I have used all 3 BRs to great effect. They are all very worth using if you can aim well enough for consistent head shots.
I lol'd when I read this. "Welcome to PS2...!" BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM PLEASE tell me I got you w/ the Eidolon! Srsly, I'm glad to find another Battle rifle convert! I used to main Engie w/ Eidolon + AV MANA and it was a blast! But then they nerfed Nanoweave so it no longer protected the head and snipers suddenly were everywhere. So I switched to HA for the Resist Shield OHK protection. Oh, also, your contribution to my kill count is appreciated... Yes I agree. I'm constantly running out of Eidolon ammo when I'm HA. They are underrated in that most people find them to be either a limited niche weapon with little purpose, or completely worthless. Very few people are actually able to make them work effectively. But even if you and I might find them serivceable, the vast majority of players won't touch them. They either dropped them during a VR/Trial session or after only a couple hundred kills, or they used them only long enough to Aurax them and then never picked them up again. All of the main metrics we have to measure weapons' performance indicate they are currently UP, and my own experience aggrees with this. Overall Battle Rifles have the worst KPU, KPH, Q4 KPU & KPH, KDR, TTK, and DPS of any primary weapon in the game (except the 3 starter carbines, whose KDR/KPH are barely lower due to new player bias skewing the numbers). Here are some graphs comparing the Nyx, Eidolon (the best performing Battle Rifle), and Solstice Burst, to give you an idea how Battle Rifles perform against Semi-Auto Scouts, which are similar in function; and burst carbines, which most players seem to agree are severely underperforming. On every single graph the Eidolon is the worst of the 3. Every. Single. One. Q4 KPH http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=q4kph&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 Q4 KPU http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=q4kpu&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 KPU http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kpu&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 KPH http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kpu&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 BR100 KPU http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=br100kpu&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 BR100 KPH http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=br100kpu&weapon1=26007&weapon2=26008&weapon3=7212 At the very least BRs need their recoil angle removed. On top of that, IMO either a ROF or damage buff is also in order. I'd take either a ROF increase up to the ~375 RPM range, or a damage buff to 313/shot.
battle rifles would probably make more sense with a rof decrease and a damage increase. there a 2 shot headshot now, so if they max it out and keep it to a 2shot head shot it would make more sense, i ould also reduce the first shot multiplier on al semi weapons, makes no sense since there is no burst to multiply
Ha! :-D Well, we --ahem-- "met" where KOTV held a room that AOD wanted. That sentence alone probably paints a pretty accurate picture. AOD was in the room next to it; the two doorways between were happening places. It was my first weekend of PS2 (members double XP weekend), and I couldn't tell you what continent we were on, no less what base. But it was big mess of folks wearing purple and red, and there were a lot of people crammed into a small space. My Engineer had to dodge bullets just to get into that room, where I would throw down ammo and repair maxes until dying, only to repeat the process. So, no, you weren't using the Eidolon. I don't even remember (Polaris maybe??), other than it wasn't a gun I was really familiar with. I had a list of weapons to purchase for my all classes of my VS character, and what you were using was not on that list. For those few hours I was trying out both another faction (TR) and another server (Emerald). However, my main character is VS on Connery so we will not likely encounter one another much in game. But the stats on my iPhone app yesterday told me that my Engineer Score-Per-Minute is higher than that of my Medic. Wow ... two ammo boxes for the win! And one of the reasons I like the Battle Rifle is that I can use it to *shoot back* at those pesky snipers who are shooting at me. In more close-quarters situations I am now more likely to pull Medic, but in those open fields ... the BR is my favorite. Question: Is there any real benefit to equipping a Foregrip on a BR? Or is a Laser Sight simply the better choice.
Well, Foregrip reduces vertical recoil when ADS'ing, so yea... there's a benefit. unless your not ADS'ing with your BR.
Hmmm... Well, for a crazy mosh pit battle like that, if I wasn't tossing around Disco balls of Doom w/ the Lasher I was probably using the Flare w/ soft ammo and ext mags. Both are fun to use against large numbers of enemy forces in tight spaces. I guess it depends on whether I wanted to push the TR away from the point like a fire hose, or if I wanted to make sure I actually killed the people I was shooting at. I tend to switch back an forth. Yep, Battle Rifles are pretty much your best bet when going up against enemy snipers. You probably won't kill a decent sniper who's aware of your presence. But if you force them to relocate or at least keep their heads down while friendly forces cross an open expanse, you've still done your job. Yes, the foregrip reduces the Horizontal Recoil, Horizontal Recoil Tolerance, and Recoil Angle, all of which are just average on Battle Rifles. By far the biggest benefit IMO is the recoil angle reduction. With the foregrip it kicks almost straight up. All 3 benefits though contribute to letting you maintain accuracy on any target while firing at high speed. Basically you can spam at almost max ROF and still hit targets out to ~100m. At long range you often don't have to wait until the weapon settles each time before firing again.
I would have recognized/remembered disco balls, as I can do the same myself. The Flare does, indeed, ring a bell. So on my Battle Rifle right now I am running 4x scope with red crosshair, foregrip, HV ammo, and flash suppressor (because the drawbacks really don't apply to the BR). Does that sound about right, or is the compensator worth a look? Just today I discovered how good the compensator is on the Corvus or NS-11A.
I'd drop HV ammo, otherwise it looks good. The additional recoil of HVA necessitates that you slow your RoF slightly at long range in order to maintain accuracy, and it’s just not worth it for the velocity increase since the base velocity is already pretty good IMO (Eidolon = 570m/s base, 617m/s w/ HVA). I find I'm more accurate with a slower bullet that has less recoil. Both the compensator and flash suppressor are good attachments though. However, the Flash Suppressor will cause your CoF to bloom a bit when spamming shots, so like HVA, using one will limit how fast you can accurately fire at long range. You won’t notice it if you use the “fire, settle, fire, settle” technique, but you might find it confining on a BR after you've used it for a while and get good at accurate spammage. It really comes down to what range you expect to engage targets at. I'll use a compensator when I know my distance to my targets will be >100m. Otherwise I stick to either nothing on the barrel, or the Flash Suppressor if it's dark outside. I'd also consider getting a Laser too for those times where you want to use a Battle Rilfe at <50m. Wihtin that range the benefits of a foregrip aren't really needed, and w/ a laser the hipfire accuracy goes out to ~15m since the COF settles almost completely between shots, so its hipfire ability is better than what you'd expect given the size of your reticle. Not that I'm suggesting you take it into CQC. But if you had to use it in a CQC scenario (e.g.- if an infil or LA jumps you), the laser would server you better.
All the attachments it is then. Mostly I shoot over peoples shoulders from the back row. With my Medic I am sometimes throwing revive grenades forward to the dead bodies. With my Engineer I am hanging back trying to find vehicles that need to be destroyed, giving ammo to the living, and repairing Maxes. I like shooting at people who aren't shooting back at me. :-D
battle rifles are a bad joke in this game. They expect you to land 4 shots on targets that are moving in a badly optimized and usually laggy game. Not to mention the abysmal amount of ammo they give you. They need to be revamped badly.
After playing and testing the AMR-66 a lot with different configurations and in different situations my final response is: hell yeah, you're right. Not saying it's impossible to auraxium battle rifles but one really has to be a masochist: they only perform decently at very long range due to low damage degradation and high velocity ammo. Attachments suggest BRs should be viable in mid/close quarter but that's not true: recoil is too hard to manage even without HVA e with a Compensator, while damage output can't compare with full auto weapons. Trying to use BRs at from the hip or at close quarter basically means playing with a handicap. After all statistics clearly show they are worst performing weapon among all the primary weapons of the game. As far as I see it devs should either buff damage or reduce recoil (or a mix of both things).
I use the NC 200 damage carbine. Each shot is nearly as damaging and has 500 RPM and can full auto, so no need to try and fastclick for shots, can just hold down for lots of shots or do a short burst.
Olny thing good about battle rifles is how cheep they are, at 250 certs even if you get them, not much to recoup losses,
In my opinion current battle rifles deserve a massive CoF reduction, alongside with removal or reduction of horizontal recoil plus a higher rate of fire. Expanding max damage range to around 30-50m would also make them much more viable (honestly, 8m range is a bad joke). They are doing great at long range, but are very hard to use at close range, where you have to deal with dancers, heavies and jumpers while the recoil doesn't allow you to spam your shots. And at medium range it's not that rare to be out-DPS-ed by enemy with accurate automatic weapons due to BRs low effective rate of fire. Sure, it's possible to use them successfully in CQC, but it requires lots of luck and great weapon handling (skill, whatever). Sometimes I manage to kill heavies with shields in 1vs1 engagements at close range, but it's only due to lucky 3 headshots in a row and facing either unlucky or really unskilled opponent (most of the time I get crushed even at 50-70m when I cant reach cover). When I started using Warden I expected to have something like Baur in semi-auto mode from BF 2142, which could wreck any non-sniper target with careful shooting at long range, but at the same time it was viable in CQC, and king in mid-range combat (assuming the player could land headshots easily). I accept that BRs are working different in PS2 but I can't accept that they are so weak at close-medium range. Then we could get a 3x burst + semi-auto battle rifle with lower accuracy and higher recoil, but better suited for close to medium range combat.
Maybe if you have 3,4x scope, foregrip and HVA and you sit 100 mts away from your target then yeah they're ok. Try to use them in any other scenario. Put a 2x NV scope, laser sight, a compensator, then fight against people with carbines, assault rifles or lmgs. No way to win a face to face fight. Outside the long range niche they are just bad.
You may win those fights, for the simple fact that slow manual RoF means you're more accurate at same dps. That's how i auraxed it (1x/2x/IRNV). You also should not play it without battle hardened. There's a world of difference with/without it in a crossfire. One of the major issues with the BRs, outside of the low dps and in my opinion, is the max damage distance: 8m is very insufficient, and unrewarding when you live by headshots.
