While I personally do not use the Mass Driver, ([i wrote:I prefer to kill my enemies with pure marksmanship, rather than "noob-tubing" my way up the charts[/i]) I am trying to grasp a better understanding of said weapon.
Please don't take offense to this because I am not directing this at you specifically, but way too many people whine about the MD being a noob tube. It is
primarily an area denial and crowd control weapon. Can a great MD player get a lot of kills with it. Hell yeah. Can the average player? Hell no. Don't care either way.
It is comical how people complain about them so much. I spam a clip of rounds into an area, maybe damage a few guys, possibly kill one or two tops that were probably low on health anyways, and random red dots start running all over the place to get away from a weapon that, more often than not, won't get too many of them. The people complaining the most probably got a lot more kills in the match than I did with the MD yet they still QQ that it is OP. My point is though, that the weapon did its job for its intended use. Most decent AR users are going to take me down 1v1 at med range and I'm cool with that. If I get into CQC with a shotgunner, I am likely to injure or even kill
myself in the process. I'm not a MD expert by any means but I do know the weapon's strengths and its weaknesses and that's how I use it.
The MD has a lot of drawbacks that make up for it's strengths. It is hard to engage an elevated position. The weapon blocks your view of most of the screen when you reload. Ammo supply is very low so you better have access to nanohives and ration them out if you want your ammo to last of a decent amount of time. If your squad starts to move out while your resupplying, you gotta decide whether to keep up or stand around a little longer resupplying and possibly get gunned down by someone passsing by. You have to actually put points in MD skills for it to begin to become really effective. You have to actually practice with it quite a bit unlike the point-and-shoot guns. You have to know not where your enemy is at, but where he will be when the round lands and that becomes increasing difficult the longer the distance.
Can it keep enemy players from advancing onto the letter your team is capping or scatter the enemy away from a letter they are trying to take? Can a player with a mass driver break up a group of players traveling closely together, separate a Logi from repairing a heavy, or prevent the enemy from camping a spot. Yep. Bingo. That's the whole point of the weapon system known as the mass driver.