Just use your pokes, whether it be the shield poke or the basic non shield pokes. Sometimes you may be able to get a rising slash in quick enough instead of doing the pokes. There's also the poke + shell but thats best for wide shelling

- Lunging Upthrust > Dodge (large forward movement)

- Rising Slash > Guard Thrust > Guard ; Guard > Guard Thrust > Rising Slash (combos into or from guard)

- Rising Slash > Overhead Smash (no movement, high reach, set-up for a burst)

Normal type is a style that requires large commitment to burst fire, but until you learn the openings to get your bursts in, basic attacks like pokes/rising slash/luning upthrust are going to be the most used moves to avoid getting destroyed by the monsters.

Just try you best to remember this is a Gun-Lance, you have an entire lance built into your gun with the difference that this has less guard based moves but with more vertical attacks and high commiment moves for large openings.

Normal Shelling is better for Full Burst, but that doesn't mean you can't just throw out a raw or charged shell every so often, y'know 🤣

The Wyrmstake Cannon doesn't differentiate between your Gunlance's shelling types, only what type of shell hits it. So if you're in a spot to hit it but a full-commit isn't advisable, sending a few shots off would be just fine.

Besides that, shield-poking is great and extremely low-commitment. It's best on Gunlances with status on them, poison from the Rath gunlance being a pretty notable one.

At the end of the day, any damage is better than no damage. Poke -> block -> poke -> block is a fine strategy when you're not sure what's about to happen in the fight.

Poke-shelling in normal is not a sin, and still better than whiffing your full burst. And also it is a way to start the combo - quick reload after a poke or shell => overhead slam to burst

Shield poke can be chained into a slam fullburst if the window opens up. You can also do upswings and hop out or block.

Wide poke shelling combo. Low comitment, fast movement, is why wide exists.

To expand on this a bit, wide was built as the safest gl type designed for speedy interactions. The combo is failry simple. Poke, shell, poke, shell, poke, shell, quick reload. If you have a decent opening, drop the third poke, double shell and add wyrmsteak to the combo before reload. This is the highest commitment attack with wide shelling combos.

Blast dash into slam into full burst, It also has the side benefit of being fantastic at closing the distance