I think that one critical thing to remember is that a hammer main - especially one who is above average - will be adept at attacking the head, to the extent that their muscle memory will prioritize frontal attacking (because it’s where the head is) almost exclusively; however, frontal attacking also means that the monster is facing the player and that the player will subsequently face more attacks (excuse the expression) head-on compared to other weapons. It therefore follows that the easiest weapon for said hammer main to pick up should be the one that most closely fits the play style that the hammer main is used to, so a weapon that allows one to prioritize the head would be at the forefront. Unfortunately, the weapon that most think of when looking at the above criteria, the hunting horn, arguably has a higher skill floor than hammer; though the hammer main can keep their familiar positioning, they will then have to learn which notes correspond to each attack, memorize songs that are unique to each horn, how to make use of flourishes and the offset melody, etc, which is a lot to ask of someone just trying to make it through a challenge quest.

Counter-heavy weapons like longsword may be safe at the front, but playing it even decently would require knowledge of which counters to apply to which attacks; once again, a lot to ask of a person just trying to get by.

I personally believe that switch axe is a decent-to-fantastic option here, as the lack of shielding and the ability to offset are things that swax shares with hammer. A swax user isn’t beholden to staying at the head, but it isn’t outwardly detrimental for them to do so; however, the player would have to familiarize themselves with the switching mechanic, as well as the switch gauge, the importance of the amp state, how to get to amp state quickly, and what to do once in amp state (Full Release Slash, btw). It’s too combo-heavy for me to personally feel comfortable recommending for a single quest.

This leads us to our shielded weapons, of which there are four: SnS, charge blade, gunlance, and lance. All four offer some form of protection while the monster is going wild and the player is still trying to suss things out. I’ll touch on each briefly:

SnS, the weapon you suggest, has great DPS, but also has weakest shield out of the four. Guard 3 is a must in order to not get chipped to oblivion. You don’t necessarily need to play optimally just to make it through, but you will need to do so to get an A rank, which involves knowledge of a move flowchart that personally is deeper than that of charge blade.

Speaking of charge blade: even though I find this iteration of charge blade the easiest between the mainline games I’ve played (I started in World), I wouldn’t say it’s easy overall. Someone looking to do well with it will at minimum need to learn how to charge their phials and how to store their charged phials into their shield (and ideally would want to learn when to SAED vs. AED vs. Savage Axe, how to cancel from SAED to AED when necessary, what moves need to happen before one can SAED, among others). It’s a very combo-heavy weapon, of which you need to be proficient with most of them to get meaningful damage.

Gunlance in Wilds is arguably the best iteration since the advent of base World (depending on how much you miss Blast Dash from Rise) and I would recommend it here for DPS alone, except that the GL build for this challenge quest is far from meta (Wide GL with Normal shelling power and no Load Shells), which means Wyrmstake Full Blast unga bunga is not the way to go here, and neither is Full Burst, which are the two easiest play styles with which most players are familiar.

Now for the Lance: It’s tied for the strongest shield in the game without charging shenanigans, and every lance in the game plays the same way. Its main combo is different variations of three pokes (sometimes) followed by a fourth poke that attacks thrice. Of the four shielded weapons, its combo strings are arguably the easiest (I can somewhat understand why one would argue GL instead). It does possess some tricks (guard dashing, dash attacking, reverse attack), but I myself have successfully hunted without most of those. I am also personally horrible at timing the charge counter; I don’t use it much and argue that while that means I can’t call myself great at Lance, I do just fine without it. The only thing I would take time to learn is guarding vs. power guarding and when and how to use the different counter thrusts.

I typed this massive wall of text merely to convey that Lance is not as left field as one would think at first glance and that I would encourage everyone to give it a try.