Clutch Claw

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---HOW DOES THE CLUTCH CLAWS WORK? I DONT WANT TO PLAY THE GAME---
Speak to the smithy to get a 1* low rank tutorial quest. If you can't be arsed to do that, here's some basic pointers.

>>>BASIC CONTROLS
Hold Left Trigger/L2 to aim and B/Circle to fire the clutch claw while either sheathed or unsheathed. Certain weapons require you to press Right Stick/R3 before you can press B/Circle to fire, such as the Lance and LBG.

Once attached, any idling causes the stamina bar to drain. Marathon Runner reduces the speed at which it drains.
Use the left thumbstick to jump onto other monster parts. This drains a portion of your stamina, about 25 and is reduced by the constitution skill.
Press A/X to jump off the monster.

While attached to the monster, any attack by the monster can hit you depending on the hitbox of that attack. Be careful. Roars will also knock you off.

>>>CLUTCH CLAW ACTIONS
There's two types of clutch claw attacks: 1 for heavy and 1 for light weapons (Y or Triangle). Attacking with a light weapon causes the monster to drop slinger ammo: thorn, dragon, pierce or bomb pods depending on the monster in question.
There is also the clutch claw smack, this is a low damage attack all weapons can use (B or Circle)
Finally there is the flinch shot, which unloads your current slinger ammo into whatever part you're attached to (Right Trigger or R2)
All of these actions cause a monster to enrage faster. 3 smacks and a flinch shot will always enrage any monster even if they only just discovered you.

Light weapons: SnS, Dual Blades, Longsword, Gunlance, Insect Glaive, Light Bowgun, Bow
Heavy weapons: Greatsword, Lance, Hammer, Switchaxe, Hunting Horn, Charge Blade

>>>WALLBANGS
Attaching to a monster's head causes certain actions to have unique effects BUT ONLY IF NOT ENRAGED:
Clutch claw smacking the head will cause the monster to reel and rotate roughly 90 degrees to the opposite direction, in addition to causing 20% wound damage. Use this to reposition for a flinch shot
Flinch shotting the monster's head causes it to stumble towards the direction it's facing. If it hits any big solid object (a wall, a tree, a recess crystal, another monster), it will topple and take a bit of damage. If it hits another monster while doing this, that other monster will also topple.

>>>WOUNDING/TENDERIZING
Clutch Claw attacks and smacks cause wound damage to the part you're attached to. Wounding is new "status" in Iceborne that, when afflicted, causes a body part to become much weaker and break/sever about 3-4 times faster. Wounded parts will also increase the affinity gained by the weakness exploit skill when attacked.

Clutch Claw smacks cause 20% wound damage.
Light weapon attacks cause 50% damage.
Heavy weapon attacks cause 100% damage.

Once a part reaches 100% wound damage, it'll change visually.

>>>EPIC PROTIPS
-You can use the temporal mantle to ignore most attacks while attached, and alternatively the rocksteady mantle but can be dangerous especially against monsters with multihit attacks such as diablos and kirin.
-If the monster's eye icon on the minimap is yellow, you can claw smash/flinch shot its head. If it's red, you can't.
Earplugs is a really good skill to guarantee a wallbang at the start of a hunt.
-If the monster hasn't seen you yet, you can shoot the ground with any natural ammo (such as redpit, crystalburst or stones) to draw its attention to the sound while locking it into an animation that will keep it from immediately roaring when trying to clutch claw onto its face to open the fight with a wallbang. (do note that not all monsters have the same duration of this animation, mostly notable most brute wyverns). You can further combine this with any stealth mechanics the game has to offer, such as the ghillie mantle, sporepuffs or crouching in tall grass: as soon as the monster has lost sight of you (purple minimap overlay), it'll once again be able to be distracted with natural ammo and will again roar upon first discovery.
-Even if you can't wallbang an enraged monster, what you can do is make use of a second, non-enraged large monster and flinch shot it into your primary target to topple it regardless
-Flinch shotting a monster into barrel bombs causes the bombs to explode. As such, the best approach to sleep bombing is to place the bombs near a wall and flinch shot the sleeping monster into them, causing the monster to both topple and take massive bomb damage.
-You can also flinch shot a monster off a cliff and while it's not much of an attack opening compared to a wallbang, it looks fucking hilarious.