Gunner Skill Poll

Every gunner loves the passive upgrades to his weapon as well as the slam ability.

I'm aware the upgrades to the minigun make the gunner quite powerful. I realize he's not supposed to have lots of skills, but his melee attack is poorly designed. The gunner becomes the slowest character when you factor in the speed boost of the tank's charge. Why then does he have a grapple attack?

For $150 you can get a damage boost while deployed. That's fine and dandy and sometimes I buy it. But I never buy the level three deploy for $400; a sniper can still kill you before you have time to undeploy so all you are doing is getting rid of the damage upgrade you received previously.

Yeah, Uber should nerf the passive upgrade and buff the other skills so that the gunner has to spend as much money as everyone else to be good.

Thanks for not helping. This is a topic for people who play gunners to see how they feel about the skills they have.

Gunner is my primary class.

My first purchase is the passive upgrade and the second is slam. If I have a ton of money from dominating the other team, I consider buying the lvl3 grapple for wasting juiced up players. I almost never get the deploy, I just don't see the point.

When I play gunner I get level 2 grapple and level 2 deploy. Of course, if you want to talk about worthless level 3 upgrades, try the assassin's level 3 smoke bomb and sprint with it's amazing shorter cooldown time and duration that are obviously totally worth the 400 extra dollars each just to give an example that the gunner isn't the only class with useless level 3 skills.

When I play as a Gunner, I never upgrade Grapple. I'll sometimes upgrade Deploy to two for the damage boost but with the extreme headshot vulnerability, I don't frequently use it. (I'll most often deploy when trying to help gun down a Jackbot, or maybe when pushed back into our base.

But honestly, I don't usually even upgrade Slam all the way (if I do at all). I'll use my cash for the Annihilator, spawn bouncers, turrets, and ejectors.

Um, correct me if I am wrong but don't the skills stack. For example you have a level 2 deploy when you upgrade you get the benefits from both level 2 and 3? I mean nowhere does it say that a level 3 cancels out the effects of a level 2 upgrade.

I only buy deploy if I notice the other team has no sniper. Press select, look at what the enemy is using, and build accordingly.

I won't usually buy grapple, I either get assault-charged, tank-charged, ninja'd, or shotgunned in the face before I can get close enough during a reload on the minigun.

But Slam and Passive are obvious - Deploy is super-damn handy now that I know you can fire your jets (Like the Tank) from the back to burn Assassins that are new to the game and wanna try to grapple you. Faster heal rate, higher RoF.

If you can get juiced up and have a Support healing you while their ball is down, Deploy will probably be your new best friend, but it's situational. Again - if the enemy has Snipers on their team, I won't waste cash on deploy. Bouncers seem to be much better killers of men.

I always upgrade to the dual minigun before anything else.

Then I upgrade slam to level 3 if there is an assassin on the other team, if not then I upgrade deploy to level 2 and generally spend the rest of the money on bouncers/annhiliator/ the occassional turret.

EDIT: I ALWAYS get deploy level 2 at some point though.. it's a shame that so many people don't seem to recognize its value.

Remember, some skills can be more useful in Blitz than Crossfire.

1. Yes, but ONLY if there are stupid assassins in the game, but usually just the first rank. The damage is usually enough to kill them outright at level 2.

2. If there are no snipers or good assault/support (bomb/airstrike sticks), then usually. Particularly if I'm running in to enemy gunners a lot. First to spool up and deploy usually wins.

3. It honestly doesn't do enough to seem worth the money. Even with the reduced damage TAKEN (it apparently doesn't lower his damage output). I'd rather save it for juice after my team's bots have dropped the ball or to help build turrets.



I'll go passive 2, passive 3, deploy 2, slam 2, and -maybe- grapple 2 (See answer 1). Then I'm done.


Compared to tank... I'll usually get level 2 on everything, then go level 3 on either charge or product bomb (depending on what I'm fighting) and passive for the HP if I can spare the 400 (mostly if I find I'm fighting 2+ people at once or there are assassins with swords around).

So on average I'm spending 550 more on tank skills (extra level 2, extra level 3) per game compared to gunner.

Still not as bad as support and assault, where I want to upgrade everything. Or sniper where I upgrade everything to 3 but ignore passive completely (I IZ TEH UZI GANSTA!!111). Assassin... I fail too much at that class to even try, so I can't comment there.


Honestly, I'd LOVE more incentive to upgrade my skills on gunner and feel like I'm not relying on the minigun for everything. It's an awesome crutch to the class, but still a crutch.

The problem with this is, Blitz isn't competitive.

^ And that his grapple is pretty useless anyway.

The grapple isn't fantastic, but it is great to confuse assassins. If they expect the ground slam, you can catch them with the grapple. If they expect the grapple (i haven't run into any that have) then you can slam them or open up.

The 3rd level deploy stops all headshot bonuses, not just sniper rifle bullets. That makes you a lot more of a problem for tanks with railguns up to medium range.

you know that if an assassin jumps you cant grapple them?

Are you trying to tell us the deploy level 3 is better in blitz? It's not worth the money for either mode. With a rate of fire upgrade the sniper can kill you before you are able to undeploy. If there was not a damage decrease it might be worth considering with lots of enemy snipers.

Are you trying to say the grapple is anything other than a cruel joke? You can't use it on jackbots and it is far from amazing against black jacks. Every now and then I use the grapple to kill someone but that is exceptionally rare.

Other than unlocking the protags the gunner is a terrible choice for blitz mode. The only way to really do well in blitz is with two people.... and you need a support to heal turrets. The tank can kill bots infinitely faster in the later rounds. Check the leaderboards.

Why don't you just have different skills for blitz instead of ruining class skills for crossfire?

Re-read the skill description... it lowers your damage while deployed. Buy level 2 in a private match and then shoot for a bit while deployed. About half of your bullets are purple (critical shots). Now buy level 3 and deploy; you'll see that your critical shots are drastically reduced (I'd say down to about 1/3). If you don't want to believe me go look at their live web cast video. I asked and they said yea you get a helmet and yea it lowers your damage. I was implying the question, "Why does this skill suck?" They did not answer.

That's my feelings exactly. Sometimes I need to slam more often, but I can win most games with just $550. After that I either buy turrets or juice.

Gunner deploy is insanely useful in crossfire. Extra crits, take less damage? Yes please. Just make sure theres no sniper around.

Speaking as a gunner, I never get deploy, and always get pissed if I buy it by accident when there is lag that make the selecting menu jump everywhere. Deploy is useless.

Yea I always get upset when I buy the level 3 deploy due to lag.

I was thinking about it and I realized what skill the gunner should have had instead of a grapple....... Mines!

You press the B button and a big round mine falls out of his back color coated to your team. They would be large and therefore easily spotted but also easy to step on because of their size. For each level of the skill you can have one mine and every level increases the damage.

Maybe the level two upgrade would make them magnetic (attach like the mines in T4 to medium/heavy characters). And just to be completely annoying, the level three effect would drain part of a character's juice meter.