is there any nc weapon on the level of orion?

If you're talking about statistical sample size, then it is big enough to be worth investigating. If you're talking about size in proportion to any other LMG the Vanu are using, then the Betelgeuse users are about 2.5% of the total Vanu LMG users right now.

He is right though that cert costs should never come into any discussion regarding weapons, especially not two years after the game launched.

Also, Anchor performs better than the Orion on all BR tiers, not just the top tier.

You should be very careful while comparing the performance of Orion to Anchor, Xasapis. Orion is a stock LMG with the reputation of being good/best LMG for VS and up to 6000 unique users. Anchor is an expensive unlockable LMG with other cheaper solid alternatives available to NC and about 800 unique users. I suppose that in the user base of Orion we will find a lot of non-dedicated HA players who use the gun every now and then and pull the average performance of the gun down while the user base of Anchor has higher percentage of dedicated HA players which skews the performance to the better side. Using the Q4 metrics soften the impact of this phenomenon a bit but only so much.

It's basically the same problem which you encounter while comparing Betelgeuse with Anchor, only at the smaller scale and in the inverted direction.

Not saying that Orion is better or worse than Anchor but you really can't compare their performance stats directly to each other without keeping the mind that this is probably an apple-to-oranges comparison.

I'm unconvinced that the JH has any real advantage over the PA Shotguns, the Auto-shotguns and indeed the low spread shotguns..... except flexibility.

However you've just dismissed flexibility as an advantage by saying that NC can just use a JH (as oppose to a more flexible weapon).

Personally I think this is why the Anchor is great (and performs well), because it is a great mid-range weapon with decent (but not top class) close abilities and decent longer range ones too..... which is to say it is actually very flexible across the range most PS2 infantry combat takes place; mid range (not close or indeed long range) - it is also a weapon with a relatively high skill cap, it gets better and better the better you get with it, more so than the NC6 SAW IMO which is the LMG that usually gets that claim.




I'm very unconvinced about NC AI MAXs though, 0.3 seconds TTK difference is not "significantly burstier", I would bet that if we had SOEs statistics we'd see that NC AI MAXs are only pulled in very specific circumstances compared to VS and TR AI MAXs.

You can if you are looking at top BR tiers. And the situation doesn't change in any tier really. People using the Anchor are doing a lot better than people using the Orion, whether they are BR1 or BR100. Here's something that might surprise people (always looking at BR75+):


7253 - T9 CARV-S | Q4 KPU | Daily Average: 24.13
80 - Orion VS54 | Q4 KPU | Daily Average: 21.40
7236 - LA1 Anchor | Q4 KPU | Daily Average: 30.31

Since the Carv is basically an Orion without 0.75 ADS movement, but with 50 extra bullets, it seems that in the highest tier, more bullets are more important than 0.75 ADS. This is especially true with the Betelgeuse, which under certain, not hard to achieve, conditions, you don't need to reload at all. Comparing those three almost identical weapons, it seems that the factor that decides the performance is the magazine size.

Still, Anchor is better than both the Carv and Orion and only gets beaten by Betelgeuse.

Is there anywhere to get the number of unique users for Q4 players?

NC MAXes are pulled the most followed by the VS and then TR.

A TTK difference of 0.3 is a huge deal, as the shotguns kill faster than a Human can react (~0.15 s at best) whereas the other factions have literally quadruple the TTK (0.4+ s, double human reaction time)

The TTK is the difference between turning a corner and facing a guy with a carbine or facing two guys with shotguns.

I added the amount of MAXes pulled with different weapons per faction. Lets make the NC the measure under which we'll compare the other two factions:

• AV: VS pull 20% less and TR 9% less than NC
• AA: VS pull 7% more and TR 17% less than NC
• AI: VS pull 15% more and TR 2% more than NC
• Total numbers: VS pull 5% less and TR 3% less than NC

Xasapis, BR75+ only means that the players captured in the metric have battle rank of 75 or higher nothing else. Well, in general you can say that BR75+ are more skillful than BR1-74 so you use this data to get a weapon performance without the impact of the "noob" factor.

However, BR75+ doesn't correct anything if the user base or usage scenario of the weapons are different. And especially at this time point of the game you can't simply claim that BR75+ are in general more skillful than BR74 to the same extent across different weapons. Easy example: I am BR 8x at my main and I played HA for 5% of my gaming time and I sucked pretty hard doing this. Because I am NC I use mostly Jackhammer/EM6 (fun/cheap) if I have to play Heavy so the performance of Anchor is not affected by my heavenly skill. Would I main VS I surely would use Orion... and tadaa! the Orion would perform worse in general.

Again, there is a reason to assume that Anchor used mostly by dedicated HA players while Orion is nor or not to such extent. So the performance of the weapons is probably skewed due to different player base and can't/shouldn't be compared directly to each other.

Exactly like it's the case with Betelgeuse, a weapon which is probably to almost 100% used by dedicated and extremely skillful HA players. You just can't compare it's performance to any other free purchasable LMG in the game.

Skill level is is not something critical, when I look at stats. After all, we want to see how the weapons perform in real time conditions by people of all skill ranges. By eliminating the early BR, we simply eliminate all those people who:

• Are clueless about the game and thus die from silly reasons
• People who can't afford to buy any gun they please (and cert the class they play to its fullest potential).

As for whether one weapon is used by all rounders or people who specialise, is it that important? What's important is that BR75+ should have enough certs to fully equip any class he is playing. Beyond that, a good weapon might perform even better in the hands of somebody that plays with nothing else but it. Still, and unless we can somehow prove that one faction has more specialized players than the other, I believe it's safe to compare those guys by their merits alone.

You can't ignore the cost of the Anchor compared to the Orion because it is a huge difference. There are people in my outfit for example who are level 100 and almost never play HA, they don't have the anchor, and have no real intention of getting one for the moment.

The people buying the anchor are the ones who have a fair amount of dedication to the HA class, regardless of level, I'm not claiming the Anchor is worse than the Orion, but you can't ignore that the cost does have an impact on the performance metrics, there are far fewer people using the Anchor, at all levels, from 1 to 100, than there are the Orion, and most of those using it are going to be those who invest more time and effort into the NC HA, that will skew things.

It's all but impossible to compare the two becuase of this beyond just the stats.

Personally I think the Anchor is a decent competitor for the Orion, but ultimatly the Orion is going to be better for the less experience player, their is less recoil that player has to control (not the same as the jiggle that the player can't control) and the higher Rof makes missing a bit more forgiving.

Gauss Saw is better than the Orion in virtually every respect. As somone who's played Vanu up to BR100 I would take the Gauss Saw as a vanu weapon right now.

GD-22s isn't bad either.

Every time I see an Orion post I just know it's going to be by people who have dabbled with VS guns at the most, or maybe just got killed a lot by Orions. Anyone who has used enough of them for long enough will know that the Orion is pretty average. The SVA-88 is an all round better gun, and in my opinion the Flare and Polaris and as good for differing reasons.

The only real outstanding feature about the Orion is that it is the starting weapon. If people’s complaint was that it should not be the starting LMG then I might agree. The Pulsar LSW would make more sense as the default Vanu LMG. It's ok, but nothing more than ok.

As for the Betelgeuse being statistically the best, well gosh. It's an Orion being used by people who have 5800+ kills with Vanu LMGs. The only way it would not be the best performing Vanu LMG is if it was based on a Ursa.

By this logic you also should directly compare the Betelgeuse and Anchor. And I don't see how such comparisons can tell us something interesting about the respective weapons what would be also relevant for the judgement of their performance .

Question for you.

Does the cost of something alter its recoil pattern? How much damage it does? It's magazine size?

How is cost in any way relevant to how balanced something is? Excluding accommodation of new players of course, it's not. Price has absolutely no bearing

It's like saying you can't compare the Terminus to the Cycler because the Terminus is 1000 certs and the Cycler is free; it's ridiculous. On that note, why is the Vanu's only top-tier AR 1000 certs? It's almost like it's compensation for the NC having the Anchor at 1000, or the TR with the Lynx at 1000.

In that same vein, it's impossible to compare any 1000 cert weapons with cheaper guns, which is patently false.

Obviously the fact everyone has access to the Orion will drag it down compared to the expensive Anchor, but at BR's of 75+ (Hundreds of hours of playtime) the user will be proficient with weapons in general even if they are not using it to the utmost. While the results may be skewed, it gives a rough impression of weapon performance.

Of course this is assuming KPU is a good metric to measure with when it's horrible.

You can.

The Carnage AR is basically the Orion for NC medics.

There's no NC LMG like the Orion, though.

Link them.

Even if this is true, this is what we call "anecdote" and "circumstantial evidence" . lol

Regardless, it's irrelevant unless presented alongside hundreds or thousands of data points pointing in the same direction, which is not the case. Different players play the different factions to varying degrees of skill based on their personal preferences. I could name five guys right now who main VS but have an alt that has superior stats (including myself). That would not demonstrate the other faction is superior.

There are some thinking to be made if you consider that the Orion, Carv and Betelgeuse is pretty much the same gun in terms of characteristics, yet the Betelgeuse is the king in performance, followed by Carv (recent change) and Orion coming up last. One could say that magazine capacity has become the paramount characteristic that separates now these three weapons. However, that does not explain why Anchor beats both Orion and Carv, but won't beat Betelgeuse, also considering that:

• Both Orion and Anchor got the same amount of bullets, Anchor doesn't have 0.75 ADS, but it's still better
• Carv has more bullets than Anchor, but the extra sustained damage is not enough
• Betelgeuse has even more bullets than the Carv, or any other LMG (under certain relatively easily achievable conditions). On the other hand, Betelgeuse is pretty much a stock Orion, so it shouldn't beat Anchor. Something else is in play there.

So yea, I can compare pretty much anything. All I have to do is to give the reasoning between the comparison. Take for example ESF AI noseguns. One is a shotgun, the other is a minigun and the last one is a fast grenade launcher, yet people have no issues comparing these three totally different weapons.