Gunslinger Guide for Lost Ark

Gunslinger is an agile, fast paced class with an easy to pickup playstyle that leaves a lot of room for skill expression. Switching between Rifle, Pistol and a Shotgun while dodging boss patterns and capitalizing on the various ranges she can attack from is key in order to play the class effectively. Getting used to cancel timings and playing around her cast times and animations comes with practice, but rewards you well.

Her main Synergy is Weakness Exposure, granting a +10% Critical Rate debuff to the target(s) hit. Within that time, your goal is to deal as much damage as possible. Heavy hitters lie within your Rifle & Shotgun skills. Certain Rifle skills have a mechanic called Kill Confirmation which increases damage dealt to a target with less than 50% HP. Not only that, but the Peacemaker itself has this effect as well built into the engraving. Having your Pistol skills for additional movement, counter or Synergy helps hasten the pace of the class. Being able to grant an Attack Speed self buff before using your longer skills like Focused Shot can mean the difference between it fitting under burst window or not!

Peacemaker focuses on using all three weapons that creates a toolkit for just about anything. Switching between weapons grants you a 9 second buff of Attack Speed (Pistol), Critical Rate / Damage (Shotgun) or % damage with a conditional increase on top (Rifle). Juggling your buffs and maintaining your Synergy at near 100% uptime while also dodging and making sure your skills land is what makes this build feel very rewarding for performing adaqutely. Having skills to attack at any range and bringing extra stagger and weak point helps the build feel cohesive. There's a bit of a learning curve on top of the high requirement of skill points needed to really squeeze out everything the class has to offer. Between it and Time to Hunt, it is the more popular choice, though it is more cookie-cutter in terms of build variety.

Time to Hunt only uses Rifle and Pistol skills but increases Critical Rate by (up to) 45%. Being unable to use Shotgun doesn't take away from the high APM nature the class delievers across the board. That being said, you'll also find yourself having more skill points to invest in Pistol skills than Peacemaker. You'll also feel the difference of not having the stagger nor weak point that Shotgun brings to the table. The core gameplay loop remains the same, though unlike its counterpart, you have more variety of how to go about it. Time to Hunt can be built as either a Specialization or Swiftness class. Both offer a change of pace between a slower, more hard-hitting build and extremely high APM build. With more engraving choices than Peacemaker and the comparative cheapness, Time to Hunt is a comfortable and easy to pick-up version of Gunslinger, albeit not as popular.

The guide listed above is directed entirely towards PvE content. If you would like an in-depth analysis of Gunslinger in PvP content, take a look at our PvP Gunslinger guide written by Lin-0, one of the top PvP players in the game.