Was thinking about the Mantles and Boosters in World. I usually only see people using Temporal nowadays, often paired with Health Booster. To be honest, it’s not hard to see why since most of the equipment is useless or near-useless.
Ghillie Mantle - Hides you from visibility. Monsters will still try and ‘guess’ where you are if you do it in combat, and any attacks or damage will cancel the effect. Only really good for gathering runs, a quick getaway if you’ve used your Farcaster, or chilling with monsters and taking screenshots.
Glider Mantle - Great for mounting monsters but not much else. It lets you ride the air currents in the Highlands too, skipping the trek to Legiana/Kirin’s resting spot, but once you figure out the Wedge Beetles it’s not that long either way.
Challenger Mantle - I don’t see the point in it. Theoretically you could probably use it with Behemoth, but the effect expires once you’re attacked and monsters like Lunastra change targets at an insane rate anyway. Just use Agitator if you want to draw attention.
Bandit Mantle - Great when paired with certain weapons or doing multi-monster melees, but only when you’re really spent on cash and bulk selling monster parts or farming Kulve’s drops isn’t an option.
Apothecary Mantle - Never seen anyone use this before. It increases the chance that status buildup will occur, so I sometimes use it when playing with Paralysis weapons for fun.
Immunity Mantle - Similarly, never seen anyone use this either. Theoretically it’d be good for fighting Vaal Hazak, but I’ve never seen it used. Maybe if Purple Gypceros or Malfestio were in the game. The latter’s Hypnosis Wave and Confusion Dust would make people consider using this one.
Impact Mantle - Adds stun potential to some attacks and increases the odds of stunning. Personally, I find this has almost zero effect when playing co-op, and the non-Sticky/Hammer attacks that are effected take skillful play to really land. Which is great if you want to try something different, but you won’t see this used much by others.
Evasion Mantle - Increases invulnerability window when evading and if you evade an attack you get an Attack Boost for a short time. I used to use this now and then, but I’ve never seen anyone else use it.
Vitality Mantle - Negates a fixed amount of damage or until it expires. The problem with this mantle is that the damage is fixed. So it doesn’t scale well into the endgame. It’ll be good for one hit from an Arch Tempered monster for example and then it’s on cooldown. It is good for dealing with an enraged Hazak’s effluviual clouds though.
Fireproof Mantle - Given all the fire monsters in the game… Really it’s best used for Kulve Taroth and especially Lunastra. It massively reduces the damage her flames and blastwave inflicts. Very handy!
Waterproof Mantle - Utterly useless. There’s only two monsters that use water damage/blight and you don’t need to expend a mantle slot for either of them. It does reduce mobility restrictions in mud / deep water, but that’s only in one location. I guess if you plan on fighting Deviljho or Bazelgeuse in the Wildspire you could take it “just in case” they end up spending time in those two areas, but you’re still expending a slot for that possibility. In the original plan for the Ancient Forest you could possibly have brought it in along for Lagiacrus, due to the idea there would have been a mire/swamp he’d be fought in there too. In either case, it’d be better to just stick a few points in Mirewalker into unused slots.
Iceproof Mantle - Unless you’re having a real hard time with Legiana, there’s no point.
Thunderproof Mantle - Only good for Kirin. One of the few times I’ll see something other than Temporal is when doing Tempered or Arch Tempered Kirin. It’s a lifesaver, really. Potentially could be useful for Lagiacrus had he not been cut before release.
Dragonproof Mantle - It reduces Dragon damage sure but… I’ve only ever used it for the Dragon Damage boost, and only in a few cases. I feel its only really good for Deviljho.
Rocksteady Mantle - Negates flinching, Tremors, knockbacks, any form of interruption during combos period, gives you max level earplugs, prevents you from being thrown off during a Zero Sum Discharge attack, and reduces damage taken from all sources. Actually pretty darn cool, but……
Temporal Mantle - Auto-Dodges “strong” attacks, but it seems to activate for many, many things. It lasts as long as Rocksteady (90s) but has a minute shaved off the cooldown (5m instead of 6m), and I see people using it All. The. Time. Even deciding to forgo using Effluvial Resistance or Cleanser Booster against Arch Hazak. Sure it saved them from getting hit by his breath or etc, but they were getting infected constantly. It doesn’t do anything against continuous damage like Hazak’s effluvia and Luna’s flames/supernova, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for most people who take Temporal anyway. It also doesn’t protect against “minor” attacks (regardless of the potential consequences of said attack).
Health Booster - Often see this regardless of the setup, but if someone’s using Temporal - and they usually are - this will generally be the only other thing they have equipped. Gradual healing while in its area of effect.
Cleanser Booster - Clears any negative statuses when you approach it. I bring it for joining SOS Hazak Assignments and the Tempered Kirin Assignment but most people don’t seem to use it and many folks don’t seem to realize if they’re infected they could just enter this to cure themselves. It’s great for breaking people out of Paralysis before T-Kirin murders them though.
Affinity Booster - Fantastic when paired with neg-affinity weapons like Anjanath, Diablos, Deviljho, or Zorah… But I rarely see this one anymore since the Temporal-Health combo came to be.
There’d need to be more attacks that Temporal can’t protect against, or it needs to have some nerf in effect - like shorter duration or a ‘delay’ between auto-dodges. Or increase the threshold on how “severe” an attack has to be for it to trigger so only really strong attacks, like Nergi’s Roar-then-Divebomb attack, get auto-dodged and a mere tail swipe isn’t.
Hazak’s claw attacks or tail sweep wouldn’t be auto-dodged, but his breath attack would be. Basically, only real severe attacks would be auto-dodged, and you’d need to rely on manual dodging for most everything else.
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