Monster Hunter Wilds: Best Skills For Bows, Ranked

Summary

Some skills may help with maintaining damage output, stamina management, and charged attacks for Bows in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Partbreaker skill is effective for bow users, increasing damage dealt when breaking monster parts with focused strikes.
Charge Master skill is crucial for bow users focusing on element or status damage, increasing power and status buildup for charged attacks.

Many players are returning to Monster Hunter Wilds thanks to the game's first title update, while plenty of players are still working their way through the game or even jumping in for the first time. For new and returning players alike, Monster Hunter Wilds has a wealth of weapons, armor, and equipment to explore.

A core part of both weapons and armor in Monster Hunter Wilds is the skill system. This allows players to mix and match complementary skills across their armor pieces and weapons to achieve the best mix of offense, defense, and utility for their character. With nearly 150 different skills in the game, there's a lot for players to experiment with.

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Not every skill works with every weapon, though. Some skills are highly specific in their use, while others have more general beneficial effects. When it comes to Bows, players are generally looking for skills that will help them maintain damage output from a distance, manage stamina, and improve the bow's many charged attacks. With that in mind, these are the best skills players can use with Bows in Monster Hunter Wilds.

9 Coating Functionality

Status On Demand

Effect: Allows the use of specific coatings

This isn't one skill but many potential skills, depending on the specific coating players want to use. The specific skill decoration will be named after its status effect, e.g., Poisoncoat jewel, Sleepcoat jewel, etc. Using these decorations allows Bow players to apply coatings that don't come with the weapon by default. Players may choose to use these decorations with an Artian weapon with no inherent status effect, for example. This can be a potent ability, but it's only useful situationally and requires some pre-knowledge of monster status vulnerabilities to be effective.

8 Partbreaker

Wound Breaking Damage Boost

Effect: Makes it easier to break monster parts, increases damage dealt when destroying a wound with a focus strike

Partbreaker can be a highly effective skill combined with the Bow. Players get more damage when hitting specific monster parts, which is relatively easy to do with the bow's targeting. The skill also gives a huge damage boost, up to 30%, when destroying a wound with a focus strike. Since the bow's focus strike automatically locks on to wounds on a monster, this is a powerful extra damage boost, and players get to follow up with Dragon Piercer when they break a wound, too.

7 Charge Master

Charge Attack Buff

Effect: Increases element power and status buildup for charged attacks

For bow users who want to focus on element damage or status damage, Charge Master is an essential skill. This skill increases the amount of damage players get from elements and the amount of status effect buildup they get with each hit from a charged attack. This skill works well when combined with status coatings, making the Bow a very reliable weapon for inflicting status effects overall.

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6 Tetrad Shot

Coating Booster

Effect: Increases affinity of bowgun ammo/coatings from the fourth shot and the attack of the fourth and sixth shots

Tetrad Shot isn't the easiest skill to understand for the Bow, but it's another one that's highly effective for players who want to focus on status buildup. When the player uses a coating, this skill boosts the affinity of every shot after the fourth, making the last six of the ten shots much more likely to be critical hits. This, plus the damage boost to shots four and six, makes this a great skill for getting the most damage and status buildup out of your coatings. It's only useful if the player is making use of coatings, though.

5 Adrenaline Rush

Perfect Dodge Damage Buff

Effect: Temporarily increases attack power after executing a perfectly-timed evade

The Bow consumes a lot of stamina when players are trying to pull off consecutive attacks and charge attacks, so anything that helps players stay on top of their stamina management can be useful. Bow users get a big stamina recovery burst when they perform a perfect dodge, and with Adrenaline Rush, that comes along with a boost to attack power, too. Adrenaline Rush gives +10 attack at its first level and up to +30 if players have five levels of the skill. That's a big attack boost for a weapon that wants players to pull off well-timed dodges anyway.

4 Stamina Surge

Faster Recovery

Effect: Increases stamina recovery speed

Draining the stamina bar is easy as a Bow user when trying to deal consistent damage to a monster. Having Stamina Surge as a skill reduces Bow player's downtime by giving an increase to the rate at which stamina recovers. The initial bonus is only 10% recovery speed, but at three levels in the skill, that increases to 50% faster stamina recovery. This is plenty for Bow users to get their full stamina bar back as they reposition between shots.

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3 Focus

Faster Charging

Effect: Increases fill rate for weapons with gauges and charge rate for weapons with charge attacks

Focus is a skill that's useful for multiple weapons. Unlike many weapons that want this skill for its boost to gauge fill rate, the Bow benefits more from the increased charged rate for charge attacks. For the player, this means that charge attacks reach their maximum charge faster, increasing their overall DPS output in a fight as they can pull off more attacks at a faster rate. The trick arrow gauge also benefits from this skill, meaning that players will be able to use more tracers and coatings, but it's less significant than the charge rate boost.

2 Special Ammo Boost

Special Shot Buff

Effect: Increases the power of the Bowgun's special ammo, and the Bow's Thousand Dragon's, Dragon Piercer, and Tracer

The Special Ammo Boost skill is one that only Bow users and Bowgun users can benefit from, but it's highly effective for both. For Bows, this skill boosts the attack power of the special attacks, Thousand Dragons, Dragon Piercer, and Tracer. It's a significant damage boost with both levels of the skill, and Bow players will find themselves naturally using these moves as part of their rotations anyway, meaning this skill just ends up increasing overall damage output without any extra effort from the player.

1 Ballistics

Ideal Range Increase

Effect: Extends the range in which ammo and arrows have maximum power

Ideal range is a concept that Bow and Bowgun players need to get used to and develop a feel for in Monster Hunter Wilds. Ranged players will quickly notice that their arrows don't always do the same amount of damage to a monster. Part of that is to do with ideal range. If a player is too close to a monster - or too far from a monster - they're essentially getting a penalty to their ranged damage. Ballistics increases this ideal distance window, so it's easier for Bow players to maintain the ideal range from a monster. This is an essential skill for the bow, as more mobile monsters can make maintaining an ideal distance a difficult task without it.

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