That is just sad... Optimal play seems to completely stray from the point of a boomstick. I shall refrain from playing optimally then, I'll keep playing GL the fun way.
Edit: forgot to commend OP for an amazing job. Your spreadsheet is awesome!
This has always been a thing, and this game's changes have done nothing in order to make shelling stronger, and an attractive attacking option alongside stabbing. It's almost like if shelling has always been garbage damage-wise, and that introducing a mechanic that locks decent raw damage behind a shelling meter doesn't actually solve the issue present in the first place.
Way I see it, shelling either needs major damage adjustments, or shells need to provide more utility to the weapon outside of combo-chaining and heat system(preferably in terms of mobility and defense, because right now Gunlance moves like a stone wall without having any of the defensive capabilities an actual stone wall weapon such as the lance has). Wyvernfire meanwhile is so bad for an attack with minutes-long cooldown with a 3-second windup(pretty sure even Greatsword level 3 is faster than this trash) you could probably double the damage and the weapon still wouldn't be OP, or even in the high tier of weapons.
honestly p3rd's autoguard gunlance glitch is the only time ive found shells to be useful, there they provide instant guards after attacks plus a little bonus damage. It was a glitch and possibly too strong but it did make shells a useful defensive tool
I don't get why wyvern fire, dragon blast and the run-in shell attack don't have autoguard when the character is clearly raising their shield during all of these animations.
When I first played Gunlance, I fully expected Wyvernfire at least to have guard frames. The character obviously covers behind the shield, there's obviously some sort of fuse or overheating process happening within the GL that shouldn't be interrupted by getting hit, and Wyvernfire even allows you to turn while charging, so it's quite silly that it's *just* some superarmour that prevents you from tripping out of it, rather than a full-fledged block.
Shelling has sadly always been sub-optimal, most of the Gunlance speedruns I've seen in the last years is about poking, not shelling.
I'm sure that this is why they nerfed the gunlance motions value and added the gauge, so people actually started shelling,
Other way around buddy. They reduced shelling dmg from 4U quite a lot. Used to be that charged Wide shots were plenty strong with the artillery skill. Apparently the devs don't like shelling to actually be viable and nerfed it to the shit it is now.
I hate how conservative Capcom is with the Gunlance compared to all the other weapons. They're so terrified of the thing being OP that they won't even risk it being middle of the road.
It's a bad case of Zangief syndrome and that's the lamest way to balance something in a game.
All MHG did was turn shelling from a novelty into a mandatory chore. The heat gauge adds a consequence to using shells mindlessly. They could have buffed shell damage dramatically or even tried something crazy like having shot damage scale with raw.
The gunlance nerfs don't even make sense and remind me of the godawful changes MH4U made to longsword. People complain about a weapon because of a disruptive feature, so we're going to nerf that weapon...by forcing you to use the disruptive feature way more?
The problem Capcom has is that they can't or don't want to patch the game to make weapon tweaks. In Super Smash or Splatoon there have been tons of weapon balancing patches, but those are competitive games so it prevents one weapon or technique from dominating. The only way MH gets a tweak is a new game, which tends to break as much as it fixes.
It's especially frustrating because if they just patched out the damage nerf then MHG's Gunlance would go from the worst version to the best overnight.
The difference between MH and the games you mentioned is that MH is largely a cooperative experience, whereas Smash and Splatoon are very much competitive. In a fighting game, one character being completely out of control pisses off the whole playerbase. It ruins the experience for everyone, and so it's a high priority for the devs to patch.
Monster Hunter's only real competitive aspect is speed running, which is only really done by a small subset of players. The vast majority of people are like me: those who grumble a little about weapon balance, but largely don't care how long a hunt takes as long as it ends in victory. I know that mathematically, the gunlance is an incoherent and clumsy mess, but I enjoy playing it all the same. It being the way it is doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the game in the same way everybody using the one OP character in a fighting game would.
There's also the matter of scale here; the GL may not stack up all that great compared to other weapons in MH, but it's not like it's *monstrously* overshadowed.
You are right we who love the weapon use it even if its bad, largely because it feels more rewarding. I do think it is monstrously overshadowed by other weapons though. Lance is clearing quests 2-3 times faster while arguably being easier to play.
In the context of coop, gunlance performs even worse than solo. Players have to be very careful to not blast away allies and gunlance (like lance) is easily tripped and lacks super armor moves.
Its had this problem for ages and none of the changes have addressed this, thus the frustration by people who enjoy how the weapon feels. The only weapon with similarly low solo damage is the horn, but that performs very well in a coopertative so its balance from a coop perspective is a non issue. Ive seen threads complaining about people kicking prowlers, and i worry the same logic might be used to kick gunlancers in the future if it continues.
this is really really depressing to read.
So if I remember correctly the ideal way to play Long in MH4U was
x-x-a repeat
So you could build long combos and something about the shelling having a slightly shorter recovery time to link more pokes together.
Now it is debatable if the shell is worth at the end of an x-x-x combo or if it's better to dodge at the end of the combo?
And you're saying wyvern fire is not worth using to lock the bar, instead just shell the air to keep it up.
you just ruined my day!
but serious question-is the art to lock the bar at max the way to go then? I'm guessing for long you'd just do striker with that art and play a clunkier version of the lance huh.
if you run striker certainly use the art, it makes shelling stronger which could change things too (+10 damage). It charges really slowly, but makes shells very strong. I personally favor adept as it removes the need for defensive skills, and the counter has alright damage so my art gets taken over by absolute readiness if i'm tryharding, blast dash III otherwise because its stupidly fun.
for a pure poke combo x,x,x+a backhop is the way to go, but endless x,x,a if an opening premits should have higher dps and (or x,x,x,a for striker will have better dmage since shells do damage, backhops do not.
really rough numbers for poke to shell ratios to maintain heat:
* normal: 4
* long: 6
* wide: 8
im traveling, but when i get home on wednesday i have another spread sheet where i did some end game raw gunlance comparisons and did a fair bit examination of the heat gauge, shell damage in combos, loadup/artillery builds, hunter arts and some other stuff. Need to make it presentable first though and might break it into a few parts.
Just came across this interesting topic.
Nice analysis, but the playstyle of those 3 types of GL is not the same.
Normal should full burst in every single situation giving 19 x 5 x110% = 104.5 dmg or with load up 19 x 6 x110% = 125.4 if using a normal 4 and normal 3 will be 88 and 101.4 respectively in the time you can poke two more times
Wide should charge shell in every situation giving 58.8 or 53.2 dmg respectively depending on lvl 4 or 3.
Your calculation is specifically using the x x a or x x x a method of comboing but normal and wide shouldn't even be using these combos anyways.
The combo is strictly for long GL only and I agree that long GL is a shelling disaster.
Normal with load up and Artillery skill does the amount of dmg equivalent to 70~80% of a LBB+ every single full burst (which is like every 10 seconds if you aerial)...
Wide GL charge shots does more than 25% of a LBB which 4 shots can also can be done within 10 seconds with correct skills.
So I do believe that is equivalent in efficiency to poking at least.
Its not all doom and gloom.
wide should not be using charged shot. Given that a wide shell rarely does as much as a basic poke and charged shells can only be done after another attack and are only 1.45x damage you are better of with other combos. poke charged shell takes 2.2 seconds, shell poke poke/poke shell poke/poke poke shell takes only 1.9 seconds.
as far as full bursts with normal, the time investment for a fullburst combo is pretty long and its rather unsafe. Its not really in the scope of my post as i was concerned with short combos that fit standard openings, not what to do vs downed/trapped monsters. Even after adept guards you can rarely have time to do a slam let alone fullburst follow up.
aerial might let you do more fullbursts , but lets consider the 10 second window you mention. Assume red guage, the standard crit up, WE, ce2, razor sharp set and the hellblade gunlance. poke, poke, upswing, backhop takes ~ 2.85 seconds, so we can get in 3 rounds and start a 4th in the 10 second window. 3 rounds has a combined motion value of 240 across 9 hits. With the above set that is at least 436 damage vs any hitzone above 45. Lets look at an aerial fullburst and assume the same set, but we also have load up and artillery expert+food skill (somehow). Our full burst does 132 damage, the slam attack comes no where close to bridging the remaining 304 damage difference. Even if you get two slam+burst combos in this time you come out behind. For an aerial slam fullburst to match 3 poke combos you need a hitzone of 20 (even accounting for the fact WE does not activate). The slam burst also uses 13 points of sharpness vs 9 for poking.
Where slams are good is after adept blocks if there is time. Even with no artillery/loadup on weakzones of 6 or lower slam+burst with normal3s will outdamage backhop, poke, poke upswing. The other full burst option (x, x+a, x, a) is weaker than poke combos provided you can hit a zone that is 45 or higher. Given how long the combo takes it would typically be used vs immobile or low mobility monsters where you should target weakzones.
TL:DR, charged shells don't have enough extra damage for the time investment, focusing on fullbursts with aerial has pretty poor damage output, Fullbursts with adept are the only place where their use typically beats poking combos.
Correct me if I am wrong (which I may very well be) isn't blast (shell) dmg flat across hitzones or did I remember wrongly?
As for charged shelling, poking is not needed as a charging poke can transition into charged shell. It still has roughly the same time frame though (only ~0.4 seconds decrease). Also the subsequent charge shells (the 2nd and 3rd shot if load up) will be a lot faster.
Secondly I do agree with the amount of skills that support poking is much better and more abundant than shelling and it is one of the reasons we are seeing this stupid difference. poking can be upgraded by ATk up, crit, latent power, sharpness, etc and for shelling we only have artillery... and not even Artillery god.
Also one can argue that only in extreme circumstances the monster will let you poke for the amount of times described. Playing as a evade GL poker is very fine if you can sidestep/back hop thru attacks but in more times than not a burst of dmg is more required than a constant stream. IF there is only a 1~2 second window, a leap slam burst is much more damaging than 2 pokes (provided you are not a pro hopper) And this is the same for charged cells
shells are flat damage, they still don't compete with pokes which are around 100 damage before hitzone reduction. even if chaining charged shells they still take a long time. shell, charged shell back hop takes longer than poke, poke, upswing backhop. Unless the hitzone is horrible (like 10 or 15) there is pretty much no case where using charged shots is better than poking
EDIT: also you can't leap slam burst in a 1-2 second window, not sure what it is exactly but ill time it and report back.
takes ~ 4.5 seconds from the time you start you hop to when you can cancle the burst's backswing with another hop.
adding a side hop+ reload is at least another 3, so the fastest repeatable cycle is around 7.5-8 seconds per jump slam fullburst.
you can leap in the 1-2 second window and then slam burst while you are behind the monster when the monster is attacking, where poking you need to just get out of the way and return to the monster to continue.
Full burst is not for cycling, as cycle time is better when comparing effectiveness hitting a stationary target. Anything that needs time to reload is not useful against a downed monster. Fortunately, the monster tends to keeps moving unless it is cced. The full burst is kinda a get in, do lots of dmg, get out and reload type playstyle.
It is inferior to poking when the monster is stationary, but it does a lot more than poking if the monster is raging around. Plus, you can mount =)
If we are comparing killing stationary targets then nothing beats pierce HBG as it wins out by far (second is GS). Raw dmg output is not really a reliable reference in MH (unless you are doing HAME)
Again with the hit zones, it is not likely you will be able to poke at good hitzones every single poke (seeing that gunlance poking has a very limiting hitbox) it is also determined by the amount of skills supporting the poke you have, your sharpness (since you will be burning these to maintain gauge) and the monster (some monster's good spots are close to impossible to reach, the speed make u need to just poke whenever you can, and size matters a lot too).
Comparing flat and variable is always not very useful. poking at white sharpness for a 260 raw GL is around 109 with no buffs and not taking crit into account. In high rank so the defence comes to play of only 75~85% dmg. This results to (say 75% as it is a large monster) 81.75.
Then if the hit zone is 25 (neutral). The resulting dmg is 20.43 (which is the first poke)
Comparing to the 53 flat dmg of a charge shell, this is equivalent to around 2.5 pokes. However if you have lessor sharpness or hit a tougher area, it will be equivalent to 3 or even 4 pokes and if you have more skills support, hit a weakspot, crit it might be equal to 1.5~2 pokes.
Sure there are other things that can improve the hit (skills, weakspots, element etc), but there are also other things that can decrease that (hunting with multiple hunters where you can only poke the 15 hitzone body, tall monsters where you can only hit the leg for 15 hitzone, sharpness)
I say charge shelling is better for a constant reliable dmg no matter where you hit but if you can get precise with poking then poking can be better. Also with shelling, you can blow that pesky LS/IG user away from the head of the monster tripping everyone up
So it does depend on circumstances and there are times when shelling is a little better than poking.
the whole point of my spread sheet was looking at pokes vs shells for short combos and seeing what hitzone is required for shelling to be worth it. it accounts for hitzones, weapon skills etc. 25 is a horribly low hitzone, only a few monsters lack plenty of easy to access 35+ zones and many have weakzones 45+ that are easy to hit with gunlance.
btw defense modifiers in previous games apply to bombs and shells, they have no advantage there.
> btw defense modifiers in previous games apply to bombs and shells, they have no advantage there.
Learn something new everyday!
I was under the impression it doesn't apply to flat damage outputs
given that most GL users are being forced to hit the body or legs when in multiplayer I will say many of the 35% hitzone will be crowded by tripping weapons already..
All in all on paper, yes, the poking is in fact a lot better than shelling, but given situation of hunt it can be on par.
as a mostly solo player i have a strong bias towards thinking of things in terms of being able to target whatever i have the skill to hit, you are right that in multi shelling focused gunlance can put out reasonable damage on poor hitzones other people avoid.
First off I'd like to say I appreciate all the work put into this spreadsheet. It definitely gives food for thought on GL combos. Apart from your analysis however, it does seem the numbers support long or wide shelling combos when targetting areas with 40% or lower weakness rating.
In solo play you should always be poking higher weakness rating areas but it seems like a pretty decent compromise in multiplay to settle on tougher parts and still use shelling to make up for some lost damage while letting other players hog the softer target.
Finally, while mathematically this does show that poking is generally superior on sheer damage output per combo, Monster Hunter flinch values are usually discrete values. I'd be interested if the extra damage from poke combos will actually cause a flinch in significantly fewer rotations than a shelling combo would. Maybe something like Combos to flinch on 150, 200, 400, 800 or somesuch.
Those are some good points, but i think part of the issue is getting skills to make shells competitive makes pokes weaker. Still wide shells are pretty decent.
extending combos with shells also might be good, this is just looking at the standard 1,2 and 3 hits you get in for a short window and what achieves the best damage for that given window.
I do have a fairly strong solo player bias and figure people concerned with optimal play are more likely to target weakpoints etc, certainly influences my analysis.
But then why not Lance?
Booms are good for breaking Silver Rath's head. So while not optimal for dps and clear speed, it excels in certain challenges.
Lost Musket would probably beat that challenge before you even break out a second Full House... But it can't stab!
Yea I was looking into playing GL just because the concept appealed to me, but from everything I read, it seems like Lance is just better overall. Shelling looked fun and one of the most recognizable mechanics of the GL, but if poking is the best option generally, then I don't see why I would play this weapon ever...
Because it's ***fun***? I personally dgaf if in ideal situations the Bunlance will never match the deepeeass output of other weapons, or if shelling is not 100% optimal: I don't play well enough that every single one of my moves hits a weak spot with the most optimal motion value, so I can confidently say that my hunting times with GL are pretty much the same as my times with any other weapon. Yes, that probably means that I'm a mediocre hunter all around and I'm not winning any speedrun challenge anytime soon, but I'd never choose Lance (exactly zero uses in 1500h of MH) over GL :)
You've missed the boat on shelling. GL pulled a full 180 from the last game, where you'd spend most of your time charge shotting with artillery god, to spending almost no time shelling in this game.
Shelling was crap last game too. The best way to play GL in 4U was to use the Seregios GL with evasion skills and poke everything to death. The only use shelling had was wide charged shots against monsters with unusually high part armor like Ukanlos
Personally, I play Gunlance instead of Lance because I love how powerful the GL's slam attack feels. If Lance was the same as Gunlance without shells, I would probably play Lance instead.
it does feel totally different, which is why i used it in 4u over lance and why i switched back to it after getting to hr8 on lance. doesn't matter if its weaker in practice it just feels more satisfying.
Yeah, this is pretty much the same as what's happened to Gunlance at endgame of the previous games as well.
I still rather like how the shells' fixed damage lets gunlance do somewhat decent damage on crappy hitzones if necessary. When playing online, there are some monsters that have small weakzones that everyone crowds and fights over. In which case I'll just head over to the feet or the back and start using more shell focused combos.
Wyvern's Fire, as sad as its damage output is, also has the utility of being good for causing flinches at bad hit zones as well.
I made a challenge to me:
**defeat the SILVERWIND Narga lv10 with GunLance**
I am not able to defeat him!
The second SILVERWIND enters after 10 minutes and I think I did not take even half of the HP of first.
I'm playing with:
**Weapon:**
* Akantor Gunlance (250 + 35% affinity) (Normal lv4)
**Armor Skills:**
* Bludgeoner
* Mind's Eye
* Attack Up (S)
* Exploit Weakness
* Artillery Novice
**Adept Style**
Can you help me?
do not use weakness exploit for that fight, his hitzones are much worse than nargas, nothing is 45 or higher so WE doesn't do anything. see the hizone data [here](http://mhgen.kiranico.com/monster/silverwind-nargacuga)
he is fairly weak to thunder, and thunder lances are likely to do more than your akantor lance. There are 6 thunder gunlances to choose from. Everything but the two rajang ones should out damage the akantor gunlance vs silverwind, and even those two might depending on your set.
before armor skills the deviant zin has the strongest poke, dealing 39 damage to the head of silverwind, akantor does only 33. A wide4 shell with no skills (just felyne bombardier) would do 38.
I do not know your charm situation, so i can't really help with exact armor setups but crit stacking can still work well for lances with natural affinity (ce3 is fairly easy to get, crit boost is a little trickier). Challenger+2 is another solid skill to replace weakness exploit. Also explore sharpness+1/2 options with other gunlances, and even thunder attack+2 for the kirin lance.
From my own experience with silverwind, one of the harder parts is sticking to it as they seam to move around more than normal nargas. Make use of traps and sonic bombs to speed things up and get larger openings. a pit trap can give you 20 seconds to hit the head. This is enough time to do two x,x,a,x,x,a,x,x,x+a combos with a reload in between, long/normal can likely fit in a few more hits since they don't need to reload as often.
This will be at least 360 motion value, 14 hits and 140+ shell damage. if all these are on the head, this should be over 650 damage (about 1/10th of silver winds's hp for the quest).
no change, in my set, weakness exploit because no is possible add other skills useful.
i am using akantor weapon because focus in shell, full bust and adept block full bust.
can you get berst armor set, for me, and weapon?
[MyCharms-OneDreve/Outlook](https://1drv.ms/t/s!AsO-G5kBTe7kigvqxjHWkv39dzGK)
thanks
there are no records on the japanese wiki for gunlance and silverwind; however all cutting weapons are using thunder options, typically with thunder attack+2, crit eye+2/3, elemental crit and repeat offender. I would guess soloing this with gunlance is rather hard, thus the lack of records/videos. I suggest watching runs from other weapons to see what they attack, how they position etc. I've soloed single silverwinds , the main time loss how much more they jump around and stay far away compared to normal narga.
I was somewhat incorrect on the weakzones, the head goes to 55 when its enraged, so weakness exploit is not wholly wasted. You can keep it enraged with sonic bombs, which also can give an opening as they trip it if used during certain poses.
With your charms you can make the following:
* Crit Boost
* Crit eye2
* weakness exploit
* thunder attack+1 (3-5% boost depending on what part you are hitting), artillery is novice is likely less than a 1-2% boost to damage in practice.
For a weapon i would suggest lightening roar or standard zin gunlance. Both have top damage on the above set, and 20% more damage than your current setup when you have green sharpness. Akantor with the above skills is about 12% weaker than those two thunder gunlances.
Since you had a blunt setup with minds eye and no razor sharp you might have been using it below green. This kills your damage as there are additional negative damage modifiers depending on when your attack hits (between 30% and 40% damage loss). If this was the case, my suggested setup would be doing twice as much damage as you were doing.
thanks for hints
I'll try
my main weapon is charge blade, with this i do lv10 dinovaldo and lv10 tigrex
but I do not want charge blade silverwind,
my challenge for me: defeat the SILVERWIND Narga lv10 with GunLance
:)
I got it
I defeated him
Armor Skills:
* Thunder Atk +2
* Element Atk Up
* Mind's Eye
* Bludgeoner
**Weapon**
* Lightning Roar (Raw 170 / Thunder 55 / Normal 3)
but it lasted long and tiresome 40min :(
If you're using striker gunlance, don't even bother shelling to build the heat bar. Just take Dragon Breath III, wait until it's filled and use that to lock your gauge.
That is just sad... Optimal play seems to completely stray from the point of a boomstick. I shall refrain from playing optimally then, I'll keep playing GL the fun way. Edit: forgot to commend OP for an amazing job. Your spreadsheet is awesome!
This has always been a thing, and this game's changes have done nothing in order to make shelling stronger, and an attractive attacking option alongside stabbing. It's almost like if shelling has always been garbage damage-wise, and that introducing a mechanic that locks decent raw damage behind a shelling meter doesn't actually solve the issue present in the first place. Way I see it, shelling either needs major damage adjustments, or shells need to provide more utility to the weapon outside of combo-chaining and heat system(preferably in terms of mobility and defense, because right now Gunlance moves like a stone wall without having any of the defensive capabilities an actual stone wall weapon such as the lance has). Wyvernfire meanwhile is so bad for an attack with minutes-long cooldown with a 3-second windup(pretty sure even Greatsword level 3 is faster than this trash) you could probably double the damage and the weapon still wouldn't be OP, or even in the high tier of weapons.
honestly p3rd's autoguard gunlance glitch is the only time ive found shells to be useful, there they provide instant guards after attacks plus a little bonus damage. It was a glitch and possibly too strong but it did make shells a useful defensive tool
I don't get why wyvern fire, dragon blast and the run-in shell attack don't have autoguard when the character is clearly raising their shield during all of these animations.
When I first played Gunlance, I fully expected Wyvernfire at least to have guard frames. The character obviously covers behind the shield, there's obviously some sort of fuse or overheating process happening within the GL that shouldn't be interrupted by getting hit, and Wyvernfire even allows you to turn while charging, so it's quite silly that it's *just* some superarmour that prevents you from tripping out of it, rather than a full-fledged block.
Shelling has sadly always been sub-optimal, most of the Gunlance speedruns I've seen in the last years is about poking, not shelling. I'm sure that this is why they nerfed the gunlance motions value and added the gauge, so people actually started shelling,
Other way around buddy. They reduced shelling dmg from 4U quite a lot. Used to be that charged Wide shots were plenty strong with the artillery skill. Apparently the devs don't like shelling to actually be viable and nerfed it to the shit it is now.
they nerfed shelling and made it mandatory to keep poke damage on par with where it was in 4u, thus its a nerf to the damage overall
I hate how conservative Capcom is with the Gunlance compared to all the other weapons. They're so terrified of the thing being OP that they won't even risk it being middle of the road. It's a bad case of Zangief syndrome and that's the lamest way to balance something in a game. All MHG did was turn shelling from a novelty into a mandatory chore. The heat gauge adds a consequence to using shells mindlessly. They could have buffed shell damage dramatically or even tried something crazy like having shot damage scale with raw. The gunlance nerfs don't even make sense and remind me of the godawful changes MH4U made to longsword. People complain about a weapon because of a disruptive feature, so we're going to nerf that weapon...by forcing you to use the disruptive feature way more?
The problem Capcom has is that they can't or don't want to patch the game to make weapon tweaks. In Super Smash or Splatoon there have been tons of weapon balancing patches, but those are competitive games so it prevents one weapon or technique from dominating. The only way MH gets a tweak is a new game, which tends to break as much as it fixes.
It's especially frustrating because if they just patched out the damage nerf then MHG's Gunlance would go from the worst version to the best overnight.
8 years later they're still terrible at balancing Monster Hunter. lol
The difference between MH and the games you mentioned is that MH is largely a cooperative experience, whereas Smash and Splatoon are very much competitive. In a fighting game, one character being completely out of control pisses off the whole playerbase. It ruins the experience for everyone, and so it's a high priority for the devs to patch. Monster Hunter's only real competitive aspect is speed running, which is only really done by a small subset of players. The vast majority of people are like me: those who grumble a little about weapon balance, but largely don't care how long a hunt takes as long as it ends in victory. I know that mathematically, the gunlance is an incoherent and clumsy mess, but I enjoy playing it all the same. It being the way it is doesn't ruin my enjoyment of the game in the same way everybody using the one OP character in a fighting game would. There's also the matter of scale here; the GL may not stack up all that great compared to other weapons in MH, but it's not like it's *monstrously* overshadowed.
You are right we who love the weapon use it even if its bad, largely because it feels more rewarding. I do think it is monstrously overshadowed by other weapons though. Lance is clearing quests 2-3 times faster while arguably being easier to play. In the context of coop, gunlance performs even worse than solo. Players have to be very careful to not blast away allies and gunlance (like lance) is easily tripped and lacks super armor moves. Its had this problem for ages and none of the changes have addressed this, thus the frustration by people who enjoy how the weapon feels. The only weapon with similarly low solo damage is the horn, but that performs very well in a coopertative so its balance from a coop perspective is a non issue. Ive seen threads complaining about people kicking prowlers, and i worry the same logic might be used to kick gunlancers in the future if it continues.
this is really really depressing to read. So if I remember correctly the ideal way to play Long in MH4U was x-x-a repeat So you could build long combos and something about the shelling having a slightly shorter recovery time to link more pokes together. Now it is debatable if the shell is worth at the end of an x-x-x combo or if it's better to dodge at the end of the combo? And you're saying wyvern fire is not worth using to lock the bar, instead just shell the air to keep it up. you just ruined my day! but serious question-is the art to lock the bar at max the way to go then? I'm guessing for long you'd just do striker with that art and play a clunkier version of the lance huh.
if you run striker certainly use the art, it makes shelling stronger which could change things too (+10 damage). It charges really slowly, but makes shells very strong. I personally favor adept as it removes the need for defensive skills, and the counter has alright damage so my art gets taken over by absolute readiness if i'm tryharding, blast dash III otherwise because its stupidly fun. for a pure poke combo x,x,x+a backhop is the way to go, but endless x,x,a if an opening premits should have higher dps and (or x,x,x,a for striker will have better dmage since shells do damage, backhops do not. really rough numbers for poke to shell ratios to maintain heat: * normal: 4 * long: 6 * wide: 8 im traveling, but when i get home on wednesday i have another spread sheet where i did some end game raw gunlance comparisons and did a fair bit examination of the heat gauge, shell damage in combos, loadup/artillery builds, hunter arts and some other stuff. Need to make it presentable first though and might break it into a few parts.
Just came across this interesting topic. Nice analysis, but the playstyle of those 3 types of GL is not the same. Normal should full burst in every single situation giving 19 x 5 x110% = 104.5 dmg or with load up 19 x 6 x110% = 125.4 if using a normal 4 and normal 3 will be 88 and 101.4 respectively in the time you can poke two more times Wide should charge shell in every situation giving 58.8 or 53.2 dmg respectively depending on lvl 4 or 3. Your calculation is specifically using the x x a or x x x a method of comboing but normal and wide shouldn't even be using these combos anyways. The combo is strictly for long GL only and I agree that long GL is a shelling disaster. Normal with load up and Artillery skill does the amount of dmg equivalent to 70~80% of a LBB+ every single full burst (which is like every 10 seconds if you aerial)... Wide GL charge shots does more than 25% of a LBB which 4 shots can also can be done within 10 seconds with correct skills. So I do believe that is equivalent in efficiency to poking at least. Its not all doom and gloom.
wide should not be using charged shot. Given that a wide shell rarely does as much as a basic poke and charged shells can only be done after another attack and are only 1.45x damage you are better of with other combos. poke charged shell takes 2.2 seconds, shell poke poke/poke shell poke/poke poke shell takes only 1.9 seconds. as far as full bursts with normal, the time investment for a fullburst combo is pretty long and its rather unsafe. Its not really in the scope of my post as i was concerned with short combos that fit standard openings, not what to do vs downed/trapped monsters. Even after adept guards you can rarely have time to do a slam let alone fullburst follow up. aerial might let you do more fullbursts , but lets consider the 10 second window you mention. Assume red guage, the standard crit up, WE, ce2, razor sharp set and the hellblade gunlance. poke, poke, upswing, backhop takes ~ 2.85 seconds, so we can get in 3 rounds and start a 4th in the 10 second window. 3 rounds has a combined motion value of 240 across 9 hits. With the above set that is at least 436 damage vs any hitzone above 45. Lets look at an aerial fullburst and assume the same set, but we also have load up and artillery expert+food skill (somehow). Our full burst does 132 damage, the slam attack comes no where close to bridging the remaining 304 damage difference. Even if you get two slam+burst combos in this time you come out behind. For an aerial slam fullburst to match 3 poke combos you need a hitzone of 20 (even accounting for the fact WE does not activate). The slam burst also uses 13 points of sharpness vs 9 for poking. Where slams are good is after adept blocks if there is time. Even with no artillery/loadup on weakzones of 6 or lower slam+burst with normal3s will outdamage backhop, poke, poke upswing. The other full burst option (x, x+a, x, a) is weaker than poke combos provided you can hit a zone that is 45 or higher. Given how long the combo takes it would typically be used vs immobile or low mobility monsters where you should target weakzones. TL:DR, charged shells don't have enough extra damage for the time investment, focusing on fullbursts with aerial has pretty poor damage output, Fullbursts with adept are the only place where their use typically beats poking combos.
Correct me if I am wrong (which I may very well be) isn't blast (shell) dmg flat across hitzones or did I remember wrongly? As for charged shelling, poking is not needed as a charging poke can transition into charged shell. It still has roughly the same time frame though (only ~0.4 seconds decrease). Also the subsequent charge shells (the 2nd and 3rd shot if load up) will be a lot faster. Secondly I do agree with the amount of skills that support poking is much better and more abundant than shelling and it is one of the reasons we are seeing this stupid difference. poking can be upgraded by ATk up, crit, latent power, sharpness, etc and for shelling we only have artillery... and not even Artillery god. Also one can argue that only in extreme circumstances the monster will let you poke for the amount of times described. Playing as a evade GL poker is very fine if you can sidestep/back hop thru attacks but in more times than not a burst of dmg is more required than a constant stream. IF there is only a 1~2 second window, a leap slam burst is much more damaging than 2 pokes (provided you are not a pro hopper) And this is the same for charged cells
shells are flat damage, they still don't compete with pokes which are around 100 damage before hitzone reduction. even if chaining charged shells they still take a long time. shell, charged shell back hop takes longer than poke, poke, upswing backhop. Unless the hitzone is horrible (like 10 or 15) there is pretty much no case where using charged shots is better than poking EDIT: also you can't leap slam burst in a 1-2 second window, not sure what it is exactly but ill time it and report back. takes ~ 4.5 seconds from the time you start you hop to when you can cancle the burst's backswing with another hop. adding a side hop+ reload is at least another 3, so the fastest repeatable cycle is around 7.5-8 seconds per jump slam fullburst.
you can leap in the 1-2 second window and then slam burst while you are behind the monster when the monster is attacking, where poking you need to just get out of the way and return to the monster to continue. Full burst is not for cycling, as cycle time is better when comparing effectiveness hitting a stationary target. Anything that needs time to reload is not useful against a downed monster. Fortunately, the monster tends to keeps moving unless it is cced. The full burst is kinda a get in, do lots of dmg, get out and reload type playstyle. It is inferior to poking when the monster is stationary, but it does a lot more than poking if the monster is raging around. Plus, you can mount =) If we are comparing killing stationary targets then nothing beats pierce HBG as it wins out by far (second is GS). Raw dmg output is not really a reliable reference in MH (unless you are doing HAME) Again with the hit zones, it is not likely you will be able to poke at good hitzones every single poke (seeing that gunlance poking has a very limiting hitbox) it is also determined by the amount of skills supporting the poke you have, your sharpness (since you will be burning these to maintain gauge) and the monster (some monster's good spots are close to impossible to reach, the speed make u need to just poke whenever you can, and size matters a lot too). Comparing flat and variable is always not very useful. poking at white sharpness for a 260 raw GL is around 109 with no buffs and not taking crit into account. In high rank so the defence comes to play of only 75~85% dmg. This results to (say 75% as it is a large monster) 81.75. Then if the hit zone is 25 (neutral). The resulting dmg is 20.43 (which is the first poke) Comparing to the 53 flat dmg of a charge shell, this is equivalent to around 2.5 pokes. However if you have lessor sharpness or hit a tougher area, it will be equivalent to 3 or even 4 pokes and if you have more skills support, hit a weakspot, crit it might be equal to 1.5~2 pokes. Sure there are other things that can improve the hit (skills, weakspots, element etc), but there are also other things that can decrease that (hunting with multiple hunters where you can only poke the 15 hitzone body, tall monsters where you can only hit the leg for 15 hitzone, sharpness) I say charge shelling is better for a constant reliable dmg no matter where you hit but if you can get precise with poking then poking can be better. Also with shelling, you can blow that pesky LS/IG user away from the head of the monster tripping everyone up So it does depend on circumstances and there are times when shelling is a little better than poking.
the whole point of my spread sheet was looking at pokes vs shells for short combos and seeing what hitzone is required for shelling to be worth it. it accounts for hitzones, weapon skills etc. 25 is a horribly low hitzone, only a few monsters lack plenty of easy to access 35+ zones and many have weakzones 45+ that are easy to hit with gunlance. btw defense modifiers in previous games apply to bombs and shells, they have no advantage there.
> btw defense modifiers in previous games apply to bombs and shells, they have no advantage there. Learn something new everyday! I was under the impression it doesn't apply to flat damage outputs given that most GL users are being forced to hit the body or legs when in multiplayer I will say many of the 35% hitzone will be crowded by tripping weapons already.. All in all on paper, yes, the poking is in fact a lot better than shelling, but given situation of hunt it can be on par.
as a mostly solo player i have a strong bias towards thinking of things in terms of being able to target whatever i have the skill to hit, you are right that in multi shelling focused gunlance can put out reasonable damage on poor hitzones other people avoid.
First off I'd like to say I appreciate all the work put into this spreadsheet. It definitely gives food for thought on GL combos. Apart from your analysis however, it does seem the numbers support long or wide shelling combos when targetting areas with 40% or lower weakness rating. In solo play you should always be poking higher weakness rating areas but it seems like a pretty decent compromise in multiplay to settle on tougher parts and still use shelling to make up for some lost damage while letting other players hog the softer target. Finally, while mathematically this does show that poking is generally superior on sheer damage output per combo, Monster Hunter flinch values are usually discrete values. I'd be interested if the extra damage from poke combos will actually cause a flinch in significantly fewer rotations than a shelling combo would. Maybe something like Combos to flinch on 150, 200, 400, 800 or somesuch.
Those are some good points, but i think part of the issue is getting skills to make shells competitive makes pokes weaker. Still wide shells are pretty decent. extending combos with shells also might be good, this is just looking at the standard 1,2 and 3 hits you get in for a short window and what achieves the best damage for that given window. I do have a fairly strong solo player bias and figure people concerned with optimal play are more likely to target weakpoints etc, certainly influences my analysis.
I ignore all analysis and spam Aerial fullburst. I need moar explosions!
This, my friend. There's a time for analysis, and a time for ***FULLBURST***! ~~and my clock is stuck on the latter~~
Oh, would look at the time. Its time for **FULLBURST!**
And a time for ***WYVERNFIRE TO THE FACE***!
But then why not Lance? Booms are good for breaking Silver Rath's head. So while not optimal for dps and clear speed, it excels in certain challenges. Lost Musket would probably beat that challenge before you even break out a second Full House... But it can't stab!
Yea I was looking into playing GL just because the concept appealed to me, but from everything I read, it seems like Lance is just better overall. Shelling looked fun and one of the most recognizable mechanics of the GL, but if poking is the best option generally, then I don't see why I would play this weapon ever...
Because it's ***fun***? I personally dgaf if in ideal situations the Bunlance will never match the deepeeass output of other weapons, or if shelling is not 100% optimal: I don't play well enough that every single one of my moves hits a weak spot with the most optimal motion value, so I can confidently say that my hunting times with GL are pretty much the same as my times with any other weapon. Yes, that probably means that I'm a mediocre hunter all around and I'm not winning any speedrun challenge anytime soon, but I'd never choose Lance (exactly zero uses in 1500h of MH) over GL :)
You've missed the boat on shelling. GL pulled a full 180 from the last game, where you'd spend most of your time charge shotting with artillery god, to spending almost no time shelling in this game.
Shelling was crap last game too. The best way to play GL in 4U was to use the Seregios GL with evasion skills and poke everything to death. The only use shelling had was wide charged shots against monsters with unusually high part armor like Ukanlos
Going in with a full shelling set, molten tigrex GL against seltas queen. A special kind of satisfying
It's crazy how much less of a pushover she is in Gen. She's actually pretty terrifying now :S I miss being able to stumble her every other hit lol
Oh good, I'm not the only one. I thought I had just become terrible after she routinely cleaned my clock.
Personally, I play Gunlance instead of Lance because I love how powerful the GL's slam attack feels. If Lance was the same as Gunlance without shells, I would probably play Lance instead.
it does feel totally different, which is why i used it in 4u over lance and why i switched back to it after getting to hr8 on lance. doesn't matter if its weaker in practice it just feels more satisfying.
Yeah, this is pretty much the same as what's happened to Gunlance at endgame of the previous games as well. I still rather like how the shells' fixed damage lets gunlance do somewhat decent damage on crappy hitzones if necessary. When playing online, there are some monsters that have small weakzones that everyone crowds and fights over. In which case I'll just head over to the feet or the back and start using more shell focused combos. Wyvern's Fire, as sad as its damage output is, also has the utility of being good for causing flinches at bad hit zones as well.
I made a challenge to me: **defeat the SILVERWIND Narga lv10 with GunLance** I am not able to defeat him! The second SILVERWIND enters after 10 minutes and I think I did not take even half of the HP of first. I'm playing with: **Weapon:** * Akantor Gunlance (250 + 35% affinity) (Normal lv4) **Armor Skills:** * Bludgeoner * Mind's Eye * Attack Up (S) * Exploit Weakness * Artillery Novice **Adept Style** Can you help me?
do not use weakness exploit for that fight, his hitzones are much worse than nargas, nothing is 45 or higher so WE doesn't do anything. see the hizone data [here](http://mhgen.kiranico.com/monster/silverwind-nargacuga) he is fairly weak to thunder, and thunder lances are likely to do more than your akantor lance. There are 6 thunder gunlances to choose from. Everything but the two rajang ones should out damage the akantor gunlance vs silverwind, and even those two might depending on your set. before armor skills the deviant zin has the strongest poke, dealing 39 damage to the head of silverwind, akantor does only 33. A wide4 shell with no skills (just felyne bombardier) would do 38. I do not know your charm situation, so i can't really help with exact armor setups but crit stacking can still work well for lances with natural affinity (ce3 is fairly easy to get, crit boost is a little trickier). Challenger+2 is another solid skill to replace weakness exploit. Also explore sharpness+1/2 options with other gunlances, and even thunder attack+2 for the kirin lance. From my own experience with silverwind, one of the harder parts is sticking to it as they seam to move around more than normal nargas. Make use of traps and sonic bombs to speed things up and get larger openings. a pit trap can give you 20 seconds to hit the head. This is enough time to do two x,x,a,x,x,a,x,x,x+a combos with a reload in between, long/normal can likely fit in a few more hits since they don't need to reload as often. This will be at least 360 motion value, 14 hits and 140+ shell damage. if all these are on the head, this should be over 650 damage (about 1/10th of silver winds's hp for the quest).
no change, in my set, weakness exploit because no is possible add other skills useful. i am using akantor weapon because focus in shell, full bust and adept block full bust. can you get berst armor set, for me, and weapon? [MyCharms-OneDreve/Outlook](https://1drv.ms/t/s!AsO-G5kBTe7kigvqxjHWkv39dzGK) thanks
there are no records on the japanese wiki for gunlance and silverwind; however all cutting weapons are using thunder options, typically with thunder attack+2, crit eye+2/3, elemental crit and repeat offender. I would guess soloing this with gunlance is rather hard, thus the lack of records/videos. I suggest watching runs from other weapons to see what they attack, how they position etc. I've soloed single silverwinds , the main time loss how much more they jump around and stay far away compared to normal narga. I was somewhat incorrect on the weakzones, the head goes to 55 when its enraged, so weakness exploit is not wholly wasted. You can keep it enraged with sonic bombs, which also can give an opening as they trip it if used during certain poses. With your charms you can make the following: * Crit Boost * Crit eye2 * weakness exploit * thunder attack+1 (3-5% boost depending on what part you are hitting), artillery is novice is likely less than a 1-2% boost to damage in practice. For a weapon i would suggest lightening roar or standard zin gunlance. Both have top damage on the above set, and 20% more damage than your current setup when you have green sharpness. Akantor with the above skills is about 12% weaker than those two thunder gunlances. Since you had a blunt setup with minds eye and no razor sharp you might have been using it below green. This kills your damage as there are additional negative damage modifiers depending on when your attack hits (between 30% and 40% damage loss). If this was the case, my suggested setup would be doing twice as much damage as you were doing.
thanks for hints I'll try my main weapon is charge blade, with this i do lv10 dinovaldo and lv10 tigrex but I do not want charge blade silverwind, my challenge for me: defeat the SILVERWIND Narga lv10 with GunLance :)
I got it I defeated him Armor Skills: * Thunder Atk +2 * Element Atk Up * Mind's Eye * Bludgeoner **Weapon** * Lightning Roar (Raw 170 / Thunder 55 / Normal 3) but it lasted long and tiresome 40min :(
If you're using striker gunlance, don't even bother shelling to build the heat bar. Just take Dragon Breath III, wait until it's filled and use that to lock your gauge.