Gunslinger Guide

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The Gunslinger Guide

Introduction

Specializing as a gunslinger is very fun, and very useful. As a gunslinger you are able to keep your enemy at range while still dealing damage to them.

A gunslinger also has the advantage than many guns deal full specialized damage, which means more critical damage dealt from a gun.

Some of this material will be applicable to anyone who uses a gun, but the page as a whole is written for players who use mostly guns or only guns.

The Basics

Guns generally do less damage than swords, but make up for it in range. this immediately means two things:

-Having specialized damage weapons is more important for gunslingers.

-Gunslingers have the potential to take very little damage, being able to easily stay at range from enemies.

Starting out you might as well skip normal damage guns and go strait into specialized damage. This is because once you have two specialized damage types, you are guaranteed to be able to deal at least neutral damage to all six monster types and critical damage against four types. If you were to make a normal damage gun and one specialized damage gun, you would be able to do normal damage against all six types, but critical damage against only two types.

Guns have a clip size, after which you must stop and reload before firing again. During this time you also can not shield, and depending on the gun can not move. What this means is that reloading is the most vulnerable time for a gunner. Now if you were to pause before the second shot (on two shot clip guns like the Alchemers) or before the third shot (like the Blaster series) your gun will strangely reload by itself after a moment, while you are still able to move and shield. What this means is that in some situations it is better to do a shot-pause-shot pattern while others it is better to do a shot-shot-reload pattern, mostly depending on whether you anticipate having to shield, dodge, or stay mobile, or whether you just can't take the damage.

Also note that some of the guns which have 5 or 6 shot clips are autofire, and require you to stand still and shoot the entire clip which also leaves you vulnerable.

As a gunslinger you can also take shots at enemies that might otherwise not be as exposed. For example, if a silkwing were healing a lumber, and several other enemies stood to either side... well, pull out your Magnus and take the shot :D

Weaponry

Generally the handguns that do one damage type are best to use. This is because if a weapon does a split of elemental and piercing damage, it will do 1/2 critical damage against elemental and piercing weak enemies. If those enemies are neutral against the other damage type, than you will get less damage total than if you had used a weapon that does only the damage type that enemy is weak against.

If the enemy is strong against the other damage type, than you will have 1/2 critical damage and 1/2 resisted damage, which is less than the other case.

In the end it might be a good idea to use a weapon that does split damage if you have less than 3 weapon spots for guns, but to maximize damage it is best to use three guns, one of each specialized damage type.

Alchemers

Alchemers are a line of handgun which are all together useful. There are five alchemers, four of which deal elemental damage and one which deals shadow damage. As you upgrade your alchemer to higher star levels, the bullets begin to break and ricochet around. The ricochets of an alchemer have a chance to cause a status effect just like the first shot.

Cryotech Alchemer

Cryotech Alchemers deal elemental damage and also have a chance to freeze it's targets.

Hail Driver

Firotech Alchemer

Firotech Alchemers deal elemental damage and also have a chance to light it's targets on fire.

Magma Driver

Voltech Alchemer

Voltech Alchemers deal elemental damage and also have a chance to inflict shock on it's targets.

Storm Driver

Prismatech Alchemer

Prismatech Alchemers deal elemental damage, but have no status effect. In exchange they deal higher damage.

Nova Driver

Shadowtech Alchemer

Shadowtech Alchemers deal shadow damage, and have no status effect. They deal damage comparable to the Prismatech Alchemers. These are often what gunslingers will use to deal shadow damage.

Umbra Driver

Magnus

The Magnus line is a good choice for piercing damage. It also has a chance to cause stun.

Note that at the five star level there are two guns that come from the Magnus line. One is Callahan, which does piercing damage and has a chance to stun. The other is the Iron Slug, which does normal damage and has a chance to stun. The Iron Slug could potentially be useful for people who are not dedicated gunslingers.

Callahan

Normal Damage Handguns

While not recommended for dedicated gunslingers, normal damage weapons may be useful for others. Valiance has a three shot clip, while Iron Slug has a two shot clip. It has a charged attack which can stun the target (and the gunner!).