High ROF Autorifles - Blanket Nerfs are a Bad Idea (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, February 06, 2015, 12:52 (3579 days ago) @ RaichuKFM

I get what you're saying, but I believe that, whatever your playstyle, you'll still find that there is a more effective weapon than any of the high RoF ARs.

Point blank: Shotgun beats any AR every time. If you like point blank, use a shotgun.
Close range - Long range: slow firing AR beats high firing AR every time. The slower the weapon fires, the more effective it is at longer ranges.

You seem obsessed with Doctor Nope to the point that you're handicapping yourself. You can play any style with For the People or Up for Anything and be more effective than you're being now. You will kill things more quickly and reload less often. I'm not questioning your style of play at all; I'm helping you to understand that some ARs are simply better in all situations than other ARs because of how their stats break down.

I'm a really good PvP player in this game. Really good. And I'm trying to help you to improve your game as well. Weapon selection is a huge factor in determining PvP success.

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I'll do some napkin math here for you (I'm making up numbers right now, but I will ask my fireteam for real ones so I can come back and do a real analysis):
- A High RoF weapon with minimal impact (Doctor Nope) does 11 damage per round to a target at point blank range.
- A Slow RoF weapon with high impact (Up for Anything) does 67 damage per round to a target at point blank range.

Doctor nope would need to put out 6.1 rounds in the amount of time that Up for Anything puts out 1 round to do the same damage. BUT... since the initial rounds leave the gun at the same time, you have a fencepost problem. UFA does 67 damage while DN does only 11 on the first bullet. Even if DN puts out 6.1 rounds before the next UFA round fires, you'll have DN doing 77 damage while UFA has done 134. Add 6 more rounds and DN has done 143 damage while UFA has done 201.

See my point? While the damage values are converging over time, the initial spike from a higher damage per round weapon means it will be in the lead for some time.

Extrapolate this out until DN has fired all 72 rounds in it's mag (about 2 seconds, iirc). UFA has fired 12 rounds in that amount of time and has 30 more in the magazine. At this point, DN has done 792 damage, total, while UFA has done 804. They're very close! BUT... Now DN has to reload for 2 seconds while UFA continues firing for 5 more seconds before needing a reload. DN loses, badly, in long term DPS, even at point blank range.

The farther downrange your target is, the worse DN will do, since it has an earlier damage falloff per round (lower range stat) and is less accurate than UFA (so more of DN's rounds will miss their mark).