M14 EBR: Balance

[Panzer Jager '43]

First off, let me say I am currently a Level 6 with Commando and Sharpshooter, and I enjoy all of the balance changes in the X-mas patch except those made to the M14.

Here I am going to discuss in terms of balance, why the M14 is underpowered, using pure statistics. As I've been a Level 6 Sharpshooter for some time I have had plenty of experience with the weapons. The main weapons I will be using for comparison will be the M14 EBR, the Lever-Action Rifle, and the Mk.17 SCAR.

My primary argument is not that the Lever-Action is overpowered, it is that the M14 EBR has been nerfed to the extent that it is inferior to even a $200 weapon.

Here are the stats, pulled from the latest patch's scripts: (HS = Headshot, L6 = Level 6 of respective perk)
M14 EBR
Damage = 80
HS Damage = * 2.25
Cycle Time = 0.25
HS Modifier L6 = + 140% (* 2.4)
Magazine Capacity = 20

LAR
Damage = 140
HS Damage = * 2.0
Cycle Time = 0.9
HS Modifier L6 = + 140% (* 2.4)
Reload Modifier (affects RoF) = - 60% (*0.4)
Magazine Capacity = 10

SCAR
Damage = 65
Damage Modifier L6 = + 50% (* 1.5)
Cycle Time = 0.096
HS Damage = * 1.1
Magazine Capacity = 20/25

Using this information, as I said above, I am not arguing for changes to the SCAR or LAR. They are, in my opinion, well-balanced as of this patch. However, using Damage Per Second statistics and difference in Cost, we can see that the M14 EBR is really not worth it's money:

M14 EBR DPS = 320 (20 rounds in mag each doing 80 damage)
SCAR DPS L6 = 1016 (25 rounds in mag each doing 97.5 damage)
LAR L6 DPS = 412 (10 rounds in mag each doing 140 damage)
M14 EBR HS Damage L6 = 432
M14 EBR HS DPS = 1728
LAR HS Damage L6 = 672
LAR HS DPS L6 = 1977

That's right. For a weapon that costs anywhere between $2500 and $750, a weapon that costs $200 is vastly superior in terms of damage per second, and really not lacking much in terms of magazine capacity, reserve ammunition.
The SCAR, which costs the same as the M14 EBR, vastly outperforms it. When a weapon that, even at Level 6, costs nearly 4x as much as another AND is somehow vastly inferior to it, I'd say that's a seriously balance concern.

Where is the M14 good? I can't tell you. It has a quicker magazine reload than the LAR and lower recoil, but recoil is irrelevant with the LAR since it's Lever-Action not rapid fire, and obviously for $200 the disadvantage of reload speeds is irrelevant.

So, it is statistically a fact that the M14 EBR is not worth $750, let alone $2500. My suggestion for a 'buff' would be to increase it's initial damage, perhaps return the old rate of fire, and reduce it's headshot modifier (weapon hs mod, not perk.) Maybe one day... maybe... it will be capable of outperforming the LAR, and effectively contest the SCAR or other high-tier weapons. What balance changes do you think need to be made here? It is a fact that it's inferior to the LAR. But if not my suggestions, how much should the M14 be improved, and where?

 

[weeman2412]

In general TWi just cave from the ridiculous amounts of complaints about how the m14 was imbalance before the patch now they nerfed it so bad as to be practically worthless.. Yep this is exactly what happens when people complain far too much..
A buff would be nice.. maybe increase ammo capacity so we can spam it more, because as it stands now it does half the damage of the LAR's 10 shot... and the cost for it is simply insane..

 

[C_Gibby]

I do beleive that the damage should be increased a bit. That should do it.

The M14 doesn't stun stuff (AFAIK) and it can no longer be spammed. I don't reckon that the damage should be put up to 140, but 120 could do the job, IMO.

 

[outofrealman]

In general TWi just cave from the ridiculous amounts of complaints about how the m14 was imbalance before the patch now they nerfed it so bad as to be practically worthless.. Yep this is exactly what happens when people complain far too much..
A buff would be nice.. maybe increase ammo capacity so we can spam it more, because as it stands now it does half the damage of the LAR's 10 shot... and the cost for it is simply insane..

What? U mean M14 is expensive? No, not at all. This is a head shot weapon. So dont comapre it with SCAR. You ONLY NEED 10 hs to kill a 6-man fleshpound on hell on earth. Do you even know how much bullet SCAR need?
As for LAR, it is single shot refile, andneed to reload the bullets one-by one. M14 have lower damage is just keeping it from overpowered. Just like AA12 have lower damage per shot compare to the pump shotgun.

What really have problem is the xbow for sharpshooter. ONLY. Extremely expensive and extremely worthless.

 

[C_Gibby]

Extremely expensive and extremely worthless.

Not really. The xbow is still a beast against FPs, but it still requires a bit of teamwork to take him down safely, as opposed to the 1/2-shot-kills we used to have.

 

[Rainydaykid]

You are a sharpshooter, you aren't supposed to be spamming. DPS really doesn't mean much on a semi auto weapon. Slow down, aim, and bust heads. Bodyshot damage shouldn't matter on sharp, because you should always be getting headshots. The old M14 was boringly overpowered, and I stopped playing sharpshooter days after it came out. I just recently picked it up again with the update, and sharp is balanced and fun now, not the boring god class it was.

I had over 60K headshots before the M14 update came out, so I am speaking from experience. Go slow, line up your shots, and you will get kills. You will also get faster as you play. I could fire the M14 as fast as a person spamming it, but every hit was a headshot. I haven't tried it since the update, but I will give it a go tonight.

 

[outofrealman]

Not really. The xbow is still a beast against FPs, but it still requires a bit of teamwork to take him down safely, as opposed to the 1/2-shot-kills we used to have.

4 Shots is NO WHERE near effective. Without any help, M14 beat xbow big time. Add in team work, will xbow do better suddenly? No. It still sucks. 5 GL shots from demo, fp is GONE. Why do you want to use xbow for fp? If you're doing it, you are doing it wrong. Sad but true. All you do is raging the pound without doing good enough damage to it like demo or support.

And with M14, you really can gun down fp fast even without help. THAT'S THE PROBLEM. With a much much much lower max ammo, higher weight, more sellling price and much much much higher ammo cost, you do worse than M14. You are just ignoring the fact if you still throw out those "abc is still a beast" ****.

Just proof me wrong! Dislike my post serve NO PURPOSE.

 

[Panzer Jager '43]

You ONLY NEED 10 hs to kill a 6-man fleshpound on hell on earth...As for LAR, it is single shot refile, andneed to reload the bullets one-by one..

Assuming Hell on Earth FP is 4500 hitpoints, M14 EBR will need 11 headshots.
It can achieve this at a minimum time of 0.25 seconds.

The Lever-Action for comparison needs 7 headshots. It will accomplish this at 2.04 seconds.

I dunno about you, but the fact that the EBR fires faster seems to be redundant when the slow-shooting weapon which costs 1/4 as much STILL kills faster.

 

[Merin Redplate]

4 Shots is NO WHERE near effective. Without any help, M14 beat xbow big time. Add in team work, will xbow do better suddenly? No. It still sucks. 5 GL shots from demo, fp is GONE. Why do you want to use xbow for fp? If you're doing it, you are doing it wrong. Sad but true. All you do is raging the pound without doing good enough damage to it like demo or support.

And with M14, you really can gun down fp fast even without help. THAT'S THE PROBLEM. With a much much much lower max ammo, higher weight, more sellling price and much much much higher ammo cost, you do worse than M14. You are just ignoring the fact if you still throw out those "abc is still a beast" ****.

Just proof me wrong! Dislike my post serve NO PURPOSE.

Take a breather good sir knight.
Why do you assume the SS is the only one damaging the FP, the rest of the team will be damaging it as well. Which could easily bring the 3-4 headshots down to a 1.

 

[[UIT] Akame]

@Panzer

M14 (20 rounds in mag each doing 80 damage) = 1600 Raw Damage w/ .25 cycle time (5 seconds per clip) = 320 dps w/o reload or ~191.2 dps (3.3666 sec reload)
LAR (10 rounds in mag each doing 140 damage) =1400 Raw Damage w/ .36 cycle time (3.6 seconds per clip) = ~388.888 dps w/o reload or ~136.4 dps (0.666 per round, 6.666 full load)

Factoring in reloads, the M14 still has a higher DPS. And if the HS modifiers are correct, HS dps for a lv6 is:
~1030 for EBR (normal * 2.25 * 2.4)
~650 for LAR (normal * 2.00 * 2.4)

@outofrealman
The large down time, the massive reload afterwards, the large ammo drain, and the annoying smoke screen make the grenade launch a poor subtitute for a one or two shot, through any specimen, 40 ammo crossbow that does not self-damage. The crossbow is still a good weapon but it is more inline (or perhaps slightly worse) with other top tier weapons. It just fails to trivialize scrakes and FPs anymore.

 

[Sammers]

maybe increase ammo capacity so we can spam it more,

Get out.

I dunno about you, but the fact that the EBR fires faster seems to be redundant when the slow-shooting weapon which costs 1/4 as much STILL kills faster.

Sure, kills the big guys faster, but leaves you more open to being swarmed by lots of enemies. M14 is for rapid succession of headshot kills on lower specs, while not being completely useless at big foes. All this of course, if you can actually aim with it. Can't be that hard with the laser sight though.....can it?

 

[scary ghost]

@Panzer
If you did your homework, then you would realize that your numbers are miss-representative:

M14 (20 rounds in mag each doing 80 damage) = 1600 Raw Damage w/ .25 cycle time (5 seconds per clip) = 320 dps w/o reload or ~191.2 dps (3.3666 sec reload)
LAR (10 rounds in mag each doing 140 damage) =1400 Raw Damage w/ .9 cycle time (9 seconds per clip) = 280 dps w/o reload or ~89.4 dps (0.666 per round, 6.666 full load)

The reload bonus only affects reloading the weapon, not its cycle time between shots.

The LAR does provide more damage potential when full over an EBR. But it is in a similar fashion to the AK and shotgun, offering lower burst damage, even over a reload, but having more damage potential than their tier 3 counterparts.

Actually he's right about the faster firing rate of the lar, but for the wrong reasons. It's true the reload bonus doesn't affect how fast the LAR fires but, the sharpshooter receives a separate bonus in how fast he can fire lar, up to 60% faster @ level 6. This modification, of course, alters the firerate variable. Try it for yourself, spam M1 with the LAR as a non sharpshooter, then do it as a level 6 SS.

KFVetSharpshooter.uc

// Modify fire speed
static function float GetFireSpeedMod(KFPlayerReplicationInfo KFPRI, Weapon Other)
{
    if ( Winchester(Other) != none )
    {
        if ( KFPRI.ClientVeteranSkillLevel == 0 )
        {
            return 1.0;
        }

        return 1.0 + (0.10 * float(KFPRI.ClientVeteranSkillLevel)); // Up to 60% faster fire rate with Winchester
    }

    return 1.0;
}

Assuming Hell on Earth FP is 4500 hitpoints, M14 EBR will need 11 headshots.
It can achieve this at a minimum time of 0.25 seconds.

The Lever-Action for comparison needs 7 headshots. It will accomplish this at 2.04 seconds.

I dunno about you, but the fact that the EBR fires faster seems to be redundant when the slow-shooting weapon which costs 1/4 as much STILL kills faster.

It's 10 head shots. 6 Man h.o.E fp has 3062.5, truncated to 3062, head hit points and have 25% resistance to EBR and LAR head shots. Might want to look at the specimen files too and see how they interact with different weapons.

 

[Aze]

To support Outofrealman a little:


Level 6 Sharpshooters Xbow versus Level 6 Demolitions M32

Weight:
Xbow - 9
M32 - 7

Cost:
Xbow - 800
M32 - 749

Ammo cost
Xbow - 11

 

[scary ghost]

Shots required to kill a Fleshpound (6m HoE)
Xbow - 4 clean headshots (only decaps?)
M32 - 5 easy-spammed shots (kills)

Just some additional notes for you post:

It's really 3 + some pistol spam to the head. 3 head shots deals out 3024 damage, so tantalizingly close to the 3062 head hit points. It was probably set like that on purpose .

With the M32, you need to hit the upper chest/head with every nade to kill the fleshpound with 5 shots as a level 6 demo.

 

[[UIT] Akame]

@Scary Ghost
Well that's good to know. I'm surprised I never noticed it in-game.

Altered numbers in my post.

@Aze
You are correct, but the M32 is supposed to be a higher tier of weapon. In addition a fully loaded crossbow comes with 36 arrows (which can be picked up, situationally) and the M32 comes with 32 grenades. The M32 is clearly a better weapon, but not stupidly so. And that's still after substantial nerfing.

 

[͡ °๏Rɐnɐ-Sɐmɐ๏͡°]

Just some additional notes for you post:

It's really 3 + some pistol spam to the head. 3 head shots deals out 3024 damage, so tantalizingly close to the 3062 head hit points. It was probably set like that on purpose .

With the M32, you need to hit the upper chest/head with every nade to kill the fleshpound with 5 shots as a level 6 demo.

Something about not having to aim for their puny head with the M32 sounds easy still. But of course you could just spend the extra bolt anyway and shoot him anywhere you like to finish him. But either way, i have been using the LAR for a while anyway, and i can tell you that theres a very minor advantage to killing FPs, which is that if you miss a shot or two you arent totally boned.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

EBR......

i predicted this would happen how many months ago? whatever numbers TW tweeked with the weapon, some would get angry that it got nerfed to uselessness, and some would still say it needed to get nerfed more.

all that was needed for this weapon was to put it into the hands of the perk (commando) that was designed for controlled spamming. with the headshot bonus removed, it's essentially an equivalent alternative to the SCAR.

 

[SMIFF]

all that was needed for this weapon was to put it into the hands of the perk (commando) that was designed for controlled spamming. with the headshot bonus removed, it's essentially an equivalent alternative to the SCAR.

Oh yeah because there wouldn't be ANY problems there whatsoever right?

If that's ALL that was needed then Commando's would have been able to carry 2 perked Tier 3 weapons. Absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Foxyfired]

If that's ALL that was needed then Commando's would have been able to carry 2 perked Tier 3 weapons. Absolutely ridiculous.

And what about the support specialist wich hunting shotgun + aa12? There are twice tier 3 weapons.

 

[SMIFF]

And what about the support specialist wich hunting shotgun + aa12? There are twice tier 3 weapons.

No mate. Hunting Shotgun is Tier 2/Special.