Why the Looper is the best gun, and why you probably shouldn't try to get it

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Now that the Smart Minigun is the best gun I need to rewrite this article.

First, why the Looper is so good:

  1. It starts with Piercing, which means you don’t need to use up a perk roll for it, and also
    • it’s easier to get Ghost shots (Piercing is required to get Ghost) in events that have it.
    • it’s easier to get a good perk build for Frostina (only need to get Bouncy, which is a common perk)
  2. It includes boomerang, which even against a single enemy will often give you an extra hit on the return path (exception is if you and/or the enemy are moving too quickly) and does a decent job until you can get Bouncy walls or Ghost.
  3. In a game biased towards fast guns, it has the highest number of hits/second (the Auto Handgun fires more shots/sec, but because of Piercing + Boomerang the looper typically has more hits/second); this means
    • Best performance for Jackbot, Fursus, Mortis, Prospero and (I think) Ignus; and slightly improved performance for Arctor and Blazia (even if the pierced shots weren’t hitting anything).
    • Greatest benefit from Ice, Zap (and their improved versions) and Focus Shots
    • Very good benefit from Headshot (2nd only to AutoHandgun)
  4. Both its weapon properties activates Hero passive skills (e.g. a pierced shot or a hit from a Boomerang will deal Toxic’s venom, count for Blazia’s Wrath, will do more damage with distance for Frostina’s snowball etc) - whereas Gemini’s Laser Link, Plasma’s Explosive Blast, Devastator’s Trail and Nuclear’s Lasso do not.
  5. Both its weapon properties deal elemental damage (i.e. a pierced shot or a hit from Boomerang will deal Ice/Poison/Fire/Zap damage) and trigger Shrapnel, while Gemini’s Laser Link, Plasma’s Explosive Blast, Devastator’s Trail and Nuclear’s Lasso do not.
  6. Both it’s weapon properties are improved by Gear damage (details) while again Gemini’s Laser Link, Plasma’s Explosive Blast, Devastator’s Trail and Nuclear’s Lasso are not.

If it’s so good, why shouldn’t you be jumping on the special crate offering it?

  1. The average unlocking cost of ~22,000 gems - which puts it out of reach of most F2P players (you might be extremely lucky and get it for less, but chances are you won’t)
  2. There are 2 very good F2P weapons - the Plasma Cannon (which I’d recommend at the start) and the Auto Handgun (which I’d recommend switching to eventually, as your Gear Mastery increases, you unlock more perks that benefit it, and you unlock more heroes that play better with it). While the Looper at the same level will outperform them for all the reasons above (in most cases), both of them have weekly gun dungeons where you will typically get 1 Rare and 1 Uncommon every week - this means both of these weapons will be fused up faster than the Looper. And you would then need to throw even more money on multiple Epic Gun kits (“on sale” for 50$, and usually included in the SBP) and/or Legendary Gun kits (100$ :pleading_face:) to keep it on par. Even if you get lucky and unlock the looper for cheap, there’s no escaping this bottleneck - so you should add at least the cost of the SBP every month to your purchase cost.
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