not a speedrun-level player

This is something that I think might be able to help players who want to get more mileage out of their armor sets so I’ll try to break down the thought process that you should go through to make it as smooth as possible.

PURPOSE

First and foremost, you’ll need a purpose. You’re putting together a mixed set to accomplish something. Typically, what you want to do is likely either one of these 3 options:

• To create a set for a particular weapon
• To take down a particular monster using a particular weapon type
• To complete a particular quest using a particular weapon type

Each option gets more specific – speedrunners typically use the “quest” approach when deciding skills. Most players will likely opt for weapons or monsters because it’s easier to create a “general use” set that way and is more convenient. Once you’ve determined the purpose of your mixed set, choose a weapon. From there you can move on to the skills.

SKILLS

I generally divide skills into 3 broad categories: Core, Situational and Damage.

CORE

Core skills refer to close-to-mandatory (if not mandatory) skills for your weapon, weapon category or quest. Examples would be:

• Focus for GS
• Shot Type Up (Pierce/Normal/Pellet) for Gunners

SITUATIONAL

Situational skills refer to skills that are useful in specific scenarios. These also include skills that you personally need in order to do well in a hunt. A few examples:

• Tremor Res for Rajang/Deviljho
• Bio Researcher for Teostra/Hellblade Glavenus
• Earplugs for certain weapons
• Evade+# skills

You’ll realize that some of these skills are not used by speedrunners because they’re good enough to not need it. Not everyone (me included) is at the level of speedrunners and there are times where these skills can save you from a cart – so add these skills in as you see fit, relative to your own personal skill and experience. I personally use Bio Researcher when I do 140 Teostra GQs back in MH4U.

Some of these situational skills are so useful (Tremor Res for Rajang/Deviljho, for example) that they end up being core skills for many sets meant to hunt Rajang or Deviljho efficiently.

DAMAGE

Once you’ve decided on your core and situational skills, it becomes very simple. You just try to stack as much damage skills as possible. The meta build is of course the standard CE+2/WE/CB/RS mix, but anything goes - it depends on what weapon you’re using, what talismans you have and what skills you’re looking for. Some weapons (GS for example) do not benefit from the meta build and prioritize different skills instead - use your understanding of the weapon to pick the skills. You’ll spend a lot of time contemplating what goes here for optimal efficiency - use Kiranico or Ping's Dex to to check hitzones in order to decide what skills to slot in.

Note that Sharpness+2 and Razor Sharp can count as damage skills as well, since they extend your sharpness bar to give you a better multiplier and delay the time you’ll experience a drop in sharpness respectively.

The True Attack formula is very useful here for deciding the optimal combination of skills.

True Attack = (Weapon Raw + Bonuses) * (1 + 0.25 * (Affinity / 100))

TALISMANS

Very often your ideal set requires a specific talisman; do not build your ideal set around a talisman that you do not have. Work with what you have instead of what you don’t.

OPTIONAL: FASHION HUNTING

Sometimes you’ll want to use specific pieces to achieve a certain look and be able to deal decent damage at the same time. Take note that fashion hunting tends to consume more time and has stricter requirements for talismans. I’d imagine most players would find their own balance in between fashion and being optimal.

EXTRAS

There are sets like the Silverwind mix that AkantoreX uses here and variations of the Dreadking mix that you can utilize.

Note that you may value core and situational skills differently as I do – the purpose of this guide is to help you create your own mixed set tailored to your own strengths and weaknesses. You don’t necessarily have to follow speedrun sets unless your aim is to create a speedrun set. If that’s your goal then you can always check the Japanese TA wiki or speedrun videos to compare your sets.

At the end of the day, this process may or may not work for you. Some players might do it subconsciously already or they have their own ways of determining what skills they want to put on a set.

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EXAMPLES

I’ll do a few examples so that readers can get a clearer idea.

Example 1

Purpose: To create a set for Daybreak’s Gaze (Silverwind LBG)
Skills

• Core: Pierce Up > since what you want to do is to spam Pierce 1 RF.
  
• Situational: Shot Booster > increases the time your shots stay in critical distance. This skill is pretty solid on most (if not all) Pierce-gunning sets – I would place it somewhere between Core and Situational.
  
• Damage: Anything goes as mentioned above, it depends on what talismans you have. Critical-related skills are worth considering, and WE is decent considering that it’s Pierce 1.
  

With a Tenderizer +5 OOO talisman or a Pierce Up +5 OOO talisman you can get Pierce Up / Shot Booster / Weakness Exploit / Critical Boost which is a pretty good general use set.

Example 2

Purpose: To take down a Glavenus with a Switchaxe > from here you’ll choose your weapon first. The Hellblade Axe (as used in speedruns), Silverwind Axe or Heavenly Rain (Amatsu SA) are all good options. Let’s assume you go with Heavenly Rain here.

Skills

• Core: Nothing in particular.
• Situational: Earplugs > Glavenus tends to roar a lot, and this gives you many free hits. You don’t need HG Earplugs for his roars.
• Damage: Heavenly Rain makes good use of Blunt, so that’s a good choice. Glavenus has relatively accessible WE hit-zones so WE can be considered too.

With a good Blunt talisman, you can get a good Dreadking mix (AuL / WE / Bludgeoner / Earplugs); CantaPerMe puts this set to good use against a HR6 Glavenus.

For comparison, the Japanese TA wiki record for this quest with a SA uses Earplugs / CE+2 / Crit Boost / Weakness Exploit with the Hellblade Axe. You can see how useful Earplugs is for Glavenus, and the rest are all damage skills.

Example 3

Purpose: To complete Hellblade X with DBs – we’ll go with Plesioth Machetes since they’re the best Water DBs for most situations.
Skills

• Core: Tropic Hunter > Normally this wouldn’t be a core skill, but because the quest takes place in Ingle Isle, it makes incredibly good use of Tropic Hunter.
• Situational: I know I said this guide doesn’t take into account Hunting Styles, but let’s just assume that you’re running Adept DBs, which means there’s nothing you really need here.
• Damage: WE, CE, RS, Water Atk, etc. are all skills you’ll want to consider.

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With the examples done, this wraps up my guide and have fun creating your mixed sets!

I’ll talk a little bit about speedruns before finishing up so if it’s not your cup of tea feel free to skip it.

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SPEEDRUNS

To clear up misconceptions about speedrunning: it’s not about elitism when someone brings up speedrun data as a basis for comparison. Speedruns are the gold standard for Monster Hunter, because they’re the best, and it makes sense to learn from the best. You can glean useful information just by observing the sets they use and how they play.

Speedrunners go into detail for everything they do to squeeze out the best times. Things like how long your sharpness bar will last, whether you can constantly upkeep your sharpness with Absolute Readiness, whether the set of damage skills they’re using is optimal, etc. Math is incredibly useful in this regard, since speedrunners typically have close to perfect (if not perfect) execution. It isn’t just about not getting hit (or as least as possible), but also being able to consistently target the best hitzones as well. You’ll need to play preemptively instead of reactively in most cases.

As you can see in example 3 (the Hellblade X example), math can help you determine what combination of damage skills you should go for. You’ll also see that they run Absolute Readiness instead of Wolf’s Maw III to maintain the blue sharpness on Plesioth Machetes since they’re not using S+2.

If you’re looking to speedrun eventually, some players that I recommend for you to observe are CantaPerMe, AkantoreX and Mai LBG.

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I’ll officially end my post here, and I hope to hear your thoughts and comments. Feedback is appreciated.

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Edit: Some extra resources courtesy of /u/scook0

• Status Ailment Chart
• An alternative to Athena's A.S.S if you can't use it.

[u/YouCanBreatheNow]

Cool guide! I'd like to add some info for those who are trying to figure out whether to use Attack Up skills or Crit Eye skills on their set. There's an easy way to compare the results!

• Attack Up S/M/L is a flat +10/15/20 bonus to attack

• Every 10 affinity is a 2.5% increase to attack

• Every 10 affinity with Critical Boost is a 4% increase to attack

• Weakness Exploit is a huge 12.5% increase, but only when hitting weakzones

Because one is a flat bonus and the other is a percentage increase, Crit Eye becomes more valuable as your base attack gets higher. If your attack is listed at less than 200, Attack Up beats out CritEye, unless you have Crit Boost. For most endgame weapons hovering around 200 attack, the best damage/skill point ratio seems to be AuS & CE+2.

Edited to add this:

• To figure out the boost of any Affinity rating, use ([Affinity Number] x .25) , or ([Affinity Number] x .4) if you have Crit Boost. For instance, 35% affinity is ([35] x .25)= 8.75 percent increase, or with crit boost ([35] x .4)= 14 percent more damage.

[u/Kotaff → u/YouCanBreatheNow]

Your % dmg increase values for crit eye & WE are only accurate if the weapon has 0% starting affinity. It isn't much of a difference, but the numbers are gonna be lower the more affinity you have. It will rarely be more than a 0.5-1% difference, but it is worth noting for situations were AuX would be as good as CE+X

[u/YouCanBreatheNow → u/Kotaff]

Adding up a percentage increase is linear, though. Say you've got 200 atk, 20% natural affinity. The effective attack is 5% higher, or 210. Adding CE+2 with your armor set boosts it to 40% affinity, which is a 10% effective attack boost... which is exactly 5% more attack boost than it had before. So long as you add up all the affinity boosts together and then apply them to the attack value, you can just straight up add 2.5% for each 10 affinity you stack.

[u/Laxaria → u/YouCanBreatheNow]

100 raw weapon, 0% affinity:

CE+2: 100 * (1 + (0.20 * 0.25)) = 105
105 / 100 = 1.05x increase

100 raw weapon, 50% affinity:

Base: 100 * (1 + 0.50 * 0.25)) = 112.5
CE+2: 100 * (1 + (0.70 * 0.25)) = 117.5
117.5 / 112.5 = 1.044x~ increase

The point being made is that relative to the effective raw of the base weapon, when you have a >0% affinity to begin with, the addition of additional affinity results in diminishing returns.

If a weapon has x% of affinity with y raw, it's effective raw is y * (1 + x*0.25)). To determine the relative damage increase (not absolute), it is this base value that is the denominator, not the weapon's original true raw.

In your example:

Base: 200 * (1 + 0.2 * 0.25)) = 210
CE+2: 200 * (1 + 0.4 * 0.25)) = 220
220 / 210 = 1.047x~ increase

In this scenario, CE+2 is not a 5% damage increase. Close, but it isn't. CE+2 confers about a roughly 4.7% damage increase, not 5%.

Kotaff's point is about the relative increase from armour skills. At 0% affinity, CE+2 provides a 5% damage increase. At values that aren't 0% affinity, CE+2 provides less or more.

[u/YouCanBreatheNow → u/Laxaria]

Okay, I see what you're saying. I'm talking about percentage increase of original value and you're talking about relative increase. You are correct! But I'm not trying to compare 210 vs 220. I'm simply saying that 10 affinity adds 2.5% of your base atk, always.

Like, I'm not trying to say that (200atk + 40%aff) is 5% more than (200atk+20%aff). Not at all. I'm saying that +20% affinity will always give a 5% increase of the base attack value.

Edit: to be super clear, I'm going for a simple explanation, geared toward the readers of How To Make A Mix Set, to help them compare Crit Eye and Attack Up

[u/Kotaff → u/YouCanBreatheNow]

That is the problem though, you need to take the complicated approach to compare AuX to CE + X.

In your example, you are saying that CE+2 is a 5% dmg increase, so to get a comparable raw boost from AuX one would need 5% of 200 bonus to get to the same point. that's 10 raw. Let's put that to the test :

200 raw weapon with base 20% affinity with CE+2 has a 220 modified raw, but if you use AuS on that same weapon, you end up with 220.5 raw, which is more than CE+2, not equal.

You should always compare the new modified raw an armor skill gives to the modified raw it had before if you want to compare the increase between 2 armor skills, and always do it as a proportion, not as a linear modification. The method you provided to compare AuX to CE+X does not work all the time. It works in basic cases yes, but it doesn't work all the time.

My reasoning isn't as linear as, say u/Laxaria , sorry about that. But the point still remains, and if I have explained myself poorly again, I'll try a different approach/example if you'd like.

Edit : My example isn't too good, since like you're saying, the AuX equivalent would be based off 5% of 210 raw, and that would be a bit more precise. It still makes comparing affinity to raw annoying, because then you have 2 situations you can do, and it's easy to get mixed between the 2.

If you say Affinity is a linear % dmg increase, to compare this number to raw increases, you need to calculate the raw increase after the affinity is accounted for (in this example, you need 10 modified raw to be equivalent, and to know the base raw value, you need to substract the %dmg increase from the base affinity).

If you say raw increase in % can be calculated from the base raw (AuL is 10% dmg increase on 200 raw weapons), then you need to consider affinity as a percentage increase to compare it to the % increase from raw.

As far as general rules go, the higher the raw, the better affinity is. the higher the affinity, the better raw increase is. I think the 2nd part is important to consider too.

[u/YouCanBreatheNow → u/Kotaff]

EDIT! I see now what the confusion was! I had listed the attack % in terms of Crit Eye levels when I meant to phrase it in terms of affinity. Like, when I said Crit Eye+1/2/3 I was trying to say +10/20/30%affinity. You are correct, technically adding CE+1 isn't a 2.5% damage increase, it technically adds 2.5% of your attack to your damage. This still seems extremely pedantic to me, but I have changed my original comment to reflect this, and removed the reference to Crit Eye, instead listing it as merely increments of 10 affinity. Hopefully this clears it up.

[u/Kotaff → u/YouCanBreatheNow]

Well yeah, I guess I tend to be... pedantic some times, but mostly because of the premise, where like I've said, you are comparing raw increase with affinity increase. It is a personnal gripe I have towards this situation, and I still don't have the best way to explain it, sorry about that.

[u/jsculls → u/Kotaff]

What about comparing artillery novice for CB vs an extra level of CE. I'm using adept style so I always use red shield mode (15% DMG increase).

I'm running a hellblade cb(200 raw) with a hayabusa/silver sol mix and an artillery+10 charm.

Skills are: CE2, WE, CB and artillery.

I can run an expert charm instead of artillery and get CE3, but I'm not sure if it's better or worse? Each phial explosion is 5% of raw and artillery is supposed to add 30% to each phial explosion.

Edit: added some figures to make calcs easier.

[u/scook0]

When building a set for a specific monster or quest, it's helpful to use a chart like this one to see which ailments a monster can inflict, so that you know which ones to consider becoming immune to.

Also, if you can't use Athena's ASS for some reason, try this web-based armour set search tool instead.

[u/[deleted] → u/scook0]

Thanks for the suggestion. A resource list sounds like a good idea.

[u/FallenXIV → u/scook0]

Sweet, thank you for the link. Athena's was giving me issues trying to input my own talismans, so I'll probably end up using the searcher you provided instead.

[u/GrandpaKappa]

Nice topic! Nice to see Mai getting some recognition here in Reddit ^{^} Should also add on some basic charms that can make these mixed sets.

[u/[deleted] → u/GrandpaKappa]

LBG players can learn a lot from Mai's videos, I'm actually more surprised that he doesn't have more viewers.

I wouldn't want to add any specific charms because everyone will have different ones. I personally don't have any of the Pierce/Normal/Pellet +5 OOO charms at all so I make do with different ones for my Gunner sets.

I think it's easier for players to work with what they have instead of following a template - use templates as a reference point but create your sets based on what you have.

[u/Luminescenttide → u/[deleted]]

You could show some pretty basic mixed sets with ultra common talismans (i.e. any talisman that gives a total of Pierce Up +5, from, well, Pierce Up +5 --- to Pierce Up +1 ooo). I've been using that sort of metric for mixed sets for players just starting to get into endgame, and it helps a lot, as, even if you don't have one, a talisman that gives +5 total to a given skill is actually pretty easy to farm up.

[u/[deleted] → u/Luminescenttide]

I feel that it defeats the purpose of the guide if I start showing basic mixed sets. I went through the examples because I wanted readers to be familiarized with the thought process and it'll be more beneficial to them that way. Every weapon has their own priority of skills so it's up to the reader's understanding of their own weapon as well.

And to quote my reply to another question:

For players with less than ideal charms, it's okay to forego a damage skill if your charms don't allow for it. I ran Pierce Up / Shot Booster / CE+3 in Athena's A.S.S without any charms and there were 2 results - I think it's safe to say that even if you have horrible charms it's possible to create a decent set.

Which I think answers your question.

[u/Luminescenttide → u/[deleted]]

I see, I see. You're absolutely right, the purpose of the post is prioritization over examples. Mb.

[u/MtheDowner]

Nice one. Just to note, some weapons don't mesh at all with the standard builds. GS is the classic: optimal damage at end game is pretty much always gonna be Focus + Crit Draw + Crit Boost.

[u/Laxaria → u/MtheDowner]

CritBoost only appears on about 30%~ of GS Time Attacks.

I think there's a bit more latitude for GS sets, but Focus is core, and crit-stacking is the goal.

[u/MtheDowner → u/Laxaria]

Huh. Colour me surprised, I guess. Isn't WE kind of redundant with Crit Draw? Or is overcoming the negative affinity on Tigrex a bigger boon than I thought?

[u/[deleted] → u/MtheDowner]

GS sets use either Weakness Exploit or Crit Draw, not both.

[u/MtheDowner → u/[deleted]]

Seems I need to expand my GS horizons... I was under the impression that Focus+Crit Draw was like the standard base for a GS set. Does a WE set play differently?

[u/[deleted] → u/MtheDowner]

MHGen is a bit of an outlier in this regard, since in previous games Focus and Crit Draw were staples. A large part of Weakness Exploit's strength is that it's just easier to get in this game, while it's harder to pair Crit Draw with good skills.

The big difference is that with Weakness Exploit the overcharge becomes a lot more useful. Here's an example.

[u/MtheDowner → u/[deleted]]

Ah, nothing like a speedrunner to make you feel inadequate. That guy's seriously amazing. But would it make as much difference to a standardly-competent player? I don't find my self landing strong charges quite so often. Maybe I should start trying...

[u/[deleted] → u/MtheDowner]

It shouldn't make a huge difference. You don't have to heavily rely on the strong charge like that; just using draw charges like you normally would is fine.

[u/Laxaria → u/MtheDowner]

The nice thing with WE is that you're not locked into your draw attacks. I'm not too confident on understanding with GS runs though.

[u/CrimsonSaens]

A good write-up, though the examples could have been diversified better to include situations without crit stacking or less than ideal charms.

[u/[deleted] → u/CrimsonSaens]

Yeah, the examples could be better. Critical stacking just happens to be so widespread that all my examples ended up gravitating toward it in some way.

For players with less than ideal charms, it's okay to forego a damage skill if your charms don't allow for it. I ran Pierce Up / Shot Booster / CE+3 in Athena's A.S.S without any charms and there were 2 results - I think it's safe to say that even if you have horrible charms it's possible to create a decent set.

[u/[deleted]]

Also, think about what style you want to use. You might not need Earplugs if you're going Adept LS, for example. Might help you if you're not careful, and you can still adept dodge off of the roar if it doesn't affect you, but it might be super, super situational.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, your style does affect the skills that you'll be putting in - running Adept typically means you can forego most (if not all) situational skills because you can adept evade it instead.

I avoided mentioning styles because I think it'll make the guide too long.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No worries, just being helpful!

[u/FaliusAren]

Question about ASS: Am I just supposed to enter all my 8 million talismans, or...............

[u/[deleted] → u/FaliusAren]

Just enter the ones you think will be useful.

[u/Gopherlad]

I've added you to the datadumps page. https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/wiki/datadumps-mhgen

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[u/SEJIBAQUI → u/AutoModerator]

woah, the automod can sense an armor set from a text post? That's pretty neat, acutally.

[u/Laxaria → u/AutoModerator]

Bot please.

I concede I did not anticipate this use of the term "mixed set" when setting keywords.