MHW: Iceborne – Arch Tempered Velkhana | Gunlance Normal Lvl. 7 [Full Burst] – 7'36"71

My attempt at Normal Shelling Gunlance against AT Velkhana since I couldn't find any videos.
WSB Placements found at: 0:44 4:04

The fight starts off quite badly but picks up after 1:53. It's not a great run by any means, and I am currently working on a better run.

The purpose of this run is to demonstrate two things:
1. Although Slap Lance is the most efficient and popular way to go in this fight, Full Burst is quite viable and has many openings you can exploit.
2. To demonstrate the use of the WSB loading Guard Point to place your WSB on the fly (see 4:04).

Normal Shelling is my favourite playstyle and I wanted to demonstrate its solo viabilty against AT Velkhana. A lot of folks prefer not to use Full Burst against her because of how fast her tail stabs come out, and I completely agree. To be honest, Full Burst against AT Velkhana is not a smooth experience and it is near impossible to perform a clean, flawless run this way. This is because after every Full Burst, the Gunlancer is left completely open for 1.950 seconds and thus has an extremely high chance of receiving a tail stab to the face.

To make things even more difficult, the Gunlancer is faced with the hectic game of slinger ammo management throughout the hunt. After every flinch shot, the Gunlancer must search for and replenish their slinger ammo from the ground in order to plant a full-duration WSB on Velkhana. This is essential because of how long the fight is – a half-filled WSB after a flinch shot will deplete after around two minutes into the fight and will cause a headache replacing it.

As undesirable as all these points sound, I still wanted to do the run. Call me crazy, sadistic, misguided, anything you want – I love Full Burst and decided to eat whatever tail stabs come my way and brute-force the run. In this run, I demonstrate the slinger ammo and WSB management against a fight that would easily go into the 7-10 minute range. I expected to be making huge armour skill sacrifices just to make this run possible – and to my relief – I was able to complete it in Area 1.

This build consists of Artillery 5, Guard 5, Evade Window 5, Handicraft 4 and Slinger Capacity 1. I know what you're thinking – that's a disastrous build! Why do you need both Guard and Evade Window?!

Let me defuse your hostility by establishing that the only reason for Guard 5 is to allow me to place the WSB during Velkhana's Ice Rings. Against normal Velkhana, you can easily place the WSB with Guard 1 using the loading Guard Point during her Ice Wave, which inflicts a Small Knockback. Against Arch-Tempered Velkhana, however, the Ice Wave quickly becomes Aura 2 and inflicts a Medium Knockback, so you can no longer take advantage of the Guard Point. Thus, the Ice Rings were the next best opening to place the WSB – they inflict Small Knockback with Guard 5.

In designing this hunt, I realized that in order to successfully slay Velkhana before she flies at 7:3x, you have to land the Wyrmstake Cannon on every topple; placing the WSB during a topple is a huge damage loss that will ultimately slow down the hunt. After much deliberation I decided that Guard 5 was worth the investment to allow me to capitalize on every topple with WSC, and proceeded to place one WSB halfway through the fight during Velkhana's Ice Rings. This is a huge investment for one WSB, I know, but it turned out to be better than using Slinger Capacity 5.

Artillery, Evade Window and Handicraft were included as per the standard Gunlance build, since we all know that blocking is inefficient and Full Burst eats through sharpness. Slinger Capacity 1 is included just in case I can't find a new pile of slinger ammo after a flinch shot and have to fill the WSB with 5 measly stones.

This run definitely has lots of room to improve, and you can tell my confidence is nowhere near as high as it was in my other video showcasing Schinkikami's Reworked Gunlance (Light) against AT Velkhana. That run is almost identical to this one except Schinkikami geniously implemented Guard Points after Full Burst, where the shield is visibly in front of the character. In that video you'll see that the FB Guard Point saved me from a grand total of seven tail stabs throughout the hunt and ultimately shaved one minute off the hunt. This is truly a blessing to normal Shelling Gunlancers and it's hard to imagine life without it now.

Finally, here are the mods I used:
Daily Food Skills Utility to ensure Felyne Booster is triggered
No other mods or overlays.

Thank you watching and reading. I hope you enjoyed this hunt and got to learn something about Full Burst against Velkhana!