IMO base damage of headhunter guns is decent but when I look at the stopping power stat and see dmg vs unyielding and maniac % modifiers, they are absolutely poor. Dmg vs flak is pretty good but barely better than Infantry autoguns, and those are way better at dealing with other targets too.
Headhunters feel like they are supposed to be more of a marksman weapon but they have way worse dmg vs priority targets than full-auto infantry autoguns.
I think those specific modifiers should have way higher percentage for those weapons to be worth considering. Right now I can tap fire mk1 infantry autogun and be better marksman than headhunter could ever be.
If your class has access to braced autoguns there is almost no reason to choose a headhunter. An Agripina Braced Autogun will do everything a Headhunter can do, with more ammo to spare, and much higher DPS. Just crouch and ADS to precision-fire.
Edit: And if I might add, I absolutely abhor the Burst-fire Headhunter Autoguns. By definition, if I choose one of those guns, I’m going to click at heads ; but with the recoil it’s literally not possible to land the two shots into weak points at long range.
Was about to make the same thread but I might as well just bump this one.
Headhunters have a bunch of problems as I see it:
Lack of general stopping power against all targets. It doesn’t help that they were supposed to be buffed in the last patch but only got about half of the increase they were supposed to. On Damnation difficulty the rifle does not even do enough damage to single headshot dregs and scabs at point blank range. I think they need a further damage buff across the board as well as a much higher headshot multiplier in particular that would set them apart from other autoguns.
The Maniac damage multiplier needs to be increased relative to the others. Headhunters are really bad at stopping ragers and mutants in particular, they are also very bullet spongey against flamers. On damnation difficulty a single-shot vraks headhunter struggles to kill a charging mutant in 20 shots even WITH volley fire boosting the damage and most of the shots hitting the head.
The Agripinaa is too weak in general. On higher difficulties a single burst to the chest will not kill most scabs or dregs. This puts it in a very awkward middle spot where it cannot meet any single-shot breakpoints with a single two-shot burst. The average number of bullets required to kill one target is four, with the fourth being wasted because the target is already dead. If you compare the stats of the Agripinaa to the three-shot vraks you’ll see that the Agripinaa is more like the vraks with smaller burst size instead of being a proper intermediate gun between the single shot and three-shot vraks. It needs to be significantly buffed to properly fill that role.
Lack of a flashlight that makes it much harder to use on some maps compared to the lasguns and infantry autoguns. The rifle butt attack is entirely useless because it can take a whole 5-10 hits just to kill a single target and there’s no point using it just to shove nearby enemies when you could switch to your melee weapon in the same time and kill them instead.