Basic Guide To Insect Glaive - Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

There are 2 Parts to playing the Insect Glaive; The glaive itself, and the kinsect. To start off, I will touch on the various kinsects and what they do.

Kinsects

You can send your kinsect out to gather up to 4 different kind of extracts, depending on which part of the monster you are hitting. Each extract will give you different effects, as shown below:

Before hitting the monster with your ground combos, you should ALWAYS have Red Extract up, as well as White Extract if possible.

For maximum damage output, one should always have triple extracts up. In some situation, one might want to have an extended Kinsect Duration, to do this one can first hunt with Red + White extract, and then obtain Orange when Red Extract is blinking.

When any of the extracts are blinking, it is an indication that there is only 10 seconds remaining to that buff.

So what Kinsect should I be using?
When you are deciding on a Kinsect, there are 2 main things to take into consideration, namely the Power and Speed of the Kinsect.

Power will affect the damage your kinsect does, and Speed affects the speed at which your kinsect travels. Heal affects the amount of health regained when gathering Green Extracts, as well as the speed at which the Kinsect Stamina replenishes.

For more information on the Heal stat, do refer to the following:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunterWorld/comments/7yuvq4/data_regarding_kinsect_heal_stat/

As a new player learning to play Insect Glaive, I would recommend using "Foliacath III Forz". This Kinsect comes with high Speed and medium Power. With the high speed, it would be much easier for new players to gather the respective extracts.

For more information on Kinsects, you can also check out this video, from one of the best IG Speed runners, Pochi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNff1UCdAKw&t=227s

Kinsect Combos
1) Kinsect: Harvest Extract (L2 + Triangle)
Sends your Kinsect Forward to gather an extract from where you are aiming.

2) Kinsect: Recall (L2 + Circle)
Recalls your Kinsect and loads the gathered extracts.

3) Kinsect Charge (L2 + Circle + Triangle)
Buffs your Kinsect depending on what Slinger Ammo is used to Kinsect Charge, as well as what is the Kinsect Bonus on your Glaive itself. Doing this before a Kinsect: Recall will increase the duration of the gathered extracts.

Often you are unable to choose which pods you have access to during Kinsect Charge. The best course of action here would be to clutch onto the monster, do a weapon attack and use the Slinger Ammo produced.

Slinger Ammos
Below are the buffs that comes along with the different types of Slingers, based on the Kinsect Bonus that your current weapon has:

Stamina Upgrade & Healing
Element Boost
Speed Boost

Spirit & Strength Boost

Another way for you to fully utilize Slinger Ammos, is that when your Kinsect Stamina is low, and the Slinger Ammo you currently have provides Stamina Buff, you can Kinsect Charge to instantly replenish the Kinsect Stamina.

For those of you who are interested, here is a spreadsheet showing the different buffs/boosts interaction:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunterMeta/comments/g30ay5/insect_glaive_kinsect_buffs_and_boosts_spreadsheet/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Glaive Combos

As much as how fun Aerial Insect Glaive may seem, it is actually a huge damage loss compared to Ground Insect Glaive.

Aerial Combos
Before we start with the Aerial Combos, Flight Jewel (Airborne) affects your Mounting Moves, as well as the FIRST hit of Descending Thrust.
For Insect Glaive, these are the different Aerial Moves:

1) Vault -> (Strong) Jumping Advancing Slash (R2 + X -> Circle)
This can be used whenever you are trying to avoid a monster's skill (i.e. Kulve Taroth's Lava Breath move) and Vault + Midair Evade does not cover enough distance.

2) Vault -> (Strong) Jumping Slash (R2 + X -> Triangle)
If you are intentionally trying to mount, this gives more mounting damage than (Strong) Jumping Advancing Slash so you should use this instead.

3) Vault -> Descending Thrust (R2 + X -> R2)
This move does not contribute to mounting damage, and actually has good DPS. This is often used to gap close to a target, and the last part of this skill is akin to Kinsect: Mark. There are a few match ups where you can abuse descending thrust, namely: (Brute) Tigrex, Lunastra, Alatreon and Kulve Taroth. Generally if you are going to be spamming this move, it is better for you to bring along a Kinsect with High Power and Low Speed since during your combo you kinsect will follow up by hitting up to 2 additional times, compared to when using a Kinsect with Higher Speed. This move can also be followed up with a (Strong) Rising Slash or Overhead Smash(Without Red Extract, Tornado Slash with Red Extract)(Circle), if the opening permits. For an advanced way to use Descending Thrust optimally, you can watch this guide by KhalidSenpai, another awesome IG Speed Runner:
https://youtu.be/RvxbYyYe0uo

4) Vault -> Midair Claw Attack (R2 + X -> L2)
When a monster is far away from you and drooling, you can Vault into a MidAir Evade into Midair Claw Attack to extend it's drooling animation.

5) Midair Evade (X mid-flight)
This is an iframe that pushes you forward.

Ground Combos
Before we begin with the ground combos, I will start off with explaining the (Strong) Thrust.

(Strong) Thrust (Forward + Triangle)
This should generally be how you start your combos. Depending on the amount of time you have, you can choose to omit this move accordingly so you can finish off your main combos.

Main Combos:

1) (Strong) Thrust -> (Strong) Wide Sweep -> Overhead Smash (Tornado Slash if you have Red Extract) (Forward + Triangle -> Circle -> Circle)
Pretty much your bread and butter combo.

2) (Strong) Thrust -> (Strong) Reaping Slash -> (Strong) Double Slash -> Overhead Smash(Tornado Slash if you have Red Extract) (Forward + Triangle -> Triangle -> Triangle -> Circle)
Named by Pochi as the "Angle Combo". This move gives you the mount amount of hits.

3) (Strong) Thrust -> (Strong) Wide Sweep -> (Strong) Rising Slash Combo -> (Strong) Reaping Slash -> (Strong) Wide Sweep -> (Strong) Rising Slash Combo -> Repeat Underlined -> End off with Overhead Smash(Tornado Slash if you have Red Extract) (Forward + Triangle -> Circle -> Triangle -> Triangle -> Circle -> Triangle -> ... ... -> Circle)
Fixed Point Combo, so use this whenever the monster is fixed at a particular spot i.e. Knocked Down, Claggers (Drooling Animation), Trapped etc.

For a more detailed combo numbers break down, please refer to this video by Pochi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwIhlEteWFg&t=109s

Decorations

Useful Decorations to consider for Insect Glaive

• Flight (Increases Damage of Jumping Slash, Jumping Advancing Slash and the first hit of Descending Thrust)

• Stonethrower (Gives you extra Slinger so you can Flinch Shot and have slingers for Kinsect Charge.)

• Geology (For Guiding Lands)

• Evasion (Increases your Iframes by 3 Frames each time)

• Jumping (Increase the distance of your Iframe, including Midair Evade)

• Refresh (Or you can just eat a Dash Juice)

• Power Prolonger (Increases your overall Kinsect Duration, as shown in the chart below:

  

• Item Prolonger (Increase duration of your consumables, including Protective Polish)

• Blast (Only for Blast Weapons)

• Medicine (More Healing)

• Physique

• Mirewalker (Only used against Shara so far)

• Footing ( 1 Point is useful against Rajang. Alternatively, Triple Extract also gives you 1 Level of Footing when you have Brace Jewel.)

• Mind's Eye (Good in some fights, i.e. Rajang)

• Maintenance

• Protection

• Brace (Good for Multiplayer to prevent flinches. Each level of Brace gives the following buffs when you have Triple Extract: 1 Level of Earplugs (Up to 3), 1 Level of Windproof (Up to 3), 1 Level of Tremor Resist (Up to 2)