By the same logic, Cyclone is in the same boat, but with 4 tiers of damage drop off, much shorter min damage range, and even slower velocity. I don't see how you can consider the 3 tiers of damage dropoff a downside of the Bandit and at the same time consider the Cyclone better.
I prefer the Bandit over the GD-7F or Cyclone. It's a very well rounded gun for close and mid range. People should take shotguns or sniper rifles if they are so damn sure fighting will be mostly in the face or long range. It also has a great selection of attachments. Anchor, Bandit and Carnage are the three NC guns I like the most.
Extended mags, have different disadvantages. Also, I usually use shotguns in places where Cyclone would outperform the Bandit. It has way too low MV and way too high damage drop off.
Yes, but at least the Cyclone wrecks at close range and doesn't take 3 seconds to reload. If I want a good close-midrange weapon I'd go with the Merc, since it's more accurate, kills faster at range and reloads quickly while performing slightly worse at CQC. Again, the one good thing about the Bandit is its ADS speed, which IMO makes it the best NC carbine for mid range dueling.However I rarely want to be duelling heavies or medics anyway. What I don't get is why the Bandit drops 3 damage tiers, while the TR equivalent, the Jaguar, only drops 2 lf I remember correctly.
It has to pay something for being the only highly mobile 167 damage non-SMG in the entire game... It doesn't pay in DPS, or in recoil, or in damage per mag, or in reload speed.. so it pays in range. I don't think it's too much of a problem that it drops 3 tiers, NC have so many good carbines for mid-long range... pretty much any carbine that isn't Bandit or GD-7F is great for mid-long, compared to TR and VS options. This is mostly because as a rule, 167 damage weapons extend min damage range by 10 meters compared to 143, and then NC have the 200 damage AC-X11 which is the only carbine with min damage up to 80m (98m with HVA). That's sick effective range for a carbine.
