[Video] Iridar, the Red Baron

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As with another atypical weapon, NS-7 PDW, at first I disliked Baron and considered it directly inferior. Using it with Extended Mags, I didn't feel the promised increased effective range.

But a laser sight unlocked the potential and allowed me to effectively hip fire as if I was using an SMG. And when stars align, there still is the power of that 2 shot kill at close range.

Finally having a shotgun that can do something even if the enemy isn't within handshake distance, I grew to love my Baron, and now consider it to be a competitive choice on the shotgun market.

Of course, you still need to pace your shots, and make sure your aim is on target, and don't forget to take advantage of the tube magazine, reloading every time you get a chance.

When i first saw this thread,i thought you were talking about manfred von richtofen's red baron that killed more than 100 fighters in WW1 when i saw you crashed,nice video anyway

The original Red Baron is heavily implied in the first Red Baron video that I made, it actually involved some epic dogfighting by trained professional

This video is more self-parody and play on words kind of thing.

great vid, i could never really get used to Baron, it just takes too dam long to reload for me

Awesome vid, Iridar. Your aim is pretty good, and I love to see players learning to get them headshots at close range.(Not implying that you are just learning, but players in general)

I'm currently working away at my Chaos araxium, but I'm pretty excited to begin work on the Baron. From even what little I've used in the Trial mode, I found it to be quite potent, seeing that it keeps it's effective 3-shot range out to such distances.

Thanks Aim with shotguns is something that I need to work on, but I think I'm already subconsciously starting to try to aim better since some redditer pointed out I might have crappy aim with shotguns. And rewatching my older shotgun streaks videos, I indeed saw that it could use improvement.

The little gem that sprouts my trouser snake is the moment at 2:15 with muscle memory twitch aim at enemy engi. Didn't even know I could that :O

And I still vividly remember, long time ago, watching a gif where a skill like that was demonstrated, and the comments were "wow this some godlike aim" and I was too low to recognize what even was displayed on that gif. And only months later, when I accidentally saw the gif again, I realized what was on it. Now I do that myself without even noticing

I really recommend you try out Baron with Laser. At least myself I didn't notice anything special until I tried.

i never thought to use the laser, always running with extended mag i will absolutely try this out
so thank for posting this video
now i am a average shotgun user and i have a question
are you using slug ammo it was not clear to me in your video
thanks

No, this is not slug ammo I wouldn't dream to hip fire with slugs at these ranges.

My brother actually bought the Baron before, and he also noted a significant improvement when combined with the Laser Sight.


Now if only I could decide between the Blackhand and CQX ;~;

Oh, and as a pointer from a shotgun lover, I would recommend actually ADS'ing more often when you use a 2.5 pellet spread shotgun. Within 7 meters, you have a tight enough spread to allow headshots to actually net you more damage when compared to the risk of missing pellets on the smaller hitbox.

Normally I advise ADSing as well, but while recording this video I made it a point to find out just how far I can hip fire for. For example, those moments on the roof at the end of the video were out of range in my mind, and indeed I didn't score kills on first mag dump. It's an experiment!

I recommend Blackhand. It takes time getting used to, but it's super fun. Crossbow only works for stalkers, for the most part.

Ah, I see. I just saw a few areas where you might've been able to pull off an OHK, but hipfired instead of ADS's, and wondered if you weren't trying to.

I personally tried to ADS headshot during my trial of it, but it's iron sights are so bad for precision I had to stop Vanu reflex sights too good, pls nerf

Oh, you meant ADSing at close range to headshot OHK? Never thought about it that way. I haven't actually tried, but I would assume it's too risky to try to pull that off consistently, unless enemy is just standing with his back to you, in which case I'd rather just combo shoot + knife for greater reliability.

Oh, I can get it pretty consistently on non-HA classes actually. So long as they are within range, I always ADS for headshots. If it doesn't kill, it usually means a more consistent two hit kill. Plus, it's really strong against HA's, since they will be even slower with their overshields.

Of course, it doesn't mean you'll OHK every time, but it's worth it for the most part IMO. It has around a 5 meter max range for the OHK headshot, and I'd say it's most reliable exactly 3 meters.

Interesting, I'll have to try it out. I have a few more shotguns to auraxium

It'll be nice for the Baron and your faction's arax shotty, but for shottys without that 2.5 it's just not as useful. I'd go as far as to say the Fast Reload shotguns, but that's already pushing it. The High cap and auto shottys just have too large a pellet spread to be viable.

As for PA's, if you haven't araxiumed them yet, don't even bother really, unless you are literally in butt-smacking range. While ADS headshots for the 1st gen PA can help you 1-shot over-shielded heavies, the risk of not getting that OHK is simply not justified due to the punishing RoF. That being said, I have OHK'd a good sized handful of over-shield heavies by going for headshots on my PA, but it's not all that common.

Maybe im just blind, but i couldnt really see any difference in my COF when equipping laser on my Baron.
But i seemed to do better with it when hipfiring.

Is it a visual bug? Am i blind? Is it just when jetpacking?

The infantry shotgun crosshair size shows pellet spread, not hipfire cone, so adding the laser won't visually change the crosshair.

This is why the shotguns all have different crosshairs even though they all have the same hipfire stats.

Of course adding a laser to an auto-shotgun would still not help much since the spread pattern is so wide you won't get much extra range. But with the tight pattern on the Baron, improved hipfire should cause greater overlap between pellet loads on targets beyond touching range, as Iridar said.

The hipfire stats on a shotgun basically determine where the middle of the pellet pattern is going to be. Reducing the variance of this via laser is more valuable for the Baron and probably pointless for most other shotguns except maybe the quick reload semi-auto.

There can only be one... RED BARON.

I find that when I use shotguns I kind of twitch right before I click, sort of like some strange pre-emptive recoil.
I could never use shotguns like this without plenty of practice and stuff.

Great video.

Can we trade barons? When I was using it for the shotgun directive there were so many times where I was 3 feet from people, put 4-5 shots into them and watch them spin around and destroy me.