User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Dreadking Rathalos/@comment-15446856-20170127134300

Dreadking Rathalos, like it or not it has possibly the best example to taking an original monsters concept and enhancing it.

For me, his appearance has got to be the best of the Deviants, a true improvement of the original's design. Sporting darker red scales, larger spikes and golden patterned wings this is an improvement done right! It's the opposite to the horror that is the Crystalbeard, whose design is undoubtedly worse than the original.

In Dreadking's fight, he relies on his mastery of the skies and stronger fire to destroy hunters, which for a lot of people completely ruins this monster, but I'm not one of them. Once you learn his attack patterns the annoyance drains quickly enough to not make it that hellish, also you have a method to stop it's main ability. The gimmick is that Dreadking has stronger wings and powerful fire, the wings are so strong that even when flashbombed directly in the face he won't fall down out of the sky. So the main method to hunting it is to wound the wings first to be able to flashbomb it then wound the head to make it a weak spot. It's all about wounding the Dreadking so he becomes more and more weaker since the info on it in Gen states that elemental damage doesn't work as well on parts not wounded yet.

It's equipment is hands down the best out of the Deviants and the set that I use. This armor needs a nickname, "Rathslayer". The skills once all unlocked make the Rathalos fights in general much easier as you cannot be wind pressed, effected by roars, and even immune to being inflicted with Fireblight. Also with this you deliver more damage to weakpoints more than usual, Dragon Element weapon VS Rath head = RIP Rath. The skills also make it useful against any other monster with roars and windpresses, no more stun locks from Khezu roars, no 1 hour flinches from Lagi roars and no constant windpresses from Kushala and flying monsters! Unfortunately the weapons aren't as great, and have mediocre sharpness and damage. They would be better if they had more fire element and a little more sharpness.

The questline is mostly good, it is fought with a Rathian at Lvl 3 and Astalos at Lvl 6 which are good choices of monsters to go with it. Mostly is because its capture quests aren't good at all since the Dreadking can easily die if you keep wailing on it too much before you see it limp. The Lvl 7 capture quest however is completely garbage, Volcanic Hollow, bad small monsters that piss you off and to my great discomfort the unstable monster is an Agnaktor (please no). The Lvl 10 quest is the most unique out of all of them, a Dreadking AND Dreadqueen, two different Deviants in the same quest. Nightmare if they are fought both at once, yes but still better than the disgrace of a final quest for Thunderlord Zinogre featuring an infinitely respawning Bulldrome... why the hell is Bulldrome in the final Lvl of the questline for it? Well Dreadking does sadly get a Bulldrome quest at Lvl 8 alongside the Dreadqueen but at least it's not the final one!

Overall the Deviant is great in design and a fight that works well as a boost over the regular Rathalos but I'll admit can be annoying sometimes with the AOE fireballs in particular. It's armor is definitely worth fighting it for.