Gunnery Water Method

Introduction
We've all seen the loop method being used in Gunnery, but the holes on the sides of the board were put there for a reason: to be used in the puzzle. It is true that dumping pieces off the board slow down the puzzle, but not significantly enough once you become accustomed to this method. If you doubt that this method works for advanced gunners, the author of this guide has achieved and maintained ultimate status on multiple characters by using this technique. Note: this method has nothing to do with the water bucket piece what-so-ever. Out of ignorance, I started calling this technique the "water method" and the name stuck. The following link leads to a video to demonstrate this method in action.

Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BBRxXl2snvo

Arrow Placement
Using this method is quite simple. It involves two main arrows, a loading arrow and a dumping arrow. Placement of any other arrows comes naturally as they are needed to fill other cannons.

1. As soon as a powder ball comes out, use the arrows to guide it towards the closest cannon. Make an arrow face towards the cannon to load it, and immediately after, switch the arrow to face the water. Do this for all other pieces. If there are two or three pieces in order, then keep the arrow facing the cannon until all the correct pieces have been loaded. The images below depict the loading arrow and the dumping arrow.



2. Filling the other three cannons is done the same way. Find the closest pieces, and guide them towards the cannon.

Get a Good Mouse
Gunnery is half gunner and half mouse. In other words, the skill of the gunner will greatly affect what the duty report says, but without a good mouse, the report may suffer. A good mouse clicks easily, but not too easily, and is comfortable to hold.

Practice
Once you get good and the pieces start moving at quicker speeds, you can't be slow when loading pieces. On an alt, try switching the arrows really fast between 'load' and 'dump' to improve your reflexes.

Look Ahead
While you are loading a cannon, it is the perfect time to look for pieces to begin the next cannon. If you are sure that a cannon is loaded before the pieces go in, then you can start placing arrows for the next cannon. For example, say you have a powder in a cannon, and a wad and a cannon ball are also going in but have not yet done so. If there are no possible risks such as pieces bumping into the wad and cannon ball, then go ahead and start on the next cannon.

Pieces In Order
As the puzzle progresses, try finding pieces that have attached themselves to a piece that would come after them. Examples are a powder with a wad, a wad with a cannon ball, or even a powder with a wad with a cannon ball. If you happen to see them, guide these chains to a cannon, even if it means interrupting the process of filling another cannon. Sometimes you see a chain, but it will be going the wrong direction and it would waste too much time to reroute it. Let's say there is a wad followed by a powder heading straight towards a cannon. Let the pieces go past the cannon, then use an arrow to make the pieces go the other way and then load them. The pieces will then be in the order of powder then wad. The following images are an example of reversing the direction of pieces.