Monster Hunter World Monster Resistances and Weaknesses Guide

Use this table to determine which elements you want to craft, and how to cover their weaknesses. Example: Ice does decent against most things. A thunder, dragon and poison weapon would cover all of it’s weaknesses

Based on totals (without Lavasioth or Black Diablos info), it looks like some elements are just better in general than others:

Ice, Score of 51: Clear winner as a generalist, strong against 20/29 monsters, only two monsters are immune. It only has 3-star damage against 4 monsters, the fewest of any element. This element may be best suited for Investigations where you hunt multiple monsters.

Dragon: Score of 50: Very strong in raw points, just behind ice. Exceptional in that only one monster is immune. 13/29 monsters take no bonus damage, hurting it as a generalist element.

Thunder: Score of 47: Middle of the road. Strong in that it has 3 star-damage on 8/29 monsters. It only loses to Dragon in how 6/30 monsters are immune to it, hurting its aggregate score.

Water: Score of 44, but has the most 3-star damage ratings (9/29). 9 monsters being immune and only 4 2-star damage ratings hold it back significantly.

Fire: Score of 32, the worst by a far margin. 13/29 monsters are immune, 5/29 take no bonus damage. Of it’s 5 3-star damage ranks, one is taken by Barroth and the other by Great Jagras.

Overall weakness totals are all meaningless if you’re hunting a specific monster, though. Fire has shit numbers overall, but its the only 3-star elemental weakness for both Kirin and Palumu.

So if you’re going through the game for the first time and don’t know what anything is weak against and don’t care about looking it up, Ice is a good element to have on hand.