Ha, I was considering making a similar topic; I guess you beat me to it. Most of my experience is with the Vraks VII however (I tend not to prefer burst shot guns in games), so my feedback will be orientated towards it.
I’m not sure I fully agree with you in this point. You do need a gun with very high stability to be useable, but once you have that it’s quite controllable. By rapidly clicking your mouse button, you can actually get more shots off down range than with the Vraks III, and the first 2-3 of these are almost perfectly accurate, allowing you to have fine control over how large you need your burst to be. By moderating your shots, you can keep them pinpointed on a single target quite accurately and still fire much faster than the Kantrael XII Lasgun. And, if necessary, you can click as fast as you can and go basically full auto if you need something big or close dead in a hurry.
Point being, the gun takes a level of self-control and familiarity to use well, but once you do it’s very strong and versatile.
I actually did some testing earlier today comparing the two guns. Advantages of the Vraks VII compared to the III are:
- Very high stagger per shot.
- Enough damage to kill most light units with one headshot.
- The ability to 1 shot both Scab Shooters and Stalkers.
- The ability to 2 shot Dreg Stalkers even without Volley Fire up.
- Higher overall DPS when fired as quickly as possible.
As I mentioned in this thread here, the gun is a bit ruthless to roll because you need incredibly high base modifiers (~78+ in both stopping power and damage, not to mention high stability). You also need boosts to Unarmored or Flak to meet breakpoints, and probably Maniac to help off-set the main downside of the weapon. Then, specific blessings can really help the weapon too, so good luck getting all of those…
While the damage of the gun is quite low compared to its main competitor (the Kantrael XII), it’s much higher rate of fire and ability to just barely meet important breakpoints actually allows it to almost keep up to it’s Lasgun compatriot. Therefore, I don’t think such a large damage increase (~45%) is necessary for anything but Maniac. It definitely does need the boost to Maniac damage, however…
As stated in my other post I would recommend:
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~50% more damage to maniac, allowing it to deal up to 330 damage per shot with Volley Fire. This is enough to comfortably 5 shot both Dreg Ragers (or 4 shot with Opening Salvo) and Flamers, and would be close to (but still slightly lower than) the Agripinaa VIII Braced’s damage.
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15% more damage to Unarmoured, allowing it to reach the breakpoint for 2-shotting damnation Dreg Stalkers without investing in Unarmoured Damage and 2-shotting Dreg Bruisers if you do.
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Maybe… 5% more damage to Flak to make reaching the requisite breakpoints slightly less RNG.
I think this would be enough to make the gun competitive in Hi Intensity Shock Troop Gauntlet T5. I’m partial to an increase in carapace damage (at least for headshots and crits), but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary. I have more to say on the weapon, but I’m not home at the moment. Maybe tomorrow.