Regarding Gunlance Balance Adjustments

Improvements
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1

Suggestion

With the addition of Advanced Artillery and Artillery driftsmelting, there is now room to explore new equipment builds for the Gunlance; however, when pursuing firepower, I still feel that the benefits of upgrading equipment do not match the operational risks involved.

I would especially like you to consider adjustments regarding the following three points:

① Have shelling and Wyvern’s Fire benefit from attack power and element upgrades as well

Currently, upgrading attack power or elemental values does not increase shelling damage. In builds that combine direct attacks with shelling, offensive skills only affect a portion of your main attacks.

While the addition of Artillery driftsmelting and Advanced Artillery has helped boost damage output and expand build options, shelling does not scale with the weapon’s attack power or element. As a result, when powerful skills that boost attack power or elemental values are introduced, a structural gap in damage output easily opens up between Gunlance and other weapons.

I would like to see a mechanic where the benefits of boosting attack power and elemental values carry over to shelling as well, such as by applying modifiers based on attack power and effective elemental values while maintaining the current Grade-dependent base damage. I hope the scaling amounts can be tuned in consideration of the balance with Gunlance’s advantage of being less affected by monster hitzones.

② Review the damage or duration of the Special Skill: Wyvern’s Fire

Wyvern’s Fire takes a long time from activation until you can return to normal attacks, and there are situations where you feel you would deal more damage simply by continuing a regular combo for that same amount of time.

To make it a Special Skill worth interrupting regular attacks for, please review its total damage, startup time, and recovery lag. I hope for a comprehensive overhaul, including the potential damage boost mentioned in point ①.

③ Increase options for dealing with monster attacks when using Blast Dash

While Blast Dash provides flinch immunity during the dash and allows for angle adjustment, I feel there are few options to respond to incoming monster attacks after the dash. In particular, when facing monsters with consecutive attacks or fast action speeds, there are times when you want to interrupt your attack to defend yourself.

Please consider options such as being able to transition into a guard upon landing from midair, or improving the transition into guarding after landing. Defensive movement, like Reverse Blast, could also be one approach.

This is not a request to be able to guard at all times, but rather a desire for more options to utilize the shield while preserving the risks tied to the Guard skill and proper timing.

That is all.
I would appreciate it if you could evaluate Gunlance’s performance not just by the usage rates of specific weapons, but also by taking into account the damage dealt at equivalent upgrade levels, the value of using Special Skills, and the risk of taking damage across different playstyles.

2

In Monster Hunter Wilds, the Wyvern’s Fire can be activated with a shorter activation time when performed as part of a combo with specific moves (see the video from 18:45):

Perhaps we can consider adding such a benefit to use the SP as part of a regular combo and result in a shorter activation time so that it helps to maintain the DPS without feeling like we have to drop our regular DPS for the sake of invulnerability.

Personally, I hardly use Gunlance SP because I could do better by guarding and perfect-evading a monster’s attack and follow up with a Burst Fire instead of using SP. About the only time I would use SP for is when I am running out of time and the monster is about to die but is also preparing for a huge attack that I cannot counterattack in time to slay it. In this very specific situation would the SP then be useful to me. The rest of the time, I don’t use Gunlance’s SP.

3

Thank you for the specific suggestion. Indeed, I think Wyvern’s Fire in Wilds is well-balanced in that simply firing it carelessly isn’t strong. That might be better than a simple buff.

4

Whether it’s a Resuscitate build or a 砲撃境地 build, the level of completion skill-wise is high, so it’s simply lacking in base stats, isn’t it?

5

If it’s treated as mediocre even though you can comfortably activate 砲術境地 Level 2 and 本領発揮 Level 3, then there’s probably a problem with the weapon itself.

6

With this much of a boost, you can now put together a terrifying general-purpose set with Artillery 5 + Advanced Artillery 2 + Guard Up + Guard 4 + Combo Master 1 + Lock On, and on top of that, 7 open slots (Quematrice / Golm / Brachydios / Wroggi / Brachydios). With just a single Artillery Driftstone, your weapon choice is completely open; you can add Fighting Spirit for fast finishes, run Headstrong for a brawling style, swap the chest to Viper Tobi-Kadachi for Combo Master 3 in drawn-out battles, or go for high mobility with Dauntless, Focus, and evasion skills.

Since they’ve improved things this much for us, why not wait and see for a bit? By the way, I’m also in the camp that wants SP improved a bit more, but before that, what about the other neglected weapons…?

7

Speaking for my own build, while my damage went up by about 10%, my gear is now locked down so tight that I basically can’t expect any upgrades going forward outside of Driftsmelt skills, so honestly it feels like the buff I wanted least.

On the weapon side, the Bazel Gunlance is also firmly entrenched as practically the optimal pick, so I can’t help but feel that having both gear and weapons hit a wall like this right now is a pretty bad situation.

8

As you pointed out, build variety has certainly expanded.
However, as others have mentioned, since Artillery only applies to shelling, damage output has only increased by about 10% compared to previous meta damage builds, which is nowhere near enough to catch up with the weapons currently achieving high scores in Base Defense.

When it comes to balance adjustments as well, rather than wanting Gunlance prioritized over other weapons, I’m submitting this request in the hope that they recognize this situation—even if Advanced Artillery or Artillery Driftsmelting is introduced—and will be sure to address it at some point.

9

In Base Defense & without the score bonus,
I think reaching 700,000 to 800,000 using a Wide Gunlance & just Guard Reload + auto poke-shell wouldn’t be bad, but I wonder… It might be tough because Erupting Cannon’s animation is so sluggish considering how low its damage is.

10

Up to this point, most of the talk has been about Guard Reload, but the OP is probably referring mainly to Blast Dash.

That aside, if you were to classify Gunlance style changes like those of other weapons, it feels like it should be:
Guard Reload: stable offense and defense with decent firepower
Blast Dash: tricky to use with high firepower

…or something along those lines, but in reality Blast Dash is just tricky to use with nothing to show for it.

On top of that, you can’t make use of element boosts or Critical Element, and it has poor synergy with raw-boosting skills like Attack Efficacy.

Status ailments are also tough to work with, and the only skills that synergize well are the “ Damage Boost” type skills.

Even if Amatsu brings good skills like Critical Ferocity Element or Water Attack, it’s pretty much guaranteed not to mesh well.

Other weapons are guaranteed to get stronger than they are now in absolute terms (putting relative standing aside) as skills get stronger through future power creep and updates, but that won’t happen for Gunlance.

Under the current mechanics, it feels like it’s hit a ceiling, so it seems like high time for a rework…

11

Having increased damage dealt as the only factor for boosting damage is really bad, and because it’s all additive, even being told it’s 140% damage dealt doesn’t mean it’s actually that strong.
In a game where you get stronger by stacking a healthy balance of attack or element + increased damage dealt, skewing heavily toward increased damage dealt has no future.
Right now elemental gunlances have no reason to exist, so if element applied, you could put together a wider variety of builds, and I think armor options would expand even more.

12

Even without changing styles, you can fight with a melee-focused build by balancing attack power/elemental value, affinity, and damage boosts, just like with other weapons.
With that, its score in Interceptions is roughly on par with or slightly lower than the Guard Reload style, which gets plenty of attack openings.

By the way, when comparing top solo performers across weapon types in Interceptions, within what I’ve seen, it almost always has the lowest score out of all weapons (it forms the weakest trio alongside Sword & Shield and Dual Blades, but it ranks the lowest even among them).

It’s weak enough that even if Wyrmstakes were unlimited and didn’t require reloading, it probably still wouldn’t catch up to other weapons.
It might not be recognized as weak because Charged Shelling-focused builds → Buradagirros ran rampant thanks to how easy they were to use (or maybe poorly thought-out adjustments would just cause the same issue again).
Or perhaps, like Dual Blades, its position is meant to be a convenient weapon for everyday use against weaker monsters, but against top-tier ★10 monsters, the disparity is so large that fighting sloppily with another strong weapon will take them down more easily than meticulously optimizing your play with Gunlance.