MHW Iceborne Best Greatsword Builds [Top 5]

Monster Hunter, World, Iceborne, Weapons, Greatsword, Builds

Updated:

15 Jun 2020

If you were looking for the Incredible Hulk of Monster Hunter weapons then the Greatsword is for you.

The Greatsword hits harder than Santa Claus when he ran over some poor sap’s grandma with a rocket-powered sleigh.

Iceborne brings new Greatsword builds and new ways to enjoy your favorite oversized meat cleaver. Here are 5 amazing builds for the Greatsword in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.

5. Thales Moustache’s Rajang Crit Draw

MHW: Iceborne - The Rajang Critical Draw Greatsword Build! (Great Demon Rod)

This build focuses on using the initial unsheathing animation to boost your Greatsword’s damage. Since Crit Draw also adds some stun damage, it creates a flexible way of playing the Greatsword that also can open up more damage window for yourself and your teammates.

What's Awesome About Rajang Crit Draw

Crit Draw builds are fun since they compliment the Greatsword’s slow attack speed and natural need to choose its moments to swing.
Since your weapon will be sheathed most of the time, you will have access to all of your mobility options, which can be a great change of pace from the slow lumbering options you’ll normally have on the Greatsword.
This build rewards you for abusing ledges and aerial slashes for crazy damage numbers.
It’s a pretty comfy build and amazing fun in the Guiding Lands.

Build Details

The crux of this build is based on Velkhana’s passive which increases your damage based on how long your weapon has been sheathed.
When you are using this build, you want to land as many unsheathe attacks as you can. This will help you keep the Velkhana passive charged and also ensure you’re doing the most damage possible for the build.
This build comes with 30 hits of white sharpness and 100% affinity on draw attacks
Full Frostcraft adds a whopping 30% damage increase when it’s full, and with a quick draw set, you can keep it full for most of the hunt.
Fortify and Airborne are in this build because of how strong you can become in those niche situations. Once either of these activates, then this build can hit for close to 900 damage per swing very easily. It becomes even better when both are active at the same time.
- Fortify may be a bit questionable, but in the Guiding Lands it can be a great tool to have a persistent damage buff
Tool Specialist is there to help take advantage of Rocksteady and Glider Mantle.
- Rocksteady allows you to have more damage windows and more opportunities

4. Team Darkside’s Pre-Rajang Greatsword Build

MHW Iceborne | Best Endgame GreatSword Build

Team Darkside released this Greatsword build sometime before the Rajang patch, but it’s still relevant today due to its mix of comfort and damage. While it isn’t a speedrunning set, it’s optimized enough for damage to help carry you through the post-story content.

What's Awesome About the Pre-Rajang Greatsword Build

Even after Rajang was released, this build is both comfortable and damaging.
After the buffs to the Shara Greatsword, this build got better.
This build is pretty simple, but it plays with what the Greatsword does well without using slots for a set bonus.

Build Details

This build is pretty straight forward - it emphasizes crit damage and overall damage. This is just to make sure that each of your charge swings does as much damage as possible without relying on any restricting buffs like Velkhana or Teostra.
Handicraft both helps you deal more damage through Purple Sharpness while also giving you more attacks without the need for Master’s Touch.
Challenger jewels are a great way to increase damage. Since this build puts 2 gems into the Evasion Mantle, you can equip the mantle when the Monster is in rage mode to increase the damage you can do.
Shara’s Greatsword is preferred here since it has more purple Sharpness than Acidic Glavenus and can benefit from the Elementalless Jewel, unlike the Rajang Greatsword.
Rocksteady helps this set soften heads for more damage.

3. Elemental Greatsword

New Best Greatsword Builds - Elemental Crit Draw - Monster Hunter World Iceborne!

Yes, I know, Elemental Greatswords? What are you thinking? While the Greatsword probably shines the best under raw focused builds, it still deals a surprising amount of elemental damage. This is mostly thanks to the many buffs elemental damage received in Iceborne, and because of the Velkhana set bonus.

What's Awesome About Elemental Greatsword

I’m lumping a bunch of the Elemental builds here, but collectively they deserve the #3 spot just because the Greatsword can deal a surprising amount of damage with an Elemental build.
It’s a variation on the Crit Draw build, but this one also focuses on maximizing elemental damage. Since Critical Draw builds can also land more attacks than True Charge Slash heavy builds, it compliments the increased elemental damage.
While you can say that a downside of all this is that you have to keep switching Elemental builds to match the monster’s weakness, I think that’s a positive since you are being rewarded for building all of these different sets with more damage than some of the raw sets in these same scenarios.

Build Details

The idea here is to use Velkhana’s passive to increase elemental and physical damage. At a full bar, you get a 30% increase to your raw damage and 35% increase to elemental damage.
Of these sets, Lightning and Fire are the strongest since they use two of the best elemental Greatswords in the game - Rajang and Wyvern Ignition respectively.
- While the other sets will use gems to increase its elemental damage, the Lightning set in this video has such little lightning element to it that you might as well just focus on the weapon’s massive raw instead.
- Ice will also increase its elemental damage by a minimal amount, but since these weapons all have very strong raw, having a small increase in ice element against a monster that is weak to ice will increase your damage more than an attack boost will.
Damascus Mail is important to this build since it has 2 points of Focus and allows your charged unsheath attacks to charge faster.
Since this set doesn’t run Master’s Touch, some form of Handicraft is usually preferred just so you have to sharpen as little as possible during a hunt.

2. Rajang Greatsword

New Highest Damage Best Greatsword Build - Monster Hunter World Iceborne!

This build focuses on fat charged raw hits. If you want to see the biggest numbers possible, then you want to run this build.

What's Awesome About Rajang Greatsword

On paper, The Rajang Greatsword build can put out more damage than the Acidic Glavenus build
Not reliant on Velkhana or Teostra which frees up armor to be other pieces.
A little bit of electric element, which can push it above other Greatswords when it comes to fighting monsters that are weak to Lightning.

Build Details

This build uses Handicraft to keep its weapon sharpness up, and since it doesn’t rely on Master’s Touch, it runs Attack 6 or 7 and Critical Eye 7 to increase its damage most of the time.
It’s very doable to trade some of the damage options you have for a little bit more comfort while still staying competitive against Acidic Glavenus’ damage.
This build can be very rare jewel heavy, so building in some comfort skills in the beginning can allow you to use this set and slowly swap out the abilities you don’t need for more damage as time goes on.
You can get close to 40 hits of White Sharpness which is plenty of attacks for Greatswords.

1. Acid Glavenus Master’s Touch

Iceborne Best Highest Damage GreatswordGreat Sword Build - Monster Hunter World Iceborne!

If you’re looking for the best build for True Charge Slash that can be a bit on the unforgiving side, but rewards you with those fat, juicy damage numbers, then this build is for you. Acid Glavenus weapons are known for having some of the highest raw in the game, but also some of the worst sharpness to balance out its damage.

What's Awesome About Acidic Glavenus Master’s Touch

If you’re familiar with speed runs then you’ll be familiar with the Acidic Glavenus + Master’s Touch build. The damage on it is massive and it rewards perfect play far more than most builds.
This build probably has one of the highest damage outputs in the game at the cost of some comfort - its sharpness isn’t the highest and you will be focusing on just doing damage over anything elsehealing most of the time.
Since you’ll be aiming for the weak spot most of the time, this build should rarely lose any sharpness at all. If you play it properly, you shouldn’t have to sharpen at all during a hunt.
Unlike Rajang, this build can benefit from the Elementalless Jewel.
Between these two weapons, Acidic Glavenus is probably better since it doesn’t come with a base negative affinity to make Master’s Touch harder than it needs to be.

Build Details

The core of the build is unloading charged slashes into weak spots and watching big numbers fly.
As long as you’re swinging into a weak spot, you should come close to 100% critical chance, which also means you won’t be losing sharpness at all.
Don’t forget to make tenderized spots so you can swing into a monster's weak spot and keep your sharpness at purple.
While this set will have you use the Teostra Gamma piece, using a single piece of High Rank armor will only increase the damage you take by about 12%, which isn’t too bad.
Master’s Touch, Critical Eye 7, Attack 4 and Weakness Exploit allows you to keep swinging your Greatsword at little to no cost to your sharpness.
Be aware, you only get about 10 hits of purple if you don’t crit.

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