With the arrival of Frostfang Barioth, the meta in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne changes a bit. Thanks to its one-piece Punishing Draw, Frostfang Barioth Longsword set could be the weapon that dish out the highest K.O. damage out of all Punishing Draw users — if you manage to consistently hit Iai Slashes on the head. The idea behind this Longsword set is that even having one more K.O. could make a big difference since you get to land Helmsplitters easier.
Unfortunately for the Frostfang Barioth weapon, Longsword meta sets don’t take into account elemental weapons since the damage bonus per attack isn’t that huge. Fast melee weapons like Dual Blades and Insect Glaives benefit more with elemental weapons. Making Blast and raw damage still the better choice, but a Poison weapon that has high sharpness like Gold Rathian’s is also a good choice. Why? Here’s one explanation:
When it “procs” (or activates), Poison deals a total of 320 damage monsters with 2-stars weakness and 520 damage on 3-stars. And while the Poison damage-over-time is still active, the status effect won’t build up again. Meanwhile, a Blast weapon will deal a fixed 300 damage and can break the monster’s parts every time it procs. Thus overall, Blast should always have an edge over Poison — unless you are fighting monsters with 3-stars Poison weakness. Not to mention if you’re using Teostra belt (Kaiser Coil) you get free Blast Attack Level 2 skill anyway.
But as is the case with all meta guides: this is an “optimal way” to deal damage. If it doesn’t fit with your playstyle you are free to change skills and armor to your liking. Here’s the meta Frostfang Barioth Longsword sets according to Reddit.
Full Attack Longsword Meta Set
This Frostfang Barioth Longsword set has 40 hits of white sharpness. Coalescence armor skills (grants bonus attack, elemental, and status buildup if you got a status effect) can be replaced by one Attack Boost. It’s there because if you do activate Coalescence, you gain four free levels of Attack Boost (+12 raw attack and +30 elemental attack) instead. This applies to the other sets in here as well.
Two Sharpness V Longsword Set
With two Sharpness V on your Safi’s Shatterblade, you can get 20 hits of purple and 120 white sharpness. This means an extra 1.37 multiplier on each of those 20 hits. Of course with Master’s Touch, you could “gain” more hits since the skill prevents your weapon from losing sharpness during critical hits.
Two Sharpness V Variant
A variant from the above set that loses some raw damage but gets three more combo skills. In this one, you use two Raging Barchydios armor parts for Agitator Level 7 instead. So you have to sacrifice one Attack upgrade for Teorstra Essence on your Safi’s Shatterblade to still be able to get Master’s Touch. It also has a bit more slots for you to play around with.
“No Tenderize” Frostfang Barioth Longsword Set
Another set that uses Raging Brachydios and Frostfang Barioth armor. 20 hits of purple and 120 white sharpness. It has max Level 7 Critical Eye so you don’t have to tenderize monster’s parts to have 100% affinity/critical hit damages.
