I prefer letting my proficiency skill do the work of a damage mod for me.

Proficiency, + two complex mods and I melt anything within 3 seconds outside of heavily armored heavies.
(Shield heavies are too easy to take down)

In general, I would agree with the OP. However, it seems to me there are characteristics of the advanced and proto weapons they are not telling us about, as I seem to kill more people with the advanced and proto weapons than the stats indicate. Perhaps this is the accuracy stat but my sense is there is something else going on (like kick or dispersion)...Leadfoot

P.s. I am an AR user.

It depends, some weapons are better used with shields. CQC and low base damage weapons for example. The high fitting costs of the damage mod is not worth it sometimes.

-XOXO

-.- ok, so maybe i run a Duvolle AR with profiency 5 and double complex damage mods... "sorry, did i just melt your face off? its ok, you didnt need it anyway"


edit - come to think about it... my AV fits also have a proto assault SMG with prof 5 and double complex sidearm damage mods -.- who says im not allowed to kill squishied while shooting tanks? the swarm fix in 1.4 is only gonna make my SMG that much more fun cuz i wont have to wait so long to switch to it after firing my swarms off :D

What weapon?

I'm cool with that.

I'll take my MLT Amarr Medium frame with 570 eHP @ 10k ISK doing about 70% of your DPS, or 78% and 490 eHP vs your PRO whatever that costs you >100k isk that probably has <700 eHP.

I guarantee Ill make more than you in pub matches and definitely will outperform at a profit:KDR ratio.

my suit costs a bit over 220k per fit (cald assault). that being said, i run my 17k basic fit more often thn not :p basic level ARs with proff 5 are NASTY

I know right! I just think its stupid to pull out PRO dropsuits in pub-matches. Not only is it not classy, but the degree to which it can possibly help your stats just isn't worth the risk.

This seems to be the case a lot of times...

Most of the mainline STD weapons have their PRO weapon as having a +10% damage difference from the STD version. The PRO versions also have a little bit more accuracy sometimes. Could anyone weigh in on how significant the accuracy difference is when both weapons have a lvl5 in the weapon operation skill?

The downside of the STD+dmg mod is that it takes about 10-15%% more CPU and in some instances, less PG. This matters less for armor tankers.

You should also note that a STD+PROdamage mod is about 25% of the cost of a PRO weapon...

I think one of the smartest investments a new player can make is getting handheld weapon upgrades to lvl5 ASAP.

43/0 isnt worth pulling out proto?