Shopkeeper strong, gunslinger extremely weak?

[darksteelhyren]

Have you guys been able to make gunslinger work? My experience with him is that he lacks crowd-clearing capabilities. Yes this is explicitly stated in his description, but it does seem to mean that he can't stay alive as he gets swarmed constantly.

Compare to shopkeeper who levels up slowly but gets 3 to 8 cards per level, kind of bonkers.

Tips & tricks for improving?

[Guersant]

Get shotgun. Win.
In all seriousness if you take the Shotgun upgrade path along w/ some supporting reload and piercing mods then you should have no trouble clearing whole screens.

[Galactus]

if you get bonus projectiles instead of shooting more ammo in your clip he basically gets a shotgun effect instead. anything before HMG pretty much sucks so it's trying to get fast attack speed and hope you can get his ascended class card

[darksteelhyren]

I see, thanks. I didn't know there were multiple choices when you upgraded the weapon. What is the upgrade path for shotgun and heavy machine gun??
I did max out his multi-shot, but it didn't quite clear enough of the screen with the revolver.

[cliff.ahead]

tried a few runs with gunslinger
the SMG sucks
shotgun is king
i think it's a random upgrade at level 25.
there's a soulcard that gives you 15% to regain 1 ammo on kill. that + shotgun = max ammo all the time. then it's just getting all the damage and attack speed you can. i went about 40hrs on red time before my finger got tired of holding down mouse1

[Shining_Darkness]

One thing to note: An unmentioned and perhaps unintentional effect of his weapon path system is if you do the challenges that restrict one weapon it seems like it locks-in a path for you and you don't actually get to pick. At least that has been my experience with it.

[Sishiya]

Originally posted by darksteelhyren:

I see, thanks. I didn't know there were multiple choices when you upgraded the weapon. What is the upgrade path for shotgun and heavy machine gun??

Pistol then once you get it to 7 the following paths become available (you can only pick one path and there's no crossing over to another):

Single Shot Path
Revolver (Uncommon) -> Bolt-Action Rifle (Rare) -> Sniper Rifle (Epic)

Shotgun Path
Shotgun (Uncommon) -> Auto Shotgun (Rare) -> Scattergun (Epic)

Automatic Path
SMG (Uncommon) -> Rifle (Rare) -> HMG (Epic)

You advance to the next weapon once you get the current one to 7/7.

[Sishiya]

Originally posted by darksteelhyren:

Have you guys been able to make gunslinger work? My experience with him is that he lacks crowd-clearing capabilities. Yes this is explicitly stated in his description, but it does seem to mean that he can't stay alive as he gets swarmed constantly.

Compare to shopkeeper who levels up slowly but gets 3 to 8 cards per level, kind of bonkers.

Tips & tricks for improving?

The Gunslinger is, of the "not secret" avatars, the hardest one to start with and, as of right now, I don't believe is capable of reaching more than three days without flipping the Sage Leaf artifact and Anachronistic skill cooldowns; a rather tedious task but could still reach Day 9 (but won't be killing anything past Day 3).

The first approximate dozen levels in my experience thus far need to be spent on your defenses: whether it's HP Regen, Defense, HP, or Damage Mitigation. The mob pressure ramps up faster than you can reliably shoot them all at first, so you need to be able to survive multiple hits. After that, then start focusing on getting your Pistol to 7 along with whatever offensive tools you'll need to complement your chosen weapon path.

Artifact choices are not much different than for any other avatar. A word though on Portal Shard: I don't believe it is very useful for any class and less so for the Gunslinger (though I admit it's fun to see in action). If the bullets could cross the screen more than once until their projectile life ended then I'd have a different opinion, but as of now I think it's better to let the bullets fly away offscreen.

[Dan_The_Noob]

just stack damage until enemies can't even enter the screen... i made it to 1 day 8 hours survival with gunslinger in a few tries.

[Gwonbush]

Originally posted by Sishiya:

Artifact choices are not much different than for any other avatar. A word though on Portal Shard: I don't believe it is very useful for any class and less so for the Gunslinger (though I admit it's fun to see in action). If the bullets could cross the screen more than once until their projectile life ended then I'd have a different opinion, but as of now I think it's better to let the bullets fly away offscreen.

I think Portal Shard is far more useful on Gunslinger than the other classes. The other classes have the problem of Portal Shard not being worth it because of how it can lag them out. Gunslinger has less weapons to lag out with and the problem that they can't shoot in more than one direction at once. Portal Shard alleviates this weakness by allowing a shotgun to completely saturate the screen, giving a far more thorough defense through offense.

[Sishiya]

Originally posted by Gwonbush:

Originally posted by Sishiya:

Artifact choices are not much different than for any other avatar. A word though on Portal Shard: I don't believe it is very useful for any class and less so for the Gunslinger (though I admit it's fun to see in action). If the bullets could cross the screen more than once until their projectile life ended then I'd have a different opinion, but as of now I think it's better to let the bullets fly away offscreen.

I think Portal Shard is far more useful on Gunslinger than the other classes. The other classes have the problem of Portal Shard not being worth it because of how it can lag them out. Gunslinger has less weapons to lag out with and the problem that they can't shoot in more than one direction at once. Portal Shard alleviates this weakness by allowing a shotgun to completely saturate the screen, giving a far more thorough defense through offense.

It's not the lag I had in mind honestly, though you make a fair point.

If you're trying to push an Infinity run on the Gunslinger (not recommended), or at least multiple days, you reach a point where if an enemy appears on your screen then you are probably going to be hit. You want to delay this happening as long as possible with Ice Spirit and hitting and/or killing enemies as far offscreen as possible; something that Portal Shard makes impossible. There also comes a point where the enemy stats ramp up to where killing them with conventional damage is no longer possible, so Portal Shard's usefulness as a defense-through-offense measure, in a word, tanks.

Not taking Portal Shard also aids in relic hunting by smashing chests far offscreen.