I played a PC match yesterday. And wow, I got destroyed the second match. I'm willing to be that the majority of you, who think the Assault Rifle is in a good place right now, probably play Instant battle 99% of the time, like me. The problem here is that the random players (and also thanks to 400wp debacle) are pretty terrible and the Assault Rifle is easy to ignore. I'm an Amarr Assault and specced into amarr ****, so to me, the Assault Rifle was no more different than the Scrambler Rifle. Just like some people are terrible with SRs, some people are terrible with Assault Rifles. Some people are really good with SRs, some people are good with Assault Rifles.

That's what I USED to think. Until **** hit the fan.

I played my first couple of competitive matches yesterday. The first game, I hardly died to assault rifles, died a few times to them but I felt all my deaths during the first match was fair. I think I went 14 kills and 7 or 9 deaths or something against Teamplayers.

Then the second match started and WTF.... Nearly every person I personally ran into had Assault Rifles and I must have died 10 or 12 times to Assault Rifles alone. This DEFINITELY put Assault Rifles on my radar. These things were inescapable. So I began thinking....


Casual vs Competitive (READ: kids who can't aim vs talented shooters)

The Assault Rifle cannot exist as it currently. No matter how you balance the weapon, it will either ruin competitive matches, or it will cease to become relevant at all even in casual matches. You see, when a competitive player uses non-Area of effect weapons (ARS, SMG, Semi AUTO rifles) against another, there are two competitions going on in the duel

1) Who can deal the most damage, the fastest
2) Who can avoid the most damage

When you give one of these very skilled players a Assault, guess what happens? He can't miss. His helpless opponent cannot dodge, strafe, run for cover at all. He has essentially denied the helpless man the "2) Who can avoid the most damage" rule of this game. ALSO, he has crippled the helpless man's ability to just "stand his ground" and out DPS the scrambler rifle because the AR is a hit-scan weapon and he only has to swipe it across the enemy for a kill. There is no reason to use any other weapon in a competitive match, (actually I take that back there needs to be a Forge gun sniping objectives). I try and go the High DPS route with my proficiency lvl 5, 2 cmplx dmg mods, charge shot imperial scrambler rifle, but all the DPS is meaningless in a duel with Assault Rifles. I could kill other suits/guns just fine if I got a bead on my opponent fast enough. But those ARs were impossible.

B-B-But Assault Rifles Takes Skill!

If you think the Assault Rifle takes a lot of skill to master, then you are probably really bad at aiming and shooting. Play instant battle and you will see how terrible Assault Rifle users are. Play PC and see how devastating Assault Rifles are.

The difference is that the Assault Rifles allow bad players (who would have terrible aiming) to, thanks to hitscan beam swiping, have "decent" aiming. These bad players can now complete with SRs and other weapons in casual public matches.

on the other hand...

ARs allow skilled players (who can aim well consistently) to have flawless aiming. Because of the hitscan, the damage per high rof, the damage, and the large magazine... the AR will out DPS anything mid/close-mid-mid/long (AKA SR territory) range.

So you still think the AR takes skill? That's okay. Not trying to offend you or anything, but if you think an "easy-mode-hitscan-swipe-black-hole-for-anything-instakiller" takes skill, if it took you weeks to master the ARs hitscan swipe....

Conclusion

...then you are a bad player.