I thought these got an upgrade recently, or at least a bit of a shuffle.
I just checked some of the stats on them and some of them are really whacky.
like, the pistol for example: https://aoitems.com/item/271576/aero...-corona---c01/
Min damage on a QL 300 pistol is 80? really?
Compare to this:
https://aoitems.com/item/156771/cust...ert-reet-1000/
with a min damage of 65 which is QL 80, and has req's that are 23% as high.
The max damage on the QL 300 variety is OK at 360 but it doesn't feel right.
If you roll back the QL of pistol to 80 which is the same QL as the CDR and compare damage range:
ABC-C01 is 23-107(51) (1/1)
CDR is 65-143(162) (1.29/1.3)
I agree that the CDR is a premium weapon, but the ABC-C01 doesn't even compare performance wise.
Reqs on these two pistols at QL 80 are comparable:
CDR has pistol 357, burst 269 fling 181
ABC-C01 has pistol 405, fling 203
Here's another comparison:
Dark pistol of the Revoked vs ABC-C01
Dark Pistol QL 100: https://aoitems.com/item/245223/dark...f-the-revoked/
damage range: 75-190 (150) (1.2/1.2)
QL 100 ABC-C01: 28-130(62) (1/1)
Reqs to equip
Dark pistol: pistol 521 fling 261 (bureaucrat)
ABC-C01: pistol 504 fling 253
Again, similar reqs, but damage is completely disjointed
Another comparison, Solar-powered master engineer pistol (QL200) vs ABC-C01
https://aoitems.com/item/164515/sola...gineer-pistol/
SPMEP damage range: 120-420 (320) (1.7/1.2)
QL 200 ABC-C01: 54-245(121) (1/1)
Note that SPMEP does not have fling shot, but it does offer a wide range of very valuable modifiers, raw damage wise, the SPMEP is just a world away from the QL 200 ABC-C01
Requirements to equip
SPMEP: 1000 pistol, TL6
ABC-C01: 1003 pistol, 502 fling
I was going to compare SOL's and reign/pain of patricia, kyr'ozch pistol and Peregrine and even maw of the abyss but I'm tired of looking at stuff.
Basically, I think the damage range on this pistol are too low to compare with other pistols that have significantly lower reqs with (in some cases) more specials (burst), higher crit damage (all pistols I compared), and just generally a better damage range.
A low min damage pistol is only really usable if the max damage is high enough to offset the predominantly low damage hits you'd get when confronted by random damage rolls which are always offset by AC's. But, making a weapon with low min damage and medium low max damage essentially relegates it obsolete.
I'd say damage could be boosted on the ABC-C01 by 50% across the board to give it a chance to compare with other weapons.
ABC-C01 specific QL's with 50% boost:
QL 80: 35-160(76)
QL100: 42-195(93)
QL 200: 81-367(181)
QL 300: 120-540(270) <-- notably, I'm not really sure who would be using this, like a froob is unlikely to get 1500 pistol skill (yes no?), and for Paid players, there are just simply better weapons available for the skills needed to equip.