The Khvostov is a wonderful piece of Russian engineering, and I frequently use it in the Crucible to amuse myself. Yesterday, as the Iron Banner was coming to a close, I decided to give old Khvostov a try. As a lvl 28, I was doing ~37 critical damage per shot to another player who kept trying to take B flag on Twilight Gap. This was with a fully upgraded Shadow Price at 300 attack. Assaulting the same player with a 20 attack rifle resulted in a withering 16 damage per crit shot. This may not seem like much, but look at it like this: 18 ascendant energy and lord knows how many helium filaments for 280 attack gets you.... 21 extra damage per shot, or 2.3x the power. This is very interesting, as it shows us that the value of equipment doesn't matter that much. One of the main complaints about the previous IB was the lack of difference between levels, which most people were satisfied with in round 2. What these stats tell me is the attack power of a weapon has a very small effect in damage scaling compared to level. An unupgraded legendary coming in at 248 attack should have a slight disadvantage to its fully upgraded counterpart, but it should be around 6 damage per shot. You will lose in a 1v1 against an opponent with a more upgraded weapon, but still have a good chance of winning if you aim carefully or dip and dodge. Which brings me to the title. I use the Khvostov as a way at poking fun at the stat equalization in the Crucible. The common auto rifle you get for beating the first mission can kill someone just as well as an exotic you randomly acquired/bought. In the IB, it will definitely still kill people. As in the example with a default legendary, you will lose in a straight up gun battle. However, if used in conjunction with grenades, melee, or creative use of teammates, the Khvostov will run through even level 30 opponents. This suggests two possibilities to me for damage scaling from equipment. Option 1) The damage largely depends upon the impact stat of the weapon, with the attack rating used as a scale, much like it is against AI in singleplayer. Option 2) There is a minimum allowable damage per weapon, so the Khvostov was scaled in a non-linear fashion to be able to compete. Either way, this illustrates that the upgrade status of a weapon is largely unimportant. I should add the disclaimer that I didn't have 150 marks lying around to buy a default Shadow Price that I could run comparisons on.