Analysis of new weapons in Update 1.1.7

As is my custom whenever new weapons are released, I like to spreadsheet the heck out of them to see whether they are worth farming and to know exactly what perks I am looking for. This time around, I wanted to make sure to obtain and play with the weapons before I wrote this article since just providing my opinions based on their stats is sometimes inaccurate or fails to provide a complete picture of how the weapon stacks up. Since I do ramble a bit (as is also my custom), I'll just jump right into my thoughts on the new weapons that were released in 1.1.7.

Velvet Revolution SMG (Epic)

Drop Location: Pedro's Shop (500 normal Event Coins)

Damage: 132

Fire Rate: 550

Accuracy: 9

Range: 28

Magazine Capacity: 23

Static Perks: 5% Damage, 5% Fire Rate, 10% Reload Speed, 7% Magazine Capacity

This Epic SMG is currently available for 500 of the plain event coins that are awarded during weekly events and carries all static perks so thankfully we don't have to watch the shops for a decent roll. If you've been playing the game for at least a few months, you probably should have enough event coins to grab it, but this is more of a collector's item. Don't get me wrong, I actually found it to be a fun little SMG to play with, but the magazine is on the low end (base of 23), so its ability to mow through packs of enemies quickly is reduced because of this. It very much feels on par with Red Alert or Green Envy to me and the math puts it in that ballpark, too. As with any SMG, I wouldn't take it to PvP because even though there's decent accuracy for an SMG, that mag size will not make it easy. By all means grab it if you have plenty of coins to spare, but don't shed any tears if your inventory space is full.

The Forefather MG (Epic)

Drop Location: Pedro's Shop (600 Event Specific Currency)

Damage: 140.8

Fire Rate: 750

Accuracy: 15

Range: 41

Magazine Capacity: 40

Static Perks: 7% Damage, 11% Crit

This MG caused quite a stir when it was released because of that massive fire rate and high accuracy. I initially thought that it might replace my Xingyun as far as choosing a weapon that had some serious boss melting capabilities. While it certainly does have high DPS, it has rather low damage per magazine, so this very much becomes more of a single target melter. That being said, it needs a 10 fire rate + 10 elite damage roll to really rival the great Xingyuns that have shown up at Willow's, so if you're on the lookout for something that will truly offer something great, those are the two non-static perks you should be waiting for. Not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but one of the things I love Xingyun for is speedruns of Blade Dancer. If you've seen the video footage of my 5:17 run that so far has stood the test of time on speedrun.com, you'll see that my team takes out Riksh in about 4 seconds. I was able to put a full clip of Xingyun in his back and he died right about the time my magazine was empty. Doing a little math, this was somewhere in the neighborhood of 83,000 total damage, which represents about half of his health according to the best estimates I have. My teammates were responsible for chewing through the other half of his health with their Revenants. Now if I were to use the Forefather in this scenario, I would only do about 69,000 total damage before needing to reload. Based on the best estimates of reload time that I have, it would then be another 1.15 seconds before I could start doing damage with Forefather again. Because of Xingyun's relatively slower fire rate, it empties the magazine 0.74 seconds after Forefather would. So if you compare the two, Xingyun is still the better choice for this task even though its DPS is lower because I am able to contribute to dealing damage to Riksh for almost the exact amount of time I need to and dish out more total damage in that time frame whereas Forefather would still be in reload while my teammates are left to pick up my slack. This just reinforces my point that great MGs need to have balanced DPM and DPS. Forefather ends up giving me similar vibes to the AT Vosa, which certainly melts enemies like Hellstorms and Red Hammers faster than anything out there, but its overall usefulness is so very limited because of how little overall damage you can do with each magazine. The one other statistic that I always point to when talking about machine guns is the damage at max ammo capacity. The Heretic and Naga II Neo are the current chart toppers in this stat because of how much ammo they can actually hold in reserve. These guns are fantastic when you pair them with Midnite's Invictus legs because you can use them for so many enemies in the arena and rarely run out of ammo. Because the Forefather costs a specific event currency that only drops in this event, I did not want to waste precious coins just to figure out what its damage at max ammo capacity is, so that's the only question left to answer. It is also the only one of the new guns that I have not yet played with. Even if it were to have a similar stat to Heretic in this regard, that wouldn't really fix the problem it has related to DPM that I've previously stated. Ultimately, this should be a really fun MG if it shows up with the right roll, but it seems to be more of a collectible than a potential meta changer. I don't know that I'd be itching to take it to PvP though because of the small mag and lower dmg per hit when Cerberus is already so amazing in PvP.

Steam Dragoon Pistol (Legendary)

Drop Location: Hive Mind

Damage: 246.4

Fire Rate: 150

Accuracy: 15

Range: 18

Magazine Capacity: 8

Static Perks: 8% Fire Rate, 9% Magazine Capacity, 3% Accuracy, 14% Damage

I not only love playing pistols in this game. I really, really love this pistol. Its design is super cool, and it's a very similar style of pistol (damage wise) to Black Dragon, which has been my favorite pistol ever since it was introduced. Get ready for the math. So most people think that you only ever use pistols for Hakim missions or if you completely run out of ammo. If you don't have 6 points in combat to grab the 50% damage boost to pistols, then this does hold pretty true, but when you bump their damage up, a few of them can do some crazy things. The key damage threshold that this type of pistol needs to cross is to hit a dread to the body for at least 440 damage. This is enough damage to kill a dread in a single shot, which makes their time to kill zero. This is where pistols can behave exactly like a ranged shotgun or a mini sniper. This is not only where pistols get really fun, but they also get really powerful. Before this Steam Dragoon was released, you could only accomplish these one shot kills without aiming down sight on one pistol (AT Kub II). If you've ever played with this pistol, you know how horrible it is because of the extremely slow fire rate, so the only real viable option for one shotting stuff with a pistol without going for the extra 15% iron sight damage at 12 points in Combat has been the Kestrei SJ-87. But even that pistol needed a combined 14% damage boost from its damage and iron sight perks to pull these one shots off without having extra pistol damage on gloves. The special thing about this pistol is that you can double up on the damage perk since the 14% static one at the end is legendary rarity. If you manage to get at least 6% extra damage in the non-static perks, then you can pull off these one shots with simply the gunslinger skill and the 9% damage buff without even needing to aim down sight, which is a big plus for your mobility. Even more special is that a god roll that has 10 damage and 5 iron sight damage can still pull off these one shots when you aim down sight if you prefer to use the elite damage buff, which I typically use a lot in Silver. Needless to say, I was very excited to be the first person to find this pistol that posted in the SGL official discord and I even got a decent roll although it didn't have any extra damage. I'm more excited to farm for a god roll of this pistol than for an improved Tesla. As for the handling of the pistol, it is every bit as smooth as Black Dragon. It is very accurate and has a comfortable firing cadence to boot. The only complaint I have about it is the shorter range (18m vs 22m with Black Dragon). I have hit plenty of insanely long Black Dragon shots that make you feel unstoppable with that pistol, and I did notice the range difference when I was playing around with the Dragoon. That being said, that's a pretty minor difference, especially in PvE. I just unlocked the fire rate perk on mine to see how the new speed is, and I haven't even tried using the pistol with a gunslinger build yet, but I know based on how it already handles that this will easily be my favorite pistol for PvE. As for PvP, it will certainly do very, very well and be quite competitive with Black Dragon, but because it is still a 3 headshot kill even in the best case scenario, Black Dragon ends up killing faster most of the time because of the fire rate advantage. I cannot wait to use this thing in PvP once I unlock it though. I'm already going to call it that this pistol is one of if not the best pistol in the game and you need to get in Hive to get yourself one. The god roll pistol would be 10% damage, 15% crit, 10% elite damage, and 5% iron sight, but even just having 6% damage and 10% critical damage is very, very good.

Ironclad AR (Legendary)

Drop Location: Arena Gold

Damage: 167.2

Fire Rate: 380

Accuracy: 15

Range: 44

Magazine Capacity: 20

Static Perks: 7% Damage, 17% Crit, 8% Fire Rate, 9% Elite Damage

It's about time that we had a legendary AR with high damage and a slightly slower fire rate. This gun is basically a legendary version of the Lambent Flame but with higher accuracy and a longer range. It's not as cool looking as the Steam Dragoon, but it's still decent looking. Now everyone is asking the question on whether this makes Faraday or Tesla irrelevant now, and I would not make such a statement. What I will say is that I think it is at least competitive with those rifles, which is the best we could have hoped for with the introduction of a new AR. A few things to note about this rifle are that the damage and fire rate static perks are epic rarity, so they cannot be doubled. The 17% critical damage perk, however, is a legendary rarity, so you can get an extra 15% crit perk on the gun if you're lucky. For PvE, the Ironclad can certainly be very good because of its high accuracy and long range coupled with its high damage. The small magazine is a slight weakness, but the slower fire rate make this not as hugely noticeable as with Faraday. It still does look like this rifle should be able to take down a data shield in Hive at the boss fight in a single clip, but I'd have to unlock mine just to be sure. I even did a duo run of Hive with another player who was using Ironclad, and we did absolutely just fine in clearing the dungeon. I only had mag and elite damage perks unlocked when I did it, and the damage output was great. Not quite on Tesla's level, but not very far off that's for sure. At least there are options for me now in Hive other than just using Tesla every single freaking time. The god roll Ironclad for PvE would have 10% elite damage, 15% crit, 10% reload, and 10% magazine capacity (or 5% iron sight damage for those that don't want to ever have bugs occur because of mag cap perk). When it comes to PvP, there are some interesting things to note when looking at the math. Because you can double up on crit, you would think that this gun would yield absolutely insane headshot numbers, but it won't really reach the level where you can kill a typical opponent in PvP (166 HP with 8 Survival build and 15% projectile resistance buff) in 4 headshots rather than the minimum of 5 that Tesla and Faraday have. However, because that damage perk is locked in at 7%, a Tesla with a high damage perk actually doesn't sit that far off from Ironclad's damage per hit. You should expect to do 13 body shot damage (same as Tesla) and as low as 34 headshot damage and as high as 36 headshot damage (with 12 point Agility build, 8% AR dmg on gloves, 9% damage buff, and 69% total crit on armor) against the type of opponent I previously mentioned. When looking at the times to kill, the math says that Faraday and Tesla are still theoretically faster at killing an opponent than Ironclad on account of their superior fire rates, but the Ironclad is really not that far off (about 0.2 seconds on bodyshots and less than 0.1 seconds on headshots and back shots). When you also consider the great accuracy and range of the Ironclad, it very much has the opportunity to be competitive in PvP with Tesla and Faraday. After testing it out in a few friendly duels with my guildmates, the accuracy of the gun at range is quite nice indeed, and that is where the gun absolutely shines. Where I noticed the gun had some issues was in close range battle with Faraday especially. A good PvP opponent will move around a lot, and having a high rate of fire helps you to land shots when they are jumping all about. Talk to any of the OG PvP players about why Skull Blaster 3000 used to be the meta in PvP, and they will back up what I'm saying. One of the interesting things that the math indicates about Ironclad is that doubling up on the crit damage perk doesn't have an enormous impact. It only boosts headshot damage by about 2 points and backshot damage by 3 points, but it already reaches a high enough threshold where it doesn't serve to decrease the number of those types of shots it would take to kill an enemy at full health. Of course more crit damage is always better in PvP, but if I were to just look at the math at face value, then it would tell me that grinding my heart out in Gold Arena just to double up on the crit perk won't necessarily take this gun to a whole different level of play. With that being said, I would say that the PvP God Roll would be 15% crit, 10% reload, 10% magazine capacity, and 10% accuracy. 5% iron sight could also be nice, but if there's one thing I don't like about the gun is that its iron sight severely limits your field of view, which is quite annoying. If you consider how dangerous it is to aim down sight with your primary in PvP because of the decreased mobility, I'm just not prioritizing iron sight damage in my god roll perks for this rifle. I've already managed to drop 4 Ironclads in Gold, and I did manage to get one with elite damage, reload, and magazine capacity, so I'm definitely going to unlock that one for further testing in PvP. Because of the limited payoff of the double crit roll (purely based on the math), I'm focusing my attention on Hive to try to get that god roll Steam Dragoon instead. The long and short of it is that this AR is very much worth farming and is useful for both PvE and PvP.

Happy Hunting,

-InsulinMaze