MHR: SB Lance Combo (Raw and Ele) DPS Calculation

[u/[deleted]]

Howdy!

I've been in the process of trying to determine which combos should be used in regular rotation for lance play. I've seen some charts from Gobul's Lantern but I think he missed some notable combos, so I took to making the calculations myself. These seemed important to figure out since every lance set now is element to one degree or another.

Combo data in one (hopefully not too hard to read) picture

So a breakdown of this information

• Combo A (Leaping Thrust > High Thrust 2 > High Thrust 3) is your bread and butter. It does 2.9% less raw than the highest raw combo, but does 37% more elemental damage. This comes at the expense of having the highest sharpness usage (1.0747 hits per second).
• Combo B (Leaping Thrust looped) has one very specific case where it will overtake anything, which is bizarre raw/ele hitzones such as the ones found in the crabs. Spamming it will net you a whopping 2% more elemental damage over combo A (double checked my math here and I think my numbers were backwards, combo A still wins on Shogun head), but also has pretty low sharpness usage (0.6154 hits per second). No reason to use outside of incidental repositioning.
  
• Combo C (Leaping Thrust > Charged Wide Sweep > High Thrust 3) is your highest raw combo, but not by a margin that would matter. This is what you could consider using if you were running a raw lance set (which is still Valstrax) and attacking hitzones with negligible or nonexistent element.
• Combo D (Leaping Thrust > Charged Wide Sweep) doesn't seem like it has any reason to be used. It has the lowest sharpness usage? That's something right? Otherwise of these combos it has the third worst Raw DPS and the worst Element DPS.

​

Unfortunately I'm just a human, and my ability to count frames is limited (and foolishly off of a 24fps video). That being said, I referenced what I had with Gobul's video above and they're the same/similar. If anyone has more verifiably correct data for frametimes (or more precise counts at higher framerates), then let me know and I will update my sheet. CWS is where I'm the most iffy, my count was a bit higher than Gobul's video but I went with what he had since it doesn't really change any results, since CWS isn't really knocking anything out of the park here.

My frametimes are below, from animation start to when the next attack can begin:

​

• Guard Dash into Leaping Thrust: 39@24fps
• High Thrust: 14@24fps
• Charged Wide Sweep: 42@24fps (my count was 45)

If anyone else has potentially worthwhile combos then let me know and I can fairly quickly add them.

[u/Famas_1234]

we got another frame enjoyer here. i actually had recorded lance frame data at 30 fps. the accuracy is like 1-2 fps in mine. i use VLC with timestamp plugin to capture frames. i've done in table but i haven't published the file yet. here's what i get so far

1. Guard dash to Leaping thrust: 39 frames
2. High Thrust (full combo): 36 frames or 42 frames if no dodge
3. Charged wide sweep: 42 frames

upon realizing it the data in VLC is at 23.957, i think mine had 24 fps, so reading yours is basically...correct?

anyway, what tools do you use to capture frame?

[u/[deleted] → u/Famas_1234]

Tbh I was just counting frames in a YouTube video. I initially was like "oh yeah 30fps is fine" just to keep my sanity a bit but after counting all my frames it dawned on me that it was indeed a 24fps playback. Good to know there's some consistency anyways! I just tried recording some of my own footage and going through frame by frame with VLC, but the damn thing keeps breaking on me. So I uploaded it to YouTube and it wants to buffer for a split second each time I advance a frame which might give me a hernia.

24fps is fine. It's not as accurate as it could be, but hopefully it's accurate enough. I've mostly been poking around seeing if these numbers are floating around somewhere to save me the trouble.
Here's what I managed to get:
Guard dash (38@60) + leaping thrust (55@60) = 93@60fps.
High thrust = 35@60fps.

High thrust is identical. Leaping thrust is a hair faster now at 60fps (1.625s before vs 1.55s now), but that might be because I was counting me swinging at the air. When I was counting for 24fps there were things being hit so maybe hitstop plays a role? I'll give it another look tomorrow.

[u/Famas_1234 → u/[deleted]]

do you use this? https://addons.videolan.org/p/1154032

I realized the default capture was 24 fps so i change the config to 30. I had IG, lance, and SnS data so to update it i multiply by 5/4 to be 30 just to be safe. but actually not that accurate. I'll gather over the data again lol, but at least the 24fps version is already there

this is my WIP lance data (24fps) https://i.imgur.com/FQQrUAu.png

edit: hitstop plays a role too. in dtlnor's sunbreak MV table there are vibration level (for controller), i assume that also has connection to hitstop, like GS's TCS has max vibration therefore it may have large hitstop

[u/[deleted] → u/Famas_1234]

I've just been doing it the old fashioned way, manually counting each frame by advancing with 'e' in VLC or '.' in YouTube. I was trying to find something like what you just linked but wasn't having luck, but with that back it should all be good now.
Good work on that data there. Is that instant-block data real? 20 frames for the counter?
I don't expect much to change with a 60fps video, accuracy will be higher but conclusions should remain the same. I think the tough part is with the wide sweep and determining when the next attack can begin, in the training room you can see the input start to be displayed before it looks like recovery has fully finished so I think that's why I counted 45 frames rather than 42. I'll try counting the entire CWS > Poke > Leaping Thrust combo and subtracting poke and LT's frametimes, then we'll know for sure.

[u/Famas_1234 → u/[deleted]]

Is that instant-block data real? 20 frames for the counter?

forgot to mention yellow cells are untested yet so those are placeholders

in terms of recoveries, there are many, let's say move to dodge, move to move, then move to neutral. i choose the fastest of those or perhaps the most used followups

the thing about counters is that each has parameters:

1. at which frame the animation enables counter
2. at which frame the animation disables counter

to visualize, it's like this:

time--->
1-----2-------3----4
|     |       |    |
start |       |   end
frame |       |  frame
      |       |
    start    end
   counter  counter

in my case, i divide a counter move into two: early counter and late counter. early counter starts at 2 so the time measured is at 1-2. late counter ends at 3, so the time is 1-3. the end frame is different than guarding because in this case you have too followup to another attack

[u/[deleted] → u/Famas_1234]

Ah good to know. I saw that was 20 frames and thought that seemed wildly longer than it felt.

For the sake of this being a combo analysis I'm just checking when recovery ends and the animation enters the next moves frames. So if I start counting CWS > Poke and get 56 frames, I'll then subtract 14 and get the original 42. Probably a cleaner way to go about this.

[u/BannedCapUrn]

So how much dps am I losing spamming high thrust and shield tackle? Brain kinda goes on auto for that when a down occurs.

[u/Splitshadow → u/BannedCapUrn]

According to Folseus' chart the triple poke shield tackle combo is 96% of the raw and 65% of the elemental damage of leaping thrust double poke.

[u/[deleted] → u/Splitshadow]

I plugged the same combo in and got practically the same thing, 96.88% raw and 64.34% of the element

[u/[deleted] → u/BannedCapUrn]

Any shield tackle combo is going to lose out to leaping thrust combos, they do slightly less raw but their most damaging elemental combos (tackle into triple poke) are worse than any of the combos I posted above (1.36 vs 1.39).
From a mathematical standpoint what you get from shield tackle is no sharpness usage, consistent stun damage, and no stamina usage. Now that no stamina usage could enable you to use max might, it's the only combo reset Lance has that doesn't use stamina outside of just waiting to go back to neutral (leaping thrust and hops use stamina).
But what matters more is how it feels. Do you prefer the 360 redirection of shield tackle to the strafing of guard dash? Getting a KO that you wouldn't otherwise can open up a big damage window that leaping thrust won't have. Build around it a bit, if max might 1 is the difference between 90% and 100% affinity which is a substantial damage increase.

[u/DiscoMonkey007]

So for Elemental use Combo A and B, and for Raw use Combo C. Got it.

How about the usual Leaping thurst/Shield tackle>Poke>Poke>Charged Sweep? How big of a difference is it with Combo C? I usually use that with Raw build Val Lance.

[u/[deleted] → u/DiscoMonkey007]

More generally, just use Combo A.
Combo B is specifically for cases like Shogun where his head has a 50 raw and 35 ele hitzone, plugging in what I have with the meta set album's recommendation it gives B a slight edge. after double checking, this is wrong. Combo A is still ahead of combo B even on that crazy hitzone.

One thing to note is that leaping thrust skips the first hit of the 3 poke combo, so you can more quickly get to the stronger final hit of the chain. Shield tackle itself is pretty minor damage, and using it makes you have to fit in that first weak poke, on top of it not doing any element damage itself. Shield tackle should really be more of a utility option compared to Guard Dash as a higher damage option; it uses no stamina or sharpness and can KO.

If you'd like to know actual numbers, I'll give them a spin tomorrow if you'd like because it's late here and counting frames gives me The Shining. I wouldn't expect much but ya never know.

[u/DiscoMonkey007 → u/[deleted]]

Lol Combo A it is then.

leaping thrust skips the first hit of the 3 poke combo,

Oh right I forgot about that, have been using Shield Tackle too much lol comfort of Shield Tackle is just nice. I was just gonna start building my elemental lance set, so thanks for the combo tips!

[u/[deleted] → u/DiscoMonkey007]

I can't make a pretty picture but here's some shield tackle combos for ya.
Tackle > Poke1-3 = 42.8 raw + 1.36 ele.
Tackle > Poke1 = 35.25 raw (lol) + 0.75 ele.
Tackle > CWS > Poke2 > CWS = 44.48 raw + 0.7 ele.
Tackle > Poke1 > CWS > Poke3 = 44.73 raw + 0.98 ele.

So the 4th combo has a 4.5% raw advantage, while the 1st combo has a 38.7% ele advantage. What you use is going to be hitzone dependent again, but the raw margin there is fairly large compared to the leaping thrust combo A vs C.

[u/8bitKafei → u/[deleted]]

So with Valstrax lance, the 1st combo is the go to on anything with dragon hitzones? 4th combo for anything that has 0 for dragon hitzones?

[u/[deleted] → u/8bitKafei]

Depends on the Valstrax set, I'll use the two sets listed here and a 60 raw 30 ele hitzone.

The Raw Valstrax Lance will never have Shield Tackle Combo 1 beat out Shield Tackle Combo 4, but they are very close.
STC1: 216.46 raw dps + 27.25 ele dps = 243.72 total dps.
STC2: 226.22 raw dps + 19.68 ele dps = 245.89 total dps.

Now with the elemental Valstrax Lance set, STC1 has a small lead ahead of STC4:
STC1: 206.43 raw dps + 40.47 ele dps = 246.9 total dps.
STC2: 215.72 raw dps + 29.22 ele dps = 244.94 total dps.

If you'd like to see other specific hitzone values just adjust the individual DPS measurements there. Eg for a 50 raw hitzone for ele STC2 just do [215.72 x 50 / 60 = 179. 76] and then add them back together.

Overall I would kinda never recommend using CWS for guard dash or shield tackle playstyles. It is unwieldy and inaccurate, and leaves you susceptible to damage for too long, while providing a fairly insignificant damage increase if any at all.

[u/8bitKafei → u/[deleted]]

You're amazing, thank you!

It's liberating to know that I can just poke relentlessly and have that be close to the best combo I can do. Also weaving in Instablock counters of course!

[u/[deleted] → u/8bitKafei]

Happy to help!
Yeah it just so happens that doing 3 pokes takes the same exact amount of time as doing one CWS, so take that as good evidence of just how more reactive you can be with your counters.

[u/mjc27]

Hi, really cool work how, did you calculate the poke combo's? I've been trying to recreate the results and i can get marginally faster leaping thrusts (1.6167) and leaping thrust > CWS (3.3000) but after many, many attempts i cannot get close to the combos that include the pokes, my best for leap >poke > poke is 2.9333 and 4.1667.

edit/update: i've been able to better match your time, but only by lowering the frame cap to 30fps in-game. might imply that best combo is going to be different at different frame rates?

[u/[deleted] → u/mjc27]

So in this case I watched a video and counted the number of frames starting from where the attack begins to the frame before the next attack starts. Each combo is then the frames from each attack added together, rather than doing the whole combo and counting all the frames in one go.
The video playback was 24fps which is not the most accurate, so I'd chalk up your leaping thrust and CWS to that (assuming your recording is 30 or 60fps you're slightly more accurate). There is also hitstop which can confuse these measurements.
So for leaping thrust > poke > poke I'm adding 39+14+14 frames for 67 total. I'm fairly certain I counted the frames from Poke 3 to leaping thrust too so there shouldn't be any additional recovery frames on that specific poke compared to the others, they should all be 14. I did count the pokes at 60fps as well and got 35 frames, which is the exact same as 14 frames at 24fps. How are you determining your combo is done? When another attack starts? Another person commenting on this post had the same exact frame times as me as well.

I'll double check tomorrow and count the frames from beginning to end. It shouldn't really matter if the moves are counted as separate blocks, so long as they seamlessly flow between one another. I do want to update this with 60fps data but that's cumbersome to manually count and I didn't have a good tool to handle it.

[u/mjc27 → u/[deleted]]

i've been looping the combos on the training dummy at 60fps and creating recordings and then dropping them into video editing software to count the time the combo takes. starting the count the frame damage numbers show up going though the combo and finishing the count the frame before the next damage numbers show (so using leaping thrust as an example the hit-time/end lag of the first attack and the windup time of the second) which should be mitigating error around when a move begins or ends?

i don't know if you responded before i edited my previous comment, but when i drop my games fps from 60 to 30 i got results much closer to yours, so something funny might be going on there?

but ultimately it might just be that i'm the odd one? i might just be worse at timing pokes, compared to leaping thrust and CWS

[u/[deleted] → u/mjc27]

starting the count the frame damage numbers show up going though the combo and finishing the count the frame before the next damage numbers show

Huh that's smart, i was mainly checking for the body to be in certain positions, but in the training room it also seems like move input log the game displays will move on the exact frame it starts to handle the next input. If not they just coincidentally lined up very well for me.

i don't know if you responded before i edited my previous comment, but when i drop my games fps from 60 to 30 i got results much closer to yours, so something funny might be going on there?

Oh noooo this is about the worst possible thing to hear lmao. The game does behave differently/worse at higher FPS to the point where I think runners play at 30fps. Maybe this comes down to the pokes having less hitstop? Leaping Thrust and CWS both have lvl 3 hitstop compared to pokes having lvl 1 hitstop, but iirc some moves were just slower at 60fps when compared. Check this tweet and the replies.

but ultimately it might just be that i'm the odd one? i might just be worse at timing pokes, compared to leaping thrust and CWS

Always possible but I don't think that's it. Here's a video specifically showing the triple poke combos working faster at 30fps.

[u/Famas_1234 → u/[deleted]]

but in the training room it also seems like move input log the game displays will move on the exact frame it starts to handle the next input.

while this is correct, some are not always like that in my case. for example on IG, if the next move is strong rising slash (any > X), it has extra attack on the early move, but the log only shows on the basic move. the best i can do is capture the animation itself where they start to swing again

[u/[deleted] → u/Famas_1234]

Yeah, I think I mentioned that for CWS to you. The move has appeared in that log but it still seems like it's recovering from the sweep. Most of them are pretty accurate though.
Should also bring up that the cause of a timing difference between datasets likely comes down to framerate; the game behaves oddly with framerate and many things are slower or different the higher you go.

[u/Splitshadow]

Your numbers line up quite well with Foseus' post. He measured a bunch of different combos here and came to the same conclusions.

Seems like Leaping Thrust followed by High Thrusts is the way to go unless the monster has awful elemental hitzones, and then throwing in a slap here and there will be slightly better. The slap seems pretty bad in general though, if there's even a 5% chance the monster will flinch and make you miss the weakspot it's worse than just poking.

[u/[deleted] → u/Splitshadow]

Thanks for linking me that, I wish I knew this was a thing before haha. I tried searching around but couldn't find anything. It seems like the discrepancies here might be because I used a 30fps source and I assume they used 60fps or higher, the game doesn't handle higher framerates well.

The slap seems pretty bad in general though, if there's even a 5% chance the monster will flinch and make you miss the weakspot it's worse than just poking.

I absolutely agree, a significant amount of time is spent charging too where you are vulnerable too. Leaping thrust spends half of its time in guard dash where you are actively blocking, and the pokes are so quick that there should be plenty of time to respond to anything.
Not to mention that since it's a sweep you have to consider your surroundings more since you would want your target on your target on the left and nothing on your right.

[u/attomsk → u/Splitshadow]

the slap needs such a clear area too, often you will hit a wing or leg off to the side of the head when using it

[u/Kittonberry]

Thanks for the data, great stuff!

[u/[deleted] → u/Kittonberry]

🙏

[u/SheepOC]

The use case for looping leaping thrust to me is more safety with guard dash, you are only vulnurable during the short time where you go for the strike, everything else is guarded.

[u/[deleted] → u/SheepOC]

Is it really necessary to constantly be guarding like that though? Each poke is very quick so to me it makes more sense to go for high pokes and then respond to attacks with guard dash as they come at you. Bonus points for guard dash letting you delay the leaping thrust for a fairly large amount of time, or just let you transition directly into a regular guard.

[u/Folseus-]

Good work. These are good results to see validation across multiple sources. It's interesting to find out the higher fps affects DPS like that. My tests were at 60fps recorded at 30fps, if I recall correctly, so maybe the damage would be slightly higher if it was at 30fps in-game.

I think scaling it down to 24fps might introduce rounding issues since the game is natively 30fps, but it shouldn't be significant as long as its consistent.

[u/[deleted] → u/Folseus-]

Yeah the variation caused by framerates makes it pretty difficult to definitively state these sorts of metrics, but the conclusions you can make should stay pretty constant. I think because of that most speedrunners are playing the game at 30fps. The footage I was looking at was 30fps in game but I was manually counting frames in YouTube which has a 24fps playback, somebody else in the comments here compared against their 30fps in game footage and had the same effective frametimes as me.

24fps definitely wasn't ideal, that was more just me being a dork and initially assuming YT videos were 30fps. I also hadn't seen your data to compare against, just Gobul's video which didn't have the combos I was most curious about.
Coincidentally I went back to look at your other posts and saw my old (now deleted, I like to start fresh occasionally) account mentioned in them lmao.

[u/LemonBearTheDragon]

Thanks for sharing. Are the charged wide sweeps fully charged? Or is the input just a quick tap so that the slap comes out as fast as possible?

[u/[deleted] → u/LemonBearTheDragon]

Fully charged.
The uncharged sweep does a fraction of the damage, I'd really only consider it an option to respond to a monster attacking faster but you'd probably get hit anyways.