Eh, might as well post a Wilds Gunlance breakdown I made for some friends.
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I like it a lot, like, a whole damn lot.
The combo routing is changed significantly, but not in a bad way. Old fullburst route has one more input to do the wyrmstake, as it shares a wide sweep ender with double lateral thrust. Instead, your optimal damage route for slaplancing seems to be rising>falling>wide sweep>wyrmstake full blast>multi wyrmstake full blast>(optional wyvernfire)>(optional wyvernfire). Old fullburst is used as a middle-ground between that and regular shelling or shell>thrust>shell>thrust. You can also transition into the multi-wyrmstake combo off of any wide sweep, or just do a plain wyrmstake off of wide sweep if you don't feel like you can commit to the full funny combo. Each wyrmstake full blast also has a guard point in it while readying the wyrmstake, though these are very hard to use.
You can hold a movement direction while shelling to hop that direction while shelling, giving gunlance the ability to attack and reposition at the same time. You can even shell hop forward, so the issue of getting pushed out of combat while shell spamming is much less of a thing. I do hope the hop distance changes by shelling type though, as it's going to suck if wide lances only get 2 hops before having to reload. It's nowhere near as cool as blast dash (RIP, you will be missed), but it is more practical I suppose. Charged shelling has also been reworked, it now loads multiple shells into the same shot, letting you release them all at once for fat damage, if you so choose. Same use cases as charged shelling in older monhuns VS going for your longer combos.
Guard reload is now baked into quick reload, so that's a nice change that was kept from Rise. You also get a guard point while manual reloading. In exchange, wyvernfire no longer has a guard point (which is dumb since you're literally taking a defensive position to fire it in every single wyvernfire animation). Speaking of guard, like every other weapon with a shield, gunlance has perfect guard mechanics awfully similar to Relink's perfect guard (no stamina depletion if you time block just before a hit lands perfectly, also you take no chip), instead of building up to a stun or inflicting more stun like lance, though, perfect guards instead build up to power clashes.
I really like power clashes, really adds that extra feeling of being a frontliner to lance and gunlance. Other weapons get it too, but due to the nature of these weapons preferring guard to dodge most of the time, they'll experience it the most in multiplayer.
I do not like how much focus mode trivializes the multi wyrmstake combo route. It's supposed to be a high-risk-high-reward route all about good positining, but due to how focus mode lets you freeaim so easily, you can spam it far more easily than you should be able to. Either the turning you can do mid-move in focus needs to be nerfed, or something else needs to be changed about it to better incentivize using the full moveset. The drill move in focus mode is cool, though. Flashy and powerful.
Not sure where to put this, but wyvernfire is MASSIVE now (The length of Rey Dau from tip of tail to skull, roughly), seems to go double the distance it did before in a big line, and it can break multiple wounds on a monster if you aim it right with focus mode. A nice buff, I think.
TL;DR It's a significant improvement from both rise and world, base moveset wise, but I miss blast dash and I feel like wyvernfire should get guard points back.
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Anyone else have any interesting takes on the weapon changes? I do think I'm the most worried about focus mode being too strong overall, though. It removes any thought that goes into horizontal positioning so the only positioning that matters is relative distance to the monster, which is made irrelevant since the fuckers practically sit on top of you when fighting now. The only monster that made an effort to dodge attacks was Rey Dau with his flying wing slices.