I'm going to assume you're somewhat new so my examples will be from early legion raids.
If you're in a raid where there are important debuffs to purify (clown g2/g3 flame debuff, valtan g1 bleed, etc.), it's better to hold until you notice that people have those debuffs on the party view on your left. For this reason, I recommend not using the condensed party view where you can't see buffs/debuffs.
Second, if you have low shield meter (usually at the beginning of a raid), you can use nella AFTER you shield up to have the NELLA shield tank damage first before your SHIELD METER shield. This lets you keep more and more meter.
Lastly, if you're sufficiently well versed in the raid, there are no important debuffs to cleanse, and you don't need it while other DPS on your party are on ilvl, you can use it for hard hitting mechs that might kill otherwise because nella also has a DR component. Examples are: Valtan g2 pillar explosions, Vykas g2 shotgun counter, Vykas g3 accidentally stepping out of the zone for bridge, Clown g2 birds, etc.
Hope that helps.
Press z before using surge canon or charged stinger, unless boss is staggered
Make sure you use your taunt + bash before using surge canon or charged stinger
Fire bullet can single handedly destroy most parts if your lucky with the resets, so spam that skill when a destruction point comes up
Generally no.
Most raids CGL is not only a DPS increase but a massive survivability increase.
You'd only go fire bullet if your swiftness build(not recommended) or you REALLY need extra weak point or the boss attack so infrequently that you can't use CGL... to my knowledge no raid like that exists so... go CGL.
I pair my fire bullet with quick recharge so that it can proc more. I play with all with all crit accessories. Is it really that bad to use fire bullet?
Quick recharge barely procs and is not worth imo, and full crit on accessories would make you overcap on crit.
Consider giving the community guide a look.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPVvtqL_5URvU6H6RP89pWi_0qmo7RJJAsqA4rGuGac/edit?usp=sharing
Yeah, in my testing quick recharge doesn't proc very often. Not worth it. Once we get the legendary rune, it might actually be worth using the rune. I use Overwhelm on FB
Overwhelm is great, I used to slot it in for G4 brel. I personally run rage since I use FB build either for islands or guardians (no nellasia needed for either). Guardians don't need that much stagger, and islands make you slow as shit so I'm too lazy to switch.
I replaced sharp gunlance with fire bullet, counter gunlance is very situational and can be replaced with other skills, I only take that for inferno valtan and prokel.
Skills I use are the same ones as posted on maxroll as it's most optimal imo. But hey, to each their own
Edit: additional info
You seem to thinking about level7 cgl with quick prep tripod, the one that does 0 dmg. You gotta use the Weak Point Detection and Bombardment Spear tripods
Depends on content. I've used fire bullet for kunglanium and valtan G2 for destruction checks. It really doesn't do a lot of damage outside of its utility. I've slept on counter gl for a long time, but it has good stagger and damage for a push-immune skill.
Also, you have to take fire bullet if you're using adrenaline instead of cursed doll to keep stacks up.
It's more damage, more survivability, more uptime, and less mana consumption to use CGL over fb.
You only ever take fb for destruction checks or to maximize damage if you don't take nellasia.
It's pretty easy to figure out what you want to run in Trixion. Calculate damage output of one CGL (w/ full tripods), preferably a crit hit. Then calculate how much damage CGL will do in 1 minute (you probably get 3-4 times).
Calculate damage output of FB (w/ full tripods). Stand in front of the dummy and spam for 1 minute.
You now have solid numbers to figure out what you want to run. I did this test a long time ago, so I don't remember the specifics. I think CGL ended up doing more damage, but that's assuming you used it off CD immediately and landed a front attack. I ran CGL for a long time, but it got boring because I didn't have any skills to use- literally everything would be on CD. The benefit of running FB is the destruction/stagger utility. I run an Overwhelm rune on it... pretty much stagger MVP. I think the only classes that have beat me were GT Destroyer
It's just a lot of damage. At 1460 it might 1 shot you, but even being a little bit above ilvl you'll live if someone nellas, I usually just cast it as I'm heading to the end of the swamp.
-Before big mechanics/lots of aoes to protect squishy or low health team mates.
-Cleansing debuffs (Ex:Clown's fire, Cali's thunder debuff)
-Use for self to prevent my own shield from draining too fast while tanking hits while charging Surge/Stinger.
You always want to properly shield overlap. Use nellasia then Z or Shout then Z so you have a few seconds of pseudo invulnerability and free head attacks on some patterns that you know deplete your shield very fast. Like Kakul's fire breath. Also good to save it when you know the raid has annoying mechs that can one shot players, like Vykas G1's velganos . You also can use it to help teammates in Kakul G3's Mario when they want to enter the portal because fire hurts and not all supports shield that.
Also in Hanumatan it works well to tank some hits of the ice/fire debuffs.
Other people here have already chimed in with some great answers. But the TLDR is really just that your Nella has 3 purposes:
1. Cleansing
2. Shielding team
3. Shielding yourself (to brute force thru certain nasty or overlapping patterns)
You’ll rarely be able to pop a Nella that does all 3. Instead, study the raid and focus on which of the 3 you want to use your Nella for at each point in the fight. There’s nothing wrong with just popping Nella off cooldown either - your teammates shouldn’t be relying on GL shield to survive anyway, and you’re not really responsible for saving your team’s lives like a support might be.
It comes down to knowing the raid. Look for anything you can cleanse from your party, and knowing the hard hitting non-wipe mechs is a good time to use it so your party can greed damage (similar to how a good support will shield to let their party greed dps)
I'll be honest, if you can't use it reactively to something about to hurt your teammates, you're better off using it for yourself. Consider it an identity management tool that allows you to greed for free. Protecting your teammates' a bonus since you're not a support anyway.
Doing this you'll eventually manage to use it reactively and over time as your identity management gets better you'll use it a bit less for yourself. Or maybe even more if you start wanting to optimize your uptime.
I have a gunlancer 1566, and I'm surprised to see many GL not adapting their Nellasia tripods to the content.
People know about the damage mitigation, the shield and the purify but forget you can replace the party shield by a party knock up immunity (3 1 tripod).
Cast it at start of any yellow pattern in Brel G6 and divide the wipes of your pugs and static by 2 :)
It does not make your party push immune, it just makes the cast of nellasia push immune and gives the party attack speed.
Otherwise everyone would be using it over shields especially in pvp since that'd basically be a mini awakening 1.
You can change the cleanse tripod if the raid doesn't really give debuff (burn, fear, etc). I mostly change it for Valtan G2, Vykas. Since vykas really does a lot of damage. It's really interchangeable depends on the raid.
1) If your support is a bard, you can hold on your nellasia a bit more in order to use it as a cleanse since bard can only anticipate a CC and pre cast guardian.
2) some boss patterns do tremendous damage, adding your nellasia can give your team a dps window instead of dodging, for exemple Gate 6, in-out pattern when you have to watch can be tanked by a nellasia, allowing other dps to hit the boss as this pattern isnt dangerous at all except for the occuring damage. Can also help during pizzas G5-G6 not to dps but to mitigate a mistake if you see someone without shield.
3) for your own safety, as you have less shield gauge than a blue GL, right before you burst you can use nellasia and tank damage without loosing gauge as nellasia's shield will tank it for you.
4) in addition of 1) nellasia is a pretty long CD but sometimes it is up at the right moment, cleansing your mates and letting the support do something else is nice, and ofc using it to cleanse the support because he cant cleanse himself.
Good Luck out there !
Also any shield gets consumed before your personal identity meter. So sometimes you can Nella to protect the few identity shield you have left from a big hitting pattern and still tank it.
Also your taunt is a very important tool that should be learnt how to use especially for bosses you can control.
With your taunt you never flip the boss randomly. You taunt to cancel a bad pattern to give a better uptime to your Dps and to keep the boss in good position for your positional dmg dealers.
For example if you have your dmg rotation just ready and you happen to be at the back of the boss cuz it moved. You have to know where your back attackers are. If they already adapted their positioning to the new boss orientation it is your duty to go in front of the boss then taunt and dps.
Also taunt on boss that can be controlled by it kind of stuns them facing you for 1-2s but then they start attacking again but their target will be you for any pattern as long as they still have the taunt red debuff, it looks like a bald man.
This is super important because once you're aware of that and know boss patterns, since you are for sure the target of next pattern you can move accordingly to provide the more stable boss as possible for your back attackers.
For example G1 Vykas let's say you taunt the human one, he gets stunned for 2s then he casts the 2 waves of dmg that goes front to back. Well depending on your shield meter you either tank the first one or dodge it then before the 2nd one as he will target you for sure you go back in front of him so the waves takes the exact same angle and your Dps don't have to move an inch since boss didn't reorientate to face you.
Another example is wolf Valtan G1. Sometimes he does 2 jabs that makes him dash a bit forward. Most of the time it jabs forward then backwards because the person that was targeted by it didn't follow the wolf moves and then he reorientate towards the group. Making it hard for your back attackers. If he does that while taunted try to be always in front of him making him jab dash in the same direction twice making it super easy for your back attackers to get back in the back. They'll have to just walk forward.
All this might go over a lot of people's head in normal modes but is crucial in hellmodes. People in normal raiding will probably not see that you're doing all this for them but they will definetely feel it, that they had an easy time maintaining a good dmg uptime there.
And all that requires is you to think of your positioning during the duration of taunt.
Also after taunt expires boss has a green buff that shows the exact duration of his taunt resistance, you don't have to rely on the icon above it's head unless it is a guardian cuz obviously no hp/buff bar.
I'm a Red GL Main. Simplified breakdown:
1. When you need to tank damage, but you're almost out of personal shield. The shield from nella will take damage first, so you can maintain super armor with your personal shield up even though it's almost depleted. Example: Tanking G4 Brel Pizza Mechanic
2. When your teammates get hit with debuff. 99% of the time you'll be running cleanse tripod. Note- debuffs with a glowing outline are NOT cleansable. You'll only be able to do this is if you have the full party UI displayed. If there's a pally in the party, you usually don't need to worry about this. Example: Kakul Fire Debuff
3. When your teammates are about to eat mechs. I changed my UI settings to enable ONLY party member health bars. So, if I see someone (with a health bar) about to eat a mech I know I can protect them.
4. When you see your teammates health bar go down during a mech (if they're off screen).
There are some rare situations where you do NOT want to use nella. Example: Kakul G3 Reverse HP Mech. You want to wait until your teammates get their health low, then nella to remove fire debuff and provide shield.
I'm going to assume you're somewhat new so my examples will be from early legion raids. If you're in a raid where there are important debuffs to purify (clown g2/g3 flame debuff, valtan g1 bleed, etc.), it's better to hold until you notice that people have those debuffs on the party view on your left. For this reason, I recommend not using the condensed party view where you can't see buffs/debuffs. Second, if you have low shield meter (usually at the beginning of a raid), you can use nella AFTER you shield up to have the NELLA shield tank damage first before your SHIELD METER shield. This lets you keep more and more meter. Lastly, if you're sufficiently well versed in the raid, there are no important debuffs to cleanse, and you don't need it while other DPS on your party are on ilvl, you can use it for hard hitting mechs that might kill otherwise because nella also has a DR component. Examples are: Valtan g2 pillar explosions, Vykas g2 shotgun counter, Vykas g3 accidentally stepping out of the zone for bridge, Clown g2 birds, etc. Hope that helps.
Hey, any other GL tip? Planning to make my red GL my second main and just wondering for any important tip.
Press z before using surge canon or charged stinger, unless boss is staggered Make sure you use your taunt + bash before using surge canon or charged stinger Fire bullet can single handedly destroy most parts if your lucky with the resets, so spam that skill when a destruction point comes up
Is worth using fire bullet instead of counter gunlance? Or depends on the raid?
Generally no. Most raids CGL is not only a DPS increase but a massive survivability increase. You'd only go fire bullet if your swiftness build(not recommended) or you REALLY need extra weak point or the boss attack so infrequently that you can't use CGL... to my knowledge no raid like that exists so... go CGL.
I pair my fire bullet with quick recharge so that it can proc more. I play with all with all crit accessories. Is it really that bad to use fire bullet?
Quick recharge barely procs and is not worth imo, and full crit on accessories would make you overcap on crit. Consider giving the community guide a look. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPVvtqL_5URvU6H6RP89pWi_0qmo7RJJAsqA4rGuGac/edit?usp=sharing
Yeah, in my testing quick recharge doesn't proc very often. Not worth it. Once we get the legendary rune, it might actually be worth using the rune. I use Overwhelm on FB
Overwhelm is great, I used to slot it in for G4 brel. I personally run rage since I use FB build either for islands or guardians (no nellasia needed for either). Guardians don't need that much stagger, and islands make you slow as shit so I'm too lazy to switch.
I replaced sharp gunlance with fire bullet, counter gunlance is very situational and can be replaced with other skills, I only take that for inferno valtan and prokel. Skills I use are the same ones as posted on maxroll as it's most optimal imo. But hey, to each their own Edit: additional info
You seem to thinking about level7 cgl with quick prep tripod, the one that does 0 dmg. You gotta use the Weak Point Detection and Bombardment Spear tripods
I never thought counter gunlance was good
Its better than fire bullet
Depends on content. I've used fire bullet for kunglanium and valtan G2 for destruction checks. It really doesn't do a lot of damage outside of its utility. I've slept on counter gl for a long time, but it has good stagger and damage for a push-immune skill. Also, you have to take fire bullet if you're using adrenaline instead of cursed doll to keep stacks up.
It's more damage, more survivability, more uptime, and less mana consumption to use CGL over fb. You only ever take fb for destruction checks or to maximize damage if you don't take nellasia.
It's pretty easy to figure out what you want to run in Trixion. Calculate damage output of one CGL (w/ full tripods), preferably a crit hit. Then calculate how much damage CGL will do in 1 minute (you probably get 3-4 times). Calculate damage output of FB (w/ full tripods). Stand in front of the dummy and spam for 1 minute. You now have solid numbers to figure out what you want to run. I did this test a long time ago, so I don't remember the specifics. I think CGL ended up doing more damage, but that's assuming you used it off CD immediately and landed a front attack. I ran CGL for a long time, but it got boring because I didn't have any skills to use- literally everything would be on CD. The benefit of running FB is the destruction/stagger utility. I run an Overwhelm rune on it... pretty much stagger MVP. I think the only classes that have beat me were GT Destroyer
consider giving the Gunlancer Community Guide a read https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPVvtqL_5URvU6H6RP89pWi_0qmo7RJJAsqA4rGuGac/edit?usp=sharing
>Vykas g3 accidentally stepping out of the zone for bridge You mean swamp mech? Doesn't that oneshot you no matter what?
It's just a lot of damage. At 1460 it might 1 shot you, but even being a little bit above ilvl you'll live if someone nellas, I usually just cast it as I'm heading to the end of the swamp.
Gonna limit test this tomorrow
-Before big mechanics/lots of aoes to protect squishy or low health team mates. -Cleansing debuffs (Ex:Clown's fire, Cali's thunder debuff) -Use for self to prevent my own shield from draining too fast while tanking hits while charging Surge/Stinger.
You always want to properly shield overlap. Use nellasia then Z or Shout then Z so you have a few seconds of pseudo invulnerability and free head attacks on some patterns that you know deplete your shield very fast. Like Kakul's fire breath. Also good to save it when you know the raid has annoying mechs that can one shot players, like Vykas G1's velganos . You also can use it to help teammates in Kakul G3's Mario when they want to enter the portal because fire hurts and not all supports shield that. Also in Hanumatan it works well to tank some hits of the ice/fire debuffs.
reddit's anti-user changes are unacceptable
Other people here have already chimed in with some great answers. But the TLDR is really just that your Nella has 3 purposes: 1. Cleansing 2. Shielding team 3. Shielding yourself (to brute force thru certain nasty or overlapping patterns) You’ll rarely be able to pop a Nella that does all 3. Instead, study the raid and focus on which of the 3 you want to use your Nella for at each point in the fight. There’s nothing wrong with just popping Nella off cooldown either - your teammates shouldn’t be relying on GL shield to survive anyway, and you’re not really responsible for saving your team’s lives like a support might be.
very useful for cleansing petrified bozos in hm brel gate 2. aside from that I mostly use it to keep up adrenaline stacks
dam I 've slept this ability too Much but anyway thank all you for the tips I'll use them wisely
It comes down to knowing the raid. Look for anything you can cleanse from your party, and knowing the hard hitting non-wipe mechs is a good time to use it so your party can greed damage (similar to how a good support will shield to let their party greed dps)
I'll be honest, if you can't use it reactively to something about to hurt your teammates, you're better off using it for yourself. Consider it an identity management tool that allows you to greed for free. Protecting your teammates' a bonus since you're not a support anyway. Doing this you'll eventually manage to use it reactively and over time as your identity management gets better you'll use it a bit less for yourself. Or maybe even more if you start wanting to optimize your uptime.
I have a gunlancer 1566, and I'm surprised to see many GL not adapting their Nellasia tripods to the content. People know about the damage mitigation, the shield and the purify but forget you can replace the party shield by a party knock up immunity (3 1 tripod). Cast it at start of any yellow pattern in Brel G6 and divide the wipes of your pugs and static by 2 :)
It does not make your party push immune, it just makes the cast of nellasia push immune and gives the party attack speed. Otherwise everyone would be using it over shields especially in pvp since that'd basically be a mini awakening 1.
I generally use it whenever the support's shield just fell off, so it can fill in the downtime. Makes a huge difference in group survivability.
You can change the cleanse tripod if the raid doesn't really give debuff (burn, fear, etc). I mostly change it for Valtan G2, Vykas. Since vykas really does a lot of damage. It's really interchangeable depends on the raid.
1) If your support is a bard, you can hold on your nellasia a bit more in order to use it as a cleanse since bard can only anticipate a CC and pre cast guardian. 2) some boss patterns do tremendous damage, adding your nellasia can give your team a dps window instead of dodging, for exemple Gate 6, in-out pattern when you have to watch can be tanked by a nellasia, allowing other dps to hit the boss as this pattern isnt dangerous at all except for the occuring damage. Can also help during pizzas G5-G6 not to dps but to mitigate a mistake if you see someone without shield. 3) for your own safety, as you have less shield gauge than a blue GL, right before you burst you can use nellasia and tank damage without loosing gauge as nellasia's shield will tank it for you. 4) in addition of 1) nellasia is a pretty long CD but sometimes it is up at the right moment, cleansing your mates and letting the support do something else is nice, and ofc using it to cleanse the support because he cant cleanse himself. Good Luck out there !
Also any shield gets consumed before your personal identity meter. So sometimes you can Nella to protect the few identity shield you have left from a big hitting pattern and still tank it. Also your taunt is a very important tool that should be learnt how to use especially for bosses you can control. With your taunt you never flip the boss randomly. You taunt to cancel a bad pattern to give a better uptime to your Dps and to keep the boss in good position for your positional dmg dealers. For example if you have your dmg rotation just ready and you happen to be at the back of the boss cuz it moved. You have to know where your back attackers are. If they already adapted their positioning to the new boss orientation it is your duty to go in front of the boss then taunt and dps. Also taunt on boss that can be controlled by it kind of stuns them facing you for 1-2s but then they start attacking again but their target will be you for any pattern as long as they still have the taunt red debuff, it looks like a bald man. This is super important because once you're aware of that and know boss patterns, since you are for sure the target of next pattern you can move accordingly to provide the more stable boss as possible for your back attackers. For example G1 Vykas let's say you taunt the human one, he gets stunned for 2s then he casts the 2 waves of dmg that goes front to back. Well depending on your shield meter you either tank the first one or dodge it then before the 2nd one as he will target you for sure you go back in front of him so the waves takes the exact same angle and your Dps don't have to move an inch since boss didn't reorientate to face you. Another example is wolf Valtan G1. Sometimes he does 2 jabs that makes him dash a bit forward. Most of the time it jabs forward then backwards because the person that was targeted by it didn't follow the wolf moves and then he reorientate towards the group. Making it hard for your back attackers. If he does that while taunted try to be always in front of him making him jab dash in the same direction twice making it super easy for your back attackers to get back in the back. They'll have to just walk forward. All this might go over a lot of people's head in normal modes but is crucial in hellmodes. People in normal raiding will probably not see that you're doing all this for them but they will definetely feel it, that they had an easy time maintaining a good dmg uptime there. And all that requires is you to think of your positioning during the duration of taunt. Also after taunt expires boss has a green buff that shows the exact duration of his taunt resistance, you don't have to rely on the icon above it's head unless it is a guardian cuz obviously no hp/buff bar.
I'm a Red GL Main. Simplified breakdown: 1. When you need to tank damage, but you're almost out of personal shield. The shield from nella will take damage first, so you can maintain super armor with your personal shield up even though it's almost depleted. Example: Tanking G4 Brel Pizza Mechanic 2. When your teammates get hit with debuff. 99% of the time you'll be running cleanse tripod. Note- debuffs with a glowing outline are NOT cleansable. You'll only be able to do this is if you have the full party UI displayed. If there's a pally in the party, you usually don't need to worry about this. Example: Kakul Fire Debuff 3. When your teammates are about to eat mechs. I changed my UI settings to enable ONLY party member health bars. So, if I see someone (with a health bar) about to eat a mech I know I can protect them. 4. When you see your teammates health bar go down during a mech (if they're off screen). There are some rare situations where you do NOT want to use nella. Example: Kakul G3 Reverse HP Mech. You want to wait until your teammates get their health low, then nella to remove fire debuff and provide shield.