I’ve tried using the Mk 2 in various auric missions and it always comes up short. The DPS is simply too low to kill elites or specials in a reasonable amount of time. What’s worse is that it has next to no stagger which is most noticeable when fighting dogs and trappers, normally you can interrupt them just by shooting but the Mk II is incapable of this. The mk 6 and mk 7 don’t have the same issue because the 6 shoots ridiculously fast and the 7 has higher base damage per shot, thus achieving a higher DPS and stagger in different ways.
I’m not sure how to fix it but the 2 currently sits in a really tepid middle ground where it isn’t good at anything in particular. Upping the damage and stagger to put it at the midpoint between the 6 and 7 might work (60-80-100) because right now it is essentially just a slower firing 6 and much weaker for it.
I tested it out for a few more matches and I think it doesn’t need a huge buff. Maybe up the damage per shot by about 10 and increase the stagger to the point where it can actually affect things.
The lack of stagger is the weapon’s biggest problem, it can’t stagger anything without some combination of crits and headshots. Melee or ranged it doesn’t matter, you can blast enemies in the face and they won’t react in the slightest, it’s like fighting with a water gun. Since you can’t interrupt enemy attacks you are forced to dodge every single hit coming your way, which is totally unlike any other gun I can think of.
Unsure if FS is done tweaking them. IIRC the announcement of the slab shield and recon guns had a vague tone to it implying the last buff was a bandaid while a bigger fix was planned?
The majority of weapons need buffs IMO from damage to ammo capacity.
I wished they had not gone the MK route so there would be less variation to balance, but here we are now.
There’s also a huge lack of cool WH40k weapons like Power Gloves, Hellgun/Hot-Shot Lasgun, Bolt Pistol, Meltagun etc.
Fatshark could have gone absolutely nuts with the weapons because even the guardsmen of WH40k use ridiculous weapons but instead we got 50 Shades of Call of Duty weapons (I will never not rant at Hedge) which IMO misses the whole mark of WH40k which is all about: “big sweaty men with huge weapons beating up other big sweaty men with huge weapons”.
I put some more time into the 6 and 7. They seem to be okay in terms of DPS, they are comparable to infantry autoguns. They still have stagger problems however, just not against common enemies.
All three recon lasguns should, AT MINIMUM, be able to stagger dogs. But none of them can do that, even the 6 with the highest per-shot damage can’t even flinch most specials to the point of breaking immersion.
I personally believe that the MK 2 accatran recon lasgun needs a buff in tbe ROF department. At least to meet or beat the DPS of the MK VIIa recon lasgun. Put it’s rof at 13.33 rounds a second, or ~800 rpm instead of its current 11.11 rounds a second.
On a different note, I think all of the accatran lasguns need a buff in the maniac dmg department, and I wish that the MK IVd and MK II recon lasguns have their unyielding dmg scaled to similar levels like the MK VIId recon. MK VIId deals 155 unyielding headshot damage; MK II recon deals 64 unyielding, headshot dmg up close and MK IVd recon deals 64 unyielding, headshot dmg at a distance. Perhaps increase MK II and MK IVd unyielding dmg by 20%. This anecdotal evidence is based on all three of these recon lasguns having 80% damage.
That sounds about right, some enemies are too bullet spongey, especially when you combine that with the lack of stagger. None of the accatrans seem to be able to stop enemies if they are already in an attack animation, so they are particularly terrible against specials like dogs and flamers, as well as reapers and gunners.
The also have some funky range bands that I don’t understand. The mk6 has >100% stagger against flak at all ranges. Against unyielding it tapers from 100% at short range to 50% at long range. But then stagger vs maniac actually gets worse the closer you get which is rather confusing. If you compare it to the mk2 everything is the same except for maniac stagger which is better up close and worse at long distance which I would consider the “normal” pattern making the mk6 the odd man out.
To sum things up again, the accatrans are fun to use but they feel janky and unfinished. The range bands are nonsensical. They lack stagger to meet any meaningful breakpoints (ie, attack interrupts). And they don’t have enough maniac or unyielding damage.
I’m going to be moving on to infantry autoguns after this so I won’t be doing anymore testing, but I think that covers all the issues.
MK 2 and MK 7 recon lasguns deal max damage when a target is x<10m while the MK IVd recon has inverse damage fallof, so it deals its max damage when a target is x>20m.
Lasguns in general have inverse fall off so MK IV is more like a typical lasgun than its brothers that are like ghetto autoguns. In general it absolutely feels like the worst ranged in the game, having no real niche killing targets of any type and terrible ammo economy somehow on a lasgun, the stagger thing I could tolerate if they at least put targets down when your aim was on point. However to the point of staggering criticals will disrupt some enemies like trapper and the like, its just too bad you have to use Deadshot for it to feel bad.