The damage in Monster Hunter Wilds works by calculating both Raw and Elemental Damage and summing them up. See an explanation of how damage calculation works, what Attack terminologies such as Motion and Hitzone Values are, and whether Raw or Elemental Damage is better!

How is Damage Calculated?

Adds Both Raw and Elemental Damage

Damage is the game's fundamental stat that measures how much you harm Monsters with your attacks. This stat is inherent to all weapons and is influenced by a weapon's attack and the various skills available to your Hunter. There are primarily four kinds of damage:

1. Raw Damage
2. Elemental Damage
3. Status Damage
4. Fixed Damage

The overall damage that shows whenever you hit the Monster is the additive sum of the Raw and Elemental Damage capabilities of your weapon. The calculations for Raw and Elemental Damage are separate, but generally follow the same variables with slightly different values.

How Does Attack Work?

Raw Damage

Raw Damage pertains to the weapon's physical damage capabilities. Mainly, the Raw Attack is the base of your damage as majority of the multipliers available apply to this value. Do note that Raw Damage has a maximum damage cap for each Weapon!

It is important to divide a weapon's Attack by its Bloat Value to get its True Raw.

Elemental Damage

Elemental Damage pertains to the additive damage applied to the existing Raw Damage. Since it is separate from Raw Damage, Elemental Damage is calculated on top of the damage you just dealt, which makes it more valuable as you approach the endgame.

Elemental Damage has a separate calculation because it has different values and has their respective Elemental MVs (Motion Values) per each move. However, the MVs and HZVs (Hitzone Values) for Elemental Damage are significantly lower compared to Raw values to avoid its damage getting out of hand.

However, Monsters who have immunity to an element will nullify that weapon's elemental damage. Being affected by Dragonblight will also nullify your weapon's ability to deal elemental damage. Look out for these effects and bring a Nulberry to cure them!

How Does Weapon Elemental Damage Work?

Status Damage

Status Damage differs from Raw and Elemental since it does not use MVs and HZ modifiers. Simply put, it uses a threshold system wherein if it reaches 100%, the Monster will be inflicted with that status.

Each Monster has specific thresholds for said ailments, and some are weak to specific ones, causing them to have lower thresholds. The higher your Status Damage value is, the faster it is to inflict a status ailment on a monster.

However, applying the same status becomes significantly harder to inflict since the threshold gets bigger each time. It is also important to note that Melee weapons only have a 1/3 chance to apply status buildup. Bowguns, on the other hand, are guaranteed to deal status damage.

List of Status Effects

Fixed Damage

Fixed Damage is the easiest to understand as it does not have any calculation for the damage it deals. This kind of damage primarily has their own scaling since they will ignore both HZVs and Resistances. So far, there are five damaging attacks that the Hunter can use:

1. Gunlance Shells
2. Charge Blade Phials
3. Bombs
4. Cluster Ammo
5. Sticky Ammo

Attack Terminologies

Attack Terminologies
Motion Values Hitzone Values Sharpness Affinity and Criticals Quest and Rage Modifiers

Motion Values (MVs)

Motion Values pertain to the individual modifier of a move based on the effort put into the attack; the longer and heavier a blow is to land, the higher its MV is. Naturally, the damage of a Greatsword's charged Overhead Slash compared to a non-charged one will be significantly higher.

Lighter weapons such as the Dual Blades tend to have lower MVs, but they compensate for this lacking aspect with higher speed and damage up-time. There has been no official release of info regarding the exact motion values from the game developers, but it is can be manually computed!

What are Motion Values?

Hitzone Value (HZVs)

Hitzone Values pertain to the damage modifier based on where you hit a Monster and what Damage Type you used. To put it in much simpler terms, HZVs determine whether or not a specific body part is considered weak or resistant to damage, Raw or Elemental.

The HZVs of the head, wings, and tail of a Monster are usually the parts with the highest HZVs. Look to exploit this and focus most of your damage on these specific spots to deal more damage!

What are Hitzone Values?

Damage Types

Damage Type	Associated Weapons
Sever	Greatsword Longsword Dualblades Sword and Shield Switch Axe Charge Blade Lance Gunlance Insect Glaive
Blunt	Hammer Hunting Horn
Shot	Light Bowgun Heavy Bowgun Bow

There are three notable damage types: Sever. Blunt, and Shot. Weapons are capable of applying more of one over the other, but they are categorized primarily what damage they usually deal.

• Sever - Sever focuses more on slashes, lunges, and pokes. Considered as the most common damage type, they are typically the most effective against cutting tails.
• Blunt - Blunt focuses more on slams and bashes, including shields. They are typically the most effective against thick or flat body parts such as the head while inflicting stun and exhaust values.
• Shot - Shot is mostly exclusive to the ranged weapons and does the least part damage. However, they have multiple coatings and ammo types available which have flat Elemental Damage and Status Ailments.

Weapon Damage Types Explained

Sharpness

Sharpness Modifier Table
Sharpness Level	Raw Damage	Elemental Damage	% Loss/Gain (Raw | Ele.)
Red	0.5	0.25	-50% | -67%
Orange	0.75	0.5	-25% | -33%
Yellow	1	0.75	0% | 0%
Green	1.05	1	+5% | +33%
Blue	1.2	1.063	+20% | +42%
White	1.32	1.15	+32% | +53%
Purple	1.39	1.27	+39% | +69%

Sharpness pertains to how well-maintained your weapon is during combat, especially since it will wear down after a set amount of hits. The sharpness of a weapon is one of the key modifiers in how much a Blademaster's weapon damage is multiplied.

The higher your weapon's sharpness level, the more your damage is multiplied. As observed in the table, Elemental Damage has the highest benefit from increased sharpness levels based on the percentage loss and gain.

If you plan on using Elemental Damage, make sure the weapon has at least Green sharpness to avoid losing out on damage!

Weapon Sharpness Explained

Bouncing

Your weapon will bounce off of the Monster and end your attack due to hitting a part with high HZVs or having low sharpness. While this does not dampen the usual damage you deal, it will reduce your sharpness significantly and slow you down!

To prevent this even if you are not dealing more damage, consider taking the Mind's Eye skill or using the Self Improvement song of a Hunting Horn!

How to Sharpen Weapons

Affinity and Criticals

Affinity only comes through after the initial calculation of the damage, where there is a chance for your weapon to critically hit depending on how high your affinity is. In a way, it can be described as the game's critical hit chance.

A successful critical hit nets either a 25% increase or decrease in damage, depending on whether your affinity rate is positive or negative. Usually, affinity only involves raw damage. Affinity, however, can involve Elemental Damage when the skill Critical Element is present.

Affinity Explained: How Do Critical Hits Work?

Quest and Rage Modifiers

While rare, a Quest's difficulty can have a modifier that buffs a Monster's values, resulting in different damage values. For example, you will be fighting a higher difficulty-rated Rathalos either through an Event Quest or it will have altered values compared to the usual Rathalos!

Furthermore, if specific Monsters get enraged, they alter their HZVs to reflect their agitated state. For example, when a Kushala Daora gets enraged, its skin will turn red and have lower HZVs, often resulting in your weapon bouncing off the Elder Dragon.

List of Quests

Is Raw or Elemental Better?

Raw is Better for Heavy Weapons

Weapons that Maximize Raw Damage
Greatsword	Longsword
Hammer	Hunting Horn
Lance	Gunlance
Switch Axe	Charge Blade
Heavy Bowgun	-

※ These are the weapons that maximize Raw Damage. While they can still be built for elemental damage, they cannot bring out the potential as well as the other weapons.

It would be best to build centered around Raw Damage when you using weapons that are known for their winded-up attacks such as the Great Sword and Hammer. Due to their high attack values and massive MVs, they can easily scale up their damage dealing capabilities.

Elemental is Better for Multi-hit Weapons

Weapons that Maximize Elemental Damage
Sword and Shield	Dualblades
Charge Blade	Light Bowgun
Insect Glaive	Bow
Hunting Horn	Heavy Bowgun

※ These are the weapons that maximize Elemental Damage. While they can still be built for raw damage, elemental damage just makes them deal more damage than standard raw affinity builds.

Elemental Damage does not primarily scale off of a move's MV; it will always apply 100% of its damage, even with attacks that have small MVs.

With weapons that can apply quick attacks, such as the Dual Blades, six quick hits will apply 600% of your elemental damage compared to slow weapons that can only use up to 100% of it in a single attack.

While some slow-hitting weapons have increased Elemental Modifiers, it is rarely worth trying to invest in those resources unless you are min-maxing for the endgame.

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