The Battle Rifle - What Happened?

I don't ever remember the Warden being good. I just couldn't make it work, what with my poor aim and low FPS. I remember the gun jumping like a startled cat every time I fired a round and was usually dead in a head on fight against an LMG before I landed my third shot.

But I've auraxed all of NC's LMGs and decided to pull the Warden for the first time in what, a year? More than that probably.

And holy ****. Wow. God damn.

How did it get so good? I was out shooting Orions and SMGs in CQC, snipers at range. It feels like it fires faster, it feels more responsive, it feels like it actually packs a punch. My accuracy is still not great, only about 20-22% and I haven't given it a fully extended run, but it's been performing far beyond my expectations given how bad it was when I first decided to cert the gun, more than a year ago.

Was it stealth buffed at some point? People are telling me that head hitboxes are messed up right now but I checked my headshot count with the gun and it's still fairly low.

Quick check shows it hasn't been changed in 11 months. You just got good that's all

I tried to tell you last night, but this is probably due to the physics change to projectiles with the new patch. Many people are reporting less drop and different velocities to their weapons. On top of that you've had a year to become a better player. I'm gonna test it some today to see how it feels. I only recently bought it and can remember how it felt from about a month ago.

I started to use it when I first played more than a year ago, but felt it wasn't good enough.
So now I have pretty much every gun and have used them extensively.
As with most guns burst fire is key with ranges over what, 30-40m?
I also began to use the chevron 4x scopes on all my AR's and got pretty decent results for my "style" of gameplay.
Then I found that I can use the Warden without feeling vulnerable, as the hipfire is not too bad, but at range it is better than I remember.
I have more control over the guns.



Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I've understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. The height of cultivation is really nothing special. It is merely simplicity; the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation - Bruce Lee

Yes, there was big buff a while back. Plus, as stated, your skills have likely improved.

Semi autos are better in many situations - if you can use them right. They're still less forgiving with lower fps. I manage to do ok though. My biggest blunders with semis tend to be when I try to out snipe an inf with a bolt action. They can ohk. Hell, even the Blackhand is dangerous.

The warden and scout rifles work great with any setup too. Every attachment is viable. I tend to use flash suppressor + laser or comp/grip/hva.

Hope we get a br that can use adv lasers. It would be nice to hipfire with more accuracy in cqc.

Perhaps I've just drunk too much of the Forumside cool-aid. Even looking back in the past month or so, there have been multiple threads about how bad the Battle Rifles are. I feel like they've gotten a bad rap for being semi-auto.

While I would love to say that the performance I've gotten out of the Warden is due to "skillz", going through the last 100 actions on my killboard shows me that I've performed above my usual metrics with the Warden. My KDR/KPM the past few days has been lower with both the God SAW and Gauss SAW S, though I absolutely hate the Gauss SAW S and now that I've raxed it, I refuse to touch it ever again.

I probably haven't noticed any bullet mechanics changes since the bulk of my time post patch been spent driving a Sunderer and using Warden which I haven't touched for a long long time.

I did switch from a machine that gave me 10-20 FPS on a good day to a newer machine that lands me a solid 60 FPS in pretty much any fight. The difference it makes for infantry play simply cannot be understated. For a semi-auto gun that requires constant target acquisition, having good FPS is pretty much a requirement. I would not even consider pulling this gun with choppy FPS.

I wouldn't be surprised if poor FPS performance has contributed to the poor reputation of these guns.

I agree with the versatility of the Warden. In fact, I was surprised at how customizable the Warden is and I was not expecting it to perform so well in CQC. I've been using a Compensator/Laser combo to give me that jack-of-all-trades setup which I've been pretty happy with.

Battle Rifles are actually a good, but:
1) You have to stay out of cqc. If you manage to use it in CQC well you have my respect because it's very challenging to compete with other weapons at that range.
2) You have to learn to handle the huge recoil. That's the reason why I personally go for foregrip, compensator and no HVA.

It's definitely a very hard weapon to master (lowest KPH and KPU among all the primary weapons of the game). Imho the only "buff" I would give is to open Soft Point Ammo and / or Advanced Laser Sight as attachments, so one could configure these weapons for short range combat and get decent results without being steamrolled all day.

This. I found a lot of guns i considered bad to be very good because i played them while i was noob at PS2. Now when i am decent i tried this guns again (Razor i am looking at you) and found they are not bad at all.

Glad to read this thread. I have been thinking about getting the blackhand, so as to have a pocket BR as a secondary weapon. Not until I see how/whether they nerf it of course. But then, the Warden and the Eidolon are still superior to the TR equivalent in my opinion. So maybe I will just equip my TR toons.

I find that interesting. Could you tell me why you think this to be the case?

The Warden and AMR-66 have the exact same stats. The Eidolon at one point had no bullet drop, and was perhaps the only weapon in the entire game where having no bullet drop actually gave an advantage, but I do not know if they still have that trait. Aside from the no bullet drop, the Eidolon also has the exact same stats.

The NC does have the 3.4 scope option that the TR does not have, unless that has changed as well, but I find I spend the majority of the time with the x1, x2 and IR/NV scopes. Controlling the kick-back is much easier with a lower mag scope. It also makes me competitive at close ranges and I find it does not hamper my ability to fire at long range.

In terms of muzzle velocity, damage drop-off, fire-rate, reload speed, mag size, Battle Rifles across factions are identical.

The main problem with them is using them against someone who strafes a lot with a high rate of fire weapon. If you are not dealing with that too much then they can be good.

best battle rifle is the tross or reaper dmr on semi auto

Fair points, and it is only an opinion but the first shot accuracy at long range seems to be more erratic with the AM^-66 (well, at least in my hands!)

Low FPS = Delayed input = Inconsistent firing = Unintenional Over/Under Sampling

I recently got an FPS boost and the extra fames in small/medium fights means by the time you react you arn't already dead on their screen.


Like, if you're at 200ping you got 200ms of delay from when your actions show on another player's screen + several MS form having low frames + less frames to see them initially = less time to input commands.

If you hadn't used it since before it was buffed (about 1 year ago I think), it is a lot better than it was.... and that's the only explanation I can think of (although higher FPS may well also help).

It was always quite good in CQB though if you used a laser (it kinda did and does function like a longer range shotgun) or were a headshot ace/aimbot ( ).

Personally I'm still not convinced it is better at anything (including general use) than other options, but it is certainly pretty useable since the buff.

Not on semi-auto, that's just a dumb idea, but those weapons burst fired in small bursts are beast.

If you fire at a full health target at 90 meters (both guns at minimum damage), the SAW/Reaper/Albatross will kill in 3 headshots. Warden will kill in 3 headshots.

Warden will kill in two headshots or 4 body shots only at 0-8 meters. SAW takes 5 body shots or 3 headshots at 0-10 meters.

If you shoot center mass, beyond 8/10 meters the Warden kills in 5 shots, the SAW etc kills in 6 shots. Advantage Warden.



If you are stationary, the 200 damage guns have a starting cone of fire of 0 and will hit what you aim at (after barely any drop) every time. The Warden, in this situation, has a stationary cone of fire of 0.1, or equivalent to the Cycler. It will shoot left/right past the target on the regular if you try to hit a small target at distance. Not always, but it'll happen.

If you are strafing in ADS, the Warden will have a better cone of fire than the 200dmg automatics. This is the largest practical advantage the Warden has.

Shots to kill for the SAW/Reaper/Albatross is barely any worse than for the Warden, and you get conveniences like large magazines and fully automatic fire on demand, so I've never really seen a pressing need for the Warden. I certainly would not say, or agree to the statement, that the Warden has higher effective range than 200dmg ARs/SAW, but I guess if you keep a cool head and do some mid-ranged ADS strafing, the Warden will do that better.

Well, the VS/TR version are about identical and they don't have 200dmg beastmode guns so I guess they might like it.

I don't know why a battle rifle, when steadied by a crouching soldier, would not equal the precision of the 200dmg automatics. Or even a 167dmg one.

Your experiences of doing well with the battle rifles have nothing to do with the weapon and everything to do with becoming better players. Battle rifles are rubbish. Why? Because they are semi-automatic weapons that take more than two headshots to kill at most ranges. Scout rifles are quite nice in comparison, because they CAN kill with two headshots.

scout rifles are only better because cloak

True but they have a much better hipfire accuracy.

My remark about br is they're terrible in cqc because even with laser sight the crosshair is rather wide.
They should haveadvanced laser sight and soft point ammo as possible attachments.

But they work very well in long range fights.