Lost Ark Gunlancer Guide (Builds, Engravings, and Tips) (2023)

Gunlancer Class Guide – Lost Ark

The Gunlancer is the only Lost Ark class that can be considered a “tank” by traditional MMO standards. He has a taunt, a huge shield, and can absorb a ton of punishment. If you are looking to stay in melee and obliterate your foes while ignoring mechanics, look no further.

Remember that Lost Ark is not a traditional MMO and players don’t manage enemy aggro. That means that the Gunlancer has to do damage like other classes, and they do plenty of it. Their main function is being a tanky damage dealer with some support skills.

The class has a good balance of AOE and single target skills, allowing them to wipe out hordes of mobs quickly without flinching or to focus the boss with their massive stagger abilities, stunning them.

Their skills have a lot of utility- stuns, pulls, taunts, and electrocutes that allow them to control the battlefield and shields plus buffs to keep their allies healthy. Combine this with their ability to plant themselves anywhere and not be moved, and a great Gunlancer can dramatically change any fight, PvP or PvE.

Gunlancers may feel slow at first, but once you get used to their mobility skill jumping you backward, you can use that in combination with their leap and charge to move across the battlefield. You won’t feel as agile as other classes, but you won’t be as mechanically complex either and can focus on using your impactful abilities at key times. If you’re interested in leveling Gunlancer, check out our Gunlancer leveling guide.

Comparisons to other classes

Currently, the other two warrior classes are the Paladin and the Berserker. The paladin focuses primarily on supporting their allies on the front lines, and won’t do as much damage or be as tanky as a Gunlancer. The Berserker is going to do more damage than you more easily but this comes at the cost of defense and support skills.

Other melee classes like martial artists and assassins will be more mobile and have more combo-oriented moves, so you will have to rely on your hard-hitting abilities and your tankiness to make the most out of the Gunlancer.

You can check the performance of Gunlancer in the current meta in our list of best Lost Ark classes.

Class Mechanics

Gunlancers build up their Shield Gauge by doing damage with their skills. You have two options on how to use it:

• Defensive Stance: This can be activated at any time, granting you a shield and pushback immunity. You cannot generate meter while active and the gauge will slowly be drained – getting hit will drain it faster. This is the hallmark skill for any Gunlancer, allowing them to do things other classes cannot.
• Battlefield Shield: The Gunlancer sacrifices his entire Shield Gauge to create a zone of safety for his allies, absorbing all damage in an area. This is not used often but can be useful in specific situations where your party is going to take a lot of damage.

PvE

Gunlancer’s are a highly valued class whose job is to control the fight by interrupting the boss’s key abilities with Taunt while doing your damage rotation. To stay in melee range and do this effectively, Shield Gauge needs to be built and used efficiently.

On top of that, a Gunlancer’s abilities debuff the boss, and knowing when to use group buffs can dramatically impact the fight. If you want to focus on battle strategy, and don’t like mechanically demanding classes, you will feel right at home here.

PvP

In PvP, Gunlancers focus on disruption and burst damage. You have several abilities which stun and displace foes. Your allies will rely on you for peels, and you can support them with buffs as well.

Offensively, you have some great burst that enemies usually don’t expect. Using your Defensive Stance for CC immunity wisely will allow you to get your damage off no matter what. If pulling your enemies off your allies and into your calculated burst sounds like a great time, this is the class for you.

Core Abilities

Shout of Hatred

This is your taunt. You are the only class in the game with a taunt. You are the only class capable of standing there and shrugging off whatever the boss might throw at you. It’s also amazing for canceling deadly boss attacks and making the vulnerable, meaning it gets more value the smarter you become as a player. This skill is also great for clearing low-level mobs.

Bash

Having a big shield not only allows you to tank damage other classes can’t, but also lets you hit things really hard with it. Bash is valuable in all gun lancer builds primarily because it makes the boss vulnerable to damage AND it gives you a self-buff to do more damage. It can also counter bosses from the front!

Leap Attack

This allows your otherwise slow self to cross great distances in one (or two if talented) bounds. It also does good damage on impact and leaves a crater that continues to damage foes.

Surge Cannon

This is your hardest-hitting ability, turning your lance into a cannon that can be charged up. Does a ton of damage and heavily staggers foes along with destroying weak points. It can be talented for AOE and instant cooldown reduction, and can even catch players off guard in PvP with how much damage it does.

Shield Charge

Another great mobility skill. The Gunlancer lowers his shield and turns into a missile hurtling towards foes. Not only can it protect you from damage, but it does good damage and staggers as well.

Guardian Thunderbolt

The Gunlancer raises his lance in the air and summons a thunderstorm that radiates outwards and does massive AOE damage, and respectable single target damage. It will also electrify foes apply hard CC and stagger.

Awakening Abilities

As with all classes, the Gunlancer has access to two awakening abilities.

Guardian’s Protection

• Deal massive damage in a huge AOE stunning all opponents and restoring your shield meter to full. You create a zone of protection reducing all damage inside by 40% and making everyone immune to all push back and debuffs. This awakening is great for protecting your party and bypassing difficult boss mechanics.

Lance of Judgment

Summon a massive lance to impale foes in the target area and subsequently buff all party members crit rate by 10%. This is your damage awakening and can be used to help your party speedrun content or push damage checks. It also has significant weak point destruction properties.

Guardian’s Protection is the more versatile of the two and is usually taken to ensure full shield uptime for your Gunlancer. Lance of Judgment has its uses and can be valuable when you need destruction and damage for key boss phases.

Advanced Class Engravings

Every Lost Ark class has access to engravings that will focus your playstyle in one particular direction. For Gunlancers, you will choose between Combat Readiness and Lone Knight.

They are two completely different playstyles and were nicknamed Blue and Red build because of the color of skills that you would use in each.

Combat Readiness

• This build focuses on making you even tankier. You will generate more shield, and you will take less damage. In fact, this style encourages you to get hit so that you can stack your damage increase buff.
• You will use your taunt to generate a ton of shield gauge and keep your Defensive Stance permanently up. Knowing when to turn off your shield to build meter is key in playing this build.

Lone Knight

• This engraving completely removes your ability to use Battlefield Shield and greatly reduces the time you can spend in Defensive Stance, but it gives you increased crit rate and damage on your Gunlance abilities.
• The above turns this class into a burst damage playstyle. You save your cooldowns, wait for a window of opportunity, debuff the boss with bash, and unload all your firepower. Rinse and repeat.

Build

Combat Readiness Build

This build encourages you to take all your blue skills that scale with specialization. Your focus is to keep a healthy shield gauge so you can stay in Defensive Stance, and hit the boss with your full rotation following Bash. Of course, you will taunt and support your allies while doing this!

Here are some of the skill explanations and tripods you will take (Make sure you have 4 points in every spell and then max them out in the following order:

• Shout of Hatred
  • 1-3-:1
  • Your primary source of Shield Gauge. Use when up if not saving to cancel a specific boss attack.
• Guardians Thunderbolt
  • 3-2-1
  • One of your hardest-hitting abilities and great for AOE clear and Single Target damage.
• Leap Attack
  • 1-2-1
  • Another hard-hitting ability that can be cast twice as part of your rotation. You can use this to get across the battlefield quickly as well.
• Shield Charge
  • 3-2-2
  • Similar to leap attack, this is a strong source of damage for your rotation, but can also be used for mobility in a pinch.
• Nellasia’s Energy
  • 1-1-2
  • Great party shield buff that can be used to prepare for big damage. Adapt tripods for the fight if you need cleanse or movement speed.
• Shield Bash
  • 3-3-1
  • Gap closer that gets you into position for your combo. Also, a great filler spell to cast when you are outside of your Bash Buff.
• Bash
  • 1-1-1
  • This is always going to be your opener for your rotation. It debuffs the boss and buffs your damage (at lvl7). Also counters, but will almost always be off cooldown.
• Dash Upper Fire
  • 3-0-0
  • This spell does not need to be leveled and is primarily held for use as a counter or a destruction weak point when the time calls for it.

Feel free to replace Nellasia’s with Surge Cannon or Shield Shock when soloing, or when you don’t care about your teammates 🙂

Stat Priority

• Prioritize Specialization.
• Get some Crit on your neck as secondary.

Runes

• Focus on Taunt and Nellasia’s since they are very expensive to cast.
• Bleed or Rage on Bash and Shield Bash since they are spammable.
• Galewind on Shield Charge, Leap Attack, and Thunderbolt so they cast faster, making your rotation smoother.
• Overwhelm on Dash Upper Fire for more stagger. Feel free to use overwhelm on the bashes or any attack that is high stagger, since Gunlancer has a lot.

Engraving

• Combat Readiness lvl 1 – Feel free to level it more, but it’s not necessary for this build as you get the biggest benefits here and can use the other points on better damage skills.
• Barricade lvl 3 since you will almost always have a shield up.
• Stabilized Status lvl 3 is nice since you will rarely be below 80% health if you are managing your shield well.
• Hit Master, Spirit Absorption, and Adrenaline are all great further skills to equip at lvl 3 to boost your damage.
• Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great skills once you are an advanced player and can slot them in

Gems

• Prioritize Damage and Cooldown on all the core damage skills: Thunderbolt, Charge, Leap, and Shield Bash.
• Get cooldown on the support skills: Shout and Nellasia’s
• Everything else is a bonus.

Lone Knight Build

To play this build effectively, you need to really nail your burst rotation, and do it when the boss is not immune to taunt or about to move.

You always open with Bash and make sure your shield is up so you can not get interrupted while Surge Cannon is charging. If you can pull this off effectively, taunt the boss, and shield your allies, it feels great!

Here are some of the skill explanations and tripods you will take (Make sure you have 4 points in every spell and then max them out in the following order):

• Shout of Hatred
  • 1-3-1
  • Your primary source of Shield Gauge. Use when up if not saving to cancel a specific boss attack.
• Surge Cannon
  • 3-3-1
  • Your hardest-hitting skill and the core of your rotation.
• Charged Stinger
  • 2-2-2
  • The finisher of your combo and the other hard-hitting skill.
• Fire Bullet
  • 2-3-1
  • Close range spell that does good damage and has a short cooldown.
• Dash Upper Fire
  • 3-2-2
  • This will close your gap after Surge Cannon knocks you back, and do descent damage too. Can also be used as a counter.
• Nellasia’s Energy
  • 1-1-2
  • Great party shield buff that can be used to prepare for big damage. Adapt tripods for the fight if you need cleanse or movement speed.
• Bash
  • 1-1-1
  • This is always going to be your opener for your rotation. It debuffs the boss and buffs your damage (at lvl7). Aslo counters, but will almost always be off cooldown.
• Counter Gunlance
  • 1-0-0
  • This skill is a great defensive skill with a self buff, but you don’t need to level it. In fact you will swap it for Gunlance Shot when you get more skill points.

Stat Priority

• This build relies on Crit to do damage but the more swiftness you add, the more smoothly it plays.
• It’s up to you to strike a balance between just having swiftness on your neck or adding a couple of other pieces.

Runes

• Focus on Taunt and Nellasia’s since they are very expensive to cast.
• Bleed or Rage on Bash and Fire Bullet since they are spammable.
• Galewind on Surge Cannon and Charged Stinger so they cast faster, making your rotation smoother.
• Overwhelm on Dash Upper Fire for more stagger.
• Recommend Quick Recharge on counter Gunlance, but whatever you choose won’t be that impactful.

Engraving

• Lone Knight lvl 3 – must-have for the build
• Super Charge lvl 3 makes all your strongest abilities charge faster and hit harder.
• Master Brawler lvl 3 is really good since all your skills are head attacks.
• Depending on if you have crit or not you want to choose between Keen Blunt Weapon or Precise Dagger lvl 3. Adrenaline also works if you need crit.
• Some players use Combat Readiness lvl 1 to make their shield better. In Korea, they refer to this as a Purple Lancer 🙂
• Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great skills once you are an advanced player and can slot them in

Gems

• Prioritize Damage and Cooldown on all the core rotation skills- Surge Cannon, Dash Upper Fire, and Charged Stinger.
• Cooldown on all the core rotational skills and everything else.

Thanks for reading! For more articles and guides, check out the rest of our Lost Ark blog.