Monster Hunter Rise: Top 3 Long Swords

With Monster Hunter Rise out on PC, this series will recommend weapons to build for with a few skills and sets to try and get — similar to what we did for Monster Hunter: World. With the return of charm farming, may the Desire Sensor be ever in your favour. The weapons featured go from easiest for story, best for endgame, and a customisation for the Rampage weapon. Whilst Rise’s armour has great mix and match potential, the armour’s meta is more limited than World/Iceborne and will use the same, or similar, cookie-cutter sets.

Easiest for Story: Ore Tree

Once you hit here, you can just go immediately to Narga line.

Unlike the great sword, the long sword will tear through sharpness; unless you want to spend equal parts sharpening to slashing, the Ore line is more effective for story progression. Whilst the long sword does have moves and combos that have a natural Mind’s Eye (not bouncing on harder parts of a monster), due to the commitment required for combos and maintenance of the Spirit meter for extra damage, your sharpness meter becomes much more important. It makes the Ore line best as it has access to the Nargacuga and Tigrex line, making it easier to craft the two best meta long swords for raw.

Best for Endgame: Tigrine Need (230 Raw/No Element)

Attack Boost 3

That said, personally I run Narga because nearly infinite white sharpness.

Unlike the great sword, the Tigrex long sword isn’t an outright upgrade compared to the Nargacuga long sword. If you’re starved for decorations and general quality of life skills, the Narga can prove just as effective (if not more). As activating the recently nerfed Master’s Touch doesn’t result in 100% sharpness retention, it’s best to stack with Razor Sharp to have a similar effect. That said, you can actually stack and get it to 100 affinity via Critical Eye with Latent Power or Agitator and having the weapon augmented for Affinity.

Rampage Blade S (210 Raw/No Element)

Sharpness 4, Element 3, Attack Surge

If only base sharpness was better then element boost would be better.

A weird change of pace, but the long sword has gained a lot of flexibility to the point that when comparing what you can build vs craft into, Rathalos and Valstrax is outright better than Rampage building into element. Raw doesn’t compete due to the natural white that even with Tigrine’s -30 affinity, it doesn’t force it over. And Narga is better. Zinogre is marginally better for Thunder, but is a toss between craft pending decorations and available charm. The same is applicable for Ice and Water, albeit to a lesser extent for the latter due to how stacked Water is on the Almudron tree (48 Water vs 40 max on Rampage) and how effective the element is against the monsters weak to it.

I can’t believe it, Quick Sheath is actually part of the meta and is a massive game changer to the general long sword playstyle with the new Iai stance and counter system. However, that’s not to say the skill floor hasn’t been raised with effectively maintaining meter more aggressively via Iai slash. Using the counter/combo systems to loop where pacing yourself is key to the weapon’s overall flow, that allows you to bounce back from the majority of situations. Otherwise the usual Holy Quartet (Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye, Critical Boost, and Attack Boost) of damage skills remains the target, but element has its place albeit due to its nerfing of previous values and sheer cost — building into element isn’t as effective now with slotting for Critical Element.