So, every other weapon in this game gets nerfed just as soon as the AR nerf brigade gets going.

OP or Not, the AR is ruining Dust. This weapon is so overused it's just stupid. The weapon, in pubs, accounts for as many kills as 11 of the 14 weapons combined. Combined.

Does that sound like balance or diversity? no, it isn't.

CCP - Are other weapons supposed to compete with the AR? They aren't.

It's about damn time that CCP approaches balance with, you know, usage balance in mind.

it takes me half as long to kill a target with a gek as it does to kill a target with an hmg. and the range doesn't really make any diffference between the two.

Same kills as 11 of the 14 weapons combined. That's more than "more popular".

Where exactly are you getting this information?

The issue isn't the spam of blaster rifles, that is merely sympomatic of the real problem which is the imbalance of the rifles.

Part of this is due to their only being 2 of the 4 total rifles available yet.

Part of this is due to the basic starting militia fits favoring the blaster rifle fit over the scrambler rifle.

And a large part of this is due to the inherent, "never not" reason to use the duvolle.

As is, there is no scenario in which the duvolle isn't one of the best weapons. Close quarters, at a distance, accuracy, high damage and rate of fire, large clip size, tracking, it excels at everything. Maybe not as good as some specialized weapons in specific scenarios, but being 90% as good in 100% of the fields, is better than being 100% as good in 20% of the field.

There are a number of things that should change to resolve this.

1. Give a reason to use other weapons. ShotGuns and HMGs should by default be better in closed in areas or up close. The scrambler rifle needs to have its kick removed while zoomed in (there's no reason for this, and the Duvolle/laser rifles don't have one).

2. The Duvolle, and other blaster rifles in general, need some sort of draw back in comparison, be it a higher kick than the scrambler, a shorter effective range (and I mean actually effective, see below*) smaller clip size or poor'er zoomed in accuracy, or any number of other ideas.

* By effective range I mean range that is actually seen in game, 40m sounds short, but when you play the game rarely (unless sniping) do you see targets that are outside of your effective range. Using the scrambler rifle, you rarely have a chance to use your higher range at an advantage, because maps are generally closer than your effect range. If you do find that chance, your damage isn't high enough to kill someone before they seek cover. So, what is thus the point of that? You end up needing to use a charged shot to score head shots, effectively sniping, to have real range advantage. Which asks the question, why bother when the blaster rifle is 90% as good in almost every other scenario?

3. The shield discrepancy and the Scrambler Rifle. The other aspect, is that currently the only other rifles, the Scrambler and laser, get a distinct DPS decrease when you hit armor. The blaster rifles continue to chug through both shield and armor without consequence. This is another reason to not use energy weapons, as this fact isn't compensated by a higher DPS overall. So likely, if using the SCR rifle, you end up with a lot of enemies with 70% armor left and no shields, and no kills. The one advantage the energy weapons do have, is the ability to charge up a shot, and deal extra damage. Yet if you try to capitalize on this extra damage, the weapon overheats, damaging you, and ruining your ability to continue to do damage. You can't do anything else while the gun cools, you can't swap weapons, you can't throw grenades, you can only run around and hope that A, they don't kill you in this time, or B, they don't get away from you in this time. Why, would you handicap yourself with such a mechanic, that has no real advantage to it?

Overall, there are distinct reasons NOT to use the other rifles, but no real reason to not use the Blaster rifle. Hence, the never not issue. Players seek to maximize their efficiency and have thus specialized into the weapon that gives them the best return, the Duvolle. Making the best gun, even better, and the worse guns, even worse.

The problem is that the full auto AR is better than the breach and burst in all situations. TAC AR is still viable, but only a select few still use it. It needs to be a little less effective in all situations while the burst and breach get buffed so the AR is more diverse in its own class.
Also, I'm glad you enjoy the ScR but on paper it isn't that much better than the AR in all situations. You applied player skill into a niche weapon and can perform that weapons niche more effectively than a weapon that's supposed to be all around good. Player Skill > Weapon's Effectiveness

Oh I agree that the other rifle versions need to be retuned......dont get me wrong there. But calling the AR OP or calling for a nerf of the AR because you want to force diversity by making a balanced weapon horrible......is just a bad policy period.

And and on paper the ASCR beats out or is equal to the AR is almost every stat. It is a better weapon all around than the AR...there is no situation where the AR is better than the ASCR.

The issue isn't the spam of blaster rifles, that is merely sympomatic of the real problem which is the imbalance of the rifles.

Part of this is due to their only being 2 of the 4 total rifles available yet.

Part of this is due to the basic starting militia fits favoring the blaster rifle fit over the scrambler rifle.

And a large part of this is due to the inherent, "never not" reason to use the duvolle.

As is, there is no scenario in which the duvolle isn't one of the best weapons. Close quarters, at a distance, accuracy, high damage and rate of fire, large clip size, tracking, it excels at everything. Maybe not as good as some specialized weapons in specific scenarios, but being 90% as good in 100% of the fields, is better than being 100% as good in 20% of the field.

There are a number of things that should change to resolve this.

1. Give a reason to use other weapons. ShotGuns and HMGs should by default be better in closed in areas or up close. The scrambler rifle needs to have its kick removed while zoomed in (there's no reason for this, and the Duvolle/laser rifles don't have one).

2. The Duvolle, and other blaster rifles in general, need some sort of draw back in comparison, be it a higher kick than the scrambler, a shorter effective range (and I mean actually effective, see below*) smaller clip size or poor'er zoomed in accuracy, or any number of other ideas.

* By effective range I mean range that is actually seen in game, 40m sounds short, but when you play the game rarely (unless sniping) do you see targets that are outside of your effective range. Using the scrambler rifle, you rarely have a chance to use your higher range at an advantage, because maps are generally closer than your effect range. If you do find that chance, your damage isn't high enough to kill someone before they seek cover. So, what is thus the point of that? You end up needing to use a charged shot to score head shots, effectively sniping, to have real range advantage. Which asks the question, why bother when the blaster rifle is 90% as good in almost every other scenario?

3. The shield discrepancy and the Scrambler Rifle. The other aspect, is that currently the only other rifles, the Scrambler and laser, get a distinct DPS decrease when you hit armor. The blaster rifles continue to chug through both shield and armor without consequence. This is another reason to not use energy weapons, as this fact isn't compensated by a higher DPS overall. So likely, if using the SCR rifle, you end up with a lot of enemies with 70% armor left and no shields, and no kills. The one advantage the energy weapons do have, is the ability to charge up a shot, and deal extra damage. Yet if you try to capitalize on this extra damage, the weapon overheats, damaging you, and ruining your ability to continue to do damage. You can't do anything else while the gun cools, you can't swap weapons, you can't throw grenades, you can only run around and hope that A, they don't kill you in this time, or B, they don't get away from you in this time. Why, would you handicap yourself with such a mechanic, that has no real advantage to it?

The assault scrambler variant removes this ability for a fully automatic firing, but the kick and DPS issues aren't compensated in regard to the GEK/Duvolle, so why would you bother using it?

Overall, there are distinct reasons NOT to use the other rifles, but no real reason to not use the Blaster rifle. Hence, the never not issue. Players seek to maximize their efficiency and have thus specialized into the weapon that gives them the best return, the Duvolle. Making the best gun, even better, and the worse guns, even worse.

Nerfing the range but not buffing the DPS would put the AR as one of the worse weapons in the game, the ASCR is a great weapon and easily comparable, and sometimes outmatches the AR. But a proto ASCR will not compete with a full specced duvolle due to the duvolle getting skills to increase accuracy.

Precisely.

What you say sounds really good....only your information is all wrong. The difference between the dmg of the Duvolle and the ASCR against armor is 2 dmg per shot. Recoil on the ASCR??? Are you kidding me?? Thee is more recoil on the duvolle than the ASCR. ASCR from the starts gets the same recoil/dispersion as a fully upgraded duvolle (all recoil/dispersion skills upgraded).

Your initial reasonings were better. Everyone starts with a blaster rifle and everyone learns to play with this role first. So it makes sense that more ppl spec into this weapon and dont move on from there. This has much less to do with the AR and more to do with CCP prebuilt suits. If anything you can argue this point and I would not debate it because its true.

Just like the ASCR the AR is good in almost every situation so yea alot of ppl gravitate towards the good at all master of none weapon.

BTW I am an ASCR user....before that a SCR user. So I know what I am talking about when I say I melt heavies faster than I ever did with the AR. The bonus dmg that the ASCR does to shield more than makes up for the 2 less dmg to armor it does.

Buster take a note from this gal.

I can accept overuse, but not this much. It's way overused.

Also, it isn't natural. Only very modern, COD like shooters have this problem.

Quake doesn't even have an AR:

http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Quake_weapons

Most shooters prior the the newest don't have this issue. It isn't natural, and it is a problem.

Thanks for being rational about it though.

Here :

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=92678

And here :

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=94246

This is not enough data to form an accurate representation of gun usage, only a loose assumption. Also, recording kills completely ignores kill assists. Weapons such as the mass driver and scrambler rifle are less likely to deal a killing blow than an AR. Snipers often wing people only to have another merc finish off their target. Your analysis is too flawed.

The ARs aren't OP they are just the baseline weapon in this game and every other FPS in the universe. After the TAC nerf you don't see any bull$hit kills like you did with the flaylock.

A rapid-fire weapon that throws small high speed projectiles is just the most practical and adaptable weapon on the battlefield. They are meant to be the go to choice when you are facing a broad range of situations where you need a weapon that is versatile. Decent but not exceptional range, good ammo capacity, ability to burst and spray, etc.

They aren't meant to be the master of all and the specialist weapons in Dust are often underpowered or fail to shine in their area of expertise. For example, the laser rifle is insufficiently good at long range to offset its lack of versatility. This however is not the fault of the AR, its just that those other weapons aren't developed enough.

The reason you see lots of AR kills is not because it is OP but because players have made the choice to go for familiarity and versatility at the cost of range/AE/whatever.

Even if every other weapon was significantly buffed people would still use the AR because it is versatile.

Not to mention all the other weapons have not been released yet. Its siily to even talk about balance or over use at this point

Indeed, The AR is to be SHORT RANGED.

It out does the Current MID-LONG RANGE gun by a Mile.

Nobody saw that graph and wondered how much different we are from that?

Well the even though the AR is a short range weapon it does not mean its range should be smaller than the SMG which is a short-mid range weapon. The perfect range for the AR and lets say the Combat rifle would be having the AR max range right in between the optimal and max range of the Combat rifle, that way the combat rifle can perform well within those ranges but outgun the AR outside of the ARs range, and then follow this pattern for the rest of the weapons. Here are some numbers AR 35/65, Combat rifle 45/75, Scrambler 55/85, and Rail rifle 65/75. With this in mind the AR should have 23% higher DPS than the Combat rifle, 37% than the SCR, 47% than the Rail. Keep in mind DPS =/= high damage, this means the rail rifle will have the highest damage but the lowest clip and ROF.

Yes, I just was trying to make a point how Imbalanced the AR is currently.

Good point, and your maths seem sound for Balance.

EVRY other gun has been nerfed into the underworld because of "loose assumptions" based off of one, or two Matches!

Why not give the AR Rambos a bit of their own medicine!



All philosophical reasons aside, that is 34 Matches included in both of those threads.

And in both of those threads, there is One common denominator.

The AR has lead twice the size of the second place finisher.

In a grand total of 34 matches.

That is not flawed data.

That's the number of people they tested polio vaccines with. (The size of a School Class)

Obviously, you want to shoot down a bulletproof airplane with nerf darts.

This is true, this is the facts.

Not Paper accusations, and lacking of facts arguments.

Except the range for the rail rifle was wrong :P

Actually, for the record, it's 38 matches not counting the PC data, and more than 4200 kills total. If you ignore the sniper rifle kills for a moment, you will see that the AR kills amount to roughly all other weapons combined that are available to light/medium dropsuits. This means that out of the 14 available weapons to all classes, the AR kills amount to roughly the same as 11 of those weapons combined.

This is what I mean by AR 514.

It's illogical to compare this game to any arena style shooter. Gun usage comparisons are only valid if they're tied to other Loadout or Class based shooters.

When CCP adapts game design of suits for its use, there's a problem!