Best Sword and Shield build in Monster Hunter World

The Sword and Shield is an oft-underappreciated weapon in Monster Hunter World, largely due to its small appearance. Make no mistake, however—this weapon can be a monster killer.

Let’s go over the options to make the Sword and Shield a brutal build to hunt any monster with in MHW.

Best Sword and Shield options in MHW

The Sword and Shield is an elemental and ailment-based weapon in MHW, due mostly to the number of hits it can perform. It is exceptionally good when the monster is active, due to its low-commitment attacks with sword swings, and it can punish a downed monster with Perfect Rush. As a result, builds focusing on accumulating elemental damage or ailment buildup quickly are the best options.

As many different monsters come with many different restrictions, we want to present a handful of options for your weapons, armor, and skills. MHW is feature-complete and won’t be getting any new content in the future, so we can confirm a few definitive, must-have weapons for your build.

Best MHW Sword and Shield weapons

The best Sword and Shield weapons in MHW are elementally potent or can apply an absurd amount of Blast. While not the fastest, the Sword and Shield’s fast weapon swings are perfect for flat elemental damage or applying conditions.

That said, if we’re talking about optimization, Blast is the only ailment worth considering. Paralysis and Sleep are fine ailments, but largely for co-op, where the free openings benefit your allies. Poison, sadly, does far too little damage to be viable outside of hyper-specific builds. And those builds aren’t exactly optimal.

These are the weapons that serve Sword and Shield builds best in MHW’s endgame content:

• Blast: Safi’s Shatterfang
• Elements
  • Fire: Kjarr Slicer “King” (Fully Upgraded)
  • Water: Hydros Discus
  • Ice: Nephilim Glacia
  • Thunder: Despot’s Crookbolt
  • Dragon: Alatreon Star

Of the above weapons, Safi’s Shatterfang is the strongest weapon in general, while the elemental weapons perform better against creatures weak to those elements. Safi’s Shatterfang, when upgraded for Attack, Critical Hit, and Sharpness, can dish out solid non-elemental damage while occasionally triggering Blast. Alatreon Star comes with absurd elemental damage, and we recommend it strongly if the monster you’re hunting has two or more stars of Dragon weakness.

Most other Swords and Shields tend to be on the lower end of elemental damage, but they all wreak havoc on monsters weak to that element. Any Safi weapon with Velkhana Divinity as an awakening is worth considering since it gives you Critical Element as if it were a piece of Velkhana Armor.

Best MHW armor for Sword and Shield

In general, the Fatalis Armor is the best in MHW for its fantastic skills, great decoration slots, and incredible defense. But Sword and Shield builds can instead benefit from focusing on True Critical Element for reduced defenses and raw damage but improved elemental damage.

Fatalis is, unfortunately, the best monster to hunt for armor in general. The Fatalis Armor set is hugely effective, coming alongside incredible gem slots and highly effective skills. For the most effective all-around Sword and Shield set, we recommend the following pieces of gear:

• Head: Dragonhead Beta +
• Chest: Dragonhide Beta +
• Hands: Dragonclaws Beta +
• Waist: Dragonbarbs Alpha +
• Legs: Rimeguard Greaves Gamma +

You might notice the last piece of armor actually belongs to the Velkhana Gamma armor line. That’s because the only piece of Fatalis armor worth considering replacement is the Legs. The Rimeguard Greaves provide Peak Performance, a great boost to general attack for a Sword and Shield build. Just make sure your health is always maximized.

But this build is missing a spicy addition to the Sword and Shield’s damage library—Critical Element. It’s somewhat of a difficult set bonus to get while acquiring four stacks of the Fatalis Legend bonus. So, here is an alternative setup that replaces the “worst parts” of the Fatalis gear with True Critical Element, a set bonus from Silver Rathalos.

• Head: Azure Age Hair Alpha +
• Chest: Silver Solmail Beta +
• Hands: Azure Age Sleeve Alpha +
• Waist: Dragonbarbs Alpha +
• Legs: Azure Age Geta Alpha +

Alternatively, with the right Safi’Jiiva awakening for Silver Rathalos Essence, you can replace the Silver Solmail with Dragonhide, getting Fatalis Legend Two for Inheritance while keeping Silver Rathalos Essence Four. This is an incredible boost to your skill abilities, but forces you to dig for Safi’Jiiva awakenings and specific weapons. That’s really good if you can manage it, but not necessarily required.

This second set is overall weaker, especially defensively. That said, it’s easier to farm, since Silver Rathalos and the Azure armor tend to be easier to get. The Fatalis hunt is draining, time consuming, and requires a lot of good gear, so we understand if you need to replace some parts of it.

Even with the Fatalis set, there are good reasons to substitute in Silver Rathalos. True Critical Element can deal massive bonus damage of your element on every critical hit. This is a hyper-aggressive setup that reduces the defense and skill-based setup of Fatalis for much more elemental damage on each swipe of your Sword and Shield.

Best Skills for MHW Sword and Shield

The strongest skills for Sword and Shield in MHW are critical hit-based skills or raw elemental damage. The raw damage of a Sword and Shield isn’t the selling point—instead, you want to improve the other offensive qualities of your weapons. As a result, maxing out the attack type of your weapon’s element or ailment type is a great idea, alongside more generic skills like Agitator or Critical Eye.

As is typical for a meta build in MHW, you really want to make use of Agitator. Agitator is handy since the Clutch Claw is a very simple tool to instantly piss off a monster, guaranteeing a knockdown into an enrage. As your reward, you gain a massive amount of Attack and Critical Hit at the same time. And, with the Fatalis Armor’s set bonus, you get even more payout for building the skill—up to 28 Attack and 20 percent Affinity.

So, we recommend slotting in the following decorations, or using an Amulet, to get the following skills towards max:

• Agitator
• Elemental Attack, based on your weapon (Fire, Water, Thunder, Ice, Fire, Blast)
• Critical Eye
• Critical Boost
• Weakness Exploit
• Handicraft
• Evasion Window
• Tool Specialist
• Latent Power

If you go with the Critical Element build, you may want Health Boost to prevent one-shots. The Temporal Mantle is fantastic, but can’t be online at all times—especially in Iceborne. That said, if you have Fatalis Legend Four, you get a better version of Health Boost which doesn’t stack, so don’t worry about that for the Fatalis build.

Best Specialized Tools for MHW Sword and Shield

Depending on your build, you may want to bring different specialized tools for Sword and Shield. The best options for your build include Temporal Mantle for safety, Affinity Booster for punish situations or fights against smaller monsters, and Glider Mantle for easy mounts and easy access to bonus decorations.

Before engaging with specialized tools, it’s a good idea to upgrade the ones you want to use. For example, the Glider Mantle is considered one of the weaker mantles but comes with two Four Slots for Decorations when upgraded. This can be handy if you have suboptimal decorations and want to cap out some skills for long periods of the fight. Alongside Tool Specialist, you can have almost constant uptime on this mantle. It’s two more Four Slot gems for the entire fight, alongside some excellent mount damage for a free knockdown. Overall, we really like it as an option for eeking out some slight optimization.

Despite being nerfed in Iceborne, Temporal Mantle is still useful for avoiding damage altogether. Since most of the challenge in endgame MHW comes from massive hits that, if they don’t one-tap you, put you so low as to force a retreat, Temporal Mantle can at least let you stay in the fight for an extra mistake or two. Try to use it during enrage periods.

Affinity Boosters are hard to use but can be critical for punish periods. If you have anywhere below 100 percent crit rate, it’s worth getting the small damage boost from Affinity Booster. If you get Affinity Booster +, its radius covers a lot of the encounter, making it easier to use while the monster is actively running around.

That said, there are a handful of similarly helpful tools in MHW that you can use. The Rocksteady Mantle is great for Clutch Claw strategies and landing Perfect Rush during active periods. Vitality Mantle is a good middle-ground between Temporal and Glider Mantle, though it can disappear instantly against the wrong monster. The elemental defense mantles are extremely good at what they do, making it a great idea against prevalent Elder Dragons—such as the Thunderproof Mantle against Kirin.