I feel like ranting a bit.
Having notched up more than 300 hours almost exclusively as a bowgunner, I've got a few complains.
1) Armor ratings for bowgunner suck. Defence boosting meals, armortalon and armor charm will max out a gunners armor at around 300. Which at the most means one and a half hits from 6 star monsters. Where is the logic in this? It is not as if bowgunners have huge damage output, hence need to be glass cannons. Bowgunners fight further away? Huh? Most ammo is most effective 3 rolls away from the beastie, which is hardly far enough to not get hit.
2) Damage. The multiplier for most ammo types are 10% to 15% of total bowgun attack, subject to a distance variable. That is like a max of 30 points of damage per shot (or 22 for G-rank).

And a bowgunner can carry limited quantities of ammo, which kinda makes it a must to combine some in the field. And why do elemental shots do fixed damage?
3) Ammo restrictions. So, a bowgunner is a support class eh Capcom? So WHY BLOODY WHY

are we limited to carrying miniscule amounts of status inflicting ammo? A sns user has more armor, deals more damage and can para all thru the 45 minutes!
I tire of MHtri. I dislike running around like a bloody headless chicken during 6 star quests and diablo hunts cause one hit will probably kill me. I tire of having to constantly have max life just so that i won't faint. I tire of feeling like a passenger during these missions cause the rest seem to be doing the hard work.
I really like bowguns, but they could have been soo much better. I won't mind not being able to do much damage (capcom limits the amount of meaty juicy shots that one can carry anyways - come on 9 crag shots per level??? Lame

) if i could carry like 99 para shots
And having spent so much time bowgunning, I am not keen at all to start using other weapons.