Is Affinity Worth It In Monster Hunter? An In-Depth Guide

Hi there fellow hunter! As an experienced Monster Hunter player with over 500 hours of playtime, I wanted to provide an in-depth guide on affinity – one of the most important yet confusing combat mechanics in the Monster Hunter games.

In this guide, we‘ll cover what affinity is, why it matters, how to boost it, when it is most valuable, and if stacking it is worthwhile or not. By the end, you‘ll have a clear understanding of affinity and how to leverage it effectively in your hunts. Time to put those pesky monsters in their place!

What Exactly is Affinity in Monster Hunter?

Simply put, affinity determines your chance to land a critical hit when attacking monsters. Here are the key points:

• Positive affinity gives you a chance to deal 15-40% increased damage on attacks
• Negative affinity gives you a chance to deal 15-40% decreased damage
• The base affinity value depends on the weapon type and upgrade level

For example, the Nargacuga Great Sword has 45% positive affinity at the maximum upgrade level. This means roughly 45% of your Great Sword attacks will be critical hits dealing 15% increased damage.

On the other hand, the Diablos Great Sword has -30% negative affinity. So 30% of your Great Sword attacks will be "glancing blows" dealing 15% less damage.

Why is Affinity Important for Damage Output?

Monster Hunter revolves around killing monsters as efficiently as possible. Naturally, higher affinity directly translates into higher potential damage output by increasing your chances of landing devastating critical hits.

With skills like Critical Eye and Weakness Exploit, it‘s possible to achieve 70-100% affinity fairly easily. At 100% affinity, ALL your attacks will be critical strikes. Talk about breaking those monster parts super fast!

Even at 50% affinity, you‘ll be landing significantly more frequent crits compared to a weapon with 0% affinity. More crits = faster hunt times = more rewards.

How Can You Increase Affinity?

There are several ways to boost affinity through skills, items and equipment choices:

Skills

• Critical Eye – Directly increases affinity. At max level (+40), it provides +40% affinity.
• Weakness Exploit – Gain up to +50% affinity when hitting weak spots.
• Maximum Might – Gain +30% affinity at max stamina.
• Critical Draw – +100% affinity on first draw attack. Great for Great Sword!

Consumable Items

• Demon Powder – Gives +10% affinity for a duration.
• Might Pills – Also provide +10% affinity temporarily .
• Affinity Booster – Adds +30% affinity for 3 minutes!

Equipment

• Nargacuga armor – Comes with built-in Critical Eye and high affinity.
• Silver Rathalos armor – Provides True Critical Element to boost elemental damage on crits.
• Tigrex weapons – Many have positive affinity right off the bat.
• Nargacuga weapons – Natural high affinity, some at 40% already!

As you can see, you have plenty of options to get crazy affinity values!

Is Negative Affinity Always Bad?

Weapons with negative affinity might seem bad at first glance. However, they can definitely still be viable and worth using if you:

• Use Critical Eye skills to negate the negative affinity.
• The weapon has very high raw damage to compensate. Some examples are Diablos, Acidic Glavenus weapons.
• Avoid relying too much on elemental damage, which doesn‘t benefit from affinity. Focus on raw damage instead.

Just be prepared to balance out the negative affinity with skills and equipment choices. -30% affinity is manageable, but anything beyond that will be more limiting.

When Does Affinity Provide the Biggest Benefits?

Due to the mechanics of affinity, certain weapon types and situations allow you to benefit much more from high affinity:

• Slow hitting weapons – Great Sword, Hammer, Hunting Horn etc. Their slow but heavy strikes really capitalize those critical hits.

• High motion values – Affinity boosts your raw physical damage. So weapons that focus on high raw damage like Great Sword get more mileage from affinity.

• Limited openings – During tough fights where monster openings are rare, affinity helps you maximize damage when you CAN attack. This makes it great for speedruns.

• Impact phial Charge Blades – Their phial explosions scale off raw attack. Affinity boosts the damage significantly.

So in summary, slow, heavy hitting raw damage weapons being used against monsters with small openings gain the most from high affinity values.

Is 100% Affinity Overkill? When to Stop Stacking

You may think maximizing affinity is always best. However, there are a few reasons why stacking affinity beyond ~70% has diminishing returns:

• At 100% affinity, you‘re already critically hitting on EVERY attack. Going above 100% affinity gives zero added benefit. Those skill slots are better spent elsewhere.

• Maintaining maximum affinity requires significant skill investment and perfect play to maintain skill uptime. It can require too many tradeoffs sacrificing other utility skills.

• Other skills like Critical Boost or Attack Boost also raise your damage in a complementary way. Investing in these can provide better overall returns after 70% affinity.

The optimal approach is to first raise affinity to ~70% easily through armor skills and some basic Affinity Boost decos. After that, focus on other offensive skills and QoL improvements. This achieves excellent damage without overinvesting in affinity.

Conclusion – Leverage Affinity, But Don‘t Go Overboard

To sum up this deep dive on affinity mechanics:

• Affinity directly increases your damage potential by enabling more frequent critical hits. It‘s a valuable investment.

• Aim for around 50-70% affinity before pursuing other complementary damage skills. This hits the sweet spot before diminishing returns kick in.

• However, don‘t become a slave to affinity by sacrificing too much flexibility and versatility. 100% affinity is overkill in many builds.

I hope this guide gave you a very thorough understanding of affinity in Monster Hunter! Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy hunting and let‘s get those monster parts!