I have come back from the realm of the dead to ̶s̶e̶l̶l̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶g̶o̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶m̶e̶r̶c̶h̶a̶n̶d̶i̶s̶e̶ tell you that this exact discussion has been brought up before, and that you should b̶u̶y̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶f̶f̶ stop wasting your time and join me in forum-death.

The best course of action is to stop posting (and stop playing the game if you're sick of the colossal amount of nothing it's gotten lately) and come back when a substantial update hits. Trust me, it's much more of an enjoyable experience.

The devs won't give you any meaningful answers, anyway. They never gave me any.

But it takes more to make these things all viable sidegrades rather than just upgrades. Take for instance the recent graviton and sentenza obsidian variants. Both are now second rate weapons that would take serious re-imagining to make work. To make sentenza out-damage carbine would seriously hurt carbine; to make graviton worthwhile would be very difficult with other shadowy damage bombs.

Not of course that thinking of viable ways of making the gear interesting or unusual is hard. The developers could probably do it if they really sat down and tried, but they'd really have to be willing to take more risks than they currently do. Currently, to make new gear they use a very standard formula- take away some number of defense, give the item a certain offensive buff. Take away some percentage of damage, apply some kind of status. Rather what they should be doing is taking existing gameplay mechanics, mixing them up, and doing radical things with the various effects.

Instead of giving out small bonuses for weapons, armors could be made to give out larger buffs but also drawbacks to compensate. Graviton vortex could have been given no knockback to compensate for its lack of status. Its almost as if I already wrote about this exactly a while ago here.