I'm having trouble understanding the point of high velocity ammunition. Now I understand the benefits it gives, increased range before your rounds do their lowest damage, and faster traveling projectiles, but it's drawback completely negates these benefits. Increased recoil. I guess it'd be useful for single firing at very long ranges, but even so, the increased recoil will force you to take longer between shots. At long ranges, I usually will aim semi-low on the target and burst about 3 shots at them. What's your take on it?
With practice, you can compensate for recoil. But you can never compensate for your opponent changing direction at range. This is where HVA can come in handy in theory. For an extreme example, try hitting moving targets at range with an SMG (low velocity), and then with an LMG (higher velocity). In practice, it does add a lot of recoil and I rarely bother to equip it myself.
If you are a skilled player you dont need advanced grip or compensator. HVA is very good for both mid-long range combat in my opinion.
HVA is a scam. The only proof of it having any effect is Wrel showing it on battle rifles where it was a little faster and SOE saying that in ~PU2 HVA on DMR will now give it 50m/s faster bullets. The change in damage falloff only works for weapons that falls 2 damage tiers which are a few of the carbines and SMGs. The gauss saw for example will kill with 5 or 6 shots so the damage falloff thing is meaningless there. I tested several guns and the supposed change to damage falloff had no effect whatsoever. STK was the same for all ranges. The velocity of the bullet seems to be fake as well. I tested on many rifles from long range, recorded and looked at the time it took from seeing muzzle flash to seeing hit marker and there was no difference. Not even for battle rifles even though Wrel somehow got it to work. HVA is BULL****.
I havnt tested it as much as Pikachu have, but from my own tests on a few TR weapons in borh VR and on indar live and i got to the same conclusion: Either HVA is bug OR the buff is so small that its more or less worthless.
You're saying contradictory things here. First, you say the damage falloff works only for weapons that fall two damage tiers, i.e. that HVA does extend the range where it drops from second to third tier, e.g. 7 to 8 shot kill, while with a weapon that only drops one damage tier it will not have any effect. Second, you say you tested several guns and didn't find any difference in shots to kill, even though you just claimed that it does have that effect with weapons that drop two damage tiers. So what are you saying, that it works, or it doesn't work? Also, it is correct that a weapon like Gauss SAW will still be 6 shot kill beyond that maximum damage range. But this doesn't mean there is no effect or that HVA is useless. It'll still take a longer distance until the weapon reaches its minimum damage. Damage dropoff will still be less sharp. It won't matter on a single full 1000 HP target that's being shot only by you and is not using any sort of regen, but Planetside 2, you may have noticed, isn't a 1v1 game where your opponent always has 1000 hp in the beginning of the fight. There are lots of other factors to consider, including splash damage (gradient), fall damage (gradient), bullets from other players' weapons, leg shots, Nanoweave and NAC, overshields, Medic tool effects, regeneration kits and implants, painfields. Also, you're not always fighting squishy infantry, sometimes you'll be damaging MAXes or light vehicles. TL;DR HVA will improve the chances of taking down the target at range (provided the slight added recoil doesn't cause you to miss where you'd otherwise hit), even if it doesn't magically make a 6 shot weapon into a 5 shot weapon.
Also, from what it's worth and from what I can tell (based on VR testing), HVA increases the minimum damage range by 10 meters considerably. Razor GD-23 kills with 7 shots up to 45 meters, 8 beyond that, but with with HVA it kills with 7 shots up to 55 meters, which is quite a nice improvement. EDIT: Scratch that. In this case, the distance for the drop from 2nd tier (>143) to 3rd tier (>125) was extended by 10 meters. The range where the 3rd tier finally reaches its minimum (normally 75 meters for the Razor) could be extended by even more than 10 meters for all I know. That's just not something you can test in VR on 1000 hp targets using one weapon. I suppose what you could do is try to hit the target with some initial damage such that upon reaching the minimum 125 damage, the target will no longer die from seven shots but will require an eighth one. 125*7 = 875, so you'd have to damage the target first to leave it with at least 876 (so it will be alive after 7x125), but not more than 882 (so it will die from 7x126). Then you could experiment with the range to find out where it requires an eighth shot and therefore reaches 125, and compare with and without HVA. I'm not gonna do it... too much of a hassle
Too many people misunderstand this or hope to simplify the numbers. Any visible amount of damage can make the difference, given the right circumstances.
I am a long range lmg gunner 4x scope (em6/tmg50/flare) i would say i am pretty awesome on that and using hva with ursa make it useless, i try ho hit every shot with bursts and with the added recoil hva gives it takes longer to kill a target. I really dont understand why hva adds more recoil, it just contradicts what its supposed to do. The only lmg i find hva good with, is sv88 and i dunno why, but its just feels that way. I have done extensive testing in the field with ursa i got several thousand with it and HVA is just bad
It barely increased bullet velocity at all, tops I would say is maybe 10%, but it does increase the amount of damage you can do at a distance by reducing fall of. It isn't worth the increased recoil in any way however. It is ammo meant to be used at long range, which makes your weapon less effective at firing at long range.
It's effectiveness depends on the weapon, your scope selection and your personal ability to handle the added vertical recoil.
I find HVA to be pretty effective, I have a horrible tendency to start a fight at the wrong distance for the weapon I'm using and while I have no quantitative data, I have plenty of qualitative information where bullet travel time is noticeably reduced, turning some guns into borderline hitscan weapons. Caveat - Until recently my experience is largely VS based, although I mostly use NS guns (for some reason). That said, the SAW with Adv Grip and HVA is still my favourite weapon in the game, and I've not played NC since just after open beta started. HVA turned it into a fearsome weapon at home pretty much anywhere (except CQC, but that's another story) and made counter-sniping a breeze, even with a 2x reflex. I should also point out I use suppressors on all my weapons, and HVA -seems- to offset the reduced velocity caused by the suppressor.
HVA is extremely useful when shooting ESFs. When you put it on a battle rifle, it becomes a sniper rifle.
Pikachu doesn't really play Planetside. He spends too much time in the VR and collecting gym badges to play live.
