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He is still the great wall in iceborne, to this very days you can still see full parties going into the alatreon fight with non elemetal weapons, and getting wiped 5 minutes after.

I'm a pretty casual player, so I didn't know elemental damage was bad in world and used them because it just feels better to use your knowledge of the monster to prepare a specific weapon to fight it with. In that vein I think elements being bad seems like bad design.

The invisible modifier was the part that angered me most. At least at the time of release. I used charge blade and build specifically for big elemental SAED damage. a week later I found out that the SAED attack specifically was crippled against Alatreon. I adapted and used other attacks and can now easily solo the first elemental break for a whole party. It was how the in-game damage was deceitful and I could never get complete information from the game itself that soured me to the experience. Had I not seen the data online, "I need to do more damage" would have been inflated to absurd levels using what I believed to be my best elemental attack. Call it deceitful, call it counterintuitive, call it artificial difficulty. Something here is wrong and goes against the grain.

Honestly, the main thing I dislike about Escaton is that it has become engrained into Alatreon himself. When people think of Alatreon, they don't think of the well telegraphed moves, the super satisfying hitboxes or his outstanding design. They think of Escaton. I really wish Escaton didn't exist, because wether it's good or not, the controversy around it dominates Alatreon discussion. And it really should not.

Frostfang releasing after Alatreon is still a really weird decision to me

Honestly I imagine it would also be less hated in general if shattering the horns both times would also just mean Alatreon couldn't Escaton Judgment and even extended the time before EJ goes off from the 6-ish minute timer to say 12 or 15 after a single horn break, and that could be balanced out by making it significantly easier for ele weapons and harsher ( but not just straight up death) for raw given the "can only break during dragon element mode". hell go for spectacle, do "too much" elemental damage and a horn explodes instead, still stopping EJ. That would also of ment a huge mental relief for both parties with elemental weapon users having that relief significantly sooner. I've been playing more again recently and did a three man and even though being lance I had full access to the head for 12 minutes straight doing between 200- 400 dmg to the head regularly it gets nerve-racking when you KNOW you've passed the break threshold ( 3,697.5 dmg if kiracino is right) and the horns haven't broken the second time after the 1st feels like it breaks the instant Alatreon goes dragon element mode. the other two I played with weren't slouches either and were playing with the right element. I use to play a ton of MMO's and personally have always HATED dps checks (Especially if the fight already has a timer to begin with) since for those it could be (and usually is) an equipment issue and not a skill one (and as mentioned in video it was far too easy to reach Alatreon so very likely equipment issue). while I was one of the people who took full advantage of guiding lands I also played with people who either didn't or couldn't due to time issues (job/ had to restart from the beginning due to save file issue so lost a ton of deco progress) and it really showed how rough EJ is to deal with when it's just 1 person who's prepared. I ended up figuring out how to make a set that could deal with BOTH judgments zero horn breaks (or "best" possibly worse case scenario 1 break) and even though it still works, even with multiplayer scaling, it's ridiculous/ nerve-racking being the only person who can manage worse case but possible to survive scenario. to shorten this up, if Capcom hadn't made the dps check a small secret timer with multiple secret multipliers possibly per weapon that, in essence, one shot and instead a check that you could counter with in multiple ways that didn't one shot with mild preparation (health booster+ and mega/ two mega potions and your good to go like after 1 shut down) he'd absolutely not be as hated. I personally love the fight, I just LOTHE Escaton Judgment specifically for how poorly thought out it is.

I think there is one valid complaint regarding being forced to play a certain way, you aren't allowed to play safe. Having to get an elemental weapon and element set is extremely annoying; but if you're good enough, more basic elemental weapons can be effective. But some people play more defensive playstyles, they don’t mind taking 40 minutes on a quest in exchange for not getting hit as often. While slower, this playstyle can be just as effective. That's why I think it's bad taste that basically all of Iceborne's endgame requires faster, offensive playstyles. You don't need to be a speedrunner; but Safi, Fatalis, Alareon and especially Kulve Taroth cannot be played safe if you want to win. To be clear, I'm pretty happy with how Alatreon and Fatalis taught me how to be a faster hunter, it saves a lot of time in all quests across World and Rise. I get the feeling a lot of formerly defensive players like myself feel the same. BUT there are people who've beaten Alatreon/Fatalis and still feel burned by needing to speed up, and I think that’s valid. Being forced to change playstyles isn't so much an issue of weapon element, it's that people were literally forced to change HOW they play the game

What I dislike so heavily about fights like Alatreon or the other Sieges is how stating your dislike for them is always met with "hurdur ur just bad". No. Sieges and Alatreon (Fatalis to a lesser extent, he really just seems to be "hit hard, life good") don't follow the patterns thus established by the games. People still dislike Lunastra (mainly) for introducing a two-hit instakill combo and a DPS check in her first assignment when she was introduced to World. Sieges and Alatreon took these ideas, so far foreign to World newcomers and veterans alike, and ran with them for the worse. The game taught us XYZ. People can rightly be taken aback when after countless hours and 20 years of XYZ, there's this sudden moment where we have to perform ABC. You don't scold someone for teaching them how to ride a bike, and after a while of no deviation with your lessons you give them stilts with roller blades on the foot end and they don't perform well.

The Afflicted monsters DPS check was also fairly forgiving in its own way because of bloodblight. It rewards aggression and discourages passivity.

Another issue I had with alatron: Gunlance shelling effectively does no progress to his element damage progress, despite it having the best modifier for element, effectively it means that you have to play as a worse lance, and it’s element damage is already pretty bad to start of with

I remember reading " i play for hunting a large animal not a God" that stuck with me for a while with alatreon

In regards to the hazard risen elders in Rise, I love how they feel completely optional. It felt like Alatreon in Iceborne was necessary to beat to experience the full game, since it's the only way to fight that specific monster. In sunbreak the endgame challenge was simply buffed up versions of monsters I've already fought

I do not like any mechanic that forceably bottlenecks players into specific builds regardless of their overall stats and build they personally had set up, and this is no exception in my opinion

I really hate how there's no way to avoid Escaton. Unless you kill Alatreon before outright before can use it you WILL take damage, and that just feels bad in a series where proper positioning and moveset knowledge lets you avoid everything.

I'm at 29:30 into the video, and I want to add on to your point of how fun it is to learn the fight. When enraged, Alatreon can do three lines of lightning strikes. While learning the fight with LS I realized a cool combo: You can foresight slash the first strike, cancel into a special sheathe to dodge the second strike, and then Iai Spirit Slash the third one. Learning this, and then pulling it off consistently, has made Alatreon a top 5 fight for me. Learning how your weapon's moveset can interact with a boss' moveset like that, is what keeps me playing. Great video by the way. 🖤

I hunted 4 alatreons, that was enough for the full armor set and a fully leveled GS, not fighting it anymore

I surprised the stupid element cap wasn't mentioned when talking about element sucking so bad. That's one of the biggest reasons it sucks in World. Even if it had the ammount of skills as raw does to buff it, without wearing a specific armor set (Safi's armor skill raises the cap) you'd hit the cap relatively soon and no longer get any value. Raw damage has no such cap besides any HARD damage number in the damage like a 9999 rpg number

What I hate the most about Eschaton isnt the damage check, or the elemental requirement, its the fact its completely unavoidable damage, regardless if you pass the check or not. The whole entire game you're taught to avoid attacks to survive and that heals are there to patch up mistakes, and I can usually gauge my improvement by how many heals I have left after a hunt...so why did they think putting in an unavoidable nova that you eat a snack to survive was a good idea? I beat Alatreon first try and don't really struggle with him, but it still feels bad having done literally everything right and still take lethal damage that I can only circumvent by healing like its an MMO. EJ hurting you despite succeeding just goes against basic player psychology, which is insane because it's stapled to a monster with easily the cleanest hitboxes and most fair AOE in the entire game. A great fight held down by a mechanic thats feels almost designed to be hated.

The greatest part of the Alatreon Comtroversy is that the Devs never nerfed Alatreon, rather they force you to fight an extremely weak Alatreon before fighting the one thing harder than Alatreon, Fatalis I genuinely think the Alatreon in Dawn's Triumph was a prank from the Devs, as the Alatreon in that quest has less HP than a Master Rank Great Jagras

Until this video I didn't even know there were elemental modifiers for the weapons.

Good video! I will throw my hat into the ring for this discussion. I've always loved alatreon, i've even speedran his fight in iceborne. I think a lot of the problem is how capcom themselves didn't explain the mechanic well enough. How the weapons can realistically hit the check at the same threshold with their own modifiers for elemental damage as well as how vague the ingame notes is about Dragon element specifically, which is utterly useless in fire/ice mode. As well as telling people to run separate elements to cover the check-- which is TERRIBLE advice, as the check is scaled based around the amount of players. If you're fighting fire alatreon, you all want to run ice/water weapons. Any fire to potentially cover his shift to ice mode is only weighing you down. Overall i think if they explained the mechanic more thoroughly than "you have to use elemental weapons!" people would be less peeved. But then again, people probably would've skipped through that text anyways and still complained.

And I'll STILL see people run Raging Brachy weapons on this guy nowadays

He was probably the only wall that I actually had to rebuild all my set and learned what to put on my armor (rather than mindlessly copy from "BEST BUILD FOR MHW:IB"). I actually had fun with him. Do I find him annoying? Nah, he was hella fair. He had a fuck ton of window of opportunities that you can punish him for. Do I find the judgement bullshit? I did, but thru many trial and errors, I actually find it quite fitting for him.

As someone who always farmed elemental weapons due to Pokemon brain, I never really knew this was an issue 😂

Even with Escaton Judgement I still love this fight, made me think about what’s best to bring as opposed to just brute forcing a fight which I felt World and IB did a lot

Basically in the metaphor of carrots and sticks, Capcom decided to use a gigantic redwood of a stick to club players into using elements with a giant deadly fatalis shaped carrot.

The main gripe is that, with every other monster, now matter how much you take damage, eventually you will be able to kill it, Alatreon breaks that rule. He's an mmo boss, not a rpg boss

I really think the lack of information hurt his reception. I don't mean the fact that you need to use elemental weapons, the game already gives you like 4 popups and constant NPC dialogue telling you to. I mean, the game doesn't tell you about the elemental damage cap, neither what the limit is or that it exists at all. It doesn't tell you the elemental hitzones. It doesn't tell you the damage modifiers for each weapon type. The whole limited horn break/ killing him before the 4th escaton thing can be avoided if you still mostly build for raw but with a little bit of extra element, but that's not the impression people were given. Element sucked in World, but not for Alatreon, and for some reason they hid that fact. I think they kinda shot themselves in the foot with that a bit.

I would argue that one of the biggest issues with Escaton that wasn't covered here is that dealing with it is wildly weapon dependent. Saying that the DPS check is easy to beat while showing footage of you playing longsword kinda defeats your point. Longsword's standard playstyle is also its highest element playstyle, so you can just... play the weapon as long as you're using an elemental option. The modifiers also did help the heavier weapons, but claiming they made it equally easy for all weapon types is untrue. Hammer and lance both have a modifier of 1, but lance hits vastly more often and has a far easier time meeting the DPS check. Switch axe and dual blades also have the same modifier of 0.6 - despite hitting with vastly different frequencies. Greatsword has a modifier of 1.1, meaning it should be hitting slightly less than twice as often as dual blades. Anyone who's played those weapons can tell you that's not the case. And that's not even getting into the garbage with CB phials. Then there's gunlance, whose damage is almost entirely comprised of shellings, which are not impacted by the weapon's elemental damage (they have a miniscule fire portion, but that cannot be buffed in any way and is not impactful whatsoever). Beating Alatreon with gunlance requires you to switch to a low-damage poke-based playstyle simply to be able to beat Escaton. Hammer finds itself in a similar boat, needing to avoid using its strongest attacks in order to deal enough elemental damage. For any weapon like this, dealing that much less DPS means they'll have to stay in the fight far longer, and at that point the inability to prevent the 4th Escaton is a real threat. Bowguns have a hard cap on how much elemental damage they can deal on account of limited ammo. Even with crafting extra ammo types, they can still very easily get into a situation where they simply cannot beat the DPS check no matter what they do. This is far from my only issue with EJ (Ala's tendency to stall during the 3-minute period you have to deal elemental damage, the complete reliance on out-of-game info, etc...) but this is probably the most glaring one to me, and it rubbed me the wrong why that you claimed beating it is easy when you were essentially playing on easy mode. Not every weapon has that kind of privilege, and a lot of the people who struggled to beat EJ were far more likely to have been playing the weapons least able to combat it than simply incapable themselves. Tl;dr the difficulty of beating Escaton varied wildly by weapon and the weapons most impacted by it had a harder time with the other parts of the fight as a result.

First off, amazing video with great context of before and after Alatreon's release!! As a 5th fleeter, I found Alatreon a challenging, yet fun fight but never really understood all the hate/criticism. Since I played through world/iceborne just this year, I had all the knowledge of the game being out for 6 years, which was a massive help, especially for Alatreon. Going into the fight, I already knew the mechanics, what gear to bring, and when/where to attack for the elemental topple and horn breaks. I think your compilation of all the main criticisms of the fight, the explanations, and the rebuttals gave me a great perspective from others who may have gone into the fight blind and/or been veterans of the series. This perspective was hard to gain from a few paragraph post on reddit or other online forums, but was detailed excellently in this hour long video, but such is the difference of the two mediums. I still think Alatreon is a good, enjoyable challenge, but the criticisms of it are much easier to understand and sympathize with.

MHW introduced a lot of defensive items and armor skills that made it extremely difficult for monsters to deal damage. The temporal and rocksteady mantles, combined with powerful armor skills like divine blessing and free meal massively crippled the power of conventional attacks. Lunastra was the first monster that had some means of circumventing the mantles. After Lunastra, almost all of the DLC monsters had OP gimmicks that felt more like litmus-tests than attacks that could be skillfully avoided or countered.

For me this topic only comes down to 2 things: 1.- When I finally managed to defeat Fatalys, I felt immense satisfaction accompanied by a genuine feeling of joy and achievement. With Alatreon, that didn't happen, it was more like: the nightmare is finally over. 2.- I gladly face Fatalys again and again with a smile on my face. But that will never be the case with Alatreon.

ive always said, anyone of my complaints alone doesnt ruin him, but all of them together makes him to annoying for me. NOT to hard, he isnt to hard, just annoying for me. i CAN beat him, but i dont WANT too. Don't hurr durr me with the "jus get gud duhhh" shite. Eschaton judgment is cool on paper, but the execution was lacking. The way sunbreak handled the idea was golden for me, so its not all bad.

While the argument about nuke attacks being overdone by the end of Iceborne makes sense, one of the things that wasn't discussed very much was how they provide players with a chance to chill for a few seconds - and how important it is. The attack itself and the break in monster aggro gives you a chance to sharpen, reapply buffs, heal, and just mentally relax from constantly reading the monster. Granted, not all nuke attacks are like this, but the three main points of comparison for Alatreon (Fatalis, Behemoth, and Safi) are. You do get a small window of non-aggression with Alatreon, but if you aren't relatively high skilled, your time is usually better spent rushing him down to maximize your damage, something made mandatory by Escaton despite the 50 minute time limit. Every speedrun I've seen uses these gaps to their fullest, and I imagine most average players also try to use these as much as possible, again adding another layer to Alatreon's impossibility for average players. I just hope they do a better job with the endgame of Wilds, but I can't help but feel like they'll power creep themselves into a corner again.

I have a few corrections/clarifications I want to make: 1. Element is very good to invest in on most fast weapons classes, and meta builds specifically maximize investment in element as a higher priority than raw. This includes investing in critical element and elemental augments, even to the point that weapons with customize options have been meta for most of iceborne (even before kjarr came to master rank). That doesn't mean a majority of their DPS necessarily comes from element, but it does tend to be the most efficient place to build dps overall for these weapons. Note: some monsters just have poor elemental hitzones, and even element favored weapons don't necessarily favor heavy investment in these cases. Zinogre is one such example. These are, however, the exception, not the rule. 2. Nonelemental boost only applies to weapons that have an unawakened status/element, or no status/element at all. Raging brachy weapons, for instance, are not eligible, and the only time NEB eligible weapons have been common to the meta was the base patch when shara and acidic glavenus weapons were top contenders. In base world, NEB was indeed stupidly overpowered, and a widely available option on meta sets. 3. Blast isn't very good. In fact, over a long fight, it performs significantly worse than element because blast procs become less and less frequent due to monsters building up resistance to the status. It IS however, the best status for damage that a player can use for DPS assuming they have high enough dps uptime that poison doesn't win out. To say raging brachy weapons were good because of blast is simply wrong. They were good because they had excellent raw, good slots, and purple sharpness without investment. You will never run out of white sharpness on a raging brachy weapon unless you just forget to sharpen, and if you have a good master's touch build, you will spend most of the time in purple. Blast was only ever a bonus.

Took my friend and I about a month of doing 2-4 runs every few nights to get past Alatreon. Mind you, we didn't look up any guides. We very much wanted to figure it out ourselves. Now we're at a point where each of us can solo him at like a 50% success rate. It's a difficult fight, but doable. Definitely feel like it was a case of people being frustrated by MHW getting hard when the rest of the content was much more mild.

Great video, but small correction, you said the only way to get critical element is to equip silver Rahtalos armor, that is true for "True Critical Element", normal critical element also comes with velkhana armor and basically all rath armors, not only silver I believe. Just a tiny point in a otherwise great video :)

Another issue with alatreon which is an extension of the farcaster, is that with LBG and HBG you'd run out of elemental ammo way before alatreon is dead, and because of how elemental ammo is designed you cant carry enough ammo or crafting materials to continue the fight. Furthermore even with escaton judgement it is just mathematically better to still do raw damage or blow him up with HBG

The big problem with Alatreon for me as a gunlance main was that all of gunlance iceborne's major damage increases were monopolized by Wyrmstake Blast (WSB) which is only for shelling damage which aside from like single-digit flavor fire damage doesn't do elemental. The way to do elemental damage with gunlance is to only use the physical attacks but since there were no improvements on that side, I didn't use any physical attacks. Also why play gunlance if not for the GUN. I was already doing shelling only by the end of World and Iceborne only encouraged me to double down on that. Asking some players to suddenly use a completely different moveset than one you as a developer encouraged specifically and one that purposely neglects the very core of the weapon's identity encouraged seems pretty artificial to me. I did enjoy his fight otherwise (like his attack animations) and eventually beat it with a friend but that fight left a bad taste in my mouth. By contrast, I enjoyed Fatalis all around much more despite it being much harder. I also don't like the arbitrary disabling of farcasters. At least make up some story explanation for it. It just comes off as a developer giving up and dropping all pretense.

noobs will say nerd are being elitist fucks for saying its fair nerds will say noobs are well, noobs for saying its unfair but more than fair on unfair its the fact that no other monster has a dps check with a party wide instakill in mh history, its simply out of place, it does not belong in a chill game like mh...

I will say you've definitely covered this more in depth than most people I've seen online. I never struggled with knowledge of how to beat Alatreon, and it got really annoying to try to look up guides and help for the fight as all anyone would say is "equip element and topple him get gud". As a veteran of some time Alatreon walled me HARD. Harder than any other fight in all of MH. It took me roughly 25-30 attempts with and without skilled help and over 100 hours of on and off hunting to finally beat him for the first time which i did about a week ago solo. This grind was *miserable*. While almost all my complaints are covered very well there are some small things I noticed personally that irk me. For one thing bonking him, at least solo, is a herculean task as the hitbox for the walls in the arena are wildly inconsistent. Ive seen him hit the boulder horns first and just slide off of it like butter. And while I cant state this definitively, I'm 95% sure Alatreon is coded to shorten or stop mid attack if you clutch claw his face and knock you off. Speaking of, if he happens to use an electric attack it will instantaneously bust a fully upgraded temporal mantle in roughly a single second 😮‍💨 As for Escaton, I still think its bad. I hate that it made me change my entire armor item loadout and play style, I hate disingenuous mechanics, and I hate that it can punish you for small mistakes; I had plenty of times where he would EJ right after I had been hit hard or stunned or knocked down and didnt have time to heal the EJ even if I had gotten the topple. I even grew to somewhat enjoy his moveset over time, but I was never able to enjoy the fight as EJ was always looming over me. This fight almost ruined my enjoyment of MHW even after over 500 hours, and I think that Alatreon being the penultimate boss of IB left a bad taste in my mouth. Ranting aside I think this is a fantastic video and you've done a great job hitting all the major points, and thanks for being rather neutral and not shaming people who love the fight or the people who take issue with it^^

Burst was also in World, just as Elemental Acceleration and locked behind the Namielle set.

The fight is not the issue, its the restriction on weapon type. It requires so much grinding for a specific element weapon. Judgement is a pain but it changing its element is worse given you. Plus it is isnt the easiest to damage given its time on the air. Not the hardest fight but definitely most hated.

This was a fight where I started hating how World/Iceborne scaled with player count and probably how poorly it implemented, I remember playing when the updated recently had dropped and my three other friends were too stubborn to switch their setup or use the recommended Element for the knowledge we had at the time and with many tries we never killed the monster. After they all left I decided to try the monster on my own and what do you know I kill it first try with zero struggle, the horn shattering was significantly easier and I was consistently suppressing Escaton Judgement on my own. I don't remember if we ever did get back and beat Alatreon as a team but I do remember them all killing Alatreon at some point whether it be with the power of retrospect or they went and solo the monster with the knowledge I gave them about how it was significantly easier to control Alatreon's quirkiness. I'm glad this video exists as I always did find Escaton Judgment to be awful and I always felt alone on this matter (especially my friend circles)and only to be met by people of the extreme sides of "You are just bad" to "You just hate x game" on the internet.

Fun fact on the teostra super nova. There is a specific point of his song that lines up with the 100-second timer, so if you listen for that part specificly, you could always dodge it

fantastic and in depth video about difficulty in monster hunter. an hour long video and not 1 second was wasted or uninteresting. bravo man this was fascinating to watch.

Something a lot of fivers don't realize is that element weapons have ALWAYS worked this way. It just became more apparent in World because of how bloated the raw of weapons became and how bad the hitzones of monsters became. Old games also had skills that gave much more significant boosts to elemental damage, whereas world's element boost skills are trash.

I'll stick to what I've been saying for years about Alatreon, I very much prefer how they evolved this idea from World into Sunbreak by giving monsters a critical state that comes after their enraged states, starting with Xeno'Jiiva. Like you said, that feels more natural with their moveset and screwing up there feels like it's your fault, because you're failing the same attacks that are slightly super powered now and in general, they have more interesting dynamics going on with the fights, softening up more parts to make monsters more susceptible to damage, thereby rewarding calculated aggression, as well as a topple mechanic that still feels amazing even after hundreds of hours, seeing the monster reeling back and falling down hard on their backs, or doing a massive backflip into the ground, in the case it's an aerial topple, it's just, Glorious.. That's the kind of feeling David probably felt when taking down Goliath. I know that EJ is beaten into the ground, but I do think that a much more unforgettable fight was lost due to getting this mechanic, if we'd gotten a critical state for Alatreon, similar to all monsters before or after him in Iceborne and later on in Rise/Sunbreak? For me, that would've made Alatreon the best monster in Iceborne, bar none.. On the other hand though, it gives me big hopes for the future of the series how the developers looked into this and developed challenge for monsters in such a great way. All of that said though, I'm not entirely I'm not entirely opposed to this idea and all in for just 1 type of powered up moves/states, there are ways that they can make something like EJ work and I think it would be similarly to how Amatsu's massive attacks work.. That way we can get some interesting and dynamic attacks that can be the signature moves of more peculiar monsters like these, for another example, Fatalis's breath attacks were done in a pretty interesting way even though on the surface, they seem fairly simplistic.. And knowing that these are the devs dealing with these kinds of conundrums? I think we're in the best hands for this, I can't wait to see what they've got cooking in Wilds.

Fights like Behemoth, Safi'jiiva, reworked Alatreon, and reworked Fatalis, that _hard require_ a specific build / team comp / strategy and have extreme DPS checks, are objectively bad design for Monster Hunter. The entire point is being able to use whatever weapons and builds and fighting style you want, while being able to overcome monsters by learning their attacks and weak points and openings, and use your skills and the experience from previous encounters to successfully hunt them. If one person wants to use Elemental weapons, and learn what monsters are weak to what elements, that's great. If someone else wants to use pure Raw weapons and win out by big flat numbers, that's great. If someone wants to use Hammer and play it dangerous by always going for the head, that's great. If someone wants to use bowguns or bows and attack from range, that's great. When a monster specifically requires the whole group to know a specific strat, how to do every phase, and have specific builds, all ahead of time, that's _bad design._ Also, unavoidable damage does not belong in Monster Hunter. Escaton Judgement is something that does not belong in the series _at all._ The point of learning monsters and gaining experience is that you can start avoiding attacks and taking more risks, and be more aggressive because you can avoid attacks.

World was my first entry into Monster Hunter and I got around playing it about half a year ago so I heard about the elemental dps check before. It took me an entire week of practice runs to beat Alatreon, including the gear grind, but ultimately it was one of the most memorable fights in the game and I love it so much. It's just as he said in the video, for the first time I was actually forced to learn a monster's move set in and out. The grind itself was surprisingly fun, though. I distinctly remember the first time I didn't panic when Alatreon threw down the fire circles and dodged into the inner ring for a punish. Pure bliss. The most misleading thing about the quest is the MR25 requirement. Being new to the series and not knowing any better it kinda felt like an insult when it says 25+ on the box but 50+ was not enough. Oh, how naive of me. Now I know for anyone without any prior MH experience it's a mislabeled MR100 quest. (at least for me it was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I still think Alatreon was more fun back when he had access to all elements at once as he did in 3. It makes him feel more like a master of elements.

Here's the thing if you're playing a ranged weapon one shots have always been in the game since they take 30% more damage just for existing. This is often what drives me nuts in world and rise end game is just a series of one shots until I can basically finish the quest without getting hit and no one talks about it because there are only 3 gunner weapons and most of the community isn't using them. Just to be clear this is coming form a bow player cause to some extent I get it for the guns but the bows not really playing at range to the same extent.

To be fair with amatsu, primordial, alatreon, and fatalis if you were playing the game since the beginning you wouldn't or shouldn't have the issue of fighting them too early. I don't think Capcom cares about you late purchase or late playing experience like that

This is super interesting timing, I just returned to World and finally solo'd alatreon myself earlier this week. For some context, my first mon hun game was 3U, and I struggled with Alatreon back then. I can't recall beating him. I was hyped for his addition into world, but struggled on first release. I knew about the elemental necessity, I was running chargeblade which I was certain had enough damage from SAED to make it work. But I was still failing. Finally, while on call with some hunter friends, I took time and re-evaluated my setup. I had been running primarily Alatreon into him, assuming it was obviously the best considering its elemental resistances and the boost to elemental damage. It turns out no, 3 pieces of safi and 2 pieces of alatreon gave me a huge boost in elemental damage, and the safi set bonus gave so much consistent sustain, alongside vigorwasp. I managed to get two kills later that night, and was very hyped. Now I am here and see that SAED is explicitly nerfed for Alatreon's EJ stagger, and feel a bit robbed while still understanding the reasoning. Without the nerf, SAED would've absolutely dominated the hunt, but I really wish we got a pop up telling us it wouldn't be as effective. Regardless, I still love the fight, Alatreon's animations and kit are near perfect in my eyes, and I always viewed my failure against EJ as a failing on my part, not Alatreon's. I had actually been grinding to unlock augments (Im only MR 98) when I re-attempted with the new kit, and I can 100% say without EJ's difficulty I never wouldve bothered to do so.

I like alatreon because, as an insect glaive main, it made my kinsect more than just: "grab buffs, set and forget 'til i need more buffs" Instead, my kinsect WAS my elemental damage, allowing me to bring a raw damage build. I'd love if we could utilise our kinsect a bit more like that in Wilds

You know what would be a better way of not having the accessible camp for Alatreon while also not disabling farcasters for no reason? Just not have a camp. Have one of the npcs say in a one off line that it’s too dangerous to set one up. There’s still a ‘camp’ area where you start the quest and go back too when you die, but there’s no actual way to restock. With this you still can’t change weapons if Alatreon switches elements, but it would feel more natural and less cheap than randomly disabling farcasters. It would also turn the farcaster into a ‘get out of jail free card’ if you fail the Ej check.

My only issue with Alatreon is me having to go hunt down a frostfang Barioth cause I have actual shite luck with getting parts i want

My two dislikes about EJ: 1) Alatreon elmzones are terrible while his hitzones are good, meaning we deliberately have to make choices that lower our overall DPS just to beat EJ (except IG, which can go full raw while putting in auto-attack an elemental kinsect on the arms). Pushing players to use elements by introducing a mechanic which kills you if you don't while not addressing in the slightest the reasons why players don't use elements in the first place is a receipt for outrage. Just make elements a relevant source of damage. In Iceborne, Savage Deviljho, Stygian Zinogre, normal and black Diablos are monsters against which elements can be more powerful than raw. Slow weapons should also be tuned so elements are also viable with them. This is a Pb which has been going on since the beginning of MH, yet absolutely nothing has been done to correct it. For that matter, Iceborne director thought it was a good idea to put a 0.7 multiplier on the elemental power of IG and Lance, making them even worse at elemental damage than GS and Hammer, in a game where he was trying to get players to play elemental. What the Hell? I hope MHWilds will undo these nerfs and I am glad Iceborne director is gone from the MH team (insert the tenderizing mechanic here), even if I still like a lot MHWI. 2) The fact that Alatreon can still shift to its opposite active, even after both horns are broken. Essentially, this is a DPS check within a partbreak check within a DPS check, which is just silly. Sure, Alatreon is most likely near death and, yes, an experienced player can beat Alatreon solo before he can swap (or even before he can fire a second EJ). But Alatreon is balanced around Kjarr and Safi weapons. Safi'jiiva is forced multiplayer. Solo players would spend a year farming for his armor and weapons because of the energy drain being balanced around 16 players. For players on console who didn't pay for the PS+/Xbox live, Safi weapons/armor are off the table. In my opinion, MR Kulve Taroth DPS check is even harder than EJ. When I first fought Alatreon, Frostfang Barioth was not here yet, and I couldn't pass the first phase of MR Kulve Taroth (I didn't know what the check was. A partbreak check as the NPC said? A damage check? Once I figured out it was a DPS check with partbreaking extending the timer, then I built accordingly and killed MR Kulve Taroth on the first try, but it was well after Alatreon and I had to get the infos about the DPS check on the internet due to how bad and misleading it was presented in the game). My only options were the Beotodus weapons, which are severely lacking in raw, meaning Alatreon had enough HP to switch to Ice active, then kill me with the next EJ (for my first kill, Alatreon shifted two times to Ice active, each times killing me with the next EJ, and was in Ice active mode for the third time when he finally died). Alatreon is my favorite fight in the series, but if he returns, I hope elemental damage will be reworked so using elements against Alatreon is not a necessary handicap to not be killed by EJ. Maybe making EJ a temporary damage boost for Alatreon to the point his elemental attacks can OS you (like Fatalis blue fire) should you fail to meet the check would be better.

I have killed 50 Iceborne Fatalis I have only killed 2 Alatreon I will kill 50 more Fatalis before I willingly fight another Alatreon

Alatreon is my favorite monster from when I started in tri and just in general now. My only issue in world is I honestly I didn't know if I was doing things correctly with a great sword because nothing told me of the different values per weapon type on release. This made the fight feel hard to identify my mistakes. I don't have friends, and random people dropped like flies, so I face and beat it solo.

To expand on "Some Elemental Weapons suck": Alatreon fights (and most of Master Rank for that matter) were not designed with bowguns in mind. Capcom quintupled the monster health in High Rank, without giving Gunners extra ammo. Which would be fine, because you can fire multiple ammo types and craft more ammo while on the hunt, right? Wrong. Your crafting capacity is very limited, so unless the quest allows you to go back to your item box, you won't get enough ammo to one-tap a fight. Second, bowguns in MHW are designed around using ONLY one type of ammo. A balanced bowgun using spread, pierce and normal to do damage and sticky and status ammo to support the team... doesn't work, because your set skills and the bowguns are designed around abusing one type of ammo. Which brings us to bowguns. You can completely cheese a lot of monsters by hyper-focusing on only using either Spread, Pierce or Sticky ammo exclusively with all the damage buffs. There is no way for an Elemental Heavy-bowgun (which has absolute garbage motion values on Elemental Ammo) to get through an Alatreon fight without running out of Fire or Ice Ammo. And because of Escaton Judgement, you are not allowed to FARCASTER back to base and restock. So playing bowgun against Alatreon is basically a mandatory cart to restock. But if you have a mandatory restock baked into the fight, you might as well just take STICKY ammo and stunlock alatreon to death and take the Escaton deaths on the chin.

Thanks for this review, me and the nephew will be continuing to try our best to beat this dragon. For sure I know with enough experience we can learn his move set as we've done with other quests. It'll work out

World Alatreon just never became fun for me. I don’t mind the prep work, or changing my gear. I switch my set up often, to keep the game interesting. Specially when hunting the same monster over and over. Alatreon and Lunastra were the two monsters I only hunted to get their gear, then never again.

HE'S BACK i love your videos so far alatreon and fatalis are the only two monsters i haven't beaten after all my time with world :/ i don't even know how to begin approaching them. i've beaten fatalis in mhgu and alatreon many times in mhgu! but pretty much insta-cart every time i try in world, even before EJ -_-

Given the removal of the quest timer in wilds, i wonder how that will effect difficulty in the future. Also given the new mechanics surrounding packs of large Monsters, which you can seperate from one another if you Play it right that could have a big impact as well. If Dung Bombs exist in wilds they might be far more useful than in earlier titles.

Escaton Judgment was a skill check. There has been plenty of them throughout the series. Lord Gog's Dragonator, Dalamadurs head, Fattie's dragon hail and Hard body. etc.etc.etc. Most contained to black dragons. Though none were insta kills, they were all essential to completing the hunt, and if you couldn't, the hunt would be considerably harder. Alatreons gimmick is different, but in my honest opinion, its not that bad, its suppose to be a hard fight and he is suppose to he a strong monster, lore and gameplay comming together. I feel like the larger problem is that you can fight him at HR12, you have to be almost 9 times larger MR then this to fight Ruiner Nergigante, and as one who once had the WR speedrun of this fight (let me flex this okay, its my one claim to fame), Alatreon is in general a way harder fight. When you have newbies coming into end game with regular equipment and no real skill checks, they will get bodied why Alatreon in mere seconds, no less beating the DPS check. Odds are they will time out before they can kill the monster, no less survive the whole fight. But i do agree with the "Instakill do not belong in Monster Hunter" even if you "can" survive it, its not suppose to be survived.

Im sorry, but i still think Iceborne Alatreon is dogshit and nothing will change my mind. EJ being tied to a DPS check wouldn't irritate me as much if it wasn't for the fact that it's completely unavoidable. Getting punished with One Shot damage because i didn't kill you fast enough? That's fine. Forcing me to eat said One Shot damage with no way to defend myself? Lame.

Capcom wanted people to use elemental damage and instead of making elemental builds good they made all the others bad for this one fight. Oh, and dragon water and thunder builds were still useless.

Fantastic video bud! I remember when the review bombing was happening when the monster came out 😅 it was a wild time for sure. It was a hard fight for sure and still is! I just hope they keep bringing in the challenge for wilds! It's going to be an insane ride for sure!

I for once really wished they would implement more „you fuck up you die“ ultimate skills.. it’s somehow super cool and on monsters like alatreon and fatalis it was fitting like a god damn glove. Stuff like Teostra etc is also super cool and I really dig it but it’s avoidable yet super cool and gives an uncanny identity(!) absolutely love it. That alatreon „feature“ using elemental weapons was just a smart move cause it’s conveniently fitting and made an every do unpopular weapon tree (elementals in general) mandatory so people had to farm and optimize onto only a weapon but gear set to which gave them a new goal to grind and optimize for. This monster hunter team is really squeezing the best out of monster hunter and I think we can lean back, enjoy the Wilds trailers and teaser and grab a beverage to be sure shits gonna slap harder than our daddies.

Insect Glaive players stay winning with Alatreon given that the kinsect alone can fulfill the elemental requirement, allowing us to use any glaive.

Meanwhile me doing Altreon for 12hours straight learning it and eventually we just took a bunch of widerange skills with us and healed through Escaton by force. From what I gathered it wasn't such that people didn't know what to do. Pretty early on in a random group lobbies people realized they needed to do elemental damage. But many players were just coming from the back end of Iceborne meta which was very Raw focused and no-one really had any elemental weapons or sets specifically for it. At best alot of people managed toonly bring the Kjärr Weapons from Kulve, but without specifically having a high elemental sets. And combine that with laying with randoms, it quickly became a shitshow because not everyone was able to keep uptime with their weapon consistently. I personally realized that the best option I had, ws to bring Thunder element, because that way, regardless of which state Alatreon was in, I atleast was able to push the elemental threshold when others couldn't. And majority of the time people did not break the horns, so Alatreon was always switching from Ice to Fire, so it was almost a necessity to have someone able to keep uptime on elemental topples if possible. So what we ended up doing is; Be able to do the 1st elemental topple, and heal with relative safety. But it quickly became problematic after that if there was no horn break. So alot of it was realiant on 1 player having thunder at that point and once Alatreon goes Dragon active and everyone is able to deal elemental again, it was a hit or miss if we got the 2nd topple before 2nd escaton. But for that we did have the friendship wide-range system which helped us to stay alive by force. the funny part about this is that afterwards we had killed Alatreon just 2 times or so, I brought a friend who didn't know anything about the fight into it and we killed Alatreon with only him using a raw weapon while the rest of us dealt with the elemental stuff. And it was somewhat funny, considering how we struggled in random groups for so long.

After I slowly gained knowledge of Alatreon and Fatalis, I felt it so satisfying to finally understand the attacks. I was so happy on each first kill of each of them, especially because I'd done them solo. I initially hated the instakill, but as I understood the mechanics, I learned to actually enjoy them

My problem with Alatreon is that he conflicts with the primary philosophy of Monster Hunter hunts. They usually have a long timer so that over the course of the fight it incentivizes you to learn the monster and improve. This way you will eventually finish the hunt unless you cart too many times. Alatreon’s hard damage check doesn’t allow this where you only have a fixed amount of time to meet the threshold. It also made certain weapons borderline un-usable (looking at you GS) because they are incredibly inefficient at applying elemental damage, meaning that a lot of people’s main weapons were a massive hindrance

As a newcomer to the series (first game was world), I LOVED Alatreon, he was my main goal for months, until I decided to farm the Safi Jiiva armor set and Kulve weapons. Once I did that, I beat him on my first try, before that, I was banging my head against the wall with the set I used to every monster before, maybe people didn't want to adapt, or change, they wanted to keep their "good for all" set, I defeated Alatreon on last Christmas for the first time, with 17 min on the timer, it felt great! If I could beat him, the said veterans, who says stuff were way harder back then shouldn't have a problem with it. I went for the plat on Worldborne and RiseBreak, and I'm having a blast in GU now Greatsword is easy mode there for real, I'm clearing all the quests, and I've only had 2 carts so far, didn't fail a single quest all the way up to 9 stars. I had a cart for Zinogre and one for freaking Khezu lol Fun game anyways.

My biggest issue was the need of elemental. It’s a little silly to be fair, but I have 2,300+ hunts with a great sword and 0 with every other weapon. It’s a little OCD but I like the one huge number and zero others, it makes me feel like I’ve really mastered the great sword (which I’ve been playing exclusively on my first character since tri), and the idea of needing a “1” somewhere else on my list bothers me. When Alatreon first dropped, trying to sos respond with a great sword was almost a kick every time before you’d ever enter the hunt. I ended up playing other quests until I’d get insurance, then I’d solo with the blast GS and just eat the 3 deaths which is not a good mechanic at all. With the Witcher crossover, playing as Geralt didn’t change your weapon stats in your guild card which was a really cool idea.

Thanks for this video. As a person that picked up World/Iceborne recently, you do a very good job at summing it up pretty well. The progression in Iceborne endgame is confusing at best, with the game throwing incredibly hard monsters at you, that require you be at higher MR to get access to better Guiding Lands farming and materials, that are nearly a MUST have for these fights. With that said, I was really looking forward to fighting Alatreon, as I've been soloing the guy since his debut in Tri, yet I had a hard time explaining why I thought Iceborne Alatreon was such a bad designed fight because of Escaton Judgement. I sincerely find his fight entertaining, I like fighting the guy, yet the restrictive measures taken (and to add insult to injury, with hidden mechanics the game doesn't tell you about, that are different ONLY for this one fight) make it bad for me. I don't mind EJ being a DPS check, if anything, I used the Afflicted and even Risen as good examples as to how you can add DPS checks without restricting the player so much. MH has always been a game about letting the player decide how to finish the quest, restricting them to using one thing or two does not make a good game design, and World seems to be more about that than other games. Granted, they learned about that in Rise/Sunbreak, but alas, we spoiled the fandom so much, that just because we get tough monsters that don't 1HKO you, the game's "too easy". Hopefully Wilds will use both WI's and RS' experience to make difficulty better AND scale better.

Great video. Is even motivating me to have another go at Alatreon. I loved Monster Hunter World, and Iceborne and still have the best and fondest memories, but I injured my arm around the time Alatreon released, and then life interfered in other ways, and by the time I had my first few attempts much later... I was mostly a solo hunter, who used Great Sword... really struggled. A lot of the info you gave in this video, I was completely unaware of. Back then I even tried to use SOS after a few days of trying, but we'd usually fail and then I would feel a bit guilty. Despite being my first wall in Monster Hunter, I never really disliked Altreon or the game, or the design of the fight (well knowing some of hidden mechanics would have been nice...), just figured I might have to move on and or try again later. That being said, at that point, I had felt like the game had given me and some of my friends hundreds and hundreds of content, enjoyment and good memories. Before Wilds come out, I should revisit World/Iceborne and give Alatreon (and Fatalis a go). Am happy I found your channel, will subscribe and have another great Monster Hunter creator to watch! Cheers!

131 views in 16 minutes bro still got it

For me and my mates alatreon was the end of build diversity even on our new playthroughs we just run 4 dual blades and build towards ice from the start knowing alatreon is waiting

Me and the friend I played the entirety of World and Iceborne with, used almost exclusively Heavy BG and Gunlance respectively, the weapons with the worst elemental damage in the game. We were close to beating Fatalis, we have spent COUNTLESS hours trying to beat this stupid Italian dragon to no avail, and we'd rather keep attempting Fatalis, all because of one elemental damage check. Eventually we started another playthrough on ICE (the mod that makes World infinitely better) and tried as many weapons as we could, eventually beat him, and it STILL wasn't fun playing around an elemental damage check, thanks Capcom, don't pull this again in Wilds, thank you.

Encouraging players to build elemental damage is one thing. Enforcing it with a oneshot mechanic is another. Not giving enough information to players is also bad enough, the fact that to this day I didn't even know his arms had elemental weak points speaks for itself. Also I never liked the two mandatory condition is to win the fight, both breaking his horns and the elemental discharge. Fatalis to me did this way better, you don't have to break his horns, but if you do the attacks are weaker.

His elemental damage check is not fun.

It's a dumb fight I never liked because it funnels you into making a specific build just to beat this dumb idiot, I'm so glad they added Fatalis later as the ultimate MHW final boss Now THAT is a fight

Proud to say I solo'd all of World + Iceborne without carting once

When me and my friends first tried to fight alatreon, we died basically immediately, and that essentially made my friends put down world under the idea that weve already beaten the story so theres no point in playing just for "superbosses". I kept playing though, and though i cant beat normal alatreon, i was able to solo the reduced health quest to unlock fatalis.

God, I legitimately despise Alatreon. I find his hunt to be far more annoying and frustrating than something that actually feels difficult in a "fun" way. I'm somewhat thankful for his existence, as he forced me to somewhat abandon HBG and pick up two of my new favourite weapons, Lance and GS, but he's still not fun in the slightest. "Artificial difficulty" is a pretty fitting description for his fight. And even though I can kill him in around 20 minutes with 0 carts, I'm constantly foaming at the mouth with rage, every second that I'm forced to fight him. I've killed Fatalis almost 40 times now, I find his hunt to be the single most enjoyable and easy to understand hunt in the game. Hit the head, break the horns, weaken the fire, be aggressive, win. Meanwhile with Alatreon, his arms are weaker to elemental damage than his head, despite his head being more susceptible to raw damage. His tail is weakest to ranged damage but you need to constantly focus your attacks on his front if you want to survive and you can't chill out and go for a tail cut (this makes my unga bunga GS brain very unhappy). The giant rocks around the borders of the area are super finnicky with when they decide to grant you mercy and let you perform a wallshot, so you'll end up wasting a crucial potential damage window and just end up enraging the damn thing. Then he flies for a good 3rd of the fight and has what is easily the most annoying mount in the game. I've killed him around 10 times, with most of those being me getting online and deciding to kill him purely out of spite. Not to mention the fact that critical element is an armour skill rather than a decoration, making it annoying to have enough room in your build to both deal optimal damage and have any comfort skills like free meal. I would genuinely consider Alatreon to be more difficult, or at least more infuriating, than Fatalis. I can sit back, relax, take it relatively slow and steady with Fatalis and still kill him in under 25 minutes, or even wipe him out in 19-20 minutes if I choose to put effort into playing the game and being hyper-aggressive with Lance. I have no other option than to be hyper-aggressive against Alatreon, and it feels exhausting, especially when you can't farcaster out at any point in the hunt to restock or get more food buffs. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Fatalis is fun for me, Alatreon is not. Maybe I'm just bad at the game, maybe I'm completely wrong with everything, all I know is that if I was held at gunpoint and forced to fight Alatreon, I would still face him, but constantly be muttering curses as I stare at my screen and watch as he slides off a wallshot rock for the 5th time in a row.

This monster single-handedly shaped me into a true monster hunter! I'd always call for help when the going got tough and that actually worked rather well, until Alatreon... it was the first monster that I fought alongside everyone else (I came into Iceborne before Alatreon but after Raging Brachy) and it was quite difficult having to contend with the fact that I wasn't the only one struggling, EVERYONE was struggling! Took me 2-3 days of fighting it before I finally won, and now I can solo the beast almost effortlessly, even doing the fight with the HUD off by accident (I had fought the Crimson Fatalis mod and turned the HUD off to get a screenshot for the thumbnail) and still winning! and in subsequent playthroughs, I actually struggle against Alatreon more than Fatalis, as I've killed the latter on my first try TWICE, once with Longsword and the second with Switch Axe, whereas Alatreon was still quite hard with both (especially Switch Axe, as I was less experienced with that weapon, even though it was my main throughout that playthrough)

The thing with the fight is even after improving at the fight, I can’t enjoy it because I’m always stressing about meeting the timer. I’m never thinking about his other moves just Escanton.

Despite how harsh this fight was, I'll never forget the highest highs I reached in this game were when I defeated Alatreon with a group and then finally solo.

There's no need to play semantics. Regardless of what you want to call it, if it walks like a DPS check and acts like a DPS check, it's a DPS check. Other than that, my only other critique is that you are trying way to hard to be neutral vs. just sharing what others said and what you personally have to say about any given thing.

on my few hunt with alatreon, i surpassed dps check fairly regularly but escaton always gets me, even with health booster with other player i love alatreon design, attack, and attacks telegraphing but escaton ruined everything for me

very interesting breakdown excited to see more of what ur channel has to offer.

Just recently got to and solo'd Alatreon. I'm determined to beat every monster in the game Solo so I stubbornly stuck to it, only afterwards did I hear there was a big controversy. I don't get how having to change builds to beat a super boss is worth all the anger... Now this fucking Fatalis timer on the other hand. That's some real bullshit

Yea my biggest problem with him at release is the elemental damage thing since I’m a greatsword Main we were kinda limited in options for ice we had a literal fish lol

I dont mind One Shots when theyre not related to a DPS mechanics One Shots can be fun if they're these cool telegraphed attacks that you can just get out of the way 😊

I still remember fighting it solo using lbg.

I hated how escaton only let me learn the fight in 6 minute increments before kicking me back to the hub. It made learning the fight a chore.

Fish