Weapon Tuning: The Tactical AR

The first rule of FPS is very simple: If there is an overpowered weapon or piece of equipment? USE IT. Case in point the Tactical AR. It is currently making its rounds as the current flavor of the month weapon. The worse part of the dominant weapon phenomenon is that it feeds into the copycat nature of online players. In no time everyone uses the weapon as a means to simply keep up, killing weapon variety entirely. Now its supporters will do anything to hold onto its current power level, but the facts are these: Its currently a weapon with extremely high damage, rate of fire, range all while having outstanding hip fire [which is mind boggling with it being a scoped weapon]. In a nutshell its perfect.

We tested it in Ambush on a character with a little over 500K SP and zero points in sharpshooter. We used the sight initially but after realizing we didnt need to, we were able to easily dominate CQC and engage long range targets with the scope when the opportunity presented itself.


It simply can't have all four of the major weapon advantages [range, close quarters, fire rate and damage]. No weapon can in a shooter where balance is important. The worst part is that its designed as a single shot weapon, so in reality while its fire rate should be lower than the Breach's 400 rpm, somehow its fire rate is a mind blowing almost 800 rpm! CCP has done a wonderful job adding various elements to separate the weapons, but they just have to use them more. Look at the Thales sniper rifle, while many point to its damage, the thing that truly sets it apart is it unparalleled zoom. The Assault Rifle is superior to the Militia AR because its clip size is larger, The Duvolle AR has more range and accuracy its counterparts.

While we were shocked by the Tac AR damage increase [both models currently do over 70 dmg] we agree that it should be a high damage weapon. In previous builds it simply didnt have enough bite to be effective. It also now has less recoil, a great sight because it is a medium long range weapon and now easily hits targets at over 80m, far outranging the normal ARs. All this combined with hipfire accuracy that is uncanny, which is crazy because you certainly wouldnt allow a sniper rifle accuracy without scoping up. Keep in mind the Tactical AR is only a notch below the sniper as a ranged weapon. We get the hint the devs knew how powerful the weapon was as its no longer available in the militia class and is now exclusive to the advanced tier of weapons only.

Its pretty obvious what has to happen here is a considerable lowering of fire rate and a severe reduction in hip fire accuracy. We support weapon tweaks rather than totally nerf hammers and there's really no need to cripple this weapon, just a better defining of its role. Lower the fire rate to 350 rpm and it can no longer be exploited. We have to point out, however that this fire rate must be hard coded into the game. While we dont think modded controllers are as rampant as some claim, the tactical AR without a fixed fire rate is perfect exploit for those that use them.

As always, we'll continue to attempt to help promote and publish ideas that help establish, enhance and grow the Dust 514 community as much as we can. Have any ideas that need sharing? Would you like to join our staff as a writer? Be sure to contact us at magww@live.com