Winner of the weapon classes, by faction (By work/hour:)

TR has the worst Personnel Mine (didn't see your mine comparison), so it's possible that top TR Infiltrator players stick to Sniping rather than mess with mine tricks and other CQC stuff.

I know on my TR Infiltrator I don't bother with my mine. (singular, as in I never even bothered to Cert the second one)

VS starts with a really bad pistol: Beamer. Beamer TTK is slow enough that it consistently only alerts the enemy to your presence so you can then be targeted and killed. It's very likely that the VS players rely on their knife a lot more than other players who have better starting pistols.

I know on my VS Infiltrator (before I upgraded to the Manticore or had an SMG), I would often either run away or use the knife instead of using the Beamer. Bolt Action + Beamer makes for a very ineffective CQC loadout.

These stats are pointless. The weapons have all been nerfed/buffed numerous times over the life of the game. What happened to the site that had the stats week by week.

Ah, nothing new, for a second there I thought the mystery was solved...

But nope, the difference between 500-600 ROF series of weapons and 700-800 ROF ones is apparently still a big mystery to the TR and VS players.

Carry on gentlemen.

Some ideas on the odd stats.

Sniper Rifles
Could be indicative of the relative accuracy of their Assault Rifles. If NC and VS take more hits at range from random shots then since headshots are challenging their snipers would pick up more kills since they would still one hit kill even with a body shot. Could also then mean more medics.


Heavy Weapon:
The Jackhammer is the NC shotgun of choice and shotguns are borderline OP atm and because HA is the most played class it kinda makes sense. Its just better than the other shotguns. Similar damage but greater effective range. Im like you though, usually I dont register Jackhammer deaths because they are just generic "oh he has a shotgun" deaths.

Knives
VS feel more like the knife is comparable damage. This isnt necessary a commentary on the actual damage but rather the viseral feel of the weapons. As a VS player, are guns are very pew pew and lack the visceral feel of the TR and NC variants. Knives on the other hand. Yeah.

Granades

TR spam that them? Are mines and such lumped in with nades? Either way I know that TR use a LOT of grenades from experiance

To those wondering about the Jackhammer, this may help account for the skewed stats.

I thought of them briefly.

I mean, they alone are responsible for like... 5% of all jackhammer kills, I think.

I read somewhere that using the repair & heal tools (and maybe ammo packs - anything where you have hands out and no weapon) counts as knife time. Not sure if that's true but it may explain everyone's high knife times.

To say those stats are rubbish would be an understatement.

Just look at the Lynx at number two.

Answer:
VS are better players.
NC have the MOST players.
TR rely on spamming/zerging.

The problem is the area where they outshine the PA (or even normal vanilla shotguns) is an area where they are outshined by SMGs and CCQ LMGs.

Which is why I can only think they are being used by a very few people in specific circumstance who are VERY good shots, as that is the only way they would shine.

It's also possible they excellet at kill stealing due to their tighter spread.

I have to give SoE that they did a pretty good job, giving us sweet starter weapons.
When I started playing, I bought new weapons, and now that I have auraxium'ed those, I'm back with the Gauss Rifle / Merc on NC and Cycler / Trac on TR, and I think they're very versatile and enjoyable to use most of the time.

I think you need some kind of compromised score between K/D (or deaths/Hr) and Kills/Hr.

Close range weapons generally get very high kills/hr because the use of them is in an intense environment where downtime isn't going to be as common but because of this they will usually die a lot faster as well, which actually also contributes to the kills/hr as the 'timer' stops when they are killed rather than having some travel/downtime. Behaviour and usage would vary the rates these weapons score kills or have users die.

However, it doesn't apply to some weapon types: Grenades are only out for a second, and not constantly out. Launchers are generally only swapped out when the target presents itself. The same happens with ESF rocket pods and A2AM, where the general usage is to have the nosegun out most of the time but swap into the secondary when the need arises.

I doubt its that simple.

If the VS had the best players, they would have come out on top in many more categories.


Yet, the snipers, and two of the three main weapon categories belong to the TR (One being challanged by NC, one being challenged by Vs.)
- This suggests that TR have good aim, and are adept at compensating for ballistics (Which are extenuated by their weapons having the lowest average velocity in the game.)
-- They also appear to LOVE their explosives, use knives as a utility item (Taking out turrets.)


The NC are clearly better with virtually every NS Weapon, and have overall the three of the five best performing weapons in the game by the metrics I used. (All LMG's, likely due to a factor outside of the weapon part: Overshields.)
- This suggests that NC are on average better at automatic gunplay.

The VS performed better with sidearms, and emergency weapons, as well as empire specific-but essentially NS weapons (the last one can be explained by the lack of bullet drop.)
- This implies that they have better reflexes on average, and no bullet drop.

VS lower damage per mag may mean they have to resort to sidearms more often.

If we take 143 damage weapons as the 'scale', TR weapons have 40, NC are '35'* and VS are 30 for the normal weapons.

Naturally.
I have agreed with this sentiment.


I am adding to it, by pointing out that VS are trained to have better reflex, and twich skills from this.

But also Jack has 250 RPM, which is almost as good as autoshoties, which are the best. However, I do believe Jackhammer should have been either the only auto shotgun or the only OHK shotgun. Not try to meddle in 2 places at once.

The VS knife has no drop!

The jackhammer is underrated, it's a solid shotgun trading some damage for range and accuracy. Only real shortcoming is the lack of an NV scope.

I can clearly define one reason why I refrained from doing this:
This is no normal shooter.

The victors are the ones who do the most work, while niche weapons can provide better opportunities for efficiency, it simply isn't as important at getting the job done, regardless of the cost, in planetside.

Yeah it wasn't nerfed when the rest were.

What the JH needs though is either a bigger clip size (at least 3 more per clip), or the ability to switch to slugs with alt-fire (although that would require scopes too).