OfficerFuttBuck's guide to doing it tiki style.

Last updated February 14, 2011.

Casual Build A:




Casual Build B:




Competitive Build A:




Competitive Build B (Same as lDeadeye's build):




If you aren't playing with a team, you should not expect a support to be healing you, ever, which is why I recommend gold armor for the everyday player. Gold armor will allow you to take a beating and survive a lot more.

On silver, you have two choices. Rate of Fire or Accuracy. I find they have equal effectiveness overall, but one will thrive when the other won't. The benefits you will get with silver rate of fire is you will have maximum Rate of Fire on the gunner's dual mini gun, gold rate of fire does not help it any further because it would require the game to generate bullets faster than the game is running. Silver rate of fire will also allow you to shoot your mortar much faster, allowing faster kills against turrets and those pesky snipers. The problem with silver rate of fire is, if your game takes a performance hit, or your connection is laggy, your rate of fire will also take a hit, so your minigun will not be as effective.

Your other choice, is silver accuracy. Silver accuracy will really help your bullets stay on target, even at those longer distances. Accuracy is not like steady aim on CoD, your reticle is where all of the bullets will be contained, and does not grow once you start shooting.

For bronze accuracy, your reticle will be larger, but not horrendous like it is without accuracy. For bronze RoF, your gun will rarely be affected by performance hits/lag, and your mortar will shoot at a moderate rate.

If you're having trouble deciding which build to go with, experiment with both and here are some guidelines:
-The higher the accuracy endorsement, the better your aim will have to be.
-Are you facing lots of small / med targets (assassins/snipers/assaults)? If so, you're going to want the silver accuracy to get more bullets onto their small hitboxes.
-Is their base looking pretty strong? If so, you're going to want a higher RoF build so you can get more mortars out to take their turrets out faster.
-Is the game laggy or are you experiencing framerate lag? If so, switch to a lower RoF build to get more out of your silver endorsement.


In competitive games, things will be a lot different, you should expect a heal gun on you very often, so armor won't be as needed. You will also have to be able to dish out a ton of damage really fast in competitive games, so you will need gold accuracy to deal consistent high damage. The next two endorsements should either be armor or rate of fire, which one you choose is preference more than anything else.

Casual Upgrade order:
Passive 2
Passive 3
Slam 2
Grapple 2
Grapple 3
Slam 3
Deploy 2 (Optional)
Deploy 3 (Optional)

Competitive Upgrade order:
Passive 2
Passive 3
Slam 2
Deploy 2

BE CAREFUL UPGRADING YOUR SKILLS, THERE IS A GLITCH WHERE IT WILL SWITCH TO YOUR YELLOW SKILL AT THE LAST SECOND, DO NOT RUSH WHEN UPGRADING OR YOU WILL WASTE MONEY

Starting off, upgrade your passive skill, it will cut your prespin time in half and give you splitting mortars.

As soon as you get $400, run too safety and get your dual miniguns, there is nothing more important to the gunner than those.

Next you're going to want your first slam upgrade. It will give you about 150% your original slam range, will increase your damage and impulse (amount of force * time, if you haven't taken high school physics yet).

My next upgrades are unusual for most but I think work extremely well. You want to max your grapple out next. Once you get grapple 3, use it! Most people will bunny hop to try to avoid your slams but it is much more difficult to avoid a grapple. With max grapple 3, you will kill any unarmored player besides tank and gunner, and send them flying across the map. This skill is a lot less expected, is really helpful for crowd controlling and also good for juice gaining. With grapple 3, use it against any bouncer you see, it will deplete what seems to be 9/10 of their health, and sends them flying away from you, keeping your teammates safer and give you a bit more juice. I highly recommend grappling any unguarded black jacks, because it will give you a bit of juice and helps with bot pushing

Now onto the yellow skill, in my opinion, it is horrible, only use it against problematic firebases. What it does is, locks you down into one place, slightly increases damage resistance, increases your accuracy, increases your critical chance and damage, and increases the damage you do at distance. Great huh? No, dead wrong. The areas you can shoot becomes greatly reduced, you're a sitting duck and any halfway decent player can take you out with ease. Also, the headshield might make all sniper bullets count as body shots but any smart gunner will be running gold RoF and will be able to kill you deployed. Never take away the gunners mobility unless you are certain that you can kill the firebase you are deploying against and nobody is around it.


In competitive games, you really only need your dual minis, slam 2 and deploy 2, all of the other skills cost more then they're worth, and the majority of your money should be going towards juice machines to help keep map control and to destroy turrets.

Playstyle:
First and foremost, I highly recommend you learn how to claw. Clawing is using your middle finger to shoot and the side of your index finger use A,B,X,Y and RB. It looks like this:

I also endorse microsoft's wired controller because it allows more room for your fingers in the back, allowing for a more comfortable claw.

Now if you're able to claw, you are going to want fly and shoot at almost all times. To keep your speed while flying, simply hold left trigger once you are airborne, and release it before you land and start flying again. If you pick up speed endorsements, you will be able to fly faster, which will make you a menacing hornet that nobody wants to encounter.

Next, your positioning can make a major difference, and 9 times out of 10, your position should be on the highest ground possible, it is much hard to aim up and shoot someone that's flying around than to just shoot at someone strafing at slightly elevated levels.

One of the biggest factors of being a good gunner, is having a good support. A sole gunner will be much easier to take out, assaults will be able to take you out one on one with ease because they are a bit on the overpowered side. But if you take a gunner with a support constantly healing him, and throw him against two assaults, or a support constantly healing an assault, the gunner will come out with alive and thriving. And don't think the support doesn't get anything out of this, the support is the weakest class offensive-wise, but the gunner is the strongest offensive-wise, so you can help him out when ever he is in trouble, he will also be getting a ton of juice from constantly over healing you. Having this support will get you back into battle much faster, normally the gunner has the slowest health regeneration in the game (the tank can upgrade his regen rate, gunner can't), but the heal gun will send him back in with tons of health to spare.


Main Gunner Roles:
Player Killer / Map Control
Turret Killer

The gunner is amazing at taking out Turrets, I'd say he's better than the assassin, but if your team has an assassin that knows what she should be doing (farming bots, using juice to keep the enemy base Turret free.) then you should let her do that. To contradict myself, as soon as the game starts, take out their rockit Turrets, generally you can do this against an unorganized team and it will lead to their shields being down within the first two minutes.

After the Turrets are down your main focus should be keeping map control. The gunner is amazing at keeping control of the map. The gunner can out shoot every opponent besides a distanced sniper, and he can keep shooting for a while. If there is an enemy sniper, pester him with your mortars, if he's not very smart about his build you can kill him with two well placed mortars. If you plan on raiding a sniper's camping spot or if you just see an ice trap anywhere, use your mortar gun. It will cause the ice trap to trigger and leaving you safe.

Gunners laugh at assassins. The gunner will counter the assassin in almost every way. If she gets past your slam, you can take her out baseball style, or humiliate her with your ground pound (alt grapple). If she does grapple you, you only need to be concerned if its from the back with a katana, everything else you can survive with gold armor. If you are deployed (you shouldn't be) and an assassin comes up behind you DO NOT GET OUT OF DEPLOY! The only thing that you will get out of undeploying when an assassin is behind you is a giant blade between your eyes. What you should do is use your jetpack, it will set her on fire and she will most likely be scared off. If the assassin manages to get through all of your defenses, well she's a damn good assassin or you weren't taking all of my advice.

Assaults, unless you are going against one that knows what they are doing, a bit of minigun and they are left in bits. If the assault is good, stay away from them unless you have a support, their assault rifle will tear you to shreds, their bomb will take a ton of your HP out, and they can escape easily if they get worried.

Tanks, unless you are going against a tank from a distance who uses gold RoF rail gun like a monster, you will win every fight against them, they are a big target and they will soak up every shot you fire at them, and their health will go down really fast. If they are going to try charge against you, side strafe and regain your mid range. If you get product grenaded, keep shooting chances are you'll hit them.

Supports, they can be pesky, but generally you shouldn't have a problem with them. If they are using a shotgun against you that has RoF, gain distance as fast as you can, slam them away, or grapple them if they sneak up behind you. Firebases can be quite the nuisance, if there is no wall between you and a hacked firebase, count on it being able to shoot you. The best way to take these out is with your minigun. If you think it's safe, deploy next to a wall so your gun sticks out but you don't, and unload on it. Airstrikes shouldn't be too big of a problem, their cool down is much too big for you to have to worry about them. If they manage to stick you, get beneath something and you'll survive.

Other gunners, stay away from their deploy, even though I don't think you should use it, doesn't mean other people won't. It is powerful if it is shooting at you, what you want to do is move out of his aiming range then unload on him. He should be dead before he can undeploy. Don't underestimate dual miniguns, even with horrendous builds they can tear you to shreds.

If you did not manage to take out their rocket Turrets early game, you really need to try to keep map control, keep large groups of enemies away from your base, go for players who are close to getting juice or have juice. If the enemy has juice use your grapple if it is upgraded fully and aim them away from your base, if it isn't upgraded, alt grapple them, it is longer than your unupgraded skill grapple and wastes more of their juice. Your slam is also another way to keep them away.

If your assassin isn't doing a good job at killing their Turrets, help her out, kill the Turrets. If you see your assassin isn't bot farming at all, don't be afraid to give them "constructive criticism" because a bad assassin is worse than being down a player.

The gunner is not good at bot farming with this build, but use your slams to take out bots that are draining your health.


In competitive matches you want to follow your assault into midfield and put your shots on key targets. Try to focus on the same person when you're near your assault, as you will kill people extremely fast. If you manage to get map control, you are the one who should keep it and let your assault push in first, because they have a much better chance of surviving if things get ugly. If you are getting overwhelmed, run back to your support, if they don't follow you, reload, if they do, you can deploy or try to outshoot them while flying around, but at this point your chances of surviving are slim.

When at distance, don't jump around unless you're mortaring against a sniper, because every time you jump your minigun takes a small hit in RoF, so you're going to want to stay grounded and make sure your shots connect. Also remember, against other gunners, it isn't always the best choice to start flying because you will loose DpS, which is very important in 1 on 1 fights against gunners.


Juice:
Buy it, especially in competitive matches, you are the ultimate death machine with juice, and it keeps the enemy from acquiring juice. Even if you die right after you bought juice and are unable to use it, it is better than the other team buying it and pushing your team back.


Your turrets: First off, never build a lazer blazer, they do next to no damage, and if the enemy taunts next to them or a tank deploys next to one, it's free juice for them. Longshots should not be used, they are ineffective and are killed easily. This leaves you with rockits and shaveices, on every map except for spunky cola, you're going to want rockits next your money ball and out the outer most turret nub, and put shave ices in the middle nubs. With the shave ices in the middle, your base should be slower than Boston traffic for enemies and the rockits can tear them to shreds before they can escape. On spunky cola, put rockits next to your money ball and on the ring closest to the enemy tunnel. Put a shave ice next to your bridge, as it will slow down enemies midfield. Put longshots in the back, they are effective here and only here. Also if your support is turtling, only upgrade shaveices or ask him if you can upgrade a rockit first, they are his main source of income.

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

I <3 Gunners and Tanks with Gold Armor. It just means they're easy targets with lots of health.

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

Deploy turns the dual minigun into a dual crit minigun. You should try it sometime.

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

This helps thanks muchly

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

I may have to try this.

I just switched to

Gold accuracy
Silver RoF
Bronze armor

And it seems like I got more kills when I had rof and accuracy switched.

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

That's the LDeadeye build. I asked him what it was, switched mine, and instantly did so much better. Honestly if you talk to him and try what he does, it's amazingly easy. When he told me gold accuracy I laughed, then tried it, and never went back

Re: Mildly useful gunner guide.

Once you Gold Acc, you never go back!

Ehh, I tried it, I hated it. I don't feel like it helps that much.

I haven't played Gunner properly in weeks - I've been rocking Gold Speed, Silver Armour and Bronze Skill Recovery/Health Recovery in an attempt to get my Grapple kills up. I'm up to 126

Good guide, but I prefer Gold Accuracy. I'd say after the DLC nerfing the Minigun at long range, your build will be the better one.

Also, your name gave me a little "WTF?" moment when I first saw it on the forum. Looking forward to reminding you that when these fists talk, no-one is deaf!

Office, I think the line is "crapping fat" not "crab fat."

Although crab fat is pretty freakin' funny.

What a terrifying image. It has to be "crab fat", for the sake of my soul.

Pretty sure it's crab fat.

And post DLC we'll see if accuracy changes, but I'm pretty sure it won't change the mini much. I'll just whip out my mortar more often.

I don't think the accuracy is being changed. I think it's just the damage falloff at distance is going to be greater - no more Sniper Gunners!

Gravedig for new players to see my build and reasonings!

It's crab fat, just look at the gunner kills protag

Just updated!

On Topic: Good guide.

Off Topic: I just cleaned out a page worth of trolling/trolling related discussion in this guide. I will start handing out warnings and bans if it happens again. We might tolerate it mildly in the other forums (subject to change), but keep it out of the guides.

Have you considered using the Tactical control scheme instead of giving yourself T-Rex claws for hands? It works wonders for the Tank anyway.

Ehh, I might give it a shot but having the skills in different places might mess with my head.

not too hard to pick up on, especially on a non-skill heavy class. i learned it about 1/3 the way through my scrambler levels.