Tier 3 Lone Knight Gunlancer Build Guide

Welcome to the Lone Knight Gunlancer Build Guide! This build revolves around empowering your Lance skills making them incredibly strong due to Lone Knight. Always at the front lines this build is up in the face of any foes dealing massive burst blows and providing amazing utility to the team.

Outside of that, this build provides great Stagger and Destruction to the party with one of the best Counters. The main things to watch out for are his lack of mobility, proper shield management, and front-attacking playstyle. Without understanding the class, you will struggle. However, once you can overcome this you become an unstoppable warlord that deals absurd damage.

Want a more enduring and consistent playstyle? Check out our Combat Readiness guide.

Builds

Raids

Chaos Dungeons

Need some tips for general content? Check out our Guardian Raids and Abyssal Dungeons guides.

• Surge Cannon and Charged Stinger are your biggest damage skills with some extra Destruction.
• Gunlance Shot is a filler damage skill.
• Counter Gunlance is a parry providing large defenses and some extra damage.
• Dash Upper Fire is a filler damage skill with an extra Counter and Destruction.
• Bash is your Synergy from Armor Destruction with an added Counter and Destruction.
• Shout of Hatred is a Taunt that applies your second Synergy from Open Weakness.
• Nelasia's Energy is a party wide shield that also provides a Cleanse.
• Guardian's Protection is your Awakening. It provides Push Immunity and Damage Reduction to all party members inside while charging up your Shield Meter.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Counter Gunlance can be swapped for Fire Bullet, using Lucky Chance, Weak Point Enhancement, Attack Creation, and Overwhelm.

• This allows for a significant increase in Destruction and Stagger however it results in less damage and defense as well as significant mana usage increase.

Bash can be swapped for Shield Bash, using Armor Destruction, Excellent Mobility, and Bleed.

• This allows for an increase in mobility and more comfortable usage at the cost of an additional Counter.

Shout of Hatred

• Magick Control - Will make the skill harder to land, however, can be used if you are struggling with mana.

Nelasia's Energy

• Effectiveness - Can be used to increase the effectiveness of your shield if a Cleanse is not required.

Check the Rune Guide for more details on Runes and how to obtain them.

This build is optimized and meant to be used only in Chaos Dungeons. For Ebony Cube please use a Raid build.

• Surge Cannon is used for everything and gets reset cooldown from Rotating Barrage.
• Charged Stinger is your best skill for elites and bosses.
• Leap Attack, Guardian's Thundercrack, Shield Charge, Shout of Hatred, and Shield Shock are all filler damage skills.
• Lance of Judgment is your Awakening. It does massive damage and buffs you, use it to one shot elites and bosses.

Recommended Engraving Setup

While you can freely experiment with any engravings you want for this content, here's a recommended setup, based on the Engraving Support system:

• Preemptive Strike causes your attacks to deal immense amounts of damage to monsters that you haven't attacked yet, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Contender is a stacking Attack Power effect that increases in strength once you kill a monster, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Raid Captain provides damage based on your Bonus Movement Speed, synergizing well with the Buff Nodes scattered throughout Chaos Dungeons.
• Lone Knight provides damage and crit damage to Gunlance skills, the crit however is not useful in this build, if your Gunlance are already strong enough try out Cursed Doll.
• Combat Readiness provides improved shielding, increased damage, as well as increased damage to Normal skills allowing them to be more useful.

Gameplay & Skill Rotation

Lone Knight significantly increases our Lance skill damage making it an insanely strong burst class with high utility. As well as disabling Battlefield Shield (X).

Activating his identity Defensive Stance (Z) grants you the following effects for its entire duration:

• Grant Shield based on Meter
• Push-Immunity
• 50% Reduced Movement Speed

All attacks with a Front Attack affix receive +10% Stagger and +20% Damage when they land on the target's front-side indicator. Additionally, we gain increased damage from Entropy Set and Master Brawler. It is very important to position yourself accordingly as much as possible in order to take advantage of this.

Gunlancer Identity

The core damage skills should always be used when they are available to maintain high uptime and great overall damage. You can use Counter Gunlance and Nelasia's Energy as situational defensive skills to play around the boss, but you can also try to use them as much as possible to be efficient.

Defensive Stance (Z) although not core to our build, is an incredibly useful tool in our kit. While using Defensive Stance (Z) we are granted a shield and Push Immunity, this allows you to fully send your rotation while not worrying about taking damage or having your skills canceled.

Taunt is an important mechanic from the skill Shout of Hatred. Many bosses will not be tauntable, so this will not apply to them, but if they are then there are a few rules you need to consider. Taunt has an internal cooldown on the boss, the more you Taunt the longer this becomes. Additionally, you need to consider your team when using Taunt, your goal is to hold the boss in place, not turn it whenever it feels convenient for you. If everyone is in position and the boss turns, you can Taunt to bring the boss back in place, but you should not be using it at the expense of your team's positioning.

Basic Rotations

Standard Damage Rotation

• This rotation is extremely simple, you want to buff up and taunt using Shout of Hatred and Bash then using your damage skills in order of highest damage.
• You can use Defensive Stance (Z) to grant yourself Push Immunity and a shield whenever you have it available to guarantee your rotation.
• Try your best to maintain your Synergy using Bash, even if you aren't planning to attack immediately after.
• Counter Gunlance should be used whenever you feel it is necessary to block a large attack, this could be during any point of your rotation after Charged Stinger so keep your eye out for those big boss patterns.

Stagger Check Rotation

• This rotation is super simple, just follow it to do high Stagger. Remember you can also use a Whirlwind Grenade if you have one equipped!

Tripods and Gems

Tripod Levelling

Increasing the level of Tripods greatly enhances their effectiveness. You may only increase the level of 18 tripods at a time. Some of them cannot be leveled at all, or are left at level 1 - these tripods are omitted from the table, even if they are used. Here are the main tripods you should look out for in order to maximize this build's potential.

Tripods written in bold text are your highest priority, make sure to level them first!

For more information on where to obtain Tripod Amulets and how to use them, check out our Skill Tree System Guide.

Gems

Gems are another significant aspect of your build, as they directly impact the damage and cooldowns of your skills. You can equip up to 11 gems at a time. Here are the ones you should focus on in order to maximize this build's potential, listed according to their priority.

For more information on where to obtain gems and how to use them, check out our Gem System Guide.

Stat Priority

This build utilizes Crit and Swiftness.

• Crit is the primary stat. It scales our Crit Rate which scales up our damage significantly. We will reach 90% Crit Rate at 1481 Crit which will give us room for Synergy from party members.
• Swiftness is a secondary stat. It provides us with Attack and Movement speed as well as cooldown reduction once our Crit Rate is at 100% and can no longer scale.

Gear Set

Entropy Set

This set is optimal thanks to the large amounts of Crit Rate, Crit Damage, and positional damage it provides.

The name of your set will change every time you acquire a higher tier of gear, but the set effect will remain the same. Look for your set's keyword when recrafting it to find it more easily (e.g Entropy, Hallucination etc).

Check out the Gear Progression Guide for step by step instructions and early game gearing.

If you are interested in Sidereal Weapons, click here for more details.

Engravings

Engravings are a core part of your build. Typically, most engravings will be used at level 3, but there are some that can be used at level 1 or 2 in addition to the others, after reaching item level 1540 and unlocking Ancient Accessories.

Engraving Explanations

Core Engravings

• Lone Knight significantly increases the damage of your Lance skills but reduces the efficiency of your shield.
• Grudge increases damage done while also increasing damage received. The engraving is a highly effective damage increase without needing specific positioning, making it worthwhile even with the penalty.
• Super Charge most of our skills have the Charging modifier so this engraving becomes incredibly efficient for damage and quality of life.
• Master Brawler because nearly all of your damage skills have a Front Attack property, this becomes a good choice, but forces you to play around it to take full advantage of it.

Add-on Engravings (Pick 1)

• Cursed Doll is a significant Attack Power increase at the cost of 25% healing. The healing penalty can be punishing for inexperienced players who are not familiar with boss mechanics, but it becomes easy to overcome with time.
• Barricade requires you to always have a shield on when dealing damage which is relatively unreasonable so this is not recommended due to inconsistency.

Level 1 and 2 Engravings

• Combat Readiness this engraving provides a lot of defense and damage and is significantly better than any other potential level one options.

Check out the Engraving Guide for more details.

Bracelet

Bracelets provide beneficial effects to yourself or to your party members depending on the rolls they have.

The primary goal is to get the main stats used by this build Crit and Swiftness. After that you should be aiming for Special Rolls to get more damage. Please note that this system is heavily reliant on RNG, and you should not expect to get much more beyond your main stats early on.

Check out the Bracelet Guide for more details.

Elixir

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Critical.

Check out the Elixir Guide for more details and general stat recommendations.

Card Sets

Cards are an endgame system that helps maximize your character's damage. Here are the recommended card sets for this build.

• Deep Dive is used early on as it is fairly easy to obtain.
• Light of Salvation is the standard endgame option, but it can take a long time to acquire 30-piece Awakening.
• Kazeros's Legion Commanders is used as an alternative to Light of Salvation, in content where enemies have a weakness to Dark Damage.
• Platina's People combined with A Voice Calls with is used as an alternative to Light of Salvation, in Guardian Raid content exclusively.

Check out the Card Guide for more details on how to obtain cards and interact with them.

End Game Damage Card Set