Best Long Sword builds and Armor in Monster Hunter Wilds

The Long Sword is arguably the most popular weapon out of the Monster Hunter franchise since it’s casual-friendly but has a high skill ceiling for enthusiasts. The Longsword is better than ever in Monster Hunter Wilds and if you’re looking to play and master it, here are the best Long Sword builds and Armor in Monster Hunter Wilds along with the ideal progression from low to high rank.

How to play the Long Sword in Monster Hunter Wilds

The Long Sword is a deceptively simple weapon that anyone can pick up and use for quick and successful hunts. But being able to use the Long Sword and mastering the Long Sword are vastly different things. We’ll cover all the basics of the Long Sword and how to best make use of it in Monster Hunter Wilds.

• Pay attention to your Spirit Gauge meter: Your Spirit Gauge meter has three levels and a charge bar used to perform the Spirit Slash attacks. Using normal attacks builds up the bar and landing the final hit of the Spirit Slash combo, Spirit Roundslash, increases your Spirit Gauge meter to the next level. Each level of the Spirit Gauge meter increases your damage output and lets you perform different special attacks.
• The best combo to build your Spirit Gauge meter: Rather than spamming light and heavy attacks, it’s better to use the Fade Slash attack by pressing both the thrust and slash attack buttons. It builds a significant amount of Spirit Gauge meter and you can directly go into Spirit Slash III, skipping a large portion of the combo.

• The Foresight Slash also increases your Spirit Gauge level: The Foresight Slash ability gives you i-frames as long as you can land the dodge and the follow-up attack. Missing it depletes your gauge, but landing it gets you another level to your Spirit Gauge meter. The i-frames are quite generous and it can cancel several animations, so be sure to master this tool.
• Use the Special Sheathe skills: What separates the average Long Sword player from the best is how they use their Special Sheathe abilities. You have two Sheathe abilities, the first being a quick double slash that gives you passive Spirit Gauge meter regeneration and the second one is a parry ability that negates damage and raises your Spirit Gauge level.

• Spirit Release Slash is your strongest attack: Once you’re at the Red Spirit Gauge meter at level three, you can unleash the Spirit Helmbreaker and follow it up with the Spirit Release Slash. This move consumes three of your gauge levels but deals devastating damage. It’s your primary source of nuke damage.

• How to best use the Red Spirit Gauge meter: While the Spirit Release Slash is extremely powerful, the Red Spirit Gauge state is also a lot more powerful than before in Monster Hunter Wilds. Perform your standard Spirit Slash combos and regular Slash combo strings while you have a red meter before using up the gauge levels as they deal a ton of damage too.
• Use the Iai Spirit Slash: After learning the monster’s attack patterns, you should learn how to mix in Iai Spirit Slash counters. It lets you counter and negate any single damage instance and increases your Spirit Gauge level by one.

• The Quick Sheathe skill is vital: The Quick Sheathe skill lets you access your Iai Slash and Iai Spirit Slash much more quickly making it a must-have Long Sword skill if you plan on mastering the weapon. Without the Quick Sheathe skill at Level three, the Long Sword can feel quite clunky to use. Prioritize getting this skill for every Long Sword build.

Best Low Rank Long Swords

The Monster Hunter Wilds early-game and low-rank content can take a while to clear. You’ll have to keep upgrading your Long Sword throughout this story to keep up with the difficulty increases. While playing through the main story, your build doesn’t matter that much since you don’t have access to the best armors, charms, or weapons. What matters most are the stats and elements of your Long Sword. Here are the best longswords for early-game progression in order.

• Dosha Fatecleaver I (Rarity 2)
• Uth Khlunda I (Rarity 3)
• Wyvern Blade Ash I (Rarity 4)
• Wyvern Blade Verde I (Rarity 5)
• Windclaw Blade II (Rarity 5)

Each of these weapons is the best Long Sword for their respective rarities that you can get at that point in the game. As long as you have a solid grasp of the Long Sword fundamentals and how to maximize your damage output, you should be able to breeze through the story content and make it to the more challenging High Rank hunts.

Best Long Sword builds and armor

Long Sword Crit build

The Long Sword crit build is for Affinity lovers who want to land high-damage critical hits on every strike. This build focuses on maxing out your Affinity stat, so you can consistently land critical attack combos and activate crit-based skills for explosive combos and Spirit Slash Releases. This build gives you raw damage stats that are ideal for any player who is confident with their fundamental skills on the Long Sword. The weapon of choice for this build is the Stahlrecht from the Gore Magala tree, but an Artian Long Sword with better stats can outperform it.

The Arkveld armor set gives Weakness Exploit that increases your Affinity against wounds. The two Gore Magala pieces have been chosen for the Gore Magala’s Tyranny buff which inflicts you with Frenzy. When you overcome the Frenzy, however, you get an additional 15 percent Affinity. Combined with your weapon’s base 20 to 30-percent Affinity. All of the armor pieces are the Beta versions so you have extra slots for decorations, except the Arkvulkan Greaves, which give you the extremely important Quick Sheath Level 2.

Also, make sure you pick the Corrupted Mantle for an extra amount of Affinity if you feel it’s lacking.

Best skills and decorations

Here are the best skills and decorations for the Long Sword crit build:

• Quick Sheathe: Faster sheathe animation.
• Critical Eye: Increases your Affinity(Crit rate).
• Critical Boost: Increases critical attack damage.
• Critical Draw: Increases Affinity to 100 percent for draw attacks.
• Weakness Exploit: +30 percent Affinity for weak point attacks and a further 20 percent for wounds.
• Master’s Touch: Critical hits don’t reduce weapon sharpness.
• Antivirus: Enables the Affinity bonus after recovering from Frenzy.
• Maximum Might: Increases your Affinity if your stamina remains full for a short period.
• Focus: Improve Spirit Gauge charge rate.

Long Sword Paralysis Sleep combo build

Another interesting way to play the Long Sword is to utilize a build that applies status effects such as sleep and paralysis non-stop on monsters. This leaves them stunned and vulnerable several times throughout the fight, letting you try out all the explosive longsword attack strings without any worries. This build is also quite tanky if you struggle with dodging attacks. If you want to cripple and dissect monsters, this build is for you.

The weapon of choice here is the Lala Barina Rarity 8 weapon, Lala Ornithocton, which can quickly inflict paralysis on enemies. You can also use a Paralysis element Artian weapon. The armor set of choice is the Guardian Arkveld armor set which gives some levels for the Flayer and Weakness Exploit skills. The Guardian Arkveld’s Vitality skill gives you a lot of sustain for prolonged fights. We’re going with the beta set because the rest of the set’s skills aren’t special and we need all the Decoration slots we can get our hands on.

The real secret of this build lies with your Palico. It’s no secret your Palico is more useful than any other companion before in Monster Hunter. You can equip your Palico with a powerful sleep weapon and it will eventually land enough hits to quickly inflict Sleep on the target monster. Equip your Palico with the Felyne Nerscylla Wedge made by using Nerscylla Claws. Paired with your own paralysis skill and the traps your Palico puts down, this build sometimes lets you kill monsters without letting them escape the first area.

Best skills and decorations

• Flayer: Makes it easier to inflict wounds and increases non-elemental damage.
• Critical Status: Increases effectiveness of status effects when landing critical hits.
• Weakness Exploit: +30 percent Affinity for weak point attacks and a further 20 percent for wounds.
• Paralysis Attack: Increases the rate of paralysis build-up.
• Quick Sheathe: Faster sheathe animation.
• Critical Eye: Increases your Affinity(Crit rate).
• Divine Blessing: Reduce damage taken by 50 percent.
• Guardian Arkveld’s Vitality: Restore health while attacking and destroying wounds.

While this build won’t get the fastest clear times, it’s a consistently powerful setup that minimizes your chances of death and maximizes your damage output via ailments.

Those are some of the best Long Sword builds and how to play the Long Sword in Monster Hunter Wilds. For more guides, check out our complete list of all monsters and weaknesses and the best character design codes.