Any updated gunner guides?

Vecejj · July 2017

I'm unsure of how to build my gunner exactly, I see some with full power, some with full crit, some half/half. From what I understand full crit is a loss of dps since our core skills have high crit rate anyway but full power means burst fire won't always crit either resulting in dps loss.

Should I be using quickcarve or empowered brooch? 3 god / 2 heaven jewels on 3 heaven / 2 god jewels. Since gunner is low tier dps I really want to do my best as I enjoy gunner the most of all classes I've played, after testing my dps I'm usually 2nd behind deathwrack players which is no surprise.

As for chest rolls, I see on all guides that decreased cd on replenishment is the best for low ping players (me) but then every other gunner has increased damage on arcane barrage...

Any help would be appreciated.

Chickenwing · July 2017

This guide is still pretty relevant: https://www.essentialmana.com/gunner-pve-guide/

As far as how much crit you should have, you want enough so that burst fire crits 100% after the 6th hit. Many castanic gunners have told me that they need around +150 (+ carving crystal) if running with a priest, and only +120 (no carving crystal) if running with a mystic. If you are a high elf, you will need about 10-15 more crit since you don't get the extra 1% crit passive that castanics have. Play around with your setup until you are getting a consistent 80%+ crit rate total on Burst Fire.

Empowered/Quatrefoil/Marrow Brooch is the way to go. You can use Quickcarve before entering combat if you want an extra crit/attack speed boost while building up your willpower, then activate your main brooch for bombardment and BV.

As far as chest roll, CD on Replenishment has been the standard for low ping players for a long time now because it allows you to Burst Fire more over the course of a fight. If you have bad ping and don't use Burst Fire (you shouldn't play gunner) you can roll damage on Arcane Barrage instead. This meta may change when the future gunner buff patch arrives. Arcane Barrage will be receiving a 10% damage boost and willpower generation will be faster than ever, which may mean the latter chest roll option may be viable (or even superior) again even for low ping players.

Hope this helps.

Montblanck · July 2017

First of all, props on still playing this class and having the drive to push it to its limits lol. Anyway, any DPS class can still do okay DPS if you know how to use it. For Gunners, the skill rotation is still more or less the same, with the addition of Balder's Vengeance to your burn rotation.

In my opinion, here are some pointers to consider when building your Gunner:

1. Testing the values in-game, having around +160 base bonus crit bonus gives me ~95% crit give or take on 6th Burst Fire hit on a High Elf Gunner + Mystic on VSHM. I am going to assume the optimal base would be around this value; on a Castanic this would be lesser because of the racial passive. Switch the Pounding to Carving when running with a Priest.

PS. I have no idea what the best value for Harrowhold is since that place is a crit fuckfest.

3. Using this knowledge, how you build your jewelries will depend on whether or not you reach this value. Keep in mind: "Still not on optimal crit value? More crit stuff. Reached this value? Remaining stuff goes to Power." All the same, Gunners will still go mixed jewelry. Usually you play around with the Necklace, Vyrsks, and/or Circlet roll for this. Inners are too expensive to switch lol.

3. Empowered over Quickcarve. Always. Quickcarve's additional attack speed will not help with Arcane Barrage/Burst Fire/Balders during burns (which is when you use your brooch). The crit bonus also doesn't do too much especially since you always push your crit to its optimal value for Burst Fire even if not enraged; any additional crit beyond that is wasted.

Regarding chest roll: I personally think Replenishment cooldown is top priority over Arcane Barrage damage. On a perfectly still boss, when played right, Gunner's Burst Fire will do around 30% of your damage; with Arcane Barrage around 20% (VH first boss is a good sample for this sandbag-y type of boss). Given that your actual boss moves, based on sandbag values, Burst Fire will still outdps Arcane Barrage. Also, if you recheck the recent Gunner buffs as well, it was provided to actually push you to use Willpower moves more. Replenishment helps with that by giving you a ton of wp, and more chances to reset your wp-generating skills.

Probably the reason as to why there are still Gunners on Arcane Barrage damage roll is that it's not technically a bad roll (like how Archers choose to roll either Radiant damage/ROA cdr). Still, one will always be better than the other, even by a slight margin. For Archers, it's RA damage. For Gunners, this is Replenishment cdr.

Vecejj · July 2017

Thanks for the replies.

I've rerolled back to replenishment as I feel like I can ani cancel well enough to put out more AB's and more burst fire than just relying on pure dmg from AB roll. As for crit, is this +160 or 47 base +160 so 207 crit altogether? if that makes sense.

MForAll · August 2017

@Vecejj When talking about crit factor, its usually the green value with the plus sign. So it's not the total value. For this patch, however, it's recommended to have around +170 or +180 for high end contents because they have higher crit resists compared to older bosses. For HH purposes, around +200~ is the way to go. Unless if you want to play RNG game, I'd say +160 ( high tier ) or +170-180~ ( HH ). If you do get good RNG on crits, extra powers come in quite handy.

Vecejj · August 2017

I'm confused now, I've gotten better jewels and included etches with my weapon and gloves now but i'm doing much less dps for some reason.

I was doing 850k-900k dps on VHNM last week but today I was only doing about 400k... This is after switching from all power to try get to the +160 crit as well as switching my chest roll to decreased cd on replenish. The 400k was in VHHM but do you do less dps against a hard mode boss? I'm genuinely baffled.

Catservant · August 2017

My understanding is that the hard mode bosses have vastly increased crit resist. So yes, you probably critted a LOT less. Try VHNM with the new setup to compare, would be my suggestion.

LYC14 · August 2017

> @Vecejj said:
> I'm confused now, I've gotten better jewels and included etches with my weapon and gloves now but i'm doing much less dps for some reason.
>
> I was doing 850k-900k dps on VHNM last week but today I was only doing about 400k... This is after switching from all power to try get to the +160 crit as well as switching my chest roll to decreased cd on replenish. The 400k was in VHHM but do you do less dps against a hard mode boss? I'm genuinely baffled.

It's actually normal to deal half the DPS in 4 and 5 star dungeons compared to 3 star dungeons in this patch as the bosses in the former dungeons have increased endurance and crit resistance.

Any updated gunner guides?

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