Long Sword

How it plays

• Build the gauge in the gaps, then spend it to gain a colour tier.
• Once at the top tier, hold it: losing it costs more than a few missed hits.
• Use the counters to stay in contact rather than backing off — that is what separates this from an ordinary sword.

Focus Mode and wounds

Focus Mode redirects the long combos, which otherwise run straight ahead while the monster moves. The Focus Strike closes distance as much as it bursts a wound: it puts the hunter back in contact.

Defending

No guard, no offset attack, no Power Clash: defence runs entirely through the counters, whose window is short and whose cost is high if missed.

What it brings

• The best conversion of a successful read into damage: a well-placed counter pays twice, in gauge and in position.
• Mobile and long: it reaches the head of a monster other weapons could only hit in the legs.

What loses hunts

• Spending the gauge as soon as it fills, with no opening: the combo is long and gets punished.
• Relying on counters against multi-hit attacks, where the window only covers the first hit.

What the data says ?

• It cannot guard, so it can neither trigger a Power Clash nor lean on a perfect guard: the skills that depend on those do nothing here.

  profiles.long-sword.canGuard

• It carries poison, paralysis and sleep, but no long sword in the game has blast.

  profiles.long-sword.missingStatuses

Defence

• Guardno
• Power Clashno
• Offset attackno