(Though MykeMichail was probably being facetious, you can blame him for the idea of this thread) Question: 200 damage per bullet!!!111 Answer: That's not a question. Question: 200 damage per bullet? Answer: Yes, but at 500RPM. Which means SAW does pretty much ideantical DPS as a 167 damage gun with 600RPM or 143 damage gun with 698RPM. No free rides. Question: SAW's recoil is heavy, but I've read forum experts say that vertical recoil is irrelevant? Answer: VS "experts" probably. EM6's recoil is heavy, SAW's recoil is insane. And saying something like "Recoil is meaningless, all you need to do is pull your mouse down" is like saying "Railgun is the easiest weapon to use in Quake, all you need is to point and click". It's technically true. But not really. Besides, vertical recoil is not the only SAW problem. Planetside 2 uses both recoil and cone of fire to measure accuracy. Question: So how good is SAW's CoF? Answer: SAW's mobile, standing, ADS CoF(so what you actually use in a firefight 90% of the time - shoot and strafe at the same time) is worst in the game. Question: Can't you alleviate it by using burst fire? Answer: No, because it's the initial CoF, not a bloom issue. It's what you get for your first bullet, and then it will only get worse with CoF bloom. Question: So how should SAW be used? Answer: Stop, crouch, turn on the shield, ADS and pray. Question: Will that make me a big, stationary, glowing target, easier to hit than a target dummy in VR Training? Answer: Yes. Question: Will that make my head a tasty, fat watermelon for all the bored infiltrators camping hills around the base? Answer: Yes. Question: I hear SAW is an automatic sniper rifle, is that true? Answer: The first shot from SAW indeed has sniper rifle accuracy. But at distances past 75 meters you do 167 damage per bullet, which means you need six bullets(without NW) to kill someone. Since you'll be firing about once every half a second at least - it's only the first bullet that gets the accuracy bonus so you have to let the SAW "cool down" between shots - that gives the enemy whooping three seconds to get his *** to cover. Three seconds assuming you hit every time. Question: So is it an automatic sniper rifle or not? Answer: No, it's a very bad semi-automatic one. Question: But I heard SAW is great with attachments, is that true? Answer: Grips were "rebalanced" and don't affect vertical recoil anymore, and NC guns in general have lowest horizontal recoil in the game, so grips basically do next to nothing for SAW now. Compensator is almost mandatory, but it will **** on your hipfire accuracy, which is already plenty bad, plus all the other penalties(doubling of the detection range). If you top it with laser sight, you will go to your regular bad hipfire accuracy you ruined with the compensator. In the end you've spent 200 certs and all you've achieved is slight decrease in vertical recoil. Question: But I used SAW and had a really nice killstreak once/but I shot people in the back and killed them/but I used SAW to kill an Engineer and it's not like my shield gives me any advantage or anything/but you don't have auraxium medal in SAW so what do you know? Answer: SAW is a gun. A gun that fires bullets, that do damage. Will it kill other players? Yes. Will it do so effectively? No. Are there many better weapons to choose from? Yes. Question: So what should I do if I'm NC HA? Answer: Buy GD-22S for 100 certs ASAP. Question: And if I want something that's like SAW but doesn't suck? Answer: EM6.
Too much dressing up, too few facts. For example you seem to ignore that recoil and bloom are per shot, which brings the recoil in line with the CARV, even if it is a bit more jittery. Or the highest damage per magazine without extended mags. Try again.
The SAW is the most frequent and most suitable weapon for spawn room warriors. ADS and crouch & lets see what idiots run in front of our spawns
I think the biggest issue I have with the SAW is that it's the stock weapon for NC heavies. It can be absolutely lethal when used by an experienced player, but compared to a well-rounded gun like the Orion, it's a terrible starter weapon for new players.
I dunno man, think about it like this. Yes, the SAW loses it's 5-bullet kill outside 10 meters (assuming no nanoweave), going to 6 bullets. However, 167-damage guns carry their max out to the same range, and also gain a bullet to kill past 10 meters. 6 bullets (7 with most nanoweave) is about 1 to 2 bursts. That's still pretty strong. There are a lot of other points I'd like to refute, but I don't want to ramble on for too long. Is the SAW a good gun? Yes, I think so, though it isn't your typical LMG and shouldn't be handled as such. Is it the best gun? Depends on what "best" means. But usually no, people are better off using something else. It's definitely not a gun for new players though, I still stand by the opinion that the SAW and SAW S should have traded places and names.
Been saying this for a while, it's a stupid starter weapon, especially when compared to the Carv and Orion, both of which are easier to control out of the box.
This is the problem. Gauss SAW is a great weapon if you know what you're doing. However, if you're just picking the game up, it's probably the worst choice for an LMG. It'd be like starting new VS players with the Ursa.
I wasn't being a smart-***. I actually liked your Q&A. I think it breaks down the NC6 pretty well. I don't know many people who continue to use the NC6 after they have a decent amount of CERT's available - its just not that good. I mainly use it when I have an opportunity to fire into big groups of bunched up enemies. These opportunities are rare.
Op is bad @nc. The recoil is easy to counter. I had no real isse adadad with it. Is it an auto sniper? Yes, if u dont suck. Is em6 better? Yes bc its better in cqc buut the saw is a winner...u just gotta have basic pc operation skills
Br37....lol And wuts br have to do with ne thing? Ive auraxium my nc6. Ive put lik 60hrs on it. ive gotten over 3.5kd with it. Yes i am here to say its a fine gun. You haters of it simply do not want to put forth the effort to use the gun well. The 200-167dmg had won me more oh **** fights then i can count. It won when i shoulda been dead. I cant find a truely bad quality in the nc6 once its certed. Recoil is easy dmg s good acc and cof bloom is fine...yeah its a winner. I beat out t9 and vs54 all the time with my nc6.
How about a BR71 NC then? The SAW is unmatched when it comes to medium to long range combat. It's also very bad at its weakness of note, which is close range. Yes you -can- spray and pray and yes those bullets will cause a lot of damage but the ludicrously long reload time and atrocious hipfire makes this weapon very unsuited for the role. It'll work, but there's much better weapons for the close range role. The SAW is not for everyone. Some people prefer weapons that are easier to control, others don't mind a heavy recoil in return for heavy punch. There is no wrong answer in this, it's all about someone's preferred shooting style. The Gauss Saw is a very powerful weapon for what it does, but it's also the most newbie unfriendly one and can sour new players to it very quickly. I know I hated it when I started out. Then I gave it another go down the road when I had more time under my belt. I'm glad I did.
No ones saying its a horrible weapon. But in terms of the amount of effort you need to put in to get a kill with it, its simply not worth using if you can switch over to something else. Its extra damage is next to meaningless as it doesn't actually reward you with a lower TTK compared to faster firing, lower damage weapons, and its extra accuracy is meaningless beyond the first shot. Its high recoil makes it much more difficult to control over range, and its horrible hip cone of fire make it not worth using in CQC. This all adds up to a weapon with limited applications, which doesn't really excel at the things its best at, but is horrendous for the things its worst at.
I feel the same. I hate the SAW and I've never understood the high praise it gets. Unfortunately, the rest of the NC LMG arsenal is equally abysmal. There are a few decent mid range options such as the Anchor, but we have nothing that can touch the Orion, or even the MSR-W. The EM1, our best CQC option, is a joke that offers nothing but a high magazine count and a fast reload. I enjoy playing my HA because of the Phoenix, but I constantly feel out-gunned.
The Gauss SAW scales highly with it's user's skill, beginners with the weapon won't see what it's capable of until you invest the proper time into it. To compete in CQC with any weapon above 143 damage and RPM lower than 698, you have to aim for the head.
I hate when people talk like this. I can't help but assume they're just tooting their own horn when they claim something simply requires "skill" to be good. What kind of skill? What exactly is so unique or hard to grasp about the SAW that it requires hours of play and thousands of kills for it to metamorphosis into the shining beacon of godliness that people claim it to be? Does it just make you feel good about yourself that you've ground away thousands of kills with an overrated weapon that is obviously difficult to use? I'm betting so. In reality, it's just a slow-firing canon with a lot of recoil and miserable CoF bloom when moving, and only fit for firing stationary from a static/defensive position. Of course really good players with high mental skill that are able to confuse and outmaneuver their opponents can do well with it, but that doesn't mean it's some great weapon who's potential may only be reached by the select few chosen ones that are able to tame the beast. It's still a crappy weapon that, like the OP says, doesn't excel anywhere. The RoF, moving CoF bloom, and basically everything else about it makes it horrible in CQC, and the absurd recoil makes it trash at long range. Yes, it's accurate and powerful, so you can probably fire it semi auto at long range targets and score some kills with headshots, but a warden will do it better all day long. Want to see a good LMG, pick up an Orion.
^ Yup. Your "skill" or "experience" or other nonsense won't magically change the in-game numbers, almost all of which make SAW unsuitable for the actual in-game combat. But jitter matters. Imagine two hypothetical weapons: one has recoil of 1 and RPM of 100, and the other has recoil of 0.1 and RPM of 1000. Both have same vertical pull, but which one would make it easier to keep your sights at the enemy when firing? With the first gun you wouldn't even be seeing what you're firing at most of the time. The second one would just steadily pull upward and there would be no jitter at all. Which is possibly the most worthless statistic one can come up with for an LMG. Very likely. Unfortunately 90% of combat in PS2 is CQB-short range urban, so we'll never know, or care.
Thing is, as soon as those 143 damage, 750 rpm weapon users aim for the head too, your advantage is gone. NC6 will kill in 3 hits to the head of someone with up to level 4 NW. 3 hits will take 0.24 seconds to fire. If they have NW 4 you'll need a 4th shot ( anywhere will do) for a total TTK of 0.36 seconds. T9 Carv will kill up to NW 1 with 4 headshots and kill NW5 with 5 headshots. That's 0.24 seconds for up to NW1 and 0.32 for NW5. So against NW, 143 damage 750 RPM weapons actually will kill faster against the most heavily armored infantry in the game, but have no disadvantage against the NC6 against non-armored targets. Keep in mind that this is under 10 m before damage drop off kicks in, and this will vary over range, but at longer ranges, the chances of getting multiple consecutive headshots with the NC6 reduces dramatically.
I've looked at your stats and I can see your problem. 16% accuracy, 15% HS/K and 232 kills, Gauss SAW requires time investment and skill. You have neither currently. Vertical recoil can be controlled, only bad players complain about the Gauss SAW's recoil and the reason they don't improve is because they are too busy internally complaining of how hard it is instead of analysing where they are going wrong and making steps to improve. Already auraxiumed the Orion. Yeah because "skill" or "experience" have never changed anything in any FPS game ever. Widely known among experienced FPS players that vertical recoil can be controlled, your overblown example still suggests that the 1000 rpm weapon can still be controlled, even though it is much harder to control, with controlled vertical pulldown on the mouse while firing. Your example also suggests that the 1000 RPM weapon is the superior high skill cap weapon due to it's difficulty at controlling vertical recoil. "90% of all statistics are false." Pulling facts and numbers out of your **** without sourcing to make a vain attempt to prove that high damage, low RPM LMGs are completely useless. Yes CQC fights happen more often, but does that mean 167+ LMGs have no place or situation where they dominate or can compete in CQC with a higher skill level than your opponent? Hell no.
True but eventually a lot of people will be BR 100 or the majority will have enough certs for nanoweave 5 assuming nothing changes. The difference in headshot TTKs can be compensated by having a slightly faster reaction time while still retaining deadly mid/long range performance. True but the ability to headshot with the Orion, CARV and MSW-R takes a massive drop compared to a Gauss SAW user when shooting at 20+ metres due to large horizontal recoil amplified by the high RPM and COF/COF bloom also amplified by the high RPM.
