All purpose Hunting Horns?

[Kreddi]

What do you guys prefer?
I wanna get into HH shape for Iceborne, so if you guys got any tips you've learnt from experience let me know.

[mewlynx]

Luna Blaze, Deep Vero, Taroth Sleep.

Bone horn can be used for Xeno and Luna Styx for Kushala, but otherwise you'll want to stick to those three.

[TVMAN]

For end game horns: deep vero, taroth pipe sleep, and empress ruin/styx are your best choices. DV still remains the dps king of HHs you can craft and has a good all around song list, but you'll need to augment it to help offset the affinity penalty it comes with. If you're lucky enough to get a taroth sleep horn, then that is also a great dps horn

The two empress horns i mentioned before are good situational horns depending on what you're fighting. Styx is a direct upgrade to the manasheena so it's a must-take against kushala thanks to its wind negation song, and Ruin has earplugs + health recovery so it's good at keeping your party alive vs monsters that love to roar like nergigante. Plus it comes with hasten recovery so it'll help keep you from sheathing to heal as often.

Empress blaze is also good since it has atk up large and all melodies extended so you don't need to take a maestro charm.

[tag545]

Originally posted by maelynx:

Luna Blaze, Deep Vero, Taroth Sleep.

Bone horn can be used for Xeno and Luna Styx for Kushala, but otherwise you'll want to stick to those three.

all the current meta hunting horns work out fine for early master rank except deep vero. the rebalance done for iceborne killed the max might skill and thus made weapons with negative affinity much weaker than they were in world. any of the other options would work as a generalist weapon for early MR.

im not too sure how the iceborne meta is looking for horn at end game. with its new attacks it could either stay the usual get big raw number with attack up L or it could end up being an elemental weapon.

[mewlynx]

Originally posted by tag545:

Originally posted by maelynx:

Luna Blaze, Deep Vero, Taroth Sleep.

Bone horn can be used for Xeno and Luna Styx for Kushala, but otherwise you'll want to stick to those three.

all the current meta hunting horns work out fine for early master rank except deep vero. the rebalance done for iceborne killed the max might skill and thus made weapons with negative affinity much weaker than they were in world. any of the other options would work as a generalist weapon for early MR.

im not too sure how the iceborne meta is looking for horn at end game. with its new attacks it could either stay the usual get big raw number with attack up L or it could end up being an elemental weapon.

Kinda a shame about Deep Vero, the design is nice. Do you know if the Zinogre horn is still an electric guitar or did it get shafted?

Also OP was more of asking for general horns on current build to practice with, from my understanding, so DV is still worth mentioning.

[tag545]

yes the zinogre HH is still the guitar. he also gets the railgun, longsword and i believe a few more of his originals. there are a few bones / metal on sticks though like the greatsword

[Remi]

Garuga Shamisen for memes, still better than Zinogre HH too.

[lexilogo]

Deep Vero is THE all-purpose Hunting Horn currently in World. There are other really good ones, but Deep Vero has the overall highest attack potential and has solid, though few, songs.

As for potential alternatives for early-game Iceborne, when you may want to switch Horns from Deep Vero (note: I would like to say that new Max Might really isn't "dead" just inconvenient and that you can always switch to Agitator anyway, so Deep Vero would still be good at the least):

Dancing Davul (Kulu) as weird as that sounds. The Davul provides Defense Up L (which, as an XL buff, is a 20% buff to base defense- which is actually pretty good. haven't done the math but that'd probably be the equivalent of ~2 additional levels of Health Boost in effective health), Stun Negated which means as long as that melody's active, your team's carting chances pretty much halve, Tool Use Drain Reduced which means more Rocksteady mantle uptime for the whole team, and Stamina Use Reduced which means Bow users will love you forever. Plus, it has high base Affinity. Oh, and if you have a Release Jewel for Free Element, you could always slot one into your build and now you're getting a sleep proc every hunt.

Heavy Bone Horn is also a good choice. It's a bone weapon so it'll be easy to upgrade, and it packs Attack Up L.

Empress Roar Blaze grants Guts, Attack Up L, and Knockbacks Negated (that's Flinch Free) so especially in a multiplayer setting it'll make things more convenient.

[ciel]

The Nerg one, desolation's overture, is my go-to since it's got earplugs + crit up, since everyone likes crits and everything but jagras, jyuratodus, and lavasioth have sonic attacks, so it's pretty generally good. Has healing (S) from easy twirl combo, so that's a nice little bonus to keep everyone topped up. Has a unique model and sounds too! Always nice to be stylish when you're out there playing for the fans.

Beyond that anything with sonic waves from 3 heavy notes is good. Best damage attack -> getting easy melodies stocked = moar damage and moar stun. Just gotta learn to aim your back strike and you'll be good.

[Kreddi]

Thanks a lot for the input.
I have two additional questions now that I've played a handful of hours with HH.

Are KO damage related to the damage done of the attack, or a number attached to the attack that hits the head? So would a crit hit to the head do more KO and exhaust damage than a regular attack?

And what is the goal/highest damage move of the HH?
The way I currently play is I try to hit the head with as many encores as possible. (While maintaining every buff.)
Should I aim for something else instead?

[Holografix]

Originally posted by Kreddi:

Thanks a lot for the input.
I have two additional questions now that I've played a handful of hours with HH.

Are KO damage related to the damage done of the attack, or a number attached to the attack that hits the head? So would a crit hit to the head do more KO and exhaust damage than a regular attack?

And what is the goal/highest damage move of the HH?
The way I currently play is I try to hit the head with as many encores as possible. (While maintaining every buff.)
Should I aim for something else instead?

1. KO is attached to the head hits.
2. Highest damage move is the second hit of ground-pounder (Triangle+Circle). If you hit both swings, even better. :)

In my experience, there are no all purpose Hunting Horns. Each HH is situational and based around monster + armor worn. My favorite horns are Taroth Pipe 'Sleep', Taroth Pipe 'Spew' (poison) Empress Roar Ruin, Desolation Overture, & the Queen Vespoid HH.

[Kreddi]

[quote=Holografix;3159763879063485609
1. KO is attached to the head hits.
2. Highest damage move is the second hit of ground-pounder (Triangle+Circle). If you hit both swings, even better. :) [/quote]

About 1. so it's not about weapon damage, but hit used, in terms of KO buildup? So a crit won't do more KO damage than a non-crit?
So playing songs should only be done when buffs are about to run out, while Triangle+Circle is what should be spammed for damage?

[Remi]

Originally posted by Kreddi:

Originally posted by Holografix:

1. KO is attached to the head hits.
2. Highest damage move is the second hit of ground-pounder (Triangle+Circle). If you hit both swings, even better. :)

About 1. so it's not about weapon damage, but hit used, in terms of KO buildup? So a crit won't do more KO damage than a non-crit?
So playing songs should only be done when buffs are about to run out, while Triangle+Circle is what should be spammed for damage?

Recitals are your highest damage move, you should be using those as often as possible. Use Roar Blaze or Bazel Rookslayer.

[Holografix]

Originally posted by Kreddi:

Originally posted by Holografix:

1. KO is attached to the head hits.
2. Highest damage move is the second hit of ground-pounder (Triangle+Circle). If you hit both swings, even better. :)

About 1. so it's not about weapon damage, but hit used, in terms of KO buildup? So a crit won't do more KO damage than a non-crit?
So playing songs should only be done when buffs are about to run out, while Triangle+Circle is what should be spammed for damage?

HH is an elegant weapon. You shouldn't be spammed anything, but instead you should be swinging (reacting) according to monster positioning. So in an ideal solo battle, you could be landing 90% of all your swings, but not relying on any one specific swing.

As for recitals, this is the Right Trigger swing that starts your melodies. It is not the most powerful move and in some monster battles, you really can't use recitals that often or else you will be counter-attacked (AT monsters...etc).

i think crit hits do more status damage (KO, exhaution) than non-crit hits, but i'm not 100% sure about this.

[Remi]

Stun damage is fixed and only affected by Slugger (skill and Felyne meal skill) and Impact mantle.
Status is only affected by critical hits when you have Crit Staus, but stun and exhause will never be affected by crits. Every blunt move has an exhaust and stun value attached to it, you can look those up and with a monster's KO treshold you could calculate the amount of hits needed for the KO to happen.

[Holografix]

Originally posted by Remi:

Stun damage is fixed and only affected by Slugger (skill and Felyne meal skill) and Impact mantle.
Status is only affected by critical hits when you have Crit Staus, but stun and exhause will never be affected by crits. Every blunt move has an exhaust and stun value attached to it, you can look those up and with a monster's KO treshold you could calculate the amount of hits needed for the KO to happen.

can you KO a monster without ever hitting it's head?