An increase in wear resistance and thus an increase in service life is of great importance for many components. The production of hybrid components with high-carbon steel as cladding material offers the possibility of achieving these goals. However, materials with a carbon equivalent of more than 0.65 are considered difficult to weld due to their tendency to crack. In this study, a laser hot-wire deposition welding process with bearing steel AISI 52100 as cladding material is used to investigate the influence of laser power, wire feed speed, scanning speed, overlap ratio and wire preheating as well as interactions of these parameters on process stability, the formation of cracks and pores, the cladding waviness and the dilution. Layers of eight adjacent weld seams are welded onto an austenitic stainless steel. A stable process is observed for most parameter combinations except for samples with low wire feed speed and major wire preheating.