GunZ 2 Top Gears Guide

GunZ 2 Top Gears Guide by Thothmes

I made this guide because I hear a lot of people ask what gears they should buy and I kind off wanted to know it for myself too. So I thought a little (not too much), did some calculating and came up with this guide! Enjoy!

Shorter names for the gears:
Gear of Fortitude = HP gear
Gear of Protection = AP gear
Gear of Aggression = Crit gear
Gear of Perception = Apen gear

My opinion about the best gears per class:

Shield Trooper: 6 HP Gears

Silent Avenger: 6 Apen Gears

Gunslinger: 6 HP Gears

I will further explain why I prefer there gears in the guide.

Intro:
To understand this guide, you will need a basic understanding of the damage system in GunZ2.
Every weapon and skill has its piercing value and its damage value.
E.g. when you have a weapon that deals 100 damage and a piercing value of 25. Then this weapon will deal exactly 25HP damage and 75AP damage.

The Gears:
A gear costs 5000gold. To upgrade the gear it will cost you respectively 1200, 1800, 2400, 3200 gold to get it to lvl 2, 3, 4, 5.
There seems to be a chance that a gear breaks if you try to upgrade it from lvl 4 to 5, while the chance it upgrades is very low.
It’s most cost effective to get a full set of lvl 4 gears, If you really want to, you can still upgrade them afterward.
Apen gears: 0.8Apen per level = 24Apen maximum (this only works on ranged weapons).
This Apen value gets added to the piercing value of the weapon in use. If a person has 24Apen, the new piercing value will be 49. Then a 100 damage dealing weapon will deal 49HP damage and 51AP damage.
To know the piercing value of a weapon, you will have to test it.
HP gears: 1HP per lvl = 30HP maximum. Pretty straight forward, these gears give you flat HP (tooltip in inventory is wrong).
AP gears: 1.5AP per lvl = 45AP maximum. These gears give you flat AP (tooltip in inventory is wrong).
Crit gears: 0.6% crit per lvl = 18% crit maximum (this only works on melee weapons).
This percentage gets added to the crit value of the melee weapons in use. Crit values of melee weapons can be found in the shop/inventory, each yellow block equals 10%.

Calculations for usefulness of HP/AP gears:
Calculations have been made in the case where you are facing opponents with high penetration values.
The piercing value is called Apen here.
Eff HP = The damage amount (HP and AP) you can take before you die.
Eff HP = MIN(HP+AP;HP+HP/(Apen/(100-Apen)))
The goal of the most succesfull amount of HP gears and AP gears is to have as much total HP as possible.
AP waste = The amound a AP you have left after you died.
AP waste = HP+AP – Eff HP

Link to this spreadsheet in google docs: Spreadsheet
Calculations for usefulness of Apen gears:
Damage increase = % less damage taken to die = AP waste/(HP+AP)

Shield Trooper:
The first gear is pretty obvious:
Shield Troopers die a lot from Death Strike (up to 5% of the deaths).
To counteract this, take a HP gear as the first gear.

From there, there are 3 options:
1) Offensive (1 HP gear + 5 Apen gears)
The Shield Trooper does not have any weapons with piercing rates over 50%. (Flamethrower can have 59%, but flamethrower comes after a shield knockdown most of the time, which deals almost all AP damage).
This means you will not be able to kill someone with 100HP/100AP faster with gears then without.
But when a fight last longer and the opponent picks up AP, then the Apen gears will limit the usefulness of these AP pickups (not that much though).

2) Defensive (2 HP gears + 4 AP gears)
Most enemies you face will most likely have 6 Apen gears. Derived from my calculation, I think 2 HP gear + 4 AP gears is the best combination.
The calculations show the effective HP values when facing a certain piercing value with X HP gears and (6-X) AP gears.
2 HP gear + 4 AP gears is the combination you need so you still have maximum effective versus Gunslingers rifle (with 24% Apen).
290/250 – 1 = 0.16 => You can take 16% extra damage thanks to this gearset.

3) Defensive (6 HP gears)
This won’t help you as much in short fights, but if you manage to do a 10AP pickup it will be as good as 2 HP gears + 4 AP gears
It will also be more useful against the sniper rifle (and the gunslingers rifle if you do some AP pickups).
280/250 – 1 = 0.12 => You can take 12% extra damage thanks to this gearset.
But AP pickups will be a lot more valuable then in the previous case.

Crit gears are not very useful for Shield Trooper as his melee gets mainly used for engage (not really for damage).

Silent Avenger:
The Silent Avenger has 4 options:
1) Ranged offensive (6 Apen gears)
The most successful Silent Avengers I know make 75% of their kills with the sniper rifle. And Apen gears scale massively with the Silent avenger.
The Silent Avenger has huge piercing values, adding even more Apen, returns ridiculous values.
Sniper rifle can get 69% piercing and both SMG and katana can get around 50%.
Sniper rifle damage increase = 27.55% (against opponents with AP=HP)
A Silent Avenger with Apen Gears using a Deer Hunter can one-hit people with 100HP.

2) Headshot + fill up (X Apen gears + (6-X) other gears)
If you only want your gears to help you one-hit people with headshots and fill up the rest with crit or HP gears, then check out this table:

Check out the dark red values. For example, the Golden Predator: You can one-hit people with 100HP with 0 Apen gears, 130HP – 3 Apen gears, 150HP – 6 Apen gears (It’s possible that the game rounds up the value for 5 Apen gears, I did not test this).
The 130HP is added because that is the amount of HP I recommend to build for a Gunslinger. Also watch out with the 150HP – 180HP for Shield Troopers, Shield Troopers carrying a shield take less damage.
Once you decided how much damage you want your headshots to deal, you can fill up the other slots with HP gears or crit gears.
I’m not a fan of crit gears, because once you hit someone with you melee, you will usually either knock him down or he will parry you. If you knock him down you can kill him with SMG, if he parry’s you, the crits wont matter anyway.
I think the best choice is to fill up your last gear slots with HP gears. The more HP the better.

3) Melee offensive (6 crit gears)
As I said before, I do not like crit gears. I think the only moment this is viable is when you know that you do most of your damage with melee.

4) Defensive (6 HP gears)
You will have 130HP/100AP (= you can take 15% extra damage).

AP gears are not useful on Silent Avengers.

Gunslinger:
The Gunslinger has 2 options:
1) Offensive (6 Apen gears)
This option has a bit the same problem as Shield Troopers first option. Only the rifle has a piercing rate above 50% (54% or 56% unless you use the Desert AK which has only 49%).
The rifle is used less in combination with another weapon though, so if you are really sure that your target does not take any damage from any other source then your rifle.
Then you will have about 7-8% extra damage against an opponent with AP = HP.
Another slight advantage to Apen gears, is that you will kill people that take AP pickups faster.
These are all pretty small advantages, so I would suggest the next option:

2) Defensive (6 HP gears)
You will have 30 extra HP, you will have 130HP/100AP, gunslingers with Apen gears won’t have any damage advantage against you and AP pickups will help you a lot more then before.
You can take an extra 15% damage with this gearset.

AP gears and crit gears are not useful on Gunslinger.

Shadow Dancer:
I believe crit gears will be good on the Shadow Dancer, as she will be more melee based.

In general:
HP gears are pretty strong on itself, taking AP pickups will increase their significance a lot (certainly with Shield Trooper).
AP gears are a little bit better the HP gears but AP pickups have a little less effect. When facing high penetration values AP gears are a lot worse then HP gears.
Apen gears are good when the user get penetration values way above 50 from them. Otherwise, a melee hit or a hit from something else will counteract their usefulness.
Crit gears could be good on the Shadow Dancer. When she gets released.

Closing:
If you happen to find mistakes, things I forgot to consider, calculation mistakes or even writing errors, feel free to point them out.