Updated Practical Magic Gunner Build Guide!!!

i have remodeled the magic gun guide once again with your given evaluation and advice on making it work with 1s equipments and meeting the minimum standards, how does it look? and are there any tips or info you would recommend to be added or if there is any changes necessary to the guide to keep its relevant for all magic gunners from present to the future onwards?

 

As a full-time magic gunner wannabe, here are everything I can gather based on my own experience, along with a few others that I found:

- Bowgun MD build is itself not really a practical build in the first place. It feels more like a meme build or a fun build. It has a lot of demerits and problems compared to regular one-way, monotonous builds, but since it's not like those build, and it can at least still deal somewhat decent damage if built correctly, Bowgun MD can act like a new, different breath for this everybody-go-str-get-some-bow-2hs-halberd-and-pew-pew-slash-slash-for-lots-of-damage game.

- There's little need to worry about proration if you can use the correct skill cycle. In parties, though, you're gonna need to consider who your teammates are. At the very least you can still use the proration advantage.

- Problem with stat distribution.
Bowgun itself technically has the lowest average base stability of all weapons, and second lowest stability growth rate from stats (most weapons has 0.1%/stat point that is split to 1 or 2 stats, bowgun only have 0.05%/stat point and is put solely into STR) which only staff has similar rate, and only that of Knuckle is lower than those 2, thus STR will be required if you want your damage to be slightly more stable. Moreover, STR gives crit dmg, which is an important stat for physical damage.
On the other hand, not sure what you may think but bowgun's weaponATK is actually not really THAT high (lower than 1hs), so in reality Conversion alone doesn't give enough MATK even with +S weapon, so if you want high MATK you're gonna need some INT.
In short: without STR, the damage will be super unstable and you'll lose a good chunk of crit dmg; without INT, your MATK will be laughable. For better comparison, it's 750 MATK vs 12% stability +49% base crit dmg. Basically after maxing DEX, you're left with 3 choice: either being a half-hearted mage-with-a-gun, a gunner that sacrifices arrow's benefits for MD's ones, or a something-in-the-middle with a little bit of both.

- Gearing and gear stats.
As a magic gunner, you may think that getting both %ATK and %MATK is a must. That's not entirely correct. %ATK, yes, but %MATK, not really. Unlike staff & MD main users, and like most other physical weapons, bowgun only gain 3 MATK per INT, and MATK gained from Conversion is considered as flat MATK (which is added after applying %MATK), thus %MATK doesn't not have as much impact. Instead, magic pierce could be considered the priority for magic damage. Not that magic gunner's magic damage is high, though, so whatever. Good thing is that negative %MATK would also has less impact, but that still doesn't mean you can just go for super negative %MATK gears.
And since you're still a gunner, high crit rate is a must. You don't want your carefully charged CF gets a magnificent "MISS" after all.
Since bowgun always goes with high DEX, which leads to high CSPD, gears with CSPD or %CSPD is almost always welcome. But there's also the factor of playstyle to consider, so those kinds of gears are not really a must if your playstyle doesn't require them.
Element MD is ok if you want to make use of ESpell, but high refinement for them is not recommended. Unless you're planning to use Resonance buff, there's no need to refine the sub MD. But considering that Resonance buff is random, and how much stat those buffs can give, I'd say just up to like +C or even +E is enough.

- There's also the problem of skill points distribution. There are a lot of viable skills for bowgun MD but limited amount of skill points. You have to consider your playstyle first, see if it could be "good enough", before spending points. I'd say compared to 1hs MD, bowgun MD has a wider range of skill choices.

- For the physical side, CF is mandatory. Snipe is a decent sub damage skill since it has decently high multiplier and innate bonus stability for bowgun, although it has crit rate penalty and stupidly low armor break chance. Satellite Arrow is currently being overrated due to its 100% pp, but it requires 25 skill points, and is hard to aim unless either the target is super slow and/or doesn't move much, or you just need it to hit at least once. Currently I'm trying to see if Bullseye can be a rip-off inferior substitute or not, now that there's the Regislet that can technically doubles the skill's multiplier.
Soul Hunter is also one option, but since bow & bowgun has a -5 multiplier penalty on 1st hit, the skill has a total of 15 mult without any stacks, so... Idk if it's a good dps skill for this build or not. Fortunately, only the 1st hit multiplier, the MP recovery, and the fear chance are affected by the skill's level, so if you're not planning to use it for damage, leaving it at lv1 is enough to be a panic button that has acceptable damage.
If you think your stability is a problem, there's Paralysis Shot that gives you a stability buff of up to 10% for 10s (20s with Regislet).

- For the magic side, there are Finale, Burst, and Imperial Ray, each has their own pros and cons.
Finale has super high multiplier and the first hit has 3000 constant, which can partly compensate for bowgun MD's low MATK. Having sub MD also grants the bonus of quadrupling the 1st hit's range (0.5m radius to 2m radius), making it easier to land that hit on the targets. The downside is, the skills forces you to be locked in place for 5 seconds, which removes bowgun's mobility advantage, leaving you completely vulnerable to everything including the interruptions that makes your Finale gone wasted. Using heavy armor with auto guard may probably be able to mitigate this to an extent, but it's up to you to decide if it's worth exchanging 6 additional evasion stack and 3 times faster evasion recharge from light armor for the not-sure-if-it's-good guard from heavy armor (which I doubt can protect you from super lethal attacks, especially fractional ones).
Burst solves the mobility issue as it has faster cast as long as you have enough stacks and CSPD, in exchange for less damage and constant. But in order to spam it you'll need a hell lot of CSPD, and for that High Cycle will be required. But with High Cycle, your AMPR will be reduced significantly, thus you're gonna need AMPR food & buffs and stuff to compensate for that. Though, there's also the option of using both, along with Impact>Smite spam and ESpell in order to reduce the need of high CSPD.
And then there's Imperial Ray. While the above two are gonna need magic crit in order to compensate for bowgun's low MATK (which will require Spell Burst with its why-so-low 25% cr conversion rate, and - for Burst - the weaken debuff with advantage element), Imperial Ray can just auto crit as long as the dumb cat is still alive. But IR has a major con of having a ridiculous cast time of 4s. The blast's multiplier is said to be 20, which is just a tiny little bit lower than Burst, but the fact that it has super slow cast time AND requires an additional magic skill to activate the blast makes its viability kinda questionable. And moreover, the blast is unaffected by skill tag, so no smite bonus.

- As mentioned, Spellburst is slightly recommended for magic crit. But due to the cr conversion rate is only 25%, you'll either need a super high amount of regular cr, or just a bit more cr than usual but with weaken debuff and advantage element. Without those, you may barely feel much difference despite the cdmg conversion rate being 75% (not of total cdmg, but of (total cdmg - 100%)), which can effectively double the magic damage dealt. Since Finale is forever locked as Neutral, and Imperial Ray can just crit by having the dumb cat, weaken debuff + element mostly benefit Burst and against non-Neutral enemies.

- Taking GSW for hyperspeed is not bad, but that is only if you know what you're doing, and you also need good reflex along with knowing the patterns. Also, using GSW destroys the viability of using heavy armor for auto guard, since heavy armor alone is only barely enough to mitigate a portion of received damage and some debuffs and interruption, so GSW will just triple the remaining damage and kill you anyway.

- Enchanted Spell is a good choice for cheap and safe stacking Burst stacks, and can also be used for proration or activate Imperial Blast. But if you want it for damage then better max it so the activated spells can apply their highest level values. Though, the fact that activated spells don't get any MD bonuses reduced the passive's value. But at least they can still get the MD element & Regislet bonuses. Also, there's no need to raise Resonance to lv10 for guaranteed activation. I have lv5 Resonance and lv10 ESpell, and when Resonance buff is active my spell activates 100% of the time as long as the cooldown is off and the previously activated spell is completed.

- The lower branch of Magic Blade skill tree barely has much benefit for Bowgun MD. ESword can't be used, and all the good stuff of EBurst is only available for 1hs.
Ether Flare is like a cheaper & no burn Kairiki, but it requires the sub MD to have the advantage element, which render the skill useless against Neutral or multi-element targets.
Element Slash is used for the weaken debuff, but similar to Ether Flare, you need advantage element for higher-to-guaranteed debuff, and moreover the debuff mostly benefits against single-element non-neutral targets for magic crit, otherwise it's just a much worse Armor Break debuff. Worse, the stupid skill can MISS, GRAZE, or be EVADED, despite BEING A MAGIC SKILL. But it uses magic crit to crit.
Without all the good stuff that is only available for 1hs, EBurst serves almost zero purpose for bowgun MD, other than for omni-elemental Imperial Blast. Its element is always the advantage element, which is good for Imperial Ray for the element bonus, but that's about it. It can't even inflict weaken since bowgun can't grant it any stacks so bowgun MD can't even use it to replace the already-not-good Element Slash.

- For MP recovery, bowgun has the advantage of uninterruptable ranged decoy, thus bowgun MD can easily recover MP through it, unlike other sub MD. Bowgun MD can also use Resonance for quick MP recovery, though there's that 30s buff duration when you can't use it again. MP Charge Maximizer is optional.

- Like many other people, you can buy both a Minstrel Book for Ad Lib, and a Reflex stargem. But since bowgun can use other Minstrel skills, you can instead spend 7 skill points for the 3 Minstrel skills. They're also decent 1mp combo openers. Pick whichever you think is more cost-effective.
Also, since MD can use both Minstrel & Dancer skills, you can also spend 1 skill point for Elegant Poise. That skill can serve as a quick & cheap panic button, though it won't fully save you in every scenario.

- With all the above, bowgun MD will have these skills to consider: CF, Snipe, Decoy, Finale, Burst, Maximizer, GSW, ESpell, Element Slash, Sat Arrow, Soul Hunter, Spellburst, High Cycle. You can see that many of them are expensive as ****, with how many skill points we can possibly get currently, I'd say you can only take half of those at most. Not to mention there are other utility skills that I haven't listed. That being said, it all depends on your style to pick which skills you want.

- Unlike 1hs MD who can spam ESword for stacks and then EBurst for MATK buff, bowgun MD has no other way to gain more MATK, so you're gonna suffer with lower MATK than other mage-like or hybrid-like builds. That, plus the stupidly low stability, makes your damage feel like a meme. Without magic pierce or magic crit, you'd feel like the magic is just another form of proration to increase the physical damage instead of being actual damage. The only thing that might probably comfort you a little is that, thanks to the low stability, your damage would feel the same with or without grazes.

- There's also a few problems with leveling in case there are some idiots who wants to play this build as their very first and main character (me, for example).
Skills. Before tier 4, there are barely any good skill cycles. Back when I first played, story quest wasn't long enough to bring me to lv150, so all I have for damage back then was only Impact Snipe, and nothing more. Other magic skills are just doesn't feel worth their cast time, and Magic Blade actives are next to useless. Before tier 4 I was more like a gunner who uses MD instead of arrow, rather than an actual magic gunner. Also, without Decoy or Maximizer, my MP recovery through AMPR isn't any better than other weapons. Since Magic Blade tier 4 was released when my level has capped, Idk which level is required to unlock them, but I guess it's not before lv150.
So basically: At tier 1, just stick with Bullseye and Javelin or Arrow and MP charge or something; tier 2, Arrow Rain and maybe Lance or Blast (or just stick with Javelin or Arrow); tier 3, Snipe & Impact, for magic you can use Storm but don't expect it to be good.
And gears. There aren't many good cheap gears for a fresh magic gunner. You either have to buy something cheap or craft and stat the stuff yourself, or search the coryn website for hours looking for what you can consider "suitable". If your gear is low-budget, it's not gonna be effective. Even me who now have near-mid-budget gears is still overpowered by many others. And since this is "magic gunner", your gears should also be hybrid, or else you're just gonna be more of a new-style gunner (or mage) rather than a "magic gunner". Well, some NPC gears can be decent, but good luck finding and refining those, since some of them have abysmal drop rate, and refining by yourself can be very frustrating since it costs quite a fortune, and you also need a blacksmith char.

Considering all of the above, I feel somewhat impressed that I'm still sticking with it as my main, and even trying to find out the best way to build it.
Edit: btw did I miss anything else?

 

Ah, wrong button.
I was supposed to be editing the previous comment, but somehow it resulted in another reply. And now idk how to remove this.
Btw isn't this kind of thread supposed to be in the Class Discussion sector?

 

Good points, i will revamp the magic gunner build guide to be dex str based, and magic will simply just be viewed as an alternate damage method against bosses where physical damage will do 1 damage, in which magic can be used bypass those barriers, and the primary damage of the magic gunner will be physical, essentially the entire build would be based on being a powerful gunner that knows how to use magic when a situation such as a high physical resist boss is encountered, and have high critical damage from str, thus making magic gunner a viable class, magic will just be a means to sufficiently deal with bosses that have the 1 damage taken barrier when there is no mage around, also as for burst the guide highlights that impacting until 4 burst stacks is enough to instant cast bursts, and the equipments and xtals mentioned in the guide are necessary to hit even bosses that have high crit resist, so yeah magic gunner is designed for those who already have decent spina, not for beginners, but for intermediate to advanced players that have the budget to make it work, also the gears will be entirely physical because the primary damage will be physical, magic will be treated as a side damage for emergencies such as the 1 physical damage taken bosses, i will also do some changes to the skill point distributions to eliminate unnecessary skills and include skills that will be useful

 

I have revamped the entire magic gunner guide, feel free to take a look at it and please give feedback on how it is like, i have decided that magic gunner would work best as primarily a physical attacker capable of dealing full physical CF damage, and the magic will be used for emergencies such as bosses that make crossfire useless in which magic is the only way to defeat such bosses when there is no mage available, or for fun as a gunner that knows how to use magic to break up monotony of standard build that only uses a few skills which can get boring, and 6th Anniv BG which are coming up may have a decently high weapon atk to allow for more adequate matk to deal more meaningful magic damage with Conversion

 

magic gunners would be like magic gun cad users in the anime mahouka koukou no rettousei, they are less powerful than traditional magic wielders in raw magic power but they make up by being super fast and way more practical than traditional magic wielders in combat, and not to mention with dex-str build, crossfire will retain the full physical power to do its usual millions of damage!!!. https://mahouka-koukou-no-rettousei.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

 

Good news: Aso has planned to make bowgun be able to use Enchant Sword soon (next "balance" update, i think, gonna be called "Enchant Shot" perhaps). There'll be a chance for bowgun md build to gain the EBurst buff for extra MATK with it, allowing it to have both higher ATK and MATK than ohs md build, albeit with much lower stability.
Downside is, rip skill point spending.

 

I don't think asobimo mention this on their livestream, and where the hell did you hear this?

 

ak

akakuro translation

 

I don't mean to revive this thread but I have something I wanna say.

Well, turns out the new adjustments is a disappointment. Enchant "Shot" animation is even slower than 2hs Enchant Sword, and the range is only 4m; bowgun's Enchant Burst only uses half MATK in addition to full ATK for base damage, and no MATK up buff. There goes my 3.7k atk 4.1k matk build dream.

On the plus side, Enchanted Burst is now almost twice as strong, since each of its stack will leave one "mark" on the target, which will detonate upon hitting with a magic skill, dealing the same damage as Eburst's stack damage, although this is unaffected by combo tag. 1hs still benefits more, though, since they can get the MATK up buff. But anyway, at least Enchant Sword and Enchanted Burst can now be somewhat of a viable dps choice for bowgun.

Still, for the build to be more "effective" at both sides, triple-stat build may be inevitable. Unless one still goes for the "pure archer with some magic proration" path.

 

reading this i get the feels like ya'll think being a magic gunner is optional.... which it's not... besides dex the only stat that adds some form of atk is int, so if you cap dex 255 where will you put 240 points to get atk? it's gonna have to be int.... sure you can get any other stat..... but if what you wanted was atk... you have to get int.... and then convert the int to physical atk with magic arrow and consecutively reload during twin storm to add power? also consecutively reload after twin storm, to reduce power loss.

and while twin storm does more damage during full mp that doesn't mean you'll get more damage from it by spending the bullets instead of your mp, so what it really basically does is makes decoy shot redundant and allows you to throw a big spell and ampr back up just using twin storm while still doing more damage than 1 gun and decoy since magic arrow will add to both guns, but not to decoy. and you don't need a sub md to benefit from conversion, so just take the flat matk and added int and throw a finale, then get back to twin storm?

i mean you get 10 buttons, use them lol, you can add atleast 1 other smite skill before getting to finale, effectively using something like satellite arrow or cross fire before getting to finale. something like reflex-prayer(save)oh wow 10%matk i wonder what that's good for)-flash blast(consecutive)i mean you went for reflex might as well) - war cry(consecutive)more atk whut?)-now idk meikyou shisui(consecutive) extra crit why not)- then cross fire? satellite arrow?with smite ofcourse(doesn't matter if satellite hits or not, we're trying to get 0 penalty on finale and casually adding something quick on also 0 penalty before that)- now impact(consecutive)-then finale with smite- then finish with eh anything with consecutive, berserk or something doesn't matter.

i mean obviously this combo is long, but it will probably do more damage than spending 900 bullets at max mp... and for the sake of making the thing shorter instead of casting finale you can use magic: crash and get armor break with a bowgun(wew) crash is verry effective btw. it also costs less mp, so instead of using smite tags you can rush through the combo with swift and minimalizing mp cost with consecutive and keep your mp closer to full then once you hit armor break you can refill and spam twin storm at max mp, this gives more mobility and whatnot.

so all in all.... i don't play shot tree, cause i don't have the passion for it.... but all i know is being a magic gunner isn't something faint of heart to do, it's literally what the game designed bowguns to do and saying stuff like magic gunner is not as good as idk whatever just can't be true, because you can't even get to satellite arrow without going over magic arrow. and there's no way the devs added bowgun to conversion just to troll people with the fact that it would suck.... the main problem i'm seeing is that ya'll trying to separate the two aspects that make the bowgun a whole. i see people that just wanna shoot lead and then there's people that just wanna do magic while holding a gun.... you're both wrong, and from that perspective obviously just shooting lead is gonna do more damage than using magic, but that is by design, what would do better if i did this 1 thing separately yes, shoot lead hurts more with guns and shooting magic hurts more with a staff..... but you're also doing less damage cause you're not using a bow. you're literally using a bowgun, when you're playing bow..... low stability, no atk from str... why aren't you playing bow? or will this thread try to convince me that bowgun/arrow can outdps a bow/arrow when both use str/dex? because there's literally no way.... the difference might not be as insanely impactful, but there's just no way for the bowgun to win here... idc who you are... it's not possible.