High temperature forging tools are highly damaged by wear shearing under cyclic loading which reduces the life of tools. In real conditions, depending upon the tool areas, the level of wear can change. The surfaces of tools can be treated by cobalt-based hardfacing using different welding processes. This study focuses on tribological damages of Stellite 21 deposited by MIG process. Wear tests are carried out at room and high temperature on a ring on disc tribometer under high normal load. Different testing conditions are examined. The surface plastic strain due to the friction shear stresses is demonstrated by different methods like SEM observations, micro-hardness measurements and XRD analyses. More particularly, it is shown that the initial (200) crystallographic preferred orientation due to the welding process is modified into (111) crystallographic preferred orientation due to shear stresses regardless the loading. Moreover, a relationship between the gradient of the plastic shear strain at the friction subsurface and the level of the micro-hardness measurement has been established. In regard of the results, when the shear strain exceeds a threshold, the micro-hardness measurement is stabilised. The ultimate value could be induced by the stacking fault energy that is considered as weak in Stellites.