User blog comment:Kogath/Monster Hunter Generations Discussion/@comment-16331478-20160618121639

So after seeing WolfQueen's post on the Lance I decided it would be a good idea to complain about my main: The Gunlance. Kep in mind I've only played the demo, but I have gathered information from people who have actually played the full game.

Now, the Gunlance in MHGens has been nerfed, unsurprisingly, and although it has not been gutted as hard as lance or other weapons, it still feels weaker than ever before, especially considering it wasn't that great of a weapon to begin with in 4U.

The main nerf Gunlance has received is the heat meter. Now, when I first heard about the heat meter, I was excited. I thought it was gonna be a buff akin to the LS's spirit blade, that granted attack bonuses when you shelled enough. But guess what? It isn't. So basically the gauge has three sections: yellow, orange and red. Let's start with yellow, and oh boy there is a lot to say on this. At yellow, your thrusts deal 15% less damage than they did in 4U. 15% is fucking huge alright, just keep in mind that the GL in 4U had its motion values reduced from 3U so I don't even know how low they are at this point. But you'll be like "alright well just don't stay in yellow" which is a good counter-point, but let me go on with the other levels. At orange you deal exactly the same damage you dealt in 4U which is fair enough, and at red you deal 5% extra damage. Five percent. How on earth is a gauge that nerfs your damage by 15% in the worst case and buffs it by 5% in the best case balanced? As a result, the focus of Gunlance shifts from being a weapon with a lot of combo freedom and burst potential to "Please don't ever be at yellow ever". Your mind is on the heat gauge for the whole hunt, and it's just harder to focus on dealing actual damage. Now, there are workarounds to this. Skills like artillery will slow down the rate at which your heat drops, and executing a wyver fire will lock your heat meter until it recharges. Which is another shitty mechanic because the wyvern fire goes from being a big burst of damage to a simple tool to rent you from dropping to yellow, and as a result you're not gonna want to use it as much because if your heat is too low you're just wasting it. Alternatively, you can equip the Dragon Breath hunter art, which boosts your meter to red and locks it there for one minute al lv1, two at lv2 and three at lv3. And I use the term "can" loosely because this art is pretty much mandatory on Gunlance. Now have you notcied a little something? Everything that's really good on Gunlance has the sole purose of making you not worry about the heat gauge. Your main concern is not having to worry about it. This is just proof the mechanic has been implemented in a really shitty way, which is sad considering the heat meter could've been much, much more.

Onto the shelling. Shelling has been nerfed as well, who would've thought? And this is no ordinary nerf, the shell damage has been reduced by a wapping 20% from 4U. TWENTY PERCENT are you kidding me now Capcom. As if the shells in 4U didn't feel weak enough, now they're even shittier? This means that by equipping artillery expert you deal as much damage as the vanilla shells in 4U, which is like none by the way. And this nerf also affects the wyvern fire and charged shells of course. I mean seriously, this is a new low for GL, who thought this was good idea. Oh but don't worry, using Dragon Breath will increase your shell raw damage by 10 points and fire damage by 10 points as well, which makes the Hunter Art all the more imperative to have.

As for everything else, the GL handles pretty much the same as it did in 4U, no new moves or anything fancy beyond the styles. The weapon overall still is slower than it was in 3U and considerably weaker now. Onto the styles:

Guild Style

Not much to say that I didn't already. It gets 2 HA slots so you can have something other than Dragon Breath which is nice. Only new thing is the heat meter which I already covered earlier and well, let's just say Gunlance is not gonna feel anything close to powerful this time around.

Striker Style

You give up the slam finisher and full burst for a third poke akin to the lance and that's pretty much it. This style is definitely meant to be played with wide Gunlances, and the ablity to equip 3 hunter arts is also pretty sweet. It also helps that GL has some great HAs, like the one I don't know the name of that makes you rocket jump to the monster and slam it in the face. This is probably what I'll use most of the time, and what I think to be the best style.

Aerial Style

Admittedly not nearly as bad as I thought, you give up the running shells, the grounded slam and the backhop for the standard fair of jumping with B. This style could be great if only the shells shot in mid-air counted towards the mount, but they don't so it's average at best. If you magae to lock yourself in red you can spam the aerial slam for some easy mounts and damage, but I'm not sure how affective that is. Not being able to do running shells also hurts you heat meter and only having Dragon Breath equipped is a bummer, although the jump is a great way to approach a monster with your weapon out funnily enough.

Adept Style

This one took the longest to get used to, but I have to say it's not nearly as bad as peole make it out to be. You lose the ability to do quick reloads, although after a perfect guard you can fully reload all the shells with an upward thrust and then slam down and do a full burst, and if you have time you can even wyvern fire after that. Sure it takes a long time, but you're not locked into any of that, you can just evade out of the slam, and it's pretty fast too. Perfect guards are oddly harder to pull off than perfect evades though, and combined with only having Dragon's Breath and no burst HAs, this style isn't too great.

In conclusion, Gunlance has been hit hard, not as hard as other weapons, but it's still been considerably nerfed, and don't use it online because they really want you to shell a lot this time around.