Combat Readiness Gunlancer Skill Guide for Lost Ark

Gunlancer's skills are split between either Normal (blue) skills or Gunlance (red) skills. While using Combat Readiness, our Normal skills are buffed by a flat amount, making them more potent to use. Due to this, we typically run almost entirely blue skills.

The blue Skills in a Gunlancer's kit tend to be the more diversive skills. These Normal skills provide us with our synergy buffs, our taunt, and the ability to shield and cleanse the party. Most of them come with some type of mobility as well.

• Bash: This is effectively your spam skill. It should be used on cooldown to maintain the buff it gives, Armor Destruction. It also serves as a counter, but should never be held for that purpose, sinice we have another counter in our kit, explained below.
• Shield Charge: Deals a moderate amount of damage, but it's main perk is how mobile it makes us. The cooldown on this is short enough to make this a reliable form of mobility.
• Shield Bash: Short cooldown skill that deals a high amount of Stagger damage to the target. Make sure this is up for stagger checks, but otherwise use on cooldown for damage.
• Leap Attack: Another high-mobility skill, but also one of our two big burst skills. In the build we've put together, we've opted for using Shockwave, but Electric Field is also a viable option. Just keep in mind, the enemy will need to sit in the puddle you leave for it to be effective.
• Guardian's Thundercrack: Recently revamped, this skill deals the most damage in our entire build. The range on this skill is pretty big, but it's usually not even a consideration since the rotation has you use Leap Attack prior to Guardian's Thundercrack.
• Shout of Hatred: Every burst window should start with this attack, ideally with Defensive Stance off to generate Shield Meter, then toggled on to take advantage of Barricade and to gain stacks from your class engraving. This skill provides one of the best synergy buffs in the game with Open Weakness and also functions as your taunt, allowing you to get your front positionals with ease.
• Nelasia's Energy: At base, this skill provides a 25% damage reduction to all party members, but this skill is capable of doing so much more. Shout of Purification serves as a party wide cleanse for tripod row two, while row three has the option between a party wide shield or a party wide Attack Speed buff. The majority of the time you will want to take the shield, but if you know your group doesn't need it, feel free to take the synergy instead.
• Shield Shock: Not widely used, but can be taken if you don't need a counter with Dash Upper Fire. Gunlancer's are expected to counter by the community, so don't expect to take this and people not notice. Very situational.

Combat Readiness doesn't use very many of these. Your build can handle at most two Gunlance skills and still function, but in order for that to work you need to be willing to give up Nelasia's Energy. Most builds will only contain a single red skill.

• Dash Upper Fire: By far the most common choice, as it serves as a reliable counter with added mobility. We take Excellent Mobility for this reason. The only reason you drop this skill is if a counter is not needed in your group. An example of this would be something like Gate 1 or Gate 3 of Argos.
• Counter Gunlance: On Lone Knight this skill makes Gunlancer extremely sturdy, but the fact is, Combat Readiness just doesn't need it due to the uptime on Defensive Stance.
• Fire Bullet: Should only be used for fights where Weak Point damage is required. Even then, you may only be speeding a fight up by a small amount in exchange for not having a reliable counter and/or losing access to a party shield.

While most classes in this game have a definite Awakening to choose from for a specific engraving, Gunlancer can freely cycle between theirs given the situation and needs of the group.

• Guardian's Protection: Possibly one of the most abusable Awakenings in the game, this skill places a large bubble on the ground that party members can stand in to receive 40% damage reduction on top of Super Armor. If you want to see how strong this is, use this during Deskaluda when the green tethers attach to your party members. Fair warning, people tend to not know what this does, or they don't expect it to happen and will still run away from it when it's used. May be worth pinging people to stand in it when it's placed.
• Lance of Judgment: Pretty straight forward, provides a 10% Crit Rate buff to all party members inside of it's radius for 10 seconds. Either plan the usage out with a premade, or try to use this after a boss has been knocked down after a stagger check to make sure people abuse the buff entirely.

Below is a table consisted of recommended tripods for each skill. Prioritize tripods that either buff your damage, or the tripods on your heavier hitting Normal skills, with the goal of having 18 max level tripods.

Skill Name	Tripod 1	Tripod 2	Tripod 3
Bash	Armor Destruction (N/A)	Ready Attack (High)	Bell Strike N/A (Optional)
Shield Charge	Enhanced Strike (Low)	Quick Pace (Low)	Destruction Charger (Low)
Shield Bash	Nimble Movement (Low)	Weak Point Detection (Medium)	Additional Hit (Medium)
Leap Attack	Quick Prep (High)	Shockwave (High)	Low Shock (High)
Guardian's Thundercrack	Weak Point Detection (High)	Tough Strike (High)	Lightning Stalk (High)
Shout of Hatred	Quick Prep (High)	Shield (Low)	Open Weakness (N/A)
Nelasia's Energy	Quick Prep (High)	Shout of Purification (N/A)	Survive (Medium)
Dash Upper Fire	Excellent Mobility (N/A)	Wide Hit (N/A) Optional	(N/A)

• Bash: Rage
• Shield Charge: Galewind
• Shield Bash: Overwhelm
• Leap Attack: Galewind
• Guardian's Thundercrack: Galewind
• Shout of Hatred: Bleed
• Nelasia's Energy: Focus
• Dash Upper Fire: Quick Recharge

• Shield Charge
• Shield Bash
• Leap Attack
• Guardian's Thundercrack

• Bash
• Shield Charge
• Shield Bash
• Leap Attack
• Guardian's Thundercrack
• Shout of Hatred
• Nelasia's Energy