Switch Axe

How it plays

• Fill in axe mode while the monster moves, the reach letting you follow.
• Switch to sword the moment the opening appears, and stay there while phials last.
• Keep a reserve for the final discharge rather than spending it on ordinary hits.

Focus Mode and wounds

Focus Mode corrects the drift of sword mode, which sticks the hunter to the monster and drags him along. The Focus Strike is used to put the weapon back on the part you were working.

Defending

No guard. Defence runs through the offset attack, available in axe mode only — which means leaving the mode where you deal the most damage in order to defend.

What it brings

• The axe's reach and mobility, the sword's rate and power, with no sheathing between them.
• The amped state turns a mediocre opening into a full damage sequence.

What loses hunts

• Staying in sword mode too long: out of phials, the weapon loses its mobility without keeping its damage.
• Picking an element-phial weapon for a monster that resists that element — phial type cannot be changed.

What the data says ?

• The power phial dominates the category, on 33 switch axes, ahead of the element phial — the four other types share what is left.

  profiles.switch-axe.mechanics.phial.power

• It is the game's most limited category for status: neither sleep nor blast, no switch axe carries either.

  profiles.switch-axe.missingStatuses

• Its offset attack exists only in axe mode: defending means leaving sword mode.

  counters.offsetAttack.moves.switch-axe

Defence

• Guardno
• Power Clashno
• Offset attackyes
• Offset Rising Slash, en mode hache

What belongs to it alone ?

• Phials

  power 33element 25dragon 8exhaust 5poison 4paralysis 3