Lets take a look at weapon with High Affinity but Low Raw Damage! Screenshots were taking from the Monster Hunter World Wiki. We are going to be taking a look at some weapon stats in the Charge blade Tree Using a weapon with abnormal status will benefit from Critical Hits as it will cause monster's to reach the threshold for status effects much faster! This does not affect abnormal attacks(Poison/Sleep/Paralysis/Blast/Stun). (However there is a skill that lets you benefit from it but its considered a waste of a skill if your not invested in pure Elemental DMG) Infact it's a drawback if you are using Elemental attacks since you will not benefit from Critical hits! Does that mean having a lower raw damge is bad? No of course not! You can make different types of build based on these stats however there is one important thing to note:ДЄffinity does not affect Elemental Damage!ДЄny weapon with Elemental(Fire/Water/Thunder/Ice/Dragon) will not benefit from Affinity! Affinity only for RAW DAMAGE Here's a basic version of Affinity trade-off'sДЄ weapon having High Positive Affinity will have weaker Raw DamageДЄ weapon having High Negative Affinity will have Higher Raw DamageДЄ weapon having No Affinity will have standard raw Damage based on it's level and tierДЄs you can see their is a trade-off to having positive/negative affinity attached to them.

In MHW there are trade-offs to having High Positive/Negative Affinity!

Affinity mhw