MHW Iceborne (PC) | AT Velkhana (SnS) | 4'24"70 (TA Rules)

Finally got sub 4'30 after lots and lots of on and off grinding. I got really really really lucky in this run. I got pretty great clagger and topple timing, I got all perfect rush finishers on the head after claggers, and that aerial flinch in the middle of the run allowed me to sharpen without any time loss. I was thinking about doing something dumb for the description but since this will be my final AT Velk run I might as well get all my thoughts about this fight off my chest.

AT Velk has gotta be one of the best, if not the best fight in the franchise for me. Velk at aura levels 1 and 2 has a crazy good moveset. Almost all of her moves can be punished with good damage. This means that her AI for the most part is kinda consistent, or at the very least much more consistent than Alatreon's AI. New optimizations are always being discovered for this matchup. I can still think of multiple aspects of the fight where I could still improve, such as performing full perfect rush on the traditional elder dragon turn into ice puddle. It's a difficult fight to learn, but definitely the most rewarding to master. She's really damn fun to hunt with SnS, and that ice puddle punish is the best thing ever made (thank you Dr. Phil 😍😍😍).

The biggest problem with this fight for me was the map geometry and ice ledge/wall generation. I mentioned this in my previous run but when fighting near the walls of the map or slopes it can be really awkward to punish certain moves. Wall and ledge generation is also a pretty horrible gimmick and ruins a tons of runs because my guard rolls get cancelled into ledge hops which messes up slinger burst PR. I don't really like Velk's beam attacks either because they share a unique flinch threshold that leads into a rebounding ice beam. This threshold is usually pretty easy to count but there have been many cases where Velk will flinch on the leaping slash portion of PR. On top of this Velk sometimes loves to spam her beam attacks which isn't really ideal. Size variation is also horrible to deal with since the fight is made harder overall if Velk ends up being really big, very specific punishes are actually impossible to perform at certain sizes (makes me glad I run on PC tbh).

In conclusion AT Velk is goooooooood and fun and I really wish more fights were like this. Thanks to CSMHPiano for inspiring me with his sub 5 AT Velk run, and thanks to Harper for giving great advice while I was still learning the matchup.

CSMHPiano's 4'53 TA run -    • MHW Iceborne | AT Velkhana Solo (SnS) - 4'...  
Harper's 4'38 TA run -    • MHW Iceborne | Arch Tempered Velkhana 04'3...  

Mods used:
Daily Food Skills Utility - https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterwor...
Guaranteed Legal Small Crown - https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterwor...

Music:
Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files - The Duel -    • Видео