you would have the only divine mantle / hood in the game to have an asi uv if you did managed to get all the uvs you want

I became a good LD player in dragon scale armor. You know the one with no asi bonus and no DMG bonus? Yeah its also the set with 0 normal defense, and 2 3* trinkets.... and asi low on my swords.... Yeah....

Was ur guildmate playing a noob in tier 2?

Ardent doesn't seem to respond to his own thread, but I'll humor the idea. I've been down the road of trying to use an unconventional thing and making it my own (from using my PVE hybrid gear to using recon + guns when pretty much all the good gunslingers at the time recommended striker):

Swiftstriker buckler is only for PVE. While it can determine what tier you go to in PVP, your shield gets replaced by class mod.

Divine Set:
- Divine set's primary use is to be a haze bomb killer. You get immunity to different statuses, so you can just walk up to bombers and clear them out for your teammates.

Trinkets:
- You only need pentas if you're going Striker. If you're going Guard or Recon, I suggest using ASI or (if you already have crazy ASI on your weapons or from armor) Damage trinkets for your main weapon of choice. The greatest thing about this is that damage and speed trinkets are all actually useful in PVE (and make your experience more enjoyable), unlike Heart Trinkets. In Lockdown, ASI gives you mobility (useful for survival and chaining safe attacks), and Damage will let you kill in less hits. Depending on your weapon choice, playstyle, and apparent skill, you can balance which of the two you really want to focus on.

Swords:
- Acheron/Glacius/DA/FF are all solid and common choices in Lockdown. Glacius Charge is decent when you're outnumbered or solo, because if it freezes the opponent, you get another charge for free. For normal swings, Acheron with its non-status hit will do more damage than Glacius for normal attacks. DA is nice for sweeping people who are grouped together, and FF is a nice quick option (probably pretty decent for recon, too).

Guns:
- Justifier is a pretty decent set for recon if you're absolutely sure you will be using guns as your primary weapon. If you use recon with justifier, you automatically get max ASI with every gun, and since recon has no need for health trinkets, you can use two gun damage trinkets instead (this is actually my armor/trinket set of choice when playing seriously). The max ASI will give you the speed to peek a shot out and disappear, or to recover from a missed shot and still hit a melee striker quickly closing in on you.

AP/Sentenza/Valiance are all great ranged weapons and can be used to harass people at max distance if you can learn your range. Max-ranging and kiting of course is easiest to do as striker. Recon can get away with some long-range gunplay as well, but if you use recon and guns, you'll need to learn how to leadshoot, learn common striker movements so you can compete in close range with swordsmen (all of which I've had to learn myself and can give you tips on lol). Since most bomber armor has elemental def, sentenza is a decent choice for shooting down bombers.

Volt/Storm Driver will be a great support gun: Even if you don't learn any techniques for speeding up your gun play, shock removes your target's invincibility frames, meaning your teammates will love you and clear out enemies much quicker.

Firo Driver is more of a slow chip weapon. If you're peeking in shots (guard/recon), kiting, or think you're going to die, set things on fire.

lol it's sort of a given that you'll have to fight once you get inside a haze (bombers aren't usually alone anyway), but if you can get a bomber to switch to a sword, is he charging another bomb to keep up the haze wall? Nope.
> Haze calms down
> Your walled teammates can run in and help

At the very least, you won't be walled off by a VT, and it's up to you to make something out of that.

Leading shots is an issue of compensating for connection, but after you get past that, it goes down to prediction and execution. They aren't impossible, at least not in a 1v1.

Anyway, as you said in the original post, you know you have the skills to handle it, yes?
Your equipment's fine.