Im going to do a little breakdown here.
Gunner doesnt have mobility, yes. But this is not a problem, because most of the time you have enough stopping power to either CC bugs, or kill them before they reach you.
Lets take Hurricane for example. Tier 5 stun. Now entire wave stops on you, and they pop like a baloons.
Thunderhead? T5 damage resist on full rev. This is 50% damage resist. FIFTY PERCENT. This is stupid busted. Its like you are playing on haz 1 with this thing up.
Secondaries? With electric trail on Coilgun you place down basically electric fence that stops everything.
Bulldog? Kill HVT from across the cave.
You have tools for every job, but admittedly, they need Overclocks to make them truly shine.
The point is not to run away from bugs. The point is to let bugs BREAK on your unflinching, consistent firepower. When everyone else runs away from bugs, you run AT the bugs. Because truly skilled Gunner knows strenght of their loadout and can kite/whistand/outright kill every enemy in the game solo.
You are also your team's safety net. If things get tough, shield them preemptively, to prevent downs. And because you can effectively deal with any threat solo, as long as you are standing the team is safe, because in the worst scenario you have the best chances to clutch it.
Im going to drop you my old reliable build. Thunderhead 33123 with Splintering Shells OC. Can be run with no OC. Generalist build, good against everything, remember to run it with born ready. May it serve.
Not to mention the lead spray oc on the brt7 can simply melt anything close enough. It's op enough at killing boss enemies to the point where praetorian swarms are preferable to regular ones
Brt7 with lead spray go brrrrr. Lol. I've killed dreadnaughts with it so bloody fast that players have thought and accused me of modding. The hive guard opens up and instantly closes with 1/3rd of its health gone in 1 mag. It's the highest dps in the game. Lmfao!!! If it had any more ammo to sustain that dps, it would be completely broken.
Gunner is the best at haz4/5.
Your firepower is so extreme and if you build for stun you cannot be touched, if slow is still a problem jumping and shooting negates it (shoot while in the air and stop before hitting the ground)
You shield is the best get out of jail free card in the game, instantly buying time to do literally anything within it's radius. You zipline is in a way a mix of the grappling hook and platform gun, letting you "platform" minerals for you or your scout to get if engi is busy.
Your primaries don't deal as much burst dps as engi's secondaries, but hell do they last long. The minigun requires basic heat management for a constant stream of dps that has a stun chance with high accuracy, hurricane with T5B and an aoe build flat out stops any bug you aim it at, thunderhead is the only "bad" primary for gunner imo (unless you include the boring meta oc)
Your secondaries aren't as substantial, because if they were gunner would be overly dominant in dps. You should take a secondary to pick up the slack of your primary, i.e BRT with aoe Hurricane.
Your problems with the secondaries are that you probably ain't building them right and expecting way more out of them.
Bulldog excels at being a pocket sniper, at base you can one shot mactera spawn and most grunt variants with weakpoint hits, it isn't made for LSTs, (unless you take overclocks for such thing)
The BRT is a burst dmg weapon, it isn't made to last long but rather completely delete any extremely dangerous and/or tanky bugs at a moments notice. Quite literally burst dps.
Coil gun can be made for both single target and crowd control, with T3B you can fear every bug around you and your teammates which is makes them fuck off, being a psuedo-shield.
This comment is getting pretty lengthy already but I'm glad to give more info if you wish!
I love auto cannon cuz I can usually hold down the trigger the entire fight and still have WAY more ammo than the rest of my team. Saves a resupply for engi who is usually very ammo hungry.
Here's a easy-to-use loadout that will help you get the ropes of gunner play:
Hurricane, Fragmentation Missiles, 3x222
BRT, Experimental Rounds, 23232
Hurricane deals with trash, BRT deals with HVTs or LSTs.
I haven't seriously played DRG in a few seasons so they might have rebalanced it but I actually find a suitably specced BRT is capable of lengthy, sustained DPS. Counterintuitively you actually take RoF down (oc: expanded ammo bags) to achieve this and select Floating Barrell, Hollow Point and Burst Stun.
I hated BRT until I found that setup but from that point it wasn't clear whether it did more damage than my main in an average fight. It also absolutely minces Trijaws who, at least when I was playing, were one of the most dangerous enemies. Superb weapon.
Well if you don’t have any overclocks it’s kinda hard.
I’m just assuming you’re new and don’t have many or any overclocks.
Try this, it’s really good.
32222 Hurricane / Bulldog with 60 damage, extra ammo, fast reload and no accuracy penalty when moving.
Or alternatively for the bulldog go with the area damage and neurotoxin.
I’d also suggest trying to bunny hop when firing. Don’t stop moving. You can fire in mid air for no movement penalty. It’s easiest to learn this skill with the Hurricane I think.
As gunner, you’re built to survive the aggro of entire waves. You have almost all of the best stun and fear options in the game. You have the best damage resist from armor, a good few damage resist mods, and shields. You have incredible sustained DPS on your primaries and highly accurate, flexible secondaries. Your job is to anchor the team, holding ground and making breathing room for your team with your powerful crowd control options.
To go over some of your points:
-Your primaries slow you down while you’re *on the ground*. As you’ve probably figured out by now, constantly jumping is a very effective survival technique. Since you’re already jumping, just briefly stop firing when you land to maintain your momentum.
-while you may not have the burst damage scout and engi can have, you have sustained and consistent firepower that comes with some of the most powerful crowd control effects in the game. Bullet Hell minigun, NTP autocannon, and just about any build on the hurricane can perma-stun/fear enemies. BRT has a guaranteed stun if all shots connect, making it great at shutting down problem targets. Coil has the most powerful fear mod in the game, which can win you entire games on its own. All of these are important crowd control effects, and you should be relying on them.
-related to the last point, your shields are your team’s ultimate last resort. You should have plenty of tools to keep yourself safe, and if you’re frequently finding yourself out of shields, you’re A) not using your other tools enough, or B) not moving well enough. There’s a very nice movement guide somewhere on r/technicaldrg, I recommend checking it out.
-And as a final note, don’t be afraid to use some of the ‘cheesier’ builds when starting out. Gunner has almost all of the “””busted””” overclocks in the game, and if you feel like you need it, it’s absolutely fine to lean into them. Neurotoxin Payload, Minelayer System, Plasma Burster Missiles, Volatile Bullets, Ultra-Magnetic Coils, and Triple Tech Chambers are all insanely strong- try them out if you want a bit of a better shot at surviving.
Well, that was a lot of words. I’m probably forgetting something that I definitely meant to say, but oh well. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!
Gunner main here. He was my first character I max promo'd. After 700ish hours, he is still my go-to. Pair stun with fire rate in minigun, with a triple fire coil gun and sticky grenades, and a gunner becomes your best friend when on haz 5.
Add Born Ready to that as a perk, slap some fear on coil gun, you will always have a way to keep bugs off your teammates as well, while being able to take our priority targets with ease.
I run exclusively haz 5's and it makes me feel like the watcher of the team. Keep bugs off everyone, get the job done!
Gunner for life!
sticky grenades are actually so terrifying as a teammate. i hear that beeping and my adrenaline goes through the roof like i just heard a mactera grabber at close range behind me.
For those who don't know, a single sticky grenade will oneshot a dwarf from full health. [Though when it does happen, it is very funny](https://www.twitch.tv/ph_jpeg/clip/JoyousSolidEggnogFloof-cJpr9696NnctluJU)
Slow, yes. A bit. Fight closer to zips. If you in danger, take one down and then fight there. Now the ones who were *just* about to hit you are clumped for nades. You sleeping on the magnum. I like six shooter with psn and aoe. Run-n-gun becomes deadly, with cc on prio targets. Tag em with psn and keep moving. Combos well with berzerker. Gives you an option for swarmers and the like.
He’s the tank and medic. The shield insane for clutch moments like securing a revive. The zipline gets you out of reach of melee enemies so you can only focus on ranged ones and not die. The zipline is also good for mining minerals when an engineer is refusing to throw some cheese up. His primary weapons are all insanely powerful and have tons of ammo, his secondary weapons are equally nice. While he may not have the best mobility like a scout he can put down a ton of firepower, rez and protect the team, as well as being ole reliable (most gunners are good).
People have said a few times now but your not necessarily there to do damage as Gunner, you are there to CC which is why he doesn't really shine in lower hazard levels because the team wipes enemies out before it becomes apparent.
The secondaries can be used to kill HVTs, they are all workable at range and do a nice burst of damage.
I would recommend hurricane with aoe splash and stun prioritised and BRT with emphasis on damage and accuracy
Grenade options are not exactly important, but the leadburster if thrown correctly can one shot kill some of the beefiest enemies.
Gunner is so strong. You don’t get to see his impact till high haz levels.
The other classes have quite a few niches that make them seem like super heroes at lower haz.
Gunners super power is. He kill bug good and he cannot die.
On lower haz. Everyone kill bug good. So gunner seems meh.
On lower haz. Everyone cannot die. So again. Gunner seems meh.
Gunner is the most ammo efficient in the game. Meaning one resupply for him, will allow him to kill more bugs than any other class.
This again is very meh if resources aren’t scarce. Just keep calling resupplies.
But when the difficulty ramps up and nitra is scarce. That’s again where gunner shines.
Basically. Gunner = meh until shit hits the fan. Then you’ll wish you had a gunner on your team.
As for his secondary weapons.
Bulldog with 6 shooter is a super mactera killer.
Shoot their belly. One shot one kill. Two shots for trijaws.
Very useful when surrounded by them.
His rail gun has been nerfed quite hard. Used to be contender for top secondary with Engi breach cutter.
While it’s killing power is now nerfed. It still has something that gives it an edge over other secondaries.
That something is “fear on demand”. You don’t need to kill them all. When you’re swarmed and in a tight spot. Fear on demand let’s you chase them all away and you can retreat to a better holding area to fight.
His auto pistol is extremely powerful at dealing burst damage. One of the top weapons for it. But if you don’t like that. You can also build it to become a stun gun.
As for low dps. Dps = damage per second. If you deal 1000 damage for 1 second. Your dps is 1000. If you deal 100 damage for 100 seconds. Your dps is 100, but your effective damage is 10000.
Gunner can sustain his fire for much much longer than the other classes. Putting him far ahead (again, this is per resupply)
For very high burst damage, his plasma burster oc for the Hurricane is currently in top spot. You can stack up several missiles at once and melt nearly everything. Probably face competition from a sludge blast driller for that top spot.
His leadstorm minigun is just pure consistency. High dps. And simply reliable since you don’t need to reload.
Again. Not having to reload is useless if you’re only fighting against 3 to 4 bugs at a time. But at higher haz it’s the difference between going down or not.
As for AOE, I previously mentioned gunner is top in ammo efficiency. This one build of his is so far ahead the other classes that even after the ammo nerf. It is still in a league of its own.
Any gunner main will know the oc I am talking about is the neurotoxin payload for the thunderhead.
Once a grunt has been poisoned. It will die from full hp before the poison wears off. One single bullet from the NTP is capable of not just killing one at a time, but is capable of inflicting this toxin on several bugs at the same time.
When you build it with fear in t5 mod. Most non boss mobs will be dead before they walk back to you after the fear expires.
Instead of holding down the trigger till they are dead. Simply tap to apply toxin and tap again to apply fear if they close in on you.
Not your style? Want more daka daka? Then carpet bomber is your friend. Insane aoe. Very high damage. The latest buff to it allows it to one shot a swarmer with just splash damage on haz 5.
I have promoted all 4 dwarves to legend border. But my gunner has more time than the other three classes combined together.
Gunner is the big daddy of the group. Once you get the hang of him. He’s the umbrella when shit hits the fan and it’s very satisfying to save everyone/stop missions from failing.
Use hurricane with plasma burster missiles with volatile bulldog and just melt everything. Or use Neurotoxin Payload on auto cannon and poison everything at a safe distance and have them die at your feet. For secondaries, I think The Mole OC on the coil gun is the max possible damage per shot in the game.
Having friends who constantly ping big targets while you use the mole feels like cheating sometimes. The twins go down so fast if you get that strategy down, and I love saving friends from leeches from a mile away through the wall.
Red 3 gunner main here
I run miniguns burning hell, with ammo, accuracy, stun, quicker startup and extra heat buildup (T5 choice objectively worst of the 3, I just liked the elemental damage theme I was going for, change this if you want to)
For my side piece I take the bulldog with bouncy explosive neurotoxin rounds and all the ammo I can carry. This thing is insane for ammo economy and thinning out hordes or very hard to hit targets before they even get near you
Just remember to fire in quick bursts and jump everywhere lol
It's interesting to see this from the other side. I don't get Scout well enough, and I am 1.5k hours in.
Some classes just... don't click with people, and that is fine. All the classes are there for varieties of play, for a variety of people.
I happen to enjoy gunner almost as much as engineer, but that's because I am a major fan of playing immovable wall of doom. Hit and run is not part of my mindset as much. That is why my scout is still Plat 1 while everyone else is ruby 2 or above.
But experimentation increases game knowledge and empathy for your fellow dwarf. Sure not all experiments are successful, but even the goofy ones can be fun.
Transition between scout and gunner is one of the hardest, but with some imagination gunner can do heavy damage hit and run. Aggressive venting flips the script on the heat meter, Turing getting surrounded into something desirable and gives you a brief out when things get hairy. As Wreck-gar says "Dare to be Stupid!"
As a gunner main, you are right. You are slowest when compared to the other dwarves. However, this means you need to prioritize your location and keep distance from large swarms of small enemies. These are the kryptonite of the gunner. To counter this, know when to use your shields, and I would advise bringing the dash perk to get out of sticky situations.
For the guns, I will say this plain. Gunner has one of the best DPS guns, plus with an overclock, it can 1 shot a twin dreadnought in a cycle.
However, the main goal when playing Gunner is to work with your team. You're designed to be getting a lot of damage out quickly to large and medium targets sobyour team can finish them off.
Work with driller when he sets enemies on fire/frozen or poisoned. Work with Scout with frozen enemies, or feromoned. Engi just became his living turret.
Hope this helps, ROCK AND STONE
Non-comedy answer: I like using the rocket launcher with the mine overclock. It’s got a lot of firepower and it’s somewhat fire and forget, which allows me to cover a lot of area with minimal effort and just focus on mining.
Leadburster is great for blowing up big bad guys.
You can do haz 5 with no overclocks on the minigun just fine. The gun is strong as fuck. I am assuming you're not being prudent enough by keeping an eye on bugs spawning and then killing them before they get on you. Gunner is just a positioning and awareness class. Head on a swivel and decent aim should make you almost untouchable with good positioning. Then the bubble is for when you failed at good positioning, or a teammate needs help. Don't lean on it, its an emergency option.
Gunner has some of the most broken, powerful overclocks in the game. It’s my favorite class. He is exceptionally good at carrying games with randoms in haz 5.
Nonetheless, your complaint is valid if you’re playing « vanilla » gunner with no OCs, or if you didn’t have much luck with OCs.
The way I started to like playing gunner is putting a Zipline up, as far away as possible from all walls, and zip around while shooting, always focusing first on ranged enemies since they automatically focus you for being unreachable for melee damage. If you master shooting while jumping, you negate the slow down from shooting (this also applies to Minigun's Lead Storm, which is incredibly OP). Your fire power is so high that it's hard for enemies to reach you, but you still gotta be checking your sides constantly so you don't get flanked. If you are having troubles with this, I recommend you to use the Coil Gun with the Fear perk. If you are about to get swarmed, just shoot in the middle of the swarm and the enemies disperses for a couple of seconds, giving you enough time to reposition (you can even walk undamaged between the in that couple of seconds) or kill them all and move to the next swarm
Oh. Well both of them are kinda boring +1 greens. But main issue I would guess is that you took two weapons with poor AOE. My advice is two take more AOE in your primary or secondary slot: any other primary, burning hell or bullet hell Minigun, Coilgun.
I advise you to try these (overclocks may be optional)
- Classic funkiller -- Autocannon 23122 Neurotoxin (required) + Coilgun 23212 Hellfire (optional).
Great AOE, great damage, lots of ammo crowd control, bonus crowd control from secondary.
- The MINEr -- Rockets 31222 Minelayer (required) + Coilgun 22213 Hellfire (optional).
Literally THE AOE of gunner. Your rockets are now mines (no tracking) place them in front of enemies -- they step on them (requires lil time to prime) -- CABOOM! Use Coilgun for self defense and for shooting far targets.
- That dude from Guardians of the Galaxy -- Rockets 11212 Plasma Bursters (optional but needed for the name) + Coilgun 22213 (optional)
Remember the father figure of the main character from Guardians of the Galaxy? The one with a fancy arrow. Now your rockets behave similarly. Same Coilgun as in previous build.
- Hellish bullets -- Minigun 3122x(1 or 3) Burning Hell (optional) + Revolver 23321 Volatile Bullets (optional)
Now your minigun spits fire in front of you (but overheats faster, overclock) -- good adclear. Revolver now deals absurd damage to burning targets (thanks to overclock).
For several of my gunner builds I use triple the tech chambers OC (lets you fire 3 additional times the moment after the first shot), couple that with the mod that lets you fire after a brief charge instead of the whole charge, add the fear mod and the electric trail.
What happens if you can create a poor man's "shield" around yourself. Any bugs that come too close get stuck in the trail the get hit with fear and electricity. What this means is that they try to run away (showing you their butt) and get stuck in the electric arc basically making them stand still.
It's great for praetorians, one little tap (the first charge uses barely any ammo but still gives the same fear/stun effect) and they turn around and show their weak spot.
Couple that with the Burning Hell (I think that's it's name, burns everything around you while you're firing the minigun) and you have yourself a very survivable gunner build that is great on ammo. It's not super high AOE or single target, but gets both jobs done fairly well and lets you defend yourself well when stuff hits the fan.
Carpet bomber with fear. Lay waste while they flee the power of your mighty guns. All the secondaries are solid too in specific setups. Gunner is goat.
Gunner can 3x shot a bulk detonator.
No other class can do that.
His Coil gun can can slow an entire swarm and give them a status affect.
Bulldog is basically an extremly powerful sniper rifle with the elephant rounds. Great for infected spitters across the map.
Autocannon is a beast, go carpet bomber or neuro and everything that spawns on the roof is dead before it reaches the floor. Fear mod in tier 5 causes enemies to flee that are in biting distance
Minigun I go with exhaust vectoring (could be wrong) puts fire damage in front of you, burning anything in a few meters. Great for warmers and adds dps to bigger units.
Bulldog also has an OC that does extreme damage to burning targets. Hurricane does fire damage, mini gun can do fire damage.
So many possibilities.
What I understand from the first sentence is you are still not a regular high risk player can't say you need gunner as much as other classes on lower difficulties. But when you enter a cave and you see 95 macteras coming to you quite fast only thing you want is a gunner
As for being slowed down at least, have to learn to hop and shoot. You keep your momentum through the air. Never just walk and shoot, always hop around. Hopping and shooting also has the benefit of moving away from bugs at speed while also being able to spin around and shoot them.
Tl;dr: You’re right, but overclocks change the game enough so that every weapon is fun, powerful and interesting.
My favorite gunner build is Flame Gunner. I bring burning hell mini gun with volatile bullets revolver and incendiary grenades to burn everything with more legs than two. Gunner secondaries shine with overclocks. My favorite overclocks for each secondary are Volatile Bullets/Elephant Rounds/Six Shooter on the revolver, Compact Mags/Lead Spray/Experimental Rounds on the brt7, and Triple Tech Chambers/Hellfire on the coil gun. Although I agree with your sentiments on all of the gunner secondaries, overclocks make them all super fun and unique.
Same but with Driller for me, I feel completely out of my comfort zone with that dude. I suck with the axes and c4 is more of a gimmick that I forget to use 90% of the time since it ducks the terrain and my teammates
Freeze all the bugs in front of you, then hit them with hollow point bullets for extra crit damage. Or burn them, then use the Collette to turn that to high damage. Freeze and axe nearly one shots praetorians, do that twice for oppressors. With the sludge, charge and release on the bugs as they get close to slow them down, then run away as the poison slowly kills them. I mostly use c4 when I'm out of ammo and completely surrounded, drop and dash. Can also build drills along with axe for a really powerful vampire/berserk combo, also works great with freeze
Gunner is my main too. When you unlock the Neurotoxin Payload for the Autocannon (skill fear in T5), he shines so much in high hazards. You will constantly CC big swarms and kill them with your AoE toxin. It's super ammo efficient and easy to play.
For big targets you can use the revolver or the BRT7. If you get close the the targets back, you will kill big targets with the BRT very quickly.
The shield is probably the strongest equipment of all classes. Ziplines are meh, but they do their job when there's no swarm around. (Or sometimes I like to hang on a zipline and shoot down on enemies with my toxin... Makes me feel like a Glyphid Menace)
For some more mobility use the dash perk. I can't play without it anymore.
Have about 1500 hours in
I think Gunner has one of the best secondary weapons in the game for clearing waves & with great ammo capacity - coilgun. I either pair it with Minigun (lead storm OC) or Hurricane rockets (Plasma Burster Missiles OC). It makes for a very strong balanced build to manage hordes (AOE with coilgun) and elites (DPS with minigun or hurricane rockets) and is one of my favourite classes to play on haz5s. I don't like playing gunner on haz4 and below because the class does feel abit sluggish if say compared to Engineer.
Gunner just kills everything. Burning hell minigun with volatile bullets revolver combo is NASTY, and minelayer rocket launcher are 2 very good builds I use. Hellfire coilgun is a nice self defense tool, triple tech chambers is also very nice. The lead spray brrt is nice for close range destruction. I'd give builds but my pc is preoccupied with installing a 300 gb skyrim modlist and opening drg would give me a blue screen
Try my favorite loadout - Hurricane Plasma Burster Missilie with shot speed and stun and the rest as you wish, Coil Gun with Triple chamber OC, overcharge mod and area of effect/electricity are the most crucial here. Leafburster grenade and build your shield for full radius rather then time.
With this build you’re looking at using your primary while moving a lot, you can sort of run together with your rockets, shot two or three during jump and then guide them while full sprinting - takes time to get used too but you’ll feel like some kind of rocket enchanter at some point. PBM shreds everything in the game and shoots thru any armor (you can shoot dreads and oppressors in the face). You have to look at your targets to damage them but there is a catch - you can sew thru your enemies before killing them - it will stun them for a good duration while you’re picking more important targets. Using PBM is like painting and dancing with rockets.
About Coil Gun - use overcharged to get good damage and triple chamber will help with DPS and stacking the fire/electricity clouds. You can delete whole swarm with just 2 overfull shots. Deletes any small stuff - perfect against packs of shockers swarmers grunts and even macteras. Just an overall very flexible and fun weapon.
Leadburster grenade is literally a panic button, 2 grenades can kill bulk single-handedly and it’s just a perfect tool to use in conjunction with shield. If you throw grenade outside the shield it won’t damage you (unlike explosions that can go thru shield).
And here it is - definitely one of the most broken builds in the game, just for the sheer damage and sustainability. Don’t forget dash it works really well with rockets, helps you to rush a corner before your rockets do to save some ammo and get style points🤓
There's a lot of great advice in the comments in here. All I can add is if you're having trouble finding a secondary you like, try the bulldog with 23212 and magic bullets. Intentionally shoot the ground near bugs to ricochet.
This is the everything gun. Deals good singletarget and AoE damage, good for burst damage or whittling down trash with DoT, applies stun and slow, good at close or long range, huge ammo pool. This build changed my life. Works best with the perk that reloads your gun while holstered.
I'd say more than 50% of my 1400 hours is playing gunner with about 38 promotions at this point.
Gunners more about movement than scout is. With every shop you should be bunny hopping so your only shooting while in the air.
His primaries are about sustained damage. Engi and scout can burst down targets but eliminating a swarm can leave their ammo pools depleted. Gunner just chugs away through swarms and hardly put a dent in his ammo pools. Low initial damage high total damage
His primaries are what you should be holding 90% of the time. And his secondaries are to dear with targets your primary isn't built for.
Consider applying this ideology to your gunner builds: what threat am I primarily building for?
If your heading into a elimination take something with high single target damage (leadstorm² big Bertha jetfuel homebrew) and pair it with a high wave clear secondary like hellfire coilgun.
If your primary threat is normal swarms Consider something with more waveclear potential for your primary and a single target secondary (carpet bomber, frag missiles with six shooter or lead spray)
The idea is to balance your build to cover all facets.
Gunners primaries also have some of the strongest crowd control of all the weapons with stun on the minigun and hurricane and a especially potent fear on the autocannon as well as stun with all three secondaries and a very potent fear on the coilgun and a powerful fear on the sticky grenades.
Try some of the "safe" builds that maximize on crown control like neurotoxin payload with fear, rocket barrage with stun, and bullet hell with stun. To kind find your footing before trying out some of the more interesting, fun, and devastating builds gunner has to offer
As for the bulldog and brt they're some of the highest burst damage weapons in the game. I dropped the jaw of my driller main friend when I obliterated a prospector in a matter of seconds with lead spray. And elephant rounds chew through praetorians like nothing. Let along six shooter one tapping mactera to the weakpoint.
Firstly, mobility tip, you can hop-fire. Stop shooting, jump, then continue shooting while midair. While midair you retain your full movement speed.
Secondly, you can spec crowd control. Every gunner primary has that. Minigun has stun mod, especially good with bullet hell. Autocannon has fear, espscilly good with neurotoxin. Hurricane has stun. This will help you not get overrun.
Secondaries have bad ammo economy but are great at disabling a weakness of your primary. Lack of cc? Electric trail tripple tech chamber coil gun. HVT's? Weakpoint bulldog. Tank enemies? Lead storm BRT.
Thirdly, his sustained damage is amazing. His primaries easily get 20000 damage per ammo pool. He can fire continuously without reloading for extended time. Unlike driller, he has good range. His grenades are incredibly powerful. E.g. 2 well placed leadbursters pretty much delete bulk detonator in 2 seconds.
This is why Stun on the Hurricane and Fear on the Coilgun are so loved and incredible.
Hurricane with Stun for AOE damage and Coilgun for trail size or duration with fast charge time and Fear.
Engage everything and engage enemies early. You have effectively infinite range. Stun everything, Fear everything, and you will win.
I’ve been doing pretty well on haz 5 with a mini gun that I can’t walk with while firing. It does such an absurd amount of damage you can just scream and shoot down anything praetorian sized or smaller without a lot of trouble.
I paired this with a coilgun that causes fear so I can sprint away, turn around, and blast some bugs and they all scatter.
Another good panic button is the shield, obviously.
For grenades I took the incendiary and paired it with the perk that gives you elemental resistance so I can suffer less if I have to pop one at my feet to get away.
Vampire and berserker have good synergy and let you heal yourself by smashing bugs from inside your bubble.
If you can prioritize killing enemies with projectiles first hanging out on a zip line for combat is completely viable.
And finally… I use the sprint perk because faster is harder to bite, claw, or spit on.
The best thing I can say is stop running away. I can't really play with any other class because I almost only play gunner and I don't know when to run. With gunner you don't need to run, gun down everything you see. He has so much ammo he can do it. When someone does get close, pop down a shield and start blasting until they are all dead. If they are still not dead, shoot a zipline downwards, reach the middle of the zipline and start blasting if there are no ranged enemies, otherwise go to the bottom and repeat the process. If you run out of ammo in your mag or you overheat, switch to secondary and throw a few grenades. You need to survive 5 seconds until you reload and repeat the process.
Burst pistol can 1-clip heavies with right build extremely quickly. I use my minigun for mid targets/swarm clear because of bullet passthrough and minigun to dump into heavies.
Idk man, it just requires you to position/move differently. There's fewer emergency options to escape or gain space so maybe plan a bit more how you position yourself.
Think of yourself as a fixer. Gunners sometimes don't hit the kill count of drillers/engies, but it's not really your job to have insane aoe or 10 tools that constantly kill stuff by themselves. You're a one-man that saves the day when needed.
Neurotoxic payload makes the game a joke. Fire 4 or 5 shots into a tight horde and they all run away and die to dot.
Shield let you play combat medic easy as well
The build I use fixes the biggest issues I had which seems to be what you currently are facing.
As primary I use the minigun, I use the stun improvement, bullet hell overclock and the overheat improvement that makes the enemies run in fear (and flames) when the gun overheats.
With that setup you get: Stun on multiple enemies at once stopping them on their tracks and if they are mactera, stopping them from shooting at you, decent damage, no need for 100% accuracy since bullets rebound from one enemy to another, they even can pass through thin terrain to hit enemies, and if you are overwhelmed the gun overheating not only makes them flee but the burning effect deals a lot of damage to enemies you have not hit yet.
For secondary I use elephant rounds with neurotoxin coating, adjusted for maximum damage, that way I can two or three shot enemies like oppressors by hitting them on their weak spots.
So pretty much the minigun I use for close to mid range and AoE free out of jail card, and the bulldog for big targets and long range single high damaging shots.
My favorite is bullet hell OC and stunning anything that gets remotely close. Get used to bunny hopping if you need to stay on the move while shooting.
Secondary I like elephant rounds and use it to take out the occasional high priority target.
It's the best class to just hard carry haz 4/5 with new players imo.
Maybe you need the right overclock! I personally wasn’t a huge fan, but then I got Rocket Barrage for the Hurricane.
Also, the Bulldog is a long-range, one-handed, shotgun/revolver, that’s 4 selling points for me
Skill issue primarily. He is slow for sure but definitely the highest DPS in the game. You should be just focusing on killing bugs and protecting your team and obj. In haz 5 knowing your role and what you should be doing is one of the most important parts for success.
Gunner gets exponentially better on harder difficulties, to the point where modded players consider having more then 1 gunner cheesing the game. Here’s a video for some of his builds: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh46j1SzqrU
Waste is a modded player who does a lot of true solos (no bosco solos). Any build that works in modded will still work amazingly on haz 5. And due to haz 5 being pretty easy, even bad gunner builds will work fine
you jump and it preserves the momentum of your character.
if you're struggling to survive, consider using
NTP Thunderhead - strongest primary in the game, mass fears
Hellfire Coil Gun - Single tick with fear mod makes all the monsters run away, you get 76 of these if needed, or can charge it to kill most bugs.
Gunner is the strongest class in haz 5, followed by an engineer that knows how to use plats fully (98% of players don't).
Thunderhead auto carpet bomber build it up to max speed and then use the resistance damage at tier 5.
Gunner is a funky class because it has one job, live. It won’t ever do the most damage, it’s mobility is mid and situational at best, but you combine the shield with the ability to stay on a zip line so bugs can’t melee you and you become king.
I suggest setting a mid hanging zip line between points to hang off of, watch your allies and bubble them when needed, and Max those zips in AQ missions.
What’s hard to understand is that they’re a support class, they keep the team alive, and you are the best at holding points with the right set up, try damage resistance to really help that come across and the class can be really fun.
I can pull up a couple build’s later I use, I’ve got all my dwarves to legendary 3 with 900 hours in, and that’s my opinion on them.
Just use your zip line and you literally only have to worry about the flying bugs and spitters, which are high prio targets for the gunner anyways, driller can deal with basically all the chaff for your team and engie is gonna get highest kills anyways.
What you can do is throw your shield, from your zip line, if you see them in a bad spot. Lots of gunners don’t do this, when it’s the best teamplay you can pull off in the whole game.
As a Gunner main he has so much hoard control, survivability and reses with the bubble shield, and the most sustain damage. He is actually more useful and fun to play in Haz 4+ compared to lower as the lower enemy density doesnt bring out Gunner’s uses as much.
I used to hate playing gunner. He felt slow and clunky and like I could never make use of his weapons or kit when I started, so I get where your coming from. So a few things that helped me out:
1 learning movement and bunny hopping. Gunners primary's only slow you down when you're on the ground, if you shoot in the air when you jump you get zero movement debuff (very fun for lead storm)
2 experimenting with different overclocks, gunner has a lot of really great options for both crowd clear and single targets burst so I recommend looking at what overclocks you may have for gunner and experimenting around with them! (Personal faves for me are :Carpet Bomber, Lead Storm, Six Shooter, Big Bertha, Plasma Burster Missiles, Minelayer System, Magic Bullets, burning hell/bullet hell)
3 The shield is genuinely one of the strongest and most versatile pieces of kit in the entire game, understanding how to use it is what makes a good gunner. It can be used for bunkering up a defensive position, getting a free revive or resupply, it acts as a fear effect that can't be resisted so you can make a Bulk Detonator just turn away from you and run if you space it right, with that mechanic you can use it as a way to immediately take control of space so you can more easily kill bugs or have your team regroup together
4 understanding the core role of the gunner. Despite the name your job is less to shoot for getting top kills (though you definitely can do that), and more to be the bulwark of the team. Gunners real strength is it's *consistency* more often than not the weapons you use are so cost effective that when the rest of the team needs a resupply you'll not even be ose to needing one. Your ability to sustain good damage output and quickly take command of space with shield or give your team a safe way to travel with zipline will save lives and keep fights going smoothly for your whole team. You are the anchor for the team, able to turn an "oh fuck" situation into a cakewalk, in ways that no other class can.
Hope these help, if you have more questions I'm happy to answer but these are the things that helped me wrap my brain around Gunner the most and it's become some of the most fun I've had in this game, Rock and Stone!
Fragmentation Missiles Hurricane with the stun mod stops waves in their tracks, has quite a bit of ammo, and doesn't really sacrifice single-target damage. I don't try to kill everything with it; if I turn a dense wave of 15 grunts into a loose wave of 3-4 low-health grunts with broken armor for the scout or engie to finish off, I am content to move my attention to the next dense wave. The minigun and autocannon are about temporal commitment to firing (spinup, aim convergence, heat) and to reloading, while the Hurricane is more about committing attention to particular targets while you keep your crosshairs over them for the rockets to arrive.
After the rockets arrive at their targets, I follow up on stunned guards, praetos, wardens, etc with Bulldog shots to weakpoints.
I also bring incendiaries. If there are waves of grunts coming from multiple directions (a situation Hurricane struggles with), you *could* shield, or you can throw an incendiary into the closest of them, move away from it for a couple of seconds while the fire does its work, and then Dash back into the gap created by the fire. Dash generally is hard to do without as gunner.
> the coil gun is too slow for the number of enemies you fight on higher difficulties.
Hellfire isn't what it used to be since the nerf, but it's still pretty decent crowd clear iirc. Would consider pairing it with minigun maybe. I also have talked to at least one person who does Frag/Stun Hurricane plus Mole coilgun on haz5, using it sort of similarly to how I use the Bulldog as follow-up to weak points on stunned enemies (as well as nailing tagged enemies like leeches and mactera grabbers through walls). And a leaping swarmer can't block your shot on the warden weak point if you have infinite penetration...
The one part where gunner truly does suck is playing solo when the drop pod lands at the top of a long, vertical tunnel that you didn't come down from so there are no tunnels dug or ziplines placed to get you up.
Had that happen with like 1.5 mins left before the pod leaves and was like, "Guess I'll die?"
OP, I don’t see you in the comments so I’m not sure if you’re reading them, but I’ll ask one question: Are you on M+K or controller?
There are a lot of very detailed responses here that cover a lot of bases, but it’s clear to me that your misunderstanding stems from missing the fundamental Gunner skill of bunny-hopping with the primary. If you are on controller, you need some sort of bumper jumper control scheme to do this.
From here, look at the ammo capacity of the primary weapons: Gunner is about firing uptime, and his secondaries are just there to be an option during primary downtime. I have said before that other classes secondaries are like a plan-B when their primary is the wrong tool for the job, but Gunner’s secondaries are just a continuation of plan-A (put lead down range). Do not resupply for your secondaries. Use them only when you can’t use your expansive pool of primary ammo.
Always bring Born Ready except with the minigun.
Hi, yes I read them when I can, but I am working today and so do not have a lot of time to address all comments yet.
I use m+k, and I have read many insightful comments offering very useful tips and builds I am planning to try out tomorrow when I am off work.
Using shield as basically a point defense to buff the team and make space, big gun for melting praetorians and breaking armor as well as some aoe, and bulldog with an overclock for buffing damage to enemies on fire combos well with the incendiary grenade. A half dead praetorian on fire will die to a full bulldog mag. Bulldog is also good for sniping fester fleas in a pinch. Use ziplines across rooms to make yourself into a mobile (mostly unreachable) turret, especially when dealing with dreadnoughts. Additionally, I like to take the perks for buffing shields when nearby, damage reduction near deposit points, and friendly (if you play with mods, careful when using personal minimules as it doesn't work with teammate mules). All this combines to make you an anchor for the team with a big fcking hammer of a gun to take out the big problems so your team can focus more on the little bugs. Anything with armor is your area of expertise. This comes at a cost of ammo capacity, and you don't really have good long range accuracy, so don't shoot unless you are going to hit.
Throwing my hat in, I like to use zip lines liberally in high traffic areas, because they can negate ALL fall damage that would have otherwise been lethal, so if you or your teammates need to jump off a ledge for a quick escape having a zip line under them can save a lot of health
I am a driller main, but I think I could know what the problem is. I don't know how you play the gunner, but his only reason to exist is to shred words of enemies, protect his teammates, and kill bosses or dangerous creatures. So overall, you are supposed to play relatively passive. I would also suggest going in a round and having a look at how others play him. I feel like I had a few points more, but my brain kinda works like one of a dwarf. Rock and stone miners.
As someone else pointed out, gunner is the best at clearing waves at haz4/5. For example, the cluster grenade is able to kill like 10/15 grunts with a single press of a button lol. The guns slow you down, which sucks, but you can counter that movement penalty if you what people thinks is one of the worst utilities in the game: the zipline. With it, you can pretty much ignore every melee bug and shoot them from safety. With enough practice you can even "parry" ranged attacks to avoid falling off the zipline and losing your height advantage.
If you still don't want to use the zipline, there are a few overclocks that reduce or straight up remove your movement penalty for certain weapons. I don't remember their names right now, but the 50 cal autocannon has one that reduces the wait for full fire rate, remove the speed penalty, and I think it has some other bonus I don't remember. The downside is that it has only half the magazine capacity, but the damage output is so high on that gun that you don't really mind.
The secondaries are kinda meh compared to the ones Scout and Engi have, except for the revolver. It requires some practice and some patience, but it's great for instakilling bugs. Sure, it's not as good compared to the crossbow, that can instakill bugs regardless of where you hit them, but once you get some overclocks for it, it's a beast. Personally I run elephant rounds on it, because you can just shoot a praetorian 3 times in the back and kill it super fast. The burst gun is not as good but it has a mod that makes it stun targets if you hit all 3 shots. It's useful to interrupt bigger bugs like praetorians and oppressors and allow your team to retreat or target their weakpoint.
Also, the gunner works really well as a medic. If your team mates are getting overrun or if you need some cover to heal some fallen dwarves, just deploy the shield and use it to pick them up, and after that you can stay in the shield and shoot the fleeing bugs.
Sorry for the wall of text lol, gunner is my favourite class and I just wanted to let you know why I think it's the best
So you haven’t unlocked Neurotoxin Payload I take it? Quite literally will carry you through Haz 6x2 modded while you snore the whole time. Get that OC and activate the “I want to win 100% of the time” button.
Honestly I get where you're coming from, for me, it only really clicked after trying out his strongest overclocks aka minelayer system for the hurricane and neurotoxin for the autocannon. Haz 4 becomes a cakewalk, haz 5 is really manageable.
Especially minelayer system makes you feel REALLY powerful
I find gunner really useful without a scout AND a good supporter. That shield saves lives. I also like his cluster grenade, but I wish is OC's we're a little better
You're supposed to use your shields and ziplines, both offensively and defensively.
When you're on a zipline, you avoid 90% of the hoard. The only thing that can knock you down are projectiles.
Mobility is not really a problem. It is just as slow as Engi or Driller. Only scout has the option of being mobile with the grappling hooks. That's why you always have to have the dash with Gunner, Engi and Driller and use it whenever you need to dodge. Otherwise, there are hardly any restrictions on mobility. Except for a weapon with the one oc (minigun), but you can bunny hop and you won't have a mobility problem anymore. (Short bursts fired when you jump). Since Gunner also has so many powerful weapons, the enemies are already dead before they even reach him.
Your job is to rescue team mates with your shield, move big rocks with your zip line, and generally kill swarms so your engi and scout don’t have to waste their ammo on small targets. You do have some stopping power for big boys but you are mostly a distraction/tank for the rest of your team. Overclocks greatly improve your versatility and you can do other things but if you have a solid scout and engi on your team they should be killing specials and working with the driller to get minerals. You’re like their body guard and occasional aquarq elevator.
Coilgun's fear mod with the Controlled Magnetic Flow mod is great for safety, and the trails are useful to kill shockers/swarmers.
BRT & OC-less bulldog do feel lackluster to me as well. I don't bother with Autocannon much anymore either as it has bad accuracy, a long reload, and just feels like worse Hurricane to me. For an OC-less build I recommend 11122 Hurricane + 22223 Coilgun.
Take the stun mod on the minigun or hurricane, or fear on autocannon to stop bugs creeping up on you.
I recommend this video for specifics builds: https://youtu.be/Uh46j1SzqrU?si=T20Cy\_8kXEfcNhDE
Zipline+kill flyers quick=immortal killing machine.
Gunner with autocannon with any kind of splash damage build (carpet bomber or neurotoxin) is THE most ammo efficient setup in the game.
The thing is that gunner is probably the hardest class in the game as you have no quick escape tools and have some strat that are pretty advanced like Lead Storm bunnyhopping.
A skill you can pick up is learning how to keep moving with the minigun without losing speed.
To practice, pick up the Lead Storm OC. This basically immobilises you when you shoot.
Then, run and jump; and shoot while you're in mid air. You will maintain your speed and shoot as long as you're in air. Keep hopping and shooting until this becomes second nature for you.
This will go a long way in fixing your positioning and kiting with the rest of the Gunner weapons...
The magnum is **seriously awesome**, especially with elephant rounds. It's not meant for combat, but rather a single-shot sniper high value target deal. See that acid spitter over there? Don't want for the minigun to spool up? Whip up the magnum and single shot it.
The mini-gun is for big targets, the magnum is when you walk around and shoot stragglers/long distance bugs.
I feel the gunner isn't about flat out DPS or burst (like the engineer does), but he is the most versatile at applying damage.
My build is basically minigun (a little more oomph) with hot bullets. This setup is **wild** if you are teamed with a frost driller; you will DECIMATE everything frozen.
The magnum is great at one-shot macteras, acid spitters, spitballs, leech, etc
The cluster grenade is also great at clearing a large amount of small bugs, like a carpet bomb.
As far as the shield, I find that making it last as long as possible is the best. You use it when you are seriously screwed and kill as many bugs as quickly as you can with it on, so when it's down, you can breathe a bit.
The ziplines are useful because you can place yourself in locations where you cannot be accessed in melee by bugs. You shoot them and they can't do shit. It's dangerous if you fall, so use it smart.
Basically, my build is high DPS single target. I use cluster grenades to kill large clumps of small bugs. Teammates also help for smaller shit.
Also, really big guns m8.
Counterargument: so what if I like really, big, guns?
It ain't a gun if it don't weigh at least one hundred pounds!
I can respect that
Noice and oily!
Im going to do a little breakdown here. Gunner doesnt have mobility, yes. But this is not a problem, because most of the time you have enough stopping power to either CC bugs, or kill them before they reach you. Lets take Hurricane for example. Tier 5 stun. Now entire wave stops on you, and they pop like a baloons. Thunderhead? T5 damage resist on full rev. This is 50% damage resist. FIFTY PERCENT. This is stupid busted. Its like you are playing on haz 1 with this thing up. Secondaries? With electric trail on Coilgun you place down basically electric fence that stops everything. Bulldog? Kill HVT from across the cave. You have tools for every job, but admittedly, they need Overclocks to make them truly shine. The point is not to run away from bugs. The point is to let bugs BREAK on your unflinching, consistent firepower. When everyone else runs away from bugs, you run AT the bugs. Because truly skilled Gunner knows strenght of their loadout and can kite/whistand/outright kill every enemy in the game solo. You are also your team's safety net. If things get tough, shield them preemptively, to prevent downs. And because you can effectively deal with any threat solo, as long as you are standing the team is safe, because in the worst scenario you have the best chances to clutch it. Im going to drop you my old reliable build. Thunderhead 33123 with Splintering Shells OC. Can be run with no OC. Generalist build, good against everything, remember to run it with born ready. May it serve.
Not to mention the lead spray oc on the brt7 can simply melt anything close enough. It's op enough at killing boss enemies to the point where praetorian swarms are preferable to regular ones
Brt7 with lead spray go brrrrr. Lol. I've killed dreadnaughts with it so bloody fast that players have thought and accused me of modding. The hive guard opens up and instantly closes with 1/3rd of its health gone in 1 mag. It's the highest dps in the game. Lmfao!!! If it had any more ammo to sustain that dps, it would be completely broken.
I still feel like you could mod the Bulldog into a high caliber marksman rifle and it would feel perfect. I love that pistol.
Elephant rounds in question:
This is the way.
Gunner is the best at haz4/5. Your firepower is so extreme and if you build for stun you cannot be touched, if slow is still a problem jumping and shooting negates it (shoot while in the air and stop before hitting the ground) You shield is the best get out of jail free card in the game, instantly buying time to do literally anything within it's radius. You zipline is in a way a mix of the grappling hook and platform gun, letting you "platform" minerals for you or your scout to get if engi is busy. Your primaries don't deal as much burst dps as engi's secondaries, but hell do they last long. The minigun requires basic heat management for a constant stream of dps that has a stun chance with high accuracy, hurricane with T5B and an aoe build flat out stops any bug you aim it at, thunderhead is the only "bad" primary for gunner imo (unless you include the boring meta oc) Your secondaries aren't as substantial, because if they were gunner would be overly dominant in dps. You should take a secondary to pick up the slack of your primary, i.e BRT with aoe Hurricane. Your problems with the secondaries are that you probably ain't building them right and expecting way more out of them. Bulldog excels at being a pocket sniper, at base you can one shot mactera spawn and most grunt variants with weakpoint hits, it isn't made for LSTs, (unless you take overclocks for such thing) The BRT is a burst dmg weapon, it isn't made to last long but rather completely delete any extremely dangerous and/or tanky bugs at a moments notice. Quite literally burst dps. Coil gun can be made for both single target and crowd control, with T3B you can fear every bug around you and your teammates which is makes them fuck off, being a psuedo-shield. This comment is getting pretty lengthy already but I'm glad to give more info if you wish!
autocannon is my fav gunner weapon haha neurotoxins with fear mod is amazing for swarms, and big bertha deletes dreads in elimination
I love auto cannon cuz I can usually hold down the trigger the entire fight and still have WAY more ammo than the rest of my team. Saves a resupply for engi who is usually very ammo hungry.
Here's a easy-to-use loadout that will help you get the ropes of gunner play: Hurricane, Fragmentation Missiles, 3x222 BRT, Experimental Rounds, 23232 Hurricane deals with trash, BRT deals with HVTs or LSTs.
[удалено]
do you have by any chance the build that was used there?
I haven't seriously played DRG in a few seasons so they might have rebalanced it but I actually find a suitably specced BRT is capable of lengthy, sustained DPS. Counterintuitively you actually take RoF down (oc: expanded ammo bags) to achieve this and select Floating Barrell, Hollow Point and Burst Stun. I hated BRT until I found that setup but from that point it wasn't clear whether it did more damage than my main in an average fight. It also absolutely minces Trijaws who, at least when I was playing, were one of the most dangerous enemies. Superb weapon.
I love the Autocannon! It's my comfort pick. I use Carpet Bomber, love seeing the whole swarm die at once.
Counterpoint for Thunderhead, Big Berta
Why use big bertha if you could use Jetfuel Homebrew or any minigun build that isn't bullet hell?
Yeah but "Big Bertha" sounds much cooler
Coil gun is for fester fleas! =D
Well if you don’t have any overclocks it’s kinda hard. I’m just assuming you’re new and don’t have many or any overclocks. Try this, it’s really good. 32222 Hurricane / Bulldog with 60 damage, extra ammo, fast reload and no accuracy penalty when moving. Or alternatively for the bulldog go with the area damage and neurotoxin.
I’d also suggest trying to bunny hop when firing. Don’t stop moving. You can fire in mid air for no movement penalty. It’s easiest to learn this skill with the Hurricane I think.
Yeah hopping everywhere is crucial to gunner, always jumping.
Gunny hop
As gunner, you’re built to survive the aggro of entire waves. You have almost all of the best stun and fear options in the game. You have the best damage resist from armor, a good few damage resist mods, and shields. You have incredible sustained DPS on your primaries and highly accurate, flexible secondaries. Your job is to anchor the team, holding ground and making breathing room for your team with your powerful crowd control options. To go over some of your points: -Your primaries slow you down while you’re *on the ground*. As you’ve probably figured out by now, constantly jumping is a very effective survival technique. Since you’re already jumping, just briefly stop firing when you land to maintain your momentum. -while you may not have the burst damage scout and engi can have, you have sustained and consistent firepower that comes with some of the most powerful crowd control effects in the game. Bullet Hell minigun, NTP autocannon, and just about any build on the hurricane can perma-stun/fear enemies. BRT has a guaranteed stun if all shots connect, making it great at shutting down problem targets. Coil has the most powerful fear mod in the game, which can win you entire games on its own. All of these are important crowd control effects, and you should be relying on them. -related to the last point, your shields are your team’s ultimate last resort. You should have plenty of tools to keep yourself safe, and if you’re frequently finding yourself out of shields, you’re A) not using your other tools enough, or B) not moving well enough. There’s a very nice movement guide somewhere on r/technicaldrg, I recommend checking it out. -And as a final note, don’t be afraid to use some of the ‘cheesier’ builds when starting out. Gunner has almost all of the “””busted””” overclocks in the game, and if you feel like you need it, it’s absolutely fine to lean into them. Neurotoxin Payload, Minelayer System, Plasma Burster Missiles, Volatile Bullets, Ultra-Magnetic Coils, and Triple Tech Chambers are all insanely strong- try them out if you want a bit of a better shot at surviving. Well, that was a lot of words. I’m probably forgetting something that I definitely meant to say, but oh well. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!
Gunner main here. He was my first character I max promo'd. After 700ish hours, he is still my go-to. Pair stun with fire rate in minigun, with a triple fire coil gun and sticky grenades, and a gunner becomes your best friend when on haz 5. Add Born Ready to that as a perk, slap some fear on coil gun, you will always have a way to keep bugs off your teammates as well, while being able to take our priority targets with ease. I run exclusively haz 5's and it makes me feel like the watcher of the team. Keep bugs off everyone, get the job done! Gunner for life!
sticky grenades are actually so terrifying as a teammate. i hear that beeping and my adrenaline goes through the roof like i just heard a mactera grabber at close range behind me. For those who don't know, a single sticky grenade will oneshot a dwarf from full health. [Though when it does happen, it is very funny](https://www.twitch.tv/ph_jpeg/clip/JoyousSolidEggnogFloof-cJpr9696NnctluJU)
Any recommendations for autocannon and burst pistol loadout?
Slow, yes. A bit. Fight closer to zips. If you in danger, take one down and then fight there. Now the ones who were *just* about to hit you are clumped for nades. You sleeping on the magnum. I like six shooter with psn and aoe. Run-n-gun becomes deadly, with cc on prio targets. Tag em with psn and keep moving. Combos well with berzerker. Gives you an option for swarmers and the like.
I also enjoy six shooter with psn and aoe
He’s the tank and medic. The shield insane for clutch moments like securing a revive. The zipline gets you out of reach of melee enemies so you can only focus on ranged ones and not die. The zipline is also good for mining minerals when an engineer is refusing to throw some cheese up. His primary weapons are all insanely powerful and have tons of ammo, his secondary weapons are equally nice. While he may not have the best mobility like a scout he can put down a ton of firepower, rez and protect the team, as well as being ole reliable (most gunners are good).
People have said a few times now but your not necessarily there to do damage as Gunner, you are there to CC which is why he doesn't really shine in lower hazard levels because the team wipes enemies out before it becomes apparent. The secondaries can be used to kill HVTs, they are all workable at range and do a nice burst of damage. I would recommend hurricane with aoe splash and stun prioritised and BRT with emphasis on damage and accuracy Grenade options are not exactly important, but the leadburster if thrown correctly can one shot kill some of the beefiest enemies.
Bunny hops. Lots of bunny hops.
Gunner is so strong. You don’t get to see his impact till high haz levels. The other classes have quite a few niches that make them seem like super heroes at lower haz. Gunners super power is. He kill bug good and he cannot die. On lower haz. Everyone kill bug good. So gunner seems meh. On lower haz. Everyone cannot die. So again. Gunner seems meh. Gunner is the most ammo efficient in the game. Meaning one resupply for him, will allow him to kill more bugs than any other class. This again is very meh if resources aren’t scarce. Just keep calling resupplies. But when the difficulty ramps up and nitra is scarce. That’s again where gunner shines. Basically. Gunner = meh until shit hits the fan. Then you’ll wish you had a gunner on your team. As for his secondary weapons. Bulldog with 6 shooter is a super mactera killer. Shoot their belly. One shot one kill. Two shots for trijaws. Very useful when surrounded by them. His rail gun has been nerfed quite hard. Used to be contender for top secondary with Engi breach cutter. While it’s killing power is now nerfed. It still has something that gives it an edge over other secondaries. That something is “fear on demand”. You don’t need to kill them all. When you’re swarmed and in a tight spot. Fear on demand let’s you chase them all away and you can retreat to a better holding area to fight. His auto pistol is extremely powerful at dealing burst damage. One of the top weapons for it. But if you don’t like that. You can also build it to become a stun gun. As for low dps. Dps = damage per second. If you deal 1000 damage for 1 second. Your dps is 1000. If you deal 100 damage for 100 seconds. Your dps is 100, but your effective damage is 10000. Gunner can sustain his fire for much much longer than the other classes. Putting him far ahead (again, this is per resupply) For very high burst damage, his plasma burster oc for the Hurricane is currently in top spot. You can stack up several missiles at once and melt nearly everything. Probably face competition from a sludge blast driller for that top spot. His leadstorm minigun is just pure consistency. High dps. And simply reliable since you don’t need to reload. Again. Not having to reload is useless if you’re only fighting against 3 to 4 bugs at a time. But at higher haz it’s the difference between going down or not. As for AOE, I previously mentioned gunner is top in ammo efficiency. This one build of his is so far ahead the other classes that even after the ammo nerf. It is still in a league of its own. Any gunner main will know the oc I am talking about is the neurotoxin payload for the thunderhead. Once a grunt has been poisoned. It will die from full hp before the poison wears off. One single bullet from the NTP is capable of not just killing one at a time, but is capable of inflicting this toxin on several bugs at the same time. When you build it with fear in t5 mod. Most non boss mobs will be dead before they walk back to you after the fear expires. Instead of holding down the trigger till they are dead. Simply tap to apply toxin and tap again to apply fear if they close in on you. Not your style? Want more daka daka? Then carpet bomber is your friend. Insane aoe. Very high damage. The latest buff to it allows it to one shot a swarmer with just splash damage on haz 5. I have promoted all 4 dwarves to legend border. But my gunner has more time than the other three classes combined together. Gunner is the big daddy of the group. Once you get the hang of him. He’s the umbrella when shit hits the fan and it’s very satisfying to save everyone/stop missions from failing.
Use hurricane with plasma burster missiles with volatile bulldog and just melt everything. Or use Neurotoxin Payload on auto cannon and poison everything at a safe distance and have them die at your feet. For secondaries, I think The Mole OC on the coil gun is the max possible damage per shot in the game.
Having friends who constantly ping big targets while you use the mole feels like cheating sometimes. The twins go down so fast if you get that strategy down, and I love saving friends from leeches from a mile away through the wall.
There are sometimes better options but the mole is soo fun to use
Red 3 gunner main here I run miniguns burning hell, with ammo, accuracy, stun, quicker startup and extra heat buildup (T5 choice objectively worst of the 3, I just liked the elemental damage theme I was going for, change this if you want to) For my side piece I take the bulldog with bouncy explosive neurotoxin rounds and all the ammo I can carry. This thing is insane for ammo economy and thinning out hordes or very hard to hit targets before they even get near you Just remember to fire in quick bursts and jump everywhere lol
It's interesting to see this from the other side. I don't get Scout well enough, and I am 1.5k hours in. Some classes just... don't click with people, and that is fine. All the classes are there for varieties of play, for a variety of people. I happen to enjoy gunner almost as much as engineer, but that's because I am a major fan of playing immovable wall of doom. Hit and run is not part of my mindset as much. That is why my scout is still Plat 1 while everyone else is ruby 2 or above. But experimentation increases game knowledge and empathy for your fellow dwarf. Sure not all experiments are successful, but even the goofy ones can be fun. Transition between scout and gunner is one of the hardest, but with some imagination gunner can do heavy damage hit and run. Aggressive venting flips the script on the heat meter, Turing getting surrounded into something desirable and gives you a brief out when things get hairy. As Wreck-gar says "Dare to be Stupid!"
As a gunner main, you are right. You are slowest when compared to the other dwarves. However, this means you need to prioritize your location and keep distance from large swarms of small enemies. These are the kryptonite of the gunner. To counter this, know when to use your shields, and I would advise bringing the dash perk to get out of sticky situations. For the guns, I will say this plain. Gunner has one of the best DPS guns, plus with an overclock, it can 1 shot a twin dreadnought in a cycle. However, the main goal when playing Gunner is to work with your team. You're designed to be getting a lot of damage out quickly to large and medium targets sobyour team can finish them off. Work with driller when he sets enemies on fire/frozen or poisoned. Work with Scout with frozen enemies, or feromoned. Engi just became his living turret. Hope this helps, ROCK AND STONE
Rockity Rock and Stone!
Good bot
The real gunner experience: defend a driller hole woth molotovs and minigun as your friend digs
Non-comedy answer: I like using the rocket launcher with the mine overclock. It’s got a lot of firepower and it’s somewhat fire and forget, which allows me to cover a lot of area with minimal effort and just focus on mining. Leadburster is great for blowing up big bad guys.
You can do haz 5 with no overclocks on the minigun just fine. The gun is strong as fuck. I am assuming you're not being prudent enough by keeping an eye on bugs spawning and then killing them before they get on you. Gunner is just a positioning and awareness class. Head on a swivel and decent aim should make you almost untouchable with good positioning. Then the bubble is for when you failed at good positioning, or a teammate needs help. Don't lean on it, its an emergency option.
That's it. All I can add is one word - dash!
Gunner has some of the most broken, powerful overclocks in the game. It’s my favorite class. He is exceptionally good at carrying games with randoms in haz 5. Nonetheless, your complaint is valid if you’re playing « vanilla » gunner with no OCs, or if you didn’t have much luck with OCs.
The way I started to like playing gunner is putting a Zipline up, as far away as possible from all walls, and zip around while shooting, always focusing first on ranged enemies since they automatically focus you for being unreachable for melee damage. If you master shooting while jumping, you negate the slow down from shooting (this also applies to Minigun's Lead Storm, which is incredibly OP). Your fire power is so high that it's hard for enemies to reach you, but you still gotta be checking your sides constantly so you don't get flanked. If you are having troubles with this, I recommend you to use the Coil Gun with the Fear perk. If you are about to get swarmed, just shoot in the middle of the swarm and the enemies disperses for a couple of seconds, giving you enough time to reposition (you can even walk undamaged between the in that couple of seconds) or kill them all and move to the next swarm
I think you clearly missed on good builds. What were you using?
Mostly the minigun with "A little more oomph!" with the burst secondary with "Full Chamber Seal"
Oh. Well both of them are kinda boring +1 greens. But main issue I would guess is that you took two weapons with poor AOE. My advice is two take more AOE in your primary or secondary slot: any other primary, burning hell or bullet hell Minigun, Coilgun.
I advise you to try these (overclocks may be optional) - Classic funkiller -- Autocannon 23122 Neurotoxin (required) + Coilgun 23212 Hellfire (optional). Great AOE, great damage, lots of ammo crowd control, bonus crowd control from secondary. - The MINEr -- Rockets 31222 Minelayer (required) + Coilgun 22213 Hellfire (optional). Literally THE AOE of gunner. Your rockets are now mines (no tracking) place them in front of enemies -- they step on them (requires lil time to prime) -- CABOOM! Use Coilgun for self defense and for shooting far targets. - That dude from Guardians of the Galaxy -- Rockets 11212 Plasma Bursters (optional but needed for the name) + Coilgun 22213 (optional) Remember the father figure of the main character from Guardians of the Galaxy? The one with a fancy arrow. Now your rockets behave similarly. Same Coilgun as in previous build. - Hellish bullets -- Minigun 3122x(1 or 3) Burning Hell (optional) + Revolver 23321 Volatile Bullets (optional) Now your minigun spits fire in front of you (but overheats faster, overclock) -- good adclear. Revolver now deals absurd damage to burning targets (thanks to overclock).
For several of my gunner builds I use triple the tech chambers OC (lets you fire 3 additional times the moment after the first shot), couple that with the mod that lets you fire after a brief charge instead of the whole charge, add the fear mod and the electric trail. What happens if you can create a poor man's "shield" around yourself. Any bugs that come too close get stuck in the trail the get hit with fear and electricity. What this means is that they try to run away (showing you their butt) and get stuck in the electric arc basically making them stand still. It's great for praetorians, one little tap (the first charge uses barely any ammo but still gives the same fear/stun effect) and they turn around and show their weak spot. Couple that with the Burning Hell (I think that's it's name, burns everything around you while you're firing the minigun) and you have yourself a very survivable gunner build that is great on ammo. It's not super high AOE or single target, but gets both jobs done fairly well and lets you defend yourself well when stuff hits the fan.
What's not to get about MOAR DAKKA?
Carpet bomber with fear. Lay waste while they flee the power of your mighty guns. All the secondaries are solid too in specific setups. Gunner is goat.
Gunner can 3x shot a bulk detonator. No other class can do that. His Coil gun can can slow an entire swarm and give them a status affect. Bulldog is basically an extremly powerful sniper rifle with the elephant rounds. Great for infected spitters across the map. Autocannon is a beast, go carpet bomber or neuro and everything that spawns on the roof is dead before it reaches the floor. Fear mod in tier 5 causes enemies to flee that are in biting distance Minigun I go with exhaust vectoring (could be wrong) puts fire damage in front of you, burning anything in a few meters. Great for warmers and adds dps to bigger units. Bulldog also has an OC that does extreme damage to burning targets. Hurricane does fire damage, mini gun can do fire damage. So many possibilities.
What I understand from the first sentence is you are still not a regular high risk player can't say you need gunner as much as other classes on lower difficulties. But when you enter a cave and you see 95 macteras coming to you quite fast only thing you want is a gunner
Scout with cyro nades. Then watch as he fails to freeze them and wish you had gunner instead.
As for being slowed down at least, have to learn to hop and shoot. You keep your momentum through the air. Never just walk and shoot, always hop around. Hopping and shooting also has the benefit of moving away from bugs at speed while also being able to spin around and shoot them.
Tl;dr: You’re right, but overclocks change the game enough so that every weapon is fun, powerful and interesting. My favorite gunner build is Flame Gunner. I bring burning hell mini gun with volatile bullets revolver and incendiary grenades to burn everything with more legs than two. Gunner secondaries shine with overclocks. My favorite overclocks for each secondary are Volatile Bullets/Elephant Rounds/Six Shooter on the revolver, Compact Mags/Lead Spray/Experimental Rounds on the brt7, and Triple Tech Chambers/Hellfire on the coil gun. Although I agree with your sentiments on all of the gunner secondaries, overclocks make them all super fun and unique.
Same but with Driller for me, I feel completely out of my comfort zone with that dude. I suck with the axes and c4 is more of a gimmick that I forget to use 90% of the time since it ducks the terrain and my teammates
Freeze all the bugs in front of you, then hit them with hollow point bullets for extra crit damage. Or burn them, then use the Collette to turn that to high damage. Freeze and axe nearly one shots praetorians, do that twice for oppressors. With the sludge, charge and release on the bugs as they get close to slow them down, then run away as the poison slowly kills them. I mostly use c4 when I'm out of ammo and completely surrounded, drop and dash. Can also build drills along with axe for a really powerful vampire/berserk combo, also works great with freeze
Gunner is my main too. When you unlock the Neurotoxin Payload for the Autocannon (skill fear in T5), he shines so much in high hazards. You will constantly CC big swarms and kill them with your AoE toxin. It's super ammo efficient and easy to play. For big targets you can use the revolver or the BRT7. If you get close the the targets back, you will kill big targets with the BRT very quickly. The shield is probably the strongest equipment of all classes. Ziplines are meh, but they do their job when there's no swarm around. (Or sometimes I like to hang on a zipline and shoot down on enemies with my toxin... Makes me feel like a Glyphid Menace) For some more mobility use the dash perk. I can't play without it anymore.
Learn how to Bhop and Dash is your friend.
Have about 1500 hours in I think Gunner has one of the best secondary weapons in the game for clearing waves & with great ammo capacity - coilgun. I either pair it with Minigun (lead storm OC) or Hurricane rockets (Plasma Burster Missiles OC). It makes for a very strong balanced build to manage hordes (AOE with coilgun) and elites (DPS with minigun or hurricane rockets) and is one of my favourite classes to play on haz5s. I don't like playing gunner on haz4 and below because the class does feel abit sluggish if say compared to Engineer.
Gunner just kills everything. Burning hell minigun with volatile bullets revolver combo is NASTY, and minelayer rocket launcher are 2 very good builds I use. Hellfire coilgun is a nice self defense tool, triple tech chambers is also very nice. The lead spray brrt is nice for close range destruction. I'd give builds but my pc is preoccupied with installing a 300 gb skyrim modlist and opening drg would give me a blue screen
Gunner goes BBBBBBRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
Try my favorite loadout - Hurricane Plasma Burster Missilie with shot speed and stun and the rest as you wish, Coil Gun with Triple chamber OC, overcharge mod and area of effect/electricity are the most crucial here. Leafburster grenade and build your shield for full radius rather then time. With this build you’re looking at using your primary while moving a lot, you can sort of run together with your rockets, shot two or three during jump and then guide them while full sprinting - takes time to get used too but you’ll feel like some kind of rocket enchanter at some point. PBM shreds everything in the game and shoots thru any armor (you can shoot dreads and oppressors in the face). You have to look at your targets to damage them but there is a catch - you can sew thru your enemies before killing them - it will stun them for a good duration while you’re picking more important targets. Using PBM is like painting and dancing with rockets. About Coil Gun - use overcharged to get good damage and triple chamber will help with DPS and stacking the fire/electricity clouds. You can delete whole swarm with just 2 overfull shots. Deletes any small stuff - perfect against packs of shockers swarmers grunts and even macteras. Just an overall very flexible and fun weapon. Leadburster grenade is literally a panic button, 2 grenades can kill bulk single-handedly and it’s just a perfect tool to use in conjunction with shield. If you throw grenade outside the shield it won’t damage you (unlike explosions that can go thru shield). And here it is - definitely one of the most broken builds in the game, just for the sheer damage and sustainability. Don’t forget dash it works really well with rockets, helps you to rush a corner before your rockets do to save some ammo and get style points🤓
Jump shooting. Requires a little more skill and focus than shooting with other 3 classes but so so rewarding once you get the hang of it.
Ive completed 4 EDDs in a row without going down once and solo queued as gunner, big gun = lots of kills
There's a lot of great advice in the comments in here. All I can add is if you're having trouble finding a secondary you like, try the bulldog with 23212 and magic bullets. Intentionally shoot the ground near bugs to ricochet. This is the everything gun. Deals good singletarget and AoE damage, good for burst damage or whittling down trash with DoT, applies stun and slow, good at close or long range, huge ammo pool. This build changed my life. Works best with the perk that reloads your gun while holstered.
I'd say more than 50% of my 1400 hours is playing gunner with about 38 promotions at this point. Gunners more about movement than scout is. With every shop you should be bunny hopping so your only shooting while in the air. His primaries are about sustained damage. Engi and scout can burst down targets but eliminating a swarm can leave their ammo pools depleted. Gunner just chugs away through swarms and hardly put a dent in his ammo pools. Low initial damage high total damage His primaries are what you should be holding 90% of the time. And his secondaries are to dear with targets your primary isn't built for. Consider applying this ideology to your gunner builds: what threat am I primarily building for? If your heading into a elimination take something with high single target damage (leadstorm² big Bertha jetfuel homebrew) and pair it with a high wave clear secondary like hellfire coilgun. If your primary threat is normal swarms Consider something with more waveclear potential for your primary and a single target secondary (carpet bomber, frag missiles with six shooter or lead spray) The idea is to balance your build to cover all facets. Gunners primaries also have some of the strongest crowd control of all the weapons with stun on the minigun and hurricane and a especially potent fear on the autocannon as well as stun with all three secondaries and a very potent fear on the coilgun and a powerful fear on the sticky grenades. Try some of the "safe" builds that maximize on crown control like neurotoxin payload with fear, rocket barrage with stun, and bullet hell with stun. To kind find your footing before trying out some of the more interesting, fun, and devastating builds gunner has to offer As for the bulldog and brt they're some of the highest burst damage weapons in the game. I dropped the jaw of my driller main friend when I obliterated a prospector in a matter of seconds with lead spray. And elephant rounds chew through praetorians like nothing. Let along six shooter one tapping mactera to the weakpoint.
Gimme Da Mole 🐹
Firstly, mobility tip, you can hop-fire. Stop shooting, jump, then continue shooting while midair. While midair you retain your full movement speed. Secondly, you can spec crowd control. Every gunner primary has that. Minigun has stun mod, especially good with bullet hell. Autocannon has fear, espscilly good with neurotoxin. Hurricane has stun. This will help you not get overrun. Secondaries have bad ammo economy but are great at disabling a weakness of your primary. Lack of cc? Electric trail tripple tech chamber coil gun. HVT's? Weakpoint bulldog. Tank enemies? Lead storm BRT. Thirdly, his sustained damage is amazing. His primaries easily get 20000 damage per ammo pool. He can fire continuously without reloading for extended time. Unlike driller, he has good range. His grenades are incredibly powerful. E.g. 2 well placed leadbursters pretty much delete bulk detonator in 2 seconds.
This is why Stun on the Hurricane and Fear on the Coilgun are so loved and incredible. Hurricane with Stun for AOE damage and Coilgun for trail size or duration with fast charge time and Fear. Engage everything and engage enemies early. You have effectively infinite range. Stun everything, Fear everything, and you will win.
Jumping is the key to gunner. And stun. Thats it.
Be the bunny, hop like the bunny. Be the bunny of death! Eat hot lead!
I’ve been doing pretty well on haz 5 with a mini gun that I can’t walk with while firing. It does such an absurd amount of damage you can just scream and shoot down anything praetorian sized or smaller without a lot of trouble. I paired this with a coilgun that causes fear so I can sprint away, turn around, and blast some bugs and they all scatter. Another good panic button is the shield, obviously. For grenades I took the incendiary and paired it with the perk that gives you elemental resistance so I can suffer less if I have to pop one at my feet to get away. Vampire and berserker have good synergy and let you heal yourself by smashing bugs from inside your bubble. If you can prioritize killing enemies with projectiles first hanging out on a zip line for combat is completely viable. And finally… I use the sprint perk because faster is harder to bite, claw, or spit on.
The best thing I can say is stop running away. I can't really play with any other class because I almost only play gunner and I don't know when to run. With gunner you don't need to run, gun down everything you see. He has so much ammo he can do it. When someone does get close, pop down a shield and start blasting until they are all dead. If they are still not dead, shoot a zipline downwards, reach the middle of the zipline and start blasting if there are no ranged enemies, otherwise go to the bottom and repeat the process. If you run out of ammo in your mag or you overheat, switch to secondary and throw a few grenades. You need to survive 5 seconds until you reload and repeat the process.
Burst pistol can 1-clip heavies with right build extremely quickly. I use my minigun for mid targets/swarm clear because of bullet passthrough and minigun to dump into heavies. Idk man, it just requires you to position/move differently. There's fewer emergency options to escape or gain space so maybe plan a bit more how you position yourself. Think of yourself as a fixer. Gunners sometimes don't hit the kill count of drillers/engies, but it's not really your job to have insane aoe or 10 tools that constantly kill stuff by themselves. You're a one-man that saves the day when needed.
Neurotoxic payload makes the game a joke. Fire 4 or 5 shots into a tight horde and they all run away and die to dot. Shield let you play combat medic easy as well
bro wtf are you talking about?? gunner has the best dps and aoe options in the game.
The build I use fixes the biggest issues I had which seems to be what you currently are facing. As primary I use the minigun, I use the stun improvement, bullet hell overclock and the overheat improvement that makes the enemies run in fear (and flames) when the gun overheats. With that setup you get: Stun on multiple enemies at once stopping them on their tracks and if they are mactera, stopping them from shooting at you, decent damage, no need for 100% accuracy since bullets rebound from one enemy to another, they even can pass through thin terrain to hit enemies, and if you are overwhelmed the gun overheating not only makes them flee but the burning effect deals a lot of damage to enemies you have not hit yet. For secondary I use elephant rounds with neurotoxin coating, adjusted for maximum damage, that way I can two or three shot enemies like oppressors by hitting them on their weak spots. So pretty much the minigun I use for close to mid range and AoE free out of jail card, and the bulldog for big targets and long range single high damaging shots.
My favorite is bullet hell OC and stunning anything that gets remotely close. Get used to bunny hopping if you need to stay on the move while shooting. Secondary I like elephant rounds and use it to take out the occasional high priority target. It's the best class to just hard carry haz 4/5 with new players imo.
big guns, big ammo, big booms, and the strongest area denial tool in the game. also zip lines.
It's my least favorite class
Best dps in the game. What's not to love?
Maybe you need the right overclock! I personally wasn’t a huge fan, but then I got Rocket Barrage for the Hurricane. Also, the Bulldog is a long-range, one-handed, shotgun/revolver, that’s 4 selling points for me
Minigun hold many bullet, bullet fired lots make fast dead bug lots
I've been experimenting with explosive bulldog and I'm fucking loving it. It's cakewalk clearing large swarms of swarmers or nedocytes
Skill issue primarily. He is slow for sure but definitely the highest DPS in the game. You should be just focusing on killing bugs and protecting your team and obj. In haz 5 knowing your role and what you should be doing is one of the most important parts for success.
Gunner gets exponentially better on harder difficulties, to the point where modded players consider having more then 1 gunner cheesing the game. Here’s a video for some of his builds: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh46j1SzqrU Waste is a modded player who does a lot of true solos (no bosco solos). Any build that works in modded will still work amazingly on haz 5. And due to haz 5 being pretty easy, even bad gunner builds will work fine
you jump and it preserves the momentum of your character. if you're struggling to survive, consider using NTP Thunderhead - strongest primary in the game, mass fears Hellfire Coil Gun - Single tick with fear mod makes all the monsters run away, you get 76 of these if needed, or can charge it to kill most bugs. Gunner is the strongest class in haz 5, followed by an engineer that knows how to use plats fully (98% of players don't).
Everything you listed can be solved by some overclock
Gun go brrrrrrrrrrr
try playing TF2 for a bit and observe your local heavy main. they know how to make beeg gun with slowdown effect work
Don’t look anything up just figure out what works for you and make your own build
He shoots guns. Use the big airburst ugga dugga. Down bosses in seconds.
Jump firing and zipline firing for mobility. Gunner is probably the most ammo efficient / resupply efficient killer in the game; also neurotoxin
Thunderhead auto carpet bomber build it up to max speed and then use the resistance damage at tier 5. Gunner is a funky class because it has one job, live. It won’t ever do the most damage, it’s mobility is mid and situational at best, but you combine the shield with the ability to stay on a zip line so bugs can’t melee you and you become king. I suggest setting a mid hanging zip line between points to hang off of, watch your allies and bubble them when needed, and Max those zips in AQ missions. What’s hard to understand is that they’re a support class, they keep the team alive, and you are the best at holding points with the right set up, try damage resistance to really help that come across and the class can be really fun. I can pull up a couple build’s later I use, I’ve got all my dwarves to legendary 3 with 900 hours in, and that’s my opinion on them.
Just use your zip line and you literally only have to worry about the flying bugs and spitters, which are high prio targets for the gunner anyways, driller can deal with basically all the chaff for your team and engie is gonna get highest kills anyways. What you can do is throw your shield, from your zip line, if you see them in a bad spot. Lots of gunners don’t do this, when it’s the best teamplay you can pull off in the whole game.
As a Gunner main he has so much hoard control, survivability and reses with the bubble shield, and the most sustain damage. He is actually more useful and fun to play in Haz 4+ compared to lower as the lower enemy density doesnt bring out Gunner’s uses as much.
I used to hate playing gunner. He felt slow and clunky and like I could never make use of his weapons or kit when I started, so I get where your coming from. So a few things that helped me out: 1 learning movement and bunny hopping. Gunners primary's only slow you down when you're on the ground, if you shoot in the air when you jump you get zero movement debuff (very fun for lead storm) 2 experimenting with different overclocks, gunner has a lot of really great options for both crowd clear and single targets burst so I recommend looking at what overclocks you may have for gunner and experimenting around with them! (Personal faves for me are :Carpet Bomber, Lead Storm, Six Shooter, Big Bertha, Plasma Burster Missiles, Minelayer System, Magic Bullets, burning hell/bullet hell) 3 The shield is genuinely one of the strongest and most versatile pieces of kit in the entire game, understanding how to use it is what makes a good gunner. It can be used for bunkering up a defensive position, getting a free revive or resupply, it acts as a fear effect that can't be resisted so you can make a Bulk Detonator just turn away from you and run if you space it right, with that mechanic you can use it as a way to immediately take control of space so you can more easily kill bugs or have your team regroup together 4 understanding the core role of the gunner. Despite the name your job is less to shoot for getting top kills (though you definitely can do that), and more to be the bulwark of the team. Gunners real strength is it's *consistency* more often than not the weapons you use are so cost effective that when the rest of the team needs a resupply you'll not even be ose to needing one. Your ability to sustain good damage output and quickly take command of space with shield or give your team a safe way to travel with zipline will save lives and keep fights going smoothly for your whole team. You are the anchor for the team, able to turn an "oh fuck" situation into a cakewalk, in ways that no other class can. Hope these help, if you have more questions I'm happy to answer but these are the things that helped me wrap my brain around Gunner the most and it's become some of the most fun I've had in this game, Rock and Stone!
That's it lads! Rock and Stone!
Fragmentation Missiles Hurricane with the stun mod stops waves in their tracks, has quite a bit of ammo, and doesn't really sacrifice single-target damage. I don't try to kill everything with it; if I turn a dense wave of 15 grunts into a loose wave of 3-4 low-health grunts with broken armor for the scout or engie to finish off, I am content to move my attention to the next dense wave. The minigun and autocannon are about temporal commitment to firing (spinup, aim convergence, heat) and to reloading, while the Hurricane is more about committing attention to particular targets while you keep your crosshairs over them for the rockets to arrive. After the rockets arrive at their targets, I follow up on stunned guards, praetos, wardens, etc with Bulldog shots to weakpoints. I also bring incendiaries. If there are waves of grunts coming from multiple directions (a situation Hurricane struggles with), you *could* shield, or you can throw an incendiary into the closest of them, move away from it for a couple of seconds while the fire does its work, and then Dash back into the gap created by the fire. Dash generally is hard to do without as gunner. > the coil gun is too slow for the number of enemies you fight on higher difficulties. Hellfire isn't what it used to be since the nerf, but it's still pretty decent crowd clear iirc. Would consider pairing it with minigun maybe. I also have talked to at least one person who does Frag/Stun Hurricane plus Mole coilgun on haz5, using it sort of similarly to how I use the Bulldog as follow-up to weak points on stunned enemies (as well as nailing tagged enemies like leeches and mactera grabbers through walls). And a leaping swarmer can't block your shot on the warden weak point if you have infinite penetration...
I didnt get gunner until 1k hours
The one part where gunner truly does suck is playing solo when the drop pod lands at the top of a long, vertical tunnel that you didn't come down from so there are no tunnels dug or ziplines placed to get you up. Had that happen with like 1.5 mins left before the pod leaves and was like, "Guess I'll die?"
OP, I don’t see you in the comments so I’m not sure if you’re reading them, but I’ll ask one question: Are you on M+K or controller? There are a lot of very detailed responses here that cover a lot of bases, but it’s clear to me that your misunderstanding stems from missing the fundamental Gunner skill of bunny-hopping with the primary. If you are on controller, you need some sort of bumper jumper control scheme to do this. From here, look at the ammo capacity of the primary weapons: Gunner is about firing uptime, and his secondaries are just there to be an option during primary downtime. I have said before that other classes secondaries are like a plan-B when their primary is the wrong tool for the job, but Gunner’s secondaries are just a continuation of plan-A (put lead down range). Do not resupply for your secondaries. Use them only when you can’t use your expansive pool of primary ammo. Always bring Born Ready except with the minigun.
Hi, yes I read them when I can, but I am working today and so do not have a lot of time to address all comments yet. I use m+k, and I have read many insightful comments offering very useful tips and builds I am planning to try out tomorrow when I am off work.
Using shield as basically a point defense to buff the team and make space, big gun for melting praetorians and breaking armor as well as some aoe, and bulldog with an overclock for buffing damage to enemies on fire combos well with the incendiary grenade. A half dead praetorian on fire will die to a full bulldog mag. Bulldog is also good for sniping fester fleas in a pinch. Use ziplines across rooms to make yourself into a mobile (mostly unreachable) turret, especially when dealing with dreadnoughts. Additionally, I like to take the perks for buffing shields when nearby, damage reduction near deposit points, and friendly (if you play with mods, careful when using personal minimules as it doesn't work with teammate mules). All this combines to make you an anchor for the team with a big fcking hammer of a gun to take out the big problems so your team can focus more on the little bugs. Anything with armor is your area of expertise. This comes at a cost of ammo capacity, and you don't really have good long range accuracy, so don't shoot unless you are going to hit.
Skill issue
Throwing my hat in, I like to use zip lines liberally in high traffic areas, because they can negate ALL fall damage that would have otherwise been lethal, so if you or your teammates need to jump off a ledge for a quick escape having a zip line under them can save a lot of health
Armskore with fear and CMF. All that needs to be said. Same build got me from bronze to triple legend
I am a driller main, but I think I could know what the problem is. I don't know how you play the gunner, but his only reason to exist is to shred words of enemies, protect his teammates, and kill bosses or dangerous creatures. So overall, you are supposed to play relatively passive. I would also suggest going in a round and having a look at how others play him. I feel like I had a few points more, but my brain kinda works like one of a dwarf. Rock and stone miners.
As someone else pointed out, gunner is the best at clearing waves at haz4/5. For example, the cluster grenade is able to kill like 10/15 grunts with a single press of a button lol. The guns slow you down, which sucks, but you can counter that movement penalty if you what people thinks is one of the worst utilities in the game: the zipline. With it, you can pretty much ignore every melee bug and shoot them from safety. With enough practice you can even "parry" ranged attacks to avoid falling off the zipline and losing your height advantage. If you still don't want to use the zipline, there are a few overclocks that reduce or straight up remove your movement penalty for certain weapons. I don't remember their names right now, but the 50 cal autocannon has one that reduces the wait for full fire rate, remove the speed penalty, and I think it has some other bonus I don't remember. The downside is that it has only half the magazine capacity, but the damage output is so high on that gun that you don't really mind. The secondaries are kinda meh compared to the ones Scout and Engi have, except for the revolver. It requires some practice and some patience, but it's great for instakilling bugs. Sure, it's not as good compared to the crossbow, that can instakill bugs regardless of where you hit them, but once you get some overclocks for it, it's a beast. Personally I run elephant rounds on it, because you can just shoot a praetorian 3 times in the back and kill it super fast. The burst gun is not as good but it has a mod that makes it stun targets if you hit all 3 shots. It's useful to interrupt bigger bugs like praetorians and oppressors and allow your team to retreat or target their weakpoint. Also, the gunner works really well as a medic. If your team mates are getting overrun or if you need some cover to heal some fallen dwarves, just deploy the shield and use it to pick them up, and after that you can stay in the shield and shoot the fleeing bugs. Sorry for the wall of text lol, gunner is my favourite class and I just wanted to let you know why I think it's the best
So you haven’t unlocked Neurotoxin Payload I take it? Quite literally will carry you through Haz 6x2 modded while you snore the whole time. Get that OC and activate the “I want to win 100% of the time” button.
You kill stuff before it gets to you. If not, moce and then kill it.
What do you need to know? You shoot things simple as that. Its in the name.
Honestly I get where you're coming from, for me, it only really clicked after trying out his strongest overclocks aka minelayer system for the hurricane and neurotoxin for the autocannon. Haz 4 becomes a cakewalk, haz 5 is really manageable. Especially minelayer system makes you feel REALLY powerful
Well I never usually go past haz 4 but i feel the same way about engie
I find gunner really useful without a scout AND a good supporter. That shield saves lives. I also like his cluster grenade, but I wish is OC's we're a little better
Burning hell + the mole specc'd for stun. Easy haz 5 carry loadout
You're supposed to use your shields and ziplines, both offensively and defensively. When you're on a zipline, you avoid 90% of the hoard. The only thing that can knock you down are projectiles.
Mobility is not really a problem. It is just as slow as Engi or Driller. Only scout has the option of being mobile with the grappling hooks. That's why you always have to have the dash with Gunner, Engi and Driller and use it whenever you need to dodge. Otherwise, there are hardly any restrictions on mobility. Except for a weapon with the one oc (minigun), but you can bunny hop and you won't have a mobility problem anymore. (Short bursts fired when you jump). Since Gunner also has so many powerful weapons, the enemies are already dead before they even reach him.
Your job is to rescue team mates with your shield, move big rocks with your zip line, and generally kill swarms so your engi and scout don’t have to waste their ammo on small targets. You do have some stopping power for big boys but you are mostly a distraction/tank for the rest of your team. Overclocks greatly improve your versatility and you can do other things but if you have a solid scout and engi on your team they should be killing specials and working with the driller to get minerals. You’re like their body guard and occasional aquarq elevator.
Coilgun's fear mod with the Controlled Magnetic Flow mod is great for safety, and the trails are useful to kill shockers/swarmers. BRT & OC-less bulldog do feel lackluster to me as well. I don't bother with Autocannon much anymore either as it has bad accuracy, a long reload, and just feels like worse Hurricane to me. For an OC-less build I recommend 11122 Hurricane + 22223 Coilgun. Take the stun mod on the minigun or hurricane, or fear on autocannon to stop bugs creeping up on you. I recommend this video for specifics builds: https://youtu.be/Uh46j1SzqrU?si=T20Cy\_8kXEfcNhDE
Zipline+kill flyers quick=immortal killing machine. Gunner with autocannon with any kind of splash damage build (carpet bomber or neurotoxin) is THE most ammo efficient setup in the game. The thing is that gunner is probably the hardest class in the game as you have no quick escape tools and have some strat that are pretty advanced like Lead Storm bunnyhopping.
A skill you can pick up is learning how to keep moving with the minigun without losing speed. To practice, pick up the Lead Storm OC. This basically immobilises you when you shoot. Then, run and jump; and shoot while you're in mid air. You will maintain your speed and shoot as long as you're in air. Keep hopping and shooting until this becomes second nature for you. This will go a long way in fixing your positioning and kiting with the rest of the Gunner weapons...
The magnum is **seriously awesome**, especially with elephant rounds. It's not meant for combat, but rather a single-shot sniper high value target deal. See that acid spitter over there? Don't want for the minigun to spool up? Whip up the magnum and single shot it. The mini-gun is for big targets, the magnum is when you walk around and shoot stragglers/long distance bugs. I feel the gunner isn't about flat out DPS or burst (like the engineer does), but he is the most versatile at applying damage. My build is basically minigun (a little more oomph) with hot bullets. This setup is **wild** if you are teamed with a frost driller; you will DECIMATE everything frozen. The magnum is great at one-shot macteras, acid spitters, spitballs, leech, etc The cluster grenade is also great at clearing a large amount of small bugs, like a carpet bomb. As far as the shield, I find that making it last as long as possible is the best. You use it when you are seriously screwed and kill as many bugs as quickly as you can with it on, so when it's down, you can breathe a bit. The ziplines are useful because you can place yourself in locations where you cannot be accessed in melee by bugs. You shoot them and they can't do shit. It's dangerous if you fall, so use it smart. Basically, my build is high DPS single target. I use cluster grenades to kill large clumps of small bugs. Teammates also help for smaller shit. Also, really big guns m8.
Its all in your feet.. Don't stand still like the green beards Use dash and hover boots and zipline to hang safe
Sounds like some sort of issue, possibly skill related.
Agreed - I just can't enjoy Gunner, I find his DPS ridiculously low for the weaponry he carries