The best Hunting Horn builds in Monster Hunter Rise

The Hunting Horn is one of the 14 different weapon categories in Monster Hunter Rise. It is a blunt weapon that damages enemies and buffs your party members. The weapon set also allows players to inflict status ailments on monsters in the process, making this a powerful and diverse weapon for buffing your party or dealing damage.

Like every weapon in Monster Hunter Rise, there are plenty of different skills to take to help customize your build to suit your playstyle. Here are some of the best possible builds with the Hunting Horn in the game as of the most recent update.

The best Hunting Horn builds in Monster Hunter Rise

Because the Hunting Horn is focused on a mix of dealing damage and buffing or debuffing, there are several different late-game builds that you can use, depending on what you want your role to be.

Damage Build

If you want to focus entirely on raw damage, then this is the build for you. The Full Valstrax set of armor gives you boosts to your key skills, and the Rampage Agitato S is perfect for dishing out the pain.

• Weapon – Rampage Agitato S – This weapon is by far the best damage dealer among the Hunting Horns, with skills that amplify the Earthshaker and Sonic Waves abilities.
• Armor – Valstrax Set – This armor gives you skills in Dragonheart, Resentment, and Weakness Exploit. These give you buffs when your health drops below a certain point, boost your damage when you are first hit, and increase damage to a monster’s weak spot, respectively.
• Talisman Skill – Wirebug Whisperer – This decreases the cooldown for the wirebug.
• Decorations – Six Attack Jewel 2, One Grinder Jewel 1, One Wirebug Jewel 2, and One Sonorous Jewel 1
• Skills – Attack Boost Level 6, Dragonheart Level 5, Resentment Level 3, Resuscitate Level 3, Weakness Exploit Level 3, Wirebug Whisperer Level 3, Speed Sharpening Level 2, and Horn Maestro Level 1

Critical Focus Build

Instead of dealing out consistent damage, you might want to focus on a build that increases Critical Damage and increases the chance to deal Critical Hits. This build requires focusing even more heavily on exploiting monster Weak Points. Ideally, we should be hitting 80% affinity on weak spots with this build and skills that help us keep our weapon sharp throughout the fight.

• Weapon – Rampage Agitato S – Once again, we’re recommending going with the Rampage Agitato S as your Hunting Horn weapon of choice.
• Armor – Kaiser Crown, Kaiser Vambraces, Anjanath Coil S, Vaik Mail S, and Ingot Greaves S – We’re mixing and matching a few armor sets here because we want as many Attack Boost, Critical Eye, and Critical Boost skills as possible. Having these skills from the different pieces will help more than the bonuses for having a complete set of armor.
• Talisman Skill – Weakness Exploit Level 2 – We want to exploit monster weaknesses as much as possible with this build, so this is a really easy choice.
• Decorations – Three Mastery Jewel 2, One Tenderizer Jewel 2, One Critical Jewel 2, Three Grinder Jewel 1, One Brace Jewel 1, and One Sonorous Jewel 1
• Skills – Critical Eye Level 6, Attack Boost Level 4, Critical Boost Level 3, Weakness Exploit Level 3, Speed Sharpening Level 3, Master’s Touch Level 3, Horn Maestro Level 1, Teostra Blessing Level 1

Knock-Out Build

If you’re not as worried about directly dealing damage and instead want to help your allies by staggering and knocking out monsters, this one will be great. It only works for multiplayer, though; you’ll need someone who can take advantage of the monsters you’ve knocked out, after all.

• Weapon – Rampage Agitato – Again, the Rampage Agitato is our best bet when inflicting status ailments on monsters. Rank it up as high as you can. This build works best with rank V or higher.
• Armor – Sinister Helm, Sinister Gauntlets, Kulu-Ya-Ku Mail, Anjanath Coil, Ingot Greaves – Once again we’re mixing and matching to get the skills we want. This armor includes skills that increase stamina damage to monsters and protects you from being knocked out as well.
• Talisman Skill – Weakness Exploit Level 2 – Same as before, we want to focus on hitting monster weak points to inflict maximum stamina damage.
• Decorations – One Tenderizer Jewel 2, Three Grinder Jewel 1, Three Critical Jewel 2, One KO Jewel 2
• Skills – Attack Boost Level 4, Slugger Level 3, Handicraft Level 3, Weakness Exploit Level 3, Speed Sharpening Level 3, Critical Boost Level 3, Critical Eye Level 2, Flinch Free Level 1, Horn Maestro Level 1, Resentment Level 1, Hellfire Cloak Level 1