Best Gunlance Tree to start with?

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

I've been using GS pretty much the entire time and arena made me like the GL, so I wanted to give that a try. I already tried the Barroth Bluff II GL, but the sharpness on that one is terrible. What would be a good Gunlance upgrade tree to start with and what should I aim for in endgame? I know sharpness and shelling level are both very important. I've also read about the different types of shellings and long with a bonus on charged shellings doesn't really sound that fun, so maybe something with wide or normal type?

[Popcorn]

Base game or IB?
Base game would be defenders due to the OP ness of it
IB endgame would be Fatalis

I may be wrong tho, if any GL mains would correct me, go ahead

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

Originally posted by Popcorn:

Base game or IB?
Base game would be defenders due to the OP ness of it
IB endgame would be Fatalis

I may be wrong tho, if any GL mains would correct me, go ahead

I'm currently in IB, MR 14. So not too far in. I just killed the Fulgur Anjanath.

[UnwieldyRex]

I used to be a GL main, but mostly only used the Defender until I could get the Magda Lahat (Zorah Magdoros). That one was aight, but Defender was always more powerful and better blocking. Nothing pre-IB is going to beat Defender in terms of stopping power and defense abilities, even going elemental builds it was a consistent drop in DPS - even when between attack and element power should have been "close to the same". I also believe Defender is one of the very few non-IB GLs that have white sharpness, IIRC; and also it's reduction in stamina usage when sprinting ability is super nice, especially for areas like Elder's Recess, Wildspire Waste, or if you get knocked out the trees in Ancient Forest.

In terms of best, including Iceborne, that would be nice to know since I have only gotten the first monster in with the DLC.

[Woter Meron]

In base game:
-Wide shelling: defenitly defender. It is OP as hell.
-Normal shelling: rathian is a real solid pick.


Wide playstyle consists of: poke → shoot → shoot → poke → ...
You will lose 1 shell with every shot. Shoot 3 times for a wyrmstake

Normal playstyle consists of: up thrust → down slam → shoot → reload → down slam → ...
You will lose all your shells with the burst fire. press poke after the shot for wyrmstake.


Highly recommended skills (besides the common ones):
-artillery
-magazine
-ironwall and/or evade extender

somewhat usefull skills:
-grinder
-polish

[Insane Scientist]

As above post said, defender's if you want an OP weapon that requires no monster grinding to upgrade, I personally wouldn't recommend using defender weapons or armor though unless you want no challenge and to breeze through the base game quickly, it trivializes any challenge in the base game as defender armor is better than anything you will be able to craft for pretty much the entire base game story.

I'm not a gunlance main myself but looking at the fully visible and completed crafting tree in the workshop the weapon's that stand out the most to me are early on are the Rathian tree which seems to have the highest general raw damage and affinity for most of the early game and should last all the way until mid Iceborne DLC(also the coolest looking gunlance design imo), there's also Great Jagras gunlance tree which later gets the Great Girros subtree with paralysis which is really nice for getting off a free wyrmstake on the monster, this is a decent early alternative for the Rathian tree. When you get late into Iceborne DLC and outgrow the Rathian gunlance it seems to be a straightforward progression of using stuff from the last boss monster you fought or last special assignment you did as they all have very strong stuff up until you get Fatalis which is the final gunlance.
EDIT: a bunch of replies came in while I was typing and I see you're MR 14, I'd just stick with Rathian in Iceborne until you start fighting boss monsters and special assignment stuff which will offer many better options.

[Woter Meron]

Originally posted by UnwieldyRex:

... In terms of best, including Iceborne, that would be nice to know since I have only gotten the first monster in with the DLC.

Baroth for wide, rathain/brachy for normal. That would be good enough to get you through the story.

[Shoepots]

Depends on what shelling type you want. I'm not at Fatalis yet so I used the Rathian tree for normal shelling and the Lightbreak for wide shelling. Never been a fan of long shelling.

[♋Phenex]

Progression guide from the MHW discord:
https://imgur.com/gallery/THX9pGS
You don't need to hard follow it so I would just look at the armors themselves and weapons since you probably dont have decorations.

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Originally posted by UnwieldyRex:

... In terms of best, including Iceborne, that would be nice to know since I have only gotten the first monster in with the DLC.

Baroth for wide, rathain/brachy for normal. That would be good enough to get you through the story.

As already mentioned, I have only tried Barroth so far and the very low white sharpness even with Handicraft 4 seems kinda bad considering sharpness is one of the most important aspects.

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

Originally posted by ♋Phenex:

Progression guide from the MHW discord:
https://imgur.com/gallery/THX9pGS
You don't need to hard follow it so I would just look at the armors themselves and weapons since you probably dont have decorations.

I have 13 pages of decorations, but most of them are pretty meh. You do get a ton of crappy ones I feel like.

[Woter Meron]

Originally posted by 🌌Venvetta🌌:

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Baroth for wide, rathain/brachy for normal. That would be good enough to get you through the story.

As already mentioned, I have only tried Barroth so far and the very low white sharpness even with Handicraft 4 seems kinda bad considering sharpness is one of the most important aspects.

Where have you ever heard sharpness is important? I mean, yeah, the higer the beter, but important? Especially for gunlance where most of your damage is shelling (independent of sharpness). And elemental damage on GL is laughable

The most important thing is artillery, critchance to 100%, critboost and all the jewels you need to stay alive. Blue sharpness is good enough

Also, eat for felyne bombardier. It helps with the shelling.


Also also, that was a response to the guy asking begining iceborn GL builds and not to your question. Baroth GL isn't great for base endgame

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Originally posted by 🌌Venvetta🌌:

As already mentioned, I have only tried Barroth so far and the very low white sharpness even with Handicraft 4 seems kinda bad considering sharpness is one of the most important aspects.

Where have you ever heard sharpness is important? I mean, yeah, the higer the beter, but important? Especially for gunlance where most of your damage is shelling (independent of sharpness). And elemental damage on GL is laughable

The most important thing is artillery, critchance to 100%, critboost and all the jewels you need to stay alive. Blue sharpness is good enough

Also, eat for felyne bombardier. It helps with the shelling.


Also also, that was a response to the guy asking begining iceborn GL builds and not to your question. Baroth GL isn't great for base endgame

But shelling eats through sharpness pretty quickly. Does it not affect the damage of your shots? Even so, I want to melee too and not just shoot all the time.

[Woter Meron]

Originally posted by 🌌Venvetta🌌:

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Where have you ever heard sharpness is important? I mean, yeah, the higer the beter, but important? Especially for gunlance where most of your damage is shelling (independent of sharpness). And elemental damage on GL is laughable

The most important thing is artillery, critchance to 100%, critboost and all the jewels you need to stay alive. Blue sharpness is good enough

Also, eat for felyne bombardier. It helps with the shelling.


Also also, that was a response to the guy asking begining iceborn GL builds and not to your question. Baroth GL isn't great for base endgame

But shelling eats through sharpness pretty quickly. Does it not affect the damage of your shots? Even so, I want to melee too and not just shoot all the time.

Sharpness does not effect shelling unless you are at yellow or below (which you shouldn't) and you answered your own question. Why have a bit off white sharpness that gets immediately blown off?
Why invest in sharpness jewels for such a small damage buff of a small part of your moveset that last so little?

You should play into your strengths rather than cover your weaknesses. Besides you can sharpen everytime a monster moves to a new location. If you have a lot of blue sharpness you will (mostly) still have blue by the end of your engagement. With a bit of white it will be blown off in the first seconds.

Sharpness only matters for elemental damage or in combination with teostra's/behemoths armor set bonus which doesn't work with GL.

[~🐣Venvetta🐣~]

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Originally posted by 🌌Venvetta🌌:

But shelling eats through sharpness pretty quickly. Does it not affect the damage of your shots? Even so, I want to melee too and not just shoot all the time.

Sharpness does not effect shelling unless you are at yellow or below (which you shouldn't) and you answered your own question. Why have a bit off white sharpness that gets immediately blown off?
Why invest in sharpness jewels for such a small damage buff of a small part of your moveset that last so little?

You should play into your strengths rather than cover your weaknesses. Besides you can sharpen everytime a monster moves to a new location. If you have a lot of blue sharpness you will (mostly) still have blue by the end of your engagement. With a bit of white it will be blown off in the first seconds.

Sharpness only matters for elemental damage or in combination with teostra's/behemoths armor set bonus which doesn't work with GL.

Ah, I see. That actually makes a lot of sense if you put it that way. I assume by saying that sharpness only matters for elemental damage it implies that melee attacks can and shellings cannot ever deal elemental damage, correct?

[Woter Meron]

Originally posted by 🔥Venvetta🔥:

Originally posted by Woter Meron:

Sharpness does not effect shelling unless you are at yellow or below (which you shouldn't) and you answered your own question. Why have a bit off white sharpness that gets immediately blown off?
Why invest in sharpness jewels for such a small damage buff of a small part of your moveset that last so little?

You should play into your strengths rather than cover your weaknesses. Besides you can sharpen everytime a monster moves to a new location. If you have a lot of blue sharpness you will (mostly) still have blue by the end of your engagement. With a bit of white it will be blown off in the first seconds.

Sharpness only matters for elemental damage or in combination with teostra's/behemoths armor set bonus which doesn't work with GL.

Ah, I see. That actually makes a lot of sense if you put it that way. I assume by saying that sharpness only matters for elemental damage it implies that melee attacks can and shellings cannot ever deal elemental damage, correct?

Shelling is not effected by elemental or raw attack boosts. The only way to increase shelling damage is the artillery skill, the shell level of your gunlance and eating for felyne bombardier (and I guess magazine jewel for more shells) no other skills or augments can change that (the blast and bombardier skills do not increase shelling. That is a very common mistake).

well maybe I should clarify that sharpness also increases raw (non-elemental) damage but that increase is too small to be worth investing in (in most cases), while the increase in elemental damage is higher therefor more 'justified' to invest in (not worth it for GL because GL has bad elemental modifiers).

And a tip for gunlance: shells ignore hitzone values. Ever had trouble with anjanath with GS? His/her head is hard to hit and if you aim for the legs you deal little damage due to the bad hitzone value. With shelling you can just ignore that. Shells deal as much damage to the head as to the legs or any other bodypart, so you can bombard the legs until the monster is toppled and then go for the head once it's down (your melee attacks still uses hitzone values). This can be really usefull for fighting brute wyverns in multiplayer since you can easily topple the monster for your squad.