[Top 5] Monster Hunter World Best Lance

Monster Hunter, World, Iceborne, Best Lance, Top 5

Updated:

11 Mar 2020

The feeling of being an immortal deity in the palm of your hand.

The tankiest tank that ever tanked, the Lance is Monster Hunter’s resident defensive weapon. But don’t let its massive shield fool you. In World and Iceborne, the Lance got massive buffs to its mobility and flexibility. With the addition of Offensive Guard, the Lance’s offense has also received a fairly chunky offensive boost.

This list will cover the top 5 best Lances you should try using. I base my criteria heavily on damage output and comfort as a close second parameter. While comfort can be a bit subjective, unless otherwise noted, I’ve stuck to lances that just make hunting as stress-free as possible. Plus, I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that hunting with 10 hits of Purple Sharpness isn’t comfortable.

While we'll talk about what each Lance needs when we get to them, the general skills you will be needing for Lance are Critical Eye, Weakness Exploit, Guard, Offensive Guard, and Critical Boost. We're building all of the Affinity skills cause Master's Touch is the way to go with the Lance. A little known fact is that the Lance is one of the most sharpness hungry weapons in the game. You attack often enough to burn through your sharpness crazy fast, and don't have the Dual Sword's benefit of natural Razor Sharp. On top of that, Lances also have one of the slowest sheathing animations in the game. This means we want to avoid putting away our Lance and sharpening as much as possible. Luckily, Master's Touch can help fulfill all of these criteria since we won't have to sharpen as often and can focus on just attacking which in turn, with a health augment, gives us our health back and fewer reasons to sheathe.

Guard is needed so you can block attacks and swing back as soon as possible, or reposition so you don't take more hits than necessary. Offensive Guard was added in Iceborne, and it's useful since it increases our raw based on a percentage when you activate it.

Now that we've talked about those skills, let’s get to the top 5 Lances you should be using!

(Courtesy to r/MonsterHunterMeta's stickied album for the build images. If you want to see more builds, please visit this link.)

5. Minqar Al-Nasr II

Best Transitional & Poverty Lance Builds: MHW Iceborne META

I like to start these lists off with a transitional weapon to get you through the game and into the post-story content.

For the Lance, the clear winner of that award goes to The Minqar Al-Nasr II. This Lance is made from Kulu-Yaku parts and can be built and upgraded fairly early in Iceborne’s life. The reason this lance is on this list is because of just how early you can upgrade this lance for a Health Augment.

Unlike other weapons, the Lance benefits greatly from a Health Augment since you will be taking chip damage from blocks and you need to block in order to keep Offensive Guard up. As a result, a Health Augment keeps your HP at close to full and will lead to more damage (cause you sheathe your weapon less) and comfier hunts because you can stay at full health for the majority of the hunt.

While its main competitors are the Odogaron Lance and the Pukei Lance, Minqar Al-Nasr leaves both of those Lances in the dust because it has more raw than the Odogaron Lance and better affinity than the Pukei Lance. Most Lances want to run Master’s Touch to keep up both their damage and sharpness, so the additional affinity and raw goes a long way.

Be aware that this Lance will not out-damage the other Lances on this list, however, this Lance deserves this spot for being so easy to get, augment, and be a comfortable choice until you can get a better lance or better decorations.

What's Great About Minqar Al-Nasr II

Early access to Kulu-Yaku, so it’s pretty easy to make and upgrade.
Early Health Augment is a big deal for Lances. You can get those parts pretty quickly once you get access to the Guiding Lands.
Has a great mix of damage, sharpness, and affinity than other lances in the early game.

Minquar Al-Nasr II Stats (Atk 2, Aff 1, Health Aug 1)

Rarity: 10
Sharpness:
- 30 hits of white sharpness
- 40 hits of blue sharpness
Raw Damage: 598 (315 Effective Raw)
Affinity: 25%
Element: (420 Sleep)
Slots:
- None

4. Royal Grace Pike

One of the newest Lances next to Rajang, the Royal Grace Pike has become one of the best general-use Lances. Be aware, this Lance is also locked to Fest Tickets. At the time of this article’s writing, the only way you can get these is to complete the 50 Shades of White quest.

It has more effective Raw than the Nergigante Lance, and with 2 points of Handicraft, you can reach 20 hits of purple sharpness. Paired with Master’s Touch, high Affinity, and very careful play, you should rarely lose sharpness.

This Lance earns a number 4 spot just because of its high damage. I’d even argue that it competes with many of the other Lances on this list because of its damage, sharpness, and comfort to hunt with. However, since it’s locked to an Event, it requires some patience to build the first level of this weapon, and then some arena quests in order to get to the Royal Grace Pike.

Despite those negatives, this weapon still has plenty of positives to potentially earn it a 3rd or 2nd place spot on this list. One such positive is its hidden water element which can be used to out-damage the Namielle Lance. This Lance also comes with an open Level 3 slot, so you can fit in plenty of skills. The only thing holding this weapon back is just its exclusivity to an event and its lower sharpness than some of the other lances on this list.

Builds for this Lance would look like this if you’re going raw:

Recommended raw build for the Royal Grace Pike.

And this if you’re going elemental:

The recommended build if you want to turn the Royal Grace Pike into a water elemented weapon.

What's Great About Royal Grace Pike

Great sharpness, damage, and affinity rate.
It comes with a hidden water element, so this Lance can cover both your raw lance needs and your water elemental needs.
Flexible to build with since it comes with a level 3 slot.

Royal Grace Pike Stats

Rarity: 12
Sharpness:
- With Handicraft 5:
  - 50 Hits of purple
- Without Handicraft 5:
  - 50 hits of white sharpness
  - 50 hits of blue sharpness
Raw Damage: 621 (390.31 Effective Raw) (Handicraft 5: 411.01)
Affinity: 15%
Element: (540 Water)
Slots:
- 1x Level 3

3. Unblinking Gatekeeper

Knightly Ectis Stats (Atk 1, Health Aug 1)

Rarity: 12
Sharpness:
- Handicraft 5:
  - 50 hits of purple sharpness.
- Handicraft 1:
  - 10 hits of purple sharpness.
- 40 hits of white sharpness
- 50 hits of blue sharpness
Raw Damage: 621 (382.8 Effective Raw)
Affinity: 0%
Element: 360 Ice (41.4 Effective Element)
Slots:
- 1x Level 4

Wait, no Rajang?

I know you probably scanned this list expecting Rajang to pop out at some point, and you were probably surprised it wasn’t on this list. The Great Demon Lance is the best thunder Lance we have, but it’s also very decoration intensive, and for most meta builds, there's no room for comfort or multiplayer skills since you have to make up for Rajang's negative affinity and weak sharpness. Its damage is also comparable to the Ruinous Perdition, Knight Ectis, and The Solvent Spindle, which are Lances I would recommend using instead. The only exception to this is if the monster is especially weak to Thunder.

This isn’t to say that Rajang is a bad Lance, it has a small bit of thunder element, white sharpness with handicraft, and a huge chunk of raw. Post-story, you could either use this weapon or the Shara Lance and do great. If you have a build that’s working for you with this Lance, then just keep using it. It’s a game, have fun.

If you’re curious about specific builds in the PC Lance meta, then I recommend this link.

What about Safi'Jiiva?

When this article was written, Safi'Jiiva wasn't released on PC just yet.

Building with the Lance post Safi-Jiiva launch is more of the same - you want to awaken for more raw and use the Safi'Jiiva lances that provide a little element for the small damage boost. If you want a generalist Lance, then you can run any of the abnormal lances and still deal out a good amount of damage.

However, the Lance is impacted more by the changes brought by the Safi'Jiiva armor. While previously the Lance had used Master's Touch only to offset its crazy hunger for sharpness, you can now run Safi Jiiva's set bonus and Master's Touch to further boost your power and keep your sharpness. Since we rarely sheathe our weapon and attack fairly often anyway, we get to enjoy the full benefit of Safi's affinity and health boost more often than the other weapons. However, the trade-off for this is that we lose health whenever we attack. If you miss too often, then you won't be able to guard the next attack without carting.

If you want to read up on current Safi included builds then head over to this link.

Thanks for reading!

Also be sure to check out these articles: