NS-357 IA is a meme pistol? & other pistol balances.

I mean I'll try Beamer/Manticore more. Tho I do wish vs had a new pistol. Or new faction pistols for everyone. For sure the 357 IA, my opinion is that its a bad pistol, still stands.

Even if I get good with vs pistols, they'll never be pistols a majority of new players or medium level players seem to enjoy. While some other pistols seem good all around. Or better from the get go.

I have been playing beamer and manticore strictly for directive grinding. They where tough at first, but there is a beautiful skill in using them guns. And i find them very effective now as a side arm. I prob wouldnt want to main any pistol though, except for commisioner.

When you are using stalker cloaker, you are meant to make up the lack of firepower with your element of surprise and positioning. Those guns wont win in a heads up 1 v 1. But shud be good if you can hit them from the side, of course if you have good aiming to back it up.

Stalker cloak is more about selecting good targets, and using your ability rather than your gun. Thats where your k/d comes down too. equip sprint sut and sensor shield and you should be good.

100% need sensor shield playing this style, or they will see your dot and turn around.

Ive got 191 kills with beamer and kdr of 0.6. Prob alot better now since im overall a better player.
Ive got 162 kills with manticorE and 0.84 kdr. And i made that switch recently so thats why its a higher KDR
ive got 549 kills with commisioner with kdr 0.6. and i havent used that gun for a longer time than the last two.

Sorry for the low kill counts, i tried maining a pistol and it was torture, i only use them as side arms now to finish directives. Would main a commissioner though, super effective.

Hunter with smg is for good players.

Somewhere here I read the Yawara is supposed to be way better compared to the NS-357 IA.

Good joke.

Dude I've pistol mained as heavy to unlock all the directive sidearms. Pistols will win 1v1s as they have much faster ttk than primaries. They are only limited by magazine size and ammo reserves.

Pistols are already a little too strong for the role they're meant to fill. Sure, the es ones are more in line, but they're still extremely powerful for what they should be.

No offense but if you're not aiming properly ofc they won't be effective. I'd say it's an issue with the player and not the weapon. When I pistol main it's extremely fun and I often perform better with them than primaries. You can even calculate it statistically, pistols are better in 1v1s than primaries.

And yeah lol the yawara takes away one of the best features about the pilot: it's 1hk potential. Sure it's still decent but the NS-357 IA is a much better option lol.

Yuwara goes on killing sprees, shooting people from top of Nasons wall or bridges even. The NS-357 IA is just a weaker underboss, the underboss is already a slightly weaker commissioner.... The NS 357 uses knife range, yet kills x10 times slower. Its the worst pistol I've ever seen. Its ammo limit is also bad. I may as well be using the candy cannon or the snow gun.

I'd say the blackhand is more towards fine, being more ranged with less shots.

If we're going with 'recoil' as a nerf it'd get less due to it's more range focus.

It fits the 'emergency strong weapon' these pistols tend to think they are, you could also change projectile size of things if need be, i dont think much guns use that for balancing.

But then we get into things like 'its easy to get one kill and these clean up one kill' arguments since this isn't a 1v1 based game, but i still think the lack of recoil is sorta poopy.

they all just hit way too hard, they're supposed to be sidearms, blackhand is a fully-fledged semi-auto sniper with 2 shot kills.

I guess it wouldn't matter that much if they didn't have a 2x hs multiplier. Like the rate of fire would balance out the fairly high damage if it didn't 1-2hk to the head.

Honestly i dont want them nerfed that bad, they just need to be harder to use with maybe a small rof nerf, anything to make the ttk only minimally increased so you can actually directly fight that better, because it's already harder and has a upper cap on it.

Or just simply reduce the hs multiplier on them!

They could make them single action revolvers for that, meaning that the hammer has to be cocked manually

I personally don't go on killing sprees with blackhand, if you do it'd be slow. As that gun requires a lot of patience. Also you usually get spotted after the 1st kill. Actually I dueled a engi, as blackhand verse his Aura'x scout rifle, the nc 1. His scout rifle was 2 times more OP than the blackhand was. I hit him with 3 shots, 1 being a headshot or 2, idk.. maybe the implant survives the 2nd headshot. Either way his scout rifle was x2 more op. He wasn't even invis.

Most people keep saying " pistols ", when they actually just mean " commissioner ". As I want most of these guns buffed, not nerfed. NS 357 AI = 30% buff. VS pistols = 15% buff.

Does Pilot or Underboss need a nerf, naw. Or any mid tier pistols, they are fine. So that leaves Commissioner. The only thing commissioner needs, is 20% less headshot dps, to not 1 hit kill anyone, ever. Other than that, most pistols are fine. & Messing with them, also messes with the pistol ASP skill, to dual wield pistols. Which already is kinda pointless, since my stalker can't use that asp spec anyways (So why not just run smg?).

Even at 2m the gun does not reliably 1-shot on headshot. You have to literally be standing right next to the person for it to reliably 1-shot on headshot. And they probably have to be standing still for it to be reliable even then. At 20m the gun is essentially useless on anyone who isn't AFK. At 10m, if you miss one shot you're basically SoL because you're then forced into a reload or switching gun/knifing to finish the kill.

For almost all practical purposes, the IA is just a dog**** weapon and the one-hit potential is absolutely a meme. And the pistol is a complete joke if you compare it to like a commissioner, blackhand, or underdog. I don't have experience with other pistols to compare it to those, though. It's worse even than the beamer, but I never used the beamer much once I got another pistol because it feels incredibly underwhelming relatively.

I think the pellet spread should be a little tighter so that it can RELIABLY one-shot headshot at 2-3, maybe even 4, meters. And pistols like the commissioner and blackhand should probably be nerfed a little.

well these weps were designed to be lottery alert rewards. They couldn't be made good in a sense cuz then the 99.9% of players that didn't get it would complain about how unfair that was.

Now that it's accessible to everyone maybe a buff is justified. Honestly the IA is fine where it is, I don't know what your issue is but I've never really had a problem with that pistol, in fact I auraxed it 2h faster than the blackhand.

The high damage is balanced by making the pistol a bit harder to use, especially at range, but it's not impossible to get kills at range and it works really well in cqc anyways.

The fact it's so unforgiving to use makes it a high risk/high reward weapon. Sure the minimum hs range could be double, I wouldn't be against it. But reduce the already tiny cof? Lol no way dude. Nah the only change that could be justified is either a slight buff in min damage range, or an extra round in the mag or faster reload. Any more than that would make the weapon too good and remove it's niche.

It's already a good pistol, all I'm gonna say is it's more oriented to skilled players.

This is the only thing I can really agree with you on. And this is what makes the pistol ridiculous, because there are so many other pistols that are low risk/high reward.

Actually, no, I can't even agree with that. Because the gun isn't even high reward. Even if you're in a rare meme situation where you can get the 1-shot headshot, you can easily in that situation just get a follow-up shot with a commissioner or underdog, while not being subject to all the gross limitations the IA has.

The blackhand is super strong, but it takes aim. Maybe you just couldn't aurax it faster because it's a pistol more oriented to skilled players.

touche