One of the most complex weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds is the Charge Blade, a transforming tool with powerful combos to help you take down monsters. The Charge Blade has two forms - a sword and shield or a massive double-edged axe. With elemental phials you build up by attacking with the Charge Blade, you can unleash devastating strikes that discharge your stored energy to rack up incredible damage.

The Charge Blade is one of the hardest weapons to use, with its many combos and forms leading many players to make mistakes in Monster Hunter Wilds. New players may want to try other weapons first to learn, but it is up to you which weapon you wish to equip. As my personal favorite weapon in all of Monster Hunter, the Charge Blade is not for the faint of heart.

How To Charge & Use Phials

Build Up Phial Energy From Basic Attacks

You start with a basic sword and shield when you unsheath the Charge Blade. Strikes with your sword and blocks with your shield build up energy, which can be seen through the aura surrounding your phials under your health. As you protect yourself from a monster's strike or hit a target, the aura around your phials goes from yellow to red as you generate more charge.

For this guide, the controls for Charge Blade inputs will be represented by a PlayStation controller's layout. Some example control inputs will be R2, Circle, Triangle, R1, L3, etc.

By pressing R2 + Circle in sword/shield form when you've built up phial energy, you load energy into phials, filling them up based on how much charge you accumulated. For example, loading phials while they have a yellow aura will fully charge three of your five total phials. When your phials are red, loading them will completely fill every possible phial slot to give you maximum charge.

One of the mechanic changes in Monster Hunter Wilds is that phials can now be supercharged after being filled. When your phials are already full, you can still build charge using your sword/shield and reload phials a second time. Doing this will supercharge the phials, causing the energy they release to be more potent throughout the various attacks available to the weapon.

A yellow aura around phials means that they will always charge 3 phials when loaded. Any type of red aura indicates 5 phial charges when loaded.

When your phials are glowing red after too many hits without loading, your sword attacks will overheat, causing them to bounce off monsters and deal almost no damage. Phial management is the core feature of the Charge Blade, so you have to to load phials often to prevent overheating​​​​​​.

Every Charge Blade Mode Explained

Master Every Technique From Each Stance

There are two main forms of the Charge Blade activated through specific actions. The primary modes for the Charge Blade are the standard Sword/Shield and the Axe forms, which can be switched between by pressing R2 + Triangle at any time. This input causes your character to perform an attack that switches stances into one of the weapon's primary modes.

How To Use Sword & Shield Mode

The basic form of the Charge Blade comes with regular combos of slashes you can use to hit monsters. The Circle attack uses an upward slash that adds more charge to your phials than basic Triangle strikes, but doing this move in a direction will have you slide across the ground before your strike. You can charge your standing Circle attack to add more energy to your phials than almost any other move.

Your shield is capable of blocking a variety of monster attacks at the cost of Stamina. Pressing R2 will raise your shield, with Circle performing a sidestep to avoid enemy strikes while you have the shield raised. Pressing R2 + Circle while the shield is raised will load phials will energy after you've created a charge by blocking or landing attacks.

How To Use Axe Mode

Pressing R2 + Triangle while in Sword & Shield form will unleash an attack that leaves you in Axe form. While in Axe mode, your normal Triangle attacks become sweeping slashes that change based on the direction you hold when pressing an input. Axe mode slashes have more range, allowing you to hit the monsters of Monster Hunter Wilds that like to fly or have weak points above where your sword can strike.

When you press Circle in Axe mode, you perform a fast, wide-sweeping slash with the Charge Blade that hits anything in front of you. Using a Circle attack in Axe mode consumes a phial's energy, unleashing a small burst of damage that explodes after a delay when hitting a monster.

Supercharged phials expended with Axe mode Circle attacks deal extra damage with their charged bursts, allowing you to rack up more injuries on a monster you hunt.

Pressing Triangle + Circle in Axe mode will activate the Elemental Discharge attack, which causes your character to break the Charge Blade's limiters and slash forward with a devastating strike. This consumes a phial, causing a delayed explosion of energy that can greatly damage or even stagger a monster. Those who want to get back to Sword + Shield form to start charging phials again can press R2 during this move to quickly go back to the weapon's base form.

How To Use Powered-Up Modes

Many mechanics of the Charge Blade from Monster Hunter World stay the same in Wilds, with some noticeable changes to how some forms work. You may notice three symbols next to your phials that represent the different modes you can activate with the Charge Blade. These are additional powered-up forms of the weapon, which include:

• Shield Elemental Boost
• Elemental Sword
• Savage Axe Mode

The following table shows how to activate each powered-up mode of the Charge Blade and what benefits each form provides for the weapon:

Each additional power-up mode of the Charge Blade has a distinct purpose, from giving you almost unbreakable defense to much stronger attacks. For example, Savage Axe mode allows you to stay in Axe mode for far longer before you need to switch to Sword + Shield to recharge phials. I've always tried to work my way toward having each mode active at once, giving the Charge Blade all its buffs for a fight.

How To Do Super Amped Elemental Discharge & Guard Points

Unleash The Charge Blade's Strongest Attack

The Charge Blade has two hidden techniques alongside its impressive arsenal of abilities - Super Amped Elemental Discharge (SAED) and Guard Points. Once you get a hang of the Sword/Shield, Axe, and Power-Up modes of the weapon, these are the tools you'll need to truly master the Charge Blade.

How To Use Super Amped Elemental Discharge (SAED)

The SAED is the strongest attack in the Charge Blade's arsenal, acting as a super-powered version of the normal Elemental Discharge. This attack sees your character charge the weapon for a moment before unleashing a powerful downward slash in Axe mode. The initial hit does a lot of damage, but the real burst of damage comes from multiple delayed explosions in a line that appear in front of the attack's landing point.

Using a SAED consumes all the phials you have loaded into your Charge Blade. The more phials that are consumed, the more damage this attack does, especially when those phials are supercharged. In Focus Mode, you can aim this attack freely once it's been activated.

Landing all hits from a SAED on a staggered monster can deal some of the highest damage to iconic creatures in Monster Hunter Wilds. However, this is a difficult move to perform, as it does not combo naturally from attacks in the Charge Blade's forms. Here are all the ways you can activate an SAED to inflict tons of damage in your next hunt:

• Press Circle after a normal Elemental Discharge to do an extra slash, then input Triangle + Circle
• Press Triangle + Circle after a normal Elemental Discharge
• Press Triangle + Circle after performing a Perfect Guard

How To Use Guard Points

The final technique of the Charge Blade is Guard Points, which activates whenever you block an attack from a monster while transforming the weapon. Whether you are trying to transition into the powered-up Shield, do the start-up of an Elemental Discharge, or simply go from Sword + Shield mode to Axe mode, a Guard Point will trigger if your shield moves to block a monster's attack during a transforming animation.

This is extremely tricky to do consistently, as it requires innate knowledge of how long Charge Blade form transformations last. This also requires you to know at what point of a transformation your Charge Blade Shield will face an enemy. One of the easiest ways to activate guard points consistently is to use the Shield Elemental Boost transformation, which has the Shield out in front of you for a longer period.

Guard Points with a powered-up Shield can stagger monsters and immediately count as a Perfect Guard. From a Guard Point, you can go straight into a SAED, dealing tons of damage and setting up your allies to finish off a dangerous foe. With all its moves, forms, and mechanics, the Charge Blade is one of the most satisfying weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds to use and master for any hunt.