Is Heavy Bowgun secretly shit? It's pretty unwieldy and about as slow as a Greatsword while the damage feels pretty underwhelming. I just thought I could make my life easier against Xeno so I don't try to blow my brains out from fighting it with a hammer.
The damage is pretty good due to constantly being able to fire. Against Xeno with a pierce build, legianna gun, you do like 60-80 per shot I think, almost double when he does the glowy shit and becomes more vulnerable, but you can more or less fire the entire time while melee have to run around to hit the front legs and shit which is a pain when he decides to turn around and charge super far. Triple range damage mods or double+guard, pierce 3 with a lot of attack, weakness exploit, 1pt crit boost, 1pt pierce(most likely from the rath legs or whatever gives it I forgot already I've been swapping HBG builds). Bring some gunpowder and put the pierce 3 craft on the radial wheel so you can refill midfight and never have to fire anything else(other than the minigun special shit, that one's good, affinity smoke before and just fire at the fucker).
It's a lot faster than every other build I've tried against Xeno. It's pretty good against some other monsters too, but not too much.
For the rest, spread seems better, but you have to basically be in melee range to shoot, it does a lot of stagger though.
I also made a cluster set for Kushala cause I was getting fucking tired of his shit. Basically a set where you just stand in one spot and mortar the fuck out of him for 2-3mins until he dies without doing much. If you don't get lucky procs though he'll eventually fly away which adds some time, but that one's nice since I keep getting kushala investigations, and they're the only ones with 4 or 5 boxes.
Any other Long Sworders? I've watched a few videos of sets but interested in other people's ideas for progression. I'm only up through Nergigante but currently running a full set of Odogaron alpha and trying to figure out what to move in to. Might skip going out tonight and just chill in Discord trying to party up with people. Actually having a lot of fun in random PUGs.
Basic entry level long sword build is your average elementless build. To get started super early, dragonking eyepatch, dober b chest, teostra b gloves, nergigante b belt, death stench legs with a handicraft charm and the arena long sword Divine Slasher. This gives you 3weakness exploit from helm+gloves, 4atk from chest+belt(5 with the free atk deco you get in the quests), 4 handicraft with charm+legs(since you won't get +3 handicraft charm for a little while). Dragonking comes from finishing the main story and death stench comes from vaal hazak+sinister cloth(from tailraider expeditions shit, random chance on any of them so make sure to keep sending them).
Later on, you'll change that stuff around a bit to say, nergigante helm a, kushala b chest, teostra a gloves, nergi b belt, nergi b boots, this gives you the nergi 3 pc set(not great but not bad) and 3 maximum might which virtually is 30%crit since you don't use stam. For this you need a weakness exploit jewel to get 3 with the gloves, and you'll definitely want elementless boost(this is a common one, and is basically a flat 10% damage increase if you're not using elemental) and a crit boost jewel for the 30% more crit dmg. You can also drop some of the handicraft once you get protective polish(rare jewel).
Mostly, start farming the sword, try to do it in a grp since solo is slow as shit, it needs arena materials so it's a bit different than other stuff. But it's basically the best sword for a while.
