I understand the technicality, hence I did raise as an improvement, but my point is that some bowgun weapons have a clear thematic. The thematic is not relfected in element/status, and ultimately it’s fine if it’s not implemented because it currently affects optional content. I’m raising it as an improvement because if you’ve spent time and effort (and money for some) to create a single status bowgun with the appropriate status effects, I feel there’s a case to be made to consider the weapon for the category.
Moonlit Sparkflier only has poison and pierce (side note: I find the screenshot with R4 Moonlit Sparkflier weird as I can’t find an R4 Gold Rathian weapon and the ammo is different). Nightmare’s Seed has sleep, sticky, and pierce. Since they only have 1 status gimmick (not counting stun as it also doesn’t seem to register on element), I feel they should be considered as status weapons.
I know status values for bowguns are also weird (they build up much faster even in mainline games) so I do understand it’s not easy to just give a number though.
As for Basarios HBG and Silver Rathalos LBG, since they’re multi-faceted I’m unsure. For Moonlit Sparkflier and Nightmare’s Seed, it’s pretty much the only status so I’d say it’s reasonable.
As for Deviljho Gunlance, I think it can still be treated as dragon because Gunlance is more than just shelling anyway; it’s just that most players use it for pure shelling I think. I’m really not a good Gunlance user though so dunno how good my opinion is either.
Indeed. Weapons with multiple modes of attack will not conform nicely to the traditional model the rest of the weapons are modelled in, such as S&S and Long Sword. The current system simply doesn’t cater for multi-element weapons, otherwise Khezu Dual Blades (traditionally half thunder, half paralysis) would have been a thing, but it isn’t.
Raw weapons with raw damage as the primary attack are counted as raw “element”. The other characteristics are secondary and therefore does not make them their primary attribute. For Gold Rathian bowguns and Nightshade Paolumu bowguns, their primary attribute is raw, not status, hence they don’t get an elemental attribute.
Monster Hunter is unique this way because each of the weapon system have been polished and evolved over time, up to 2 decades for some of the weapons. We cannot expect them to use copy-paste formula like many of those mass-produced game clones do, where they just take the same template, change some labels and values and then call it a different thing.
The weapon systems here are designed to be unique and differentiated from each other, hence the way they work now in various parts of the game. And the core weapon-monster design of the MH series has always been to “use the right tool for the right job”. This never changed in all these years. If you expect to use one tool for all the jobs (even if you can), then that’s not MH, and you can expect to eventually get challenged and blocked at some point down the road, such as the Trial Quests now for some of the users who never diversified their arsenal.
Please update status bowguns (LBG/HBG) with their appropriate status classification. For example Nightshade LBG/HBG should be considered sleep and Gold Rathian HBG should be considered Poison.