Unga Bunga big damage. 

The Hammer is a weapon whose art is dealing out more concussions than a croupier at Las Vegas deals out cards to gambling addicts. Luckily, Hammers have the common courtesy to at least kill their victims instead of stringing them along a road of crippling debt and barely manageable social anxiety around the shuffling of cards and the clacking of poker chips. 

After Rajang’s release, Hammers condensed themselves down to 5 relevant hammers for damage. If you want more detail into these hammers then take a look at this list of the top 5 best Hammers.

5. Ruinous Obliteration

MHW: Iceborne - The Immortal Skull Cracker Hammer Build! (Ruinous Obliteration)

The Nergigante Hammer, or the Ruinous Obliteration, is the perfect hammer to build if you’re looking for comfort. With 110 hits of white sharpness, 1508 raw, and 180 dragon element, this Hammer is effective to run for almost any build against almost any monster.

If you want to see this hammer shine, then bring it with you to the Guiding Lands, slap on a health augment, put on some damage decos, kick back, relax, and cruise through as many monster skulls as you please.

Be aware that this Hammer can only be built after you hit MR 100.

If you’re looking for a farming build that’s optimized for Guiding Lands farming, I recommend this set:

A few important points: 

Geologist helps you get more shinies from monsters. For some reason, when you have Geologist, you can pick up monster shinies twice. 

Fortify is always nice to have since everyone faints sometimes in the Guiding Lands.

If you want something more comfortable, you can switch out the Flawless Jewel for something else. 

What's Awesome About the Ruinous Obliteration:

• Miles of sharpness. You don’t have to sharpen your Hammer as often anymore!
• This is a great farming weapon since you also get great raw and some dragon element.
• Since this weapon isn’t reliant on any particular skills to do its job, you can build in almost any direction you want and the Ruinous Obliteration will still be functional.

Ruinous Obliteration Stats

• Rarity: 12
• Sharpness:
  • 110 hits of white sharpness
  • 40 hits of blue sharpness
• Raw Damage: 1508 (402.6 Effective Raw)
• Affinity: 0%
• Element: 180 Dragon
• Slots: 
  • 1x Level 1 slot

4. Mane Malice Rajang

MHW:IB - MR6 Gold Rathian - Hammer Solo - 6'44 - TA Wiki + Claw

Rajang was just recently added to Iceborne, and with the giant angry monkey comes the giant angry Hammer. 

If there’s one award the Rajang Hammer is going to win, it’s going to be one of the top damn sexiestweapons out there. When you charge up your Hammer, the weapon turns gold the way a Rajang would. If you’ve ever had fantasies about a Super Saiyan weapon, then consider your fantasies fulfilled. 

The Mane Malice Rajang, however, doesn’t really outdo any of its competition. It has comparative damage to the Acidic Glavenus Hammer and the Shara Hammer, but it has lower sharpness, can’t reach purple sharpness, and negative affinity. If you add Handicraft you can extend how much white sharpness you have and, as a result, you can build more comfort into this Hammer than the other hammers while sacrificing very little damage.

For builds, you build minimal Handicraft and then use Master’s Touch in order to keep that white sharpness for as long as possible.

WIth Agitator, Weakness Exploit, and Peak Performance, you can hit 100% Affinity which will make up for the negative affinity and keep your sharpness high.

What's Awesome About the Mane Malice Rajang:

• You can increase your levels of white sharpness based on how much Handicraft you want to run. Master’s Touch can help expand this sharpness.
• Crazy high raw damage that can compete with the other Hammers. 
• Its base Thunder Element can add enough damage against some monsters to put it over some of the other weapons in some matchups.
• It has a level 4 decoration slot which can make building with this weapon pretty comfortable.
• It looks sexy af. 

Mane Malice Rajang Stats

• Rarity: 12
• Sharpness:
  • With Handicraft 5:
    • 50 hits of white sharpness.
  • Without Handicraft:
    • 50 hits of blue sharpness
    • 50 hits of green sharpness.
• Raw Damage: 1612 (375.38 Effective Raw)(412.91 with white sharpness).
• Affinity: -15%
• Element: 120 Dragon
• Slots: 
  • 1x Level 4 slot

3. Dawning Tranquility

MHWI | M★6 Gold Rathian 4'11 Hammer Solo (TA wiki rules + clutch claw) / リオレイア希少種 ハンマー ソロ

What did the five golden fingers say to the face?
BAM. 

The Dawning Tranquility is another Hammer that has amazing looks and high damage. Builds with this weapon will rely on a similar vein to Rajang’s, ie. Master’s Touch and high crit. But the biggest difference between Rajang and the Dawning Tranquility is that the Tranquilitycan hit purple sharpness while Rajang can’t. However, this comes at the cost of, at minimum, 3 points of Handicraft. 

The difference between white sharpness and purple sharpness is minimal when it comes to damage. But the largest benefit of purple sharpness is that you will almost never bounce against a monster’s surface. 

An example of how to build this Hammer would look like this:

A big difference here is that you don’t need Peak Performance active to keep your 100% critical. However, to comfortably hunt with purple sharpness, Handicraft 4 is recommended.

What's Awesome About Dawning Tranquility:

• Purple sharpness with handicraft level 3.
• High raw damage that falls a little behind Acidic Glavenus and Rajang.
• You can build this Hammer after completing the story. Since it’s just a raw weapon, this can be pretty useful for early farming in the Guiding Lands.
• 2x Level 1 slots can help you slot in more skills.
• Giving monsters aggressive face-fives is deeply satisfying on a spiritual level.

Dawning Tranquility Stats

• Rarity: 12
• Sharpness:
  • With Handicraft 5: 
    • 30 hits of purple sharpness
    • 30 hits of white sharpness.
  • Without Handicraft: 
    • 10 hits of white sharpness.
    • 50 hits of blue sharpness.
• Raw Damage: 1456 (389.4 Effective Raw)(410.05 with purple sharpness).
• Affinity: 0%
• Element: (480 Dragon)
• Slots: 
  • 2x Level 1 slot

2. Royal Cross Mace

Best Sets for the *NEW* Royal Cross Mace 'Hammer' | MHW: ICEBORNE

Another new weapon that was recently introduced, the Royal Cross Mace strikes a balance between high damage and great comfort.

One of the benefits of using this weapon is how it can reach purple sharpness with a minimum of 1 level of Handicraft. Each level increases the number of purple sharpness hits by 10. 

If you’re looking for a build that has a balance of damage and comfort, I recommend running this:

This set will have more comfort than the Acid Glavenus Hammer, and runs high crit with Master’s Touch. If you find yourself needing more sharpness, you can drop some skills for more points in Handicraft.

What's Awesome About Royal Cross Mace:

• Purple sharpness with a minimum of handicraft level 1. Each level adds 10 more hits.
• High raw damage, but extremely decoration hungry to outdamage Rajang and other Hammers.
• Comfortable to hunt with since it has Master’s Touch,  Handicraft, high crit, and room for Health Boost/Health Augments.
• 1x Level 3 slot, so you can slot in most skills that you can need here.
• After a while, it feels odd that you can’t cut tails with this weapon, but damn is it satisfying to swing a massive ax that hits with the weight of a firetruck.

Royal Cross Mace Stats

• Rarity: 12
• Sharpness:
  • With Handicraft 5: 
    • 50 hits of purple sharpness
  • Without Handicraft: 
    • 30 hits of white sharpness.
    • 50 hits of blue sharpness.
• Raw Damage: 1404 (390.31 Effective Raw)(411.01 with purple sharpness).
• Affinity: 15%
• Element: (510 Water)
• Slots: 
  • 1x Level 3 slot

1. The Grinding Mallet

MHW: Iceborne - MR6★ Gold Rathian Solo - 4:16 (Hammer)

The Grinding Mallet takes our number 1 place for the best Hammer out there. It can reach the highest numbers in terms of damage and you can make it fairly early. 

This Hammer’s biggest problem is that it has low sharpness, but you can help alleviate that with Handicraft 5, where it will reach 10 hits of Purple. While that may not be the most comfortable amount of sharpness, it’s still miles better than its base of blue sharpness. Thanks to the Hammer’s slow swing speed, you can get away with Master’s Touch, high affinity, and purple sharpness. This should maximize how long you can keep purple sharpness up. 

A high damage oriented build for this Hammer would look like this:

This runs full affinity, and Master’s Touch to make the most of the low sharpness on the weapon. If you want a comfier build for this, then I would recommend switching to one of the other Hammers on this list which will trade the damage this Hammer has for more comfort.

What's Awesome About the Grinding Mallet:

• Best damage you can squeeze out of a general Hammer build.
• Purple sharpness with a minimum of handicraft level 5.
• 1x Level 4 slot.

The Grinding Mallet Stats

• Rarity: 11
• Sharpness:
  • With Handicraft 5: 
    • 10 hits of purple sharpness
    • 20 hits of white sharpness
  • Without Handicraft: 
    • 40 hits of blue sharpness.
    • 80 hits of green sharpness.
• Raw Damage: 1508 (366 Effective Raw)(423.05 with purple sharpness).
• Affinity: 0%
• Element: (330 Paralysis)
• Slots: 
  • 1x Level 4 slot

Special Mention

I just wanted to give a special shout out to the two videos here by the speedrunner TSC. If you’re curious about what goes into planning speed runs and how to think about doing a speed run, then this analysis is very useful.
If you want to see the builds then please visit this link thanks to the MonsterHunterMeta subreddit.

What about Safi'Jiiva?

When this article was written, Safi'Jiiva wasn't released on the PC yet. Luckily for the Hammer, building post Safi'Jiiva is pretty simple. Pick up Safi's Shattercrusher, focus on Attack, and then go to town. The Shattercrusher has an inherent blast element which will help propel its damage to be better than the Acidic Glavenus Hammer. You'll lose purple sharpness compared to the Acidic Glavenus Hammer, but in return, you'll get a more comfortable hunt, more damage, blast element, and you don't need to run Handicraft anymore. That seems like a pretty good trade-off to me.

If you want to read more about how to build this hammer, then please visit this album. 

Thank you for reading!

Also be sure to check out these articles:

• Top 5 Best MHW Builds (MHW Strongest Builds Ever)
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• Top 15 Games Like Monster Hunter World (With Awesome Boss Fights)
• 10 Things We Love About Monster Hunter World
• Monster Hunter World Guide: 50 Tips and Tricks
• Best Monster Hunter World Tips, Tricks and Secrets
• Monster Hunter Live Action Movie Release Date, Cast, Trailer, Story, News
• Monster Hunter World Large Monsters List: Weaknesses, How To Kill, and Location
• MHW Tier List Iceborne (MHW Best Weapons)