Monster Hunter Wilds: Best SnS Build

The Sword and Shield is the most versatile weapon type in Monster Hunter Wilds. It can do most of the things that other melee weapons can, and while it might not look too impressive, its performance speaks for itself, especially once players use it with a proper build.

This is a build guide that aims to provide players with an SnS build that’s all about making hunts comfy without sacrificing damage potential. It’s similar to some meta Long Sword builds in MH Wilds, but with a stronger focus on quality of life.

Monster Hunter Wilds Beat Gore Magala Guide Gore Magala Boss Walkthrough MH Wilds Feature

Monster Hunter Wilds: How to Beat Gore Magala

To beat the Gore Magala, Monster Hunter Wilds players must pay careful attention to their positioning to avoid the boss’ extremely strong moveset.

The following strikes a balance between DPS and comfort by combining armor skills that boost Attack, Affinity, and consumable use speed while also providing healing by breaking wounds. These effects drastically improve the player’s damage output without fully committing to a speedrunning build.

Armor Bonuses

This build uses two pieces of the Gore Magala set and two pieces of the High Rank G. Arkveld set. The former provides free Affinity via the Black Eclipse set bonus, while the latter lets players regain health by breaking wounds via the Decimator set bonus.

For more damage, replace the helmet with Xu Wu Helm Beta

for more points into Adrenaline Rush. However, this will deactivate Decimator.

Skills

The setup above results in the following:

Weakness Exploit 5
Antivirus 3
Speed Eating 3
Adrenaline Rush 2
Counterstrike 2
Constitution 2
Burst 1
Flayer 1
Recovery Up 1
Partbreaker 1
Flinch Free 1

Weakness Exploit and Antivirus with the Gore set bonus are great for boosting your Affinity. These pair well with Burst, Adrenaline Rush, and Counterstrike, all of which increase your Raw Attack when conditions are met. You’ll be dodging, blocking, and attacking with the Sword and Shield a lot, so it makes sense to make use of these armor skills.

Speed Eating from the Gobbler Jewel is the preferred comfort skill for this build. Players can use consumables even while their SnS is drawn, and if you combine this with Speed Eating, you’ll be able to recover from hits in no time at all.

If you’re yet to get any of these armor pieces, we recommend the Guardian Ebony Odogaron and Guardian Fulgur Anjanath armor sets. Use whatever decorations you have until you get the recommended ones listed above.

Weapon Choices

Players can take this build against any monster and still see decent success. However, it is still recommended to bring a weapon with an element that’s strong against its target. For those who want a general-purpose Raw Sword and Shield that’s great against most monsters, we have three options:

A Blast Artian SnS and the Ajara Subinda are great if you want weapons with high Raw Attack. However, they’ll lose effectiveness against anything that’s immune to Blastblight. Switch to the Lala Barina SnS for its high Affinity and Paralysis effect as an alternative, though you might want to use Attack Jewels on it to compensate for its relatively low Raw damage.

Sword and Shield is a great weapon type for elemental damage builds. Weapons like the Gore Magala SnS are especially good.