# Demystifying Affinity: Your Complete Guide to Critical Hits in Monster Hunter World

- Canonical: https://33rdsquare.com/demystifying-affinity-your-complete-guide-to-critical-hits-in-monster-hunter-world/
- Published: 2023-11-06
- Author: Nelson Ayers
- Categories: [Basic knowledge & Meaning](https://33rdsquare.com/category/games/meaning/)

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Hey fellow hunter! Affinity can seem confusing at first, but mastering it is key to taking your damage to the next level in Monster Hunter World. In this guide, I‘ll cover everything you need to know about affinity, critical hits, and maximizing your crit potential. Time to boost those numbers!

## What is Affinity Again?

Let‘s start simple. Affinity determines your chance to score a critical hit, dealing 125% of your raw physical damage. The higher your affinity percentage, the more frequent your critical hits will be.

Affinity is shown as a positive or negative percentage on your weapon. Positive affinity gives you a chance to crit, while negative affinity gives you a chance to hit weaker "feeble" attacks.

For example, with 50% affinity, half of your attacks will be critical hits, half will be normal hits, and none will be feeble. Easy enough so far!

## Why You Want Those Big Juicy Crits

More frequent critical hits mean higher damage per second (DPS). Let‘s look at some numbers:

| Affinity | Crit Rate | Average Damage |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 0% | 0% | 100% |
| 25% | 25% | 106.25% |
| 50% | 50% | 112.5% |
| 75% | 75% | 118.75% |
| 100% | 100% | 125% |

As you can see, stacking affinity results in a sizable damage increase over time.

Getting to 100% affinity lets you crit with every single hit for massive damage. It‘s one of the biggest DPS boosts you can get!

## Balancing Affinity and Raw Attack

When building your gear, you generally want to prioritize affinity over raw attack once you reach a reasonable attack value. The thresholds depend on your weapon type:

- **Great Sword:** Focus on raw attack until you reach ~1400, then build affinity.
- **Long Sword:** Prioritize affinity after hitting ~1300 attack.
- **Hammer:** Balance affinity and attack until you have ~1300 attack and 30% affinity.
- **Dual Blades:** Stack affinity as high as possible after reaching ~900 attack.

These numbers will vary based on your decos and gear. But you want enough raw attack power before focusing on crit stacking.

## Ways to Boost That Affinity

Now let‘s talk about how to increase affinity. There are a ton of skills that contribute:

- **Critical Eye** – Directly increases affinity. Critical Eye 7 gives +40% affinity.
- **Critical Draw** – Gives 100% affinity on draw attacks, great for Great Sword.
- **Agitator** – Grants 5-20% affinity when monsters become enraged.
- **Maximum Might** – 30% affinity at max stamina, if you can keep it full.
- **Latent Power** – Grants up to 20% affinity for 90 seconds after taking damage.
- **Resentment** – Gain up to 20% affinity when you have recoverable damage.
- **Offensive Guard** – Grants 5/10/15% affinity for successfully blocking attacks.

There are also food skills, mantles, augments, and the affinity booster that provide temporary boosts.

With the right skills, you can pile on affinity to get those sweet, sweet 100% critical hits!

## Countering Negative Affinity

Some weapons like the Diablos line have negative affinity. There are a few ways to counterbalance this:

- Use the skill **Non-Elemental Boost** – this adds 5% affinity to offset the negative affinity a bit.
- Augment for Affinity – Health or Affinity augments will add 10% affinity to counteract the negative.
- Use the affinity booster – this temporarily nullifies negative affinity and forces 30% crit chance.
- Stack Critical Eye until your affinity hits at least 0% positive.

You basically want to negate the negative affinity to bring your crit rate up to normal. Then you can boost it further with additional skills.

## Compounding Crits with Additional Skills

To fully maximize affinity damage, you also want skills that enhance your critical hits:

- **Critical Boost** – Increases crit damage from 125% to 130/140/150% based on level. Huge damage bump!
- **Critical Element** – Makes affinity also boost elemental damage in addition to raw damage.
- **Peak Performance** – Gives +20 attack when at full health to stack with affinity.
- **Agitator** – Grants extra raw attack when monsters become enraged.

Pairing these together with high affinity results in some massive crits!

For example, with Critical Boost 3 and 100% affinity, your crits will deal 150% damage instead of the normal 125%. That‘s a straight 50% damage increase to ALL your attacks!

## Sample Affinity Builds

Let‘s look at some sample builds focusing on maximizing affinity:

**Long Sword Build**

- Kjarr Decay (20% base affinity)
- Critical Eye 7 (+40% affinity)
- Agitator 7 (+20% affinity when enraged)
- Critical Boost 3
- Critical Element

This build hits 80% affinity minimum, and 100% when the monster is enraged, resulting in huge elemental crits!

**Great Sword Build**

- Wyvern Ignition
- Critical Eye 7 (+40%)
- Agitator 5 (+15%)
- Max Might 3 (+30% when stamina full)
- Critical Draw 3 (100% affinity on draw attacks)
- Focus 3 (for charged draw slashes)

With 85% affinity on normal attacks and 100% on draws, you‘ll be dishing out giant crits with your charged slashes!

## Final Affinity Tips

Here are some final tips for maximizing affinity:

- Prioritize affinity over attack once you have a solid raw damage base. Critical hits give better returns.
- Aim for at least 40% affinity in most builds, ideally higher at 80-100%.
- Offset negative affinity before boosting crit rate further.
- Take advantage of temporal buffs like mantles and booster to counter negative affinity.
- Pair affinity with Critical Boost, Critical Element, Agitator, and Peak Performance for huge crits.

Okay hunters, now get out there and start stacking crit! With this affinity guide, you‘ll be destroying monsters in no time. Happy hunting and happy crit-making!

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Source: [Demystifying Affinity: Your Complete Guide to Critical Hits in Monster Hunter World](https://33rdsquare.com/demystifying-affinity-your-complete-guide-to-critical-hits-in-monster-hunter-world/)