New Weapons Analysis for Update 1.0.7

Well it has been an exciting day with the first update that we've had in 8 months, and while not all bugs that we were expecting a fix for have been fixed (I'm looking at you, Magazine Capacity bug), it was still awesome to chat with some old players that stepped away from the game for a while and talk to a bunch of people to try to gather the new weapon stats.  Now that I've collected all the information I was looking for, I wanted to provide my take on which of the new weapons is worth farming for.

If you don't want to read my discussion of each gun, I'll just throw out my conclusion first that the Twilight Vindicator (Sniper Rifle) is the only weapon actually worth farming for, but this is really just a PvE only sniper even though it could be ok in PvP, but still quite inferior to Cryonic there.  The Red Alert SMG is actually a lot of fun to use, so I would urge collectors to grab it since it's relatively cheap, but it's more of a PvE SMG than anything else.

**Weapons Breakdown:**

Doomhammer is the new legendary shotgun that can be found in Blade Dancer.  It has 844.8 base damage, 75 fire rate, 3 accuracy, 19 range, and 4 magazine capacity.  It has four static perks: 8% damage to elites, 8% overall accuracy, 5% damage, and 12% fire rate.  Doomhammer is somewhat of an upgrade to the AT Volta II Neo, which shares the same damage per blast, but has 10 rounds per minute slower fire rate and has 1 more round in the magazine.  You really have to get good perks to make this gun work (crit + fire rate + mag cap + elite damage), but it isn't really a complete gamechanger.  I was initially not sure if you can double up on elite damage with this weapon, but after seeing a post on Facebook, you can indeed get a maximum of 18% elite damage on this gun. Also, after having played a lot with other shotguns, namely Fearargini, Nebula, and Dybbuk, I've found that you don't really need to have 844.8 base damage to really do well with a shotgun.  These other weapons have lower base damage, but they still achieve one shot kills on a lot of the Torment enemies that you should be using your primary on, and they all have better fire rates and higher magazine capacity, so I was not a fan of this category of shotgun to begin with.  I will gladly farm for one and try it out for myself, but I strongly suspect that this gun will not change any PvE or PvP meta.

*Ultimate conclusion:* not worth farming for.

Red Alert is a new SMG that can be found at Willow's shop for 350 Gold.  It has 114.4 base damage, 600 fire rate, 8 accuracy, 26 range, and 30 magazine capacity.  It has all static perks: 5% fire rate, 10% damage to elites, 8% reload speed, and 12% critical damage.  My first impression of this gun was that it wasn't worth the gold because if you have a good Wintermute already, then it is pretty easily superior to this gun.  Because I had gold to spare, I picked it up and unlocked it with the fame from the adventure missions.  I can say that it's a lot more fun to use than its perks would indicate.  It's quite accurate and the fire rate is beautiful.  When it comes to PvP, it kind of sits between Wintermute and Green Envy from a time to kill perspective, and I did a couple duels with it, but didn't find it to be a particularly good gun there.  I did however use it in Silver Arena twice, and it did very, very well.  Ultimately, if you don't have a good Wintermute or Green Envy, then this gun is absolutely worth the pickup.  Otherwise, it's more of a collector's item than anything else.

*Ultimate conclusion:* not absolutely worth the gold, but is great for players without Green Envy or a good Wintermute.

Pit Boss is a new epic machine gun that can be found at the lucky wheel in the casino (200 gold per spin).  It has 220 base damage, 440 fire rate, 10 accuracy, 38 range, and 40 magazine capacity.  It also carries 3 clips at full capacity, but that can be increased with support ammo capacity perks.  It took me three spins to get this MG, but all of the perks are random, so I did not get a particularly good roll on mine.  That being said, this gun is basically a Cobra with slightly higher base damage, so the DPS works out to be only slightly better than Rascal Bigboy.  I used the gun in a Silver Arena and it performed very well actually, but ultimately, the Heretic ZX-1 and Xingyun are far better machine guns than this one.  Given that it's behind a pay wall and is random to obtain and has random perks, do not waste your gold trying to get a good roll of this weapon.

*Ultimate conclusion:* Not worth the gold at all.

Silver Fang is a new epic rocket launcher that can be found in Arena Silver.  It has 1,540 base damage, 140 fire rate, 17 accuracy, 80 range, and 1 magazine capacity.  I don't feel like much explanation is needed for this one.  Kobold is still the best launcher in the game because of the magazine capacity, but Bestie and Slade's Shitstorm are definitely better alternatives because of the higher single shot damage.  Hell, even Dobermann is a better option than this.

*Ultimate conclusion:* Not worth farming at all.  It's not even worth keeping in your inventory.

Twilight Vindicator is the new legendary sniper rifle that can be found in Arena Gold.  It has 1,100 base damage, 60 fire rate, 30 accuracy, 70 range, and 6 magazine capacity.  It carries 4 clips at full capacity. This gun is basically a legendary Vespertine, and it has the highest DPS of any epic or legendary sniper rifle in the game.  DPS is a funny metric when you talk about sniper rifles because it's more important that a sniper reach a specific damage threshold to kill enemies in ideally 1 shot, but definitely no more than 2 for almost all scenarios.  From a PvP perspective, you really don't want to go for a sniper with any damage lower than Cryonic's because it is still challenging for some people to reach a 1 shot supercharged kill to the body against well geared players in PvP.  That being said, this is still going to be a 2 body shot, 1 headshot sniper, so it will do perfectly fine in PvP; however, with one fewer bullet in the magazine, I don't see players that already have a great Cryonic swapping that out in PvP except as a cure for boredom.  In PvE, I would only really recommend using this sniper if you have a 12 point combat build because it just doesn't reach the right damage thresholds that Lacroix and Cryonic do with builds that don't go this high in their investment in the Combat tree.  Because I've developed a recent obsession with using Sniper Rifles in Silver and Gold, I am definitely going to farm for a good one, but it'll certainly need a very good roll and very good sniper gear to make this gun fun to use instead of Cryonic or Lacroix.

*Ultimate conclusion:* Relatively worth farming for, but if you have a good Cryonic or Lacroix already, there's no need to work yourself into a frenzy here.

Phaser Pistol is a new elite pistol that can be found in Hive Mind.  It has 140.8 base damage, 240 fire rate, 17 accuracy, 20 range, and 14 magazine capacity.  This gun is an upgraded version of the PZ-1337 Elite II pistol; however, it is quite inferior to Ostrich and Meihua when it comes to PvP, and in PvE the damage output is pretty poor, although it is a nice high magazine alternative to the Skull's Sting pistol.  Even with as obsessed as I am with pistols, I am in no rush to obtain this pistol, and I won't be farming for a good one explicitly.

*Ultimate conclusion:* Not worth farming at all.

**Final Thoughts:**

Here's to hoping that an additional update will be coming soon to put the magazine capacity bug to bed, and I will be ready and waiting for even more new weapons to hit the landscape.  For now, I hope you enjoy the new update and new adventure.  Good luck with all your farming!

--InsulinMaze