The Guntecher guide - written by GTs for GTs.

[Zarbolord]

GUIDE UPDATE: SPECIALISING AS GT FOR CASTS

Much for the GT has been said in this thread, but although it might work for everyclass, the cast has a hard time with techs, so here's a little help from my experience as a lvl 55 GT CAST.

First of all, I rarely use traps.... why? Basically as CASTS have a higher ATP and ATA from most GTs. Point being they can directly inflict effects. When you reach a group of enemies, its good to get the rifle or bow and start shooting, the ones you hit will have a tiny knockback, and will momentarily, stop the advance. The effects you'll inflict will also help the other party members to clear the room quickly.

Elements: It is good to keep different element bullets for all guns, a good initiative would be to have at least 2, and now since ultimate PAs are comming out, you might want to get one of those neutral ones that inflict different effects, such as Twin Mayalee,or the new laser PA that knocks back.

The cast GT can evolve under 2 ways: The damager and the group helper. Both can be done at the same time, but you will soon notice that it is one or the other. A damager, will basically use the damaging and ice bullets, which are Dark, Fire and Ice. Infection and Burn cannot be given to one enemy at the same time, as they do the same effect: dmg. The higher the effect lvl the more dmg you will do. AS a CAST this is the strategy I'd say to adopt. I have tried all PAs for all bullets, but I have noticed that casts having high ATP and high ATA can clean a room quickly using these capacitites. If you're more of a group helper then you will use Light, Earth, and Plasma bullets.

Equipment for damager and strategy: Mainly use direct range, never go for skills as they'll slow you up. A rifle, a bow, twin handguns are the main ranged weaponry you'll be interested in, do NOT go for the laser unless you really like it, as it is slow and not very effective. If ever you do take a laser, use the ultimate PA for knockback. Ice bullets freeze the enemy, and then you can infect, a crossbow and handgun with 2 wands would also be part of the equipment as the cast guntecher can run into the melee without getting as much DMG as the other races and styart healing the group. You may also want to add a shot, but I am not a fan of shots and I have managed with ease up to now without one. You may replace a left hand weapon with a card, or add a third wand with one.

Equipment for group^helper and strategy: Please note that the group helper is basically the GT that gives time to the group and helps other classes to proceed with attacking. Cards with wands are essential, my cast at lvl 55 can inflict up to 600 dmg with 3 cards flying at lvl 21 bullet. But the most important here is not the damage you inflict, but the effects you give. Cards have a nice homing capacity and so you can easily hit the enemy you want to hit. Shots are essential here too, they will hit numerous enemies inflicting the effects without problem, and as they don't hold the enemy from attacking you, you will not suffer from their hits as a newman would. also use handguns and twin handguns as they are quick, keep a bow and rifle if ever there is need to deal high damage. The bullets you use here will paralyse, silence and confuse the enemy, which incapacitates the enemies holding back their power, and leaving you team to take action.

Now both of these can be used as a main strategy, one GT can hold all of these PAs so there is no problem for that. In this way you can alternate your strategy, be it for a whole run or inside the run itself, depending on the group members, if any. For casts in general, I have one thing to say, as GT, your wands won't be that fantastic. the TP doesn't increase very much at all, and it will be a long time before you'll be able to use A rank wands, but in the end you will and they'll be of good use. You may not agree with this, but it is my view of the cast GT. It also may be valid for other races, but I think that casts need to be aware of their capacities before randomly selecting GT



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Zarbolord on 2007-02-08 23:46 ]</font>

[Dymalos]

Is this going to be the official Guntecher Thread? I'm getting a little tired of going around and posting in these. Anyway, in the following text I've consolidated my impressions of the class, which I've made in a variety of threads

For the purpose of disclosure here is a little background about my character, I am a 67 Beast Guntecher 8 and I'm the Xbox 360. I use the following weapons: Ulteri 3x, Alteric +6 x3, Hanmateric x2, Evil Twins 3x, Arb Rega +6 x2, Deathmaker x1. Cubo Dunga x2, Cuga Mamba x1, Mira-kikami x3, Beam Vulcanic x3. I have all 6 elements for Bows, Crossbows, Dual Handguns, Machineguns, and Cards. For the most part, I spend my time solo, duo, or rarely in a trio, this has led to me developing time-efficient takedown strategies for the majority of the enemies in the game.

First of all Damage Techs are a trap, do not bother with any of them, there is never a situation in which you will be doing more damage with these, then you could with the appropriate Ranged weapon. This even goes for Newmans, I'm sorry but Guntecher the class only allows you a total of 44% of your Race's base TP and that is at lvl 10, what this means is that even a Female Newman Guntecher will have 75% of the total TP that a level equivalent Cast Male Fortetecher has, and that is absolutely, and positively gimp when it comes to attack Techs.

Many people disregard the Guntecher as a damage class, but what they do not realize is the fact that the Guntecher has access to the most damaging and versatile ranged weapons equipable.

Bows, for example, have the highest Att and Acc out of any of the other ranged weapons and carry Lvl 4 S.E. with 30% element, on top of this they avoid the monster's Defense (but not flat 50% or 25% reductions). While this is an easy bonus to discount in even the lower level S Ranks, keep in mind that as we being recieving S2 missions the Defense bypass will only become more lucrative. That being said however, I do not primarily use my Bows unless the monsters have an incredible amount of Hitpoints, or are outright resistant to bullets. In these two cases the Lvl 4 S.E. Burn or Infection does the most damage out of my available options. I also bring out my Bow when De Regan, Dimmagolus, or Onmagoug take flight.

Notable Drops: The Blue Bots in Grove drop Hikauri 6* (w/ Kubara: Alteric) boards on A. Alterics are really decent when grinded, not a bad weapon if you're tight for cash. Heck bows aren't really about DPS, mostly about the DoT. But if you really need accuracy for Mizuras/BUGs you can make Hanmaterics, I'm a beast and even I can hit these things essily with a Hanmateric. The Roksari 8* (w/ Kubara: Hanmateric) boards drop from the same Blue Bots in Grove on S.

If anything, Crossbows are the 'Bread and Butter' of a Guntecher. They are absolute kings of Ranged Weapon DPS. They have a 3 shot dispersal with 21+ Bullets and carry Lvl 3 S.E. Some might argue with me that Shotguns outperform Crossbow DPS but in reality they are about the same, if you doubt me than you are welcome to join a mission with me and compare them side by side. The Crossbow has a quicker rate of fire than the Shotgun (seriously why the hell do you have to pump a laser?), and it lets you remain mobile. I primarily use Crossbows against enemies which I can comfortably engage at close range, but they are particularly handy when I need to quickly apply a longlasting S.E. (Unlike with Shotguns you don't risk immediately breaking the Ice with the same attack you just used to place it on your enemy). Also if you're character is on the Short side you can rip into S Rank Vanda's with ease, as they seem to stay at an optimum distance away from you to hurl Diga over your head and they line up in a manner which facilitates hitting three at medium range.

Notable Drops: Completed Cuga Mambas will sometimes drop from the Mid-Bosses at the end of the West Parum Train Mission on S. I know it's not on any lists, but I've seen it happen, this is how I got mine.

Tip: A soloing strategy I employ to deal with Grove/Endrum/Train bots is to dish S.E. lvl 4 Infect on them with a Bow, then quickly freeze them with my Crossbow. This makes the whole process rather painless. This technique works rather well with just about any enemy that can be Infected and Frozen.

Cards are easy to dismiss at first glance, since we are only allowed to equip A Ranks. Doing so however, would be a dire mistake, as these are probably the most practical of all of the situational ranged weapons and will therefore see the most use. They home, have 25%x3 element, range right behind the Rifle, and accuracy second only to Bows. Cards are absolutely invaluable when dealing with anything that either Flies or Hurls dangerous Techs. Seriously, equipping cards against a lvl 85 Gaozoran is like activating easy mode. Also the card is tops with DPS, In testing, it ranks right behind the Crossbow, I guarantee that with a sufficiently leveled Card bullet you will be able to kill a Tengogh or it's Dark cousin much faster than you would with either Infect or Burn lvl 4 regardless of it's level.

I'm going to withhold any final judgements on Machineguns until we recieve the update which improves their damage, but even in their current state I still do use them against smallish type enemies with piss poor defense. I do have the 4 base elemental bullets 21+, but I'm not feeling them at the moment, hopefully the patch will bring em up to speed.

Also, Twin Handguns don't really have a niche. While they have a rather broad application, they are not particularly excellent at any particular task. I feel that they're being romantisized a bit in the first post. They're not really made for dancing, if anything, Cards are the dancing shoes. As such I keep them as back-ups. But If I have to drop an elemental or two in the future it will probably come out of the Twin line. I have lvl 30 Bullets in four of the Elements for these things, and I've yet to run into a situation in which I could not have done more damage by using either a Crossbow or a Card, and those go in one hand so my conclusion is that Twins Handguns are altogether rather disappointing.

Notable Drops: A cheap alternative to Dualies is to make a bunch of Arb Regas and grind 'em up to 6, as these make for Evil Twin equivalents. The board for Arb Regas drops from any lvl 50+ Lapucha on Moatoob. If you're feeling adventerous, the Tengogh like beasts in the Hive drop completed Deathmakers, or alternatively you can hope for the board from a Seed Vitace (Hive Only).

To avoid alot of controversy when I breach the subject of weaponry DPS I run controlled tests to rate the performance of my weapons. The way I test which of my weapons is best DPS is simple, I use each weapon with the same Lvl 30 Bullet which doesn't add a DoT (i.e. Earth, Ice, Shock, Light) and see how long it takes me to kill a particular monster of the opposite element with each of my weapons.

Here are some results:

On a level 90 Polty (Low HP, Low Def Mob) using lvl 30 Earth.
From Fastest to Slowest:
1. Yak Diga lvl 30 (w/ Cuga Mamba, 9* Crossbow)
2. Jusei-shiki lvl 30 (w/ Mira-kikami, 9* Cards)
3. Twin Grav lvl 30 (w/ Deathmaker, 9* Twin Handguns)
4. Jisei-sou lvl 30 (w/ Ulteri, 9* Bow)

On a level 90 Jarba (Hi HP, Med Def Mob)
From Fastest to Slowest
1. Yak Riga lvl 30 (w/ Cuga Mamba, 9* Crossbow)
2. Reisei-shiki lvl 30 (w/ Mira-kikami, 9* Cards)
3. Reisei-sou lvl 30 (w/ Ulteri, 9* Bow)
4. Twin Freeze lvl 30 (w/ Deathmaker, 9* Dual Handgun)

[Zarbolord]

Are you trying to say that if you're of a certain class you obtain more chances for a weapon? Ridiculous! That would utterly disgust everyone. Also remember how complex this would make probability calcualtions, they already are copmplex using this method would make it worse, for a worse outcome. You may give those stats for a general appearance but I think that intuiting that the GT finds more crossbows than anyone is silly. Anyway, I don't see he point of mentioning rly as its basically a thread on strategy. If I understood badly then you wrote it in the way that made me understand that. Diss finished.

I have tried almost every class, and GT still remains my favorite, adjacent to fortetecher. ALthough many of your stats are correct there is still a lot we can't know as the S weapons are missing and the SS missions haven't appeared yet, also the ulmtimate PAs may change things around.

[juno-6]

On 2007-02-09 11:38, Zarbolord wrote:
Are you trying to say that if you're of a certain class you obtain more chances for a weapon? Ridiculous! That would utterly disgust everyone. Also remember how complex this would make probability calcualtions, they already are copmplex using this method would make it worse, for a worse outcome. You may give those stats for a general appearance but I think that intuiting that the GT finds more crossbows than anyone is silly. Anyway, I don't see he point of mentioning rly as its basically a thread on strategy. If I understood badly then you wrote it in the way that made me understand that. Diss finished.

I have tried almost every class, and GT still remains my favorite, adjacent to fortetecher. ALthough many of your stats are correct there is still a lot we can't know as the S weapons are missing and the SS missions haven't appeared yet, also the ulmtimate PAs may change things around.

I really don't know where you got that impression?

[Kupi]

On the SE4 weapons (Rifles and Bows): Another good reason to get and level a Freeze PA is that it resets enemies to their neutral state when they break from the ice. For large enemies that can't be burnt or infected (notably the Stateria and Galvapas at the end of Agata Relics), an SE4 Freeze going off at the right time can stop a lot of damage from happening.

[juno-6]

On 2007-02-09 16:03, Kupi wrote:
On the SE4 weapons (Rifles and Bows): Another good reason to get and level a Freeze PA is that it resets enemies to their neutral state when they break from the ice. For large enemies that can't be burnt or infected (notably the Stateria and Galvapas at the end of Agata Relics), an SE4 Freeze going off at the right time can stop a lot of damage from happening.

Yup! Hey, did you notice that they would only be frozen for like 2-3 seconds though?

[Kupi]

On 2007-02-09 16:34, juno-6 wrote:

On 2007-02-09 16:03, Kupi wrote:
On the SE4 weapons (Rifles and Bows): Another good reason to get and level a Freeze PA is that it resets enemies to their neutral state when they break from the ice. For large enemies that can't be burnt or infected (notably the Stateria and Galvapas at the end of Agata Relics), an SE4 Freeze going off at the right time can stop a lot of damage from happening.

Yup! Hey, did you notice that they would only be frozen for like 2-3 seconds though?

Oh, I'm aware that freeze breaks quickly under concentrated attacks. I'm talking about the fact that, say, if a Stateria's winding up to do its big circular swing attack and you freeze it, when it unfreezes, it won't finish the attack. At worst, it'll wind up doing the swing again, and at best it'll do more jumping around before trying another attack. I'm not saying that freeze prevents damage by locking them down, I'm saying it prevents damage by interrupting individual attacks. Sometimes that's the best you can do, and therefore it'd be a good idea to have an SE4 Ice bullet.

[Dymalos]

Also it is entirely possible to apply Infection on both Svaltus and the Galvapas, this goes for the rare versions of Svaltus as well. I usually infect them and then freeze them to let the Infection tick away at their health.

[Dymalos]

On 2007-02-09 11:38, Zarbolord wrote:
Are you trying to say that if you're of a certain class you obtain more chances for a weapon? Ridiculous! That would utterly disgust everyone. Also remember how complex this would make probability calcualtions, they already are copmplex using this method would make it worse, for a worse outcome. You may give those stats for a general appearance but I think that intuiting that the GT finds more crossbows than anyone is silly. Anyway, I don't see he point of mentioning rly as its basically a thread on strategy. If I understood badly then you wrote it in the way that made me understand that. Diss finished.

Diss finished huh... what exactly are you trying to 'diss'? Instead of attacking my writing skills maybe you should brush up on your reading comprehension. I was not in any way implying that droprates are dependant on class, I was merely providing some information on where someone might score some free weapons.

[60Hz]

Crossbows seem to be the bread and butter of GT, but it seems they do need some investing in to reap the rewards.

I'm a big shotgun fan but the lack of movement and the SUPER SLOW firing rate is a big negative. The damage potential is of course enourmous but did u run control test comparing shotty to say crossbow or regular bow? I could probably do a quick test between bow and shotty i have both level 30 for freeze... hmm...

anyway.. I've been contemplating the move to crossbow but i'll have to overwrite some handgun pa's... 36 PA slots is not enough!