I’ve played V2 for hundreds of hours using Drakefire Pistols. They’re one of my favorite weapons but they really struggle in cata. And if you think they don’t… Well, almost no one takes them on cata and there are reasons for that. I think I have a pretty good idea on how to make them viable on higher difficulties with just a handful of small tweaks:
Accuracy. Drakefire Pistols really struggle at hitting long or even mid-range targets because of how random the projectile spread is. I’d say make them pinpoint accurate on first two shots and then have the spread kick in on consecutive shots, but still significantly reduced to what we have now.
Damage against armored specials should be significantly buffed as the pistols struggle REALLY hard in higher difficulties. It can deal with unarmored specials just fine, but engaging armored ones… At long range you’ll barely hit them because of the projectile spread (and thus the need for more accuracy) and at close ranges there’s a lot of risk of being hit by warpfire or ratling, which makes your accuracy go nuts. And you still have to hit them with a RIDICULOUS amount of shots.
On IB, Drakefires (Hunter) + Under Pressure, is one of the highest damage builds for using Hunter in melee.
If you made it harder to proc Hunter, by changing Under Pressure, but made Drakefire Pistols better, I would be happy with that though. If you don’t change Under Pressure, IB will become power crept.
Should also mention that Under Pressure isn’t really needed for Flamethrower, only for quickly getting Hunter up with Drakefire Pistols, so changing it wouldn’t harm Flamethrower.
I honestly thought they would put Talents on OE to improve them, due to him being an Engi.
Tried that. To be honest, feelt like a stretch.
It amplifies the strong aspects of the weapon while the disadvantages still hurt.
What I do myself is I use Drakefire Pistols along with Axe and Shield. It’s the part of my melee combo.
I begin with shield bash, then H1, then I quickly swap to the pistols, blast the enemies (very effective against swarm) with the secondary fire and then swap back. And I take Blood of Grimnir instead of Under Pressure. With the amount of THP IB gets you can easily vent and keep it going forever.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s better vs swarm than Drakegun.
But that just sounds like I’ll have more single target damage, but way less THP generation, less cleave, less stagger, less swarm DPS, less power (talent) and just as much of an inaccurate weapon as before…