Jan 14 Battle Rifle buffs: not buff enough...

AMR-66
·Maximum damage range to 15m, from 8m.
·Horizontal recoil to 0.18, from 0.18 to 0.22.
·Horizontal tolerance to 0.4, from 0.5.
·Added Underbarrel Grenade.
·Added Underbarrel Smoke attachments.

Thank you, devs, for looking at the battle rifles. They needed your love. But they need a big hug and a wet french
kiss, not the pat on the shoulder you gave them.

The issue with the battle rifle is more about DPS than recoil, although they are related. The effective DPS of the battle rifle is HALF of what you get if you run the numbers, because you can't hit targets at range without recentering your sights. That cuts the possible rate of fire in half, halving the DPS.

Here's the stats (wow, the wiki updated this already)

Fire Rate:

333 RPM

Max Damage:

250 before 15m

Min Damage:

225 after 75m

Compare this to the (at range) carbine models:
TR: 750rpm 112damage: 1400 dps
NC: 600rpm 125damage: 1250 dps
TR scout rifle HSR-1: 225 rpm 280damage: 1050 dps

If you consider the time it takes for the sights to recenter, we're looking at 250-225 damage at about 150-200rpm. That's about 625 DPS.

Its still quite underpowered. Most targets will dodge into cover well before you can bring down their shields and their health.

I think the battle rifles need their damage per bullet increased. You can drop their rate of fire so you don't indirectly overbuff their close quarters taptaptap dps if you want. But the bottom line is, the battle rifles are still not very effective.

I did mean to try out the AMR today but performance issues prevented me playing for long.

That does sound quite low, but the DPS you presented for the other weapons is purely theoretical. The HSR/Shadow/Nyx have re-center times too, and even for full-autos controlled bursting is required past a certain range.

Without trying the new-improved battle rifles I can't comment on how today's improvements have fared, but looking at statistics on their performance it'd be safe to say accuracy (or lack thereof) was one of their biggest drawbacks.

OR...

We can give each battle rifle empire-specific stats. The 66 gets 25 rounds and a 2x burst mode, the Warden gets increased velocity and much better damage range, and the Eidolon gets a charged mode for the ability to one-shot when maxed (or maybe something better) and gets less recoil. There! They all sound better now.

The new Battle Rifles are beastly dude. They are much more viable weapons.

Go use them.

How did you test them? Game crashes every 15 minutes.
Imho they are now brutally better and they are much more viable even at mid and short range. Compensator, foregrip, 2x scope and no hva. Finally this weapon is controllable.

Theyre not amazing but certainly a strong improvement

The UBGL was enough for me to dumb the gauss compact S permanently

LOL, if you'd run the same aimbot program that you use to never miss firing the carbines full auto at range with the battle rifles they might not be so bad.

Joking aside, I'm happy to see them get a buff. But it's better to buff/nerf in increments inside of breaking or making godmode weapons.

You are describing here a sniper rifle. That is what you get, if daybreak do all this things you want to. So, go for the sniper class, and its fine. Max demage per bullet.

625 FPS is far below all carbines and sniper rifles. Asking for a dps closer to ALL the other weapons in the game is not asking too much.

I do like the idea of adding Empire Specific behaviors too

They could do with a slight velocity buff as well. Still - it's a good thing they are being worked on.

-{Agreed...}

The buffs they got in today's patch are definitely an evolutionary - not revolutionary - step. They will help those who are already able to use them to effect. But most players who struggled w/ them before will still not be able to use them. I doubt we'll see much in the way of usage or performance increases.

I still think they need a moving ADS COF buff.

That said.... The recoil and Tolerance changes will help their accuracy enough to maintain near-max ROF out to ~100m w/ the right attachments. The max damage increase we needed to help out it's extraordinary weakness up close and becuase an 8m max range was just stupid for a long range weapon (I still think it needs to be extended to 25-30m tho).

The UB launchers don't really fit tho IMO. I'll probably never use them since I value the Laser and Foregrip much more, although there will certainly be a few who do. IMO neither one really adds anything to the weapon, esp in light of the long range explosive capabilities of 2 of the 3 classes that use BRs (HA has RLs and AV nades, and Engie has AV Turrets, mines, and sticky nades). But w/e.

And as for damage..... It seems the devs are loath to touch this area at all given their somewhat stingy max damage range increase.. And now that one of the Battle Rifles' two primary nemeses have been nerfed (HAs with Overshields - the other one being OHK snipers), I'm not sure if they even need a damage buff.

But if they were to buff the damage, I can think of a few different ways to do so without turning them into Heavy Scout/Sniper rifles like so many players seem to fear:

• Increase the max damage range to 50m - This means 2-headshot kills to 50m
• Increase the base damage to 313 - This would reduce their STK by 2 against Nano5 out to 30m, and by 1 out to maybe ~60m. At the same time it keeps its current 4 bodyshot kill against unarmoured infantry, but extends it to the same 60m range. Same thing with the 2-headshot kill range.
• Change their damage type to "Aircraft MachineGun" - I read this originally on Reddit a while back. The damage vs Infantry wouldn't change, but it'd do ~50% more damage per shot to MAXes (STK would go from 40 to 27) and light vehicles. It'd increase its anti-material role a bit, kinda making it like a semi-auto cousin to the Archer: not as good at anti-MAX, but better at AI.
• Increase the ROF to ~375 RPM - this would help them a little bit up close while keeping them in check at ranges where you have to let the weapon settle between shots (i.e. - where sniper rifles are most commonly used, at long range).

The problem with bumping the damage up is that it will essentially turn into a scout rifle which is 334 dmg per bullet. What separates the Battle rifles to the Scout Rifles is the damage and class availability. So essentially bumping the damage is like putting a scout rifle in more classes.

So my suggestion is just to lower the recenter time of the weapon so that it has the accuracy to compensate for the lower dps. To be honest though scout rifles and battle rifles are weird as the only reason to use them is because semi auto sniper rifles don't have any scopes lower than 6x, but I haven't used the battle rifles and scout rifles all that much, since their 4 and 3 shot kill is only in close quarters, they always end up needing a 4th (in the case of battle rifles a 5th) shot at the ranges they are most effective at.

I can't see why they should not be a sort of heavy scout rifle. The main feature of the BR in real life is stopping power. I've put an SLR round through a brick wall irl with enough power to kill or injure someone on the other side. I agree the buff to max damage range starts to address this but I'd go for a damage level that will break an HA shield with the first shot myself............OK, maybe that's going too far (SASR can do that since the shield nerf IIRC) but something in the 300+ damage range doesn't seem excessive. I've not used an underbarrel launcher for anythign on carbines so I've got no view on that change.

Can they stop dancing around the issues and raise damage to 334 already? All these non-concrete BS tweaks.

Isn't that what the sniper rifles already do?

Newp. They do 400-750.

You might be thinking of the Minimum damage SASR's do after their max range. He's suggesting 334 then drops to 250. I wouldn't say no to that.. but they'd be pretty beefy.

Personally I'd like a 3 rnd burst option added. For flexibility up close. Still inferior to Assault Rifles and Carbines in those range brackets due to automatic fire.. but not entirely useless.

You are right. I found the numbers. I think they are in a good place right now. Great for picking off the wounded, or working in teams.

there was nothing wrong with the battle rifle 3yrs ago

PEBCAK

WE NEED NEW BATTLE RIFLES NOT CHANGES TO THE PERFECTLY FINE ONE WE ALREADY HAVE.

Did we even have battle rifles three years ago?