Hunting Horn Combo Tree + New HH Mindset

Click here for the Hunting Horn Combo Tree!

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Unlike previous MH titles, Encores are now the meat of the HH's damage output due to three new additions in MHW:

• • Shockwaves in Recitals and Encores
• • The ability to dodge-cancel the Encore (and to a lesser degree the Recital) before the song plays
• • Stocking songs (like CB phials)

As such, a HH user's main goal should be to keep a full stock of 3- and 4-note songs ready to be unleashed as shockwave-packed Encore supers. (2-note Encores deal significantly less damage and should be avoided)

This combo tree should help you plan your route to shockwave-packed maximum dootage!

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PART 1: SHOCKWAVE-PACKED ENCORES

As mentioned, shockwaves have turned 3- and 4-note Encores into damage-pumping machines, so let's discuss them.

There are five Encores that you can do depending on which direction you hold. Generally speaking, the longer the Encore animations, the more hits (and damage) it deals.

• For damage (and thus length) it's Back > Forward > Neutral = Left = Right
• • If you have a large opening, go for Back or Forward Encore
• • If you have a small opening, go for Neutral or a side Encore

Knowing how much of an opening you have is key to deciding which Encore to use, so make sure you learn their hitboxes and durations!

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PART 2: DODGE-CANCELING

In previous MH games, you would want to dodge (roll) after finishing playing a song to skip the unnecessary animation.

But in MHW, we can now dodge before playing the song, after the attack finishes.

This means you can isolate just the attack portion of the damage-heavy Encores!

So if you've already played a song twice for the upgraded version before, there's no need to play the song portion of the Encore (since you'll have refreshed the song's duration with Recital), so just dodge-cancel out of it!

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PART 3: EFFICIENT SONG-STOCKING

With regard to keeping your "phials" charged by having your song queue filled with 3- and 4-note songs, certain note patterns make song-stocking easier.

The easiest patterns are when the song is three of the same note in a row. Namely, ♪ ♪ ♪ and ♫ ♫ ♫ (for Sonic Waves or Scoutfly Range Up).

The reason why is because you only need to play 5 notes to get three 3-note songs:

• Example: In the case of a a horn with the ♪ ♪ ♪ song, by playing the ♪ note 5 times in a row, the game will recognize it as 3 songs:
• 1. (♪ ♪ ♪) ♪ ♪
• 2. ♪ (♪ ♪ ♪) ♪
• 3. ♪ ♪ (♪ ♪ ♪)

Take advantage of Flourish (Forward+Circle with the extra note) or the Hilt Stab to stock your songs even quicker!

(and if you follow up Hilt Stab with Neutral Recital it becomes the much faster Quick Recital!)

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MISC

"What about just doing dodge-canceled Recitals?" you may wonder, especially since 2-, 3-, and 4-note Recitals all deal the same damage (unlike Encores).

Although you'll certainly be moving around quickly by dodge-canceling Recitals, you'll be sacrificing the tremendous damage you could be doing by Encoring.

These numbers were from the beta and may be off slightly, but compare:

(The bold numbers are the shockwaves, which are not affected by sharpness multipliers.)

Attack Name	Motion Values	Total
Neutral / Back Recital	31+28	59
Forward / Left / Right Recital	30+28	58
Neutral / Left / Right Encore	35+28+35+28	126
Forward Encore	35+28+29+31+28	151
Back Encore	35+28+35+28+31+28	185

As you can see, Encore numbers are nothing to sneeze at. And they certainly beat the old Left Swing, Right Swing bread-and-butter combo of old (now a paltry 22, 26 MVs respectively).