Endgame
Endgame
Face the White Wraith and Tempered monsters with powerful endgame lance builds!
These are the current endgame builds for Title Update 2, which added Seregios and Lagiacrus. All of these builds assume you've completed the main story and have access to the highest rarity Artian weapons, plus pretty much all decorations and armor pieces.
Weapons
Artian weapons are still the best option in the game by a wide margin. They all come with three level-3 slots, which lets you stack the weapon skills that lance really needs. The reinforcement system also gives them the best stats for almost every element or status, making most craftable lances pretty obsolete (for thunder the Lagiacrus lance is pretty good).
When crafting new Artian weapons, try to get three parts with the same element or status and all having attack infusions. This basically guarantees you to get the element you want while maximizing the attack production bonus.
A fire Artian lance with full raw production bonus and 2 sharpness, 1 affinity and 1 affinity production bonus. Not the god roll, but still a very good one.
For reinforcement bonuses, aim for 1 sharpness and 4 attack (2 sharpness 3 attack is the second best). Even if you only get 2-3 attack reinforcements, the weapon will still outperform the craftable alternatives.
Weapon Decorations
Here's how to use those 3 weapon decoration slots:
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Offensive Guard 3
Lance's most important weapon skill for damage
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Master's Touch 3 or Razor Sharp 3
Essential for maintaining sharpness during long fights
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Critical Boost 3
Great damage skill, but prioritize the other two first
Offensive Guard comes with combo decorations that include guard, handicraft, or elemental attack. Pick based on what you need—guard for tough matchups, handicraft if you're struggling with sharpness, or elemental attack for a small damage boost.
Since our affinity is pretty high now, Master's Touch is slowly starts being better for
sharpness management. Most sets have around 80% average affinity, we get 1/(1 - (0.8*0.8)) = 2.78 times the sharpness. And with the Artian lances being at 50 hits that results in around 138
hits. On the other hand, Razor Sharp just doubles the sharpness, which is 120 hits if you pick
a handicraft combo or 100 hits if you pick a guard or elemental attack combo.
Craftable Weapons
The Lagiacrus lance can actually match or and even beat the Artian Thunder Lance in very elemental-heavy matchups like Seregios if you manage to reach high thunder resistance. For longer hunts, an Artian with god roll probably still wins due to better slots, giving it better sharpness.
When using the Lagi Lance, eat a meal that gives elemental resistances and use your 1-slots for more thunder resistance.
For other craftable options, the Blazing Sital from Zoh Shia has a unique
weapon skill, while the Guardian Rathalos lance Shining Pillar offers good
stats and slot efficiency.
Element vs Raw
Since Artian weapons can all reach the same raw damage, using elemental ones just adds free damage on top. If you can afford to make 6 different Artian lances (5 element and 1 status/raw), definitely do it. Using the right element typically adds 5-10% damage, which really adds up over time.
Check the matchup table to see which element works best against each monster.
📊 matchup chartIf you want to stick with raw weapons, blast is generally the best option, though paralysis is also solid for the openings it creates.
Armor
All three builds here use Guts, the set bonus from wearing 3 pieces of any Arch-Tempered Apex monster armor. Guts lets you survive a lethal hit if you're above 40% health, and as long as it hasn't been triggered recently, it gives you a 5% raw damage bonus. Combined with how skill-efficient these armor pieces are, it makes Guts one of the strongest skills available.
The builds are very similar in damage output, but each has different strengths and use cases.
Now with all that covered, let's take a look at the builds.
latent power set
This build uses 3 pieces of Rey Dau combined with the best-in-slot armor pieces available, letting us max out both Agitator and Weakness Exploit.
The key feature is high Latent Power levels, giving this set the highest theoretical damage output. The downside is that Latent Power can be inconsistent, as it has high up and down times. And when the up times overlap with zone transitions, or timings in the fight where you can't attack or deal less damage due to monster states, it can lead to damage loss.
If you get hit a lot, you actually will have a higher latent power uptime. If this is an advantage solely depends on you :)
rey dau latent power set
We get Guts/Lord's Soul from 2 pieces of AT Rey Dau and the new AT Uth Duna boots, allowing us to max out agitator and weakness exploit
With an additional 3 levels of latent power, we reach a very good average affinity allowing for the highest damage output
High thunder resistance makes this set particularly good when using the Lagiacrus lance.
EFFECTIVE RAW
fire ELEMENT
AVG AFFINITY
azure bolt set
This set uses 2 pieces of Lagiacrus for the Azure Bolt set bonus, trading some raw power for much more consistent damage output.
While the Lagiacrus pieces make this slightly weaker than the Latent Power set on paper, Azure Bolt provides more reliable affinity uptime with shorter cycles. The set bonus also adds free damage procs that aren't reflected in the displayed stats. We also get 2 levels of Stamina Surge, which helps maintain Maximum Might uptime.
lagiacrus azure bolt set
Two Lagiacrus pieces provide the Azure Bolt set bonus for more consistent affinity.
The set bonus offers reliable uptime and additional damage procs not shown in stats.
Two levels of Stamina Surge help maintain Maximum Might uptime.
EFFECTIVE RAW
fire ELEMENT
AVG AFFINITY
comfy zoh shia set
Alternatively, there's this third set which is a really comfy variant using the Zoh Shia super recovery set bonus, which allows you to recover health passively even without having red health. This is really nice for us, as it can help a lot with damage building up from chip or smaller hits, meaning you need to heal less often, allowing you to focus more on attacking.
Overall, this set has only around 1-2% less damage than the latent power set, but offers a lot of quality of life, making this my go to set for most late game investigation hunts.
comfy zoh shia recovery set
Two Zoh Shia pieces provide Super Recovery for passive healing without red health.
AT Uth Duna boots still let us max Weakness Exploit and Agitator while losing only one Latent Power level.
Two free level-1 slots can be used for comfort skills like Mirewalker, Windproof, or Stun Resistance.