Talk:Heavy Gunner/@comment-5319831-20121007214521/@comment-5007614-20121023212755

A Rank1 Tempest is equivalent to a Rank3 Heavy Gunner, in terms of damage. So a Tempest can exceed a Heavy Gunner in terms of damage.

I believe the Tempest is the "natural" progression from a Heavy Gunner when you think about the wide-area machine gun units. A regular Gunner has little HP and no defense. The Heavy Gunner gets more defense and dodge, as well as HP. His gun also hits 5-wide and 2-deep. The Tempest takes it up a notch and adds armor. "Soldiers" tend to have more weaknesses than "Tanks".

Lastly, the Basilisk is the next step, where you get a giant boost in damage. However, piercing damage really does suffer late game without reliance on other units to remove armor.

In short, these wide-area machine guns are best used against large unarmored formations, but fare poorly against single targets and armor.