I'll give you a +1 because that was very elaborate work.
But i disagree.I think ARs are powerful,but as they are i think they are good.
An above avarege player like myself can do in any AR user with my niche weapon the Scrambler rifle.(Other playerswith TAC ars,ASCR,SMG's,Mass drivers,etc...)
They are just the most overall effective weapon,but its not OP.There by they dont need a ''balance''.

Hear me now people.The AR playerbase is around 55%-60% Of all dust 514

If you ''balance'' (NERF) the AR, you will have at LEAST 50% of our miserable 2000 playerbase complaining/leaving just because some niche weapon users felt they were getting overrun by ARs.

I prefer dealing with ARs as they are than loosing yet another 400-800 players due to AR nerf.

I was just talking with 4 of my friends about your post.
They all use Duvolles ARs.

They say they wouldnt mind a CLIP REDUCTION, but the damage should stay.

I kind of agree with them,i mean,still hit hard,but negating your spray and pray ability wthat is at the end of the day the REAL problem.

45 For Regular ARS
18-24 TAC
30 for Burst
30 For Breach

This of course.If applied needs,for balance sake, a clip reduction for Scramblers:

55 ASCR
35 SCrbs

Just my 2 cents.

I'm an AR user. It's the only weapon I have trained to a prototype level. I want ARs to be toned down.

Let that sink in for a moment. I want the only weapon I am capable of using to be toned down. It is OP. There's a reason 60% or higher of the playerbase uses ARs. This whole build has been a giant clusterf*ck, and rapid fire weapons (aside from the HMG) are to blame. The time to kill has gone down to a Rainbow 6 shooter level of one shot one kill, effectively. You don't get to react. Your skill points in shield extension or armor plating don't count for anything. All that matters is that you're using an AR or assault scrambler, and that you shot the other guy first.

Imagine if every frigate in eve came with a doomsday device on it. That is what Dust is today. Subdreddit has 382 people in it who have logged in during the last 30 days. After a few weeks with this ridiculous instakill version of Dust the average number of players logged in for our corp has dropped to less than 10.

People do not enjoy playing Dust in it's current state.

My approach to this is to log in and play a few games with cheap fits in a squad, and log out the moment I get bored. Lately I'm getting about two games in before I get to that point. The only reason I'm still logging in every day is because of the SP bonus. If it weren't for that I'd play once every three days. I used to cap out every week and then start leveling an alt.

Yes Dust has had some major improvements, and yes it will continue to do so. But I think the game has come to a critical point. The massive buff to high ROF weapons was a gigantic leap in the wrong direction. People just die way too fast. If this doesn't get fixed quickly, I'm concerned that the playerbase is going to fall off a cliff that will take years to recover from.

I think even the laser rifle may need to be looked at. I loved it back in the day and was sad when it became useless, but now I think it's just too powerful again. This is all about time to kill, not how powerful one weapon is compared to another.

Gonna throw my two cents in as well I believe.

AR's. I love them. I play a scout running a scrambler pistol so this is the majority of my opposition. They do their job very efficiently especially to my poor over taxed shielding and armor. I've been slowly progressing this new character ( Just a little over a mill sp and rising. Just hit my cap a few hours ago for the week so I'm very happy that resets soon. ) Off topic. Back on topic now. The AR does its job of reminding me that I have no freakin armor. I run a valor suit because I'm cheap and had some aur left over from a pack I decided to buy. So my current ehp on my main ADV hacking scout is 92/199. The heavies with the HMG's don't scare me like an AR plinking at my armor when I'm tacticly retreating my motocross looking backside behind some cover toward my squad. Heavies simple cant keep up unless I missed one on my initial overlook of an area before moving in to harass. I'm the annoying little guy that always tries to flank your group with the pistol and headshots people from you side to try and thin the group. So these AR's as current do their job to send my suit scurrying.

Now for a subject of things I've noticed on my bonus sp used up character. This one is specced into AR level 4 cause again, new characters. Now the problem seems to lie with my burst AR's. Doing damage calc's my ar is firing a three round burst at I believe ( cant remember exact figure but we will say...) 34 damage a shot? Three round bursts hitting a target with each bullet doing 34 should add up to 102 damage per pull of the trigger. It however still takes me half a mag to down an enemy from across two close rooftops. Im not sure if it's because I'm doing the calculations wrong or what but I think the hit registration might be wonky on this. I love that its a three round burst but for the effectiveness I cannot afford to fit it on my regular suits. ive used entire stocks of ammo with it not getting a single kill because people hop back into cover after standing there and letting me lay into them for several seconds. Idk, could just be me on those rifles.

In short, AR's dont all need a nerf, maybe a buff on the breach's rate of fire and a little bit more recoil would fix them. As well as maybe a bit less range to them with the exception of the burst and tac which I feel should be classed as Marksmen role type weapons, hence keep the range. My two cents.

You've earned my +1 sir. My ideas for balancing ARs were a lot less involved than this; basically just increasing recoil and reducing range. But I actually really appreciate your approach because I think it really does drive that jack of all trades role home. One thing I didn't see you mention that I think also needs to be done is making the recoil actually work properly. Because right now, any recoil accumulated from continuous fire can instantly be removed and reset simply by letting go of the trigger for an instant. This makes no sense from either a mechanical or thematic perspective.

The only thing about your work that I really specifically didn't agree with was your comparison to real world assault rifles. This is really something that needs to be said more clearly anyway, so to go off on a minor tangent: this game has nothing to do with the real world. People frequently try to reference real world guns to make cases for their ideas, things like "IRL ARs and even miniguns can fire accurately up to or past 100 meters easy!" But again, this means literally nothing. Because Dust doesn't take place in modern day earth, it takes place in a future sci-fi far away galaxy setting. The technology used here in no way follows the norms and conventions of our technology, for better or worse.

And think about this, there is no 'biotic' HP, just shields and armor. This implies that when even a single bullet penetrates your suit, it kills you immediately with ease. Which means these guns are all actually incredibly lethal, which in turn means that these dropsuits must also be really really good at keeping people alive against such powerful munition. So while I have no doubt that your assault rifle can fire a bullet at least 100 meters, it simply isn't able to damage a target in a high-tech Iron Man suit at that range.

Ok, sorry to get a little ranty there, but I think it needed to be said. Anywho, overall great work here OP. I look forward to seeing more of your balancing ideas for other weapons in the future.

you know the RoF for the laser rifle is 750.

when you remove the HMG from the ammo count because is skews the numbers you only get 28 rounds per clip average.

also remove MD/sniper rifles because it skews your damage number as well as AV weapons.

+1 for the data. Once again, you were very thorough.

Anyways, I disagree on what you should do for the Breach AR.

IMHO A Breach weapon is designed to do one thing: Kill whoever is in front of you FAST. Think about breaching a door with one person on the other side. You don't want to ruin the element of surprise by drawing out the gunfight. You want him dead before he can react.

How is that achieved? High Damage, High ROF.

"But Ghost, that's SO OP"

Right now, yeah, but that's whats balancing is for.

If you want a High DPS weapon for CQC, you need to make sure that it doesn't become deadly at range or be able to mow through a horde of people with one clip. Breach weapons are made to take on a single target (OR two) in a clip. Due to the huge damage and high ROF, it should have terrible accuracy. Why? Cause you don't need accuracy at point blank. You are just trying to kill one or two people, and then reload and move up or run away .

So, I propose that all Breach weapons follow this Stat Trend:

Breach "INSERT WEAPON HERE"
Damage: HIGH
ROF: HIGH
Accuracy: MID-LOW
Range: VERY SHORT
Clip Size: LOW

***EDIT***
As a side note, I wanna see who agree's with me on this.

Right now, the standard AR has a HIGHER hipfire accuracy than an SMG.

In what world would an AR be easier to handle full auto over an SMG from the hip. Makes no sense. And that is what is probably leading to the CQC Spray and Pray from AR users. And why they beat SMG's silly in point blank CQC

I agree with everything you've said but the clip size of 225 is the only thing I'm wary of. A 3% (if memory serves) ammo increase on that is only 6 bullets per freaking skill level. That's just stupid. It would have to be changed to lets say 15 rounds per skill level, at level 5 that would be 75 coming to a nice round 300 rounds. :)

I hate running out of ammo, but I hate running out of ammo with an AR the most. I run out of ammo the most with it. I would prefer it not be reduced but I don't know what 225 would feel like right now.

Quick thing, I'd recommend adding just the new weapon stats to the OP. That way they can be quickly and easily referenced, without needing to look through your longer document.

Edit: Looking at the TAR, I'm afraid that the damage may be a bit too high. I understand that it's doing the same damage per clip as your proposed AR, but I think you might have underestimated the advantage of raw damage over clip size here. I mean, I know you said you weren't a fan of using DPS to help calculate this variant's stats, but skilled players are going to get good enough with it to fire many shots quickly and accurately, and right now it would dish out a whopping 700 dps. I'd strongly recommend lowering the damage.

While I'm on that subject, how exactly do you decide on what damage/clip size to start off with? I understand (and 100% agree with) your notion of making sure all the variants do the same damage per clip, but where do the starting numbers come from? Do you just pick what seems right for damage and balance the rest from there? Just something I was curious about.

Lastly, I think there's something you don't quite get about the point of these rifles and their variants. As has been stated by CCP here, the overall idea for the finished product is that each race has their main assault rifle, made with that race's signature technology and specific firing mechanics, and then the three variants are attempts to mimic the other races' assault rifles with their own tech. So it goes:

Amarr- Scrambler Rifle [Laser]; Tactical
Caldari- Rail Rifle [Railgun]; Breach (man that really does need a better name...)
Gallente- Plasma Rifle [Plasma]; Assault
Minmatar- Combat Rifle [Projectile]; Burst

So it just doesn't really make sense to say there shouldn't be a tactical variant for the Gallente rifle just because it's typically a short range weapon. Think of it this way, it may shoot farther than the normal base assault variant of the weapon, but it should still never shoot farther than the Amarr's base scrambler rifle.

Edit 2: Found the post I was talking about.

It says NOTHING about range.

Or Recoil.

The Change to reload is Negligible, a fourth a second

And, all it does is make this new clip size is STILL a negligible difference considering that the AR now kills 15 percent faster!

It wont NEED the clip size with the TTK!

It still can Kill even the biggest brick a heavy can be with ONE clip.

This, isn't what is needed.

The AR needs a Clip size drop, a accuracy nerf, and a range change, nothing more.

This is an overly complicated proposal, compared to the one we have known NEEDED to be put in for a long time!

Uh, maybe go read it again...?

Although that does bring up a point Syn; some of your stats in the OP need their ranges added. And I'd suggest maybe also putting in a sentence or two about making sure the AR's recoil isn't immediately reset by not firing for an instant.

Honestly, I still feel like the TAR is doing a little too much damage. Let's not forget that right now, unfortunately, modded controllers are a thing that happens. And people are going to use them to get the maximum DPS, which would currently be 633.33. I'd like to effectively negate their use by lowering the fire rate. I actually really like the idea of 300 RPM, because that equates to exactly 5 shots per second, which is definitely doable by just a decent player with some practice, so modded controllers wouldn't really have an edge here. Also, I feel like 5 shots per second is about how many I'd expect from a tactical rifle. This would bring its DPS to 475, or 15 below the standard AR. Which again, I'm ok with, because I feel it sacrifices that small amount of DPS for its extended range. That's my opinion, anyway.

As a side note, the TAR in the OP still seems to have the old stats. And as a side side note, did you change the ammo stats to correlate with new damage? By my count, it would be Clip Size: 20 and Max Ammo: 100.

OMG, why do you want to change the TAR!?

No.

Just no.

Leave it alone!

I read the rest of the thread and there is nothing I like about the suggested TAR stats.

Please read the post from the start to the end and you will find the Words NERF and AR many many times, a few times it is called ballance for some reason, but really they talk about nerfing...

I dont know if you are stupid or just dumb, or if you just try to be funny. IDIOT

Anywho Syn, got the burst stats coming up soon?

No worries. Also, the breach variant really needs a new name, we should work on that. How about....the 'Siege' variant?

You can't just start speccing into what you want now?