which weapon should i use?

[Raiden - In Flames 🎵]

a weapon that is easy to learn, hits hard and somewhat mobile.
gonna try heavy bowgun.

also another question i don't really get, is the whole monster hunting/crafting system this was an issue i had in MHW where i was fine using any gear and beat the monster.
i just picked the highest defense gear available ignoring elemental resistances.

[sun6000]

I would either sword and shield or Hammer for the sorta thing your looking for, as easy to pick up weapons! Hammer is basically the blunt brother of the great sword but is able to move while charging up its attacks, rather then block and or power through monster attacks

Elemental resistances never matter toooo much in any monster hunter game, except for very certain circumstances. so dont worry about that, the real thing you should almost always be building for are skills that armors provides, either ones that are just generally good like attack, def ups, or partbreaker. Or ones that benefit your style of play!

Oh, quick thing: Defender weapons and armor is back in Rise, please resist the urge to use them as they are meant to be OP, and will give you less time to learn the game before the game actually expects you to know what your doing. That, and since Rise has a lot more unique weapon designs you'll miss out on those if you just use the defender stuff!

I believe the defender armor goes by the "Black Belt" set

[D. Flame]

Longsword is mobile, hits hard, and is easy to learn.

HBG is OP at end game, but it is slow, gear dependent, etc,

The most important part of armor crafting is the skills on the armor. Like getting 5 out of 5 points of earplugs in your armor would make you immune to roars. Defense and elemental defense is secondary.

[Hannes091]

Really easy to pick up weapons are dual blades. Granted, you need to maintain your stamina but mobility and very little commitment is great for beginners. Also silkbinds allow you to just let em rip.
Another one is hammer, as mentioned. Its absolutely funny being at sharp end of the monster and bonking the crap out of it. You do need to learn monster moves tough. This is universal for all weapons.

Edits: Typos, added hammer to list of weapons.

[Mr.MacaronSama]

Originally posted by Mr.MacaronSama:

Go hammer bro.. If you have Iceborne DLC

Sorry my bad wrong game...
Go Switch axe..

[Raiden - In Flames 🎵]

Originally posted by Mr.MacaronSama:

Originally posted by Mr.MacaronSama:

Go hammer bro.. If you have Iceborne DLC

Sorry my bad wrong game...
Go Switch axe..

there's no wrong, i actually haven't beaten iceborne so this is good stuff :3

[Hannes091]

Actually, my 2 cents is, besides Charge Blade, pretty much every weapon is somewhat beginner friendly. Lance and Gunlance being pretty safe bet as well. In Rise/sunbreak basically every weapon got a counter move.

[Scipo0419]

Normally I'd suggest SnS but even Capcom realized that it's not really a beginner weapon anymore and stopped players from starting with it.

All weapons have a very high skill ceiling to master them so I'll organize from what I consider the easiest to pick up (lowest skill floor) with little knowledge to the ones that are more confusing/harder to pick up (highest skill floor):

1. Longsword
   
2. Lance
   
3. Dual Blades
   
4. Hammer
   
5. Sword and Shield
   
6. Great Sword
   
7. Bow
   
8. Hunting Horn
   
9. Gunlance
   
10. Switch Axe
    
11. Light Bowgun
    
12. Heavy Bowgun
    
13. Insect Glaive
    
14. Charge Blade

Some of these were hard for me to rank because I'm trying to ignore high level play and just thinking "how hard is it to just use the weapon at a basic level". For example, the Bowguns are so high because of critical distance and how many ammo types there are can be overwhelming, but the gap between picking up the weapon and mastering it isn't very wide, compared to something like Hammer where it's super easy to pick it up and start bonking, but high level play requires immense knowledge of your animations, the monsters animations, perfect positioning etc.

I think I did a decent job of organizing them with that in mind, but I'm open to opinions. Note: I play SnS, DB, GL, Lance, Hammer, HBG, and HH in Rise.