Monster Hunter Wilds – Hunting Horn: Kill The Monster Build

HH: Kill The Monster Build Guide

Ву November.

While Widerange 5 and Mushroomancer Horn is certainly a playstyle, it is like taking that combo on Longsword. Sure you can, but you’re basically griefing.

I emphasize this because the ‘Support’ misconception of HH has done damage to it’s reputation and Capcom’s current implementation of the weapon in Wilds. Design choices were made that reinforce this stereotype while true users of the weapon understand it is a weapon and not a support device.

Hunting Horn is a damage weapon. I happen to buff my allies on my way to completely destroy the monster. I am not a support. I am not a corner horner. I am a krazee-eyez killa.

To facilitate my playstyle I buff myself and happen to spread those effects to my allies. This is a consequence of amplifying my own damage, but I acknowledge you all are thankful. Your praise is unwarranted, I am doing my job.

To kill the monster we need some damage. Here’s the armor and weapon I am using atm, but honestly playstyle is the most important factor to doing damage with Hunting Horn.

Weapons and Armor

• Primary: Artian Raw (Omiltika)
• 3-Slot: Critical Jewel 3/Attack Jewel 3
• 3-Slot: Critical Jewel 3
• 3-Slot: Sonorous/Atk1

3 Attack, Reinforce with a focus on attack. Ideal is 4 Attack 1 Sharp, 3 Attack 1 Sharp 1 Element, 2 Attack 1 Sharp 2 Element. These combos are all decreasing in priority with 4 Attack 1 Sharp being BiS. We run raw Artian for Echo Wave Slash (only echo wave that scales with crit).

• Secondary: Gramklang
• 3-Slot: Sonorous

We run this for Affinity Up and Earplugs L songs. We prebuff with these songs before each fight.

Armor:

• Gore Helm B
• Arkvulcan Mail B
• Gore Vambraces B
• Gore Coil B
• Gore Greaves B
• Exploiter Charm 2

• 4×3-Slots: Counter Attack, Chain, 2x Tenderizer
• 4×2-Slots: 3x Mighty, Evasion Jewel
• 3×1-Slots: Brace (preference), 2xSane

Typical 4 piece gore. Here are the skills:

• WEX 5, Consitution 3, Maximum Might 3, Antivirus 3, Evade Window 3, Coalescence 1, Flinch Free 2, Adrenaline Rush 1, and Burst 1

Playstyle

Your playstyle is that of a warrior, not a coward. You smack the head. You doot the snoot. And you roll through the monster’s frustrations.

Initating combat should always happen from your Seikret after swapping to your Primary Omiltika. Before this you should be queuing melodies on Gramklang during transit. Pre buff Affinity Up -> Earplugs -> Self Improvement on your way. If you queue these up but still have time, you can swap and start queuing melodies for Artian Raw such as Attack Up S, Stamina Up, or Defense up. The only necessary one is Attack Up S. (We take Gramklang instead of a horn with Attack Up L because Artian Raw has Attack Up S which gives us enough of a buff that prioritizing an affinity increase is better than the difference between Encored Attack up S and Encored Attack Up L).

The mount on initiation opens combat with a ton of extra damage. Horn does some absurd mount attack damage.

For the most part, when you get on top of head or slightly into the monster’s body you want to stop inputting direction when using your attacks. This will put your attacks in neutral and give you access to our quickest queuing combos. You’ll want to begin by queing Attack S

• Attack S = Neutral Note 1, Neutral Note 2, Neutral Double Note, Neutral Double Note.

This will leave you in a good position to queue your Offset melody with an echo bubble. Echo bubble and queue remaining offset notes.

• Offset Melody = Neutral Double Note, Neutral Note 2 (start here if from Attack S), Neutral Note 1, Neutral Note 2.

If playing Offset from Attack S, you can play from Neutral Note 2, bypassing inputting a note.

From here you can also skip 2 notes in inputting Stamina Use Reduced.

Stamina Use Reduced: Neutral Note 1, Neutral Double Note, Neutral Note 1 (if following Offset start here), Neutral Note 2.

Finally from Stamina Use Up, Defense Up L is only 2 notes away.

Defense Up L: Neutral Note 1, Neutral Double Note, Neutral Double Note (Start here from Stamina Use Reduced), Neutral Note 2. Phew. You’ve queued your buffs and have encore on your horn so they’ll last a while.

At any point during this process, you can begin performing these buffs as Single Encores to get them out. Do not try to triple perform your chain of buffs. Losing these queues kills your damage uptime and it is much better to just Perform -> Encore (double note during performance) to get the song out.

From here we get to actually use our damage rotation. To queue Echo Wave Slash (our bread and butter) we’re going to use Neutral Backslam into Right. This is a fast combo but pushes your character backwards as you use it. For this reason you want to angle yourself with your back pointing to the rest of the monster’s body so you move backwards into them and continue to hit the monster as you spam.

• Echo Wave Slash = Neutral Double Note (neutral backslam), Neutral Note 2, Neutral Double Note.

Echo Wave Slash feeds into itself. So we can Neutral Backslam into Neutral Right and build up a queue of Echo Waves quickly. Just like with our buffs we get a lot out of just Single Perform Encoring these when we can. But its nice to have them queued up because this is the only thing I want you to triple perform. More often we will single perform or greedily try to double perform, but when monster is down or para, you can get gutzy and go for triple perform.

The only time I recommend triple perform is if your Bubble is already down. Otherwise it’s better to Bubble and single/double perform during a Down, KO, or Para.

Notes

I mentioned how ‘support’ misconceptions have made things more difficult for damage horn. Here’s what I mean.

Echo Bubble: The echo bubble is a new addition to players from World, but was a skill in Rise that was mostly unused due to its clunky behavior. It retains that clunkyness in Wilds and has some mathematical limiters baked in that make it even worse. A lot of problems on Horn stem from the fact that this skill is in the game and there was therefor balancing for other aspects of our kit with the assumption of 3 bubble uptime (which doesn’t factor in monster movement).

Echo Bubble has 3 glaring issues.

• The buff does not linger long enough and thus requires you to stand inside. This would not be a problem, but Echo Bubble radius is limited due to it doing damage.
• Echo Bubble does not crit, has pitiful motionvalues (MVs), a 0.3 scaling (vs 1.0 scaling) with Element and Status, AND the most egregious sin DOES NOT SCALE WITH SHARPNESS.
• Deals direct damage, which may account for the limiters above. However this direct damage will quickly be outscaled by future title updates while we have no way to continue scaling this damage as the game evolves.

So yeah. Echo Bubble. But that’s not all of our kit right? What about Echo Waves?

Echo waves similarly have 3 glaring issues.

• Only Echo Wave Slash can crit. All other Echo Waves cannot crit.
• None of the Echo Waves scale with Sharp.
• They all deal direct damage but DO NOT scale with base element of your weapon.

Both of these tools are our bread and butter and leaves most of our damage lacking the capacity to adequately scale. While putting in Sharpness Scaling would necessitate Sharp Consumption, they could compensate by giving >1 values for sharpness consumption. Partial scaling is MUCH better than NO scaling at all.

What does all this have to do with Support Horn?

Support Horn is a stereotype that led to the implementation of Echo Bubble. It’s primary role of applying a buff inside the bubble, is a tool implemented from a Support Horn mindset. The tool’s long animation time, poor damage retention due to monster movement, and lack of scaling means are all oversights that would be made from a mindset solely focused on Supporting with Hunting Horn. Hunting Horn is a weapon. Not a support tool. Please fix Capcom.