Must've been playing too much kassadin on league!

Do enemies still get knocked down if they are frozen? If so, great - winter grave is new gremlin killing machine. If not, though, the callahan may still be worth using instead because of the knockdown every shot with damage max.

Yus!

Time to come back to SK. Collect cr and orbs. Craft new weapons.

Thank you OOO for this early christmas present.

Erm, anyone know where stats are on the new armours/helms? I'm not at my gaming computer, so I can't check right now (and not for another 10 hours damnit)

Post #1 claims that Antigua-style charge attacks are more useful than Blaster-style charge attacks?

I disagree. Blaster-style charge attacks are okay but not great. Antigua-style charge attacks are essentially useless.

Please help me understand where an Antigua-style charge attack is useful --- specifically a piercing Antigua.

Both are pretty terrible, but antigua charges have use in that final arena of f26 dfv and in some scenarios in HoI. That's about all that I can think of - one hell of a situational positive, but listed nonetheless.

for charge use riftlocker
antigua charges are suicide on a boss

but if theres no shivermister I think the griffins regular shots will do better, dont quote me on that though

Tip for the new behavior of Magnus charges: It seems that they always throw enemies backwards relative to themselves. So quite literally shoot them in their face to maximize damage, since it'll keep throwing them backwards back into the path of the bullet.

@Bopp

Alright, here we go:

In general, antigua charges are nice for gun puppiez (bird cancels their attack).

Argent Peacemaker:
Charge DESTROYS roarmulus twins. I think at max damage, it can oneshot the boss in the stunned timeframe solo (oneshot meaning one charge and its on to the next phase already). It takes charge + a few extra shots when in a party. But believe me, that bird annihilates roarmulus twins. The only other weapon that can rek roarmulus to an extent it the DA charge, but thats a sword. So for guns it's the best. Not even nova driver charge beats it vs roarmy.

Also pretty decent vs Skelly Mobs in FSC. New undead high sweetens the deal. Here, blitz still reigns supreme for guns.

With the Gilded Griffin, I could see the charge do some nice damage to Snarbolax. Also, firing it into a group of fiends would undoubtedly do nice damage, but still isnt the best option. Since fiends and wolvers dodge, its charge really wouldnt beat the AP or Sentenza charges anywhere.

So yeah, antigua charges are OK overall, but nowhere near useless. Definitely better than a val charge against enemies that dont dodge.

sorry about that I meant that just on vana

It could just be that I find in the royal jelly palace quite often, and am particularly advantaged there... I should probably not mention that tactic for serious use, even if I end up using it whenever I get stuck with it. Like it's not something that you should try to rely on, but it is something you can make work.

As some of you know, the guild Lancer Knightz has a long-running project to collect data on weapons, missions, etc. We are currently working on updating our handgun data after this big update. In this post I report preliminary results on movement speed while charging guns.

It appears that all guns allow the knight to run at full speed while charging. This is an especially big improvement for Callahan, which used to cut the knight's movement speed down to half. Presumably the same comments apply to Iron Slug.

The guns we've tested cover every major style except tortofist and Overcharged Mixmaster. In detail, we've tested Valiance, Callahan, Blitz Needle, Polaris, Argent Peacemaker, Hail Driver, Nova Driver, Umbra Driver, Biohazard, and Sentenza.

In comparison, many swords and bombs slow down the user while charging. We have detailed data on swords, and will soon have detailed data on bombs.

theres something for every situation, whats not to like?

unless you mean looks, thats personal preference though

(tl;dr at the bottom if you don't want to read the reasoning behind the shadow weapon strengths/weaknesses)

Okay, let's move to the winter grave line then. I've only got the 4* so far, but it certainly wrecks gremlins even better than the callahan did. Despite being frozen, they still get knocked down. This is an amazing thing, as it means that you won't even need damage max to knock down gremlins on every shot now, and it comes with the benefit of locking them down even longer with freeze. Single swapping the gun gives great results, though you can also opt to dual swap with an umbra driver or phantamos for slightly higher dps since the gremlins stay down long enough. If facing more than 2-3 gremlins, just single swap it and keep the whole group on the floor. Keep in mind that the umbra driver is the more effective swap steroid when facing clustered groups due to the riccochet, but the phantamos gives more dps against a single target. The charge attack is fantastic against groups, as it can carry a wave of enemies with it and deal multiple ticks of damage to each. You'll almost always end up with a wave of frozen enemies after using the charge, and they'll be in perfect position to fire off another.

The winter grave does an "okay" job with slimes, but the biohazard is much more suitable for them (and you can't use the winter grave effectively in IQ runs anyways). Slimes have extremely slow, predictable attack patterns, allowing you to get them stacked up very easily. They also tend to group up, which plays right into the gun. When used in the right situations the bio/neutralizer allow for extremely quick clear times. The biohazard actually does less damage per shot than pre-GU if used against a single enemy, but comes with the benefit of the normal shots dealing damage in an AOE. The biggest downside to the gun is that if you don't kill an enemy/group of enemies in one detonation, they go FLYING. This is terrible in a team, so only pack cata runs in either solo runs, team runs where you know you can kill the enemies in one detonation (ie compounds), or team runs where multiple players are using catalyzers to enable one shot kills. One other downside is the way in which stacks detonate - they can be triggered by either the charged shot passing through a stack or by the charged shot contacting an enemy with stacks. They do not seem to be triggered by other explosions, which is a shame (Also, unlike GU beta, they are not triggered by other weapons so no more winter grave bio synergy). Do not attempt to use the bio/neutralizer against shielded enemies, though, as the stacks float outside of the shield range meaning that many of your stack explosions will be blocked and deal no damage. The same applies when enemies are near walls - any stacks floating inside of a wall will deal no damage when detonated.

The phantamos line is shadow vanilla to the max. Against gremlins/slimes, the gun is spectacular against neither but effective against both. A great gun to carry when there are mixed enemy types, as a fallback when you can't one-shot a slime with bio charges, or even when you just want a higher dps swap steroid than an umbra driver. The charge attack is meh.

The grim repeater does its job well, but not without flaws. As with the regular blitz/pepperbox, this gun can be used as a kiting tool or burst weapon depending on your positioning. It shreds through the jelly king (and even the ice queen), and deals with groups of gremlins very effectively. I'd only recommend using this over the winter grave against combat gremlins when there are too many to keep floorlocked or you have a flash charge ready, though. As with the blitz, one normal attack is all it takes to break a mender's shield, and you can single swap this weapon to kill a mender before it can start to run. The biohazard and phantamos deal with regular slimes more effectively, though it can be used to wreck a lichen colony if your team pulls aggro. The biggest downside is the fact that the charge attack causes extreme knockback - you won't get all of the shots off against single enemies other than lichen colonies, much like the pepperbox.

tl;dr:
Winter grave is good against single gremlins --> small groups. Good to dual swap with umbra/phantamos, yet strong to single swap as well

Biohazard is great against slimes/good against nonshielded gremlins. Only single swap (or dual swap biohazards for even more dps) since one-shotting groups with stacks is important

Phantamos is all-around good, especially useful against slimes that don't get one-shotted by bio (lichen colonies, some arenas in ice queen runs where you can't get an opening to stack one enemy with bio). Good single swapped or dual swapped with other shadow kiting guns

Grim repeater is best against large groups of gremlins, gremlin menders (especially against the shields --> single swapping), JK/IQ bosses, lichen colonies in a team with cc/aggro on another party member

Raven's Opinion Following:

Autogun line now outclass antigua line.
If you didnt realize before, the damage numbers are the same.
Now with the normal attack boosts, you can dish out a shotgun of sentenza attacks with the grim repeater [at the expense of moving while shooting].

Catalyzer line is now useless.
S.P.A.M. now has a new alias: Biohazard.
The weapon is best compared to the magnus line, since the charge attack is most similar.
Less damage, more knockback/unpredictability.

Magnus line can now compete with brandishes.
That is significant. They have more interrupt power than brandishes. Normal shots for interrupting, charge for high DPS.

Pulsars are still junk weapons.
They just got maybe a 20% nerf on damage. I still wont be using them.

Blasters are fairly nice.

All in all, I'll be using the magnus line much more. Alchs still have their place for me by charge spamming, somewhat replaced with swapping by blasters. I'll still never use pulsars. Sentenza now replaces OC in my RRT loadout. Autogun lines swap out a couple antigua lines in my loadouts. I'll need more testing before magnus lines are finalized in my loadouts, but some brandishes may be replaced.

I'm finding my Biohazard to be very useful, actually. It's admittedly a bit hard to make sure everything explodes in one go, but I guess the solution is to tag a single mob as much as you can instead of just spamming in a crowd.

I ended up getting the Neutralizer so that I can use it against Kats. I have to say that it does the job well. It's extremely easy to use now, I used it against Devilites today and was relieved to know that they could keep up pretty well with the erratic movement of overtimers, since the Charge only needs to graze the tags to explode. It's not as explosive as before the gun update, but it's much faster and more flexible now.

My latest adventures with the catalyzer line weapons seem to indicate that they can be a good weapon if your entire team is spamming them, and that everyone's theory crafted but terrible in practice strategies now work as intended.

The strategy in question seems to be two to three people firing normal shots as fast as they can, and one person detonating them. As long as the detonator is doing her job, all of the damage from the normal shots is accounted for. Since all party members are using the weapon, all have agreed to predict the knockback in the same fashion, and the party is free to get work done. I'm not certain as to how much work or how capable the party trying this is going to be, but at least there is some merit to what they're doing.

The only problem with this is that the bulk of parties aren't purist catalyzer parties. In team play without any other catalyzer users, the catalyzer is still god awful, as your team members still haven't signed up for unpredictable knockback, and aren't obligated to sit there while you overshoot your damage on a single set of three mobs. Since most weapons just go out and deal damage regardless of what you do while catalyzer must get in a clip or two and a charge shot to do any real damage, you're often the last one to get in any sort of hit and it feels like significantly more work than anything else. Combined with the weapon's slow shot speed, this makes the gun incredibly frustrating to use.

In essence, nothing much has changed for the catalyzer. It's less skill based and more spam based now, but it's still the same same weapon it was before. Worth crafting for the fun of trying to make it work, and not much else.

In uncoordinated parties, you can still use the cata's charge. It's slow, but it does big damage and has high flinch rate.

...But to begin with, bringing a Cata to a random party is like bringing a max CTR Nitronome. It's not recommended.

I've been looking at the wiki to see the stats of the new armors and weaps, but joy...
All stat-pictures are broken, as usual with all new items u.u
The armors don't even have a seperate page yet...
Where to find them?

I know, at school now and bored, so I thought I would take a look before starting farming tonight.
I just had no clue what it all is, figured it out now.

@Armor alchemy tree topic.

The wiki editors have been struggling with figuring out how exactly to handle an alchemy tree with 36 entrees. Given the standard process, it would take my screen 3-4 pages worth of scrolling to just fit the table alone.

It is still largely mid-testing to have an economical fit, but you are welcome to see/help the progress we got going over in this thread. [Or directly to the testing sandbox that I've made here]. It is a monster of an alchemy tree.