Monster Hunter: World

Monster Hunter: World

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Damage Calculation
By CodeX
Understanding Motion Values, Hitzone Values, and more.
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▶ Introduction ◀
Monster Hunter: World is an action role-playing game developed and published by Capcom and the fifth mainline installment in the Monster Hunter series. It was released worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2018, with a Microsoft Windows version following in August 2018. In the game, the player takes the role of a Hunter, tasked to hunt down and either kill or trap monsters that roam in one of several environmental spaces.

This is the first time I created a long-ass guide because I love this game and of course MH Series as well.

Most likely doing Speedruns and Meme Runs in MHW, faints don't matter and I'm a GS Main:
and:
We will tell you about this topic. You will have learned what you need to pay attention to when calculating damage.
Damage Type
When attacks strike a monster, two types of damage are dealt with: Physical (Raw) damage, and Elemental damage (but only if the weapon has an Elemental attribute).

Some weapons have an abnormal status attribute instead of an Elemental attribute. These weapons will Physical damage and apply Status damage.

Physical damage includes Severing-type damage, Blunt-type damage, and Projectile-type damage. Elemental damage includes Fire, Water, Thunder, Ice, and Dragon. There are also
other sources of damage such as Fixed damage and Status damage. All damage types are
dealt with independently of each other.

Severing
Severing (sometimes known as Cutting) damage is the primary damage type for the following weapons:
  • Great Sword
  • Long Sword
  • Sword and Shield
  • Dual Blades
  • Lance
  • Gunlance
  • Switch Axe
  • Charge Blade
  • Insect Glaive
The following attacks also deal Severing damage:
  • Hunting Horn's Handle Poke
  • Bow's Melee Attack deals Severing damage
  • Some Kinsects deal Severing damage
  • Slicing shot from Bowguns
Tails can only be cut by Severing damage. This happens when sufficient Severing damage has been accumulated on the tail, which then severs it.

Blunt
Blunt damage is the primary damage type for the following weapons:
  • Hammer
  • Hunting Horn
The following attacks also deal Blunt damage:
  • Sword & Shield's shield-oriented attacks
  • Sword/Shield Combo
  • Shield Attack
  • Shield Bash
  • Hard Bash
  • Falling Bash
  • Lance's Shield Attack
  • Kinsects with Blunt attribute
Blunt weapons deal Exhaust status when they hit a monster. If they hit a monster's head, they deal Stun damage.

Projectile
Projectile damage is the primary damage type for the following weapons:
  • Light Bowgun
  • Heavy Bowgun
  • Bow
Gunlance's Shelling attacks deal Fixed damage instead of Projectile damage.

Elemental
Elemental Attributes:
  • Fire
  • Water
  • Thunder
  • Ice
  • Dragon
Melee weapons can have an Elemental attribute, a Status attribute, or neither. Some Dual Blades have two Elemental/Status attributes, one for each blade.

The Bow may have an Elemental attribute. The Bowguns do not have natural Elemental attributes, but they can load Elemental shots that effectively function as dealing Elemental damage when it hits a monster.

Elemental damage is mainly affected by the weapon's Elemental value and the monster's Elemental Hitzone. Abnormal Status damage is not affected by the monster's Physical or Elemental Hitzone values. Melee weapons have a 1-in-3 chance per hit to apply
Abnormal Status damage, while Ranged weapons always apply Abnormal Status damage.

If a monster has no weakness to a specific element on their Hitzone, then no Elemental damage is dealt. The Physical damage done by the weapon is not affected, as Elemental and Physical damage is calculated separately.
Abnormal Status Attacks
Abnormal Status attributes:
  • Poison
  • Paralysis
  • Sleep
  • Blast
Melee weapons can have an Abnormal Status attribute instead of an Elemental attribute. Bows cannot have a natural Status attribute but may equip Status Coatings to make fired arrows apply Status damage. Equipping Status Coatings will disable Bow's Elemental attribute temporarily. The Bowguns do not have natural Abnormal Status attributes but can load Status shots that apply Abnormal Status damage.

For Melee weapons, each time an attack lands, the attack has a 1-in-3 chance of applying Abnormal Status damage. For Ranged weapons, a successful hit will always apply Abnormal Status damage.

Applying Abnormal Status damage to a monster does not instantly activate its effect. Instead, monsters have an innate tolerance to Status Ailments. To trigger a Status Ailment, enough Status damage must be dealt with by a monster to overcome its tolerance threshold. Once a monster is afflicted with the Ailment, the accumulated Status damage is reset to 0 and additional Status damage cannot be dealt with until the monster recovers. The only exception to this is Poison.

After the monster recovers, its tolerance threshold for the Ailment increases. This means it takes more Status damage must be accumulated before being able to inflict the monster with the same Ailment.

For all Ailments (except Blast), the accumulated Status damage disappears gradually due to the monster's tolerances. Overcoming this gradual decay is necessary to successfully trigger a Status Ailment on a monster.
Factors for Damage Calculation
The following factors influence damage calculations:

BM = Blademaster (Melee)

Attack Value
The Attack value of the Hunter is calculated from the Hunter's equipped weapon, offensive boosts (e.g. being in DB's Archdemon Mode or having a HH attack buff), equipped skills, items, and Food skills. When damage is calculated, only True values are used, and the Displayed Attack value is adjusted down by the Display Multiplier.

Display Multiplier
The attack value displayed in Hunter's status screen is an inflated value that helps indicate the average damage per hit the weapon can deal.

In reality, all weapons have a true value (commonly referred to as "True Raw" and "True Element) and a displayed value ("Display Raw" and "Display Element"). The displayed value is calculated by taking the weapon's true values and multiplying them by a specific Display Multiplier. For example, if the Bow has a true raw of 100, and a display multiplier of 1.2, then its display raw
(the value in the status screen) is 120.

All weapons of the same type share the same display multiplier. In general, slower weapons have a larger display multiplier, and thus show higher display raw/element values in the status screen, while faster weapons have a smaller display multiplier.


Changes in Attack
Effects in the same group do not stack




Motion Values
All weapon attacks have a Motion Value (MV), which determines what proportion of the Attack value is used in damage calculations. For example, a weaker move with 40 MV uses applies 40% of the Attack Value in calculating damage, while a stronger move with 80 MV applies 80% of the Attack Value in calculating damage.

In general, slow weapons make up for their slower attacks with larger MVs, and fast weapons make up for their faster attacks with smaller MVs.

MHWorld Motion Values compiled: https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterHunter/comments/7v0pp3/mhworld_motion_values_compiled/
Sharpness
Sharpness describes how sharp a weapon is. Sharper weapons deal more damage and are less likely to bounce when hitting tough body parts.

Weapon Sharpness is split into discrete colors (see below). Different colors provide different multipliers to the damage dealt by the player.


In addition to lower damage, weaker Sharpness colors cause some weapons to lose functionality. For example, at Orange Sharpness, the Gunlance's shells will deal less damage, the Switch Axe may bounce while in Sword mode, and the Dual Blades will not complete its full Blade Dance animation. At Red Sharpness, the Gunlance cannot shell.

Sharpness Gauge and Consumption
Each weapon can only make a specific amount of hits in a specific sharpness color before it dulls and the sharpness color is lowered. Sharpness is consumed when a player lands an attack, but some shield attacks from the SnS and Lance do not deplete Sharpness.
Although most attacks deplete Sharpness by one per hit, some weapons have attacks that deplete Sharpness faster:

Weapon Adjustment
Certain attacks have inherent damage bonuses:


Sharpness Adjustment
Some moves modify Sharpness, which affects both damage output and the likelihood to bounce.

Critical Hits and Feeble Hits
When an attack makes a Critical Hit, additional damage is dealt. When an attack makes a Feeble Hit, the damage is reduced.


The below table briefly illustrates the interaction between Affinity and the probability of making a Critical or Feeble Hit:

Monster Hitzone Values
Monsters are comprised of different body parts, and each part has different weaknesses to Physical damage, and Elemental damage. The Physical weakness of a Hitzone does not affect its Elemental weakness and vice versa. If a Hitzone is not weak to a specific element (i.e. a Hitzone value of 0), then no Elemental damage is dealt, but Physical damage is not impacted.

The higher the Hitzone value, the weaker it is. For example, if a monster's head has Hitzone values of 20/50/40 (corresponding to the Severing, Blunt, and Projectile damage types respectively), then Severing-type attacks deal 20% of its damage, Blunt-type attacks deal 50% of its damage, and Projectile-type attacks deal 40% of its damage.

A Hitzone is generally considered vulnerable when its Physical Hitzone value is 45 or higher or when its Elemental Hitzone value is 20 or higher.

I think many people have checked Monster Field Guide after they unlocked the monster to check what their weak points are and to what elements they are weak. However, this is just part of the story which may not be telling all of the truth. In this guide, I will try to break down what you should be caring about and how to maximize your damage during hunts.

Hit zone values show the truly weak points of the monster. When I learned about them I changed my hunting tactics a bit. I now try to concentrate on those parts which have the highest hitzones.

In this tutorial let us take a look at Ruiner Nergigante as an example (Loots and Rewards included):
Extra:
Elemental Value
Projectile Adjustment
Critical Distance
For Gunner Weapons like LBG & HBG (Ranged), Critical Distance (or Critical Range) refers to the distance at which a fired shot deals maximal damage. If the player is at a Critical Distance, the aiming reticle will look like this:


Generally, being too close or too far away from the target will put the player outside of Critical Distance. Being too close or too far (i.e. outside of Critical Distance) will reduce the damage done by player Projectiles.

Critical Distance does not affect Affinity or Critical Hits.
Rapid Fire Adjustment
The Light Bowgun is capable of Rapid Fire, where the LBG shoots multiple shots in a single burst at the cost of 1 ammo. Each shot fired from Rapid Fire is weaker than a single shot of the same ammo type, but if most Rapid Fire shots land, their combined damage will exceed the damage done by firing just a single shot.

Fixed Damage
Fixed damage is dealt directly to the monster and does not have a damage calculation. This means that Fixed damage attacks are not mitigated by the monster's Hitzone values or affected by the player's Attack value.

Some sources of Fixed damage, such as Gunlance shelling and Wyvern Fire, and Bowgun Sticky shot and Crag shot, also deal additional Fire damage. This additional Fire damage will be impacted by damage calculations.

Damage Calculator
Base Game Only

Note: Experimental

http://www.mhwcalculator.com/
12 Comments
Humanoid Being 19 Mar @ 3:33pm 
i main ls
𒌐 10 Mar @ 4:30pm 
I need me a man with a sword
tchegraf! 8 Jul, 2023 @ 6:05pm 
as a longsword main i can relate to the intro
Mizublu 28 Apr, 2023 @ 5:20am 
<3
GlitchPenguin 10 Sep, 2022 @ 3:38pm 
What do I do I didn't know long sword was the big bad and I just chose it cause I didn't know what to pick and now i'm too used to it
hammerofthegods 31 Jul, 2022 @ 3:15pm 
This is quite something....To be honest, I'm not sure I could still enjoy a game if I broke it down mechanically like this.
Leapo 5 Oct, 2021 @ 6:14pm 
I tried reading this while waiting on a friend to come back from being afk, but after a while started noticing that I had no idea what I was reading.

Will try to read again once I become as big brain as you.
Willow 4 Oct, 2021 @ 6:15am 
Take it easy, your brain won't fit in your head if you keep going
Yanxi 28 Sep, 2021 @ 8:56pm 
This is fantastic work, Codex! When I get a free weekend, this treasure of a guide is exactly what I'll be studying. Thank you for providing this for the community.
MARLOD1987 16 Sep, 2021 @ 4:09pm 
Great data