Long Sword Guide (Combos, Tips, and Tricks)

The Long Sword is an incredibly versatile melee weapon that players can comfortably take into any quest in Monster Hunter World. While it lacks the speed and raw power of other weapons, it makes up for its shortcomings with its powerful counterattacks, long reach, and great ease-of-use.

These ridiculously long weapons are easy to learn, but hard to master. There’s plenty of stuff to learn with this weapon, but it’s not as complicated as some of the other options you get in Monster Hunter World. Here’s a quick guide covering the basics of the Long Sword, including some must-know combos and intermediate tips.

How to Use The Long Sword in MHW

The Long Sword has fairly average stats when it comes to both speed and power. However, it is incredibly mobile thanks to its Foresight Slash move, which acts as a dodge with generous amounts of invulnerability frames (iframes). While you can safely use the Long Sword as a simple weapon for hitting things with, its true strength lies in its ability to protect its users from danger while setting up for counterattacks.

Before diving into the Long Sword’s movesets, the most important thing you need to know about the weapon is how the Spirit Gauge works. When you have a Long Sword equipped, you’ll see a katana-shaped symbol below your stamina bar. As you land hits, the bar will fill up. The Long Sword’s R2 attacks will consume this red bar, and if the final attack of the R2 combo connects, the katana symbol’s outline will glow white.

The outline represents one level of the Spirit Gauge. Levels are represented by the colors white, yellow, and red. Every time you hit a target with the final spinning slash from the R2 combo, your Spirit Gauge’s level will increase, and so too will your weapon’s damage. Your top priority as a Long Sword user is to keep your Spirit Gauge red as much as possible.

Recommended Long Sword Combos

All of your attacks will deal more damage once your Spirit Gauge is red. Once you reach this point, you should actively look for opportunities to hit a monster with Spirit Helmbreaker, the Long Sword’s strongest attack. It takes a while to pull off, but once it connects, it will deal massive damage.

Fade Slash is another important part of the Long Sword’s kit, as positioning is a key element in MHW. It doesn’t have iframes like Foresight Slash, but it lets you reposition mid-combo, potentially saving you from an incoming attack or making sure that your following attacks hit the right places. Fade Slash also chains to the Spirit Blade combo, giving you an opportunity to raise your Spirit Gauge.

If you have the Iceborne expansion, you’ll gain access to Special Sheath and its two follow-up Iai attacks. Iai Slash is a two-hit attack that carries you forward by a few steps — hitting a monster with at least one swing will gradually refill your Spirit Gauge over 15 seconds. Meanwhile, Iai Spirit Slash is a counterattack with iframes and hyperarmor that deals massive damage without consuming your Spirit Gauge level.

Here are a couple of tips on how to use MHW Longsword combos:

• Thrust (◯) is the fastest way to access Foresight Slash and Special Sheath. Use it when you need to dodge an incoming attack from a neutral stance.
• Special Sheath can be used to cancel animations. This is especially useful for canceling Foresight Slash’s return attack and Spirit Helmbreaker’s long recovery animation.
• You can use Spirit Helmbreaker as a follow-up for any attack.
• The Quick Sheath skill affects Special Sheath’s speed.
• You can change the direction of Foresight Slash and Fade Slash by adding a movement input.
• Likewise, you can change the direction you’re facing by adding a movement input to Special Sheath.
• The Evade Window and Evade Extender skills affect Foresight Slash (but not Iai Spirit Slash).
• Spirit Blade attacks will never bounce off monsters, regardless of the target’s toughness or your blade’s sharpness.

How to Charge Longsword Spirit Gauge Faster

The quickest way to level up your Spirit Gauge is to perfectly dodge an attack with Foresight Slash and follow-up with Spirit Roundslash. Dodging and countering are essential Longsword skills in Monster Hunter — if you hear a sound cue as your Hunter slides backwards, then it means you did it right. A perfect Foresight Slash dodge will completely fill your Spirit Gauge bar. However, the follow-up roundslash must hit the target for the gauge to level up.

You can also perform a mid-air Spirit Slash by dodging off a ledge and pressing R2. Once you land, press R2 again, and you’ll immediately start perfoming the last three-hit combo of the Spirit Slash combo, which is immediately followed up by a Spirit Roundslash.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t need any of the Spirit Slash attacks to hit in order to level up your gauge. The only attack that does need to hit is the roundslash, which means you can pre-emptively start doing the Spirit Slash combo and time it so the roundslash hits the monster.