Guns are OP in LD when used correctly.

^ He might have seen blueflood's lockdown videos. Basically, gunners are unhitable if they play correctly. They can skate out of danger and continue to shoot without getting close to their targets.
Still though, gunning in LD is as hard, if not harder than using anything other then a flourish.

I don't think sword users should be able to continuously shield cancel out of their first strike and then immediately use it again.
If this were changed I would be less inclined towards gun buffs in LD, aside from possible consistency fixes.

Also remove auto-aim plox

Most people can't seem to grasp the difference between something being hard and being underpowered.

As a swordsman with very good gear and at least a fair degree of skill, I know several gunners who play very competetively with me in both Lockdown and PvE levels in terms of damage and usefulness. The thing is, it takes a high degree of skill with guns to achieve that level of damage with them. Guns are not underpowered, however a person who simply shoots one enemy with a full clip, over and over, will always lose in damage against a swordsman who hits the same enemy with a full combo over and over. Gunners need to make use of alternative strategies, as well as multiple targets, to achieve the full effect.

Before you ask me to show you, I can't. I'm a miserable gunner myself. However I've seen gunners do just as much, or more damage than me, while remaining at range and mobile.

Gunning gear is not broken. Gunners are viable. People just want it to be made easier for them.

I've played with and against Blueflood and Hawtpink, and they're amazing. I'll link to a video below. Thing is, not everyone's ever going to be able to be that good, practice or no. Most people hit a wall at some point; I'm a pure gunner in PvE, been playing since before flourishes existed, and play LD every day when I'm on. I ain't gettin' any better than I am now, and I'm happy with being reasonably above-average... which means that I'm getting only slightly better stats than the average swordie. That's the problem. There's a huge difference between knowing how to use a weapon effectively and being amazing with it. Right now, guns are only really good if you're amazing with them, and most people just won't get there, even if they want to.

Beyond that, t3's the only place where gunning even approaches viability. I've tried for the past week to make a similar gunning set for tier 2, even dipping into 1* for a Cyclops Cap's gun bonus (with heart trinkets to make up for it). Even with the very best I could do bonus-wise, it takes me seven hits to drop a random guy in 3* armor and no heart trinkets with a fully leveled Shadowtech mkii. SEVEN. And this is an alchemer, so you get a shot per second. That's ~7 seconds to take out one dude, who can take you out in one combo if he touches you.

I would love to see gunning in LD have the same learning curve as bombing, which I think is done excellently: definitely tougher to do than hitting someone with a sword, but extremely useful when done correctly and open to a lot of different builds. The ones that are easiest to use are the easiest to disrupt and work around (haze), and the ones that are hardest to use can be the most rewarding (damage and shard bombs). It allows a broader metagame instead of just facing (and using!) the same weapon over and over.

So yeah, I'd love to see gunning made easier, not just to improve my game, but to make it an actual option for people who don't have godlike skills. I have high hopes for what NIck announced was coming.

he has posted a screenshot >_<

hold on....lemme get it.....here!

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/40584#comment-256515

I've seen it several times, from Chris spamming it everywhere.
I'd *almost* bet my arse that it's photoshopped.

Guns are OP in LD when used correctly.

This seems less of a 'guns are OP' and more 'good players are op'. An extremely skilled gunner may be able to devastate lesser skilled swordsmen, just as a highly skilled bomber could decimate a team, but when you compare equally skilled players a swordsman should always come out on top. Guns are underpowered by virtue of the fact that unlike bombs they don't actually fill a 'different niche' to swords; comparing swordsmen and bombers is fruitless as they can provide fundamnetally different roles both in the Clockworks and in Lockdown. Guns for all intents and purposes have nothing to actually differntiate them bar status and range, both of which are ruled out entirely by latency in Lockdown, and in the Clockworks very few if any mobs are threatening enough to justify using range over swords and let's face it; bombs do status a thousand times better. This isn't even considering that bullets are tracked server side unlike swords, which further weakens them in Lockdown.

I don't think guns explicity need buffing with all that being said, what they need is to be able to carve out a more distinguished role from swords and bombs. The Catalyzer line although unfortunately underpowered in the eyes of many is a good example of this simply because it's such a unique weapon, and to a lesser extent the Pulsar line does as well. Gives guns utility that swords and bombs don't have, make them something unique as opposed to the side arm for a dedicated swordsman/bomber.

"Mere mortals don't have 4 bars"
True

I just skimmed the video again, and even he misses most of his shots. It's hard, man!

I've seen BF lag into a flourish many times, I can confirm this. Hell, he has died by fire on occasion, mostly due to java.

Also, thank you Blueflood for pointing out that capping and defending solo isn't the gunner's strong suit. Maybe this will shed some perspective onto how a gunner should be played.