I never changed my position. What does this have to with anything? I'm the one saying that targets should be engaged when they are within effective range. This also doesn't relate to our argument, since the playstyle you suggest does operate within said range. Yes, the nerf is nothing major. It is just enough to make Serpent's range shorter than VX6-7's. I've read your breakdown, and you seem to be making my case for me: VX6-7 is more precise than the Serpent, and that's it. I don't know where you get the idea of "ADS weapon", "pray and spray" weapon. Absolutely all weapons in PS2 have effective hip fire range and effective ADS range. Serpent's are a tad shorter than VX6-7's, that's all. A few additional meters of the zone where you really should ADS instead of hip firing. A few additional meters you have to close in before firing. If you operate within those effective ranges, you will never have to "pray and spray". You seem to be aware of the PU2 nerf, so I don't get how can you still push with this "Serpent has better ADS precision that VX6-7" outdated attitude.
Read my breakdown, vx6-7 has a far higher vertical recoil making ADS difficult. The serpents horizontal recoil is mitigated by the grip. Try the grip for yourself. Without the horizontal, the gun handles range very well, and its insane ROF means it can drop targets up to 50 meters no problem. Your telling me that beyond 20 meters a serpent needs to use a pistol and thats just insane. You changed your position because I called you out, and now your no longer specifying ranges whatsoever. Your response was to me stating that the serpent is most effective between 20-30 meters to which you responded that people would be better off with a pistol. Considering your argument why would you use a laser sight on a serpent over a vx6-7? The vx6-7 has no horizontal recoil, better COF, and a faster reload time. I'm getting spray and pray because a serpent down the hip is about spitting many bullets at the target. Even with the laser sight, its just not incredibly accurate. ITs not nessesarily a bad thing, but its not a precision hipfire weapon. Refer to WREls video, because as you said the changes were very minor, and WREL's video breaks down the weapons very well, and he actually suggested the serpent get nerfed in the video because it was too good ADS. I'm getting ADS weapon because it has a very low vertical recoil, reduced first shot recoil by VS standards, and a High ROF. The only flaw in its accuracy is mitigated by the very upgrade your advocating against.
I was curious about the Serpent vs VX6-7 after reading all of these walls of text in this thread, so i tried both of them for about a hour in the VR. As someone who Auraxed the Eidolon and almost the Solstice SF (31 left), i'm rather used to lower first shot multiplier carbines/rifles so both of them felt like a serious kick in the nuts while being used ADS. Both suffer from a random pull into the left (Serpent) or the right (VX6-7) direction after the first bullet, leading to a couple of missed bullets before you can adjust your aim, and possibly making you loose a critical fraction of a second in a 1 on 1 fight at beyond 20 meters range. With Foregrips, the VX6-7 however pulls far less to the right than the Serpent to the left after the first bullet and is more forced to go with vertical recoil after the first shot. Both guns can still wander off the center with Foregrips if you are unlucky, but it's less likely to happen with the VX6-7 while ADS. If however the first bullet is going vertical for the Serpent, you can pull the trigger till your mag is empty and bullethose a target down up to a range of 40 meters, while the VX6-7 kicks quite hard so you have to counterpull your mouse a bit more down.
Okay, look, there's a part of player demographic that slaps forward grips on CQC weapons and tries to use them beyond their effective range. I consider this behavior foolish, because even though forward grips helps with horizontal recoil, and, possibly, recoil angle, recoil stats are still gonna be bad, and additional tier of damage drop off will make the gun weak at longer ranges. I'm not saying that using pistol at any range is better than using any CQC carbine, with any attachments. People are justifying this behavior of using a CQC Carbine + FG by saying "But it is effective because I kill people with it!" and "But forward grip really helps with horizontal recoil, look how I can kill people at range!". I respond to this statements with what should be an obvious hyperbole: imagine a player that engages enemies at long range with a pistol, while hysterically screaming "Look, this playstyle is effective because I can kill people!11". Yes, he can kill people with a pistol at almost any range. Does it make the pistol the best, or even effective, weapon for those kind of engagements? Certainly not. That is my point, and that is why I mentioned pistols at all. You took this this hyperbole personal and literal. It's just a general statement as to how I feel about forward grips on CQC carbines, because the only reason to use a forward grip on a CQC carbine is to go beyond that effective range, which I consider foolish. I'm not listing specific ranges because it's meaningless. Every player has it's own ways of compensating for recoil, which results in completely different effective engagement ranges. If a player hones and develops his recoil compensating skills, he can almost always use the gun to its full potential, and effectively engage targets at X meters. Mediocre player that barely pulls his mouse down will have to suffice for Y engagement range or just waste a lot of bullets. No two players will have same X and Y ranges, that's why talking about specific ranges is meaningless. You don't know exactly how much vertical recoil serpent does, because weapons stats have not been datamined since before PU2, and the changelog doesn't have any specifics. I will not go into details, but my research, which I just did, shows that Serpent has vertical recoil of 0.24, and VX6-7 has 18% more recoil per second than the Serpent. I guess 18% difference in recoil is a justification enough for some people, and in case of horrid recoil angles these both weapons have, having less vertical recoil can actually amount to something at extreme ranges. A side-by-side video to demonstrate. Bursts of 10 rounds. (video will probably be encoding for several hours before HD is available) As for the grip efficiency, VX6-7 with forward grip will be better at range than the Serpent with grip, due to inherently better (but still bad) horizontal recoil. I doubt that very much. At 50 meters Serpent requires 10 bullets to kill a player. For DPS. I'd have to be a bit closer to the enemy, but in terms for raw killing potential - Serpent has more. Like I said, VX6-7 vs Serpent are DPS vs Precision. What? Both these guns have a lot of horizontal recoil, but Serpent has more, which makes it less effective at range. You're blowing the difference between them way out of proportion. This picture demonstrates the hip fire CoF differences between them with ALS installed. Purple circle is VX6-7, red circle is Serpent.The difference between them is just that - statistical. VX6-7 has the tiniest hip fire CoF, Serpent has *just* tiny. Stop referring to Wrel, I respect him and watch all of his videos. That particular review is very thorough and accurate, but for the purposes of this discussion it is outdated. As for the Pulsar C - while it does have 36% more vertical recoil per second, it is very constant and predictable, and pulls straight up, no recoil angle, so a higher degree of the Pulsar C's recoil is "compensatable".
Let your gameplay dictate which weapon you purchase. 1. Where do you normally fight? Are you tower "stomping," Fighting in Biolabs, or flanking with a Light Assault aggressively --- If so the Serpent/Vx6-7 is for you. I prefer the Vx6-7 due to the increased accuracy due to slower fire rate (ADS is easier for me also, even if stats says other wise.) DPS is nice, but if you hate the left pull, despise the massive recoil management, the serpent is not for you. Granted the VX6-7 suffers from more of the same problems, but not as bad. However if you are the type that picks you spots, fights on your terms and slowly advances, the Pulsar C is preferred, its excellent when you are camping a spot where enemies are advancing on you from range where you can ping headshot then take cover. Flanking as a LA then attacking from 20-50 meters is the preferred range. Took long dont read. Aggressive tower stomping type, VX6-7/serpent , semi reserve Pulsar C with 2x scope no silencer.
Serpent unless you want to go for mid-long range with a weaker version of NC guns. Pulsar C is a bad burst fire gun due its unusually poor recoil recovery for its damage tier.
Yes, it's not the recoil, it's the recoil recovery(AKA recoil decrease, or center speed). Basically, how quickly a gun returns to the state at which you started firing from- which for obvious reasons is good if firing in bursts rather than holding down fire, as most mid-long range guns should be fired when used at those distances. Different guns have different values for this, but almost all carbines have 18(higher being better, lower worse). The only two that have lower are the Pulsar C and the rather unique AC-X11(and for good reason in that case considering the 200 damage per bullet). I do significantly better with a Mercenary or Gauss Compact S on my NC character than I will with a Pulsar C on my VS due to this stat inconsistency. Granted, the Pulsar C has the advanced grip access, but it's definitely not worth dealing with its bad recoil recovery.
Pulsar C is a fine weapon. It makes up for the lack of center speed with another trait, that being .4 (as opposed to the GCS' .45) recoil with a comp (as opposed to the mercenary going slick) That brings it down to .35 recoil, like a razor, but you trade velocity and center speed for no angle, and an AFG, and better DPS. These traits make it less powerful at range, but better as you move in. as for the serpent and vx6-7. I stopped using both after I got aurax. CQC is determined more by who shoots first, cover, movement, etc, than the DPS of your gun. The TTK difference between a serpent and pulsar C is less than a tenth of a second, and that's with no headshots. Once you throw those in, not only is the pulsar much more viable, but 167 damage+ weapons can actually cause meaningful levels of flinch, where the weaker weapons still don't do enough. The only real argument for CQC weapons is SPA centered, as engagements between 10-15m are surprisingly common in some bases.
What about ALS? It dramatically increases hip fire accuracy, scoring multiple headshots while firing from the hip (i.e. not encumbering yourself with ADSing) is much easier with them, and possible from further range.
Lol, just because it's a starter weapon doesn't mean it's a lousy weapon. Far from it. If I go into battle not knowing what to expect, I would always go for the Soltice. You really can't go wrong with it.. Unless you wish to spend the whole day inside buildings, then there's nothing wrong with the Serpent either... Seriously, if my life depends on it, I would go for the Soltice VE3. Get the 2x reflex, suppressor, forward grip and it will be one of the easiest gun to use in the game, if not the easiest..
Well, Iridar, I am of the opinion that regular laser sight is plenty enough for the ranges where one usually hip fires. I feel that extending hip fire out even further does not offer a big benefit past a certain point, not only that but ALS is only a bit tighter than regular. I do suppose though, that the extra tightness can make up for any misses that occur without the player having to come off the trigger, but it's pretty meh for me. still cant quote people unless im on my phone... this forum sucks!
Yeah, you have a point. Until recently I've used only ALS, and didn't use regular LS on carbines. But recently I've returned to TRAC 5 to auraxium it, which I abandoned almost a year ago without any attachments, and I was surprised how good it hip fires with regular LS. To be honest, I didn't notice any functional difference to the Jaguar in that regard.
I believe the reason for that is simple: Although the hipfire cone is fairly large, there is probably a statistical bias in the "random" nature of the COF system toward the center point. That is, I think shots are slightly more likely to be fired closer to the center of the crosshair than toward the periphery, but that chance probably increases as bloom does. There does come a point where enough shots are going astray that hipfire is wholly unreliable in terms of TTK, but that point is one that is not frequently reached by carbines. This is part of my hypothesis for why Burst variants are better at hipfiring than their COFs might indicate, even relative to the stock models: The nature of the burst is working to reset the COF bias and trending more shots toward the center than it otherwise would. At any rate, I'm relatively sure that there isn't an equal-odds chance of any given pixel within the COF being chosen as the place where the shot goes. Were that the case it ought to be possible to fire an LMG from the hip at a moderately distant unmoving target in VR and never actually hit them at a reasonably high odds, but in my experience that isn't how it goes and there will always be shots that bias toward the center and score occasional hits. Corezer's logic is one reason why I run a Grip on the Jaguar and Lynx. I find their hipfire is perfectly acceptable without ALS. I also hipfire the gripped Pulsar C on occasion and really it does that just fine. About the only gun I really like the LS on is the AC-X11, and only because it's over-penalized at hipfire compared to other carbines. With the Solstice I usually run a Grip and I've never had issues hipfiring it. I've heard arguments that go either way for the NS-11C though.
Honestly saying that the default weapons are good on any faction is just bullocks. Cause honestly if the Serpent, Jag, GD-7F were the default weapons people would still wanna buy something new cause of them being default weapons. :S Just saying that the Solstice, Trac 5 n the Merc are all good all rounders. Trac 5 a bit better then the other two default weapons in CQC due to higher rate of fire n more ammo, but that's my opinion.
Serpent is a nice bullet hose, but for some reason I find myself not exercising proper fire control at medium range not getting into close range combat that much and when I did get close I still found a lot of shots going nowhere when the enemy runs around and strafes crazily. And of course the UBGL nerf, so my engi is back to Pulsar C. It is a fun gun to shoot. Very satisfying when I kill heavies with it for some reason. My LA now runs a tricked out PDW, mixed results, not sure I'll keep it.
