User blog comment:Kogath/Monster Hunter Generations Discussion/@comment-16331478-20160618121639/@comment-5167887-20160618125434

Gonna have to disagree for Aerial GL.

First, heat gauge mechanics, while basically nerfing the damage of the weapon, at least got success into 1 thing: differenciating GL from Lance. You have to be careful about your heat gauge just like how you would want to care about your gauge with LS. Sure there's no mindless comboing anymore - it instead puts the level of technicality of GL to that of the use of Guard pointing with CB. Now you have to carefully mix in shells to heat and thrust to cool down so that when you know you'll be able to WF, the gauge will lock in red. Back in 4U i never knew when it would be optimal to shell rather than thrusting, this new system somewhat puts the weapon "in order".

The weapon was made much more mobile with Aerial Style than it ever was with this forward jump that replaces the backward hop, so it is a completely new approach to the gameplay, it's like they were two different weapons with the same name. Aerial Gunlance is all about full burst (after which and Wyvern Fire you can now evade, which is a long-needed upgrade) and, at least with the demo GL, three aerial fullbursts (i don't even fire shells mid-air) get you more or less to the exact red limit just before overheating, then a WF and you're in for 120 seconds of combo onslaught. Not saying that you can spam them really quickly: effectively, Aerial Gunlance is the style that allows the fastest heat building of all. The extra mobility also kind of makes up for any other disadvantage it would have.