Evade and Defense

Successfully hunting a monster not only requires dealing damage to it, but also requires effectively evading or guarding against their attacks. While all weapons have evasive maneuvers, only some weapons can guard.

Evade Window

An evasion roll or step (<<X>>) has a small window in which the Hunter cannot be hit. This window is commonly referred to as a set of invulnerability frames (i-frames).

By default, this invulnerability window is short, but can be increases with different [[Skills|skills]]. For example, the Evade Window skill increases i-frames duration, while Evade Distance increases the distance from an evasion movement.

Emergency Evading (a Panic Dive or Superman Dive) has a large invulnerability window. To perform this dive, the player has to press <<X>> while running away from a monster. Although this dive has a long invulnerability window, it also has a long recovery animation, and the player becomes vulnerable to follow up attacks while recovering from the dive.

Guarding

When the player Guards, they can block incoming attacks. Blocking an attack consumes [[stamina|status#stamina]] and pushes back the player. If player has insufficient stamina, the attack will not be blocked successfully. Powerful attacks will cause chip damage on the player even after a successfully blocking the attack.

[[images/weapon_guard)

Knockback from Guarding

* With Element Boost

Damage and Stamina Consumption

Both the chip damage taken and the stamina consumed from blocking attacks are determined by the amount of knockback caused from blocking the attack:

Non-Guardable Attacks

Not all monster attacks can be successfully blocked with the natural Guard abilities that weapons have. For these attacks, the Guard Up skill must be equipped before they can be successfully blocked.