Well, your probably just random slashing, go for the mosnters weak spots.

For Lagicarus it's his face, neck and back.

It's a long fight solo, took me about 20 minutes of gunning to see it dead and I was already used to his ways.

There are some VERY good SNS, but if you want to change your damage output you need to use elements and know where your hitting, that's gonna take some skill, typical areas that are heavy damage points are the face or cores of monsters, but if your using SnS you probably wont get the monster to flinch so choosing when to block and evade or pack it up and run gets even trickier.

After I realized I could 4 hit kill that thing it became as relevant as it's Jaggi counter parts, their all just cannon fodder.

I strongly recommend a Lance for Lagiacrus. When u see him charging at you, defend. He'll stop right besides you, you can easily nail 2-3 hits, sidestep, defend, repeat (underwater). On land, he's even easier as charging at him does a lot of damage to its body. If you're still having difficulties, bring some traps. Or add me my online name is Routsou, will post Capcom ID later on today, I'll help you with it.

guess i should start forging an epic lance then, its not really my style of play but i may as well give it a shot.  online is fine, we passed the urgent quest first time. That said, raiding with you sometime would be fun, are you in the  PAL server?

what sns would you reccomend? at the moment i'm using the hynos knife since its got high damage for a sword and inflicts sleep. Im thinking of going down the lagi path next so i'll have to farm him a lot

Well, at end game for every MH there is a SnS that is all dragon damage, that's basically the damage dealer.

For the most part if you want to deal more damage than usual, your going to want a poison sword, the poison damage needs to be high and the sharpness higher.

Level 2 poison will last for about 15% of the targets health which is about 2 minutes so you can shoot for that.

IT works VERY well for things like Diablos or Rathalos who like to spend tuns of time on the move, so while it's flying out of range of everyone, you'll know it's still slowly dieing from your poison.

For just up front damage then your going to want to counter element until that dragon sword.

In some cases though counter element will still do more damage than Dragon element.

I been after the parlized sword just not to the point of that boss fight that drops the few items i need. Though at the same time i am working on a fire sword and the high dmg / posion axe. That seems to be the trick with SnS to keep more then one sword going at the same time. Just requests a bit of farming and i have played mmorpg for years now so i am using to doing the same thing over and over with out being bord!

They are ... Azi Dahaka, Blood Tabar, and Qurupeco Chopper. Then to there upgrad verson!

The lance is actually quite agile, once you get the hang of it. Basically, try to emulate this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FV6hvORAcA&feature=player_embedded#!

Use your sidestep, advancing guard, and counterthrust abilities to move about or, better yet, get the monster close to you and in a position where you're one quick pivot away from counterattacking. It can do crazy damage very quickly this way: I killed the Lagi my first time in under 15 minutes with the first Gobul Lance, and that was with retreating twice to wear off the paralysis susceptability. I also find it useful to have the Evasion abilities, as invulnerability combines greatly with reducing cooldown.

One important thing if you do use the lance: Cha-Cha becomes more of a liability than a help once you get used to it, as you want the monster near you at all times, rather than charging the NPC on the other side of the map.

Sounds like you got it down noname, I've always considered lance to be harikiri in my hands, I'd do rolls a lot only to find that I did a back dash, back into the enemy attack, it's been a VERY long time since I had to block attacks V_V.