A Few of My Favorite Builds: Ultimate Regen, Explosive Crit, Tanky Support (Monster Hunter World)

written by Justin Prince (@prince_justin)

My favorite thing to do in Monster Hunter World has been crafting builds that help me with my personal playstyle. Since these builds have been very helpful for me, I wanted to share these with my fellow hunters, maybe these builds will help you get over some difficult humps or maybe added to your regular rotation when facing off against the Council of RNG.

The Vampire: Ultimate Survivalist

Do you ever want to just focus on attacking instead of worrying about your health? Potions are easy to make, but sometimes I just want to focus on the attack without having to worry about healing. Now I know, if I don't want to waste time healing I just have to not get hit... right? Of course that's the goal here, but let's be realistic... who hasn't carted thanks to some dumb luck? So let's go over the pieces.

Equipment

Weapon: Empress Edge “Ruin” w/ Health Regen
Helm: Empress Crown Alpha
Chest: Vaal Hazak Mail Gamma
Arms: Vaal Hazak Braces Beta
Waist: Vaal Hazak Coil Gamma
Legs: Empress Greaves Beta
Charm: Earplugs

Decorations

Weapon: Sharp (lvl 2)
Helm: Earplug (lvl 3), Vitality (lvl 1)
Chest: Earplug (lvl 3)
Arms: ProtectionX3 (lvl 1)
Waist: Jumping (lvl 2), MedicineX2 (lvl 1)
Legs: Flawless (lvl 2), Recovery (lvl 1)

Skills

Earplugs 5 (MAX)
Evade Extender 3 (MAX)
Recovery Up 3 (MAX)
Recovery Speed 3 (MAX)
Health Boost 3 (MAX)
Divine Blessing 3 (MAX)
Peak Performance 3 (MAX)
Dragon Attack 1
Tool Specialist 1
Protective Polish 1 (MAX)

Equipment Bonuses

Super Recovery
Stamina Cap Up
Hasten Recovery

This is the absolute deathless build. You should be recovering more health than the monster can chip away from you as long as you stay on the attack. Now I know what the community says, Hasten Recovery isn't the best ability but with all the pieces coming together in this build it ends up a much more useful ability. You'll have 50 extra HP, recover health at a faster rate, recover more health when you do, and best of all with Super Recovery (courtesy of Vaal's armor) you regenerate health past the recoverable red range. To keep you attacking, Evade Extender will let you dive further while Earplugs keep you from being staggered by monster roars. Max Peak Performance gives you a +20 attack boost when your health is full and max Divine Blessing (which procs more frequently than you'd think) can end up saving you from carting when you don't dodge in time.

Pros & Cons: While this set is great for keeping the fight going, negative resistance to fire and a high negative resistance to dragon mean that you have to be more careful around those monsters. Thanks to two pieces of gamma armor and two pieces of Lunastra armor, it does have a decent defense rating; something that hopefully mitigates how brittle it is to dragon. This is a versatile build, since none of the decorations used on armor pieces are specific to a certain weapon type, you can swap into a different Luna/Nerg weapon as long as you slot the decorations that go into the weapon around that particular type; for example, if you use a Gunlance make sure to slot a Magazine deco into the weapon.

Explosive Freeze: A Song of Ice & Fire

A build crafted completely around the weapon. The Fire and Ice Dual Blades is hands down one of my favorite weapons in the game. Utilizing two opposing elements, they strangely enough work well together. So while crafting my end-game builds I wanted to have one that drew out the potential of the weapon, fortunately utilizing two parts of Rathalos armor and three pieces of Zorah armor help facilitate that goal wonderfully.

Equipment

Weapon: Fire and Ice
Helm: Rathalos Helm Beta
Chest: Zorah Hide Beta
Arms: Rathalos Vambraces Alpha
Waist: Zorah Spine Beta
Legs: Zorah Spurs Beta
Charm: Exploiter Charm

Decorations

Weapon: Attack (lvl 1)
Helm: Blast (lvl 1)
Chest: Tenderize (lvl 2)
Arms: (none)
Waist: Fire Res (lvl 1)
Legs: Attack (lvl 1)

Skills

Attack Boost Level 5
Fire Resistance Level 3 (MAX)
Blast Attack Level 3 (MAX)
Weakness Exploit Level 3 (MAX)
Bombadier Level 2
Fortify Level 1 (MAX)

Equipment Bonuses

Critical Status
Critical Element

This build is very crit hungry, max level of Weakness Exploit along with a slight buff to affinity thanks to level 5 of Attack Boost. The weapon has a natural 10% affinity and if you choose to augment it for affinity you can get a little bit more. Personally I like to have regen on all my weapons and since these Dual Blades are ranked rarity 8, I only get one augment slot. I make sure to bring an Affinity Booster tool with me to get my affinity up to that 100% rate. Why is this 100% affinity important you may ask? It's all in the bonus skills. Two pieces of Rathalos and three pieces of Zorah give you both Critical Status and Critical Element. Everytime you land a crit with this weapon you will do either increased blast buildup or increased ice damage, topping it off with the max rating in Blast Attack means the explosions will be more frequent. Having 2 levels in Bombadier is a nice little bonus for when you use barrel bombs on sleeping monsters and Fortify is helpful just in case you cart.

Pros & Cons: Because of the armor pieces chosen, the set is fairly limited in decorations, hopefully you have two attack gems. Optimizing the build around the Fire and Ice Dual Blades, I decided to stick solely to attack and affinity. Because of this and because the Dual Blades are fairly stamina hungry, I suggest bringing Dash Juice with you on hunts. Despite the set's shortcomings, it does feel so very satisfying when your blast status procs as frequently as it does on this build.

A Stalwart Protector: Sapphire Paladin

With reports stating that the forthcoming Behemoth update will require more MMORPG like approaches to hunts, as the Hunters of the Research Commission take on the role of Warriors of Light... a build like this I feel will be useful for hunting one of the Final Fantasy XIV's biggest baddies. The Sapphire Paladin is all about hitting hard and supporting your hunting party. Going over the equipment, you'll notice that your gear is extremely resilient.

Equipment

Weapon: Wyvern Ignition “Impact” w/ Slot Upgrade & “Dealer's Choice”
Helm: Empress Crown Alpha
Chest: Kulve Taroth's Ire Beta
Arms: Empress Vambraces Beta
Waist: Empress Coil Beta
Legs: Empress Greaves Beta
Charm: Earplugs

Decorations

Weapon: SheathX3 (lvl1)
Helm: Earplug (lvl 3), Vitality (lvl 3)
Chest: Earplug (lvl 3), Steadfast (lvl 1)
Arms: Elementless (lvl 2), Tenderizer (lvl 2)
Waist: TenderizerX2 (lvl 2)
Legs: Jumping (lvl 2), Friendship (lvl 1)

Skills

Earplugs 5 (MAX))
Wide-Range 5 (MAX)
Stun Resistance 5 (MAX)
Health Boost 3 (MAX)
Weakness Exploit 3 (MAX)
Evade Extender 3 (MAX)
Tool Specialist 3 (MAX)
Quick Sheath 3 (MAX)
Critical Boost 1
Non-elemental Boost 1 (MAX)

Equipment Bonuses

Stamina Cap Up
Mind's Eye/Ballistics

Earplugs 5 is always a good way to mitigate those ever frustrating moments you get stun locked by roars, but throw in a max rating in Health Boost, Stun Resistance, and Evade Extender to make this a fairly safe build. On the offensive side, Non-elemental Boost further increases raw damage and Weakness Exploit negates the negative affinity on the Wyvern's Ignition when attacking weak points. To keep the fight coming, Mind's Eye (courtesy of Lunastra bonus) prevents your weapon from bouncing when you hit harder parts of the monster. As you'll notice, much like the Vamp build at the top of the page, this particular build outlines which weapon augments you should be using; Slot Upgrade gives you one extra level one decoration slot with the second augment being your choice, personally I went for Health Regen, but that's mostly because I love regen on a GS build. Supporting your hunting party is achieved with Wide-Range, Tool Specialist, and Quick Sheath at max. As long as you bring an AOE tool, preferably Health Booster, Tool Specialist will allow you to use it more frequently. Wide-Range and Quick Sheath work together to keep your party topped off, items you use on yourself (like potions and buffs) will also affect your team. I toyed with using Gobbler jewels for Speed Eating instead of Quick Sheath, and you can try it too, but personally I felt sheathing my GS quicker felt more fluid.

Pros & Cons: The Sapphire Paladin is a beastly build that benefits from the best of both worlds with high defense and high attack. It's a versatile build that works not just for yourself but also works to help out the entire hunting party. Because I needed this to be a support build, I had to forgo some skills I generally like to always have with a GS, there's no Focus here so your positioning will have to be picture perfect. Overall though, this is one build with far more Pros than Cons in my opinion.

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OKAY! With that we have our very first build article done! I love the Monster Hunter series and Monster Hunter World has been an obsession of mine since launch. These three are builds I worked hard to fine tune but I am always up for constructive criticism. Sound off in the comments what builds work for you, I'd love to hear from you. If you took any of my builds and slightly modified them I'd love to hear about what you did. I do plan to make this into a video series, gotta get serious with our YouTube hustle, so hopefully I have cut a TL;DR video version for you guys soon. Until then, may the RNG be ever in your favor my fellow hunters.