What About Battle Rifles?

Do you find you use these? Why or why not? Specifically these are the AMR-66, Warden, VE33 and the directive variants.

This is not a promise the team is looking at these weapons, but if they were what would you tell them?

I find the damage quite suitable, but I find it quite unusual that weapons such as the Reaper and the Tross have better first shot accuracy than the battle rifles.

I tend to use them when supporting a 12 man squad in my outfit. They're not really something to use unless you have a few other guys to help complement the shortcomings of your weapon. They've got a good niche of long range, but the first shot accuracy kinda takes away from that

First thing that pops in my head upon seeing the words battle rifle, why to get the directive ones do I need to use scout rifles. As for the battle rifle itself I use the Eidolon (well used to in the beta haven't rebought it yet) in the PS4 version and its a pretty good weapon.

I love my Warden use it all the time. It can be used for any non heavy armor duty needed. Irons and x2 for close quarters, x4 for mid range combat, x6 for long range. It takes more time to learn than most other weapons since it's not automatic and you can't cloak like an infil when using them. But I still have it as a regular for my loadouts. I don't personally think they really needs buffs just more people need to get used to them if you are looking to see them increase in popularity.

Battle rifles generally receive a bad rap from the community, but I really like them. I like all the semi-auto guns. I assume most people have a hard time with them because they're not automatic, and they give up on them before they get used to the wonders of semi-auto murder.

I enjoy the Eidolon especially. The weapon's overall accuracy and semi auto nature (and fairly tight CoF) lets you counter snipe and hold decent distance vs others as an engineer or heavy.

I think the battle rifles fit the engineer style well for the more defensive/support player. They hit hard enough to greatly assist in a fight, the effective range is good, and it allows you to be very multi role (with the AV turret equipped)

The only thing I would say in general is possibly a bit higher bullet velocity for them all and maybe trade that off with a slightly worse hipfire COF or recoil, to really hammer home the weapon being a medium/longer engagement weapon and not something to use if you plan to get into the fray but thats really focusing it down and as it stands I don't see it needing much change.

I use the warden, but only out of spite of the weapon. Its useable, sure, but far from being the ideal weapon to be using. The directive variants are a joke.

I would not mind seeing more attachments to give the rifles more flexibility. Underslung gl/smoke/sg comes to mind first. Perhaps a burst or automatic attachment with some drawbacks of some sort. Or perhaps make it really shine as a counter-sniper weapon and give it a long range darklight attachment...

I use the VE33 Eidolon with my Heavy. The Battle rifle is great for these wide open fields in Esamir, Indar and sometimes Amerish. They can hit targets much more reliable than the long range lmgs. What i don't really understand is why there is a distinction between scout rifles and battle rifles. They are nearly the same weapons in terms of dps, handling and usage. Maybe the scout rifles are a bit more orientated towards close range. Why not merging the two groups? I can't see any balance issues. The HA, medic and the engi would get some alternatives to their single BR. Infil will get a bit more diversity in it's mid/long range semi automatic arsenal. This will also resolve that stupid BR/scout directives situation.
Yeah and about the directive BRs itself: I have no char with the directive variant, but it looks like to that they are only reskins of the original BRs with the mandatory attachements already included. Would be nice to see some unique touch on them. Something that doesnt make them op, but some flavour that you are motivated to work for.

As one of the few players who owns an Eidolon and a Revenant, I find its damage model to be ever-so-slightly on the low side. I understand it's for balance, but I think it would really benefit from a small minimum damage range upgrade, maybe up to 20 meters or so. It already can take up to 8 shots or something crazy like that to kill a shielded HA, not factoring head-shots or misses. Additionally, the recoil pattern, as mentioned in an above comment, prevents the player from sampling the weapon at its maximum fire-rate, instead forcing them to let the gun settle, take aim again, and then fire once again. The auraxium variant is essentially the same as an Eidolon; I'd love to see it get an overhaul like the LMG changes such as the BG/Godsaw. Maybe an ES trait like a TRAP styled burstgun for TR, Lower fire-rate, higher damage for NC (please no under-barrel shotgun, lol) and perhaps an alternate fire for VS, maybe a 500-600 damage shot that has a cooldown or something, idk, but .75 movement would probably make everyone rage again (though I'd be totally fine with that ) . Those are just some rough ideas I threw together in a minute or so.

Altogether, I can see a few changes that would make Battle Rifles interesting to more players besides people like me:
1.) Lower first shot recoil - It's seemingly supposed to be a controllable long range weapon but the player has to pause to aim again
2.) More versatility - It could be more like the SABR with a 2-round burst with lower FSR, with slightly less damage to compensate, but it may prove too powerful in that state
3.) Longer minimum range - Giving it softpoint as an option could be an easy way to fix this, maybe the rax variant has an extended range even further to really emphasize the headhunter role I've always fantasized with these weapons. This is my favorite option and the one I'd love to see in-game

Buuuuut those are my opinions based on my total bias for Semi-autos; I'd just love to see something new for battle rifles to make them awesome again.

Make em feel more ES. Example give TR burst mode with reduced damage TRAP style and give VS charge up/uinlimited ammo. NC one should be how it is but buffed a bit.

Also the TR one reloads slower than the NC one atm even tho the rest is identical.

If I were to use a Battle Rifle I would want it on my LA, that is the only time I would touch them for the extra maneuverability

Frankly if I wanted to use a slow hard hitting weapon I would just play Infil and use the short range BASR or the close range semi sniper, the SAS and the Impetus more specifically

Battle Rifle is my go-to weapon for engineer, and I occasionally use it on HA when dealing with targets at long ranges.
I don't think it particularly sucks. If it's supposed to be weaker than scout rifles and other dedicated ranged weapon of infiltrator, then it is in a good place right now.

Battle Rifles can be made stronger by adding a full auto fire mode and higher rate of fire, or increasing damage and lower rate of fire, but that would turn it into another weapon entirely.

There's also a strong argument in favor of adding battle rifles to Light Assault class (I edited the quote):

Battle Rifles are the best weapons in the game, simply because so many bad players write them off.

I won't speak about the weapon itself cause I didn't play it so much to get a good meaning.

But as dedicated Infil, I got some concern about the directive. Could you look at it in the same time?

I tried to use the reverant and couldnt, but i enjoyed using the BR

They aint bad guns, its just people have a hard time using them and their COF cripples them

I auraxed the default one, but cant stand the directive one.

they are not bad guns, but they have some flaws, and they are very hard to use. they also suffer from "camperitis" where people will just use them as awful snipers. (using them as scout rifles with a 2x or 3.4x really makes them shine) sadly there aint much you can do about that.

First change that needs done is the VS directive one needs a forward grip, it is there visually but the benefit isnt. also removing HV from the directive ones would be grand.

now onto making them *good* with simple stat buffs

- Decrease COF and moving COF. having 'accuracy weapons' to be inaccurate is a joke. (currently the BR's have more COF than the gauss saw!)

- slight velocity increase (this would improve its lacking ranged performance and make them easier to use)

- a improvement on their damage drop off (without the HV penalty) would be excellent.

- Softpoint acess could be intresting, but isnt needed. (improve versatility)

Other potential changes

- Allow infils to acess them. sure scout rifles are better in most ways, but the nice mag size is cool, and they would benefit from the infils flanking ability.

- LA acsess might be intresting, or might be wonky. baron with slugs already works quite well, as does the pulsarC/AC11X (which outperform the BR for many players). However i understand people dont want legions of rooftop snipers.

- If possible scopes that toggle zooms would make them more versatile without buffing stats

- Removal of 6x scopes would be intresting: as it means less people would attempt to use them as a SA sniper and then complain that they dont snipe well, of course they dont, they are weak scout rifles!

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Thanks

- Fuzz

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notes on other suggestions:

- adding a automatic mode would be redundant as the pulsarC/AC11X/15M/SAW/URSA/TMG/Flare/11C/11P all fill that role very well

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My main gripe is that the guardian is in a weird spot. It just seems so incredibly stupid that to get it you have to heavily play a class that can't use it and vice versa.

As for the warden it's self I feel It needs much better accuracy, the black hand does a much better job at longer ranges that although the Warden is soooo fun to use (and it is!) it just makes more sense to have a short range primary and the Black hand then a Warden and a close range secondary.

Heck, just changing the recoil to only pull up would be awesome too.

Why do you believe this?

The role battlerifles compete for is an incredibly saturated market, where many more ideal accuracy and lower bloom weapons clutter the market, with Shorter TTK's, Less recoil, and better hipfire.

Lets look at the list of weapons that compete with battle rifles in their optimal ranges on battle rifle classes: SABR-13, ACX-11/Atross/Reaper DMR/Gauss SAW, practically EVERY 167 damage LMG, The Corvus, The T1s Cycler/T1S, Gauss Rifle, Carnage AR, Pulsar, and the T5 AMC are ones I can list without even consulting the wiki.

Ultimately, we can justify fixing the accuracy and bloom problems pretty easily while staying true to their design, but they won't really shine as long as they don't clearly outshine the competition (Which would be overkill to a destructive degree,) or develop some outside utility to battle rifles isn't within the current scope of their design.

I would like to see current BRs get damage buff to be do there roles better. But I would also like to see a BRs that keeps the current but are automatic with like 375 rpm.

Battlerifles are just plain bad, sorry.

because they are supposed to be for mid-to-long range engagements but their low (insufficient) damage, terrible bullet velocity and awful horizontal recoil make them extremely ineffective and a poor choice for any situation. any longer-range automatic weapon (Carbine, Assault Rifle or LMG) is far superior. people who like using Battlerifles just enjoy the challenge or "feeling" of a semi-auto weapon. i would pretty much argue that these people will always do better using auto weapons any time.

so that's why something needs to be done about Battlerifles. i suggest ONE of the following buffs to make them worthwhile:
1) increase the damage model: make the Battlerifles a three-shot kill (from four) at closerange and a four-shot kill (from five) at any other range
2) increase the bullet velocity by a lot! right now, the velocity is hardly higher than of comparable LMGs or auto rifles. but the Battlerifle is supposed to be good at longer ranges. it at least needs a better projectile velocity to give it an advantage compared to automatic guns
3) get rid of the bad horizontal shake. it only severely hampers the Battlerifles' performance for longer-range combat since it affects accuracy and makes consecutive shots unnecessarily difficult to do
4) alternatively, make Battlerifles empire-specific:
TR: larger magazine & selectable burst-mode, but higher horizontal recoil
NC: higher damage model, but higher vertical recoil
VS: no bullet drop, but lower velocity (stays the same or could even be augmented), alternatively a charge mode(??)