User blog comment:Lord Loss/Discussion of the Week: Switch Axes/@comment-72.134.30.182-20120902220000

Switch axes are my favorite weapon. Range it seems is always one of my most valued traits when chosing a weapon/character/thing, even if I don't realize I'm gravitating to that at the time. I actually had a hatred of the weapon at first because one of my friends in the group would constantly upswing us like a moron and use the stamina drain multi-slash (terrible attack... so bad), but once I started using it the weapon really grew on me. I find it really easy to not murder teammates with the SA and don't understand how others can't help but hit everyone around them.

For the adressed questions, I don't have all of them (freaking skypiercers), but I use Great Demondbind (P) the most, and from the ones I can remember off-hand, the barrioth lance is probably the slickest looking IMO. I sincerely hope they make it into MH4. They definitely provide reasonable damage and have great versatility. As far as sword vs. axe, I prefer axe mode myself, but you really need to be able to use both. Sword is great for if you're fighting something where you really don't wanna bouce (ohai urragan face on the turn, I guess I'll let you chin smash me) or for creatures flying right above you (rathian if you're careful about tail, rathalos, and quru mostly). Every hit lands easily with the vertical combo, you have wind res while attacking, and you don't need to worry about launching anyone else trying to get under them. SA is great for the flyers mentioned there and I would reccommend it for anything other than barroth and lagia. Barroth charges generally put you out of range of a quick upswing after dodge and by the time you get back to it the thing is charging again. Lagia's moves just have too big of hitboxes and it's really tough to get those dodges in underwater with a SA. Barrioth and Giganox get a lesser thumbs down unless you're really good at rolling through attacks (barrioth) and because just because on the Gig, I dunno. Better tail cutters? Depends on the monster. SA is good for hard to reach tails, but I think GS in general tops it.