MH:Wilds Great Sword Guide

Great Sword: Endgame Meta Sets

Header by T3h Phish

This guide is based on the original GS guide by Jackscin & OP Ground Zero 2.0, which has been remade here for better accessibility. Thanks to everyone who worked on that guide. If you have any feedback or questions on this guide, you can find us in the meta channel on the Mathalos Nest Discord server.

Table of Contents

Introduction Gameplay Overview Builds Skill Priority Weapons Craftable Weapons (Best) True Shadowbringer High Lagia Blade Artian Weapon (Varianza) Armor Sets (New) Bale + Lord’s Soul + Bad Blood (New) Bale + Lord’s Soul + Thunderous Roar (New) Blackest Night + Heroics

Set Archive (Outdated Sets) FulGore FourGore ReyGore FourRey 3Rey/Zoh/Lag 3Rey/2Lag Variant Convert Thunder Element Earplugs no LP Variant Lord’s Soul Variant Evade Extender Second Wind LP Lord’s Soul no LP Variant no Azure for extra 2-slot Lord’s Soul no Evade Extender Critical Draw

Gameplay Overview

Great Sword is a rather simple weapon at its core: beeg hits, beeg damage numbers, monster beeg dead. All its subtleties really come from positioning and timing in order to be able to successfully land your chunky hits. Your core gameplay will generally consist in running around until you find an opening for strong charged attacks that can be followed with even stronger attacks. Tackle and Offset Attack can be used to power through the monster attacks while attacking them in return (Offset Attack is a very good damaging attack regardless if you counter with it or not).

A more detailed gameplay guide is coming soon.

Builds

Skill Priority

Armor Skill Priority

1 Weakness Exploit 5^ Since critical hits give a 25% raw damage bonus to your attacks (which can be up to 40% with Critical Boost), increasing affinity becomes the main way to maximize the damage of your juicy big hits. Every single set in this album will be using a combination of these skills in order to be able to reach >90% affinity. Most of the time agitator and weakness exploit can not both be maxed as the same. In those cases it is better to max agitator as the bonus raw matters more with the amount of raw on current weapons.

1 Maximum Might 3

1 Agitator 5

1 Counterstrike 3

This skill gives you a whopping +25 raw for 45 seconds after getting sent flying by an attack or hyper armoring through an attack that would’ve sent you flying. The buff can therefore be triggered with both tackles and offset attacks, which makes it extremely valuable on the weapon.

1 Burst 1^ Burst lv1 gives on GS +5 raw on your first hit and +5 to the following hits. A pretty nice buff for only one lv3 slot.

1 Lord’s Soul

Lord’s Soul is a set bonus triggered from equipping any 3 pieces from Arch Tempered monster’s armor sets. It gives a bonus equal to 5% of your weapon’s base attack at the cost of a 5% defence penalty. In addition, you gain the Guts passive which prevents you from taking a hit that will make you faint if you are above a certain hp threshold. After triggering, your attack boon and defence penalty will be traded for a defence boon. As AT / Gamma pieces already have good skills attached, you will almost always have this passive triggered just by making skill efficient sets.

2

Black Eclipse I (2p Gore Magala) + Antivirus 3

Gore Magala’s set bonus has always made up for its armor’s lackluster skill efficiency. With more and more armor sets being released with high skill efficiency, the value of Black Eclipse has decreased.

2 Earplugs 2-3

Earplugs is a pretty nice way to be able to land strong attacks in a moment when the monster is standing still to roar. Its utility goes down the longer monsters stay enraged, but for now it’s cheap enough that it’s worth considering putting it in your build.

3 Adrenaline Rush 1+

Adrenaline Rush gives you a raw attack buff for 30s after i-framing through an attack. This is a nice buff, but only really useable on Crit Draw builds since they are made to run around a lot with the weapon sheathed. The release of Seregios and AT Uth Duna has allowed us to build sets dedicated solely to the adrenaline rush and crit draw playstyle.

Weapon Skill Priority

1 Focus 3

As most of GS gameplay revolves around charged attacks, Focus 3 will be the biggest damage boost for the weapon, not only because it lets you attack more often, but also because it will let you land attacks in situations where you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so. 1 Critical Boost 3/5^ We crit, therefore we boost crit. Easy and simple.

2 Handicraft 1+^

GS doesn’t need too much sharpness to function and this is an easy way to extend it. Luckily for us, this already comes bundled with either Focus or Offensive Guard decorations.

3 Offensive Guard 3^

Offensive Guard is great against monsters where you can trigger it often enough through perfect guards followed by attacks, but otherwise it will fall behind just maxing out Crit Boost.

4 Mind’s Eye

Some monsters have parts you will be hitting a lot with hitzone values just below wex’s activation range. One example is Uth Duna’s head. If you know what you are doing, use it. If not, best to slot in any of the above skills.

5 Critical Draw 3

Crit Draw has become viable again thanks to the buffs to the skill that allows you to keep the affinity for enough time to land an extra hit after the sheathing attack. It’s not gonna be as good as a regular setup (hence its low priority), but it’s decent nonetheless. Once again, best slotted in if you know exactly what you are doing.

-10 Punishing Draw^ It’s just not worth giving up any of your good skills for this one.

Weapons

Craftable Weapons

(Best) True Shadowbringer

True Shadowbringer is currently the optimal weapon choice even outclassing Artians. Darkside enhances charged attacks of the three “standard” charged slash moves (Charged Slash -> Strong Charged Slash -> True Charged Slash) at the cost of consuming health per Charged Slash. The self-damage leaves you with recoverable health so Recovery Speed and Wild Jerky will help offset the drain. For most scenarios Recovery Speed 3 is highly recommended so all sets utilizing True Shadowbringer will have it. The self-damage being recoverable health is important as it allows Greatsword to trigger Resentment consistently. Capcom even coded the health drain to happen at the start of the Charged Slash, allowing every Charged Slash to benefit from Resentment. As a result, the weapon has enabled Resentment builds which Artians can not take advantage of.

High Lagia Blade

Lag’s GS is a great craftable weapon and good for hunting Omega to craft Shadowbringer. It has great attack and sharpness with the ability to slot in crit boost 5 and focus 3.

Artian Weapon (Varianza)

Note: currently Artians are not worth making if you want the absolute best weapon as the FFXIV collaboration Greatsword outclasses any Artian. In TU4 Capcom stated there will be a way to enhance Artians further so stay tuned. Otherwise, if you absolutely hate the health drain from Shadowbringer, then you can use Artians.

(Note: you can replace Focus/Handicraft with any deco that gives you Focus 3)

Like most other weapons, the best GS in the game is also an Artian weapon. The natural white, the high raw, the affinity, the amazing slots and the ability to give it a status simply allow you to make the best possible weapon for any situation.

GS is the best weapon for wakeup hits on sleeping monsters due to its amazing single hit damage, hence why we go for Sleep. Do note however that Agitator won’t be active during your wakeup hit.

When you create the weapon, you should use 3x Attack infusions for the same element (Sleep). The ideal reinforcements are 4x Attack + 1x Sharpness. In the end this will give you a weapon with 225 Attack, 5% Affinity and 50 sharpness.

_You could also go with_ _5x Attack_ _reinforcements instead, which is theoretically more damage, but without any Handicraft you will probably end up having to sharpen mid fight often. Regardless, as long as you get at least_ _3x Attack_ _it will still be better than the craftable options._

_Variant_

Offensive Guard: _Critical Jewel II -> Guardian (or Guardian/Handicraft) Jewel_ Offensive Guard is good against monsters such as Arkveld or Rey Dau where you can realistically use perfect guards often to boost the damage of your following attacks. This will however be worse than Crit Boost 5 if less than 1/3 of your hits are affected by OG.

Armor Sets

All of these sets assume that you reached HR41+ and you can craft all armor available or farm all required decos. Quick Sheathe decos are fillers and can be replaced with anything you want. Clicking on the image of an armor set links to the online set builder. I encourage you to play around with decorations and armor pieces as the current meta features many combinations of the same four or five armor sets. Most of the time the decision is between how much Agitator, Weakness Exploit, or Latent Power you want and what comfort skills you prefer.

(New) Bale + Lord’s Soul + Bad Blood

Because of Shadowbringer, we are the only weapon class capable of consistently utilizing resentment. Furthermore, Shadowbringer’s health drain counts towards Latent Power so we also have the benefit of triggering it without having to rely on getting hit or self-damage. The 2pc Bale bonus allows charged slashes barring Offset Charged Slash to add an additional shockwave dealing around 10% of the original slash’s damage. You also gain around 20% elemental damage boost when you have recoverable health (think: “resentment but elemental”). Now with AT Nu Udra we can also make use of Bad Blood which adds a tiny amount of damage while resentment is active. The damage ranges from 10 to 30 which is almost trivial but free damage is free damage.

(New) Bale + Lord’s Soul + Thunderous Roar

With how miniscule the bonus damage from Bad Blood is, you might get more damage out of having 30 seconds extra Latent Power uptime per trigger as it is 30 seconds of 50% extra affinity. To fit Recovery Speed 3, one point of Agitator was sacrificed.

(New) Blackest Night + Heroics

Equipping 4 pieces of the Bale Set allows us to utilize an item called The Blackest Night. The item can be used from the hotbar or from quick access. The latter is recommended as it allows you to use the item whilst having your weapon drawn. After using the skill, you enter a “stance” where you have three options. You can either roll out of the “stance”, attack for a quick burst of damage at the cost, or wait for the monster to attack you and break your shield. If your shield is broken you retaliate with a bigger attack, set your hp to one and gain a buff called Undead Redemption for 30 seconds. In Undead Redemption, your entire health bar becomes recoverable health, your base defence is doubled, and you gain lifesteal on all your attacks. The health drain also triggers latent power. Finally, the item has an 90 seconds cooldown, which starts the moment you use it. This set uses Blackest Night to quickly enter Heroics range and uses the health drain from Shadowbringer to stay in that range as the drain can not cart you.

If you want a safer option, you can swap out Heroics for Agitator and slot in Recovery Speed 3. As a bonus, as triggering Undead Redemption turns your entire health bar into recoverable health, you can eat a Wild Jerky and instantly heal to full. The Blackest Night even sheathes your weapon so you can quickly heal to full and still take advantage of the defence and lifesteal buffs.

Set Archive (Outdated Sets)

Most of the below sets are from previous updates, do note that none of them are directly powercrept as we are still using the same few skills we have had since launch.

FulGore

This is the recommended GS set for most situations. While the weapon doesn’t use stamina when attacking, you will still need to run around to reposition, to roll to cancel the endlag of your big hits or to tackle, all of which will decrease your Max Might uptime. With 2p Fulgur however you will never lose the 30% affinity from Max Might for your occasional stamina

usage, which makes this the most consistent set for regular play (this is true also after the MM stealth change after the TU1 patch).

Variant

- Flayer -> Earplugs Being able to land a big hit on the monster during a roar can have a quite high value on many occasions, and it’s actually rather cheap to fit it in your build. Earplugs 3 is only needed for Zoh shia, Gravios, Jin Dahaad and Gore Magala’s “phase 2” roar; for all other monsters you can go with Earplugs 2 and still keep 1 level of Flayer

FourGore

This set outdamages the previous one if you can manage your stamina carefully enough. This does limit the flexibility of your gameplay quite a bit however, so it's recommended only if you like seeing the highest potential damage numbers.

Now that the maximum might bug has been fixed, the uptime of the skill has dropped significantly. However, with skilled play the uptime can be kept high enough for the set to still be viable. It is also worth noting that most of the time maximum might will trigger in time for the final hit of a TCS if the combo started while it has deactivated.

ReyGore

Stepping onto the scene is AT Rey Dau. Its 3p set bonus gives 5% raw. The set also provides you with Guts. Under the condition that you don’t consume the Guts, the 5% raw will remain for the entire hunt. Set also comes with Latent Power. Latent Power, once a certain damage has been taken, you will receive 20% affinity. Normally Latent Power only lasts 2 minutes, but with 2p Rey, it lasts 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Due to factors like monster aggression, and player skill, uptime of this skill can be all over the place. On aggressive fights like Doshaguma, Arkveld, AT Rey Dau, or Zoh Shia, uptime can be decently high, but for MUs who aren’t constantly trying to murk you, Raths for example, uptime can be devastatingly low. However there is also player skill to factor. If you are someone who constantly gets tossed around and curbed stomp, then really no matter who you’re fighting, LP is just better cause your uptime will be much more consistent.

FourRey

This set reaches 536 raw and 100% affinity on weak points with all buffs triggered. However, if the hunt is too short you will never trigger LP, and if it takes too long LP’s uptime decreases too much to be effective. The alternative is to find a way to reliably trigger LP, which can be done through bombs and corrupted mantle or just face tanking a strong hit or two. Variant

- Mizu legs -> Nu Udra Beta legs Swapping Mizu to Udra legs loses you one level of burst in exchange for an extra 1-slot and windproof which allows you to slot Windproof 3 for Zoh Shia speedruns (which this set is perfect for).

3Rey/Zoh/Lag

With the addition of Lag legs, we are able to fit more levels of agitator and wex and squeeze out an extra free point of latent power as well. This set reaches 489 EFR without latent power inactive and 536 with it active. The flexibility of the decos also allows us to max agitator, wex or even latent power depending on what we need.

3Rey/2Lag

This set makes use of Lagiacrus’s Azure Bolt skill. How the skill works is that it triggers a small explosion of thunder damage, increases your affinity by 15% for 20/30 seconds depending on 2/4pc, then goes on cooldown for 30 seconds before it can be retriggered. There are some key issues with Azure Bolt, the first being the uptime as with optimal play the uptime will only be 40%. Also, the triggering hit does not benefit from the affinity bonus which reduces uptime even further. However, compared to the previous set, this set only drops one level of weakness exploit. As a result, the trade off is 5% affinity on weak points vs 15% affinity + extra damage every so often. This set has been showing up in speedruns and is likely the most consistent set you can run.

Variant Convert Thunder Element

We are capping out on thunder resist for Lag GS’s Convert Thunder Resistance to maximise elemental damage. Testing has yet to be done but chances are this set would shine against monsters extremely weak to thunder. Unfortunately this set is much more efficient at slotting wex than agitator so you will need to be hitting weak points a majority of the time for the set to be competitive. If you want to go all-in you can swap the 3-slot and 2-slot for a Bolt/Crit Element + Crit Element jewel to max out on elemental attack. GS does get a 1.21x multiplier from crit element over the 1.15x that faster hitting weapons have.

I would highly advise against this but it is funny. You don’t have to use Lag’s GS with this set and can stick to Artians, the extra 2-slot could be used for ambush which makes this set possibly competitive with the original version.

Earplugs no LP

This is another speedrun set that has been showing up. The idea behind the set is that Lag’s affinity bonus proc’s before Gore's, allowing for more consistent high affinity. With maximum might back to its unbugged release functionality, having extra affinity has become much more useful. If you were to count your maximum might uptime, you would be surprised how low it is. In addition, this set trades away Lord’s Soul for earplugs 2 and can fit three levels by swapping out another level of weakness exploit which is only 5% conditional affinity. This set shines in shorter hunts where ignoring a roar can have a significant impact on clear times or if you just don’t like getting roared out of a TCS.

Variant Lord’s Soul

Use this if you want to keep Lord’s Soul for the guts effects. You can also swap one point of wex for earplugs 3. Tool specialist and Uth Duna passive is nice but nothing major.

Variant Evade Extender

You can also replace the Uth Duna arms for Rey Dau if you really want evade extender. This set can also drop one point of wex for earplugs 3.

Second Wind LP

This set is perfect if you miss the uptime of maximum might. Unlike the original version that runs Gore, this set sources latent power for 50% worth of affinity. Use this set if you want to have the most consistent crits, provided you trigger latent power.

Lord’s Soul no LP

This set trades away 4 points of latent power in the 3Rey/Zoh/Lag set for an extra point of weakness exploit and Azure Bolt. Against tankier and/or harder-hitting monsters this is likely never worth it. Where it does work well is in bullying weaker monsters.

Variant no Azure for extra 2-slot

This version trades away Azure Bolt for one more 2-slot which you can slot in comfort skills or ambush. Whether the trade off is worth it is up to you.

Lord’s Soul no Evade Extender

Use this set if you detest evade extender. You only lose a level of latent power. I find Zoh Shia’s pulse to be useless but it comes free in this set up. On the other hand, tool specialist may come in useful.

Critical Draw

Set made for the traditional “hit & run” GS style of the pre-5th generation MH games. AT Duna and Seregios have done a lot for the critical draw build. Seregios has increased the consistency of adrenaline rush and Duna Gamma has allowed us to use Lord’s soul without wasted skills such as maximum might and latent power. As a bonus the build also gains a few points of peak performance and tool specialist to squeeze out a small amount of extra damage and mantle uptime although they should be treated as a bonus and not something to play around. There is no point in going to 4 pieces of Seregios as the 5% bonus attack from Lord’s soul beats the bonus attack from retriggering adrenaline rush that 4pc Sere provides. Critical Draw was made basically unusable in 5th gen due to the addition of non-draw attacks such as TCS that dealt significantly more damage than draw attacks as well as the nerfs to the affinity buff in Rise. However, in Wilds not only you get once again +100% affinity on your draw attacks, but you retain the buff for 3 seconds after that, which means that you have time to follow up your Draw Slash with another attack such as a lv3 Offset Attack, lv2 Strong Charged Slash or Wide Slash into lv0 Charged Slash. You can use this for a nice playstyle change that doesn’t lose too much damage.