Summary
Monster Hunter Wildsintroduces several new elements to theMonster Hunterformula, some minor changes, and some major gameplay mechanics. One of the most significant additions to combat is the wound mechanic. Players can now open wounds on monsters, highlighted by glowing red markers. Monsters will take more damage to the wounded part, but these wounds can then be broken to inflict even more damage and stagger them.
Some weapons can make better use of wounds than others. Some weapon categories, like the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade, rely on wounds for charging up their weapon-specific mechanics. All weapons can break wounds with focus strikes, but some weapons can break multiple parts or get better buffs for doing so. This can be important to hunting parties looking to make the most of wounds with their composition, but it’s also good to know for solo hunters who want to focus on breaking wounds. These are the best weapon types for popping wounds inMonster Hunter Wilds.
Dragon Piercer
Best Craftable Weapons For Breaking Wounds:
The Bow’s focus strike is excellent for destroying wounds and inflicting heavy damage. When Bow players activate focus, the attack will gradually lock on to any wounds on a monster and any tracer arrows stuck in it. When the attack button is released, the Bow fires guided arrows at all targets, which will break any wounds they hit. Breaking a wound with the move activates Dragon Piercer, which is a powerful piercing finisher.
Focusing on wounds as a solo Bow player is a viable strategy forMonster Hunter Wilds, usingarmor skills like Weakness Exploitto focus on wound and weakpoint damage. Opening wounds with a Bow is relatively easy as well since players can reliably target parts from range and deal continuous damage to create wounds, without relying too much on getting close and mounting. Bows are one of the better weapons to focus on wound damage overall.
Kinsect Charging
Some parts of theInsect Glaive’s movesetare reliant on wounds to activate. Insect Glaive players use their Kinsect to collect extracts from monsters, which grant various buffs. They can do this by attacking parts individually with the Kinsect, but the easiest way to fill every essence quickly is with Focus Thrust, a focus strike that breaks monster wounds. This synergizes with other Insect Glaive moves that consume extracts to deal damage.
Since the Insect Glaive is great for performing aerial combos and repeatedly mounting monsters, players can use this as a strategy to continually open wounds, collect extracts by destroying them, and deal big damage with the extracts or maintain their buffs. This makes the Insect Glaive relatively complex to use effectively, but also a very satisfying weapon to use for exploiting wounds on monsters.
Savage Axe
Charge Blade users can make use of breaking wounds with focus strikes to activate savage axe mode for their weapon. This adds a buzzsaw visual to weapon attacks and causes multiple additional damage ticks with hits. This can also be activated with perfect guards and mounted finishers, so the Charge Blade isn’t totally reliant on wound-breaking for this mode. With that said, it is a quick and effective way to enable this significant damage buff.
Focus Slash: Double Rend isthe Charge Blade’s focus strike. The move performs a double slash and will transition the weapon into savage axe mode if it pops a wound. Savage axe mode’s whirling chainsaw is a nice reward for a well-timed wound break.
Spirit Gauge Leveling
Playing the Long Sword inMonster Hunter Wildsmostly revolves around building the spirit gauge to unleash the weapon’s most powerful attacks. There are several ways to do this with the sword’s normal combos, but players can level up their spirit gauge quickly by breaking wounds with a focus strike.
Each wound broken with a focus strike increases the gauge by one level, so if Long Sword players can manage to break multiple wounds with a strike, they can instantly level up the gauge to level three. Even if there’s only one wound to break, the Long Sword can transition into the Spirit Blade III combo from a focus strike to gain the additional two levels needed for a red spirit gauge. Long Swords don’t need to focus on popping wounds, but the benefit makes utilizing them smartly worthwhile.
Spinning Destruction
Dual Blades has a very satisfying way of breaking wounds that weaves into its demon gauge and stamina management gameplay style nicely, without the weapon being dependent on it. The Dual Blades focus strike, Turning Tides, launches the player into the air and performs a spinning slash along the full length of a monster, hitting multiple parts.
The move can potentially break multiple wounds, soDual Blades playersplaying solo will look to open multiple wounds on a monster, then detonate them simultaneously with this move. The added advantage is that if Turning Tide hits a wound, it pauses demon mode’s constant stamina drain and fills the demon gauge at the same time.
Horn Solo
The main mechanic of the Hunting Horn is queuing up notes to play certain melodies for buffs, heals, and strong attacks. InMonster Hunter Wilds, the Horn gets an interesting mechanical use for its focus strike. Breaking a wound allows the player to input five notes at once, with an accompanying guitar solo-like animation.
Queuing five notes is a useful way to store melodies for the Horn, but if players input the notes with the right timing, they also get a finishing attack to the combo that deals additional damage to the monster. The Hunting Horn can be a complicated weapon to use effectively, but the solo mechanic makes breaking wounds a satisfying experience for the horn inMH: Wilds.
Explosive Shot
The Light Bowgun’s Focus Blast: Eagle Strike Shot is a very satisfying move to break wounds with. This is a powerful, charged shot performed in focus mode. The explosion can break wounds, and fully charging the shot increases the damage and size of the blast, which means the move can break multiple wounds if timed correctly.
There’s no further advantage withthe Light Bowgunthan the big burst of damage, but solo players can comfortably fit this shot into their move rotation when they have the opportunity.
Damage Boost
There’s no big advantage to popping wounds with the Sword and Shield. It’s just a straight-up DPS increase and a follow-up attack that can knock down a monster. It’s still a satisfying weapon to pull off wound breaks with, and solo players can naturally weave opening and breaking wounds into their attack and defense.
In multiplayer, Sword and Shield characters are better off letting other teammates capitalize on wounds while focusing on the utility of their kit, like shield stuns and quick item use.
