Tera online gunner skill guide

Looking for me on Ascension Valley?

Virus, Forsynthia, Zoo, Omanko, Vouch, Peq, Hew, Hiq, Luq, Bakemono, Luria.Fibers

youtube.com/idioticfreek | reddit.com/u/megatonfist

REPLENISH VALUE CALCULATOR – PLEASE FILL IN D54-60 AT BOTTOM FOR BEST RESULTS

2/7 edit: calculator is complete

INTRODUCTION

I started playing tera around the time it went f2p back in march of 2013 and hit 60 on my first character on AV around May that year. I mained warrior at the time, both tanking and dpsing as needed, and moved on to leveling other classes since the game got stale.Following warrior, I leveled berserker, priest, lancer, reaper, mystic, archer, slayer, sorcerer, gunner, and brawler to 60 > 65 in that order. Needless to say, I have enough experience in this game playing across all roles/classes and have cleared all major content since the release of Tera.

I picked up gunner on its release here in NA and immediately saw how blatantly broken this class was. For those of you tuning in to tera just now and have not experienced gameplay before, arcane barrage used to do nearly twice the damage and generate double the willpower before the nerfs. Because of how strong AB used to be, running double cdr lines and energetic etches was a viable build at the time as rotations focused on getting as many AB’s out as possible. However after numerous nerfs to the skill, the traditional build focusing on % damage lines and crit/power is now more common.

CTRL + F GUIDE FOR THE LAZY

A1 – SUGGESTED GEAR LINES/CRYSTALS

Weapon

enraged + enraged/flat dmg/rear dmg/cdr*

Chest

15% cd on rolling reload + flat dmg/enraged dmg/frontal dmg/max hp or increased healing effects*

*extra line is only available to visionmaker gear (i.e. lucid/starfall for our current patch)

Gloves

atk speed, power, crit

Boots

movement speed, endurance, hp or mp regen

Crystals

focused/spiteful/savage/ + one of either pounding, forceful, carving, or slaying

(more info following)

A2 – NICHE SKILLS EXPLAINED

Arcane Barrage – AB

launches a slow moving projectile upon first cast, and detonates on 2nd cast. detonate the projectile when positioned behind a monster for rear crit damage. will 100% rear crit at approximately +130 bonus crit. following the detonation, if your HB is summoned, will shoot 5 projectiles at the targeted detonation location. 20 wp on first hit, 200 wp on second hit

Scattershot – SS

shoots 5 bullets in a conical spread forward and will provide a 4.5meter recoil, 2.5meter when glyphed for recoil reduction. 20wp gained per bullet hit, up to 100. this is your go to skill for moving behind bosses with a small enough character model

Burst Fire – BF

windup your gun and fire a stream of bullets with increasing damage and crit rate up to a cap using willpower. the damage on this skill will go up to 4x 6x the base moving up in increments of 100% per shot (4th 6th shot of consecutive BF will be the maximum dmg output)

Point Blank – PB

this is a two part skill requiring two key inputs, swing your gun forward to move a short distance and then fire a blank shot moving you back a further distance. rotating your screen 180 degrees after the first hit will allow you traverse the most distance

Rocket Jump

propel yourself forward with your gun; can be used mid rolling reload to traverse a slightly greater distance(~2m more)

Rolling Reload

your main iframe; resets scattershot upon use

Command: Recall

leashes you up to 40 meters to your HB-bot allowing you to absorb all incoming damage for ~2 seconds. you will still be prone to debuffs such as slows/stuns/DoTs. can be used when knocked down. also can be used to cancel all animations.

Mana Missiles

charge your gun to fire long range missiles. maximum charge will release 5 shots, any other duration of a charge or tap will release only 2 shots. each shot has a fixed base damage and does not change based on the charge level. aim this at the base of a mob for better accuracy as the missiles follow a sinusoidal path and have a tendency to spread out pass monster hit boxes. this skill extends 30 35 meters making this the longest ranging skill in the game.

Balder’s Vengeance

requires 1500 wp to use. fires a long range shot that will guarantee a crit, can be animation cancelled using recall

A3 – DEBATABLE POINTS OF CONVERSATION

Please note, I don’t have any reliable math to prove my points but here are my reasons as to why I choose one over the other.

Additional weapon line of 14 crit vs 7.2% cdr

7.2% cdr will apply to ALL of your skills as a gunner

This means that not only are you able to use your hardest hitting skills more often (bombardment/AB), you will be able to build willpower much quicker (replenishment/other general skills). Reduced cooldowns on skills such as rocket jump, rolling reload, point blank, and recall will help with flexibility/survivability/mobility which translates to more back crits; more back crits means more dps.

Pounding vs Forceful vs Carving vs Slaying

POUNDING

use this when you will be running a dungeon with a priest/mystic

FORCEFUL

use this when you are solo playing without energy stars/titanic wrath or when your total power is under ~244 after buffs/consumables

CARVING

after numerous tests on BAMS and dungeons i found that carving increases the crit rate on burst fire by ~10-15%

use this if you are running a power centric build or are lacking in crit accessories as a FRESH 65

SLAYING

use this for high score runs where you will be playing under 50% hp

Chest Lines – Arcane Barrage vs Replenishment vs -5wp on BF

“15% reduced cd on rolling reload” is actually a typo and affects replenishment instead of roll. With master glyphs and the chest line, replenishment’s cooldown will go down to less than 4 seconds from 8.

Now why do I choose replenishment over AB dmg?

  1. You can build wp faster with more replenishments
  2. You have a good filler skill if you experience a boss turning mid BF
  3. 7% AB damage will only provide you 5.83% overall more damage on AB (1.27/1.2=1.05833) because of the 20% dmg glyph. This nets us about a 1.4575% increase in total damage as AB amounts to approximately 25% of your total dps

A4 – Glyphs: 2-5 Update

This is your core build, please allocate points around what kind of fight you are going to expect.

http://www.essentialmana.com/glyph-calc/#gu65:a2:b4:e01:f3:g2:j23:l14:m0:n3

I listed the following glyphs in order of effectiveness/contribution to total dps.

GLYPHS TO CONSIDER

A5 – POWER VS CRIT

About +133 crit is the sweetspot for AB to 100% back crit and for TB/HBsum to 100% crit mid BF. Because of this, +130 bonus crit is the minimum crit gunners should be running. The question here is should you stack more power or more crit after +130?

Why you shouldn’t stack power

powerMod = (1 + power / 100)

This means that every single additional point of power increases your overall damage by a gradually decreasing amount. For example:

11/10 = 1.10 : 10% increase.

12/11=1.0909 : 9.09% increase

13/12=1.0833 : 8.3% increase

Although these numbers seem very large, once you go up to the few hundred power range the % increase per point of power becomes very very small.

Why you shouldn’t stack crit

If we assume we can 100% crit on our BV/AB/TB/HBsum with +130 crit factor, this means that approximately 40% of our total damage is going to be unaffected by stacking more crit.

That being said, Mana Missiles, Bombardment, and Burstfire all scale differently than standard skills with crit. Both Mana Missiles and Bombardment have 3x/2x crit glyphs respectively. Just from playing around with these two skills glyphed/unglyphed, I usually see MM and Bombardment critting anywhere from 2-2.5x more and 1.5-2x more when glyphed. So any additional crit you stack will benefit these two immensely.

I have no idea exactly how burst fire crit works but following shot # 5 (which is where the damage ramp is at its max) I see BF critting for upwards of 90-100% at +173 crit and only ~70% at +130. So take what you can from this and make your own decision.

TL;DR

Gunners scale like shit with both crit and power. Take your pick.

A6 – ATTACK SPEED ROLL AND WHY IT’S BAD

Only the following skills benefit from additional attack speed:

-bombardment cast time

-mana missiles charge speed

-burst fire wind up animation

A gunner’s main rotation revolves around BV, AB, Replenish, TB, HbSum, BF(held), and HbProjectiles all of which total to over 70% of your dps and are unaffected by AS.

Rolling for attack speed on your weapon is a waste of a line and should only be considered as a bonus supplementary stat from lamb bulgogi, energy stars/titanic wrath, and bravery potion.

A7 – UTILIZING MANA MISSILES EFFECTIVELY

Mana missiles is odd in that it doesn’t allow the skill to be used until your character is out of its current skill animation.

This holds true for nearly all of gunner’s skills except the following:

Burst Fire (let go of BF key before you start to hold MM)

Command:Recall

Rocket Jump

Many gunner’s will tell you about how MM should be used after these skills because they “speed up” the charge time but this is not totally true. What is actually happening is that these skills don’t put you in an ending animation lock and allow you to almost instantly start the charge. Although you benefit most from MM by utilizing it following above 3 skills, using it solely as a filler in place of scattershot is also okay as it effectively does more damage than SS.

A8 – UTILIZING TIME BOMB EFFECTIVELY

Timebomb WILL NOT always back crit even after aiming at a boss directly. You want the edge of the TB to just touch the edge of the boss’s base model. Sometimes I find that if timebomb detonates under the boss when mid animation of an attack or turn, it will register as a back hit, but no guarantees.

Video for reference, most of my timebombs were directed poorly, but you’ll see some of them placed properly.

A9 – BLAST CANCELLING/WEAVING: 2-5-16 UPDATE

One of the more challenging topics that many people talk about on gunner, blast canceling does one of several things for you.

1. It allows you to break animations following the end of certain skills to allow for continued free movement

2. It will proc your 15% attack speed glyph.

3. It restores 100mp on hit

4. It does kawaii dps.

REASONING BEHIND BLAST CANCELLING CONTINUED

  1. Breaking animations on skills is crucial to gunners because two of their main filler skills, scattershot and mana missiles, have significant recoils. Utilizing blast after said skills will allow you to continue walking forward to stay at melee range of the boss. But why should I be at melee range? Your most important skill (AB) goes on cooldown after it is detonated. This means you should be trying to detonate this skill as soon as possible to maximize its usage (that being said, you also want AB to make contact with the boss first so the HB projectiles that follow up will also hit). So if you don’t blast after SS or MM, you’ll slowly be distancing yourself from the boss. This will put you in a situation where you will not be able to instantly detonate AB. In addition to this, HBsummon, one of your other main tools that will be utilized before starting to BF needs to be used at melee range to hit.You’ll also have a much easier time maneuvering around bosses by simply rolling through them.

*I should note here that in a scattershot/MM > ab rotation or any time you’re trying to close gaps, instead of blasting prior to the AB. you can blast mid AB flight to continue forward movement. Other options include using SS or Arcbomb mid AB but these cast times are a little longer than blast and won’t give you free movement, so you’ll have to use your judgement as to what filler is best given the distance needed to be traveled by your AB.

  1. The 15% attack speed glyph has a 10% proc chance and lasts for 10 seconds. On average, this means that 1 blast will effectively provide you with 15% attack speed for 1 second. This is most useful when blasting PRIOR to SS as this is your main filler skill and is affected by more attack speed.
  1. Gunner’s natural MP replenishment is very VERY little. If you supplement this with replenishing off cooldown and your priest/mystic periodically regenerating your mana, it will still be insufficient to sustain your mana pool. If you are having MP issues on gunner, not utilizing blast is probably the number one reason as to why you’re going OOM. Just as a side note, I’m able to run dungeons without the need for infused charms whatsoever.
  1. kawaii dps ~ keep reading below

I went ahead and did a number of tests to determine how long weaving 1 blast takes between skills. What I found was it takes 0.15 seconds at my ping of 35 using Sony Vegas for 1 blast.

To put that into perspective as to what this means for our rotations, when blast is glyphed for damage (920.39), blast can do

1 / 0.15 x 920.39 = 6135 dps.

This means that if I could spam blast at 0.15 second intervals, it would have a dps of 6135.

But because no one can do this realistically, what you and every other gunner out there should be doing is utilizing blast weaving. This will net you that 6135 dps over the course of a boss fight as this is the value you should be keeping in mind as you use this skill.

Just for reference, scattershot’s base damage is 3107 and its cast time is 1 second at +30 AS (+17 is standard for gunners and +13 means playing with either bravery potion and energy stars or the AS glyph proc itself).

Scattershot’s DPS is 3107/1=3107

This means utilizing blast is almost TWICE as effective as using scattershots in rotations.

(for proper calculations with WP factored in go here.)

Strictly speaking, nearly every skill can be used to animation cancel but only blast, tb, and ab give you free character movement following the cancel.

Situations I would not recommend blast cancelling would be when you can cancel the current animation of your skill with something with better dps (replenish, ab, tb, hb).

Blasting will generally lead to a DPS GAIN when used PRIOR to any fillers that can cancel animations.

B1 – BALDER’S VENGEANCE VS BF 1500 WP USAGE

BV tooltip has a base damage of 15173

BV’s actual base damage is 16235.87

Cast time of bv is 2.4333 if cancelled with recall

Cast time of bv rolling at the end of animation is 4.7 seconds (useless info)

Balder’s Vengeance yields 16235.87 x 8 / 2.4333 = 53376.073 dps

Cast time of full BF +15% AS from glyph is 4.8 seconds

Full BF has a base damage of 20385. If we assume the first 3 hits will not crit and the other 22 will, that’s an 88% crit chance. With an 8x crit mod this gives us:

19480 x 8 + 856 =156696/4.8=32645 dps

BV>1500BF if you recall cancel

Even if you utilize AB/TB/HB before the BF, balder’s will provide you more dps and should be used off CD. Math reasoning is posted in the comments of this thread.

B2 – TIMEBOMB, HB SUM, AND AB PROJECTILES

Important note: the 5 projectiles following AB have a total base dmg of ~5120; this is HUGE that’s what she said

If you are mid Burst Fire, any and all skills that hit will also benefit from BF’s bonus crit chance. For these supplementary skills to 100% crit from the REAR, you will need approximately +133 bonus crit. What this means is that before you start to BF, you should be looking to do one of 5 things.

  1. Arcane Barrage > TB> AB(detonate) > BF (use this when you have about ~170 wp so your BF can last long enough for all 5 projectiles to crit)
  2. TB > HB Summon > BF (use this if you’re at melee range, requires ~180 wp)
  3. TB (~180wp) > BF
  4. AB (~350wp) > BF
  5. HB Sum (~300wp) > BF

B3 – OPTIMIZING YOUR ROTATION

I will continue to update this section if I’m able to further improve rotations.

If you’ve made it to this point, congratulations. I should hope that I don’t need to point out what a gunner’s rotation is. You’re going to either strictly be using your willpower or building it.

Ideal opening rotation with BV:

Bombard > AB > Rep > BV(recall) > tb > stack wp

Ideal opening rotation without BV:

Bombard > AB > TB > AB (detonate) > BF > MM > SS > stack wp

If you’re trying to generate willpower from zero:

(TB)>AB>SS>REP>(RollSS)>MM>ARC

If you use tb at 0 wp, by the time you are near stacked with wp, it should be available for use before BFing. Avoid using TB for wp generation if not at 0-100 wp as you will most likely overcap WP by the time TB becomes available.

The Conservative Gunner

First I’d like to say that your primary goal is to AB>TB>AB before every BF and to maintain a BF for as long as possible.

This playstyle involves spacing out ab/hb usage to maximize sustained dps. Using HB off cooldown before BF is not advised because there is a 50% chance that on your next BF parse AB does NOT reset on your final replenishment. In the event this occurs, this is when you would use HB>TB before BF (hence why I mentioned spacing out skill usage). Should this occur, what will end up happening is that your AB will come off CD mid BF following the HB>TB. When it becomes available, you should stop BFing, AB, then continue BF. Follow your rotation normally afterwards.

This rotation follows the above mentioned priority line for stacking your wp. When you are almost done stacking your wp, on your FINAL replenishment, should both SS and AB reset and you have room to stack the wp, use SS first then AB>TB>AB>BF to 0.

Should your final replenishment NOT reset your AB and your HB is ON CD, it is NOT recommended to overstack wp to wait for your AB to come off CD. At this point you will have no option but to TB>BF without AB/HB.

The Lucky Recall Gunner

This rotation puts a heavy emphasis on using recall off cd for replenish resets. While this is great for DPS you put you and your party in jeopardy if you are unable to recall to iframe something important. If you are trying to maximize your dps however, this is what you should follow.

From 0 wp:

(TB)>AB>Rep+recall>(AB)>SS>Rep> continue wp stacking normally.

Do keep in mind, you will not need to use roll>SS as frequently since you will easily stack WP should you manage to pull off two AB resets in a row.

Other things to note:

B4 – Questions mid rotation that I ask myself

Should I stop to timebomb or Hbsum mid BF then restart BF?

Should I stop to AB mid BF?

Should I use both AB and SS before I replenish?

When is it better to single tap MM vs full charge?

CHECK BOTTOM OF GUIDE FOR MY ANALYSIS/ANSWERS

B5 – NOTABLE TIPS/TRICKS

Double point blank stagger (pvp use more prevalent)

requires a fair amount of attack speed and good ping to do consistently (~+23AS/35ping)

Double replenish/triple AB

use recall the moment you replenish to prevent replenish from going on cooldown

Hitting a target with rocket jump DOES NOT put you into combat.

Blast will sometimes bug and fire 2 shots instantly instead of 1, though I don’t know why this occurs.

B6 – My gear

My current gear

B7 – WTS PING

Gunner may be one the more difficult classes to play with high ping as you will not be able to weave blast/cancel as effectively and burst fire will be choppy as it needs to send individual packets to servers very quickly. You’ll need to spam alternate keys to BF with high ping or macro it for it be effective. So many of the topics highlighted above will be of very little use to you.

However, if you still want to play Gunner and have upwards of over 200 ping, your best bet would be to focus on a power build with an emphasis on AB over anything as that is the single most faceroll skill in this game. So if you can’t do what I present to you in my videos, blame whoever designed this game to be so ping dependant.

I have 35 ping.

B8 – 5WP BF CHEST LINE

30407.625=standard BF dps

cast time is 4.8 (25 shots)

cast time is 4.933(27 shots) (idk why the difference in cast times are very short)

27 consecutive hits = 24.5 full dmg hits

24.5 x 906 = 22197 base dmg

22197 x 8 x .88 +22197 x .12=158930.52

32215.8636/30407.625=5.946% increase in number of BF’s, chestline vs no chest line

assuming BF is 30% of your total DPS

5.946%*.3 = 1.7838% increase in total damage

(Above % value doesn’t factor in cast time of additional BFs correctly so it may be wrong. 3/30 edit currently testing this chest line in DS2)

B9 – Calculating Replenishment’s DPS value

Before you continue below and check the spreadsheet linked, please understand that the value of replenishment at any given point has 7+ factors:

  1. the remaining cooldown of AB (you wouldn’t replenish when AB will come up in 1 second right?)
  2. filler skills you have available (ideal filler rotation would be MM>SS>rollSS (repeat roll)
  3. willpower generated (AB/replenish/filler skills all generate WP)
  4. BF duration (because you most likely won’t be using BF from 1500-0 every single time, the DPS value gained from generating wp from AB/REP and filler skills varies based on how long you plan to BF for)
  5. your crit rate (as your crit rate goes down, value of AB goes up but value of BF and fillers go down)
  6. glyphs. because we all have personal preferences
  7. attack speed (this changes the value of your fillers/BFwind up as they are affected by AS)

The following table assumes:

  1. +17 AS +15% AS from blast glyph proc (or bravery potion + energy stars),
  2. start of animation to start of horizontal movement after blast cancelling said skill for cast time reference points
  3. 8x crit mod

Scattershot tool tip is insanely wrong.

BF windup calculated by Sony Vegas ~ 0.9 seconds

Cast time of BF from start of windup to finish = 4.8 seconds

0.192 = avg cast time for 1 BF shot (4.8/25)

0.0032 = avg cast time of ONE WP worth of BF (0.156/60)

2-3 edit: Looking for the table of values that used to be here?

Please refer to excel spreadsheet below that is almost complete

REPLENISH VALUE CALCULATOR and GUNNER SKILL VALUES

PLEASE FILL IN CELLS D67-71 FOR MORE ACCURATE REPRESENTATIONS

C1 – BREAKING BF:Calculating TB/HBsum/ABprojectiles with BF

First I’d like to point out that this next section is to determine if it’s ever beneficial to break BF for other skills and what skills are best to use before you start BF. Please skip to TL;DR if you don’t want to look at my calculations as they are now outdated, but still somewhat relevant.

The average dps value of BF is 32653.75 assuming 1500>0 wp use.

The dps value of BF maintaining just the 6th+shot is 37750.

Here are the possible combinations I’ve thought about using to break out of BF

TB>BF

total cast time

.2666 + .9 + 5x.156=1.9466 seconds

total damage

damage value of TB with 100% crit + mini hit on contact = 33370.401

sum of first 5 shots of BF is 151 + 302 + 453 + 604 + 755 = 2265

apply 88% crit chance with 8x crit factor

(2265*.88*8+2265*.12)=16217.4

33370.401 + 16217.4 =49581.801

49581.801/1.9466=25474.05 dps

HB>BF

total cast time

0.3 + .9 + 5x.156=1.98 seconds

total dmg

34328.128 + 16217.4 = 50545.528

50545.528/1.98=25528.276

TB>HB>BF

total cast time

.6333 + .9 + 5x.156= 2.3133

total dmg

67699.001+16217.4=83916.4

83916.4/2.7813=30171.646

i’m going to scale down crit rate on BF here for more realistic values

dmg value of first 10 hits of BF = 6795; let’s look at 75% crit rate

6795 x (.75*8 + .25)=42468.75

AB>BF including projectile backcrits

total cast time

1.1+.9+10 x .156=3.56 seconds

total dmg

44216+42468.75+(5122*8)=127660

127660/3.56=35859.55

AB>TB>AB (detonation)>BF

total cast time

1.1+.3+.9+10 x .156=3.86

total dmg

44216+33370.401+42468.75+(5122*8)=161031.151

161031.151/3.86=41717.94

#1 COMBO

TL;DR

The only situations you want to break mid BF is if AB comes off CD and you have at least 350wp. If you do break for the AB you MUST BF for ~10 hits (600 wp) for it to be damage effective. If you have TB available for use as well when you are going to break for AB, use it between the cast/detonation animations.

C2 – Conclusions and TL;DR

3/21 edit – improved dungeon rotation (ab>tb focus)

Here are some conclusions that I’ve come to: (subject to change)

  1. You should look to either HBsum, TB, AB,TB>HBsum, or AB>TB>AB(detonate) before you BF, the latter yielding most dps.
  1. When should you ever break mid BF? Only for AB (+tb if available) when you can reliably BF for at least 10 hits.
  1. It is NOT recommended to replenish midBF for AB resets; and you really shouldn’t replenish if your WP is going to overcap 1500.
  1. Should I scattershot before replenishment? Absolutely yes. The only situations I would not SS before replenish is if you know you will overstack your wp should you finish with ab>tb>ab OR after your FIRST replenish>recall cancel.
  1. Using MM as a filler generally does MORE dps than SS, HOWEVER this is not the case when you will be utilizing BF’s bonus crit to apply to other skills and you plan on BFing for long durations. In addition, because replenish/ab/ss are your primary filler tools, you will want to avoid using MM mid rotation unless both ss and ab did not reset following a replenish. The hidden value in WP is its ability to get our other skills to crit. So generating willpower quicker with SS will become the better filler. Also, use MM after BF so you don’t screw yourself over with the cast time.
  1. Should I TB>BF off CD? No. Stack your WP as high as you can without over filling before you TB>BF.
  1. Also another thing I should bring up is single tapping MM vs full charge. Single tap technically does more raw damage, especially when you don’t have much AS, but a full charge MM will allow you to reliably do good filler dps while giving your other skills time to come back off CD. So I leave it up to your judgment mid rotations on what you should be doing.
  1. PLEASE read blast cancelling section as there’s a lot to say about this skill.
  1. If you’re looking to optimize your DPS rotation, please refer to sectionB3.

(MM before you AB as your filler rotation doesn’t matter when stacking wp.)

(I’m always shit. Please use this skill absolutely last for dps.)

C3 – Closing words

Everything presented here in this guide is my own opinion. Take what you can and apply it to how you play as I may not be correct.

youtube.com/idioticfreek

reddit.com/u/megatonfist

PM me on reddit or youtube for any questions, comments, concerns

If you’d like to run a dungeon with me to compare DPS/rotations, organize the run, let me know when, and we’ll sync IMS queue. I’m always looking for people to prove me wrong or show me better rotations.

casualmeter4dayz

shoutout to taps/nya of AV for best sorc NA

better than yosha :^)

lateral and bernkastel are math gods.

thanks to texendis for being the only one to properly critique me and find errors in my guide