Axe and shield doing same amount of damage? Where when xD What reality are you living? Focusing on pistol play you can easly go for very high damage amount.
Test dummies told me so. As for going for dps on the pistols requires draki wrath which increases overheat so I won’t do that. Barage doesn’t change much either.
As for the heat sink taking away gromril you were right it doesn’t. I guess someone shot me while cooling.
Dummies are amazingly bad test example. You won’t get always stagger bonus damage from enemies, you wont connect every hit with axe and shield because it will slow you down dramatically each swing.
You can easly clear hordes with pistols alone without any help and with realistically good time doing it(they wont pile up on you because they will just die instantly from blasts).
You don’t suffer movement penalties from using pistol like you do with shields weapons.
It depends what you mean by that. Every damage or stagger “aggros” a monster. For example, when a chaos spawn is first running at your group, he will instantly change targets to anyone that touches him because no one has built up Their aggro yet. So yes hitting in the back builds aggro, but not as much as headshotting or critting.
That’s just what you like. Crossbow is better for sniping, i don’t think anyone uses drakefire pistols to snipe. Drakefire pistols just have 2 options, it’s more versatile in that regard. If you compare them to a crossy or flamethrower then ofcourse those 2 weapons are better at their niches.
Maybe drakefire pistols need a buff i don’t know, but idk what you expect to be able to use them for? Do you just wanna use them to spam and never vent, or be able to kill multiple specials without reaching red bar?
To his point, I think Drakefire pistols are bad enough at horde clear and sniping that they don’t do anything well enough to be considered “versatile.” Beam staff is probably the worst wiz weapon. Drakefire pistols does the same damage as beam staff on the shotgun blast, but shoots at half the rate. So the dps is 1/2 Beam staff dps. That’s pretty sad. The left click on drakefire is horrible against anything non-infantry. That means you can’t really kill any specials outside of gas/blight/leech. Leech is generally the only special in range of a Drakefire pistol. So you can consistently only kill one special enemy and you have awful horde clear. In fact, I would venture that a good flamethrower user will kill more specials than a drakefire pistol user because flamethrower melts assassins and pack rats and leeches who come within range. Xbow is obviously the choice for elite special killing if that is what your comp needs. Why would you take drakefire?
That’s just a balance issue. The question was why he would ever take drakefire, i interpretted that as ‘what role does it have’. If it needs a buff that’s totally fine, maybe i missunderstood his original post.
Yeah. I read it as the pistols being too bad to ever take over the other options for optimal play.
To his point, I think Drakefire pistols are bad enough at horde clear and sniping that they don’t do anything well enough to be considered “versatile.” Beam staff is probably the worst wiz weapon. Drakefire pistols does the same damage as beam staff on the shotgun blast, but shoots at half the rate. So the dps is 1/2 Beam staff dps. That’s pretty sad. The left click on drakefire is horrible against anything non-infantry. That means you can’t really kill any specials outside of gas/blight/leech. Leech is generally the only special in range of a Drakefire pistol. So you can consistently only kill one special enemy and you have awful horde clear. In fact, I would venture that a good flamethrower user will kill more specials than a drakefire pistol user because flamethrower melts assassins and pack rats and leeches who come within range. Xbow is obviously the choice for elite special killing if that is what your comp needs. Why would you take drakefire?
Exactly what I’m trying to say. This problem was fixed before they changed the talent tree all you had to do was get the thermal equalizer trait and the drakefire talent which allowed you to fire 11 shots (alt fire was actually useful with this combo). The drake fire talent was replaced with something utterly useless.
Funny enough many people at the time said they were useless back when I found them to be worth while. Maybe they didn’t know about the heat cooling combo. After all I do use axe and shield which many find useless as well. Good thing I know a combo to that too hehe.
I used Drakefires a lot back in 1.6, but since 2.0 they just aren’t a very attractive option to me anymore. I’ll admit that I’m only going to talk about experience in Cata, though.
Drakefires are actually really good vs. hordes, even on Cata. But their problem is that their weak point (not very good vs. specials and utterly useless vs. Ratling & Flamerats) is so much more punishing than their strong points (good vs. hordes and versatile / free ammo) are. Pistols are a little more useful vs. Specials in general than the Drakegun, but Drakegun is way better vs. hordes which makes Pistols’ trade off of less effectiveness vs. hordes against more shooting range not worth it, because their effect vs. Specials is still really bad.
And the thing is, that Ironbreaker as a class actually doesn’t have a problem vs. hordes anyway. His problem is vs. Specials. So a ranged weapon that deals with Specials well is usually a better pick for him, unless you go all in on your anti-horde role by bringing the Drakegun.
Drakefire Pistols would be more worth it, if they could deal with Specials (especialy the armored ones) a little better. But I understand that if you’d make them kill those really fast they’d also become overpowered really fast, though. Therefore I feel that the buff they need, is that the left click fireballs get a lot more stagger power instead of more damage. The ability to stagger a shooting Flamer or Gunrat when within flamethrower range, for example. You’d still be disadvantaged vs. Specials, but at least you could do something. Right now, if you face a Flamer while having brought Pistols, you’re just sh*t out of luck.
I don’t play IB, and have no idea about the balance of drake fire weapons.
I absolutely do not miss them though. I seemed to spend most of my time in 1.6 constantly on fire and half blinded by some lunatic circle chasing dawi who incinerated everything and everyone because the weapons were too good at ripping a lot of things apart. Just the sound of the pistols firing makes me want to snap my keyboard.
If there are any balance changes, please let’s not end up getting torched constantly again by some moon mad dwarf high on the fumes.
There are some players who are still playing in that way. IB, drake pistol + 2h hammer. Probably is the easiest to play combo to get the infamous green circles.
In legend a good player, can, using this configuration, easily carry around anyone. (not saying that it’s the only way, I know there’s plenty of elf/saltz/kru able to do it, just, the IB is probably the easiest one, also not saying that it’s wrong to do it).
A friend of mine is using that combo because usually is playing legend with another friend of mine + 2 bots, so having someone taking care of almost anything is important, but (it’s my opinion) you learn some very bad habits, like pulling crap without minding about finishing each pull and the damage, you don’t care about what’s coming from behind or your mates, just keep pushing forward, because if you stop the flow, then the game will punish the behavior. So, when I’m playing with them, using a sniper or any other support it’s a swearing feast, sniping a standing elite is one thing, a moving one with a bad ping is another one.
I also don’t like the pew pew 
In cata I didn’t find yet someone using them, but I’m still quite “green”.
Probably I would ask for slower 2h weapons and more dangerous (for the user) drake weapons, but I don’t have numbers it’s just my feeling, I mean, compared, to other chars builds that look fine, this IB build seems a little bit too much.
I agree. Their light (single shot) attacks do little damage. The breakpoints aren’t good.
With Drakki Wrath, most non-armored specials and elites will still need 3-4 hits to kill (with near single shots [far shots will need more hits]). You need to shoot significantly more for armored specials and elites (7 - 11 hits). (Shouldn’t fire do more damage to armored units? Fire will heat the metal you are wearing and cook you in it.) Combined with Drakki Wrath’s negative effect of increasing overheat cost, your shots will be very limited.
The Drakki Wrath talent is such a non-interesting talent too. Drakefire weapons are Ironbreaker-specific; Drakefire weapon bonuses or negative effects should already be inherent in the weapon itself, and I shouldn’t have to choose a talent specifically for Drakefire weapons.
EDIT: Breakpoints above are on legend.
Actually, it’s one of the worst ranged weapons in the game, breakpoint-wise (see my post above) and that’s already with the Drakki Wrath talent.
It’s also not terribly good at horde clear. As for “2 blast deletes trash enemies in cata without talent”, that is only true for Skavenslaves. As per the breakpoint calculator, dual blast BP for Skavenslaves is 3->2 (17.0% or 2 properties). Dual blast with one burn tick BP is 2->1 (46.6%).
As per the BP calculator, for most horde units, you will need more than 2 blasts.
Breakpoints don’t matter that much with pistols, draki wrath is better for flamer (2 shots sv).
They are one of better weapons in term of balance.
The only use I could find for drakefire pistols in VT1 was for quick clear (with charged shot) of skavenslaves and clanrats as a tank, probably the only viability in VT2 as well.
Ironbreaker´s best weapon…
Skip crit and that stupid talent. I run 10% Chaos, infantry and Skaven.
edit: and barrage 
Lvl 878 Dwarf
Oh no! I can’t reach a onehit breakpoint for anything below chaos warriors on my infinite ammo AoE + single target damage ranged weapon for my ridiculous overpowered melee tank class. HOW HORRIBLE THEY ARE BASICALLY TRASH PLEASE BUFF!
The grudgeraker has low ammo, low dmg against anything but tier one enemies, berserkers and your own allies thanks to brutal friendly fire, small clip, long reload, short range, zero horde clear, zero boss dmg, that glorious melee shove and not a single useful perk.
The crossbow also has shitty breakpoints, mediocre aim that makes headshots wonky, mediocre reload but a lot of ammo and versatile use, still uses ammo tho.
The gun deletes everything even trough shields but has a tedious reload, zero medium/short range cover and is hard to fire between shoves if your are bound in melee plus very small ammo capacity.
I don’t see how the drakeguns are bad positioned here.
People need more experience in non meta builds without press “f” to win the map and hard carries that drag even the worst group trough legend with mindless lmb mashing at everything that moves.
Well, people saying it’s bad gave actual facts and explained why they thought it was bad. You should try the same.
Also, if you can’t headshot with Xbow, that’s definitely a user issue and not an issue with the weapon. And aren’t the BP’s really strong in legend?
They are, you can pretty comfortably oneshot-bodyshot most specials and Stormvermin. Considering the reload speed, especially with something like BH and RV, you can kill like 15 Stormvermin in like 10 seconds.
See the post’s title and maybe read the first post too to see what weapon we’re talking about here. (Hint: Not Drakeguns.)
Just exaggeration and misinformation there. (LOL at Grudgeraker zero horde clear, short range, Crossbow shitty breakpoints) No actual, non-troll information on why Drakefire Pistols are balanced considering it is exclusive to the IB. You are talking about many weapons, but not about the Drakefire Pistols. Also, why are you saying that a weapon that “uses ammo” is very inconvenient? Most careers and ranged weapons use ammo and it’s not like there are no ammo caches conveniently placed around the map.
How can you be fine with taking 5 hits or higher to kill a special or SV on Legend. Imagine that BP for Grudgeraker or Crossbow.