Gunlance Shelling in a Nutshell

Note: This is NOT a full in-depth guide to Gunlance. There are plenty of videos out there going over it that do a hell of a lot better job than I ever could. With that out of way, I would also like to say that this information can be looked up on the internet. I'm just making this guide as an "ease of access" to the information in case you were just looking on Steam. (This Guide's last LAST edit: 12/28/2021) (Added "Guard Point" explanation to "Wyrmstake Blast" section. Happy hunting! Hopefully this is definitively my last edit to the guide!)

Normal

Normal Shelling is pretty much the "I have lots of ammo" category of shelling.
- It comes with quite a lot of shells to blast enemies with.
- They do lower base damage than the other two categories
- Meant to be expended all at once rather than one at a time
-Will tear through your sharpness quicker than kids and their Halloween candy

Generally, the "go to" combo for this is (Under ideal circumstances):
Rising Slash > Overhead Smash > Burst Fire > Wide Sweep > Quick Reload > Overhead Smash > Burst Fire > Repeat from Wide Sweep

This allows you to quickly deal out tons of damage as Burst Fire expends all your shelling into a massive "Burst" of attacks, dealing damage individually for each shelling you have. Following this up with Quick Reload allows for an infinite loop essentially allowing you to absolutely nuke whatever you're hunting over and over. Combining this with Wyrmstake Blast allows for even more DPS (damage per second).

Long

Long Shelling "mostly" takes advantage of charged shelling. Pretty much after an action, you can hold down the shelling button to charge it up and do more damage with it. Yeah, that.
- Has the middle ground when it comes to shelling capacity
- Long Shelling as its name implies has longer range than its other two categories (when charged up)
- Has a higher base damage than its other two categories assuming you're charging your shelling.

Its "go to" combo usually looks like:
Guard Stance > Poke > Shelling (Charged) > Shelling (Charged) > Shelling (Charged) > Quick Reload > Repeat from Shelling (Charged)

Obviously the combo can be altered to adapt to whatever situation but that is the bread and butter of it. With how slow Gunlance is, this is probably the slowest play style it has to offer as it more or less allows you to be more defensive by locking in place and blowing your hunt up. Wyrmstake Blast can still be taken advantage of for higher DPS. Charged Shelling blasts will cause the Wyrmstake to blow up in a larger explosion than usual, effectively dealing twice that that a normal shelling blast response. Very useful and very satisfying.

Wide

Wide Shelling is possibly my personal favorite as it has the most straight forward loop and is arguably the most passive play style of the three shellings.

- It has the lowest shelling capacity compared to its other two categories
- Hidden note is that it has a higher part breaker modifier for charged shelling
- Higher base damage than Normal and Long assuming you're not charging your shells
-"Wide" hitbox so positioning can be more forgiving at times

The "go to" combo looks like this:
Guard Stance > Poke > Shell > Poke > Shell > Poke > Quick Reload > Poke > Shell... you get the idea.

Simplicity at its finest. Not only that, but you can essentially double your brain dead DPS by implanting the Wyrmstake Blast. Fireworks everywhere! This combo is also useful for applying status effects as you'll be poking them quite often.

Shelling Tips

This is pretty much side information you should know about shelling in general. If you already know these, give yourself a pat on the back because it took me a while to find this out, believe it or not... and I called myself a Gunlance main...haha. Well at least I learned these later than never.

1. Shelling does not apply elemental or status effect damage. Do consider this when choosing a gunlance as Wide Shelling is your best bet for applying things like Blast, Sleep, Paralysis, etc due to its poke combo meta.

2. Shelling drains your sharpness FAST as it shaves off twice the original value compared to basic attacks. If you're used to seeing that purple or white sharpness for a while during a fight, you may wanna prepare yourself. You'll be seeing green sharpness quite often. Or maybe this is because I just don't run Handicraft.

3. If you haven't already noticed, Shelling deals something known as "True Damage". This means shelling bypasses all sorts of defenses a monster may have. In short, shelling will never deal damage that is colored gray. This also applies to Wyvern's Fire. You'll always see those juicy orange numbers.

4. Shelling's damage is fixed and won't decrease until you go below green sharpness so you can still maintain a good DPS flow in regards to your shelling attacks.

5. Shelling cannot deal "critical" damage. As said before, the damage is fixed. Keep this in mind with your playstyle as Affinity won't matter if you're focusing more on shelling than physical attacks.

6. Shelling is unique to Gunlance... I feel like this is obvious but I've been asked a couple of times what other weapons can use shelling, believe it or not.

Wyrmstake Cannon

Not to be confused with "Wyrmstake Blast".

Wyrmstake Cannon is the standard combo finisher Gunlance has to offer. Surprisingly enough, it's highly under rated due to its slow animation that usually leaves you wide open for attack. I personally (and some other Gunlancers as well) beg to differ.

The quickest method to execute Wyrmstake Cannon is through shelling twice and pressing the shelling button again. It should look like:
Shelling > Shelling > Wyrmstake Cannon (Remember this is the quickest method, not the only method)

Wyrmstake Cannon works differently in comparison to shelling attacks. While in the animation, you will shoot out what looks like a really thick needle. That needle has the ability to drill into a monster and then explode violently. It will start off doing rapid tick damage over time. This damage does not act like shelling and will be reduced if you do not land the Cannon on a weak point. However, this means that if you land the Cannon on a weak point (or a monster part that has been softened up by clutch claw attacks), the damage will be increased and scale like any normal physical attack. The final part of the Wyrmstake Cannon is the explosion. This acts exactly like any shelling attack. The damage is fixed, true, and still eats your sharpness like Thanksgiving dinner.

Some general information you should know:
-The tick damage of the Wyrmstake Cannon is rumored to do some sort of slicing damage. If this is true, it may be useful to try and use this on the tail of the monster.
-The attack combo itself is rather fast and you can dish out more damage than the Dragonator if you build yourself correctly. However, it's the recovery animation after you use Wyrmstake Cannon that people tend to frown upon. If you miss, you're pretty much a sitting duck waiting to get carted.
-Some Gunlances can look deceiving (I'm looking at you Lightbreak...) and the tip of the Lance isn't actually where the "gun" portion is. It's better to try and position yourself closer than farther if attempted to use this at a distance.

So when should you use this? Well like any well adapted hunter, you should use it while the monster is stunned/KO'ed/Toppled over, exhausted, in a trap... pretty much any time the monster is immobilized. Where should you use it? Preferably any weak points the monster has. The head and tail tend to be the prioritized spots. If you have gotten used to a monster's movement pattern, feel free to go for some risky Cannons if you know you can come out unscathed.

Wyrmstake Blast

Wyrmstake Blast is the new tool added with the Iceborne DLC. At first, most will shrug it off as a waste of time, but if used correctly, you can out DPS most other weapons pretty easily. This section will go over some tips on how to use it effectively.

Some general information before we start:
-Wyrmstake Blast is much like shelling in the form of how it deals damage. It's fixed, will deal True Damage, and can't deal critical damage
-It will not trigger if you don't perform a shelling attack near it
-To load it, you must have slinger ammo equipped
-The more slinger ammo put into the Wyrmstake, the longer it will stay on the monster. Slinger Capacity skills will help with this
-You can only implant 1 Wyrmstake Blast of your own at a time, however, multiple Wyrmstake Blasts can be implanted at a time if your hunting party has more than one Gunlance user (assuming they all use Wyrmstake Blast as well).
-Wyrmstake Blast works with all forms of shelling, your Wyrmstake Cannon, and best of all, your Wyvern's Fire. It will blow up equal to the amount of times it's attacked. One shell? One explosion. Burst fire? Lots of explosions. Wyvern's Fire? Lots of Explosions

- Positioning -

Consider where you want the Wyrmstake Blast to be. It will assist heavily in increasing your DPS, but it will also assist quite a bit in part breaking. Put it somewhere easy to see and attack with your shelling. This way, you're the most consistent with your damage.

If you have a party of Gunlances (4 Gunlances is fun, trust me on that, haha), other hunters can place their Wyrmstake Blasts all over the monster. By doing this, you can safely shell just about anywhere on the monster and it will trigger a Wyrmstake Blast.

Of course, your party can do the opposite and just implant all 4 possible Wyrmstake Blasts in one spot and cause so many explosions, the Demoman from TF2 would be proud.

- Timing/Duration -

Wyrmstake Blasts have a set time they can remain on a monster. You can shell at it as many times as you want within that time so feel free to blow it up as much as you desire.

Now assuming you're wanting to slay your hunt, if you know when a monster is about to limp away and go sleep somewhere (or get lucky), it's advised to implant your boomstick toy on the monster's head. Let it fall asleep, then plant all your Mega Barrel Bombs near its head. As a Gunlance user, use your Wyvern's Fire to wake the monster up. This will deal so much damage, it makes a Greatsword user look underpar.

- Guard Point -

Wyrmstake Blast's animation has a guard point. This means if any attack comes into contact with you during this small window, you will block the attack entirely (assuming you're able to guard the attack normally). This can be EXTREMELY useful for setting up a Wyrmstake Blast early like during a monster roar for absolutely free. Being able to utilize this can drastically open up the way you play Gunlance purely because of all the options it gives you at the beginning and middle of a hunt.

Final Tips

As mentioned before, this isn't an in-depth guide to Gunlance, only its shelling. Hopefully this helped in finalizing any decision you may have had about the weapon itself, or what kind of Gunlance you want to be using most of the time. As most weapons, it takes time to master/use effectively, so take time to find out what kind of shelling suits you.

If you need every shelling type summarized with some extra info, here:

Normal: Burst Fire is your best friend. Keep in mind that doing the heavy combo for Gunlance will leave you stuck in recovery frames so this playstyle is very situational depending on the Monster's status. Also remember that there are multiple ways to initiate full burst attacks.
1. Heavy Slam then press the shelling button.
2. Jumping off ledges or jumping while sliding then pressing the shelling button to do an airborne full burst (This move is so satisfying and looks so cool).
3. When you mount a monster successfully and weaken it enough, the Gunlance will do a final attack which is a full burst.
It is also worth mentioning that since you will be slapping the monster a lot more often with your Gunlance that you should consider running damage/affinity increasing skills as they add to your DPS. Your shelling only comes out in full bursts so more often than not, you're going to be physically attacking the monster.

Long: Charged Shelling is the way to go with this. Once you get used to the shelling hit boxes on Long, it may be harder for you to switch to Wide or Normal as you have quite a lot of range with Long Shelling. The Focus skill will dramatically improve your performance with this so it is definitely worth running.

Wide: Poke, shell, and poke. That's all you really need to do with this. What you should be mindful of though is your positioning. Since you are poking the monster more, you want to aim for weak spots to maximize your DPS and to avoid your attack bouncing off.

Wyrmstake Blast: If you like damage, use this as often as you can as this can effectively double your DPS or just give you more damage during your combos. Remember that Slinger capacity will help as your slinger ammo amount will impact the time the Wyrmstake Blast will stick around.

Wyrmstake Cannon: Wide gunlances have a damage bonus on this, but every kind of gunlance can use this to deal a very nice amount of damage if you use the heavy combo all the way to Wyrmstake Cannon. If you intend to burst fire within that combo, Normal will be your best bet to maximize the combo's damage. If you're going for a more "slapstick" playstyle, using affinity and attack boosting skills can increase this combo finisher's damage.

With all of that said, a quick reminder that you can of course find this kind of information else where. I did use information found on the Monster Hunter: World Wiki as well as information found on a response post on gamefaqs.gamespot under the username of "Button_Masher_Z".
Feel free to leave a comment with any other information you think could be useful (or just make your own guide...contribute to the community). Have a nice day/night!

[K1ll3rc0mb0]

i do more damage with the up stab>down slam> horizontal slash > side step
i use shells now and again when i get a loaded stake in but most of the time i just repeat this combo and do tons of damage. this would normally be the normal shell rotation with burst in the middle but i use a wide shell lance so bursting just adds an extra animation i rather skip. the difference being bursting 100 ish damage or horizontal for 300 to 400.

[//////// AZUSA ////////]

nice

[Peter]

nice

[@ninx_corp]

Thanks a lot

[Ulysses]

Outstanding!

[Yan]

The last time I touched GL was on Vanilla MHW (2019) I guess, I only used it for slap lance. The addition of wyrmstakes makes it so much fun

[Thot Process]

I came back to Gunlance to play Iceborne for the first time and could NOT figure out that I needed slinger ammo for the Blast. Great guide, exactly what I needed

[ZadeKirian]

I noticed that I am one of the only authors of a series of "Gunlance Guides" in general and that there are very minimal (if any) steam sources for Gunlance material. I just want to say that I'm extremely grateful for all the feedback, support, and favorites of these guides. It started off as just a way to help people understand Gunlance, but I've gotten messages from y'all that I've helped you become a Gunlance main (if only temporary) and that is such an amazing feeling! Thank you all and happy hunting!

[XXBCZBCZBXA]

Oh finally! I made it) Thanks to you

[ZadeKirian]

To load a Wyrmstake Blast on PC Controls, you first need to have slinger ammo.

Once you have your slinger loaded with any kind of ammo, you need to guard. While guarding, refer to the top right of your screen and it should say "Load Wyrmstake Blast" with a button combination following it.

For me, I had to press C + Right Click while guarding to load my Wyrmstake Blast.