The Ignis Wraith, and its range - what was it, and what is it now?

[Khift]

The patch notes claim that the Ignis Wraith's range was buffed from 20m to 27m.

The wiki, for a time, claimed the Ignis Wraith was a 40m range weapon.

Some people said that their personal experience backed the wiki's claim. Others, like mine, backed the patch note's claim. So, I did some digging, and here's what I found:

 

First I found that the weapon was, definitively, at some point, a 40m range weapon:

 

That video is dated to March 2017, around when the weapon was first introduced. However, there's clearly some glitchiness there - Sinister Reach, for example, had its range boost applied more than twice, for no explainable reason.

 

The wiki, however, now claims the following:

Quote

The weapon, along with the Ignis, has an additional 5m hemispherical AoE that appears at 40m (that is, a 5-meter spherical AoE centered at 40m with the far half cut off). This was fixed in an undocumented change sometime around Update 20.4.

 

Update 20.4 would place this change around May 2017. I do not know who put this edit in, but it appears to be backed up by comments on the wiki:

 

This certainly lines up with the Wiki's claim, and explains why I never felt like the weapon was 40m range when I personally used it. I was not able to find any mention of the Ignis Wraith's range being changed, either by DE or by any posters, on any thread in the Build Notes forum, however.

 

As for now, despite the patch notes saying it has a 27m range, I am able to consistently hit enemies at 30m:

That punchthrough there is with just a regular Shred, as well, FYI.

 

 

So, long story short, the Ignis Wraith definitively did, at some point, have a 40m range. However, that got changed some time in 2017, and it had a 25m range after that - and now its range is 30m, and 42m with Sinister Reach.

That should just about wrap this mystery up for people.

[Fishyflakes]

• Thanks for this informative post!

[DawnFalcon]

It's 27m stick, then a 3m ball on the end of that.

It is a nerf, as the stick's thinner and the ball's smaller (from 5m). But... it feels okay to me for Saryn gas build.  (Of course, I'm going for the CC/AoE Amphis..)

Edited February 22, 2018 by DawnFalcon

[fatpig84]

Well you get crit rate and crit damage buff in return.
It is NOT too bad actually since now it can crit semi consistently now.....

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

K 

[SneakyErvin]

The crit stats alone makes up for the slight decrease in range, aswell as the damage changed from x/sec to an actual fire rate. Note also that Ignis benefits from multishot mods now, which it didnt do previously due to the /sec mechanic. You can now effectivly and reliably make use of hunter's munitions due to the crit increase aswell as split chamber and vigilant armaments thanks to the sync with multishot. Ontop of that it now has a reliable status chance that isnt gimped to 1/sec.

I'll gladly take these things instead of slightly more range and innate environmental punch through. It still has punch through where it matters i.e against mobs. So it is kinda like a mix of a shotty and an assault rifle now, just alot less aiming involved.