Weapons Balance
Pistol
In the hands of a skilled player, this beats the Assault and Battle rifles. It fires slow, but has high damage output.
Since this game’s weapon balancing is like Halo, this is basically your revolver/magnum.
Assault Rifle
Fully automatic. Second lowest damage output. This is a spray and pray weapon, best used in CQC or medium range engagement. It serves it’s purpose
Battle Rifle
Just the assault rifle with moderately higher damage, more range, and it’s burst-fire only.
SMG
Lowest damage output in the game, and less range than the Assault rifle. It does have the fastest rate of fire, though, and tears up enemies the fastest than any other gun in CQC except for the shotgun. Spray and pray !
Shotgun
I really have to explain ? Shortest range, high damage up close.
Sniper Rifle
Third highest highest damage output, next to the rail gun and rocket launcher. Requires 2 body shots to kill, or 1 headshot.
Plasma Rifle
Works like the assault rifle, but the fire rate increases as you keep shooting in full auto. It can actually tear through armor/shields the fastest while it’s “overcharged”.
Rail Gun
The quickest killing weapon, but you have to charge the shot first. Once charged, it’s a one-hit kill and projectile travels lighting fast; hence rail gun.
Rocket Launcher
Kills in one hit, on impact or by splash damage(must land close enough to your enemy). Projectile speed is much slower than the rail gun, so you have to really lead your shot against moving targets.
Grenades
These are for destroying portals, only. They’re not “anti-personel.”
Gott it’d ? Gewd
Now that you get a sense of weapon balance, stop crying “nerf pistol, buff AR’s” and stuff. All the weapons have roles. They are not made to be as accurate or as powerful as each other. You are incentivized to change weapons when the situation calls for it.
This game is spiritually succeeding Halo, which means there is armor and energy shields in this game. You shoot out someone’s shield, then they go down after further being shot. Your shield will regenerate after a few seconds of not taking damage.
So, again, energy shields and weapon balance; It’s a sci-fi shooter. It’s not made to be realistic, and it’s not like those “advanced” COD games; where those military organizations would rather spend money on robots than lead-proof armor for their living soldiers.
There are lead weapons in this game, and they are purposely weaker. That’s the point. That’s why there is also energy/laser weapons, but there is also the rocket launcher; It works like the rail gun, but is more conventional. It kills on impact or by splash damage, but travels slower.
To touch on the pistol, suck it up. In Halo 1, it fired faster. In Halo 2, it got a fire rate buff, but a huge damage nerf (making “magnum” a joke). Halo 3 brought the damage back up, but nerfed fire rate to what you see in this game; which is the slowest of all Halo games.
You’re probably mad some pistoler is ripping apart you and your friends, while you helplessly spray at him with your automatics. This isn’t COD(pistols nerfed to oblivion, lot’s of spread, low accuracy). Back in the Halo and competitive Halo days, there were players so skilled they could solo-dominate whole teams of people with just that pistol. Best advice to you is distance yourself and switch to a sniper rifle or battle rifle, or get close and use a shotgun or smg. The devs emulated the Halo feel of weapons and character movement really well, that players from the Halo days carried their skills over. That’s who the game was made for.
