Disclaimer: I play all three factions and really like the NC weapons (6 auraxium medals). They are balanced as far as I'm concerned - this thread is not about balance, it's about cert prices. The issue I have with NC is that only one class has access to cheap CQC weapons - the medic. (GR-22 and Carnage BR - 250 certs each) Carbines have one CQC option - the GD-7F (1000 certs) LMG have two CQC options - the Anchor (1000 certs) and the EM1 (250 certs), but the EM1 is universally considered terrible at CQC because of its low RoF and terrible stock hipfire accuracy. Then there are SMG's - 1000 certs each. Basically if you're not spending cash and not playing medic, you have to put down 1000 certs for a CQC weapon (plus attachments). In comparison, the TR and Vanu can get a good CQC carbine for 250 certs (Jaguar / Serpent). TR can get a CQC LMG for 100 certs (MSW-R) and Vanu starts with the Orion. Since this is a game with a lot of CQC (capping points, towers, bio labs etc.) I think that the NC should have access to a cheap (decent) CQC weapon outside the medic class. My suggestion would be dropping the price of the Anchor to 250 or even 500 certs, but I'm sure there's a better solution. Also, I'm not against spending cash - I've put money into this game myself. I just think there should be a cheapish CQC option outside the Assault Rifles. The reason I'm having these thoughts is that some of my BF3-friends are joining my NC server and they have not committed to spending cash yet, so I can't really recommend they start off playing anything other than medic, since the other classes will give them a really hard time in CQC-situations until they have 1000 certs to blow.
The GDS-22 is a poor (or casual) mans anchor and pretty noob friendly. If they're decent FPS gamers they shouldn't have too much of a problem but as a whole I agree. It would be nice to see a little more variety in cert spending for NC.
The grinders for the MAX are 250 certs each,andyouhave adefault scattercannon to begin with. The MAXis a class too you know. Also, the high capacity shotgun (haymaker for TR, think it is the mauler for NC) is also just 250 certs
I agree, it's definately better than the SAW for CQC (I'm currently using it with a laser sight), but I find mid range to be the optimal range for the GD-22S. I think a stock Mercenary has higher DPS and better hipfire accuracy and that thing's not too great in CQC either.
TL;DR version for HA's: They should make the EM6 the default for HA's, not Gauss SAW. Long Version about HA's: The ideal is that all three factions had weapons more tailored for their combat styles with 1 or 2 similar to the opposing factions (TMG-50 for example for TR) although slightly worse. But now the game is even further molded into CQC combat (crappy new tracers, attachment changes, new base designs, etc) which is a shame (I miss medium & long range firefights), so I overall agree with you. But anyway the NC have the best 167 @ 10m weapons and for a while it was great considering the TMG-50 (slightly worse version of SAW S and EM6) was a go-to weapon until a few GU's ago where they nerfed most attachments. The 167 @ 10m weapons are still very viable in game if you aim for heads quicker than the other person in CQC. So if they just gave the NC the EM6 as the default gun instead of Gauss Saw, I think there would have been quite a different feedback from players. I think they should just give the NC HA's the EM6 as default since it would still fit with the faction main trait. Although I have better options (Bull and Rhino) in the medium tier category, which the NS-15M is a part of and I also have CQC weapons (Carv, MSW-R), I use the NS-15M, which has less ROF than the EM1 and to me in CQC, I still win out most of the time when I have good situational awareness, so I definitely think there is an advantage an experienced player has when connecting his shots no matter what weapon he uses. I think the EM1 could be that weapon but the problem is newer players want ROF advantage, the more experiences players stick to the EM6 type weapons since they can headshot kill super quickly. So in the end the EM1 feels out of place, even for how cheap it is. I don't think it has to do with being a terrible weapon but more so that it doesn't feel right for a newbie and doesn't feel right for the experienced NC player who is already used to a 167 or 200 damage weapon. But, again, I think this would go a lot smoother for new HA players if they just gave them the EM6 instead.
