User blog:Sarcastos/Assault Rifle Comparisons

Which gun is the best member of the assault rifle family?

Context - I'm a lvl 72 assault, with a fast moving, fast reloading, hard hitting but fragile build. And this question is geared towards NM mode. I'm still 28 lvls away from end game, but I'd say I'm getting there.

There are currently 15 assault rifles. Let's quickly knock some of the weaker candidates out of the running - all the RIAs, the CM Titan, that one sad HVM 005 G-class, the Raptor, the Starburst, the Planet Stormer, all the Ronsons and the Heartburn. That leaves us with the Gigavolt, the Hardthorn, the Sublight and the Mixmaster.

Looking at both the numbers and numerous actual use of the weapons, I'm going to declare the Gigavolt out of the race. I currently have red 10*** versions of them, all of them with deadly and overclocked in common:

Gigavolt:

DPS: 10.4K

Movement Penalty: 13.7%

Clip size: 40

Reload: .54 seconds

Damage type: Shock

Sublight:

DPS: 38.4K

Movement Penalty: 18.2%

Clip size: 110

Reload: .64 seconds

Damage type: physical

Mixmaster:

DPS: 34.2K

Movement Penalty: 24.6%

Clip size: 240... without capacity

Reload: .45 seconds

Damage type: Energy

(Now my bonuses from collections, skills, masteries are not the same as your character's, however the numerical differences between the weapons should be consistent regardless of bonuses, as all three aforesaid are assault rifles.)

The most important stat, DPS, speaks for itself. And it's a damned shame, because I remember finding it 10*** clean and being so excited, spent a quarter of my cash on it's augments, then playing with it in a multiplayer pods game and realizing how little damage I do compared to my Sublight or Mix. The arcing is nifty little gimmick but it doesn't change the fact that this gun has way less killing power. So this weapon is only good situationally, and that is Single Player. In Single player, when zombies are way weaker, the DPS is acceptable. I find that in my SP pod runs, as long as I carry a physical weapon to blast through barriers while maining the Gigavolt, I can complete pod runs slightly faster than with a Sublight or Mix. That is probably due to the faster movement speed and the arcing (which is useful when shots actually kill the zombies in a few hits vs many many hits).

But for NM mode, this gun is all flash and no cash. It doesn't matter the level or character build, I notice that anyone in my NM game using mostly this gun would always either have the least or second least kills, depending on his other weapon.

Now, that leaves the Sublight and the Mixmaster. In one corner, we have the Sublight, an assault rifle so good that people compare it against the Hornet. And in the other corner, we have the Mixmaster, one of Rancor's finest creations. To be continued.