Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Ultimate Heavy Bowgun Guide |

I made a guide for 3DS game for a more uncommonly used weapon type. This guide was made with intentions both to help players with no understanding of gunning as well as give more advanced tips for “older” players.

Contents

Guide to Heavy Bowgun

Guide to Heavy Bowgun

Introduction

Heavy Bowgun is arguably the strongest ranged weapon in 4u and around the 3rd best weapon in the game (not considering relics & matchups may vary). Limiter off along with power barrel gives HBG massive raw out of the gate with solid mobility once you get evade extender and even more movement options after you obtain Furia Sedition.

Basic Information

Check the hunter notes.

(the “special action” is siege mode)

HBG has a free spot to put in power barrel (shield doesn’t exist) and then you can either choose to take the variable zoom or not, depending on how you want to play since variable zoom removes the ability to aim via the D pad and the zoom itself is generally detrimental. I personally hate the scope attachment.
If you want affirmation the shield gives sns guard, it’s terrible.

At Rarity 6 and higher you can finally remove the limiter for a big boost in raw

Power barrel is 10% of the base raw of your gun and it’s additive. For example, 300 base raw on a gun makes power barrel give a flat 30 additional raw, then it does all other calculations, eating a might seed or getting attack up does not change the attack given by power barrel.

Limiter off changes the base 1.48 (1.5 display) raw mod on HBG to a whooping 1.7 (22%!), meaning unlike power barrel, it’s multiplicative and works with any raw boost. The raw boost of limiter off does not affect the elemental portion of elemental shots. Limiter off removes siege and expands some mag sizes.
- Siege kinda sorta doesn’t exist? Outside of specific cases of course. But you’ll be dropping the ability to siege for the raw boost of Limiter off in almost all scenarios. If you do siege, lack of ability to position can hamper your overall damage due to taking bad angles, let alone the “I’m going to die” part on 140s. It is very hard to beat the better raw mod of limiter off unless you can basically never stop siege.

Fundamentals

You may not be up in the face of the monster but you should still treat it as a turn based game. Find openings to reload and shoot. Memorize how many shots you can fit into each opening and if you can reload on flinches as well as how to move into the optimal position on each opening. It should be cut down to a flowchart if you want to be optimal and reduce hunt times.

Manage your space on the map. Open space is as much a resource as the bullets that come out of your gun. Proper map usage and positioning can keep you alive as well as drastically increase damage, especially when considering pierce angles and critical distance. Be wary of walls, ledges and slopes. Ledges can lead to an untimely demise and walls and slopes can move the hitboxes of monsters or change the distance of some moves as well as reduce your damage by messing up your pierce angles and aim speed.

Pierce is the best shot in the game in technically all situations. The sheer amount of MV pierce has compared to other shots just pulls it that far ahead. N2 is 12 mv, P2 is 36 mv, that’s basically 3 shots of normal 2 in 1 shot of Pierce 2. Every monster besides Kirin will be able to easily eat all the ticks of P2 so size will never be something to worry about.

Aim properly for the love of all that is holy.

Pierce may be the best shot in the game but to fully bring out its damage potential, angles and positioning are everything. Proper pierce angles and position is one of the differences between being an ok gunner, and being an actually good gunner. I cannot stress enough how important these two aspects are.
- Keeping SFX at max is a MASSIVE HELP when it comes to identifying how many ticks you land on the monster with pierce. I actually cannot live without it.

While Furia’s roll to reload may be the reason it’s the best gun besides its great stats, rolling too much can reduce kill times. Reloading normally still has a place in play and learning what to do with each of your openings will make you a drastically better bowgun user.

People very often misjudge pierce critical distance. Just because the screen shakes from the first tick does not mean the other 2 to 3 ticks will be in that 150% range. If you pay attention to the sound and specific screen shakes you’ll be able to tell. The 2 to 3 other ticks being in distance is extremely important.

Please do your research and look up shot zones for monsters on Kiranico or Ping’s Dex. If you are using pierce this is especially important as it lets you plan out the best path for your pierce shots and obtain the ideal “angles” I was talking about before.

If you say “pierce is for bigger monsters” I will come to your house and break down your door to stare at you with murderous intent.

Settings

Making the settings how you want can drastically change how you gun or how you perceive gunning if you are just getting into it. I suggest you fiddle around a bit to see what vibes with you. The 2 big settings however are Choosing between “Type 1” “Type 2” in the “Gunner’s Reticle” setting and the “Reticle Speed” setting.

Type 1 makes it so whatever direction your character is facing is the way your reticle aims.
Type 2 controls make it so wherever the center screen is, that’s where your reticle is going to be when you aim.

Reticle speed can come down to personal preference, monster matchups or both.

No matter what you decide to use, it’s largely your preference and how you want to play, although you could argue certain setups are superior to others, it’s mostly just what you vibe with.

“Target Cam Behavior” on page 3 is one of the last big settings in terms of impact.

Type 1 will return your aim to a default angle after retargeting. On some monsters this can hurt or it can help. Not having to spend the time to constantly adjust angles can help if the monster likes to move around the weak point and then returns to a default position (Garuga) or It can not matter at all as monsters from the gore family all have low to the ground heads.
Type 2 will keep the angle you were at without changing it upon retargeting. This can help on some monsters where their heads are locked up high and stay at that level while also requiring constant retargeting, the easiest example being Brachy as his head is relatively high off the floor or Teostra’s tail when using Normal 2 and they both move a ton so ideally type 2 would be the pick here.

As a little addition I also like to play with music off or really low and SFX all the way up. Paying attention to audio can help or enhance gameplay if you pay close enough attention to it as you can react quicker to what a monster is doing or listen to the sound of your pierce

Ammo & Breakdown

Pierce ammo (short hand P1, P2 and P3)

Pierce 1 – 10 MV per tick / 3 ticks / 30 MV total

Second best shot in the game right under p2. Critical distance on p1 is rather tiny when considering all ticks, Very specific cases it beats P2. Can use during apex to avoid hardzone damage reduction or bounces without having to use Normal or slice.

Pierce 2 – 9 MV per tick / 4 ticks / 36 total MV

The premiere shot. When you think 4u bowguns, you will think p2. Critical distance is a bit more forgiving than p1 with trajectory and you get 6 more MV in terms of total which is a huge increase over p1.

The only problem is bird wyvern fangs for combines are expensive and can only be purchased in bulk with points.

Pierce 3 – 8 MV per tick / 5 ticks / 40 MV total

(See the pattern yet?) The extra tick on p3 might not sound like a big deal but it kinda is, and not really in a good way. 4 ticks is that porridge that is just right when it comes to actually landing the ticks but 5 is just too many when it comes to not only putting them on proper zones, but landing that last tick in general. There is also 1 less mv per tick which will reduce the front loaded damage while aiming for a weak point, let alone if you miss that last tick it’s just a total loss in mv.

Other problems are that it requires a higher level of reload speed to load at max speed. Furia’s P3 mag also is terrible at a size of 3 compared to the 6 P1 and P2

Even disregarding Furia in general, this shot overall will generally give you worse damage and worse damage overtime (reload speed) compared to p1 and especially p2 unless it’s something like Dalamadur, Gog or Mohran.

Still a cut above other shots and has niche use.

Normal ammo (short hand N1, N2 and N3)

Normal 1 – 6 MV

Never ever use n1, if you use n1 you need to rethink your life choices. But then again you are already gunning, coward.

Normal 2 – 12 MV

Single shot, basic projectile. Inferior to Pierce in basically all scenarios but easier to use and still the leading normal shot. Super cheap and you can buy combines if you don’t have pierce materials.

Normal 3 – 10 MV

10 MV any additional bounces as well

Creates a child projectile that reflects off the initial point. The additional hits do not benefit from critical distance.

The lower initial MV, lack of crit dist affecting the additional projectile and almost random nature of N3 makes it inferior to N2 in almost all cases. Additionally for the cases you could use N3, pierce does the job better. For example something massive like Mohran where the child projectile will tick multiple times but still do less damage than a shot of pierce.

Pellet (no shorthand because Pierce took the “P”)

Pellet 1 – 5mv per pellet / 3 pellets
Pellet 2 – 5mv per pellet / 4 pellets
Pellet 3 – 5mv per pellet / 5 pellets

Absolutely and utterly garbage. If you get used to playing gunner normally with pierce or even n2 and then switch to pellet, you will want to blow your brains out from how shit it is. It is so absolutely garbage to the point of being unviable on some of the harder content.

It is missing that 150% damage modifier because it can’t benefit from critical distance. Crit dist for pellet is just to land more pellets on the monster. “Critical distance” for pellet also isn’t point blank or close range, but rather around the spot where pierce is so it’s not as brain dead as you might think and to “aim” it you have to shoot from the outer circle of your scope.

Pellet 3 and pellet 2 combines have the least amount of combines out of pierce and normal and they still also share the same combine materials. Meaning once you combine all your pellet 3, you are stuck with pellet 1.

It also can’t specifically target zones and is at the mercy of wherever the pellet magnets are on the monster which further hurts the damage on a weapon type where being able to hit weak points whenever is it’s greatest strength.

With the lack of crit dist and lack of ability to aim at specific parts, the damage is absolutely abysmal and you won’t be able to flinch anything.

Level 3 shots also tend to have smaller mag sizes than their level 1 and 2 counterparts. Pellet 3 also has higher recoil requirements than Pellet 1 and 2.

That 25 mv on pellet 3 isn’t so decent after accounting for all these factors.

(also Furia has a bad pellet 3 mag which can only load 3 bullets)

It’s so bad on apex to the point of unviability.

Slicing

8mv per “cut” – 3 cuts (24 total mv)

Has the cutting attributes of a blade master weapon but still uses shot hitzones.

Alright, this is the ammo besides the standard 2 (3 if you want to admit pellet exists) that can be used in niche situations.

No, Slicing is not a main ammo type to use for HBG and yes, even LBG.

Just as element suffers from limited combinations, so does slicing. This limits it from being used in any serious capacity before even mentioning the other flaws.

Slice has even more limited capacity than pierce shots and still has less mv than P1. Besides the capacity issue it’s affected by deviation as much as a normal shot is, so if you eat for temper it’s absolutely cancer to aim it. The actual damage part of slice (the cuts), is not affected by temper so you lose 5% there as well. Lastly, it has no specific shot type up skill which puts it down 10% in comparison to normal and pierce off the bat.

Slice ticks also happen in a sort of “orb” shape and monster movement in addition to this can change where the slices hit, often not to your benefit. When accounting for only food and armor specific buffs only that’s already 15% less than pierce and 20% less than normal 2. It also does not have the benefit of Cut zones over shot, just cut type that uses shot zones.

TLDR, does less damage than pierce and has limited capacity.

The one niche is the possibility for more casual players being able to use it on certain apex monsters to avoid hardzones. Pierce will basically always be better if you can aim it but the option is there.

You can also use it to cut tails as a gunner if you ever need a tail for some reason, for example during progression. It’s surprisingly good at it in fact.

Summary of Ammo

Pierce 2 sits at 36 total mv which is 3x the mv of normal 2 in 1 shot, letting it destroy n2 which sits at 12 mv per shot. This is not accounting for critical distance or mag size, but Furia Sedition existing as well as the Trajectory armor skill make these points almost non-existent. Most monsters won’t allow you to dump more than 6 bullets on an opening anyways so the doubled mag size of n2 isn’t that big a deal. This is not to mention that people also tend to underestimate the tick rate of pierce. It is not as wide as you think. The sound and looks are good to know when you are in critical distance, but tick rate is often deceiving on looks alone. You can fire p3 down a rajang and hit all 5 ticks. You can take p2 on Velocidrome and land all 4 ticks. Heck you can even shoot his head from a side angle and land 2 ticks. Piece 2 can even drop all 4 ticks on the Kirins. Crazy right?

So no, its not “only for large monsters”.

Early game Pierce Usage

A problem with pierce ammo though is early game the mag sizes are rather small, usually 3 or 4 until you get Seregios which is 6 out of the box. Critical distance can be hard to manage without trajectory, but it can still be a valuable experience to help you learn pierces default critical range.

The raw mv difference also gives that 3 to 4 shot mag size of pierce quite a bit of value. Normal 2 mags early on aren’t as large as in endgame as well. Due to pierce’s raw power, it still exceeds n2 damage output early game.

Other Shots

Most of this boils down to “Furia / the other decent guns can’t shoot these so you’ll probably never use them outside of the arena”. There’s certainly plenty of meme potential here if that’s your jazz as most shots here suffer issues such as lacking raw power and/or bad loading time and recoil. There are some niche applications here however.

Elemental Shots

I’m not going to cover element shots in any large depth. Even on something like Chamelos, pierce’s raw power with limit off can do more damage than fire shot on proper angles. You also have no chance of running out of ammo unlike with ele shot and still have the benefit of roll to reload. The raw mod on limit off also does not affect the elemental portion of ele shots.

Demon Shot

Provides +10 raw but the real kicker is it has hidden modifiers on top of this.

For guns it changes the 150% critical distance mod to 170%, which is massive. For blade master it is a 1.1 sharpness modifier, or 10% more damage which is basically almost another level of sharpness and you can give this to 3 other teammates with one bullet, pretty wild.

However, these next two tidbits are the sad parts. One flaw is it only lasts 90 seconds, still a big boost though. The other, more crippling flaw, is that most guns can’t use it. The only 2 good HBGs that can actually use it are Molten Tigrex which is the leading n2 gun (and not pierce) and Gravios Hame Cannon.

Still one of the best shots out of this list and turns you into what is essentially HH with not terrible damage.

Para and sleep shots

One of the few actually usable shots in this list. Can have some merit to its use on hbg in very specific or planned out situations. If you got para or sleep shots in an arena set it’s probably a good idea to use them somehow. Level 1 shots are terrible however as they take too long to apply status for the benefit in almost all cases.

Para’d monsters also take 10% more damage.

Cluster

It’s so bad it’s even useless in the arena, don’t say I didn’t tell you. Massive recoil, 1 or 2 shots in a mag and poor fixed damage with slow reload times.

Crag

Can be used for KO, but why when you could just shoot the monster. The fixed damage is also pretty bad. If you wanted the KO for niche cases, then Crag 3 is the way to go due to having much higher KO value.

Poison shot

Poison in general, even on Blade Master, is just pretty sad. Poison damage is lack-luster and slow to happen. At least blast can contribute towards flinch thresholds and does its damage in an instant.

If you get poison shot in an arena set and want to solo an arena quest with hbg, poison can save you some of that limited ammo since capcom doesn’t believe in combines and the lower hp pool of arena monsters as well as bad armor skills on their sets means it’s not a terrible option. Outside of the arena don’t touch it at all though unless it’s to carve bugs.

Exhaust shot

Rage overwrites exhaust and cannot be applied while raged

Bad ammo and a waste of time using. Might be able to KO when applied to the head. On exhaust as a whole and why it’s so bad, you can’t trigger challenger 2 which is basically what you are always using and besides that monsters are always enraged meaning they basically can never be properly exhausted.

Blast shot

Ok so, you take a bullet, but it does basically no damage. Instead of actually hurting things, you make it do fixed blast build up and give the mag sizes 1 or 2 shots. It’s a Blade Master weapon with blast, but without the actual blade damage part, literally just blast status build up that procs blast. On top of that the usual mag sizes are like, 1-3 shots.

Why not just shoot something like Normal or Pierce? Heck, literally anything else is better than this. Just forget this exists.

Endgame Pierce Heavy Bowgun

Furia vs Destiny’s Arm

The two endgame Pierce HBGs being Crimson Fatalis HBG and Seregios HBG. Furia (Seregios) is better than Destiny’s Arm (Crim fatty) in every single practical case. Multiplayer, Solo, Casual, Mega Gamer it doesn’t matter. Furia’s roll to reload is uber strong as it lets you maintain offensive flow when you otherwise would not be able to and turn what was downtime into uptime and in all endgame cases allow you to fire more bullets than you would be able to with a regular gun.

In Multiplayer it will allow you to deal with the more chaotic nature of monster AI when you have multiple players. Roll to reload will increase damage uptime as you will most likely need to roll more to chase or reposition on a monster.

The kicker is you get all of this for no cost!

In terms of the raw stat comparisons, Furia’s 25% afin lead over Destiny’s arm helps to pull it ahead, even lacking 20 raw (See “Critical eye” skill in skill breakdown section). Because you have nearly 400 base raw with everything considered in a proper set, Furia comes out on top damage wise! This lets Furia win by a smidge on paper even if raw usually wins on most other weapons. It wins even more after you pop a might seed.

Furia still also has 6 shots in both Pierce 1 and Pierce 2 magazines which is the same as D.arm. The P3 D.arm has is also a non factor in almost every case because it’s not p2 or p1 and it needs a tier of reload speed to load properly.

The benefit D.arm has over Furia however is that you only need 1 level of recoil down vs the 2 levels of recoil down you need for furia. D.arm also has 2 slots vs Furia’s 1 slot so it can be more forgiving on your charms and let you build the sets you need while you wait for a better charm.

Theoretically, if you have a god charm, and I mean GOD CHARM, you can add WE into your Destiny Arm set on top of challenger and still lose on paper due to the affinity difference, but pull ahead slightly if you shoot 45 zones. But as stated before pierce and WE don’t mesh well in most cases and you lose roll to reload.

The TLDR is Furia with a decent enough charm will win on paper over Destiny’s Arm while also having the massive benefit of roll to reload. The only possible use case of Destiny’s Arm is charm poverty.

The biggest point for Furia however is that it doesn’t look butt ugly and that alone makes it superior. God that muzzle break is sexy.

Other Guns

Molten Tigrex (Livid Griscannon) is the best option for N2 alongside W.Fatty HBG

I still use N2 from time to time simply to change it up once in a while or to turn off my brain and ignore angles or because Pierce can get expensive to use. It can also be more fun to use every once in a while.

It does however have some matchups where it can perform not garbage like on Crim and Black Fatalis, Garuga and the Kirins.

Gravios Gigacannon

Deserves a mention for being the best gun to siege pierce with even among relics.

Fights where I take Gigacannon are usually larger fights that let me siege or fights that don’t have anything to quickly threaten me. Do not try to use this in normal play as a general weapon. It sucks if you can’t actually siege.

Fights include

Gogmazios (also has fire shots to break down his armor), Dalamadur and Dah’ren Mohran, Basarios and Gravios to an extent. Ukanlos and Akantor to a lesser degree than the previously mentioned as well. As well as weaker content that doesn’t punish you for getting hit

Relics

Ah yes, relics. Sadly, they are mostly inferior to Furia. Even perfect relics are questionable as you still can’t fit any meaningful skills to beat out roll to reload in most scenarios as well as the already solid stats of Furia. Keep in mind, relics just like Destiny’s arm, have that affinity deficit compared to Furia, so having a bit more raw isn’t a big deal (same raw as D.arm).

Same applies to Normal shot relics and their lack of affinity compared to Livid Griscannon. Only time on paper they would win was the aforementioned Perfect fury gun in aldren range, and even then it’s not like Furia can’t run heroics or Adren as well. You can still use them if you want to flex a perfect or near perfect relic or want a different look but that’s about it.

And while Darm over Furia in multi is a terrible argument, you could possibly make a claim for a perfect relic gun which can get 2 more shots of say, p2 in the mag and the ability to drop recoil down for an extra skill. If you aren’t soloing it would be acceptable to consider it a “valid” option but not superior. Even the aforementioned lack of charms for Furia can be taken into account (but if you don’t have a charm for Furia by the time you have a perfect relic gun that’s pretty sus mate).

Skills Breakdown

This has been set up with some vague sense of priority but not really since some skills are all rather equally important and core to a set.

Evade Extender

Doubles the distance you roll.

Still the same amount of frames as the default roll.

A must have, this skill is your bread and butter and It’s a 2 for one deal as well. It allows you to spend much less time rolling into position as you now roll twice as far. For pierce specifically this becomes very important as critical distance is a tad away from the monster. With EE it’s much faster to position for pierce. It also helps to avoid attacks while staying unsheathed as well as push more openings and roll later during your “turns”.

Recoil down

Reduces recoil by 1 level per skill level

Absolutely essential to have if your gun requires it and by that I mean it’s not shooting Pierce 1 and Pierce 2 at the lowest recoil.

Won’t be used for normal shots because it has low requirements to shoot at max speed. Pierce however requires “Some” recoil to shoot Pierce 2 and Pierce 3 at max speed. Pierce 1 requires “Average” recoil to shoot at the normal rate.

Furia(Seregios gun) for example requires 1 level of recoil down to shoot P1 to work properly and 2 levels of recoil down to fire P2 effectively as it starts at high recoil.

Trajectory

The back-end time frame of critical distance is extended by 50%

Core skill for pierce.

Unless a monster is just going to stand there and die, which generally only happens in hame (lame), trajectory is a mandatory skill to have on pierce shot due to those extra ticks on the back end often being outside of range.

Another big benefit of trajectory is that it lets you position in a fewer amount of rolls or not have to position at all and lets you maintain your current spot. This can result in another massive increase in damage over time as 2 or 3 extra shots in that 150% critical distance range per opening will drastically reduce kill times.

And no, it’s not “traj is a crutch for bad gunners, Just always be in critical distance”. You can go beat the TAs with no traj to prove me wrong if you want.

Please don’t use trajectory on normal shots. The single hit projectile and very generous range of N2 makes it unnecessary and you already lack enough damage as is when using N2.

Trajectory also does not magically allow you to cross map, never cross map. You should still be standing around the back end of where crit dist is about to end without trajectory.

If you are in progression, you cannot get this skill till after Gogmazios.

Challenger 2

A staple for any basic set, the best damage skill in the game*. Provides attack up XL (25 raw) as well as 20 affinity while the monster is enraged for only 15 skill points. Might not be appropriate for certain matchups. Challenger 1 only gives 10 raw and 10 affinity. When in a lone comparison to Pierce up, it can beat it (important information for progression).

It will basically never trigger on both Zino and Stygian however.

(Shot type) up

Another must have skill. Gives you 10% more damage when using Normal up or Pierce up which is going to be your next big damage boost next to challenger. Pellet up gives 20% vs the 10% but even that still doesn’t save it.

During progression and charm poverty the “must have” status becomes iffy due to the raw power of challenger 2.

Fleet feet

A compound skill of peak performance (Attack up L/ 20 raw at 100% health) and EE.

On the rare matchups where WE can make a difference like rajang (basically just rajang), using fleet over challenger 2 can help you fit WE into your set. Once you get access to Prudence 5 relic armor or Soral parts through caravan, it becomes rather easy to get as well as efficient skill wise. (It also can make nice looking sets over challenger variants due to relic armor if that’s your cup of tea)

Fleet also beats challenger 2 in matchups where Challenger uptime is hampered such as zinogre and Stygian.

Do note that if you get hit once or twice outside those specific matchups like zinogres, challenger 2 will beat out fleet by quite a bit.

If you are suffering from bad charms, it is much easier to fit Fleet compared to Challenger 2.

Note: Fleet does not stack with Challenger 2 but the EE part still works.

Attack Up

Gives 10/15/20/25 raw for levels S/ M / L / XL respectively. (Can look at it as 1 point = 1 raw)

Generally not something I would go for right off the bat, but it’s a good filler skill when you use Fleet. It also is quite decent early on as the shot type up skills do not start winning over attack up till around high rank

Weakness exploit (WE)

Increases a hitzone by 5 if you hit a 45 and up hitzone (no that does not mean 5% more damage)

Alright so this is a toughie. WE might be the second best damage skill in the game* next to challenger*, but the way pierce fans out means it can shoot out of WE zones. It’s generally not worth it to get WE with pierce since about half of your damage will come from the ticks that don’t land on 45 and up zones (Matchups may vary).

Diminishing returns on higher hit zones such as Zinogre head or Deviljho chest as well as apex hard zones are also something to consider over simply just stacking attack with Fleet or using challenger as you cannot fit WE on the premier challenger Furia set.

If you have pinpoint aim there can be an argument to be made for bringing WE on more than just Jang.

Ruthlessness

A compound skill of WE and crit eye 2 (15 afin) and is generally impossible to get on pierce sets with the skills you want unless you have a god charm and/or a perfect relic gun lying around and planned a very niche set. Ruth is basically required on normal 2 sets however due to the efficiency of some parts such as Kaiser chest and lack of needing traj.

Critical eye

The threshold for affinity to start beating out raw is 400 base true raw. Furia falls just short of that with the standard Challenger 2 set, Talon and charm with attack food at 397 raw. With Might seed, crit eye will come out on top slightly.

However, the problem is you can’t fit crit eye on a challenger set with Destiny or Furia. Challenger also already provides you with 25 raw and 20 affinity for only 15 points which is absurd value. Not to mention you need to take fleet feet to be able to fit crit eye which sacks 5 raw compared to challenger. Might seed also doesn’t last that long. Unless you decided you were going to start speedrunning say, normal G rank zinogre, I don’t see you using this.

To summarize, just on the cusp of being usable normally, the amount of skills you can fit limits this theoretical use. Practical in maybe a case by case basis for Normal G rank? Wouldn’t recommend it.

Fury (Adrenaline 2 + Guts)

One of your only hopes if you for some reason don’t want to use Furia, is to roll a relic gun with fury on it that is near perfect. So good luck with that mate. But a 30% boost I think is enough to outpace Furia’s raw stats and special mechanic in multi. The guts portion allows ease of getting into adren range safely as well as freeing up a food slot for temper or sharpshooter since you no longer need moxie. In 140 GQs this becomes a questionable strategy solo.

If you don’t maintain adren Furia will still outpace and this is still ignoring the fact that furia can also take it.

Additional Information

These are just some bits of information that aren’t big enough for their own category or fit anywhere else that I thought would be useful.

Temper, shot type up, HH raw boost songs and the HBG raw modifier all do not contribute towards reaching the 400 true raw threshold for equal levels of crit eye to beat attack up. But this information won’t matter unless you are doing some kind of niche run on a monster.

The Wystone setup you want to take is Force and Drive every time. Deapex/Defrenzy is based on a portion of your damage and both of these wystones increase damage dealt by a solid amount, Force (20%) more so than Drive (10% flat for gunners) so quicker deapex than other wystones. Wystones also still work on frenzied monsters. They even multiply together to give you a damage boost bigger than Adrenaline 2 for free.

Hardzones on Apex monsters have a massive 80% damage reduction when you hit them with drive. If your bullet bounces it does a fixed 1 damage to the monster (and to you if a bullet deflects, have fun with fleet!). Try to avoid hard zones even with drive if possible.

Temper is a 5% boost for all shots (raw portion only if you are about to ask about ele shot) and increases deviation by a level. Take this food skill for Pierce. Despite what some might think, it’s a sizable boost even with the deviation and can lead to an extra point or 2 of damage each tick which is massive (Meat & Dairy meal).

Sharpshooter is a 10% boost for Normal shot that stacks on top of the regular shot type up. Take for normal shot (Meat & Dairy meal).

Moxie is a very nice food skill to have as a gunner if you are doing 140 Guild quests and don’t think you can avoid carting or don’t want to risk dying to multiplayer jank. (Bread & Drink meal)

HBG has enough pierce ammo to solo any quest. Even 140 double monster quests, provided you have the proper setup and decent aim.

Progression & New Gunners

There’s a myth that goes around where people say “gunning is impossible to do early on” “everything is so expensive” and that’s all a load of baloney. In fact I would say it is still one of the strongest weapons in progression.

N2 is easier to use in progression and dirt cheap to buy as well as having the ability to buy the materials to make it for more ammo while hunting. N2 is also not as weak in progression compared to Pierce although it still pales in comparison if you can properly use Pierce early on. If you ever need zenny you can just farm a monster and sell the materials after the hunt. The only issue you will run into is lacking combines for other items like mega potions early on or max potions later, since all your carts will likely be stuck producing latch berries and bone husks.

Do keep in mind that to make gunning effective you need to bring the materials to combine for more ammo in the middle of the hunt. It’s a good idea to get used to that as you will only be doing it more and more the further you get in the game.

The only full set I will suggest is low rank lagombi armor. If you want an armor set besides that use the information in the skill description area above here and then use an armor set searcher which will be explained after the section below here.

Start caravan
Bone shooter with N2s (normal 2)
(Use from 1 star to 3 star quests)
Upgrade from bone to Tetsu HBG
Use P1s and then switch to N2s if you run out of p1s mid hunt

Start multiplying latch berries at the wycoon for pierce 1 combines.

You can avoid using them as combines early on and just use n2 when you run out of p1 so you can start building up a supply. Getting a jump on multiplying also lets you level up your carts so don’t forget.

At caravan 4 star you can finally swap out starter armor (or something else I guess) for lagombi armor for Evade Extender (which is a must for hbg).

If you decide to go the normal shot only route you could possibly drop EE and farm Velocidrome armor early and get some attack up but you will probably suffer without EE.

Stick with Shirabeo, next upgrade is caravan 6 star or if you decide to do hall, HR4 is tetsu next upgrade.

You can make nerscylla hbg which I personally did when that became available. It has Inate some recoil which lets you fire p2 without recoil down as well as having access to p1 lets you cut out normal shot usage without having to make a recoil down set.

Najarala as well as Rathian if you decide to go the n2 route. Najarala can take you all the way through till you get to seregios if you decide to pick it up.

As soon as you get to HR4 or Caravan 9 star you have access to Seregios.

If you plan on doing all of caravan first instead of cara>hall>cara, you can use monoblos and nerscylla as filler or keep using the easy to upgrade Tetsu/Najarala guns.

In hub you can do the “Super sonic Seregios” event quest at HR4 and in caravan 9 you have access to “Dance of a Thousand blades” and “An omen in the Skies”.

This in turn lets you finally make his gun and win progression! With 8/4/X on craft and 6/6/X (p3 doesn’t matter) pierce mags on the first upgrade while other guns all have terrible mag sizes for that point. Before the first upgrade you can just stick with the 8 shots of p1 and stick with recoil down 1 as p1 is cheap and easy to maintain. Roll to reload makes Furia amazing to use.

It’s even better than the early G rank guns you can make. If you don’t have enough pierce mats stockpiled yet it still shoots normal decently (or even slice but don’t tell anyone I said that) if you were to run out of pierce. Only downside is you need to make a proper recoil down 2 set for p2. But as previously stated, don’t end up rolling too much and turn one of Furia’s greatest strengths into a weakness.

Something alternative you can do is, you can do caravan till you unlock all the essentials such as wycoon as well as decorations. You can then rough it out in hall till you get to HR4 and then do the seregios event quest, which only requires you to be HR4 and up, essentially letting you rush to Seregios hbg (and win progression). The only non seregios material you need is Fucium ore which you can get on the same map as the quest, so no waiting is required as soon as you hit High rank.

Since it starts at rare 6 you can also limit remove it as soon as you make it and you will really start feeling that power.

Don’t forget to finish up caravan for wystones though.

Choosing this option lets you cut out a decent chunk of early progression.

From here on you can just stick to Seregios HBG if you desire as the load to reload and solid stats beats out practically all options. Even in G rank, the early HBGs you can make still have smaller pierce mags than Seregios and lack roll to reload. Even if they do have a bit more stat wise for now, you’ll still most likely prefer Seregios.

The only time I suggest you to not use Seregios as a choice is against Gogmazios as his oil armor will stop shots and cannot be broken without fire. I highly suggest Gravios HBG with fire shots to break a part of the armor and then siege pierce on the ledges. Additionally, I also highly suggest heroics or Adrenaline 2 (they don’t stack) as you might not have the raw power to solo it and not run out of ammo yet in progression.

Set Suggestions

All assume Furia. If not Furia just remove the amount of recoil as desired.

The Ideal set most of the time in endgame with Furia barring a few matchups. For zinos swap out Challenger with Fleet feet and add extra skill as desired/possible

If perhaps, your charms aren’t up to snuff yet. You can use one of these options.

1st – Challenger 2 requires only a 3 slot talisman if you have absolutely no relevant skills.
2nd – Pierce up + Challenger 1 if you have at least a 3 slot with 1 or more points in a relevant skill. Better than Option 1.
3rd – Fleet feet + Pierce up beats out both options by a smidgen if you can maintain that Atk up large. It’s slightly harder to get than these 2 but still rather easy. It’s also easier to fit another extra skill when using fleet like we or attack up. If you can add an extra skill it destroys option 1 and 2.

I highly suggest you use an armor set searcher when making sets.

Due to the way talisman work, any specific set someone makes or you see somewhere else most likely will not work for you. Set searchers will take into account your charms and give the best possible results.

Using one is relatively easy as well. Just make sure:

You have inputted your valid charms
Have the correct settings – Blademaster / Gunner, relic armor allowed (when you finally have it), correct weapon slots, proper caravan and hall level
Check the boxes for the skills you want
Hit the search button at the bottom

And that’s it! Both searchers automatically sort by max defense as well so no need to worry there either. The skill breakdown section is a good place to start for deciding what skills to use if you don’t know what to get.

Also I personally have approximately 6 different HBG sets for certain situations (Although this can be cut down to probably 2 sets minimum). I highly suggest you build sets based on matchup but that comes once you get to the meat of 4u which are the Guild Quests.

Online version with no download required. Also is better than Athena’s when looking for extra skills to add because the extra skill function actually works. On top of this it searches for sets much faster than Athena’s.

The classic Athena’s ASS has a few more functions over the web version, most notably the ability to preview what sets look like when all put together if you right click. Extra skill function sucks compared to the online version. Can also brute force theoretical sets with theoretical talisman and salivate at what you can’t have.

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Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Ultimate Heavy Bowgun Guide