Weapons

Monster Hunter Rise gives you 14 weapon types and no way to try them all before the first real hunt. Every ranking of them ends up being a ranking of the writer's taste, and our own weapons tier list is no exception. So this guide sorts the 14 by something you can check on the controls screen instead: how many things the weapon asks you to watch besides your sharpness and your health bar.

A Sword and Shield asks you to watch nothing. A Charge Blade asks you to watch phials, a shield charge and a sword charge, and to swap modes while you do it. Between those two ends sit twelve weapons with one or two meters each, and the position on that ladder predicts how long our own pages say the weapon takes to learn far better than any tier does.

The ladder: every weapon by what it makes you manage

Read the last column against the second and the tier list stops looking like a difficulty chart. Its three S-tier weapons are a one-meter Long Sword and two two-meter bowguns, its four A-tier weapons span one to three meters, and its C tier holds the zero-meter Sword and Shield next to the two-meter Bow. Tier position and management load are independent, which is the point of listing both.

Nothing to watch: Sword and Shield and Lance

The Sword and Shield is the one weapon in the game that lets you drink a potion or throw a bomb without sheathing, and our page treats that as its defining feature ahead of any combo. What it gives up is reach and burst: the page is blunt that its long combos do not hit hard, and that the weapon lives on Perfect Rush and on the shield uppercut, Metsu Shoryugeki, that can replace Windmill. Sunbreak added a fifth Switch Skill slot and the Destroyer Oil silkbind, which coats the blade to make monsters stagger more easily.

The Lance page calls it the safest and easiest of the 14, and the reason is the same absence of a meter. You guard, you counter, you thrust, and the only thing that grows during a fight is Anchor Rage, which turns the strength of a blocked hit into your next attack. The page's own warnings are about speed rather than resources: sheathe before you reposition, because an unsheathed Lance walks slowly, and do not lean on Twin Vine, which roots you in place after it lands.

One meter: the weapons with a single gauge

Five weapons add exactly one thing to track, and they split into two families. The Great Sword and the Hammer are charge weapons. The Great Sword builds through Charged Slash to Strong Charged Slash to True Charged Slash, and its Rage Slash switch skill can absorb a hit mid-charge and feed the damage back into the swing. The Hammer's three charge levels can be held while running, and its Charge Switch trades the level-three spinning attack for a single heavy blow. Our Hammer page is the most honest in the folder about the cost: a whiff leaves you open for the full animation, so it asks for patience and positioning above everything else.

The Long Sword tracks a Spirit Gauge that fills as you land normal hits and empties into Spirit Blade attacks. Ending a combo with Spirit Roundslash raises the blade's level, up to three times, and the Soaring Kick silkbind sets up the Helmbreaker that the page calls the weapon's biggest single hit. Because the gauge rewards constant contact, it is also the weapon our beginners guide names as the best first pick, with the caveat from the Long Sword page itself that its reach will catch teammates in multiplayer.

The Hunting Horn is a one-meter weapon since the 2.0 update, which cut each horn to three notes. Every attack plays one, and three in a row become a melody: Self-Improvement, Attack Up, Defense Up, Health Recovery or Infernal Melody depending on the horn. Bead of Resonance plants a cocoon that repeats your melodies at range, which the page pairs with the Rampage Agitato V's healing song to keep a whole team standing. The Gunlance rounds out the group with shells you reload and a Wyvern Fire you wait on; the Hail Cutter silkbind shortens that wait and reloads at the same time, and the page's infinite full-burst combo is built around never letting the shells run dry.

Two meters: the weapons that spend stamina or ammo

The next five all pair a weapon gauge with a second resource that drains on its own. Dual Blades are the clearest case. Demon mode makes every attack faster and stronger but eats stamina, as our page puts it, in the blink of an eye. Attacking in Demon mode fills a second gauge, and when it is full Archdemon mode gives you the same speed without the stamina bill. The Bow spends stamina per charged shot, since Rise removed the quick shot entirely, and layers coatings on top, which are finite per hunt. The Charging Step raises your charge level while dodging, and Aerial Aim can replace Focus Shot to fire from the air.

The Switch Axe has the most rigid clock in the group. Axe hits fill the Switch Gauge, sword mode spends it, Elemental Discharges spend it faster, and the Amped State that lets both modes use the phial lasts exactly 45 seconds. When the gauge empties you drop back to axe form and sit through a reload. The Switch Charger silkbind exists to skip that cycle, refilling the gauge and freezing its drain for a few seconds so you can stay in sword mode.

Both bowguns count ammo by type rather than one pool. The Light Bowgun adds Wyvernblast mines, up to three at a time, each regenerating one per minute, and it is the only gun with Rapid Fire, which only works with ammo that carries the rapid-fire attribute. The Heavy Bowgun replaces mobility with a charge on every shot, special ammo in two flavours, Wyvernheart for a machine-gun burst and Wyvernsnipe for a single line, and an optional shield mod that the page recommends as the answer to its weight. Its best picks are built around Sticky Ammo 3 and Cluster Bomb 3, and the page says the Tigrex Howl II's real strength is that pairing rather than its raw.

Three meters: Insect Glaive and Charge Blade

The Insect Glaive keeps three slots under your stamina bar, red, orange and white, and fills them by sending the Kinsect to specific body parts: the head for red attack, the body for orange defence, the wings or legs for white speed. With all three lit the page says you stop flinching from small roars and knockbacks, which is the payoff for babysitting an insect that has its own stamina bar. Recall Kinsect brings it back spinning and restores that stamina, and the Diving Wyvern silkbind is the page's answer for burst damage once the buffs are up.

The Charge Blade is the most managed weapon in the game and our page is the only weapon page that says outright to avoid it as a first weapon. Sword hits build kinetic energy, the energy goes into phials, the phials can be poured into the shield to charge it, and a charged shield lets the sword be charged too. Only then does axe mode pay out, in Elemental Discharges that cost phials and a Super Amped Elemental Discharge that spends all of them. Counter Peak Performance fills the phials from a blocked hit, which is how experienced players skip the first step, and the page's Savage Axe loop is the endgame rhythm once every charge is up.

Where our own pages disagree

Three pages in the folder take three positions on Dual Blades. The tier list puts them in C. The Dual Blades page calls them the best close-range weapon for a first Monster Hunter game. The weapon tips page says there is no overpowered weapon type at all and calls Dual Blades its favourite. Read that as evidence about tier lists, not about the blades: the page that rates them lowest is the one that ranks weapons by the raw numbers of their best endgame craft, and the two that rate them highest are describing how they feel to swing.

The tier list's own logic is worth knowing before you trust it. Its top picks per type are endgame crafts with their zenny cost attached, from the 24,000-zenny Nightmare Frilled Jab to the 90,000-zenny Reddnaught Blade, and its S tier is Long Sword, Light Bowgun and Heavy Bowgun. Our builds overview takes a different approach again, giving five full armor-and-weapon sets for Long Sword, Great Sword, Dual Blades and Charge Blade at early and late game. None of the three is wrong. They are answering different questions.

The starter kit is the same on eleven pages

Every weapon page ends with builds by quest difficulty, and lining them up produces a finding the pages do not state individually. Eleven of the 14 give a 2-star set, and every one of those eleven wears the Izuchi Helm and Hunter's Mail, ten wear Baggi Greaves, and the defence total lands at 38 or 44 in each case. The early game has one armor set and 14 weapons to hold with it. The pages only diverge at 4 stars, where Basarios, Barroth and Tetranadon pieces take over, and at endgame, where Rathalos Coil S and Ingot Greaves S appear on seven of the sets.

The gaps in that table are as informative as the entries. The Gunlance and Sword and Shield pages were written for Sunbreak and give only Master Rank sets, with defence totals of 316 to 480 against the 245 to 283 of the other endgame sets. The Long Sword page carries a Sunbreak early set for Master Rank 1 and 2, then two further sets headed Switch Axe and Lance that use the Royal Order's Guard, a weapon our Royal Order weapons page lists as a lance. Treat those two as misfiled until an editor moves them.

Switch Skills, silkbinds and the Feathered Frenzy gate

Every weapon carries three or four Silkbind attacks that spend Wirebug charges, listed in the ladder above, and a set of Switch Skills that replace a default move with an alternative. Six of the weapon pages agree on the gate: the first Switch Skill unlocks after the 3-star Village urgent quest Feathered Frenzy, and more follow as your hunter rank climbs. The Wirebug page covers the charge system the silkbinds draw on, including the fact that ranged weapons need R held as well as ZL to use them.

The weapon tips page is the fastest way to compare all 14 movesets, with a controls table and two or three signature combos per weapon on a single page. When you have picked one, that weapon's own page has the full Switch and PC control tables, the weapon tree by material line, and its best crafts. Weapon trees begin with Kamura, Ore and Bone lines and branch into one line per monster, plus oddities like the Rampage tree, and the Kamura line's early weapons are bought with Kamura Tickets rather than carves.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best weapon for a beginner?

Our beginners guide says Long Sword, for its reach and easy combos. By the ladder, the Sword and Shield and the Lance ask even less of you, and the Lance page calls itself the safest weapon in the game. The one clear answer is which to avoid: the Charge Blade page tells new players to leave it alone.

Which weapons are ranged?

Three of the 14: Bow, Light Bowgun and Heavy Bowgun. The other eleven are melee, and among those the Gunlance and both bowguns' ammo are the only things that fire. The Insect Glaive's Kinsect flies but the glaive itself is a melee weapon.

Do I need a different weapon for each monster?

Not a different type, but often a different element. The monsters guide ranks the roster by its weak points and counts which element is best against how many of them; Ice is the safe default and Dragon the specialist choice. Most weapon pages list a best craft per element for exactly this reason.

Where do the best endgame weapons come from?

From the elder dragons and the Rampage tree. The tier list's picks are mostly Teostra, Chameleos, Valstrax and Narwa crafts, plus the Rampage S weapons bought with Apex parts and Defender Tickets. Sunbreak adds the Royal Order line, unlocked through follower quests rather than hunts. The materials behind all of them are sorted by when you can first get them on the items guide, and everything else in the folder starts at the Monster Hunter Rise hub.