Monster Hunter: World – Dual Blades Progression Guide (Iceborne DLC)

Guide to Dual Blades Progression

Introduction

Dual Blades are an elemental focused weapon, which means you will need to have dual blades for each element and change them according to the monster’s weakness.

The priority skills for dual blades in general are:

• Critical Element
• Elemental Attack (Ice attack, Fire attack, etc corresponding with your weapon’s element)
• Affinity Skills (Weakness Exploit, Critical eye)
• Critical Boost
• Stamina Management (Stamina Surge, Marathon Runner)
• Sharpness (Protective Polish, Master’s Touch, Handicraft).

Notable Dual Blades in Master Rank

Monster’s Elemental Weaknesses

Read!

Starting in Master Rank we will still need to use High Rank Azure Rathalos Helm & Rathalos Chest for the Critical Element they offer.

If you need base game decorations such as Expert , Tenderizer, Critical boost etc, you can easily farm them in Master Rank by using the steamworks during a festival. You will get Silver Melding Tickets that can be used to meld base game decorations.

Critical boost decorations aren’t mandatory.

Most of the dual skills lvl4 decorations (e.g. Crisis/Expert, Challenger/vitality,etc) can be played around with, they don’t have to be the exact ones shown in the builds.

Early on you should farm the event quest “A Fish to Whet Your Appetite”(MR1) for WhetFish Fins+ to help you with sharpness management throughout most of the story progression. You also need to do this quest to get the Whetfish Sabers ,so more reasons to do it a few more times for the Fins+.

Dash Juice and Felyne Black Belt food skill are your best friends during progression in terms of stamina management, so make sure you farm some materials for Dash Juice and make a custom meal that has Felyne Black Belt

Learn how to make use of the Clutch Claw combo since during progression you won’t have a Clutch Claw Boost jewel (Shaver) so you will need two clutch claw weapon attacks to tenderize or 3slaps+weapon attack while clutched. But if you use the Dual Blade Clutch Claw Combo you can tenderize in just 1 combo.

Here is a video that showing how to do it:

MR1★ –  MR4★

This set can be used as a general set, you just need to switch the elemental decorations (thunder jewel,blaze jewels etc) to correspond with the element of your weapon.

Elemental Charms can be used,  just replace 3 lvl1 elemental attack jewels with 3 lvl1 expert jewels in any builds.

Fire, Ice and Thunder builds can cover most of the matchups during progression. If you want to skip one of the elements to make the farming easier , skip dragon. There’s very few and not important dragon matchups during progression.

Element specific alternative builds

These builds are more focused on each element and they outperform the general build.

• Some builds will require you to progress thru the story a bit, use the general build template till you unlock all the pieces necessary for these builds
• ‘Crisis/Expert’ and ‘Challenger/Vitality’ decorations can be replaced with any other expert or vitality combinations
• You get an Expert Jewel+ 4 at the start of Iceborne, for free.
• You can replace Clockwork greaves with Barroth Greaves if you have another critical jewel, or with Oolong Legs. (Oolong armour can be obtained with Joyful tickets during Holiday Joy Festival or by melding them)

Thunder Build for MR1★ –  MR4★

Very strong set that gets you 100% affinity and is fairly easy to make, doesn’t require any outlandish jewels and can be done very early.

Clockwork armour can be easily unlocked by getting steam tickets from the Steamworks

Ice Build for MR1★ –  MR4★

Doesn’t reach 100% affinity sadly, but still a very strong early build.

Water Build for MR1★ –  MR4★

Whetfish Sabers are a really strong option that comes with innate Protective Polish and purple sharpness. Agitator/Vitality jewels can be replaced with any Skill/Vitality combination, the build reaches 95% affinity without agitator so it’s not a big deal.

Fire Build for MR1★ –  MR4★

For the fire build we are finally gonna get rid of Anjanath’s DBs in favour of Glavenus DBs for white sharpness and neutral affinity. But Anjanath DBs will still win over Glavenus if you can make up for the negative affinity (Which is not really realistic at this point in the game).

Replace one Blaze Jewel with a Healthboost jewel if struggle to stay alive

Dragon Build for MR1★ –  MR4★

The empty decoration slot can be filled up with anything the player wants, you have all the important skills, so it’s left to each player’s choice.

MR5★

After killing Velkhana we can finally ditch the High Rank gear and we can use this build as a general template (which means you can use this build with every other element but you need to change the thunder jewels to correspond to your weapons element).

Budget Version 

We drop some damage, but it allows you to have a decent build if you don’t have good decos.

MR6★ & Post Story

• Finally switching up to True Critical Element with 4piece Azure Age. 
• Azure Age comes from the event quest -> USJ:Ballet of Frost (MR18)
• The build might look weird at first due to the random skills it gives, but it’s an improvement over 2piece Velkhana and it will serve you well till Silver Rathalos(MR70).
• Post story farming decorations becomes alot easier, just spam the event quest -> Wrath of thunder descend.
• Post-story you can meld Protective Polish Jewel & Shaver Jewel at the Elder Melder , so you can fit it in any of these builds if you give up something.

General 4piece Azure Age Build

• This would be your general 4piece Azure Age Template for general use. 
• Shaver Jewel can be replaced with Sharp Jewel for Thunder and Ice, since Thunder and Ice weapons have low gauges of sharpness. You can also use it for Fire and Dragon but it isn’t that valuable in those builds, you will be better off with Shaver.

Thunder Variant

We replace Tobi with Furious Rajang Dual blades post story.

If you don’t have a Thunder attack lvl4 jewel you can replace it with a lvl1 bolt jewel or critical boost

Water Variant

As expected Azure Age is going to favour water variants due to the innate water attack, so the best water version ends up being the general build.

If you get your hands on Safi’s AquaClaws, run full elemental awakenings and just use the same build.

Ice Variant

Use Beotodus DBs until post story.

Post story you unlock the event quest -> The Last White Knight which will give you access to Frostfang weapons.

Critical Jewel can be replaced with Sharp Jewel for sharpness management

Fire Variant

Glavenus DBs remains our go-to for fire build, you can upgrade to Safi Fire with full elemental awakenings when you have the chance.

Dragon Variant

For the few dragon matchups during progression it’s a decent build, we use handicraft charm to get white sharpness and sharp jewel to maintain that sharpness. 

Safi’s DrakClaws can be used with the same build. 

If you are looking for a version of this build using Alatreon’s Dual Blades, please check the Anti-Monster Builds, Anti-Fatalis section, Pre MR70.

2 of the Critical Jewels can be replace with Crisis/Expert or any other combinations of Skill/Expert, if you don’t have critical boost jewels.

Kjarr Sets

Only use these sets if you have Kjarr Dual Blades

Full Safi Kjarr

General template for Full Safi Kjarr set

Sharpness Jewel can be changed for stamina management skills for Kjarr Thunder & Kjarr Rage since they don’t need protective polish.

Phoenix/Vitality can be switched for Hard Enduring+ 4 to get more value out of protective polish or where coalescence up-time is very low.

We don’t use Health Augment because it will interfere with Resentment up-time, therefore lowering our damage.

Master Touch Kjarr (3piece teostra)

General templates for 3piece Teostra + Kjarr, pre raging brachy and post raging brachy
Kaiser Crown Y comes from ARCH-TEMPERED TEOSTRA, base game event quest

Sharpness management in form of Master Touch

Pre Raging Brachy Version

You can replace a Challenger jewel with a Vitality jewel for the 3rd level of Health boost if you need it

Raging Brachy Version

The empty slots can be filled with anything the player wants , preferably : stamina management,  evasion or more agitator if you don’t have max agitator charm

You can use MR Teostra Head if you don’t wanna use Arch Temp Teo head

Silveros/Azure Era Mix (MR70+)

Once you reach MR70 you will be able to get Silver Rathalos armour that gives the same 4piece bonus as Azure Era, which makes mixing them possible while also keeping the True Critical Element.
While you could just use 4piece Silveros, the best way of making use of it, is mixing it with Azure Age for the best slots/skill ratio out of the 2 sets. 

Safi dual blades can be used with any of these builds with full elemental awakenings

General template 

You upgrade this set with Fatalis Alpha Waist.

You can use Challenger/Vitality and replace 1 vitality with elemental attack

Fire Variant

Using Safi’s Hellclaws for this template,but Glavenus DB’s will do just fine with the same build, you only use 1 level of agitator by using it.

Ice Variant

Sharp jewel is there so you can maintain purple sharpness, easy to make use of Protective Polish mid fights if you have Whetfish Fin+

Dragon Variant

You can replace challenger with Peak Performance if you have Health aug or if you think you can maintain full hp, the other 2 slots can be used for something comfy like stamina management skills.

Thunder Variant

Can drop the Crisis/Expert for another Challenger jewel combo and get Agitator4

Water Variant

Really comfy set, we use Fujang arms for the slots and stamina surge2 that it gives since the azure coil is a really strong piece for water builds.

You can use the empty slot for Protective Polish so you can maintain white sharpness, or anything the user prefers. 

Also check specific anti endgame monsters builds.

I appreciate your time and hope this little tutorial was helpful.