The Gunner's most powerful attack is its Grenade Launcher, which it can launch with minimal delay and catch inexperienced players off guard. As with any automatic weapon, circle-strafe works best to avoid most of the incoming fire whilst returning fire. But when the Gunner does attack, it can fire between 8 and 32 bullets doing 24 to 96 damage.

The second it takes the Gunner to aim and fire gives the player a good chance to prepare and move in for the kill. But the Gunner is able to shoot for longer periods of time. The Gunner's Machinegun is similar to the Enforcer's Chaingun as it takes a moment for it to aim and fire. The Gunner's armor is of a higher grade than the Enforcer's, and equal to the Berserker's. Very agile and more athletic than the Berserker, and it is said to be as powerful as the Iron Maiden in the game's manual, but players will find the Gunner to be the more difficult enemy of the two as it can easily kill a player if they do not keep their eyes on it at all times. Upon noticing player they'll make a characteristic sound, and almost immediately start attacking. In Quake 2, a Gunner is a humanoid Strogg with a Machine Gun replacing its right forearm and a Grenade Launcher replacing its left. It takes a second for his hand to open up into the machine gun so take advantage of the brief delay. This cybernetic terror eats Mutants for breakfast before coming to work - on you.

Quake 2 machine gun