[Gunner] Critical Hits Endorsement and Deploy Guide

First off, I'll start with a few things that aren't documented in the playbook:
+Crit endorsements increase both the chance AND potency of critical hits.
+When a bullet becomes a critical hit, you have one second of guaranteed critical hits.
+Higher fire rate means that you get more chances for a critical hit. Slower firing weapons don't get a higher chance.
+All shots when juiced are critical hits.
+Bullets from a deployed minigun slow enemies down.

Because of these, critical hit endorsements have a natural synergy with the gunner and going for critical hits instead of rate of fire is a valid build.

Compared to rate of fire, critical hits give you following advantages:
+Deploy is a lot better since it practically guarantees a stream of stronger critical hits. Enemy pros will melt at higher ranges than normal.
+Juice is more productive since your critical hits are more powerful.
+You deal more damage per bullet/clip/reload compared to rate of fire. It's like you got 1/4 bronze in clip size or reload speed!

However, you give up a few things when you don't have rate of fire:
-Mortar is a lot slower. It's never useless, but it feels maddeningly slow if you come from a rate of fire build.
-Less consistency. A high base fire rate and deploy make critical hits dependable, but Murphy's law does crop up from time to time.
-You end up relying more on deploy which means you make yourself extra vulnerable when you do choose to deploy.

Endorsements

Gold/Silver: Critical hits! Bronze critical hits aren't worth it, place it in silver or gold.

Gold/Silver: Armor. Gunners are high priority targets that are easy to hit. No matter how sneaky you are or how good your positioning is, you WILL get hurt and you need armor to offset this.

Bronze: Accuracy. Out of all the bronze sponsorships, accuracy makes the largest difference because closing the distance is one of the harder problems as gunner. Accuracy helps you solve this by increasing your effective range so you don't have to get as close.

Strategy and Cash Spending

First, we start with the essentials:

Passive level 2
Passive level 3
Deploy level 2

Before you have the essentials, be stingy when it comes to spending. Think twice before jumping down from the high ground: you won't be able to get up without spending $50. But depending on the level and the enemy team composition, spending $50 on a jump pad can be worth it. The starting pad on Steel Peel arena, for example, is worth the $50 since it allows you to mortar both lanes at a time. Unlocking a pad in Spunky Cola Arena, on the other hand, can be done later since the only lane on the map can be mortared from ground level.

Once you have the essentials, the following skills are low priority:

Deploy level 3
Slam level 2

You should only buy those skills if you have enough cash left over to unlock jump pads and activate ejectors or zap the annihilator. If your team's close to breaking the shields, broke the shields or if the enemy's made a huge turret farm, save up for juice instead. Bought juice should be used to damage the enemy moneyball, clean up enemy turrets or drive pros back into the spawn so they can't kill your bots that are close to their moneyball.

At this point, spending money on turrets is also fine. Turret strategy should be a topic for another guide, but as a rule, you absolutely need to buy a rocket turret or shave ice for a lane if it doesn't have any turrets.

Level 3 slam and grapple aren't worth the cash. At their effective ranges, you might as well shoot the guy with your minigun. Save your money and spend it on everything mentioned above.

Tactics

Regardless of the build, gunner tactics require you to know your effective weapon range. Far range is when your minigun suffers from so much damage drop-off that only the mortar deals good damage. Medium range is when you can force a retreat or get a kill if you deploy and sustain fire on your target. Close range is when you can kill someone quickly without even having to deploy. Since shooting the minigun and deploying has a steep mobility cost, you need to be damn sure that you dealt damage when you do decide to pay that cost.

When there are no hostile pros in sight, you should be using the mortar and shooting at bots or turrets. It's slow without rate of fire, but it still deals good splash and hurts turrets a lot. The delay between shots is long, so use the time to look around for danger. If there are hostile pros at this distance, stick to the mortar. You should still prioritize bots and turrets over pros at this range unless the pro is wounded and can be killed in one shot OR if you need to suppress the pro while you relocate.

Things get interesting when you encounter a hostile pro in medium range. What you do next depends on a lot of factors but for this guide, let's assume your expert analysis says you should go for the kill. The question now is whether you should deploy or not for the extra damage and the slow effect.

(OVERLY SIMPLIFIED RULE ALERT!) Deploying is a good idea if at least two of these apply:
+The enemy is at the further edge of medium range.
+The enemy is close to cover.
+There's more than one enemy or you expect more to arrive.
+The enemy can take out a lot of your health (or a teammate's health) in a very short time, they need to die before they can deal damage.

(OVERLY SIMPLIFIED RULE ALERT!) Deploying is a bad idea if at least one applies. This overrides the rules above:
-A sniper or assassin can see you and he or she is outside of your effective range.
-There's an enemy behind or beside you who knows you're there.
-The enemy's so close that the minigun will melt them even if you don't deploy.

Once you've killed the enemies or forced a retreat, undeploy IMMEDIATELY and get the hell out of there. Since you're free to reload and shoot while undeploying either reload your minigun or switch to mortars and go back to shooting at bots or turrets.

Counter-class Tactics

In this section, I assume that the other guy knows where you are since dealing with unaware pros is obvious.

Sniper / Assault
Snipers and assaults can stay on the outside of your effective range and whittle you down while you can't retaliate. Avoid them with cover and just concentrate on killing bots. At this point have two options to deal with you:

(A) Kill bots too. At the very least, it's a stalemate. To break the stalemate, you need to reposition while they're shooting at the bots so that you're close enough to threaten them or you can kill bots better than they can. If you can't reposition, maintain the stalemate. You can't break out of it alone, you need a teammate.

(B) They try to kill you! An assault will try to soften you up before engaging you at close range to ensure the kill. During his approach he can deal more damage than you, so evade and take cover rather than returning fire. When he does enter your kill range, either engage or run away depending on how much damage you took. Snipers will try to kill you by getting a better angle to defeat your cover. Adjust your cover so you're safe and continue killing bots.

Tank
If he takes out his railgun at long range, treat him like a sniper.

If he goes for your bots, he's forced to go out into the open where you can easily kill him from afar with deploy. If he tries to close the distance, you need to weaken him during his approach or you're screwed. Either make sure he's never at full HP with mortars or deploy and shoot when he makes a rush for you.

Support
You can melt him faster than he can kill you, but that shotgun is a beast and he can force you to retreat even if he dies. Thus, deploying can be a good idea if he's at medium range as long as you have airstrike cover over your head or he sucks at tossing the beacon.

If he hangs back with his firebase and kills bots, you need to find a good position where you can get him with the minigun. If you or a teammate kills him, try to go for the firebase at close range before he returns.

If you can't get into a good position, don't waste your time by trying to break the firebase with mortars. You're better of shooting the bots until a teammate comes to help you break the base.

Assassins
If she goes for bots, she puts herself out in the open and is even more vulnerable than a tank. If she keeps her distance, she can't kill bots so go kill hers and you'll come out ahead. At close range, shoot her with the minigun and bunny hop so it's harder to grapple you. Slam helps in this situation, but never slam after she grapples you since she always jumps right after.

Gunner
At far range it's a stalemate, you mortar his bots and he'll mortar yours. When he approaches, you can deploy and win the fight since deployed gunners beat undeployed gunners. He'll either move back and the mortar stalemate continues or move forward and get killed. Decisive gunner kills only happen when one gets to ambush the other.

I use this build on the 360 all the time, and it is barrels of fun. I wouldn't bother with Accuracy though, as Deploying increases your Accuracy. Try Health Recovery if your Supports are useless, or Clip Size/Reload Speed.

Hunk here with a few thoughts. At the time I made this post I got Keep Em' Down (2500 MG Kills)(w00t finally). I have seen a lot of fights where Deploy makes me too nervous. The problem with Deploy is it takes a few seconds to anchor and un-anchor. The second your faceshield goes down all the sniper has to do is pop you in the head. Assasins I noticed love to spam the Shurikens. Those Shurikens even with Gold Armor will kill you in a clip. They also love knifing or swording you while Deployed. They can't Grapple you but, it doesn't mean they can try to kill you while you take the time to undeploy to nail them. The second you undeploy they will Grapple you before you can turn around (or finish you off with the sword). Tanks can bunny hop while Rail Gunning you at full speed, Auto Snipers can put out more rounds then you can move or un-anchor, and the Assault loves to spam grenades at medium range. Theres too much ready to hit you at long range. Even if you don't see anyone one can pop around the corner and surprise you.

The only time I have ever deployed was at the Money Ball when all of my teammates were there. The Money Ball area has a lot of tight places for you wedge yourself into (places where your back is not exposed like a corner). If your on the lower floor there is a roof above you and it forces the enemy to either play with you from the ledge or jump down to the floor to eat MG.

Places like Spunky Cola is definately a bad place to Deploy outside the Money Ball. The reason is all those walls give Grenades from the Assault the ability to bounce around and hit you in the face. Ammo Mule is terrible because it's too open.

Grenade 3 is a maybe depending where you are at. There is a lot of blind spots and places the team can't hit you. Problem is there is jump pads leading to atleast one location to any part of the map. It's easy for the enemy to jump behind you and you won't notice it.

Lazer Razor Arena is also a maybe. If you know how to jump pack you can get yourself ontop of walls. Most enemies don't expect it. They never look up that high. The problem is that all the places that could protect you are tight quarters so you don't have much time to spew MG bullets before someone gets you.

This is just a taste of all the factors that make Deployed life worse than Undeployed.

The second the deploy animation starts, you get the bonus Crits from Deploy 2. That, combined with the slowing effect, can be used to great effect if you have sufficient back-up from your team.

This is why there's cover between you and the guy using this.

You have enough time to undeploy and run if someone else bombards you with this.

Then you were in backstab/melee range in the first place and it was dangerous even if undeployed. If the assassin actually runs to you to get into melee range, you should already be undeploying.

Don't stay deployed long enough to take a full clip. If you were just a target of opportunity, the assassin still needs time to get in a good angle/distance and switch to shurikens. At that point, you should be almost done with shooting or already undeploying.

Why would you want to deploy at the walls in Spunky Cola? The open spaces of Ammo Mule are already bad spots to be in whether you're deployed or not. It takes time to get flanked in Grenade III, it's easy enough to check the center before deploying. On top of the Lazer Razor arena is generally a bad place even when undeployed because you don't get cover there.

It depends on the situation. If you need more damage and you can assume your flanks are safe, deploying is a good idea at that moment! Honestly, this isn't a rare situation at all.

Deploy is useful. It shouldn't be abused, used out in the open, or such. Lazorrazor has plenty of corners and corridors on the lower levels to deploy and gurantee a mow-down, especially with crits.

I use crits, rate, and accuracy. I take off the armor because i'm guranteed to outdamage at the correct range (even if the opponent has armor).

Why have a firebase in the corner of lazorrazor, when you can have a deployed gunner? His protag is "turret man" for a reason. His deploy makes him a turret with low health, high firepower, and odd armor. Deploy definitely helps his reaction to opponents if he instantly deploys while firing in a cramped area (and undeploys immediately after fragging), and his ability to hold close-quarters map control.

By and by, have you tried "jumping while deployed" when being slashed by an assassin's sword? It burns any enemies close by whom are outside of your minigun's angle of turn. The idea behind it is, if they are behind you while deployed and you fire up your jumpjets, then they should be damaged by the jumpjet's burn. If they don't realize it and die, it counts as a "jetgun" kill.

I started running crit three or four days ago, and I'm loving it. I've been running gold armor silver crit and bronze acc, and it seems to work pretty well. I used to run RoF instead of Armor, and I miss it when I'm using my mortar but I think crit is more powerful in most firefights. I liked RoF, but it obviously increases the frequency at which you must reload unless you also run clip size (which I don't, never have, and likely never will). Crit gives you similar or even superior advantages to RoF in a firefight, and it doesn't require you chew through your clip in two seconds to do it.

Deploy however I still don't use that much... I don't even upgrade it anymore. The slowdown achieved by using it is, in my opinion, not very profound and all but negated by the Gunner's inability to pursue. Unless you're lucky enough to find a target that's already weakened and/or taking damage from another source, I've often found I'm better off being able to hunt them down, providing the strategic situation allows I do so. About the only time I deploy is to increase my crit rate against firebases that are being humped by an enemy support or against distant jackbots.