Sword and Shield High Rank and Endgame Builds for Monster Hunter Wilds

Welcome to our Monster Hunter Wilds build guide for the Sword and Shield in both High Rank as well as endgame. Listed below you will find the best builds for the Sword and Shield both for progressing through the earlier stages of High Rank as well as the best builds for Sword and Shield at endgame.

To skip straight to the endgame builds, click the button below!

Title Update 4, released on December 19th, is the final major update, featuring the fearsome Gogmazios siege. This brings in upgraded Artian weapons that have a significant impact on ideal builds, alongside new armor sets and the ability to transcend armor - providing better decoration slots. Due to all of this, there's a significant shake up from previously recommended endgame sets.

A quick breakdown of Sword and Shield changes on this page as of the title update are as follows:

• A new section focused on the Gogmazios Artian Weapon upgrade path and ideal skills to pick up has been added. This provides information on best practices for reinforcements, and skills to aim for.
• The ideal endgame set has seen significant changes. With the benefits of transcending paired with Gogmazios Artian weapons providing a skill, the options are significantly increased.
• Talismans remain the chase goal for your endgame gearsets - with rank 7 and 8 having access to skill combinations that, if lucky, can outperform craftable options.

Artian Weapons are the strongest available options for the Sword and Shield in all scenarios, and due to it leaning into element counters you may find yourself needing to craft quite a few. These will generally be the strongest options even before you max out reinforcements largely because of the triple 3-slot decorations you can fit in, and picking some tailored Verdoloto weapons to cover each match-up is your ultimate goal when completing your sets.

You should always aim to craft weapons with all 3 of the same element on your Blade, Disc and Tube selections to maximize its values. Also aim to use 3 Attack infusions to maximize the raw throughput. Ideally, you want the following reinforcements:

• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Attack Boost +5
• Sharpness Boost +30

This can shift around some and having a perfectly optimized craft doesn't detract from how much better Artian weapons are in general, so don't worry too much about getting it absolutely perfect.

For the 3 decoration slots, fill this with Critical Jewel III, Guardian/Handicraft and Master's Touch to cover the three main bases of ideal weapon decorations.

After defeating Gogmazios, you'll receive Tarred Devices, which can be used by Gemma to reinforce the previous Artian Weapon, Dimensius, into a much stronger version. When upgraded, your previous Sword and Shield will have its Element or Status maintained, but gain additional bonuses to either Attack, Affinity, or Element depending on the devices used. You should be using three Element infusions (due to the Affinity penalty from Attack). It will also gain one random Set Bonus Skill and one random Group Skill from a pool, and allow you to reinforce the the 5 bonuses it rolls. Reinforcements and Skills can be rerolled for additional materials.

Your goal is to acquire both Gore Magala's Tyranny and Lord's Soul, but the priority is always the set bonus skill first to match your armor set. Your ideal reinforcements are two Attack EX, two Attack III, and one Sharpness EX. You can only ever have two of any level of a given reinforcement per attribute though, so if you roll a combination of extra Sharpness or Affinity, these can sometimes be worth keeping.

Due to the nature of acquiring your ideal Artian weapon, and how much armor sets now rely on this random roll, it may be difficult to assemble the endgame set provided on this page. Due to that, below is a list of skills to prioritize while working toward the complete setup:

Armor Skills:

• Gore Magala's Tyranny - 2-piece
• Antivirus - Level 3 (With the Gore set bonus)
• Rathalos's Flare - 2-piece
• Agitator - Level 5
• Weakness Exploit - Level 5
• Lord's Soul - 3-piece
• Binding Counter - 2-piece
• Maximum Might - Level 3
• Counterstrike - Level 3
• Burst - Level 1
• Flayer - Level 1
• Adrenaline Rush - Level 1-5
• Coalescence - Level 1-3

Weapon Skills:

• Offensive Guard - Level 3
• Master's Touch - Level 3
• Critical Boost - Level 3
• Element Boost - Level 1-3
• Attack Boost - Level 1-3
• Critical Eye - Level 1-5

The absolute strongest options involve using element counters on specific monsters (especially on Rank 9 hunts), as these come at no cost to raw power on Artian weapons. You still want to aim for the same infusions, though having a Sword and Shield of each element available for match-ups is crucial due to how weighted your damage is toward Element attack. Below are some drop-down lists of monsters countered by each element:

• Fire - Click for Match-ups

  • Blangonga
  • Congalala
  • Doshaguma
  • Gore Magala
  • Gypceros
  • Hirabami
  • Jin Dahaad
  • Lala Barina
  • Lagiacrus
  • Nerscylla
  • Gogmazios (Solid)
• Water - Click for Match-ups

  • Ajarakan
  • Guardian Ebony Odogaron
  • Gravios
  • Nu Udra
  • Quematrice
  • Rompopolo
• Thunder - Click for Match-ups

  • Balahara
  • Chatacabra
  • Hirabami
  • Mizutsune
  • Seregios
  • Uth Duna
  • Omega Planetes
• Ice - Click for Match-ups

  • Guardian Fulgur Anjanath
  • Rey Dau
  • Xu Wu
  • Yian Kut-Ku
• Dragon - Click for Match-ups

  • Arkveld
  • Guardian Doshaguma
  • Guardian Rathalos
  • Rathalos
  • Rathian
  • Zoh Shia
  • Gogmazios (Liquid / Gaseous)

Added as a bonus update during Title Update 2, hunts against monsters that are 9 star and above can now also reward appraisable talismans. These can come with skill and decoration slots otherwise unobtainable from the smithy, and should you be lucky enough, can push your build to the next level. Rolling a perfect talisman is an extremely big time investment, so sometimes it's best to just look out for options that are good enough. Big ticket skills to look out for are:

• Master's Touch
• Attack Boost
• Critical Eye
• Offensive Guard

Acquiring any of these skills - especially alongside a weapon decoration slot - outpaces any other option available to craft. If you can't get hold of these though, generally a Challenger Charm III, Power Charm III or Exploiter Charm II will suffice, depending on preference. Remember that when you slot in a talisman that provides weapon skills, you may need to adjust your decorations to still provide the desired armor skills.

Traditionally the most powerful armor sets available in Monster Hunter, in Wilds the Gamma sets are being released with each Title Update. These grant access to the Lord's Soul 3-set bonus - a powerful additional cheat death effect - while coming with a slightly higher budget for strong skills. The sets currently released are:

• Rey Dau - this set focuses on Latent Power, which while a generally less appealing skill comes on very efficient pieces. With the advent of Title Update 4, it's become a less appealing method of access to Lord's Soul however.
• Uth Duna - this set features Peak Performance prominently, which is generally very difficult to optimize. Despite that, the Legs allow for some interesting build opportunities, and can be used as a way to access Quick Sheathe easily.
• Nu Udra - this set features Burst and Resentment, which, while useful, aren't typically stacked by Sword and Shield builds.
• Jin Dahaad - this set features Agitator and Foray, and provides an extremely efficient way of picking up key skills. Also makes it much easier to access Lord's Soul when paired with your Artian Weapon, and is featured in the endgame build.

After reaching Hunter Rank 50, you unlock access to the majority of endgame monsters, and will slowly unlock more event quests as you progress up to 100. Currently we have a curated primary endgame build, and a starting build for you to tackle endgame hunts effectively.

The first set to craft as you start your path through High Rank grabs some of the stronger offensive skills from Low Rank armor paired with some comfort while you get your footing farming monsters. These will slowly be phased out as you begin to unlock stronger versions of these sets, but for now the early armor on offer is fairly limited.

Your decoration collection at this stage will still be quite small, and while it may be appealing to farm them it's simply not worth the time early on. Once you gain access to some of these decorations though, it opens up room to start tailoring your build to more offensive setups.

This set strikes a good balance between comfort and offensive power for the Sword and Shield when getting started, still managing to get points in some long term high value skills such as Burst. As element counters are a key part of Sword and Shield in general you have quite a few weapon options, with Balahara Blade III providing Offensive Guard, Water element and blue sharpness while being very easy to obtain quickly. A Thunder alternative with Rey Kuara II is also a great option depending on the matchup.

Your priority hunts are Balahara or Rathian early to craft a strong weapon to bring it up to blue sharpness. The 2-piece Guardian Ebony Set brings 2 points in Burst and a slight bump in power (though the main benefit comes from the first point), and the Conga Beta Set adds a third point in for good measure. Finally, the Arkveld set gives Flayer which, while not a premium skill for Sword and Shield, does provide some healing when popping wounds with the 2-piece bonus.

• Burst - Level 3
• Divine Blessing - Level 3
• Offensive Guard - Level 2
• Flayer - Level 2
• Blight Resistance - Level 1
• Bleeding Resistance - Level 1
• Guardian's Pulse - 3-piece
• Ebony Odogaron's Power - 2-piece
• Guardian Arkveld's Vitality - 2-piece

As you progress through High Rank, more monsters are unlocked at High Rank and comes with more flexibility in Alpha and Beta sets available. With each tiered unlock comes more opportunity to cut away comfort skills and move toward offensive options, allowing you to round out the efficiency of your build to lean into the Sword and Shield playstyle. This starts with the midgame monsters unlocking at HR20, and is pushed even further at 40+ with Gore Magala being added to the pool.

We've separated these two stages into the tabs below depending on what gear you currently have access to: