Demystifying MHW Skills: Your Guide to Mastering Monster Hunter Meta

As a fellow hunter with over 400 hours of MHW under my belt, I know the agony of trying to decode the skill system. There are tons of skills to choose from in Monster Hunter World and it can get overwhelming fast. But the right skills can take your hunts to the next level when used properly!

In this guide, I‘ll share everything I‘ve learned about MHW‘s best skills – the most powerful staples along with deadly combinations that will transform your DPS and survival.

Must-Have Power Skills – Raw Damage Edition

These core attack skills should form the foundation of multiple builds, especially for Raw damage focused Great Swords, Hammers and Switch Axes.

Critical Eye & Critical Boost – Affinity Comsbo

What They Do: Critical Eye boosts your affinity or critical hit chance. Critical Boost powers up the bonus raw damage from crits. Together they result in more frequent, harder hitting critical strikes.

Why They‘re Powerful: Affinity directly translates into critical hit rates and therefore more DPS. Critical Boost acts as a damage multiplier by boosting that crit damage even further – they work hand in hand.

Ideally run Level 7 Critical Eye (40% affinity) and Level 3 Critical Boost (40% increased critical damage) simultaneously for 100+ damage crits!

Weakness Exploit – Punish Monster Weak Spots

Every monster hashit zones with higher affinity and damage multipliers – 45-55% on weakened parts. Exploit this with the 50% affinity boost from Weakness Exploit Level 3!

Paired with Critical Eye 7, I can reach 90-100% critical rates on offensive target zones for beautiful damage consistency.

Maximum Might – Free Affinity When Attacking

Maximum Might‘s conditional affinity requires stamina above 80% but rewards you with up to 20% affinity boosts just for attacking normally.

Combined with Flinch Free, certain weapons like Great Sword can constantly poke weak zones and dish out crit after crit!

Vital Defensive Skills – Survival Edition

Now to balance out all that offense with some life-saving defense skills:

Health Boost 3 – That Extra Health Bar

What It Does: Directly increases current AND maximum health – +50 at max level.

Why It‘s Vital: The extra health threshold from Level 3 Health Boost makes it much easier to avoid getting one-shot by tempered Elder Dragon hits.

Allows me to take risks and maintain aggression since I can survive an extra hit or two!

Divine Blessing 3 – Damage Reduction Lottery

Divine Blessing gives you a chance to reduce incoming damage whenever the monster attacks you. At higher levels:

• Chance to reduce damage by 30% or 50%
• Proc chance increases with level (up to 80% at Level 5)
• Scales beautifully into late game against harder hits

It‘s like having insurance against bad RNG. 50% less damage from Nergigante’s dive bomb? Yes please!

Quality of Life Skills – Comfort Edition

While less exciting than pure offense and defense, these utility skills enhance the overall hunting flow:

Speed Eating 3 – Chug Pots Faster

Speeds up consumable item usage animation like potions. Extremely useful for:

• Quickly chugging potions during small monster attack openings
• Less downtime spent drinking during combat
• More uptime wailing on the monster!

At higher levels, Speed Eating provides drastic drinking speed improvements.

Free Meal 3 – 25% Chance for Free Items

Gives you a 75% chance not to consume any inventory item whenever you use a potion, ration etc. It saves a ton of resources over long hunts!

Marathon Runner 3 – Less Stamina Depletion

Reduces continuous stamina depletion by 30% when attacking or evading over extended periods. Allows me to counter claw monster faces longer!

Combine with Dash Juice for basically infinite combo potentials.

Closing Thoughts – Next Steps

I hope this guide gives you a structured overview of MHW‘s most powerful skills. The key is combining complementary skills that enhance each other:

• Critical Eye + Weakness Exploit + Critical Boost for affinity combos

• Health Boost + Divine Blessing for defense stacks

• Speed Eating + Free Meal + Marathon Runner for quality of life

Make sure to balance offense and defense based on your weapon and the monster you‘re fighting. Check out my YouTube channel for examples of fully optimized builds!

Let me know in the comments what your favorite skill combinations are and if you have any suggestions for what to cover next. Happy hunting!