As copied from http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/says-the-chez-gu07-weapon-tuning.115773/ Lets see what the actual patch notes say: Yes, the Battle Rifles were made (almost insignificantly) more accurate. But look at that no change to the muzzle velocity, which is a paltry 500m/s, which happens to be slower than pretty much every LMG (on the NC side at least, TR and VS can correct me here). But also, damage scaling was nerfed! They lose damage faster than before and lose more damage than they did! They managed to do the exact opposite of what they set out to do. Battle Rifles should fill the role somewhere in between LMGs and the semi auto snipers, but now they're even worse at that role than before. Damage scaling should go back up to where it was pre-patch (if not higher) and muzzle velocity needs to go up to the 600-650m/s range.
The biggest buff wasn't to accuracy, it was to how fast you could fire without recoil sending your shots off all over the place. Obviously, a practical fire rate buff is an indirect buff to damage. My testing suggested it could be fired accurately a lot faster than previously, which would more than offset the changed damage degradation. As to velocity, they added HV ammo, which has recoil drawbacks so... Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to test my BR properly outside of VR so I'm not sure how it performs in the "real" world.
I think the muzzle velocity 'buff' was allowing battle rifles to use hv ammo. All I know is that I love my fully certed Eidolon after the changes. Getting in consistent head shots fast enough to kill before they can react is now possible and the ranged damage buff was very welcome. I swear with all the really awesome weapons the engineer has access to I don't even play any other class anymore.
Slowest projectile velocity on any LMG in any empire is 570. On any AR it's 550. Battle Rifles with their measly 500 projectile velocity are equivalent to a middle ground carbine. In otherwords it's easier to lead shots with just about anything else. Long range variants of LMGs and ARs are both well over 600. With High Velocity Ammo (which at best guess to be about 50) the projectile velocity on battle rifles goes up to 550. But that's little consolation when many LMGs and ARs (Especially long range variants) can use HVA as well. As I've been saying since their "buff". Reduced recoil is nice and does help, but it doesn't fundamentally change the problems with the weapon. Battle and Scout Rifles still have terrible projectile velocity and do not have a damage potential anywhere near that of the long range variants of other weapon types. Example: TMG-50 - Long Range TR LMG. Projectile Velocity: 615 (Up to 665 with HVA) DPS at min damage range (Long Range 75+m): 1372 AMR - TR Battle Rifle (Same across factions) Projectile Velocity: 500 (Up to 550 with HVA) DPS at min damage range: 1100 Both have manageable recoil and good accuracy.
