Review: Kuva Drakgoon (U26.1.3)

The MR13 Kuva Drakgoon is a massive upgrade over the base Drakgoon, with good Crit and high Status Chance. With one of the best stat distributions of any Shotgun in the game, it is a little unorthodox, but is quite powerful and a surprising amount of fun.

Acquisition

Like with the other Kuva weapons, the Kuva Drakgoon can only be acquired by vanquishing a Kuva Lich with that weapon, at which point it appears in your Foundry.

Stats

The Kuva Drakgoon's stats are very respectable, with very good Crit, and the highly desirable 30% base Status Chance. A majority Slash base Damage is great as well. A Charge Time of just 0.3 seconds is quite manageable, and innate Punch Through on Charged shots is very useful as well.

Uncharged shots do not have innate Punch Through, and are significantly weaker than Charged shots. To what extent exactly I am not sure, but needless to say you should be using Charged shots whenever possible. Charged shots also have quite tight projectile spread for a Shotgun.

The Kuva Drakgoon fires projectiles that bounce off of hard surfaces once. They have a lifespan of 2 seconds, rather than a set range, disappearing upon reaching this time. The base projectile velocity is claimed by the Warframe Wiki to be 100m/s.

Augments

The Kuva Drakgoon has access to one exclusive Augment, Fomorian Accelerant. This Augment increases its Projectile Flight Speed, as well as allowing its projectiles to bounce several times more. Notably, it is a Weapon Exilus mod.

As a Weapon Exilus mod, Fomorian Accelerant is an Augment that is a lot of fun and quite useful, but by no means strictly necessary. It allows the Kuva Drakgoon to be more effective to much longer ranges, and the extra bounces are quite fun in tight spaces.

Builds

NOTE: These builds do not include Kuva Lich bonus, which is an effective 1.25x to 1.6x multiplier.

Status 0-Forma:

With no innate polarities, the Kuva Drakgoon cannot fit in both Crit and Status mods without Forma. This basic build focuses on reaching 100% Status Chance. For this build calculator, I've set in a much lower Fire Rate, which more accurately represents the Kuva Drakgoon's DPS taking into account its Charge Time.

With having to slot in all four 60/60 mods for 100% Status Chance, there are only three elemental combos possible - Corrosive + Blast, Viral + Radiation, and Gas + Magnetic. Each has their own solid niche uses.

Corrosive + Blast strips armour quite reliably, and has excellent damage multipliers against Infested. The knockdowns can be helpful for keeping powerful enemies disabled, but also makes it much harder to land headshots. Viral + Radiation makes the Kuva Drakgoon's frequent Slash procs more deadly, as well as distracting enemies and disabling enemy auras. Gas + Magnetic has exceptional area damaging capability and deals brutal damage underneath shields.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive + Blast or Viral + Radiation vs Grineer, Corrupted, armoured Corpus, Corrosive + Blast vs Infested, Viral + Radiation or Gas + Magnetic vs unarmorued Corpus

Crit 0-Forma:

Focusing on Crit instead produces this build, which ends up actually having less DPS than a pure Status build due to the lack of mod space. Neither Point Blank nor Ravage have the space to be Primed, without dropping something else essential.

With space for only two elemental mods, this build actually has more options than the Status build, though no more that are actually effective. Corrosive has good multipliers against the Infested and some armoured enemies, with Radiation covering the other half of armoured enemies. Viral is a solid all-rounder, but without armour stripping will fall behind against armoured enemies. Pure Toxin is actually very effective against unarmoured Corpus as well.

Recommended Setups: Corrosive or Radiation vs Grineer, Corrupted, Corrosive vs Infested, Viral or Toxin vs unarmoured Corpus, Radiation vs armoured Corpus

Status 1-Forma:

One added V polarity allows the Status build to fit in Vigilante Armaments, for more damage and Status procs. Nothing complicated here, just solid value.

Recommended Setups: see Status above.

Crit 1-Forma:

Alternatively with a Crit build, you can upgrade both Point Blank and Ravage to their Primed version. This gives the Crit build a significant damage increase over the pure Status build, with the bonus 2 Ranks still allowing one 90% elemental.

Recommended Setups: see Crit above.

Hybrid 2-Forma:

One more V polarity and you can fit in all four 60/60 mods as well as the Crit mods, for an all round deadly weapon. Note that the extra ranks from being a Forma'd Kuva weapon allow all these mods to fit easily with so few Forma.

Recommended Setups: see Status above.

Hybrid 3-Forma:

If you want to fit in Fomorian Accelerant (same polarity and drain as Fatal Acceleration), annoyingly one more Forma will be required, as it only just doesn't fit otherwise.

Recommended Setups: see above.

My Builds

Exactly as the 3-Forma Hybrid build, forgot to slot in Fomorian Accelerant in the second one.

Kuva Lich Bonus

As with the other Kuva weapons, the main three bonuses I would consider are Toxin, Electric and Radiation. The former two boost Corrosive, which is a great anti-armour option, with Toxin also increasing the bias of Gas procs when built for it. Radiation offers bonus damage against Alloy armour, as well as disabling enemy Ancient/Eximus auras and providing a bit of a distraction.

Again, I'd personally consider Toxin the best for raw killing power, though Radiation is useful for shutting down enemy auras.

Combat Use and Summary

The Kuva Drakgoon is exceptional against heavily armoured enemies. With majority base Slash damage, 100% Status capable and high Crit, it can inflict brutal Slash procs alongside whatever elements are installed - both Corrosive + Blast and Viral + Radiation are highly effective against armoured enemies. The former strips armour rapidly, quickly exposing enemies' much smaller health, while the latter halves enemy health to augment the Slash procs. The Kuva Drakgoon is much less efficient against unarmoured heavies, as its DPS is not particularly high by (very high) Shotgun standards. The innate Kuva Lich bonus does help here (increase the damage numbers anywhere from 1.25x to 1.6x), but not enough to match the highest damaging shotguns.

The hardest enemies to judge the Kuva Drakgoon against is trash mobs, because of its unusual projectile behaviour, and charge fire. On the one hand, its slow RoF is a clear disadvantage when dealing with large groups. Though its Uncharged shots are faster firing and have a wider spread, they are significantly waker than Charged shots. On the other hand, Charged shots have quite tight spread, making them less effective at hitting large groups.

On the other hand, the innate Punch Through of Charged shots is extremely useful for hitting multiple enemies close together. Additionally, this Punch Through combined with bouncing projectiles (up to 4 bounces with Fomorian Accelerant!) makes the Kuva Drakgoon extremely powerful in tight spaces. A Gas + Magnetic build is also noteworthy against trash mobs for inflicting numerous brutal AoE Gas procs, which is especially effective against the Corpus. However, building for this does greatly reduce the Kuva Drakgoon's effectiveness against many enemies, as Gas + Magnetic have poor multipliers overall.

It's worth noting that although it is a Shotgun, the Kuva Drakgoon actually has no damage falloff. So long as its projectiles can reach the target, they will hit it with full force. Provided you can lead targets to account for projectile travel time, this makes the Kuva Drakgoon one of the most effective Shotguns at long range.

Overall, the Kuva Drakgoon is an unusual but undeniably effective Shotgun. Its relatively slow firing bursts are capable of doing quite significant damage to any Status-vulnerable enemy in its path, and it is especially lethal in tight spaces. The Charge mechanic can be a little clunky to use to its full potential however, and it falls behind many other Shotguns for raw DPS. I personally found it a surprising amount of fun to use, but felt that it didn't handle particularly well due to its low RoF.

Scores

Vs Trash Mobs: 3/5 - Bouncing projectiles, innate Punch Through and a formidable Gas + Magnetic Status build are counterbalanced by low RoF and tight spread. Uncharged shots, though faster and wider spreading, are much weaker than Charged shots so may not get the job done at higher levels.
Vs Unarmoured Heavies: 4/5 - High base Damage (especially with the Lich Bonus), coupled with solid Crit gives the Drakgoon quite good damage-per-shot.
Vs Armoured Heavies without Hunter Munitions: 5/5 - Capable of 100% Status Chance, with high Slash bias, the Kuva Drakgoon is fantastic against heavily armoured enemies. Both Corrosive + Blast and Viral + Radiation work well, the former relying on armour-stripping Corrosive procs, and the latter a combination of Viral and Slash procs. Its very solid Crit just makes it all the more effective.
Vs Armoured Heavies with Hunter Munitions: NA/5 - Completely unnecessary. Kuva Drakgoon can already reach 100% Status Chance and has high Slash bias. You'd be hard-pressed to find a slot for it anyway.

Vs Variants

The MR13 Kuva Drakgoon is hilariously superior to the MR5 Drakgoon, falling behind only in base Damage (which easily compensated for by the other buffs).

Competitors

There aren't many other Shotguns that are both 100% Status Chance capable and Crit viable. The Strun Wraith, Boar Prime, Kuva Kohm and Phage are all high pellet (beam in the case of Phage) Shotguns, with both minimum 30% Status Chance and respectable Crit stats. None of them are anything like the charge-fire, bouncing projectile Kuva Drakgoon. The Strun Wraith is probably the closest with its relatively low RoF, but again does not behave similarly

Rivens

As with all the new Kuva weapons, the Kuva Drakgoon has a neutral Riven disposition of 3/5 (1), while the base Drakgoon has an appropriately high disposition of 5/5 (1.48). Given it is a little clunky to use due to its (fairly short) charge fire, I would not be surprised to see the Kuva Drakgoon remain at a relatively high Disposition for a Kuva weapon (but not a low Disposition overall, as it is a very strong weapon).

As usual, +Damage/Multishot/Crit Chance/Crit Damage are all great stats to have. +Status Chance allows you one or potentially even two 60/60 mods, allowing more elemental diversity and spare mod slots. +Elemental Damage for a desirable element can be a nice damage and bias boost. +Fire Rate reduces the (Kuva) Drakgoon's Charge Time, though I personally find it already quite short. +Projectile Flight Speed makes it much nicer to use at longer range, though is relatively redundant if you're also running Fomorian Accelerant in the Exilus slot. +Punch Through is nice for uncharged shots, but relatively unnecessary for charged shots.

-Impact/Puncture are both great negatives, with minimal impact on damage output and increasing the bias of desirable procs. -Faction Damage to a weaker faction (e.g. Infested) can be easily outweighed by the rest of the Riven. -Ammo Max is quite manageable, especially if Ammo Case/Mutation/etc are used. +Recoil is quite manageable as the (Kuva) Drakgoon is quite slow firing.