Abbreviation: GNR

The Gunner's first appearance was EO2, where they were top notch damage dealers thanks to Ricochet, and great healers through Medishot. It took until the first Untold for them to reappear, where Frederica was incredibly busted, firing out multiple instances of incredibly powerful attack skills each turn, and their appearance in 2U was no slouch, especially when you consider all the enemy Grimoire skills that would boost their damage to unreasonable numbers.

In Nexus, they stay powerful heavy hitters, amongst the strongest in the game. However, their downsides are amped up even higher, forcing them to contend with either incredible inaccuracy, or frailty that would make masochistic Zodiacs blush. They also gained a new paradigm, though; you can opt to deal with neither and instead have them focus on binds, and although they had these targetted binding shots before, the new status infliction formula in Nexus makes them very competent inflictors with STR-based abilities. Gunners are one of the only classes in the series that has been powerful in all of their iterations, which commands respect.

Stats

(Full)

Strong Points: TP, STR, LUC
Medium Points: INT
Very Weak Points: HP, VIT, WIS, AGI

Equippable Weapons: Gun
Equippable Armor: Cloth Armor

Common Passive: Mine (Novice), TP Up (Veteran), Phys ATK Up (Master)


Skills: Force

Boost: Double Action
For 3 turns, all gun skills will activate twice, with the second activation dealing 40% of the damage of the first.
Double Action is a 40% damage boost, with some mechanical implications. On the plus side, the fact that it causes two actions combines well with chasers and Links. On the downside, the fact that it's two separate actions means the accuracy check is run twice, which means the second activation can miss, negating the damage boost.
A more satisfying form of a damage boost. It also boosts the Gunner's Snipe skills' bind chances, because they go off twice, and that's rad.
Double Action is also incredibly good for the Snipes, which gets two checks and become incredibly strong binding tools. It'll activate twice for gun weapon skills too, including support ones - Debuffs will be twice as long, and any ailments are also checked twice. If your Gunner has a Hero subclass, Afterimage also gets two chances to be generated. Sadly, Warrior Might still only chases once even with Double Action.

Reprisal Command will also hit twice, but this tends to be a bane rather than a boon because Double Action can only activate once per turn, which means if Reprisal Command uses it up, the Gunner's normal action will not be able to get its benefit. If you're using Reprisal Command and Gunner together in your party, be aware of this.

Break: Riot Gun


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy. Attempts to stun the target.
Damage with utility! Unless an enemy completely nullifies stun, they're almost certainly going to be stunned, giving you a turn to do whatever you want to them.
No enemy in the game has a Stun resistance of under 10% without being immune, so before STR/LUC adjustments, Riot Gun is always a guaranteed stun on anything not immune. This makes it a better Painless/Warrior Doubles as it can negate the target's next action in all effects in its entirety. On the other hand, you have your damage dealer doing support. It's good support, though.

Skills: Novice

Rapid Fire


Deals 3 instances of ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy.
Cheap damage that you can max out early. The accuracy penalty isn't great, yeah, but it can be offset with accuracy-boosting accessories.
Your best damage before Veteran. Baby Ricochet, basically. It's also really fast so it has a use in randoms later in the game.

Splash Shot


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy, with splash damage.
Early multi-target coverage. It kinda sucks, though.
As soon as you hit Veteran, you take Feint Shot or Scattershot and never give Splash Shot the time of day again.
About the only good quality it has is that it's cheap. Feint Shot pretty much outclasses it.

Leg Snipe


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy. Attempts to bind the target's legs. Cannot miss.
The first of the Snipes! Binding the legs disables evasion, meaning that any Gunner skills with accuracy penalties will always hit. Gunners having high LUC also means you've got decent odds of landing binds with Snipes, so, y'know, go nuts. They do take a lot of SP to max out, though.
You could also give these to a Nightseeker/Gunner to let them do ailments AND binds.
Unlike in 2U, Gunner's binding capabitilies are very competitive in this game and plenty of people run one with heavy investments in these skills as their main binder in their party. The fact that they cannot miss is also very helpful on a certain set of annoying enemies, and Leg Bind is actually the most helpful additional effect you can get for those annoying enemies in particular. Their main downside is that a 40% speed skill on a slow class using a slow weapon pretty much forfeits any chance of going before the target, preventing you from disabling a skill before it comes out.

Arm Snipe


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy. Attempts to bind the target's arms. Cannot miss.
Dangerous physical skills often come from the arms, so arm binds are more of a defensive tool than leg binds are. If you want your Gunner to help out with defensive strategies, feel free to grab Arm Snipe more than you need to.

Cover Support


When the user is in the back row, and uses the Defend command, party members in the front row have their HP restored.
Ugh, no. I have never liked Cover Support, and I still don't like it in this game.
It's a free row heal, but the heal is too weak to amount to much. Could be handy occasionally in explorations, but most of the time your Gunner will have better things to do, and better places to spend SP in.

Shell Shock


For one turn, reduces the attack, defense, accuracy, and evasion for enemies in the back row. Attempts to inflict stun on enemies in the back row.
Much like Cover Support, I have never liked Shell Shock, and I still don't like it here.
I'm going to defend Shell Shock. Its effects are powerful, and enemies in the back row tend to turbo-fuck you over. Stunning them and making them easier to hit and kill before they can do anything is incredibly helpful, and even if the stun misses they might miss their attacks and they'll do less damage.

Of course, the problem is that you have a damage dealer doing support. If only you could use Shell Shock without using up your Gunner's turn.

Hmmm.
The fact that Shell Shock only costs 4 points now makes it a much more considerable prospect. Nexus loves putting very rude enemies in the back, and Gunner is not very likely to take them out before they act, so having a fairly reliable stun and one-turn debuff can make them much less threatening. Stun also activates Adrenaline/TP Return and can contribute to Mind Drain (which actually requires Ailment + Bind OR Stun, instead of just bind), so it can be helpful to improve TP efficiency of your team. The main downside is still that this skill generally does nothing in boss battles, and it won't do anything for formations with no back row either (though those don't tend to be very threatening formations to begin with).

Medic Bullet


Restores the HP of, and removes ailments from, one party member.
No. A single-target heal and ailment purge is not worth any SP on, especially when it's in a damage dealer skillset.
250% speed ailment wipe with some incidental healing is neat. If you find it useful, go for it. Personally I don't bother, but Gunner isn't very SP-hungry.
Can be worth 1 point if your party otherwise lacks out of battle heals, but damn the TP efficiency is terrible. The ailment purge can sometimes help in randoms and save theriaca Bs, but again, you need only one point for this.

Pop Flare


Increases all party members' accuracy for a set amount of turns.
This is an alternate method of compensating for poor Gunner skill accuracy, alongside evasion-disabling...disables. Six SP is decently worth a +30% accuracy buff!
The duration is unfortunate. Also, Target Goggles are freakishly effective at enabling Rapid Fire and Ricochet to hit. Still, this can help prevent unlucky misses from characters like Imperial and Landsknecht, and provides an alternative to using your accessory slot for Target Goggles.
It's the cheapest party-target buff for Sovereign shenanigens, which is about its largest value to me. It doesn't give enough accuracy bonus to offset Ricochet by itself, and if you want to combine it with Feint Shot, your gunner will be spending half of their turns modifying accuracy instead of actually shooting, compared to just wearing Target Goggles and (mostly) forgetting about accuracy penalties forever. Could be more worth it if you have several other characters who also need the accuracy bonus (like other Gunners, Ronin, or Imperial).

Skills: Veteran

Feint Shot


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one row of enemies. Reduces hit targets' evasion for a set amount of turns.
Another way of compensating for accuracy penalties! This one deals damage, and has multi-target coverage!
feint shooooooot

there's enemies in the game that have evasion buffs and feint shot can barely miss

it also has basically the same use cases as pop flares but uses a debuff slot instead and doesn't have an auto version

feint shot is really useful but in weird ways
Like Pop Flares, I don't quite like it as an accuracy penalty offset, but it's good multi-target damage that comes out fast, so it's quite helpful to have in random battles for its damage and coverage alone.

Scattershot


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to all enemies.
Full multi-target coverage! I like those, especially since there's a decent amount of boss fights with adds.
The light accuracy penalty makes using it slightly unreliable. If you already have a Target Goggles so you don't need to worry about it, but if you don't, you may want to use Feint Shot instead if you really need something to be brought down reliably.

Head Snipe


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy. Attempts to bind the target's head. Cannot miss.
Head binds are defensive tools, like arm binds, but for elemental attacks and pure disables/debuffs. Again, if you want your Gunner to help out with defensive support, feel free to take this.
Just keep in mind that on that certain set of annoying enemies where you appreciate the cannot miss aspect on, Head Bind is the worst thing you can land on them.

Act Quick


Until the end of the next turn, reduces the user's TP costs, and increases their action speed.
Act Quick basically lets you trade total damage per turn for extreme TP efficiency, and also dodging the damage taken penalty on the Charged shots. Speaking of which!
This skill is awesome to have in randoms - keep in mind that if it makes you finish the battle at the start of next turn instead of the end of this turn, then you essentially lose no turns. Even if your Gunner is maxing Ricochet, this skill is still great for letting you save a ton of TP on it. I really don't like using it in boss battles though; the damage efficiency penalty is just too large and Gunner actually doesn't need to save that much TP since they already have less of a problem with it than most attackers.

Charged Shot


Deals ranged STR-based stab damage to one enemy. Increases all damage the user takes until activation.
Endgame Gunner is basically a game of choosing between Charged Shot, Ricochet, and the elemental Charged shots. The rules, as far as I'm concerned, go like this:
  1. Does the enemy have an elemental weakness OR do they resist stab damage? Elemental Charged shot.
  2. Is the enemy's evasion significantly reduced, or disabled entirely? Ricochet.
  3. Otherwise? Charged Shot.
The Charged Shots are exceedingly risky. Gunner is already very frail, but Charged Shots will make them die from a weak rando's regular attack through backrow damage reduction. In boss fights? Inflict something like Panic or Petrification, and even then in Panic they might gently brush the Gunner with a randomly-targetted regular attack and reduce them to a red paste anyway. Only worth it either with Act Quick or in a hard lockdown team, IMO.
Even if you're going for Ricochet, you probably want a few points in this skill so you can do focused damage against certain random encounters. The defense penalty is significant, but there are multiple ways of covering it. Charged Shot also has abnormally high multipliers at half max level, making it one of the few offensive skills in the game that is very strong even as a subclass skill.

Preemptive Fire


If the user knows Shell Shock, gives them a chance to use it at the start of battle.

If another party member activated Preemptive Fire, the user will be unable to activate it.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha
Boy I sure do love the enemy's extremely dangerous backline being completely neutralized for a single turn without using up a turn! Pre-Emptive Fire turns Shell Shock from a weird skill with a limited use-case into "just fucking take it". Gunner is basically keening for a place to sink more SP, not taking Shell Shock and Pre-Emptive Fire is just silly. Where else are you going to put these points? Sure, it doesn't do anything in most boss battles, especially as a pre-emptive skill, but the game's not just boss battles and the Gunner can theoretically complete their entire damage dealer build in as few as 27 SP. Give Shell Shock and Pre-Emptive Fire a chance or twenty-seven.
Spending 4 SP to help with some problematic randoms is justifiable, but spending another 6 SP on a still-not-reliable chance of firing it automatically is... questionable at best, especially since you can just use the skill manually.

Preemptive Flare


If the user knows Pop Flare, gives them a chance to use it at the start of battle.

If another party member activated Preemptive Flare, the user will be unable to activate it.
Eh, a decent point sink when you run out of other skills you want.
If you're relying on Pop Flares and/or Feint Shot to use Ricochet or skills like Helm Splitter, this can enable them in randoms.
Lets your Sovereign get to work straight away restoring TP with Negotiation, rather than waiting a turn for your Gunner to put on a buff at the end of the turn. Could also help with using Scattershot in randoms if you're using a Charged Shot/Elemental build, perhaps.

Penetrator


Gives a chance to, when using a single-target, single-hit skill, add a line-piercing effect.
See my note on Preemptive Flare.
Not a fan. Will only affect the Snipes and Charged Shots, and isn't guaranteed at max level. Gunner has better crowd control that doesn't rely on 66% chance or go off at the end of the turn.
Of Gunner's class skills, it only works for Charged Shots, Snipes. If you're building for Ricochet it's not really worth it. It's a lot more interesting when subclass skills are considered, though. Anything with a secondary effect can appreciate a chance to apply them to two enemies at once, so this skill (alongside Multi-shot) can be very important passives to take for a lot of classes when they use Gunner as a subclass.

Skills: Master

Ricochet


Deals multiple instances of ranged STR-based stab damage to random enemies.
Ricochet is some good shit when the enemy has significantly reduced or disabled evasion. If they don't, though, don't bother.

Note that the Gunner ultimate armor, combined with Target Goggles, give a permanent +30% base accuracy to a Gunner, turning Ricochet's accuracy penalty from -60% to -30%.
Actually, Target Goggles' accuracy bonus is bizarrely anomalous. I have Target Goggles on my Ricochet Gunner and she doesn't use Pop Flares or Feint Shot, and even when the enemy has no evasion disables she misses maybe one shot out of thirty. Maybe. Anyways, Ricochet's my shit. Much less risky than the Charged shots, and can serve as pseudo-crowd control. And it reminds me of Squall Volley, which is a gigantic, glowing, rainbow-hued plus in my gigantic, glowing, rainbow-hued book.
Accuracy boost on equipment seems to be far, far more effective than their numbers suggest, and from my personal experience, Target Goggles alone is enough to ensure that this skill only misses very occasionally (no more than most classes miss on their own skills). Compared to Charge Shot, you're essentially trading the big defense penalty for a smaller but always on one, as well as damage consistency and the ability to target for more damage on average (900% at max). It's also awesome for link parties because with Double Action Gunner can give two characters' worth of contribution to links. Charged Elementals will do more on average when hitting a weakness, though.

Charged Fire / Charged Ice / Charged Volt


Deals ranged STR-based stab + fire (Charged Fire), stab + ice (Charged Ice), or stab + volt (Charged Volt) damage to one enemy. Increases all damage the user takes until activation.
The Charged elemental shots are really good when they're hitting weaknesses. Don't bother with them on enemies without weaknesses, though.
One note about the Charged Shots, though: They're actually really strong at half level. I'd advocate for Nightseeker/Gunner since a half-level Charged Elemental hitting a weakness is stronger than Shadow Bite and only slightly less strong than the average of Swift Edge. Lets you stick them in the back row, too, and ignore Cut resistance. And Throws don't require a specific weapon. Potentially also useful on Protector, letting them chip in damage when you're safe for a turn since their STR is decent.
The fact that they only cost 6 SP to max makes them less SP intensive than most elemental damage set, which is a small but nice thing about them.

Multi-Shot


Gives attack skills a chance to activate twice.

Multi-Shot does not activate on Link skills, Chase skills, or counterattack skills.
Multi-Shot works out to, not accounting for accuracy stuff, a permanent 15% damage buff at max rank--with variance due to RNG, obviously. Still stupid good.
the greatest technique: attacking again

Anyway this will work on any attack, not just Gun skills, so subbing Gunner for this on an attacker is legit. It'll also activate the effects twice. Double Impulse Edge, anyone?
It's only 15%, but it's still good, and it's a main reason that gets people to take gunner as a subclass (even 7% is very helpful). Keep in mind that like Double Action, Snipes can get an extra chance to bind, too, and afterimage gets two chances to be generated. (Though unlike Double Action, suport skills have no chance of firing twice because this only works for attack skills.)

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