Short Summary(TLDR):
This is a comprehensive Lance Quality of Life overhaul. It changes Lance gameplay to permit more options during combat without losing too much DPS; as well it removes some of the Skill tax that Lance requires, by sticking Offensive Guard (there are optional versions which give Guard Up or Evade Window or Provoker instead of Offensive Guard, depending on your playstyle) and the equivalent of Minds Eye on the Lance weapons; from other Lance overhauls, I have improved Power Guard (Guard Up charge time reduced to almost instant), Dashing (better, faster, stronger, easier to steer), and the block thresholds (less knockback and damage) of all Guards. If you don't like any part of this balancing, I've included instructions about what to change and how to change it by deleting or editing the files in this mod. News and Announcements are in the Sticky Post in the comments section.


Long Description:
For years, Lance has been tied with Hunting Horn for the least played weapon in MHW, and now that its expansion Iceborne is out, its been left behind by the noble HH (please see First Wyverian stats for reference). As well, Lance has consistently come in last for at least one poll that asked (paraphrased) "Regardless of how many people play this weapon, do you like this weapon?" (citation "WEAPON POPULARITY - March 2020 | MHW Iceborne", where TheGameconomist's Youtube channel did the popularity poll; October 2020 PC results: Lance is now the least popular weapon). That same channel also has a video explaining how Lance isn't even that great of a defensive weapon, compared to its immediate competition, the Gunlance and the Heavy Bow Gun  This tells me that Lance needs some love. Huge thanks to Fexty's overhauls (this work is based on his conservative Lance changes) and the kind people that made the MHWEditor, for helping and making this possible. Now, as of v1.8, I've included many quality of life improvements from Iceborne Lance Rework (copied edits, but not assets), mainly their weapon param changes and as small number of QOL changes. Compared to that Rework, we have a few changes that they do not, making several changes to mobility moves and finishers to make them deal more damage than the same amount of time spent poking, at the expense of being more exposed and punishable. As well, we have Offensive Guard added to Lances by default, encouraging Timed Blocking instead of turtling. If your playstyle is different, you will find versions for dodge-lances with Evade Window to get more i-frames; those who want to super-turtle can choose from the versions with Guard Up instead, or Provoker if you are playing with friends.

Given the limitations of our current modding tools, I couldn't go much beyond tweaking the MV values and related move values in the Lance files (and now the Lance weapons themselves, in v1.3; and the tweaks to timings and other parms in v1.8). As a person with 75 hours maining Lance across the main game and Iceborne, I have had a little time to look and see what was lacking.

First problem: Lance has a bunch of moves that you have almost no reason to use. All of them are a worse use of your time than the standard Poke-Poke-Poke combo, and have not only the audacity to deal less damage than mindlessly poking, but also to either commit you to an animation, or render you vulnerable. For a weapon that defines the trade-off between aggression and defense as its whole niche in the game, you would think that there would be some payoff for taking risks. Alas, there is little enough reason to do most anything beyond poking that most Lance guides generally recommend that you ignore them. For example, I went 70+ hours without realizing Lance had a shield bash attack.

This mod takes these issues, and follows the following rules:

•  Moves beyond the standard poke-poke-poke combo should be usable. (Poke-Poke-Poke is the standard Mid Thrust I/II/III or High Thrust I/II/III combos)
•  Moves that expose you to being unable to block or to the possibility of interruption should be rewarded somehow, if you can avoid being interrupted.
•  Moves that are hard to aim or time should be rewarded for being able to aim.
•  Moves that take up committed actions or charge time should deal slightly more damage than just poke-poke-poke'ing for the same amount of time.
•  Lance needs to have some niche for its moves that other weapons don't already do better.
  

What does that all mean?
It means that all Lance moves have had these rules applied to them, and been calibrated by comparison with other weapons, especially the Great Sword. You can see the base moves list and MVs here: https://mhworld.kiranico.com/weapons, for reference.



Changes

• Mindseye For All Moves: All Moves have Mindseye applied to them, if they didn't already (most already did, but now base poking does too). Because, bouncing with a Lance is no fun with your already low damage output compared to all other weapons.
• More Part Damage: All Moves have had their Part damage increased by at least 10%. (or are part of combos where this is true; generally following the example from Switch Axe) Those with multihit hurtboxes now trade off more sharpness loss of higher rates of proccing status or elements (or more part damage). Status and Element are now viable, and the way that you use them effectively eats up your sharpness.
• More Element and Status Damage: All Moves have had either their Elemental modifier or Status Modifier increased to a base of 0.7 or higher (generally a change of about +0.3). Status and Element are now viable.
• Minimum DPS For All Moves Raised: All Moves besides Poke-Poke-Poke (either version) have had their MV value (read: damage) increased. Usually, this is equal if not slightly higher than the poking damage for the same period of time. The basic poke-poke-poke combos have had their partbreak and status/element increase with each stroke, so that landing the last poke in the combo is most likely to break parts or proc status/element. This means that we aren't just adding damage for no reason, we are raising the damage of moves other than the Poke-Poke-Poke combos to be consistent with spending the same amount of time as those combos take up, thus we are leveling the DPS among moves.
• Maximum DPS for Risky Moves Raised: All moves that seem like huge finisher moves are now huge finisher moves, and have been balanced by analogy with Great Sword attacks that are similar (not the same, but for a fast poking weapon whose whole thing is being good at blocking, its analogous). These moves are all the ones that aren't spammable like the poking, but are the Finishing Thrust(s), all of the mounting finishers, and the true Counter Thrust (which when interrupted, turns into the dinky Cancel Thrust/High Thrust I). For example, all of the Finishing Thrust, Finishing Twin Thrusts, and Counter Thrust (not Cancelled) all deal damage based on Great Sword's various levels of Charged Slashing, making them feel as strong as they look when you're running like around like an angry train. The single highest damaging move is now the Finishing Thrust. Counter Thrust, and both strikes of Finishing Twin Thrust all are now multihit hurtboxes, which gives you more damage if you aim well, and less if you aim poorly; generally about +30% damage for a perfect hit, and -66% for a poorly aimed one. This is not just adding more damage arbitrarily, but giving you a risk-reward tradeoff for big gambles besides just doing the Poke-Poke-Poke combos.
• Mounting Deals at Least the Minimum DPS: All of the bashing moves or mounting finisher moves (as well as Wide Sweep, but analogy with the Great Sword's nearly identical Side Blow), deal increased Stun and Exhaust damage, nearly 3x as much. As none of them are spamable, it made sense to make them useful, even if they're hard to actually hit with. Ironically, mounting still gives a lower DPS even with these adjustments, but mounting itself has a few benefits anyway to balance out that damage loss.
• Less Skill Taxes: All lances should have innate Offensive Guard, at least one level to enable the effect just like lances have innate Guard and now (via Power Guard) Guard-Up. Thus all lances have been given the skill Offensive Guard 1. Since weapons only have a single innate skill slot, those with existing skills (the really top tier lances in the base game, for example) were given a Level 2 decoration slot to stick it in, provided they can find a Guardian Jewel. This removes the Skill tax for all of these basic skills, but doesn't keep you from adding more if you want, just opening up some slots in your builds.
• Multiple Playstyles Supported: (Optional)  If you don't like having Offensive Guard 1, there are now three alternative options in the "Optional Files" section, one replaces Offensive Guard with Guard Up, and the other gives Provoker, and the last one for Evade Lancers gives a Evade Window 1. Only install only one version, as they are otherwise equivalent and will overwrite each other. Same logic as above applies here, Lance gets Skill taxed a lot to be viable vs all other weapons.
• Power Guard Instantly Charges Guard Up: (v1.8) Guard Up should be optional, now that Power Guard instantly triggers Guard Up instead of taking a long time to charge up. The Guard Up Skill is still valuable if you don't want the added costs of Power Guard, or are fighting specific enemies. This frees you from needing more Skill taxes for Guard Up.
• Lances Are Better at Guarding: (v1.8) All Guard actions should have less default knockback, this reduces all knockback and chip damage rates slightly. This frees you from needing more Skill taxes for Guard Skill levels, and makes lower values work okay and higher values even better.
• Dashing is Useful: (v1.8) All Dashing should be more useful and responsive. Deflection is set to 1 degree (down from 40, iirc; 0 caused dashing bugs when tested) so that it's easier to keep on target when Dashing. While Dashing, your charge up time to each level of Dash is faster, and you deal slightly more damage while also moving faster than normal Dashing. Angry Train can now be a viable playstyle for Lance, it's not perfect, but it may be a lot of fun on some enemies.
  

All Move Changes:

Attack Move: Power / original

• Mid Thrust I: 20 (changes only to partbreak and elemental/status) 
• Mid Thrust II: 25 / 20
• Mid Thrust III: 30 / 27 (now identical to High Thrust III)
• High Thrust I  (also Cancel Thrust): 22 (changes only to partbreak and elemental/status) 
• High Thrust II: 25 / 22
• High Thrust III: 30 / 27
• Wide Sweep I: 45 / 20 (now deals Stun 40 AND Exhaust of 20; partbreak is now 2.0)
• Jumping Thrust: 50 / 30
• Guard Thrust: 20 (changes only to partbreak and elemental/status; this is the
  highest element and status move, since it isn't good for anything else)
• Dash Attack: 7 /11 (now hits twice as often, to maximize status and element chances; net damage increase of +7%; added Mount 2; NOTE: user Hannabal96 has pointed out that these seem be based on either an older MHW value or on Fexty's changes that I built upon, this means that the net damage increase is closer to +14% instead of +7%, sorry for any confusion!)
• Midair Dash: 25 (changes only to partbreak and elemental/status) 
• Finishing Thrust: 75 / 50 (this is the only even mildly spammable high damage
  move, but you are very vulnerable while spamming it)
• Reverse Attack: 45 / 20 (now deals Stun 40 AND Exhaust of 20; partbreak is now 2.0; now identical to Wide Sweep)
• Counter-thrust: 14 / 40 (now has a multihit hurtbox, giving you an expected effective
  MV of 84 if 75% of hits land, with a max effective MV of 112 for perfect aim, and min MV of 14 for a badly aimed shot)
• Leaping Thrust: 15 / 8 (added Mount 5)
• Finishing Twin Thrust (first hit): 38 / 25 (now has a multihit hurtbox, giving
  you an expected effective MV of 76 if 2/3 of hits land, with a max effective MV of 114 for perfect aim, and min MV of 38 for a badly aimed shot)
• Finishing Twin Thrust (second hit): 22 / 50 (now has a multihit hurtbox, giving you an expected effective MV of 88 if 3/4 of
  hits land, with a max effective MV of 132 for perfect aim, and min MV of 22 for a badly aimed shot)
• Finishing Thrust Mount (head): [78, 120, 175]  / [10, 20, 40] (similar to GS Charged Slash I, II, II)
• Finishing Thrust Mount (anywhere but head): [48, 77, 110]  / [10, 20, 40] (same as GS Charged Slash I, II, II)
• Weapon Attack Clutch Claw (first hit): 50 / 33
• Weapon Attack Clutch Claw (second hit): 55 / 45
• Shield Attack: 50 (Stun/Exhaust 50) / 14 (Stun/Exhaust 27)
• Counter Claw: 100 (Stun/Exhaust 100) / 80 (Stun 30, Exhaust 33). This is the
  only move that does has Element and Status mods of 0, since its follow up moves are where that is applied, this rewards a successful counter claw with extra raw damage and extra stun/exhaust on top of the follow up claw or lance damage above in the mounting moves. 

How Was This Balanced and Tested?:
Against MR  enemies that either move around a lot or fly, these moves have been tested, and generally allow you slightly increased performance and more options for exactly how you want to deal with them. Enemies that were easy before should still be easy. Enemies that were hard to aim at are good test targets, and can be more consistently hit, but you are less likely to deal a lot of damage unless you aim well. This mod changes the overall balance for the moves that are not the core thrust-thrust-thrust so that they should deal about the same DPS as doing thrusting for the same amount of time. Risky moves that are easily punished by your enemies do more DPS, if you can pull them off; same goes with moves that require good aim. 
The only thing that you should not worry about is the exact numbers and DPS that you get when attacking the training dummies. They don't move, and so don't really represent the balancing that I tested against real hunts. Similarly, I did all of my testing without using traps or mount-spam or item-spam, so if you historically relied on that, you will find that you don't need to spam them as much any more, unless you want to go fight something special, like the soloing a raid boss.
If any of this sounds like it isn't your style, check out the Customization section below.
Because it has come up, no I do not play anything besides single-player. I don't test this in multiplayer set ups, and while I will try to help you multiplayer folks with your bugs, I can only do so with your cooperation and understanding that not all multiplayer bugs are reproducible in single-player.




Customization:
While the actual values are all below, it is good to know that you can tweak any or all of these values if you prefer them to be different, or if you think the balance is off, using the MHW Editor: https://www.nexusmods.com/monsterhunterworld/mods/2068 . If you do not like the changes to either the moves or the Offensive Guard innate skill, you can either delete the "NativePC/hm" folder in this mod to get rid of the move changes entirely, or "NativePC/common" to get rid of (or merge other mods changes to individual lances) the modified weapons.  Or, if you don't like to v1.8 changes to dashing and guarding, you can delete the wp06_param.w06p file to remove those changes entirely. Customization requires nothing more difficult than using compression software and essentially changing fields in a spreadsheet. It may not be exactly fun, but it requires no coding.


Mod Compatibility:
If you have other mods, you might be able to merge them with this one, even if they alter the same files, just be prepared to apply my changes manually to whatever other mod's files conflict with the three from this mod (namely the lances list, and both lance collision/moves files); this mod should be fully compatible with any mods that don't specifically touch those three files, so let me know if you find things that aren't. As always, if you have specific feedback, I am open to it; though I may not implement all suggested changes, I will try to consider them respectfully.


Installation:
To install it, drop the contents of the mod into your NativePC folder. It contains two files that replace the default move values for the lance, and does nothing else. As of v1.8, there is the hm folder that edits the Lance weapon entries to give the Offensive Guard skill, and the param file in the wp06 folder that edits guarding behavior and dashing behavior. This has been tested with the current version of the game (Iceborne + ver 15.11.00) and Stracker Loader (v2.0.2). Like most mods, you should make sure that its all up to date, or else it'll cause your game to hang during loading a save. If Capcom forces an update, there will be a delay between then and my tools update in turn to allow me to edit things again, so it may take a little while to get things updated again. I recommend disabling automatic updates for MHW on Steam if you can, to avoid the frustration.

Feedback:
If you want to help with development of this mod, or provide feedback, you can look at the sticky post in the comment section for current issues. I try to respond to questions or comments in comments area. DM's are an option too, but I honestly don't always remember to check them.

Legal:
This work and all of its contents are in the Public Domain, or covered by the CC0 license where that does not apply. You may do literally anything with them, you don't need to even refer to me when you do either. I don't care, have fun!