Best Melee Weapon Type In Monster Hunter Wilds

Monster Hunter Wilds features a huge variety of different melee weapons, and honestly, picking one out of the many available options can be a challenge on its own. Fortunately, Alma does ask a few questions about your preferred playstyle at the beginning of the game to help you decide which weapon to pick.

Regardless of Alma’s recommendation, figuring out which weapon type is the best is difficult until you try it out in battle against a moving and attacking enemy instead of a training dummy. But if you go ahead and read what each melee weapon type is capable of, you’ll be able to find your match with ease.

The Best Melee Weapon Type

The game features a variety of weapon types that can suit different types of players.

• If you want endless offense and mobility, the Dual Blades might be the perfect fit for you.
• If you prefer a mix of offense and defense, then the Sword and Shield has just what you’re looking for.
• For a defensive playstyle, then the Lance is a great option for you.

However, the best weapon is the one that fits your preference, and Monster Hunter Wilds provides enough variety for anyone to find their desired weapon of choice. So below, we cover the melee weapons in greater detail.

Great Sword

This weapon type features incredibly cool-looking gigantic swords that also serve as a shield in time of need. The Great Sword is also the melee weapon type that can deal the most damage in a single hit, but that factor is balanced by the fact that this weapon is incredibly slow, and it’s not easy to move around with a Great Sword drawn.

Swinging a Great Sword around takes a long time, and it is very difficult to hit small and medium-sized targets with it. With a Great Sword, you’ll have to wait for openings against enemies that are quick on their feet, but if you’re able to hit them even once with a Great Sword, that would be more than enough damage done to it.

Long Sword

Long Swords are smaller and thinner than Great Swords, which is why they can’t serve as shields. A Long Sword offers better mobility, and you can deal a good chunk of damage with it consistently, but you can’t guard with it. The Long Swords are pretty interesting as they also have a stance that can be used to unleash certain powerful spirit moves at the cost of the spirit gauge.

The Long Sword weapon type also relies on successful counter-attacks and destroying wounds to build up the spirit gauge. While most of its powerful attacks consume the spirit gauge, the regular basic attack combos of a Long Sword also deal a significant amount of damage.

Sword And Shield

Sword and Shield provide a great mix of offense and defense. The short sword allows you to repeatedly strike an enemy’s targeted part, while the shield allows you to defend against some light attacks. This weapon type also gives you good mobility, so you can dodge to avoid attacks that are too powerful to block with your shield.

Furthermore, the combination of Sword and Shield gives you both severing attacks with the sword and blunt strikes with the shield, so you’ll never be at a disadvantage against any enemy, regardless of how thick their skin is.

Dual Blades

If you want to go completely on the offensive, the Dual Blades are a perfect choice. The Dual Blades allow you to consistently stay close to an enemy and dwindle their HP with quick, repeated strikes. These blades are quite fast, and while you can’t guard with them, the mobility options are great with this weapon.

You can manually switch to Demon Mode, which repeatedly consumes your stamina for increased attack speed, and if you manage to evade an attack perfectly with a dodge, you will enter an enhanced state that drastically increases your offensive power and allows you to attack even while dodging for a short duration.

Hammer

A Hammer is a great way to knock monsters down, even if they have thick skin. You can do plenty of attacks where you swing your hammer around, dealing damage to every monster that’s foolish enough to approach you, making it a great weapon to deal with smaller enemies as well that attack you in hordes.

The Hammer hits hard, and you can charge your attacks to deal even more damage. Furthermore, you can even move around with a charged hammer and hook your enemies to bring yourself closer to them for a solid strike.

Hunting Horn

The Hunting Horn is an incredibly unique weapon type that allows you to buff yourself while dealing damage to the enemy. There are plenty of options, such as increasing your attack, defense, or increasing your evasion and attack speed.

Hunting Horn is an ideal choice for you if you want to try something different from traditional weapons. The Echo Bubble ability, which applies a buff to the Hunter in a small area, is also unique to this weapon.

You can check what type of buff the Echo Bubble ability will grant while forging a Hunting Horn.

Lance

Lance comes paired with a huge shield. It allows you to attack an enemy, even while you’re guarding from behind a shield. There are also a variety of interesting attacks that come with this weapon type, such as charging straight forward with a lance in your hand.

The shield is big enough to counter most attacks and lets you peacefully defend yourself. The attacks are fairly quick for a weapon of this size, and with a lance, you can also easily pinpoint an enemy’s part to attack it repeatedly.

Gunlance

While it may appear that Gunlance is a ranged weapon, the range of the bullets that you can fire from this weapon type is quite short and will only hit enemies in the melee range. It comes paired with a massive shield, similar to the regular lance, and there’s a variety of different bullets for each type of Gunlance.

You can check what type of bullets a Gunlance has from the forge menu at a Smithy.

The Gunlance features two types of ammo. One type of ammo is used for regular attacks, and you must reload after exhausting all the bullets, while the other type of special ammunition charges over time after use. You can deal damage to the enemy to charge the special ammunition faster.

Switch Axe

Switch Axe is a combination of an axe and a sword. You can easily switch between both weapon types. The axe grants you more reach, but the attacks are quite slow, while the sword sacrifices range for quicker attack speed.

Both types of weapons work extremely well together, and if you destroy a wound with a focus attack, you will automatically switch to the other version of the weapon. This weapon type features a variety of moves that can be paired together.

Charge Blade

The Charge Blade is a hybrid of a Sword and Shield and an Axe. You can use this weapon in a variety of creative ways. The Sword and Shield version focuses on defense and mobility, allowing you to block or dodge attacks while dealing damage to the enemy, and when the opportunity presents itself, you can switch to the Axe.

The Axe deals increased damage than the other version of the weapon, but is slower and sacrifices the shield to do so. You can also use the Element Discharge attacks with this weapon to deal considerable damage to the monsters.

Insect Glaive

Easily the most unique weapon in the game, the Insect Glaive lets you vault into the air and come down with a strong strike or an evasive maneuver. You can also target the enemy to shoot an insect at it, which will keep attacking the same part of a monster repeatedly for a duration.

You can choose which type of insect to pair with the weapon by heading to the Smithy. The repeated strikes from the insect and the quick attacks from the glaive can easily wound most enemies in no time.