Hello hunters! If you’re here, you’re wondering about WEAPON ELEMENTAL ATTACK DAMAGE CAPS. Annoying as it is, it is capped and you should be careful going over it – due to wasted armor skills / decoration slots.
Generally speaking, the larger the base elemental damage is – the larger the cap will be. The reverse also applies. The smaller the base elemental damage is – the smaller the cap will be. But the percentile growth is very similar.
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Elemental Attack Damage Cap: Examples
Let’s quickly look at these elemental Switch Axes. These are real values that I took from the weapons I own – I downgraded some to get a varied sample of base values.
| Weapon | Tree | Rarity | Element | Base | CAP | Point Need | Per Point |
| Dying Light | Nergigante | 8 | Dragon | 150 | 200 | 2 | 25 |
| Glacial Axe I | Legiana | 4 | Ice | 210 | 270 | 2 | 30 |
| Flammenbeil + | Anjanath | 5 | Fire | 240 | 310 | 3 | 23.3 |
| Jyura Drought III | Jyuratodus | 6 | Water | 300 | 390 | 3 | 30 |
| Peal+ | Kirin | 7 | Thunder | 390 | 510 | 4 | 30 |
I do not own enough weapons to PROVE that weapons that have the same base will have the same cap – be safe and find out / test it yourself. Speaking of testing…
Finding Your Weapons Elemental Attack Damage Cap
Thankfully, YOU DON’T NEED GEMS/GEAR/CHARMS that give the specific elemental attack skill to test your cap – you simply need to preview the gear. (There’s a video under these tabs as an example).
Workshop > Forge Armor > (L2/R2) to 3rd Status Page > Preview Gear (SQUARE)
(the tabs are a little dark… gotta fix that)
Fire attack +1: Preview Lavasioth a boots. +30? Continue.
Fire attack +2: unpreview boots. Preview Lavasioth a helm. +60 total? Continue.
Fire attack +3: Preview boots again, and helm. +100 total? Continue.
Fire attack +4: only preview Lavasioth a Helm and Chest. Still goes up? Continue.
Fire attack +5: Lavasioth a Helm, Chest and Boots.
Water attack +1: Preview Jyura a Chest. +30? Continue.
Water attack +2: ONLY preview Jyura a/B Hands. +60? Continue.
Water attack +3: Preview both Jyura a Chest and Hands. +100 total? Continue.
Water attack +4: Same as above plus Tzitzi a Legs. Still goes up? Continue.
Water attack +5: all of the above + Gajau boots.
Thunder attack +1: Preview Kirin a Chest. +30? Continue.
Thunder attack +2: ONLY preview Kirin Hands. +60? Continue.
Thunder attack +3: add the chest again. +100 total? Continue.
Thunder attack +4: All of the above plus Ingot B Helm. Still goes up? Continue.
Thunder attack +5: Replace Ingot B Helm for Ingot a helm.
Ice attack +1: Preview High Metal Chest. +30? Continue.
Ice attack +2: Add Legiana Helm a. +60? Continue.
Ice attack +3: Unpreview helm, add Legiana Legs. +100 total? Continue.
Ice attack +4: Add helm again. Still goes up? Continue.
Ice attack +5: Replace helm preview to Kushala helm.
Dragon attack +1: Preview Deaths Stench a Gloves. +30? Continue.
Dragon attack +2: Unpreview Gloves, add DS Legs a. +60? Continue.
Dragon attack +3: Preview the gloves again. +100 total? Continue.
Dragon attack +4: Unpreview gloves, add Boots. Still goes up? Continue.
Dragon attack +5: Preview all 3 of Gloves, legs and Boots.
(This video uses fire as an example to find elemental damage cap)
You can also play around with decorations, if you’re lucky enough to have enough of them. But the system above is easy enough. Our Armor / Armor skill table is relevant to the above.
Maximizing value: Elemental Attack Damage Skills
You never ever want to invest more points on elemental attack skills than you need. A vast majority of the time the final point you need to cap will almost never be maximized – but that’s ok. Even if you average to about 20+ Elemental Attack gained per node that’s pretty big.
Here’s an example:
| Weapon | Tree | Element | Base | CAP | Points | Final | Invested | Per Point |
| Flammenbeil + | Anjanath | Fire | 240 | 310 | 3 | 310 | 3 | 23.3 |
| Flammenbeil + | Anjanath | Fire | 240 | 310 | 2 | 300 | 2 | 30 |
In the above table, the Flammenbeil+ caps at “310 with 3 points needed”. However, an investment of 2 points gives 300 (capped!) Fire Attack. The third point is massively diluted – it only gives 10! So it would it’s viable point so skip out on.
Ultimately, this post is all about Elemental Attack Damage CAPS in Monster Hunter World, and how to find them. This is not the place to be discussing elemental damage as a whole, or how it stacks up against elementless builds. While there are many topics and information about elemental builds – the CAP is something you should definitely aware of.
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Very nice information, thank you! The one question I had coming here was “what determines the cap?” While that isn’t a piece of info you had gathered, your data did help me find what I think is the rule. Based on the (small) sample size your provide in your chart, I have a theory for the cap I’m pretty confident in.
In each of the examples you give, I took the cap and divided it by the base to find the percentage increase. While none of them matched exactly, I noticed they were all *around* 30%. So, using what I know of MH’s love of rounding, I took all the base values, and multiplied them by 1.3. So:
Weapon Base Basex1.3 CAP
Dying Light 150 195 200
Glacial Axe I 210 273 270
Flammenbeil + 240 312 310
Jyura Drought III 300 390 390
Peal+ 390 507 510
Now, since elemental damage is always displayed as a multiple of 10, the final values are rounded to the closest multiple of 10, which is what causes the discrepancy in my first test. While I can’t confirm it carries for every single weapon, the variance displayed in the sample size leaves me quite confident this is the case.
This is definitely correct for all weapons! Because the displayed elemental damage is simply the true element * 10, a handy formula would be:
((displayed_element / 10) * 1.3) * 10
or simply (displayed_element * 1.3) rounded to the nearest multiple of 10.
happy mathing!