What is Affinity MHW?

If you’re browsing on YouTube looking for the best builds for your weapon, chances are you’ll stumble upon a couple of them highlighting the importance of Affinity. Affinity can make or break your build in Monster Hunter World—especially if you’re a meta slave. While there are dozens of skills in MHW that you also need to be aware of—like Attack Boost or Critical Eye—Affinity is one of the most obtuse skills in the game that players don’t know much about other than they have to find a way to put it in their build. This guide is for you if you’ve ever wondered what is Affinity in MHW and how you can make the most out of it.

What is Affinity in Monster Hunter World?

Affinity is a statistic that helps you determine the value of how much chance there is for your weapon to land extra bits of damage to the monster. To put it simply, it decides on how like you’re to land a weak or powerful attack in Monster Hunter World. You might find this state similar to other games labeled “critical chance.” In the Monster Hunter games, Affinity can either be negative or positive. If the Affinity is negative, there’s a possibility that the strikes you’ll do will be weaker (although there are ways to circumvent this, such as using Brutal Strike). If the Affinity is positive, there’s a possibility that your attacks will be more powerful than usual.

In particular, Affinity has a more considerable impact on the tail-end of Monster Hunter World. High-rank hunts consist of monsters than hit harder and have additional move sets that can easily one-shot a whole team. You’ll have to consider your Affinity value if you don’t want to take 50 minutes trying to fumble through Furious Rajang.

Each weapon in Monster Hunter World has its own Affinity value. Whenever you’re forging or upgrading your weapons, you’ll notice the stats of your equipment in the info tab. Every weapon has its Affinity statistic—some can even have zero neutral value. While we’re here raving about how affinity is the best stat in the game you should prioritize, that doesn’t mean you should sleep on negative Affinity weapons either. There’s some fun to be had with weapons that have a negative Affinity; if you’re going for an off-meta, Brutal Strike build, you can still dish out sustainable damage—just not as much as a full 100% Affinity build.

Doing the Math

Crunching the numbers isn’t fun, but it’s needed if you want to know the specifics of Affinity. To calculate how positive Affinity affects a weapon’s average damage output per hit. Keep in mind that strong hits do 25% more damage.

First, you multiply .25 by the Affinity value. For example, if your weapon has a 20% Affinity, multiply .25 x .2. and you’ll get .050. After that, you’ll need to add 1 (1 + .050), of which you’ll get 1.050. Finally, multiply by the weapon’s corresponding raw damage.

It’s hard to wrap your head around it at first, but think it this way: suppose you have a weapon that does 300 raw damage with +20% Affinity. Simply multiply 300 and 1.050 together, and you get 315. The result shows the average weapon damage that you do with each hit.

The process mainly stays the same for negative affinity weapons, with .25 multiplied by the negative Affinity value since you’ll be doing 25% less damage. For example, here’s the calculation for a weapon with 200 raw damage and -10% Affinity.

• .25 x (-.1) = -.025.
• 1 -.025 = .975.
•  200 x .975 = 195.

Based on the math, the weapon will deal 195 damage on average (per hit).

When choosing from weapons with varied Affinity stats, it’s essential to consider raw damage and Affinity. That’s because a weapon with greater raw damage with lower affinity ((206 raw DMG and 0% Affinity) can reach higher numbers than a weapon with lower raw damage with higher Affinity (200 raw DMG and 10% Affinity). Then there’s also the fact that a slight increase in raw damage can offset a negative Affinity stat.

The Best Combinations to Compliment Affinity in MHW

As you progress deeper into Monster Hunter World, you’ll create more combinations of weapons and armor that’ll suit your playstyle. Should some of your builds rely on Affinity, you can increase its effectiveness by using the skills found on charms, decorations, and armor stats. Your build’s Affinity increases from the skills applied to the weapon you’re wielding. Here are some skills that complement it:

• Weakness Exploit – Out of all the skills in this list, Weakness Exploit is what you should prioritize the most. This skill increases your Affinity whenever you attack a monster’s weak spot. The increase is as follows: 15% at level 1, 30% at level 2, and 50% at level 3.
• Critical Eye – Critical Eye gives you a flat-out boost to your Affinity (3% at level 1 to 30% at level 7, which is the max level).
• Critical Draw – Critical Draw increases the likelihood that your draw attacks will land a critical hit. The increase is 30% at level 1, 60% at level 2, and 100% at level 3. This skill is notably perfect for longsword and greatsword users since they regularly draw and sheathe their weapons throughout a hunt.
• Affinity Sliding – This skill isn’t as needed as the others on this list, but it’s a helpful decoration if you still have a free level 1 slot in your armor/weapon. Affinity Sliding increases your affinity by 30% for 15 seconds after sliding.
• Attack Boost – Aside from increasing your attack power, Attack Boost also gives your Affinity a 5% bump after every level from level 4 to 7.
• Agitator – When a monster is enraged, the Agitator skill activates and increases your attack power and Affinity. Since some monsters get enraged several times throughout the hunt and sometimes have weaker defenses, Agitator is worthwhile. This skill is primarily seen in slow-moving weapons such as the lance and the gun lance, but it’s helpful in almost all weapons.

A significant part of balancing out your Affinity comes from Armor Skills. These powerful abilities are part of the armor pieces you equip for your character; many of them affect your Affinity. However, if you’re going for an elemental build, note that Affinity only applies to raw damage in normal circumstances. You’ll have to use the Critical Element skill to apply the Critical Status or Elemental Damage.

Mix and Match

We recommend you continue experimenting with Affinity and find combinations that can turn you into a monster-killing machine. Mixing and matching each armor piece against your chosen weapon is one of the fun things you can do in Monster Hunter World. Are there any Affinity-based builds you’d like to share for your preferred weapon? Or do you prefer using raw damage/negative affinity builds? Let us know down below!