as always, in terms of cars, Switch Axe is the Auto-transmission drive while Charge blade is Manual Transmission drive....

I actually prefer having the weapons entire moveset being gone over at the beginning, it helps have a full understanding of the weapon for people who don't typically play that type of weapon in-game.

The mid-discharge grapple in World was so sick

My first ever main weapon, it helped me understand how Monster Hunter really works (I was just spamming random combos with the Dual Blades before that) and made me fall in love with the series. From that point SA is always one of my favourite weapons, and I love how they're trying to focus on the switching mechanic to encourage you to use both modes consistently

Ah, you've finally seen the light super rad, you've finally made a video on the most superior of all the 14 weapon types! Come dear commenters, join the church of the holy switch axe! Its glory is greater than all other weapons... Just here to like and comment early for the youtube algorithm. Gonna watch this shortly.

S.Axe has always been my second favorite main, and my number one weapon when I'm "serious" about a hunt. I find it odd the whole "axe being a chore" point of view from the community, I have actively used the Axe as much as the Sword in all of the games I've played. Probably just my play style I guess. I absolutely love this weapon and it's adaptability. Glad it came out in the generation that I joined the franchise, such a great weapon

Sunbreaks switch axe now is actually insane its ability to remain evasive and the new morph attacks massively incentivise you to do different kinds of morphing attacks now

As a prowler main in gu i would love to see a history of the buddy mechanic from palicos to shakalakas to palimutes. Great vid as always.

Before: barely any monsters we know about have switch axes Now: Who the hell did this switch axe come from

16:50 holy crap I forgot how many jaggi followed the great jaggi at a time, that looks so hectic. I miss them

The value of Invincible Gambit is actually pretty high. It has hyper armour, meaning that it'll bulldoze through tremors, roars, and basically any attack while taking somewhat reduced damage; it's great for a more berserker-like playstyle. This combined with its relatively decent damage and movement makes it a great punishment tool, as well as a distance-closer. Combined with only requiring one wirebug and having a standard wirebug cooldown, among the 1-bug silkbinds it's pretty high up there. As someone who enjoys axe mode a great deal more than sword mode, this move speaks to me. It's more useful against Mizutsune than Great Izuchi, I find, also. But, to be fair, I was the kind of dork who did tempest axe adept/valor with axe mode only. On the other hand, I found Blade Charger to be practically useless. The actual effect doesn't last for very long; functionally speaking it's just a reload that moves you around and saves your next 2-4 attacks.

I personally would definitely prefer break downs of every move. Seems more like a definitive history that way.

Fun fact: the Switch Charger silkbind attack provides full invincibility during its entirety

The only thing I would add to this nice historical recap of switch axe is that while in axe mode in world, and moving walking toward, the hunter will preform an awkward transition into sword mode, where as in rise, moving forward and swaping to sword mode this akward transition is a fluid attack now.

Finally! My baby, the swag axe!

Fun fact, SA must have been more popular on Xbox than on pc, because every time i checked SA was ranked either 7th, or 8th in popularity. Another fun fact, in mh3u if you take your basic starting switch axe you get in your item box at the beginning of the game and continue upgrading it along the right upgrade path, it will wind up as the best SA in 3U, mizars aterism. Loved that baby, but I hated farming moonshards. Although I did have a method of cheesing lucent nargacuga to speed up the process drastically.

13:19 power axe does not increase axe damage, it increases partbreak modifiers, which also affects flinches.

If i remember correctly, Clutch claw combo from elemental discharge allows you to climb on the monster if you started near full bar (it only auto climbs if you're in amped mode). The other reason would be that you started the discharge where the monster was not and wish to climb on before he moves away. The clutch grabbing gives a slight boost to the bar so if near the end of the explosion you're still not full you can get the remaining charge by clutching on

After watching this Perhaps I need to put down my charge blade and bow and return to my swag axe roots...

*YES!! SWAXE!!!* I love what they did to the Switchaxe in Iceborne and Rise. Finally implented the switch in switchaxe instead of switch-to-sword axe.

The cooler charge blade

16:13 switch charger also has pretty good I-frames so it's good for evasion

I really like the format you use for the history of various things related to MonHun, I found your channel not too long ago but now I really look forward to your new content. Keep up the great work, you deserve all the views, comments and likes this community has to offer ❤️

The mechanics introduced in World (eventually) made me fall in love with the weapon. It took about a hundred or so hours of gameplay but when I decided to try the weapon for more than just two hunts, my eyes were suddenly opened to the possibilities. I essentially minmaxed a build using Safi armor and the Safi Switch Axe with exhaust phial, mixed with certain items and skills, it became ridiculously OP in multiplayer for most monsters. It was this weird mix of a support and raw damage build, where I did so much damage with the infinite I didn't even need to use sword mode all that much after exhaust buildup reached a certain point. My teammates hated how much I tossed them around tho, but that's not my problem. *puts on sunglasses* 10/10. Great video as always!

Are you kidding me? I have been a Switch Axe main since Tri and I NEVER knew about that finisher from the infinite axe swing! What is WRONG with me???

The clutch claw grapple of the discharge in Iceborne gave you a good amount of meter which helped a lot in getting to the amped state. It also helped you instantly grapple onto a monster and since it gave a good amount of meter, most of the time after grappling you would already be at amped state which enabled you to do the elemental discharge while grappled.

Out of all the monster hunter videos I've watched I never thought about seeing a history on weapons one, thank you can't wait to see charge blade.

World was my first MH game and I fell in love with Insect Glaive after watching it's little tutorial video in the training yard. After finding out the "dumb little bug" /was/ actually useful I went from love to infatuation, along the way I've also had fun with Dual Blades, Long Sword and mostly Charge Blade as a secondary. In the end though nothing compares to the versatile combat style of the Insect Glaive. When you're in the zone it stops feeling like a roughly forged weapon and more like a scalpel. Every strike becomes surgical in precision, every subtle movement of the monster as predictable reactions of instinct. The battlefield fades away as little more than an operating table, the stage for which this vivisection in progress is taking place. At your mercy the monster is little more than a lively cadaver, spasming as you rend it's flesh and bone in order to understand it better so that the next session is more efficient. A lioness toying with it's food, a god bored of its creation... Then there are the time you just can't get a Red or Green to save your life and OH GOD ITS ANGRY NOW! WHERES MY VITALITY MANTLE ;0;

I really like the changes you've made to these videos. This is by far my favorite so far just from a watching standpoint. Also Switch Axe is a fantastic weapon and my third favorite so maybe that helps lol.

Really cool video , switchaxe is a great weapon! But you know what would have made it better ?? If it had a giant shield along with it ! And there was also a cannon attached to it ! And it was named gunlance!!!! Do gunlance next !!!!

Really enjoying this series! Your presentation style is smooth as always. Would love to see SnS next!

love seeing my old 3U main covered, personally i think the weapon needs some of its attacks to have a built in rocksteady effect seeing as the weapon doesn't have the best defensive or evading options and I also think when your doing the ZSD were you grapple onto the monster you shouldn't be able to get knocked of if they did that i think the weapon would be in a much better place overall

And another great video dude it’s awesome to see what your doing😁

The silkbind attacks for SA are actually quite good and they both see some good use in speedruns. Invincible gambit is great to power through weak attacks and specially useful against roars. Switch charger not only recharges the gauge and prevents it from depleting for some seconds, but also makes you unhittable during the entire animation, making it wonderful as an evasive move. On top of that both of them allow you to cover a good amount of distance in a short time and can be used right after any other attack, so they work beautifully as repositioning tools.

The switchaxe has always been the true underrated weapon of momster hunter. When it comes to weapons like the hunting horn or the gunlance, it's easy to understand why they're unpopular: the hunting horn had bad motion values until World, it's slow, and while the recital is satisfying, the endlag of the move is not ideal; the gunlance doesn't even know what it wants to be, and the lance can be very repetitive... But the switchaxe has always been a cool, stilish and overall good weapon, yet not a lot of people play it still.

ah yes, my main weapon in Tri, carried me through so many hunts. i didn't use it much in gen 4, but i did have it as a secondary weapon next to long sword in world, can't wait to see the other silkbind moves in Rise.

I suppose I’ll ask for the charge blade to be the next video, but next week I’ll be back to asking for the bow! Great video as always

40 seconds into the video and I’m already giggling, awesome intro dude

I was hammer before tri.. then i found switch axe, and my life changed. I had found the god of weapons and basked in its power glow. I must kill everything that walks to make it shine the path. It’s how i purge the evil. Even other hunters feel its glory as it lifts them into the sky to mount monsters. All bow before the mighty switch axe.

i started playing switch axe in 4u, and its been my favorite weapon ever since. Cant wait for rise, because the new silkbind attacks in the demo already fix alot of the difficulties of switch axe, being that it lets you get in instantly with the spin move with no care to what the monster is doing, and lets you quickly both recharge your meter AND gain invincibility for entirely too long with the other one. (I also low key miss some of the old sword mode moves, we lost a couple good high hitting moves in the transition to world. but i guess zero sum discharge makes up for that.)

Man, the switch axe is probably the weapon I've used the most. If I remember right, I started tri using sword and shield, did a quick stint with the hammer and tried the switch axe but endend up using the long sword most at first, then I got my hands on FU, tried all the weird "new" weapons that weren't in tri but ended up flip flopping between long sword and dual blades. Then 3U came out and though I started with dual blades and long sword, but the axe called to me. I just felt I needed to try it again, and after some practice I just couldn't put it down. Even when 4U came out all I used was switch axe. Wasn't til Generations was coming out did I find my second love, I was looking over the weapons of 4 to try something new, I never really got pulled to the insect glave, but the charge blade was a strange one, after a few tries on that I was hooked and it very well replaced the switch axe for Gen and GenU. Now I have a handful of weapons I like to use, the sword and shield, long sword, dual blades, switch axe, charge blade, bow and with the changes in world and rise I'm getting into the bowgun.

As a SA main: Regarding the mechanic of pulling off the clutch claw during the elemental discharge, I used it quite a lot to combo from the elemental discharge, to build up gauge and clutch claw the monster to combo into the zero-sum discharge. Just making a note here since during the video you’ve thought it as a weird mechanic and didn’t see much use to it.

ahh, my absolute baby! i picked up the series in 4U thinking i was gonna kill it with the gunlance. after a real slog-fest, i tried swaxe out and absolutely got turned on to Monster Hunter in a really serious way. it’s been insane to see how the weapon’s progressed over the last several games, with Iceborne’s iteration being its peak imo. insane to know it started out as a ”hidden” weapon in its debut!

I started with 4Ultimate, and switchaxe was my first weapon that I used. And I used it into G-Rank. I distinctly remeber whooping Kushala around with the Pink Rathian/Azure Rathalos poison switchaxe. It had a really pretty pink luster with a glinting blue blade, and has a large amount of poison with good raw damage (at least in my opinion)

Something interesting is that in spanish the Switch axe is named "Hachaespada" that can be translated to Axessword

wake up babe, new SuperRAD video

The weapon I learned the game with! So dear to my heart it is. I love the Switch Axe. I feel like it's what beginners to MH thought of when they picked up the Great Sword in older titles - a huge weapon that gets swung around like a feather. At the very least, that's how I felt and made me pick up the weapon for a looong period of time. I actually thought the weapon changed quite a bit over the years just by changing how the morphing is integrated in the combos. It became gradually more fluid until it culminated in the full on berserker mode weapon it became in World. I started to branch out in 4U so I played less SA in later entries, but whenever I pick up the weapon in World or Rise, it feels like my hunter just went crazy with how much of a flurry of wide reaching moves you get to unleash nowadays. What was Valor exclusive essentially became the standard flavor of the weapon by now and I absolutely adore it.

"It just had this flamboyant flair about it" *shows Terra*

Important note about the second recharge silkbind art, it's fully invincible! Using it to dash through big telegraphed attacks such as Mizu water beam allows for a great invincible (not super armor, invincible!!) gap closer that also ensures you have enough sword gauge to go to town. it's super useful.

Something that I think's worth mentioning is the power phial nerf; in Tri power phials had a massive 1.4 multiplier on physical attacks, while Portable 3rd to GU knocked it down to 1.25. World and Rise have pushed it down even further to 1.18.

as I fiver I'm very very glad someone can tell some history from before I started this glorious series Switch Axe is my melee weapon of choice in Iceborne especially for Fatalis

The SwagAxe dance of keeping gauge/phile high if done right is second only to lance for keeping critical positioning and control. The Silkbinds for a SWAXE user are about keeping that middle pressure. Ie. Melee range dps.

I love the switch axe, it will be my main in rise and the Hunting horn of course!

Cant wait for the magnet spike video

14:08 the clutch claw attack from a standing elemental discharge does huge damage and charges your sword incredibly quickly. And as others have mentioned, if you do enter amped state during the attack you clutch onto the monster. It's a very good move to use to keep doing damage as the monster gets up and moves around

Been playing since 3U on the Wii U and I would like to say I mainly play Switch axe a lot of the time. Before, this video I didn't even know the attack that depletes your stamina even existed. Fair play man, you earned as sub

The Switch Axe was my first main weapon, I have a lot of fond memories with this weapon. I remember being upset about not being able to craft it at first offline but I found out you could craft it online, I spent a night finding the materials I needed to craft the basic one and go online to just craft it.

yo love the vids. was wondering if u had any plans of covering frontier weapons? as i understand they are all very different from the mainline counterparts. keep up the grind :)

I think that you're sleeping on the ZL+X silkbind, out of all the silkbinds in the demo with super armour, switch axe easily has the longest duration where it's active. It's definitely a more aggressive option for ignoring roars at least, but it seems safe beyond belief for a 1 cost silkbind.

That great wroggi was a menace, what was that 4x lunge combo 😭😭

Well I’ll be damned I saw your great sword video and wondered if you did one for switch axe and see you did it six hours ago. Talk about luck and thank you

I always thought it was a complicated weapon, but I got my hands on it at the end of iceborne and I learned to love it. its another one of those style on the monster weapons that feels great

awesome heavy hitting weapon thats also very stylish with all the colourful explosions.

Yeah, Switch Axe! I come and go from weapons as time goes on, but SA will always be special to me as the weapon that made MH "click" for me. It was just so ridiculous that I couldn't not enjoy myself.

I love the switch axe and main it since Tri, even though I didn't know at first it had a sword mode. I killed my first Lagiacrus offline with my boneaxe solely in axe mode. It wasn't until I played online that I saw someone in the sword mode and asked him how he did that. At least I had lots of practice with axe mode at that point.

Ahh yes switch boy i still have flashbacks yousing my i ceadeus switch axe in tri

Nice video! Will you do the Frontier and Explore weapons? Or only the main series ones? And prowler?

Ah the switch axe. The one weapon which I was disappointed learning I was playing it completely wrong because I always preferred axe over sword. It really did feel like until rise the modes were "sword mode" and "sword is not active mode", in the games I played (and seemingly was the same in world) Anyways, rise stuff, yes, power through roars to damage, free unga bunga damage there. As for the gauge charge move, that has i-frames... maybe we need wirebug nerfs in rise ultimate if everything is getting gorilla "I ignore everything you do" moves but hey, maybe that's just me BTW, was that an emulated version of 3U with a 60fps patch?

I picked up switch axe in world and it helped me get into the game(I’d played since 4u but didn’t get into world) I guess I needed to “switch” things up😄

Bow, it has all the advantages of Gunner weapons with the simplicity of A Blademaster weapon

16:25 it also had 7 years worth of I-frames in the rise demo

I started with 4U and mained the gunlance since then. I'd love to see a history of the gunlance video soon!

this was the first blademaster weapon i played in my first mh game, tri, after months of torturing myself playing heavy bowgun not realizing I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know critical distance existed back then. needless to say I had some LONG fights haha. Switchax was the first weapon I was able to take ceadus down with. Good times.

The Swaxe is insane in Rise. I outdamage all my friends by DOUBLE (it's on PC so we have damage meters). It's ridiculous with the Rapid Morph Skill.

Invincible Gambit is not useless. Is a great move to close the distance with the monster especially when you are in Sword mode. This allows you to stay aggressive without missing a beat. Then, Switch Charger is just a god sent. It has tons of s during the animation, and I never ran out of Sword mode ever again. The s especially nice since Switch Axe got no real defensive/counter move.

idk why exactly but the gameplay from about 7:21 - 7:40 is the funniest shit to me, good stuff

Made my week again dude you should definitely start streaming

Holding my breath for the "History of Monster Hunter | The Medium Bowgun" episode ;)

It's a weapon I've always wanted to get into but never quite understood so thanks for this video I'm gonna jump into iceborne in a bit and test it out again

Just started a MH4U run, my first experience with old gen and have been back on the switch axe. This was a super interesting topic and will have to watch your other history vids.

Decent take. I felt that throughout this weapon series, some opportunities was lost regarding a more meta-overview of the weapons in general. Things like how the weapon was conceptualized not from a gameplay perspective but from the historical or fantastical references, and how each come to fit the differences of themes across generations. The utility and physical mechanics of each weapon and how each combines fantastical aspects but is somehow grounded in reality is also pretty important aspect to the immersion of the gameplay. And if I'm not mistaken, no such video content creator has discussed this aspect in the past, I mean within the region of language I can understand of course. Maybe more important to me is the reason I picked this SA video to comment, is on the lore aspect of weapons. SA has some very interesting things coming from the phial mechanic as the first weapon to be christened with it. Some have already speculated that it has lore ties to monster energy and with it being so technologically advanced and mechanical compared to other weapons, I think it deems a section of it own and it's a lost opportunity to not discuss it at all, even if it's hardly officially canon. So maybe you could do that with CB instead? I also hope you'll do something with other examples like IG on how it references the 'respect from nature', 'prosperity from nature' aspect with the use of bugs, and how the bowguns handles the 'crafting from nature' aspect of the hunting Guild. They are also very prominent lore/thematic mechanics that give weapons their identities, IMO.

I am soo happy to see this up, but i have to put my vote for next vid for glaive

Good video, plenty of peco!

Can’t wait for the Charge Blade episode

I abused the heck out of Adept Switch Axe with Energy Charge when soloing GenU.

Watching this after starting to use Swax in rise. It would be pretty cool to see a switch skill that turns it into a Alchemy ( I think that's what he said ) style and auto morph for more types of combos especially since axe also deals phial damage now.

Can you add the option for any weapon for the next polls since honestly I don't know what to vote, I want to see all of them anyway.

i love when you just got stunned by great wroggi 4 times in a row

I love switch axe! It and charge blade are my favorite melee weapons. For Rise we have to get an event quest to make a Nintendo Switchaxe.

There is a pretty significant change to swaxe that can be kinda easy to miss, or at least overlooked when going from world to rise; a standing morph attack. Lemme explain. In world, to do a morph attack, you need to perform an attack, then hit the morph button mid combo to switch form. Hitting the morph button while standing (read not attacking) performs a morphing animation (which I actually recommend watching btw... it's pretty interesting seeing how the bits and bobs shift around). In Rise, you can perform a morph attack without the need of a "starter" attack. You can simply be standing in axe mode, hit the morph button and perform a sword mode attack, and vice versa. The only requirement is that your character needs to be moving (or just a directional input). Standing still and hitting morph performs the normal morph animation. Also, the morphing attack finisher from wild swing needs an addition morph input at the end to actually go into sword mode or you will stay in axe, which can be pretty nice if you're just looking for a bit of extra damage and wanna stay in axe mode. (Edit: some Grammer edits. Phone)

The clutch claw grapple attack fills the amped bar by a LOT. So if you're close to filling it up. Slam the clutch claw button, fill up amped mode and manually trigger element discharge while youre clutching. Max dps acquired

Switch Axe was one of my favourite weapons back when I first played MH3U, but since I found out how much I like the Long Sword in 4U, I haven't used it as much since then because I feel like Long Sword gives me a very similar moveset that suits me more. But, with all the improvements made to the Switch Axe in Rise, I think I will be using it a fair bit more often in that game!

I still remember when reading about Monster Hunter Tri the Nintendo magazine when I looked the weapons I've said to myself "The switch axe should be mine". Known as the sword axe in spanish (hacha espada).

I think I've been mostly maining Switch Axe since I started in 3U, with some Hunting Horn and Insect Glaive peppered in after 4U. Haha big axe go brrrrr

Invincible Gambit is pretty useful for powering through monster roars and lighter attacks; and outright evading heavier ones.

I love playing Tri with the Switch Axe!

In world the circle combo for sword mode generates more charge for the amped state, allowing you to enter the amped state faster that just using the x combo

I plan on maining this weapon in rise its so smooth. And sidenote is it normal to die while mounted cause mount seems worse than discharge? First monster hunter game btw.

14:15 you can charge your sword doing the elemental discharge and then combo into claw to climb the monster and do the discharge ON the monster. I think that this is the main use for it.

For the point at 14:18 where you couldn't get footage for the Clutch Claw specific stuff in the training room, you can change the objects in the training room to get the barrel "monster" which lets you practice clutch claw specific moves. You just have to talk to the house cat in the training room and select the change objects option.