I also think that a lot of the process of improving at MHW involves learning how to deal with specific situations created by particular intersections of monster attack patterns, player character positioning, terrain, buff/debuff status, etc. As players learn how to deal with more and more of these situations, they (A) cart less and less frequently and (B) kill monsters faster and faster. These two things are not totally discrete, though.
The goal of a given hunt is to kill/capture a monster before time runs out or before the hunters cart x times. I think a lot of intermediate players prioritize the 'cart' restriction too heavily. Let's say that there are two hunters. Both are hunting Nergigante. Hunter A carts to Nergigante every five minutes, but can kill it in ten minutes. Hunter B carts to Nergigante every 10 minutes, but can kill it in 35 minutes.
Even though Hunter B in this case carts
half as often as Hunter A, Hunter B is going to fail the hunt. What's more, in the time it takes Hunter B to fail the hunt, Hunter A is going to get to kill Nergigante three times over. So even though Hunter A is coming up
much worse than Hunter B in this one important metric, they are, overall, going to be
enormously more effective than Hunter B in terms of both individual hunts and overall time spent.
kageroo : You seem to cart out of multiplayer hunts a
lot based on your posts in this thread. I honestly think it's unlikely that you're just arbitrarily getting matched with worse players—I think it's likely that the hunts you're going on are taking too long. Let's say you get matched with a pubby who is carting to Nergigante every minute and a half. That's a lot of carting! Luckily, if
you know how to kill Nergigante in 4 minutes (and you, on average, cart to Nergigante every 10 minutes), you're still going to win that hunt, because you are going to kill Nergigante before the pubby carts you out of the hunt. Even though that pubby would almost certainly fail their own hunt against Nerg, you'd be able to make up for it.
Multiplayer hunts in MHW aren't just a matter of lucking out and getting placed with good pubbies—they're also about learning to kill a monster quickly and cleanly enough to account for the possibility that your teammates aren't going to carry themselves.
Again, I'm totally in favor of people playing the game and having fun with wacky builds. I'm especially super in favor of being very nice and compassionate toward teammates regardless of how good they are at the game. But saying that you don't care about dealing damage, then turning around and complaining about how often your teammates cart—those two things aren't totally unrelated. This game doesn't have aggro, it doesn't have tanking, supporting can't keep up a teammate who is dead-set on carting. This isn't a tank-and-spank MMO. Dealing a lot of damage safely is easily the number-one best way to carry teammates who need a little bit of help.
