That said, am I the only asshole focusing on insect glaive? It took me three days to figure out how to pick up my three buffs before slashing and dashing, mounting, and bring shit down. Any specifics I need to know on how to better mount, and what to do when mounted? Like stamina control, staying mounted, doing optimum damage, and ensuring the monster drops?
Mind you I'm barely level 5...
I switched from Dual Blades which was great but felt a bit boring and easy to Insect Glaive. Liking it so far, although I switched to a bone version and god is the sharpness awful on this shit, breaks way too fucking fast.
There's basic video guides that you probably want to check out for weapons when you grab one, like Arekkz and gaijin hunter have good ones. I liked this one
For mounting, it's honestly not that great solo, but if you do play multiplayer it seems pretty nice. Basically how it works is after you've hit the monster a certain number of times with your 1dmg attack, it'll fall over and you get damage. You have 3 things you can do while mounted(well 3 useful one, I assume one button lets you dismount but I've never checked which one). Press attack to use your little knife shit and do 1dmg which accumulates until you can do a special attack with the same button and the monster falls, press R2 to brace, which is used when the monster tries to shake you off(there will be a prompt in the early game, otherwise look for the screen dimming and the monster often doing some noise) and you can press a direction to move on a different part of the monster, either to do damage there or to avoid when the monster tries to smash himself into a wall. You can be on head, back or tail. Once you get enough hits, you'll do a special attack and that can be used to break parts so moving to the right part is useful. As glaive, you can also break parts by just moving up and down the monster, because moving around does damage. If you get shook off, you can slinger your way back onto the monster by pressing R2 or Circle as long as you still have stamina.
For the most part early game you just mount, then mash Y/Triangle just checking the prompts for R2/moving around, and once the monster is down you do damage. Your kinsect buffs are frozen while mounted so you won't lose them either.
But mounting, and aerial attacks, are actually not really that good for Insect Glaive. The video guides emphasize that, you do a lot more damage on the ground. Jumping around is fun, and useful in some situations(you want to get a mount, enemy is flying, you can dodge stuff, need to reposition etc) but if you're just spamming jumps you're doing a lot less damage than you could.