Weakness Exploiter is better than Critical Eye+3/+2

Today, I used a hammer set of Sharpness +1, Awaken, Razor Sharp, and Weakness Explorer on village Alatreon and killed it 14 minutes. Then I used a HGE, CE+3, Sharpness +1 and killed it in 19 minutes. In both runs, I used the same strategy and got hit with Dragon Blight so slime is out of the question. Both runs used Grongigas hammer.

It is clear that my former hammer run is faster than the later. According to this topic: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/683294-monster-hunter-3-ultimate/66356813
Weakness Exploiter gives a 5% damage boost when hitting weak points 45 and above. One person even said that it may only cut down time by 40 seconds. The difference between my two runs is clearly not 40 seconds, meaning weakness explorer may give a bigger boost. Alatreon's head receives 65 impact damage. This could mean weakness explorer gets stronger at higher weak points. I have not tested this with monsters damage charts lower than 45 so I can't confirm if weakness explorer scales.

By the way, it is confirmed by me that weakness explorer does not give affinity boosts.

Apparently, according to that link, it's not a 5% boost in attack, but a 5% boost in the hitzone.

2 runs isn't much to go by, no matter how similar they may have seemed

Here's video of a guy killing village ala in 7:10 with dios hammer. Skills are Honed Blade, Razor Sharp, Weakness Expliot.



The Alatreon is exceptional case because as you said - 65 impact damage on head, which is easily accessable whole fight. But what about other monsters? Lucent Narga - tail, tail tip, which is major problem to get to. Uragaans? Only belly before chin is broken. Duram? Only bump. CE+3 will work either way, no matter monster part.

I got WE on my Grongigas hammer set because i got it for free pretty much. I'm still testing it maybe on wrong monsters though.

Antari, that video is like watching a good ballet... so much coordination it almost looked choreographed... the way he used the feline bombs to avoid the excessive animations after drinking is smart as well... If I ever decide to do solo speed runs, I will have to keep that strategy in mind.

Just needed to say that... no mindful contribution to the Alatreon discussion, since I have only soloed it 3 times, once with each of my current weapons, and I haven't done any speed comparisons... to me, if it dies... great, if it doesn't, try again.

Antari18 wrote:

CE+3 will work either way, no matter monster part.

I got WE on my Grongigas hammer set because i got it for free pretty much. I'm still testing it maybe on wrong monsters though.

I agree on that as well: CE+3 will work on every monster part although I don't know where people are getting their sources that weakness exploiter gives 5% damage boost. As far as I know, Capcom has only released statistical data to places like Bradygame Guide, and I'm not sure if any more info has be released beyond that. I've only done one Lucent Nargacuga solo without CE+3/weakness exploiter in about 15 minutes. My set is Pyro Demolisher with Sharpness+1, Razor sharp, bombardier (Although I am starting to think bombardier is useless) and evasion +1 (I believe you need this skill to roll through tailslams), so I don't think I'll ever use CE+3/ Weakness Exploiter on a Lucent Nargacuga.

As far as I'm seeing the monster damage chart, pretty much all bigger than G. Jaggi bosses have at least one weakspot that is accessible to its corresponding weapon type. For example, Brachy's head makes blade master cut weapon bounce off, but hammers and HH's get a bigger boost and don't bounce off, so I think there's always an opportunity to hit a weakspot.

To properly test a hypothesis on something - anything - you need to do numerous runs. A very significant number of them.

For example, for any conclusions to be drawn about one or the other being "better", you would have to do, probably, at least 50 runs with each equipment set. Everything else would have to stay the same. (i.e. items you bring, your weapon, the method you use to fight him, etc.)

For now, you don't have nearly enough evidence to support your theory at all.

True. I'm gonna do more tests on G rank Rathalos and more village Alatreons. They are the easiest for me to hammer. I will post my progress later on. I need one more monster to test that isn't lucent narga that doesn't have a weakpoint of 45 or above. Any suggestions?

the damage increase from weakness exploiter is dependent on the hitzone, since it's a straight up +5 to the hitzone.

so on a 50 hitzone that's a 10% damage increase, while on a 95 hitzone it's a bit more than 5%.

Why does Weakness Exploiter get worse as the weakness chart gets higher than 45?

Because adding 5 hitzone gets as the number goes up. Say for example at the minimum

45 hitzone and adding 5 to it making it a 50 hitzone increases your damage by approx 11% while in the worst case scenario where a hitzone becomes
100 and you add 5 to it, it therefore becomes 105 hitzone or a 5% increase in damage.

the same way AUL becomes worse the higher the weapon raw is (and is overtaken by ce+3), because it's a set amount.

Chagrilled wrote:

the same way AUL becomes worse the higher the weapon raw is (and is overtaken by ce+3), because it's a set amount.

I paired my Lucent Narga swax with both AUL AND Crit Eye+3, and Latent Power 1 even. Without Latent I have 60% affinity, with it I have 90%. Such glorious damage!

That's what makes Narga swaxe better than the Ceadeed Axe, but only slightly.

Sai_ wrote:

That's what makes Narga swaxe better than the Ceadeed Axe, but only slightly.

Well that and that Lucent has natural purple. I didn't have to worry about Sharpness+1 for once, otherwise I'd probably have gone after Abyssal Lagi gear.

Welp, After continuous use of Weakness Exploiter and experimenting with CE+3, it's really situational, but the situation usually favors weakness exploiter because many monsters have charts close to 45 hitpoints. I don't any monster has ever gone past 100 hit points. plus, weakness exploiter is easier to get.

For hammer, I'd say my HGE Awaken Weakness Exploiter Sharpness+1 set out classes any other set including HGE sharpness+1 CE+1. So in conclusion, if you don't have a expert+10 charm to make crazy x, y, CE+3 sets, settle for weakness exploiter; you should be hitting weakspots anyways, disregarding things like breaking wings or cutting tails for stuff.