Gunners, underpowered or under appreciated?

Jessep has finally come to the Light side of the Force. Assault FTW.

Seems to me there's one area where the gunner outshines everyone: the mortar absolutely destroys turrets like nothing else, and from far enough to stay rather safe. Also in late game when bot waves get bigger the mortar allows him to get juice up very very fast. Thoses two points combined make it the only class able to deal quite easilly with a base with a few overhealed rockit 3.3.

Apart from that I do agree that he's really too slow and vulnerable, less HP that the tank, bigger hitbox, and no charge to get to cover fast. Also correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that he can't survive a headshot even when overhealed, while a tank with gold armor can survive it.

No, Gunners are not underpowered. It's just that most people have no idea how to play them.

However, I do agree that one or two decent Snipers can totally annihilate their gameplay, especially on Ammomule or GrenadeIII. I already suggested in another thread to make their lvl3 headshield effective even when they're not deployed. It would balance things a bit and would also offer more build possibilities.

Or cancel the jetpack nerf maybe

I will say just one thing though, and that's that lately, everytime I come across a gunner as a tank, all I need to do is backpedal with my gold RoF rail gun and the gunner's bullets pretty much just give the tank an exceptionally bad itch.

Meanwhile, a gold RoF rail gun will more than likely make the gunner regret his decision to confront the tank.

Yes, there are surprise ambushes, but at close range, tank charge (3). At long range, rail gun. Even at medium, backpedal and rail gun.

Oh well, that was just my past experiences. I've been dabbling in gunner lately and feel that I can adapt a defensive, area control playstyle with him personally.

I think gunner is fine at the moment. Sure with 2 snipers its really can make it a bad day but as a gunner I can usually pop both rocket turrets on most maps in under a minute.

If the game doesn't end quickly and gets to overtime I usually have over 20 turret destruction easy. Juiced I can take 2-3 level 3 turrets easy . Can't push the lanes as good as most the other classes tho but I do shell the crap out of them as much as possible while there is nothing else to shoot to gain juice.

One server I was on blocked gunners, so are they really underpowered?

i main gunner and he is not under powered but he isn't the best class, you can harass snipers from where they can't reach you (mortar arc) but the jet pack nerf has been horrible for him, the tank is ok since he has the charge to get away etc etc

snipers are a big pain the back side when it comes to playing a gunner but there's not much we can do, make the cool down on the jetpacks faster for him and it might help a little bit but sniper is a counter to the big heavy classes anyways.

Well, Tank can use his charge to escape and can also survive a Sniper's headshot. Gunner just has his jetpacks.

I'd like to try gunner, but for some reason a lot of people tend to die a lot using him so I am kind of afraid of stepping into that territory where I can get killed easily. I think I'll give it a try after reading a few guides on the strategy forums, like... Today. I am honestly curious about the gunner as I have only playing him twice during the beta, and then it was okay enough, but seeing as people seem to be struggling using him it kind of puts me further away from that class and I am probably just afraid I will prove just as useless as other pub gunners. Oh don't get me wrong I have met some really good gunners who actually know what they are doing, thing is I don't know how to do the thing they do and that's the mistakes I am afraid of making. :|

I have mentioned it before, but I personally think they need a buff.

Gunner is definately turret killer number one, and i know the frustration of smacking my head against level 3.3 rokkit turrets as a sniper, cant even scratch the paintwork if theres a semi-concious support anywhere on the map.

It just seems to me that, whilst as always a good player can really deal out the pain and kick *** as the gunner, that same player could probably do 10 times* more as an assault.

Also yes, a fully overhealed gunner can be killed with 1 headshot, some kind of headshot protection would definately make this combo more useful and fun, although i think it would have to be watched for carefully for balance reasons.


At the very least i believe a gunner at deploy 3 should recieve a 50% headshot damage reduction, this may be more balanced when taking the support gunner combo into consideration.



*This post may include some minor exaggeration

Give him all-round 50% damage reduction instead when deployed, instead of just for headshots as currently he cant be head-shot at deploy three. Oh wait youre talking un-deployed! Yeah that could work too...

Yea, undeployed, i would say put it on passive 3 but that already gives them sooo much firepower it would be overpowered if they got so many buffs on a single skill, imo.

trust me, gunner isn't a class that dies a lot if you can play him ok, just remember to get those speed upgrades when they drop, gold speed is so god damn important to pick up when playing him, other then that you might get caught off guard but if you know what your doing you should be fine (i played a lot of gunner and assault on xbox and mainly gunner on pc, idk why but i love him, he does it tiki style)

Most gunners don't seem to be aware that the mortar is awesome, instead they will insist on wasting their minigun's ammo on distant stuff, go into turret mode and deploy at silly places asking for a headshot, or go hug the bots in the middle of the lane to shoot them with the minigun, strafing at a speed barely higher than their deployed speed, and reloading so often that I wonder if they can even beat the bots spawn by doing that... let alone pre-spinning their minigun before engaging another player.
Lots of classes can make silly mistakes and get away with it, but the gunner is probably less forgiving.

me as assassin.. sees gunner..

Weeeh! free kill !

runs towards him, he notices me.

i jump, he uses slam.. misses cause im in mid air

he freaks out and pee's hes pants

me go.. EEEH! *attacks till the gunner drops dead, raped and abused on the ground*

...

me goes for next Gunner

Hysterical... :|

Nice, this is exactly how you should NOT play an assassin. :roll:

Yeah, I can literally count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that has happened to me. 99% of the time, if I notice an assassin before she can grapple me, she dies. Only the really good ones can get away. He must be playing with some bad Gunners. :shock:

They'll learn the hard way... GRAAAAAAAAAAAPPLE !!

Yeah, I've developed a knack for noticing sins at the last second and grappling them while they're still cloaked. The good ones can keep me down easy enough but a lot of them just stop going after me in a few minutes. I love it when I kill a sin like 6 times in a row and watch her start to run right past me instead of even trying the grapple. It's especially fun on maps like GrenADE III where you can ring them out fairly easily with a properly applied slam.

Every so often I'll have my trouble with them, though. The Gunner's player model is so big that it can be difficult or impossible to aim correctly (although I guess this is true for anyone, but we're just bigger on the screen) when the camera is mashed up against a wall. I almost never shoot at them when they're within this range: they have to get close to me to do their damage anyway so I'll generally just grapple spam. The only times I really worry is when I've used Slam and Grapple recently. There have been a couple of times where I've had both on recharge and two empty weapons! :x

I just tried to play gunner. Damn it was so fun!
At least on pubs. But seriously though I read Mastah's guide and followed those tips and I found it super-easy to play! I will no longer doubt of the gunners skills of destruction!