Expect people to use these items, armor, etc. for maximum effectiveness.
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Monster Hunter World
- A common strategy for new hunters going into High Rank is to farm Zorah Magdaros so that they can get some decent gear to hold them in before falling off fighting the stronger apex monsters and later the Elder Dragons.
- Expect most players to be using one of two Palico Gadgets: Either the Vigorwasp Spray, due to it providing an incredibly invaluable burst of healing and being unlocked from the start, or the Plunderblade, which greatly reduces the tedium of grinding for monster parts in the late game. The Coral Orchestra has some users as well due to being essentially a hunting horn for Palicos.
- Weapons made from Nergigante parts are very common due to the high Elderseal, superb raw damage, and a maxed out sharpness meter with a very healthy amount of blue sharpness. Vaal Hazak weapons would see some use due to having similar raw thanks to having white sharpness and a higher level gem slot in exchange for an Average Elderseal. As of patch 2.0, Deviljho weapons have become common for the exact same reason, just trade white sharpness and higher raw for negative affinity.
- The Non-Elemental Boost skill, granted from wearing 4 parts of Diablos armor, increases the base damage of all weapons that do not have an element or have not had their hidden element awakened (or for bowguns, weapons that cannot use any of the five elemental shots). This skill is also available in the form of a level 2 gem. Because of its ease of putting into a set, a fair amount of hunters are making sets that use Diablos weapons with this gem and the Weakness Exploit skill, massively increasing the amount of raw damage they can do, and removing the only flaw Diablos weapons have, being their rather significant negative affinity stat (which can also be negated by Affinity Augments), and never having to worry about elemental resistances either. This is often combined with the regenerative armors found under Game Breaker.
- If you see a Great Sword user online, there's an overwhelming chance that they'll be using the Wyvern Ignition "Impact" along with the aformentioned Non-elemental Boost and Weakness Exploit skills due to the weapon having the highest raw damage of any non-elemental Great Sword (only surpassed by Anguish, which has element), a decent amount of natural white Sharpness, being easy to obtain, and being easier to use note .
- Similarly with Long Swords, the most common one would be the Divine Slasher, the Arena Weapon, for its superb raw could be further boosted by the Non-Elemental Boost. Many would embrace the Deviljho and Lunastra/Styx longswords to a lower extent, but it's agreed that the Divine Slasher is the strongest physically.
- When it was added in the Lunastra update, the Temporal Mantle became universally used in every hunt due to effectively being immune to some of the stronger attacks of any monster.
- The RNG Cannon build which focuses on high damage output using the Dark Devourer Heavy Bowgun. The build more or less ignores the target's abilities and resistances in favor of putting out enough damage that they aren't important, allowing it to be used on most every monster.
- In the endgame, you'll have a hard time finding a melee player who isn't using the Drachen armor set made from Behemoth due to having a variety of desired skills and decoration slots. The most common setup is four pieces of the set for the Master's Touch bonus, with the fifth being up to the player's preference. However, even the fifth piece tends to have extremely common picks to still come off as this. note
- With the exception of Great Sword class, higher rarity Kulve Taroth relic weapons are practically everywhere on endgame builds. This is due to their excellent stats, sharpness meters, and most benefit from Non Elemental Boost. The Kjarr weapons that came with her Arch Tempered version in particular have Critical Element or Status as a built in skill to allow the use of Drachen armor.
- To really drive home how deep the issue of complacent gaming ran, Capcom revealed a number of changes in Iceborne targeted specifically at some of the items listed her: Weakness Exploit granting 20% less Affinity, Maximum Might having a cooldown if the hunter goes below max stamina, skills boosting elemental damage having their percentage bonuses doubled, and the Temporal Mantle being changed to lose duration each time the player auto-dodges with it (though its duration and cooldown have been adjusted to compensate).
- Among the various Bowgun builds you can use, one of the most popular happened to be the Sticky Ammo 3 build. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that they're relatively easy to understand and master, they ignore body part modifiers so you don't have to tenderize them with the Clutch Claw, along with the fact that they have high amount of stunning power, which allows them as well as other hunters to wail on them for as much as they wanted.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
- Gold Rathian weapons were considered the best weapons bar none, with all of them commonly used as a result, with the only drawback being they are unable to reach purple sharpness even with Handicraft lv. 5. They combine 10 to 15% affinity, 290 true raw damage, and a fat chunk of natural white sharpness with a major poison stack on top of this note . For context, high Raw weapons generally sacrifice affinity, while status-effect weapons sacrifice raw damage. The Gold Rathian weapons only sacrifice purple sharpness, but with massive white sharpness to compensate. The Chargeblade, in particular is especially powerful thanks to having two lvl2 decoration slots rather than one lvl1 slot.
- If there wasn't a Gold Rathian weapon, then expect Ruiner Nergigante weapons to be used instead, having the same raw value, but a lot more natural white sharpness.
- The Master's Touch Set Bonus from the Teostra armor is back, and still very common, especially on crit-heavy damage weapons, due to reducing sharpness.
- The True Critical Element Set Bonus note from wearing four pieces of the Silver Rathalos armor is considered a must have for elemental weapons thanks to the sheer damage output produced and still having enough slots to easily make up for the poor skills built into the armor.
- The Garuga Greaves Beta+ thanks to them having a combination of a Level 4 slot, two Level 2 slots and two points into the skill Critical eye making them a must have for any sets that rely on crits such as the Teostra and Silver Rathalos set bonuses mentioned above. It also helps that the female version is quite Stripperiffic, basically being a pair of panties and armored thigh highs.
- The Glider Mantle became overused as a result of two level 4 decoration slots and a very generous downtime of only 120 seconds compared to its high duration of 180 seconds. Plus, it can allow Hunters to attempt a mounting attack at any time during its duration! Explanation
- The Zorah Magdaros set, Artillery Secret, is essentially mandatory on Gunlances (and sometimes Bowguns using sticky ammo), due to significantly beefing up explosive damage. Additionally, the introduction of the Wyrmstake Blast and the relative ease with optimizing a charged shell build (which disregards the need for tenderizing body parts, makes maintaining weapon sharpness an afterthought, and is universally effective regardless of where it hits the monster) requires just three skills: Focus, Artillery, and Capacity Boost. This subsequently allows the rest of the build to be oriented towards survival or comfort.
- Health Restore Augments are also popular due to the fact they allow health recovery without pausing the onslaught of damaging blows.
- Safi'Jiiva's weapons have become popular choices thanks to their sheer customizability allowing one to build however they please, along with having good stats to begin with. This allows them to be used for both meta (which they are currently king of) and off meta builds.
- Until Safi'jiiva's release, for Greatsword users, the new Wyvern Ignition is the Acid Shredder II, being key to maximizing damage output thanks to custom upgrading.
- Out of all the Safi Light Bowguns that are available, no other weapons are more popular than Safi Aquashot. This is not only due to the fact that they're the only Safi weapon capable of running Sticky Ammo 3 but also because they are the only elemental bowguns that are capable of reaching normal Recoil rate, enabling them to fire while still moving while also being able to reload without the need to stand still. As a result, it ended up being the go-to weapon when it comes to breaking Safi's parts, particularly its back and wings.
- Raging Brachydios' equipment became go to for meta very quickly after its release:
- The Lightbreak weapons all boast raw mere single digits below the meta Safi'jiiva weapons, a little bit of natural purple sharpness with no need for Handicraft, decent Blast damage, an extra level 3 slot, and only needing to be crafted instead of doing the limited-time Raid. This makes them all amazing sidegrades at worst, like for Greatsword and Switch Axe, or small upgrades for weapons like Charge Blade and Hammer. Special mention goes to the Gunlance which has Wide 7 shellingnote .
- The armor set is also amazing, thanks to a combination of amazing skills and slots,note but especially the set bonus Brachydios Will. With two armor pieces you get Agitator Secret to raise Agitator's level cap to 7, which lets you have +28 attack and +20% affinity compared to the 20 attack and 10% affinity of Agitator 5. The most common pieces to use are the Beta chest and legs for Agitator 2 and Weakness Exploit 2 respectively, along with an Agitator 5 charm to reach level 7 Agitator.
- Wearing four pieces also gives Artillery Secret (Mentioned above with the Zorah Magdaros set bonus), making it amazing for weapons such as Charge Blade and especially Gunlance, but on an armor with better decoration slots, more defense and better skills. Heck, with some exceptions like the Damascus Beta+ chest for Charge Blade, the full five piece set is often the best choice for armor for anything that benefits from Artillery. The Alpha set also gives an extra Artillery 5, Guard 2 and Speed Sharpening 3, making it even more of a go to for Gunlance and Charge Blade.
- While MR Kulve Taroth's weapons ended up getting outclassed in raw damage, weapons that deal primarily elemental damage such as the Kjarr Dual Blades and Bows became the top weapons of the meta due to the fact that they have an in-built Critical Element, which means that they no longer have to rely on the mediocre Silver Rathalos armor to maximize their damage output, and can run armors such as Safi or Kaiser + Raging Brachy while also allowing more comfort builds due to having more space for defensive slots.
- Support builds got a new lease in life thanks to Free Meal Secret, which can go up to a whopping 75% chance of not expending your consummable items; this means that you can spam potions and nullberries with reckless abandon, made even better if you maxed out the Speed Eating skill for efficient healing or the Medicine skill for massive healing at almost no cost, effectively making it the Monster Hunter version of the Bottomless Gloves from Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. This skill is readily available upon wearing three pieces of armour from either the Tigrex set or its Brute Tigrex subspecies, as well as putting a Tigrex Essence awaken in any Safi'jiiva weapon. If you're running a healer build, you're likely to be using most of the Tigrex set, but Update 13.5 introduces us to a far more desirable armour set in the form of Master Rank Kulve Taroth, which has Free Meal Secret as one of its two set bonuses on top of staying competitive in terms of damage output thanks to the inclusion of skills like Peak Performance and Critical Boost; with the right decorations, you are able to match several offense-oriented builds while possessing the ability to quickly heal teammates.
- With its debut, Fatalis's armor is blatantly meant to be Purposefully Overpowered to represent the most top-tier monster there is. On top of already having one of the highest defense values along with powerful skills like Weakness Exploit, Handicraft, and Critical Eye, it has the Fatalis Legend set bonus, where wearing two pieces unlocks the level caps for all skills, essentially making it so that you have every Skill Secret active at the same time. Wearing four pieces upgrades this to also grant True Razor Sharp/Spare Shot in addition to maxing out both health and stamina at the start of a quest and whenever you cart. Every piece of the Beta armor comes with three level 4 decoration slots, which combined with the unlocked skill caps makes it ludicrously easy to make any build you please, assuming you have the Decorations to slot in everything you desire.
- Expect at least one person to eat a custom platter with Felyne Safeguard as a food skill before going into almost any quest. This is because Felyne Safeguard gives your team one extra cart, two if you get lucky and it can stack with Felyne Insurance. While this may seem rather uninteresting, it's a godsend on harder endgame bosses such as Fatalis or Alatreon, and gives your team a considerable bit more wiggle room in easier quests. And unlike the aforementioned Felyne Insurance, which does the same thing, but is only available as a Daily Skill, Felyne Safeguard can be activated at any time. The only problem is collecting the special "Snow White" account item that unlocks one of the ingredients needed to use the skill.
