Black Dragon Statistical Analysis

So I started to put together some analysis on the Black Dragon pistol a few weeks ago, and I got busy and never finished it.  After having some discussions about it on Discord though, I thought that I would finish it out.  There will be a lot of math in here that will likely be fairly difficult to follow at times, but what it boils down to is this: Black Dragon is my pick for best pistol in the game right now, but I only really would use it with a Gunslinger build though I do pull it out to get some pro pistol ribbons while clearing trash mobs in Arenas when I don't have gunslinger in my build.  My goal with this entire article is to (1) demonstrate why Black Dragon is the optimal pistol for PvE and (2) determine what the optimal perk set is for the Black Dragon you should buy from Nitro's.  Of course the roll that everyone would want is one that has 10% damage, 10% fire rate, 10% elite damage and 15% critical damage in the non-static slots, but that would be an extremely rare find indeed.  Typically, we only see two of these perks in the non-static slots in any roll that hits Nitro's shop, so I wanted to highlight which roll to look for while we all wait with great anticipation for that roll that has 3 or 4 of those damage perks in the non-static slots.  Sneak peek for those that see the length of this article and immediately want to click the X on their browser, grab a Black Dragon that at the very least has Damage and Fire Rate (the higher the fire rate, the better).

**PvE Analysis:**

In the past, the justification for using a high damage, low fire rate pistol has been very specific to being able to achieve one shot kills on specific types of enemies mostly because the DPS on these guns was considerably lower than other pistols (namely Peregrine and Ostrich).  The wonderful thing about the Black Dragon is that it has both higher DPS than the other existing high damage pistols (looking at the Kestrei SJ-87 and AT Kub II here) and has high enough base damage to still accomplish some of these quick kill types.  Ideally, I want my pistol to be able to one shot three main enemy types with a hipfire headshot: Dreads, Grunts (red armor), and Grunts (yellow camo armor).  Dreads have 440 HP and 0% resistance.  Red armor grunts have 700 HP and 0% resistance.  Yellow Camo grunts have 1,050 HP and 10% resistance.  It takes a really good build and gear setup to be able to get your hipfire headshots to 1,050 on the yellow camo grunts without the assistance of Gunslinger, so we will relax the headshot rule for yellow camo grunts and say that the hipfire backshots at least need to be 1,050 in order for Black Dragon to really hang with these other pistols that are of the same style.

*Non-Gunslinger PvE build (13A-0C-7S):*

In order to get the Black Dragon to the point where it can kill a red armor grunt with a single headshot, you need to have the following at a minimum: 9% dmg and 30% crit buffs, 5% damage on pistol, and 51% total crit on armor (I assumed 21% on shoulders, 0% on gloves, 15% on Legs, and 15% on Boots), which is very achievable.  Unfortunately, even with the best possible perks the Black Dragon will never be strong enough without Gunslinger to kill a yellow camo grunt with a single backshot.  The good thing to note though is that a Kestrei is also not strong enough to do this.  The AT Kub II is, but that pistol has serious disadvantages when compared to Kestrei and Black Dragon because the fire rate is ridiculously slow and its accuracy is absolutely horrible.  The bottom line is that for PvE, it is important to go with a pistol that is able to one headshot kill Dreads and Red Armor Grunts and have high DPS so that you can finish off enemies as quickly as possible if they are not killed in a single shot.  This is where the Black Dragon outshines the Kestrei and Kub by a large margin.  The DPS of the Black Dragon without factoring in perks is already 11% higher than Kestrei and 41% higher than the AT Kub.  There are only two pistols with higher base DPS than Black Dragon: Peregrine and Ostrich.  Peregrine has 14% stronger DPS and Ostrich has 12% stronger DPS.

*Gunslinger PvE Build analysis:*

There are two builds I'll look at that incorporate Gunslinger: 9A-9C-2S and 12A-6C-2S.  9A-9C-2S is the build that I favor because it is more versatile in both PvE and PvP.  9A-9C-2S has increased primary magazine size and boosted elite damage, so it is far better when you are not using your pistol, whereas 12A-6C-2S is for all out crit damage with your pistol, though it wouldn't have the boosted elite damage.  Even with the 12A-6C-2S build, you need some pretty fantastic perks to one shot a yellow camo grunt to the head with Black Dragon.  With 74% crit on armor (29% on shoulders, 15% on gloves, 15% on legs, and 15% on boots), you would also need the 9% damage buff, 30% crit buff, 5% pistol damage on gloves, as well as 10% damage and 15% crit on the Black Dragon.  This is a pretty unreasonable setup that I would expect fewer than 10 players in the game to actually have in their inventory.  With the Kestrei, this is more attainable since you only need 62% crit on armor (17% shoulders, 15% gloves, 15% legs, and 15% boots), the same buffs, 10% damage on pistol, 15% crit on pistol, and no pistol damage required on gloves.  The threshold is far less for the AT Kub II.  Only 28% crit would be required on armor, with everything else being held the same as for the Kestrei.  It is easy however for the Black Dragon to reach 1,100 for a backshot to a yellow camo grunt since you would only need 43% total crit on armor, 9% dmg buff, 30% crit buff, 8% pistol damage on gloves, and 5% damage on the pistol.

Moving to looking at the 9A-9C-2S build, we can rule out the headshots reaching 1,050 for the yellow camo grunts for Black Dragon and focus instead on backshots.  It would take 54% total crit on armor, 8% damage on gloves, the 9% damage buff, 30% crit buff, and 10% damage on the pistol.  Alternatively, you could have 14% critical damage on the pistol instead of 10% damage to achieve the same result.  For Kestrei, in order to headshot a yellow camo grunt, you would need 67% total crit on armor, 8% pistol damage on gloves, 9% damage buff, 30% crit buff, and 10% damage perk on pistol and 15% crit perk on pistol.  With the Kub, you would only need 46% crit on armor, 9% damage buff, 30% crit buff, and 10% damage perk on pistol and 15% crit perk on pistol.  The one significant advantage that the Kub has over the Black Dragon and Kestrei is that it is able to one shot dreads and spiders and thorns with a body shot if you have a 6% damage boost, which you can easily get from the damage buff.

The long and short of it is that you likely won't be able to achieve these amazing one shot results with Black Dragon right off the bat if you at least do not have decent armor to compensate, but anyone around 2-3M fame and higher will likely have gear that is at the required level of quality.  There are a few additional things to note before I wrap up the PvE section.  I only used three builds in this analysis, but there are certainly others that would alter the conclusions slightly.  Since I focused on only three enemy types, I didn't even get into the damage that these pistols will do against elite enemies because it is virtually impossible to one shot an Elite enemy with these pistols.  The AT Kub II could theoretically one shot a voidcaller or charger in the back if you were using a 12A-8C-0S build, had the absolute best of the best armor, best possible roll on the pistol, and fight for your life and supercharger were active.  In other words, the times where all of that will happen are very, very, very, very small, and I'm all about maximizing weapon damage across many situations and not just a few situations.  So as for the desired perks for a PvE Black Dragon, fire rate is the most important perk to have in the non-static slot.  Fire Rate directly impacts the time it takes to kill any target, and with the base fire rate of the Black Dragon being rather low, boosting its fire rate further will make it more powerful in dispatching enemies and make it easier to use so that you don't miss a moving target as much.  As for the second most important perk, it's kind of a toss up between base damage and critical damage.  I personally like base damage a bit more because it is a much more versatile perk than critical damage.  The crit damage perk obviously only comes into play with a head or back shot, so I tend to skew more in my preference towards base damage.  Elite damage would obviously be the next most valuable perk so that you can boost your damage with the pistol against Elites, so having 10% damage, 10% fire rate, 10% elite damage, and 15% crit in the non-static slots would absolutely be ideal, but this would be extremely rare if Black Dragon showed up with all of these perks.  Given that, I would recommend that you buy a Black Dragon that has at least fire rate and crit or fire rate and damage in the non-static slots.  Having played with the Black Dragon a bit, I have to say that I prefer it to the Kestrei because with fire rate boosts and the inherently higher DPS of the Black Dragon, it feels much better to use, and is a much more versatile pistol overall than the Kestrei (same goes for the Kub).  The accuracy and range of the Black Dragon further make it my pistol of choice for PvE.  If you're still in the camp of using Ostrich or Peregrine, I won't argue with you at all.  I still love Ostrich because of its accuracy and fire rate, and it is my pistol of choice for those that don't have the war point balance to spend on Black Dragon.  Now, on to the PvP analysis.

**PvP:**

Before I delve into the math here, I won't go into comparing this to other pistols as extensively because the mechanics change quite a bit with PvP given that there aren't a wide variety of enemy health levels and resistances to look at, at least when it comes to competitive PvP.  I find that it is easiest to assume enemy resistance of 20% and HP of 165 (42 HP chest).  This is consistent with what you'll see most often as the vast majority of the top players run a 12A-0C-8S build and have chest pieces that are typically at the 42 HP level.  When looking at what pistols are best from a Time to Kill (TTK) perspective, Peregrine and Ostrich still come out on top (with the right perk set of course) when not utilizing a Gunslinger build, but the Black Dragon is not far behind them.  When it comes to using Gunslinger builds, though, the Black Dragon is clearly the superior pistol from a theoretical TTK perspective even though I still love the Ostrich because its accuracy and fire rate make it very easy to use against enemies in PvP that move around a lot more than the silly Torment enemies in PvE.  I refer you to another article I wrote analyzing pistols prior to the release of the Black Dragon that goes into why I love using the Ostrich for some fun with pistols in PvP, particularly in Duels.  With that being said, let's look at some of the different possible perk combinations with the Black Dragon to see what the ideal perk set is for the pistol for PvP.  Obviously, if a Black Dragon is ever released with Damage, Fire Rate, and Crit in the non-static slots, that is the one that is ideal, so we'll leave that one out of the analysis.

Here are the gear assumptions I made in doing this analysis.  8% pistol damage on gloves, 24% crit on shoulders, 0% crit on gloves, 15% crit on legs, and 15% crit on boots.  I compared three different perk combinations for the Black Dragon: 10% damage + 15% crit + 13% fire rate (static), 10% damage + 23% fire rate (static plus 10% non-static), and 15% crit + 23% fire rate (static plus 10% non-static).

*Non-gunslinger build (12A-0C-8S):*

When it comes to using your pistol with this build, Damage + Fire Rate wins out here from a TTK perspective in hipfire bodyshots and headshots, but only loses out to Damage + Crit when it comes to backshots because it would take one fewer backshot to kill a 165 HP enemy.  You could get around this slightly by going with the crit buff instead of the damage buff to equalize that difference.  Overall, though, it's not very interesting to look at pistol damage with this build because you are only going to use pistols to shame noobs when you are using this build, which is much better suited to using your Tesla or Faraday.

*Gunslinger builds (12A-6C-2S and 9A-9C-2S):*

With the damage boost from gunslinger, this is where Damage + Fire Rate confidently pulls ahead of the Damage + Crit roll in the hipfire bodyshot, headshot, and backshot categories (no supercharger).  It should be noted though that a Fire Rate + Critical Damage roll would perform the same as the Damage + Fire Rate roll when neither supercharger or fight for your life come into play.  The only case where Damage + Crit wins out is backshots when using the critical damage buff and a 12A-6C-2S build.

Ultimately, I looked at a lot of data points here (Hits to Kill and Time to Kill with three different builds, three different perk sets, and two different buff sets across all 24 hit types), and while the Damage + Crit roll can pull off some faster TTKs in a limited number of cases, they are somewhat niche cases (like hipfire headshots with fight for your life with the critical damage buff when using the 9A-9C-2S build or hipfire headshots with fight for your life with the damage buff when using the 12A-6C-2S build).  While yes it is satisfying to see those big numbers pop up on the screen sometimes, I value consistency above anything else, and in the most common situations, the Damage + Fire Rate roll of the Black Dragon will perform the best overall in PvP.  Because I am still a sucker for those big numbers, I like to roll with the Critical Damage and Projectile Resistance perks for PvP when I am just using my pistol, but you can certainly roll with the damage perk instead if you would like.  Because the gunslinger builds that are viable in PvP don't have that additional 5% resistance, I really would not move away from using the Projectile Resistance buff for PvP still since it will take some significant skill to overcome someone with an AR when you are just using your pistol.  But wait patiently for those opponent revive kills in elimination where you can fire off some tasty backshots and relish in the carnage.

**Overall Conclusion:**

So based on the math, I've concluded that obviously you would want Damage + Crit + Fire Rate + Elite Damage all together for the best possible roll of Black Dragon, but since that is highly unlikely to ever occur, Fire Rate is again the most crucial perk to have on the pistol for both PvE and PvP because it directly decreases the time to kill any target.  The math supports Damage as being the more desired for the second most desirable perk, since to reach the backshot threshold for yellow camo grunts, you should either have high damage or high crit, and bodyshot values in PvP are more favorable with the Damage perk, especially in cases where you are using supercharger or have low enough health so that fight for your life is active.  So for now, grab a Black Dragon with Damage and Fire Rate when you see one and stay on the lookout for a roll that has three (or even four) of the desired damage perks and snap it up when you see it.  For PvP, we finally have a good alternative to what I would argue is the best pistol for PvP (Ostrich), and it is definitely the more versatile and user-friendly of the high damage pistols for PvE (though if you still have a good Kestrei and value one shotting those Dreads and Spiders with bodyshots, by all means, feel free to keep using it).  Don't hesitate to reach out to me either on Facebook or Discord if you have any questions about all of this.

--InsulinMaze