Rattati,
As you may remember, I was the
original inspiration to the curent Assault Rail Rifle. And it has come a very long way since that post. Too far, perhaps: I notice the assault rail being used on a very large amount of fits. Assaults of all flavors, commandos, even some sentinels. Check your metrics, but the ARR might be becoming the new FOTM. If so, I want to propose some changes that should be done so tweak the rifle into a more balanced state.
1. Greatly reduce the visual kick when aiming down the sights. It makes tracking moving targets very difficult without doing things like putting a dot on the TV where the aimpoint is. The ARR is actually the hardest to use at range than any other assault variant because the sight bounces all over the place: this is the opposite of what it should be. The actual amount the aimpoint moves when ADS is fine, just make the rifle model not bounce around so much.
2. Reduce optimal range from 71m to 60m. If you read my old thread, you'll note i pointed out one of the problems of the ARR was having only 3m less range than the base RR while only having 3 DPS more than the base. The DPS was increased, as it should have been, but the range stayed the same. As it is, the ARR has only 3m less range than the RR while having substantially more DPS: this makes it better than the RR if one can find a way to deal with the rifle bouncing around everywhere, see the above dot on the TV. This needs correcting: The ARR should have the longest range of the assault variants, while having substantially lower optimal than the base RR. Combined with change 1, this makes the RR better at "ranged" fighting within its optimal, while lowering that optimal so as to not tread on the RR/Laser Rifle's toes too much.
3. Reduce magazine size to 52, and lower the total carried to 312 shots. This keeps total ammo at 6 magazines base, while lowering the damage per magazine from 2436 to 2184. This will make ammo conservation more important, and ensure that spraying it everywhere is less viable, since Caldari are about taking accurate shots. Spraying shots everywhere is more the Minmatar strategy.
In all, this makes the rail rifle less lethal at range, while making application at its new optimal range easier to do without needing tricks. It also reduces the spray-and-pray strategy slightly while keeping its DPM relatively high. With thee changes, the ARR prevalence might be mitigated somewhat, leading to more diversity on the battlefield