switch axe vs hazard velkhana

Описание: hazard velkhana is a pretty braindead matchup with some weapons like charge blade and dual blades whilst it's suffering for weapons like hammer and hunting horn. switch axe is actually pretty interesting against this monster because its hitzones and its guaranteed large crown size make you approach the fight in a unique way.

velkhana has 3 states in this game: naked, aura state 1, and aura state 2. aura state 1 is when it applies the ice armour, aura state 2 is when the arena has this ice haze and velk can nova. each state comes with its own moveset, and breaking 3 ice armour parts will make velk go into its naked form. i still don't fully understand the mechanism behind what makes velk gain aura levels - i think it's tied to the number of attack sequences it does but maybe it could be hp based too.

hazard velk always starts in aura state 2 and will immediately do its nova unless you flash it or whatever. this nova is really annoying for weapons that can't punish it but for switch axe it provides a free dragon conversion setup, and gives me an opportunity to weaken velk's head ice armour. even though you do more damage on the legs, it's hard to target the head while velk is active so working towards the armour threshold early makes it easier to secure an aura topple later. i am also conscious of flinching velk out of its opening sequence should i break the foreleg or hindleg armour during an attack. velk is guaranteed to do the ice rings after the nova, which is a free punish.

generally, you want velk to spam ice beams in this matchup for the best dps. you can punish the ice beams by walking underneath head and hitting the legs with morph loop, or just preparing an ebc on the second ice beam. the ebc will hit velk's head and is useful for amp and mount buildup but you have to be conscious of thresholds, since velk's head has 3 thresholds you can trip - ice armour, flinch and partbreak. the first partbreak and flinch thresholds are very close together. morph loop on forelegs is also more dps than the ebc, if you get in position early enough. i don't get many ice beams during this run but i get pretty decent sequences regardless.

velk does some typically unfavourable attacks at the start of this run but i play around them well and manage to get a good flinch on the slow tail spin into an immediate ebc on icicle rain - this punish is pretty difficult timing and positioning wise since the icicle hitbox is pretty small. afterwards though i waste a bunch of time trying to snipe the head to get aura topple, only to get the aura topple and whiff my ebc swings on the second ice rings attack. i probably should not have back rolled before this ebc but if the ebc landed, it would have likely mounted velk out of its aura topple and cost me a cc. the correct thing i should have done to prevent all of this would have been to actually get the aura topple before. i'm a bit too cautious on the aura topple wakeup and could have landed an extra morph, but for the remainder of the run i don't think i made any other mistakes.

if i secured the earlier aura topple, this could have definitely been a low 3'1X. sub 3'10 is definitely possible but i cbf. if i had more matchup experience and was able to predict the aura state change roars more reliably i would be able to land more ebc/zsd punishes on those. if velk does a flying tail stab sequence or does its dash during a run, it's basically an instant reset. it also has some really annoying binded ai.

someone asked me if you could run heroics on this and considering i take 0 damage this run, it's definitely possible. i wasn't able to find a worthwhile heroics setup however, since i have too much defence and the nova zsd opening leaves me with both intrepid and heaven sent damage reduction, which makes taking enough damage for heroics hard. if i don't do the nova zsd i lose a lot of damage and build up the dragon conversion resistance stack later. also, ~60% of your damage on velk is elemental so heroics wouldn't be a massive damage boost anyway since it only scales with weapon raw - it would probably give me like ~12% more damage overall at the cost of its setup time and potentially losing the nova zsd, so it might not even be worth it.

music: persona 4 golden - snowflakes