from assault rifle to smg endgame, and why should you be forced ?

[Le-Quack]

Assault rifle is realy weak compared to smg in pvm and pvp.
You can not duel or pvp for that matter with assault rifle vs a profession that has acrobat, it is pointless more or less. i am not saying it is impossible, but its harder than it should be.
You can not kill anyone with just assault rifle more or less.
I dont like that funcom more or less forces 220 soldiers to go smg to be viable and effective.
There could been added a brand new assault rifle perkline for example with attack rate check. There is no reason why this shouldnt be possible, the assault rifle soldier would have to trade away other perks for possible new assault rifle perkline.

You can be assault rifle if you wish at 220, but you will always be weaker than anyone with smg.
I hope that it could be a change to this issue where both setups atleast can be equal.

[Solams]

Assault rifles are nice, but if you want to succeed with them in pvp you need to take your AR to the max. SMG's on the other hand have less AR, but are compensated by the add dmg from their perkline and the option to use craphander in offhand. Also the assault rifle perkline is open to SMG users while the SMG perkline isn't open to assault rifle users. And being an Assault rifle pvp'er it really comes down to timing your perks in order etc..Wasting perks on defensive perks is just stupid.. Our AMS lasts longer then their defensive perks

But what I really wanted to add is, why do you not consider all the other weapon choices were given? Ranged Energy (Cabine), Soldiers used to swap to that alot when encountering evade proffs, as we already got the skill maxed anyways to land our perks.

Shotgun and Rifle are also options considering as we got acces to the full perkline! You should play arround a bit.. because you don't have to be one of the smg clones!

The Xan of Anger could use a tweak tho, like they did with the agents rifle

[Burgly]

Assault rifles are nice, but if you want to succeed with them in pvp you need to take your AR to the max. SMG's on the other hand have less AR, but are compensated by the add dmg from their perkline and the option to use craphander in offhand. Also the assault rifle perkline is open to SMG users while the SMG perkline isn't open to assault rifle users. And being an Assault rifle pvp'er it really comes down to timing your perks in order etc..Wasting perks on defensive perks is just stupid.. Our AMS lasts longer then their defensive perks

But what I really wanted to add is, why do you not consider all the other weapon choices were given? Ranged Energy (Cabine), Soldiers used to swap to that alot when encountering evade proffs, as we already got the skill maxed anyways to land our perks.

Shotgun and Rifle are also options considering as we got acces to the full perkline! You should play arround a bit.. because you don't have to be one of the smg clones!

The Xan of Anger could use a tweak tho, like they did with the agents rifle

I've been them all except rifle, and smg far outperforms all other choices by a mile and a half, neither kec3 or Silverback can take on real evade profs now days because too much heal/hd/evades, assault rifle you need all your perks up and a perfect supernova swap to take down any1 worth their salts, so u can kill one person every 1:40 or something, nice. SMG is currently the go to setup for both pvp and pvm by the simple reason that it's way superior.

Bump for the resurrection of the AR sol!

[SirAronar]

Is this mostly just a perk issue in that non-SMG perks aren't performing well and the SMG perk line has weapon-exclusive perks that no other soldier gets?

If so, probably best to remove explicit weapon requirements (just used Ranged Weapon equipped) from perklines and start sharing cooldowns between perk specials from separate lines so it doesn't become mandatory to stack multiple lines (wasn't there a similar fix for 1hB and 1hE for Enforcers in 18.7?). If people gravitate toward certain perklines (i.e. SMG Mastery instead of Heavy Ranged) then in favor of others, then a retool is certainly in order.

I do see that Heavy Ranged has 2 perk actions that do basically the same thing: Triangulate Target should just be baked into Laser Paint Target and replaced with something else (ideally that would help bridge the gap with SMG Mastery).

Out of curiosity and to get a better sense of the overall situation, how do Power Up, Shotgun Mastery, and Rifle Mastery stack up to Heavy Ranged and SMG Mastery?

[Le-Quack]

Is this mostly just a perk issue in that non-SMG perks aren't performing well and the SMG perk line has weapon-exclusive perks that no other soldier gets?

If so, probably best to remove explicit weapon requirements (just used Ranged Weapon equipped) from perklines and start sharing cooldowns between perk specials from separate lines so it doesn't become mandatory to stack multiple lines (wasn't there a similar fix for 1hB and 1hE for Enforcers in 18.7?). If people gravitate toward certain perklines (i.e. SMG Mastery instead of Heavy Ranged) then in favor of others, then a retool is certainly in order.

I do see that Heavy Ranged has 2 perk actions that do basically the same thing: Triangulate Target should just be baked into Laser Paint Target and replaced with something else (ideally that would help bridge the gap with SMG Mastery).

Out of curiosity and to get a better sense of the overall situation, how do Power Up, Shotgun Mastery, and Rifle Mastery stack up to Heavy Ranged and SMG Mastery?

Why i suggest a new assault rifle perkline is becose its easyer that way to boost assault rifle, such a line can give more ar, dmg perks whatever, then its up to the dev's to try balance it out.
To boost attack rate by 500 points more as i seen some suggest i dont belive gonna happen even thou i think it should.
But assault rifle.. such a heavy weapon has such redicules weak dmg perks on top of that we have low attack rate.. why i realy want the dev's to make a assault rifle perkline to give us more ar and hopefully some real dmg perks.

[Tyfowler]

I agree that Assault Rifle soldiers need help. Ever Since I started playing my Soldier I found it weird that Soldiers didn't have an "Assault Rifle Mastery" perkline, and for some reason we had perk lines for smg, shotgun, and rifle. It makes no sense whatsoever. Soldiers are The masters of ranged weapons and should have access to all Ranged Mastery perklines, even if they do not currently exist.

To counteract the poor AR mechanics I went Shotgun/smg.

It works amazing for pvm, and in pvp it is hit or miss. You have to have the right two weapons for each type of defense. PDKP helps with evaders big time.

edit: why I started the post. I have put in multiple PMs and have tried to discuss this exact fact that soldiers have to go away from their main supported weapon to participate in pvp.

[Spartanx9]

Technically Assault Rifle Mastery is Heavy Ranged. The problem is that it's really barebones compared to every other perkline that raises weapon skills. It gives Heavy Weapons, which is not used and should be given it's own perk line, as the perks use Assault Rifle as a check (remember that it took until LE to realise that Weapon Bash was scaling with HW instead of AR cause HR used to use HW as skill checks), and the perks in general need a rework due to having two perks do the same thing and the damage perks being on a very long cooldown for the damage that they do.

Compared to other Mastery perk lines, it does not add any extra damage unlike pistol mastery/shotgun mastery, only increases skills unlike SMG/Rifle Mastery and lacks enough damage perks or a huge add damage like every other perk line in the game. The one that could probably compare to it would be shotgun mastery, but the damage perks recycle much faster than HR's, with SG Mastery level 10 Point Blank having the same cooldown as Weapon Bash now.

I would say the only couple of advantages that HR has is being able to debuff dodge, and only requiring eight perks. Would be nice if we got some heavy hitters or damage or even change out the modifiers on the perkline that would include more damage/crit/secondary skills like the rest of the ranged perk lines do.

[Solams]

well it would be nice if they changed heavy weapons into a perkline that has it's perks:
-check with Attack Rating.
-...Target perks debuff both dodge ranged and ducked explosives.
-gives 100 attack rating over the entire line instead of AR/Heavy weapons.
-Make Napalm also change your damage type to fire for the same duration the debuff runs.
-Weapon bash becomes a knockback instead of stun (so we can play baseball with melee profs)edit.. (can also be a copy of the collector kick skill with shorter kick).

And next to that add a new perkline called Assault Rifle Mastery.