[Ghemmah]

...The developers of MHUF made shelling and the gunnery skills ridiculously inadequate. The option to focus on shelling is there, but the downfalls are numerous and discouraging:
1) the best Spread-shelling GL (lvl 5)is a funny looking corn-cob... need I say more?
2) the best Normal-shelling GL (lvl 5) is a low attack, low-tier, end-game weapon, you can see they ddin't take it seriously if you look at its required materials... Thank god for the decent Ukanlos-GL...
3) about 3 blademaster(-compatible) sets that can be focussed on for shelling (Guardian, Guardian U, Black Belt S) have gunner-level defense. The only 3 high-def sets are the High Metal, High Metal S and Basarios X, and A) they are not specialized enough to replace non-gunnery sets for the SAME purpose (based on what I can see on Athena's ASS) and it takes a huge amount of armor spheres to upgrade 2 of them...
4) there are only two jewels involved in the most important skill for shelling (in the sense of DoT), gunnery. AND you can only improve the dmg done by a miserable 10% (according to most sources).

I mean, shelling is what the GL-class weapon is all (or mostly) about. Yesterday I took on a G-ranked Crimson Fatalis on its last round (I suppose its life was reset to 25-30%) while wearing a set with Carving Celebrity, Guts and High Speed Gathering and I finished him in less than 25 min. As I had no ESP I was shelling the whole time, armor-mode or no. So the damage is somewhat adequate - and that's why it bugs me that the choice is so limited as compared to other playing styles , e. f-ing g.: HAMMERS... Tsss. I mean I love hammers: inherent status-attack (KO), HUGE DoT, ease of use... etc. But c'mon, moar GL-pwnage please!

...anyway, I hear the shelling system got re-vamped in MHUF3, so that's good news... I guess, but at the end of the day shelling is for Fatalis' rounds and (oh yeah, and) early game monsters not much else, right?

Ghemmah out.

This post has been edited by Ghemmah: 25 January 2011 - 08:32 AM

[Usul]

Sharpness+1/Sharpsword/Gunnery King - full blademaster defense
Basarios Helm X
Ceanataur U
Ceanataur U
Ceanataur Z
Ceanataur Z

[Firestorm79]

I know what you mean.

I always thought the shelling capability of GLs should get more love. It would make it a proper bad ass weapon. It's still v useful at G rank if you don't use shelling - the ability to chain, uppercut, poke and then either uppercut or instant block is great. It has more combos than lance, and also shelling allows infinite comboing to a tripped/trapped/paralysed monster.

But definitely agree with you here - the main joy of GL is shelling and wyvern fire - the latter also suffers from nerfdom at G rank. by the time you charge up, wyvern fire, recoil then recover you would do more damage from the standard gunlance combos such as running stab, poke, uppercut, poke, etc etc I'd love it if wyvern fire got better damage as well. GL should be a heavy artillery demolitions weapon. it should the weapon of choice against big slow armoured monsters even at G rank...

[Usul]

Blame it on purple sharpness; MHP3 GL gets some shelling love precisely because of it's absence.

[Ghemmah]

@Usul: Yes, I noticed that UUZZ is the new SUUS with the bonus of being able to mix it up with other skills by wearing the right helmet... Still that's a 35 skill-point set. I'm under the impression that you've tried out a lot of sets (the 2-slot-weapon status attack set you recommended is awesome) and I'm sure that you know most people aim for an average of 40 skill points per set (depending of course whether you want heavy skills like ESP and shrp+1 or light ones like shrp skl inc)... So you made my point: you needed 4 pieces of non-gunnery armor AND the helmet has a crappy skill-point count (3 gunnery points and only 2 slots for a light skill is meh...).

BTW, what exactly are the differences between gunnery king and master...? opinions on that subject seem to differ often and by a lot.

This post has been edited by Ghemmah: 25 January 2011 - 12:11 PM

[Firestorm79]

Don't know all the differences but I DO know that master doesn't give any damage boost to shelling...

[Usul]

Ghemmah, on 25 January 2011 - 08:04 PM, said:

@Usul: Yes, I noticed that UUZZ is the new SUUS with the bonus of being able to mix it up with other skills by wearing the right helmet... Still that's a 35 skill-point set. I'm under the impression that you've tried out a lot of sets (the 2-slot-weapon status attack set you recommended is awesome) and I'm sure that you know most people aim for an average of 40 skill points per set (depending of course whether you want heavy skills like ESP and shrp+1 or light ones like shrp skl inc)... So you made my point: you needed 4 pieces of non-gunnery armor AND the helmet has a crappy skill-point count (3 gunnery points and only 2 slots for a light skill is meh...).

BTW, what exactly are the differences between gunnery king and master...? opinions on that subject seem to differ often and by a lot.

I don't look at the points that a set gives; I look at armor sets based on how useful their skills are. Getting a 40-skill point set is not worth the effort if the skills in it are just sub-par, and Sharpness+1 and Sharp Sword are creme de la creme of armor skills.

Heck, you don't see people complaining about Sharpness+1/Sharpsword/Evade+2 and it's a staple in a lot of player's armor set lists.

In any case, if you REALLY want 40 points then here's one:

Load Up or ESP/Sharpness+1/Sharpsword/RA+1
Barrage Piercing or SSP
Cean U
Cean U
Cean Z
Cean Z
* Get 1 weapon slot then you can replace RA+1 with Sharpening skill inc

Here's are 45 point sets specially designed for GL shelling:
Load Up/Gunnery King/Sharpening Skill Inc/Guts
Load Up/Gunnery King/ESP/Bomber or Sharpening Skill Inc

I still prefer Sharpness+1/Sharpsword sets over these 45 point sets.

GL isn't gimped in the armor set department; There's no shortage of GL shelling armor sets. GL is gimped because shelling damage wasn't scaled properly to G-rank, even with armor sets specifically designed for it - which kind of makes making shelling-focused sets not worth the trouble.

This post has been edited by Usul: 26 January 2011 - 01:43 AM

[Ghemmah]

Well, you're right. the point-count is not so important - although i was rather trying to make the point that the value of a certain amount of points lies on the amount of slots such a skill requires: Shrp+1 > RA > Bomber (ratio: +- 1 > 0.66 > 0.5) for example... AND its use of course...

On the other hand I'm using this GL-set ATM, purely for ease of use (no weapon-slots req.) and esthetics:

Barrage Piercing (34 def)
Silverl Sol Mail (112)
Dark Ukanlos Claw (116)
GuardianSprtCoilShin (116)
GuardinSprtBtsShin (116)

...And now that I've been doing a few non-Fatalis quests it seems to me that this set isn't that bad at all when using Spread GLs, to think of it.
I did a G-ranked Shogun Ceanetaur quest and finished in 20 mins. That does not compare to an over-powering set like the S+1, SS, RA+3 with either Magnitude or Wailing Cleaver Shin, but at least it's not that bad, I think. So though the scaling IS off, this disadvantage is off-set by the fact that shell damage is only affected by quest-specific defense (and rage?) and not by other multipliers, like raw damage, is.

So yeah, I agree, and that's why I said it was inadequately implemented, this GL-stuff. However I don't know if you understood what I meant earlier:

Let's look at the ONLY G-rank set that has the gunnery skill inherently - Basarios X.
It carries, without gemming, Def+30, Div Protct, AttkDwn(Sm)... and 8(!) points towards gunnery. So of course BasX sucks as Def+30 is redundant as hell; it's just trying to get the defense you naturally get from sets like Guardian Spirit Shin. Div Protct becomes a light skill after you beat Ukanlos and 8 points for gunnery is just sad... they didn't even BOTHER to activate the f-ing skill...

Sure you can say that BasX is meant to be used (to a certain degree) as defensive armor. But WTF, 8 points is all G-rank has to offer towards gunnery? there's no love in that I say.

This post has been edited by Ghemmah: 26 January 2011 - 09:43 AM

[Usul]

I'm sure that's pretty much offset by the fact that Howitzer Jewels give +2 Gunnery for just 1 slot, not to mention that it's easy enough to get at lower ranks (especially compared to Divine Protection Jewels).

[Spike]

I can't give two dingo's kidneys if it was a joke or not, and if it was, it makes them all the more badass.

[Ghemmah]

@Spike: lul wat?

[Spike]

You haven't read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

D: