Gunner

The Gunner is a class that has been introduced in the expansion TERA: Fate of Arun. This class is only available to female High Elves, Castanic and Elin races. The Gunner's best abilities rely on a resource called Willpower which is built using a variety of the skills available to the gunner. Once the gunner reaches 100% willpower, she's able to unleash a huge AoE skill in front of her blowing away anything that stands in her path.

The Gunner class also includes a summonable robot named HB-7 which can be blown up to stun enemies or used to quickly pull the gunner out of harms way. HB-7 is also able to heal the gunner when idle, and does small amounts of damage to mobs after the use of skills such as Obliteration and Arcane Barrage.

Official Description
Gunners are fast-moving, high-DPS ranged combatants who never stops to ask questions—they’re too busy shooting first! A gunner combines fast-paced play with strategic use of summoned constructs, and positions herself to make use of the best skills for any given situation. A unique aspect of the gunner is how she uses Willpower to activate devastating attacks. A gunner generates Willpower every time she kills an enemy, and when her meter is full…look out! Willpower fades rapidly when not fighting, so don’t stop shooting until every enemy is rekt!

General


Gunner is second of the "new classes", released one year after reaper in may 2015. Interestingly, gunner was not in game with initial release of TERA for consoles, but was released few months later. Gunner was first class with high crit change (3&times;) skills. Other classes got later buffed to same standard.

Initial plans for gunner were quite different from what the class turned out to be. Some say it was originally fashioned something like engineer in TF2, meant to build towers and stuff for attack and team support. (Class is actually still called "Arcane Engineer" (Arkaningenieurin) in German and in Russian.) Final form of gunner is more familiar to anyone who has played Quake or similar games. This makes gunner very easy to play (least during leveling) for anyone who has played first-person shooters. To actually perform well you'll have to understand the Willpower system and how it's used for Burst Fire and Balder's Vengeance.

Besides Apex new skills gunner has had one notable change. BV got it's damage doubled, which made it hardest-hitting skill in game. Also it's cooldown was cut from 6 min to 4 min, changes which actually made the skill usable. Also Bombardment was changed to not require any Willpower, instead it loads it with each hit.

Gunner is highly dependent on ping. High ping leads to DPS loss. Main culprit is main damage skill Burst Fire that requires round-trips to server. If you main gunner with >100 ms ping highly consider using TERA Proxy, VPN or similar tool.

Gunner has been notorious in PVP due it's high damage attacks. Mana Missiles from +12 Tensus gunner was capable of one-shotting player in PVE-PVP-hybrid gear from 30+ meters away. (Yes, the new classes ruined PVP in TERA.) After BV changes gunner has remained mainstay in CU, since the class is capable one-shotting anyone or even whole enemy team (unless protected by lancer).

Equipment
Gunner wears Metal armor which gives significant defense values.

Skills
Unload on multiple enemies at once with this Willpower-fueled skill, and keep firing penetrating shots until your bar is empty. Which may take a while, because you’ll get more Willpower with every kill. This skill is around 30% of gunner's total damage. Burst Fire has ramp up feature and its crit chance raises quickly while firing.

snipe skill with high damage in one shot. This skill needs full Willpower to cast. Gunner is immune to damage while firing (except when hit by skills that cannot be i-framed). Balder's Vengeance also receives a 20% damage increase if cast during Modular Weapon system (see Apex Changes).

is high damage burn skill. As of Apex changes this skill no longer needs Willpower. It loads 100 Willpower per hit and with Talent points allocated it has chance to load up gunner's Willpower fully. As the skill launches 11 missiles, this usually happens. Using Bombardment to fully load Willpower bar and Balder's Vengeance to unload that damage to boss gives gunner high burst damage potential. This combo should be used while boss in enraged and combined with Modular Weapon system and brooch.

is gunner's basic damage skill. It fires energy pulse that passes through enemies damaging them. Other tap on skill button detonates the pulse at a point of your choosing. Your HB construct will fire bombs at the same spot to seal the deal.

. Very fast skill that does reasonable damage and gains lots or Willpower. This locks the enemy on place and throws him into air unable to dodge after which another, stronger explosion happens. This skill should be used before Burst Fire as second explosion gets same crit chance.

is unique charge skill on gunner. It shoots multiple missiles after charged with triple crit chance. It loads faster when used after Burst Fire or Rocket Jump.

is useful filler skill or for getting your enemy’s attention. Not only does it deliver a spread of penetrating damage, but you’ll gain Willpower for each successful hit. Rolling Reload skill afterwards will reset this skill and power up damage for next shot.

loads mana, willpower and can reset Arcane Barrage and Scattershot.

is close range skill. Swing your Arcannon to slam your enemies, then fire an explosive shot to knock you and them back.

is gunner's auto attack skill. Its damage is low, but is cancels animations of other skills and reloads mana and Willpower. This skill should cast between each skills.

is low damage stun bomb. It can't stun boss monsters, but is sometimes used as filler. It's useful in PVP and against smaller mobs.

Apex changes


With Apex gunner gets only two new attack skills:

Remote Trigger has two parts. First tap on button launches time bomb forward. Second tap on action button lights up laser which sweeps vertically in front of gunner. When laser hits the time bomb, the bomb detonates. This means gunner must be rather near of target, since it takes longer for the bomb to detonate the further gunner it. (It should be noted that Arcane Barrage has similar functionality. Gunner should not hang back on maximum distance since this means DPS loss.) This new skill has only 9 seconds cooldown, which means gunner can skip most low-damage fillers like Arc Bomb or Scattershot.

Modular Weapons System works like boost skill gunner is missing. It activates extra construct with extra guns that do extra damage when various skills are used.

Obliteration is new skill that is only available when Modular Weapons System is active. It works much like Bombardment. It also has shield-from-damage like Balder's Vengeance. The skill has same 1.5 minute cooldown as Modular Weapons System.

Racial traits
Only three of the seven races are available to gunners so far.
 * Castanic have which increases their running speed during combat for dodging magic circles, though this only lasts 30 seconds, after which there is a 5 minute cooldown, and  which gives them a higher chance to shoot a critical hit from the back.
 * High elves have which completely recovers their mana, and  which restores an amount of mana upon revival to get back into combat quickly.
 * Elins have no special racial skills for combat.

Gearing and Attributes
Gunner uses standard ranged Weapon Crystals: Spiteful, Savage, Focused and Pounding. Recommended weapon rolls are Damage vs. enraged monster; Damage vs. enraged monsters; +6.9% damage from behind and Flat 6% damage, and Cooldown reduction.

With new level 70 patch Exodor gear gunner uses gear with magic amplification: Manaforce Azart or Dark Light gear. (Crystals, rollable weapon and chest line are not available on Exodor gear level 68/69 gear or on new level 65 Exodor Scout gear.) Gunner is unique class that uses metal armor with magic amps. This makes gearing the class quite much cheaper.

Gunners can choose to use either Energetic or power etchings.

Major part of gunner damage comes from Burst Fire. Burst Fire has ramp up feature and its crit chance raises quickly while firing. Therefore it's not necessary to stack much crit since it's wasted after 100% crit chance. Recommended crit rate for gunner is to go to 180 total crit rate and build power after that. (Note: this is totally outdated level cap 65 guide).

With patch 93 new passives Gunner's Burst Fire scales with magical crit power value. Damage increase is 2.5% per 0.01 points of magic crit power.

Enhancement Points
Strengthen Offence: It's not crit factor multiplier, but crit power buff for auto-critting skills (= free extra damage)
 * Mighty Attack, always max this first
 * Burst Fire Force
 * Burst Fire Extra-Force
 * Arcane Barrage Fatal Blow

EP Damage is generally not useful.

Speed Increase:
 * Rolling Reload Chained Speed Skating

Resource Recovery:
 * Bombardment Outrage


 * Rocket Jump Reload
 * Scattershot Propulsion
 * Replenishment Propulsion
 * Replenishment Amplification
 * Arcane Barrage Reload, useful in handling large number of mobs
 * Retaliate Turning Tables, useful in PVP

Defense/Special:
 * Mighty Defense, max this
 * Mighty Phoenix, use 1 point
 * Arc Bomb Constancy
 * Lethal Lesson, usually used in PVP

Skill Advancementment

 * Burst Fire: Velocity, best for general use


 * Modular Weapons System, Integration

Card Collection
Generally first max magical crit power, then max magical amplification.

See August 2021 card builds.