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Divine Blessing works in mysterious ways. No, I’m not talking about real life, I’m talking about the MHW Armor Skill. Like Latent Power, some in-game Armor Skills do have a vague description. If you check the MHW Skill’s description, Divine Blessing is described as “reducing damage taken by up to 50% while active.” But what does while active mean and does the damage reduction happen often enough to be worth using?
MHW: How Does Divine Blessing Work?
The Divine Blessing Skill in MHW works by reducing the damage taken every time you get hit. However, it won’t always proc, as it only has a 1/4 chance of being activated with each attack taken. Below is the list of how much the damage Divine Blessing reduces and how often it procs.
| Divine Blessing Level | Damage Reduction | Proc % |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 15% | 25% |
| 2 | 30% | 25% |
| 3 | 50% | 25% |
| 4 (Divine Blessing Secret) | 60% | 25% |
| 5 (Divine Blessing Secret) | 60% | 40% |
Nevertheless, Divine Blessing is absolutely worth it and we always use it for all our MHW sets from High to Master Rank. As a non-scientific experiment, we tried getting hit by both High Rank and Master Rank Tobi-Kadachi. At Master Rank, we got hit 18 times until fainted, and the Level 5 Skill procs about 12 times. Meanwhile, at High Rank and Level 3 Divine Blessing, it procs twice with 9 hits.
At a lower MHW Rank, Divine Blessing doesn’t proc as often but can prove to be crucial when you only have a sliver of health. During that point, it’s not easy to slot in lots of defensive skills too, so it’s much safer to have an instant damage reduction safety net. Plus mathematically speaking, a 25% chance of activation can be averaged out as a 12.5% damage reduction!
Compared to Health Boost, Elemental Resistance, and Defense Boost
Simply put, along with Divine Blessing, these are the priority of defensive Skills that you should use in MHW:
- Health Boost.
- Divine Blessings.
- Elemental / Status Resistance.
- Defense Boost.
Although +50 HP seems small in comparison to other games, remember that you start at 100 HP and max out at 200 in Monster Hunter. With Health Boost 3 and +50 Health Canteen buff, you basically have double the defense at 200 HP.
Defense Boost is last doesn’t mean it’s the worst defense buff in MHW and you should just ignore it, unlike Divine Blessing. It’s just that more monsters can deal Elemental attacks compared to monsters that rely on raw damages alone. Not to mention that at +20 Element stat, you won’t be afflicted by Blights. For example, having +20 Thunder resistance means you’ll be immune from Thunderblight and have less chance of getting Paralyzed.
But for monsters that don’t apply Element or Status like Nergigante, you can stack Defense Boost instead. There are no softcaps and your defenses are increased linearly with every 80 points in Defense. That way, you can be sure that its divebomb attacks won’t one-shot you and fail the quest.
That’s why other defense-boosting skills like Heroics and Fortify can be a lifesaver in a pinch as well. Of course, slotting in Divine Blessing will increase your survival even more when running quests in MHW.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
