Arc's M5 damage increase

[Crusade010]

The Arc class is one of my favourites in the game, I play it pretty often and I have been thinking for a while how the M5 doesn't seem to do much damage, I get it as the arc has dexterity so the weapons they use shouldn't be too strong but the weapon seems overly weak, even the sniper version is pretty useless as it takes far too many shots to kill someone while going through tonnes of ammo, also the size of clip means you have to reload very often but this would be fine if the damage was higher.

For comparison look at the mando's rifle, the primary damage is decent and the sniper mode is incredibly strong, the mando also has more maneuverability with it's jetpack (granted not on the ground but it's better than any other class in the air and can get across maps before the jetpack overheats), it's the same with the e-11 which has high damage and need to be reloaded once every year or so, even soldiers can get a level 3 e-11 with 3 lives.

Would be handy to know what other people think

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Biggest gripe is the clip size before you need to reload.
That and the ammo consumption of sniper mode.

I know their reload is largely unique sans the sniper rifle but they don't match up well against other guns overall. Dmg/Reload time/Force Drain/etc.
I'd rather have an e-11 I can micro-reload every few seconds instead of being a locked reload. Especially with that low clip size...

Increase clip size or decrease ammo reload. Other than that - arcs need parachutes. And be able to use their rockets to steer.

 

[NERO]

The M5 is pretty underwhelming since the shots are the size of ants compared to the massive beams of destruction E-11 and Pistol 3 fire. It also doesn't have CR2/3's fire rate to make up for that. Could use with a damage buff, could probably do with a larger magazine.

I always wanted the M5 to have a pretty big magazine, but consume all ammo you had in a mag if you reload, so you'd have to reload when the mag is empty unless you want to lose ammo. The gun should be strong while the weakness making up for the fast reload is not in the performance of the weapon itself.

 

[MoonmanMoonman]

Increase max ammo from 480 to 600.
Holy shit, this is so stupid. M5 is way weaker than mando's rifle, the sniper shots take whoopin' 500 hits to kill anything that isn't a sold and yet it has less ammo.
Come on.

 

[Onysfx]

The only thing it really has going for is accuracy.

 

[Tallfire]

Feel like the class makes up for the M-5's shortcomings.

-Cheap and effective enough for expensive builds.
-Predictable reload and accuracy
-Attachments and other weapons/stats pair up well with eachother.

Feel like the way to go is to build around the M5, using it as a cheaper alternative to pistols or with focus on other stats. I personally like sniper mode for being easy to switch to if you get a shot. Shines vs certain classes for that I think.

 

[CC-1119 'Appo']

Honestly, the M5 is in an alright spot whereby it gives you sufficient firepower when combined with your mobility, ARC is not a class that you can play well without Dexterity 2 at all times hell, I don't even have a build for ARC that doesn't have dexterity 3, it's not a sniper class nor is it a dedicated heavy weapons class and without the mobility it cannot compete with even the worst of gunners due to low speed, you can play it as such but you won't do well against players of even just average skill, gunners will tear apart a slow ARC faster than a Mando hovering midair, while using heavy weapons like the PLX, that stop you from moving during the firing period also get you killed incredibly fast without being worth the risk 9 times out of 10.

ARC has the unique advantage of basically some of the highest maneuverability & mobility in the game and combining this with the ability to fire during these maneuvers means that the class has a very high skill cap that can offer an incredible level of reward, I've played MB2 for basically a year now solely as ARC and I can tell you by no means is the class in a bad spot nor are his weapons lacking but this assumes you're playing the class correctly, with a focus on mobility and durability with firepower as the last priority.

The class is essentially a shocktrooper that can either attack from unexpected angles due to mobility or storm an opponent with sprint/rolling/lunge and being able to fire while doing all of that combined with heavy armor.

I do think that the class could do with some buffs/tweaks in order to make it a more versatile class with different playstyles but honestly I wouldn't change too much, the sniper mode needs some changing, I wouldn't make it a copy of the quickscope rifle but I'd suggest looking into increasing the rate of fire, decreasing the ammo cost per shot in sniper mode and reducing the damage a bit, turn it into a marksman's weapon system whereby you can put accurate fire down at long range with a high rate of fire versus the EE3 whereby you put down slow but deadly firepower that can kill targets quickly rather than suppressing them.

 

[Gumba]

Honestly, the M5 is in an alright spot whereby it gives you sufficient firepower when combined with your mobility, ARC is not a class that you can play well without Dexterity 2 at all times hell, I don't even have a build for ARC that doesn't have dexterity 3, it's not a sniper class nor is it a dedicated heavy weapons class and without the mobility it cannot compete with even the worst of gunners due to low speed, you can play it as such but you won't do well against players of even just average skill, gunners will tear apart a slow ARC faster than a Mando hovering midair, while using heavy weapons like the PLX, that stop you from moving during the firing period also get you killed incredibly fast without being worth the risk 9 times out of 10.

ARC has the unique advantage of basically some of the highest maneuverability & mobility in the game and combining this with the ability to fire during these maneuvers means that the class has a very high skill cap that can offer an incredible level of reward, I've played MB2 for basically a year now solely as ARC and I can tell you by no means is the class in a bad spot nor are his weapons lacking but this assumes you're playing the class correctly, with a focus on mobility and durability with firepower as the last priority.

The class is essentially a shocktrooper that can either attack from unexpected angles due to mobility or storm an opponent with sprint/rolling/lunge and being able to fire while doing all of that combined with heavy armor.

I do think that the class could do with some buffs/tweaks in order to make it a more versatile class with different playstyles but honestly I wouldn't change too much, the sniper mode needs some changing, I wouldn't make it a copy of the quickscope rifle but I'd suggest looking into increasing the rate of fire, decreasing the ammo cost per shot in sniper mode and reducing the damage a bit, turn it into a marksman's weapon system whereby you can put accurate fire down at long range with a high rate of fire versus the EE3 whereby you put down slow but deadly firepower that can kill targets quickly rather than suppressing them.

But compared to literally every class in mb2, ARC is just flat out terrible. You need the highest amount of skill to play it somewhat correctly(M5) just so you can compete with medium players on better classes? That doesn't make sense imo

 

[CC-1119 'Appo']

Yeah, the balance for ARC isn't ideal, where other classes have versatility and can be played in a lot of different ways ARC has to be played as a high mobility class. I don't mind it as is though, it just requires a retarded amount of practice to be consistently good with and is very limiting, definitely not a class for everyone.

 

[Crusade010]

Yeah it is probably one of, if not the hardest class to play, I think the main balance issue is the movement speed because without stamina you will get shot to shit so you need at least Dex 2, but you shouldn't need to put points into a certain skill to play that class however I also get how it has low movement speed due to having Dex, it's a strange balance.

I do think increasing the damage on the M5 or at least the ammo would help a lot though

 

[Noob]

People fail to realize every other part of ARC is very OP. The M5 doesn't really need buffing.

 

[Manyo]

I dont agree with most of your issues. Arc has more than enough variety. You can take Pistols + M5 Sniper, Rockets, M5 Pulse Launcher and Pistols + Full Dex + Full Stamina and anything between those setups.

M5 Sniper + Full Dex + Full Stamina is the only setup that has major issues with the low m5 clipsize since otherwise you will have something else that you can bring into a fight. And even in this setup you can often use your mobility to get out of the battle and reload.

Stamina lvl 2 isn't necessary for support only builds since you still can sprint without shooting, so i want to have the option to not pay for Stamina.
With other builds you need to be smart about using Stamina at all times to be harder to kill.

The damage from M5 is more than enough since you have perfect accuracy while sprinting.

ARCs sniper mode is a suicide to use versus BH's and Mandas but its viable vs other classes and stronger on defense than offense. (hi Dotf)

Most of ARCs problems come from 16vs16/Dotf only servers and from other weapons beeing too strong in the current build. 32 Players make any support build run out of pulses or rockets before the round ends but you cant fix that, otherwise it would be way op vs less players. Dotf makes it easy to get sniped and hard to use pulses and rockets. EE3 sniper mode which needs to be nerfed is a nightmare for ARCs and some other classes right now (i'd nerf p3 and dash vs siths too but second one is unrelated)

ARC is maybe the hardest class to play, it's not well suited to carry a team, its a support class at it's core that mostly shines in good teamwork.
I don't have a problem with that.

I forgot: dont compare it to the EE3 its imo the strongest weapon in the game and even if it wouldn't be it's nice to have variation in the different types of sniper weapons.

 

[Stassin]

ARC is mostly fine but a little bit weak due to a lack of mobility in the form of, for instance, a properly balanced grapple hook or some jumpjets, and perhaps some slightly reduced costs for dexterity and nades/rockets so they are less of a commitment (since they are usually very easy to counter abilities). The idea of keeping the peculiar M5 reload mechanic but increasing its clip size (two-fold maybe) also seems solid (even with that, dual clone pistols will still remain more powerful though).

 

[Tempest]

IMO, ARC does take more practice to use properly, but you do get rewarded for that. As long as you aren't trying to out-reflex snipe people in DOTF hall, you can do so much that others can't. You just can't play exactly the same way that most other classes can (which is good TBH).

 

[CC-1119 'Appo']

ARC mobility is perfect at the moment to be honest, even if taking dexterity 3 and stamina 2 or 3 is not a choice as the class is worthless without it.

Been playing MB2 more frequently than I usually do and I'd have to say the only real changes that need to be considered would be a larger clip size, increasing the FP drain to about 8 - 9 fp per shot and beef up the damage by like 8 - 10 points, at the moment it deals about 26 damage on a body shot which can be reduced even more by armor despite having a very low rate of fire for a rapid fire assault weapon compared to things like the E-11 and the EE-3, I think an average of about 32 damage or so on body shots would improve things slightly.

Clip size is definitely a big one if the damage isn't being beefed up because the amount of times you run out of ammo in the magazine is ridiculous, overall ammo is an issue as well but I can better manage that, managing the magazine and the 2s reload is painful. Really needs some tweaking.

In regards to FP drain though, I dunno if it was stealth nerfed in 1.4 or something but the drain is abysmal now, it's like 5 - 6 FP per shot even in IDR, that's essentially 20 shots in order to drain a sith's force points and this assumes you miss no shots, after which you would at best have 10 shots to kill the sith, it requires far too much accuracy to be efficient, especially since the dual pistols are so much better at the moment.

Duals deal 36 damage per shot, about 9 fp per shot in IDR, have a greater rate of fire and carry far more ammo than the Westar m5, the only reason I wouldn't use the duals all the time over the Westar M5 at the moment is because the deadzone for the pistols is awful at close range, makes them a pain to use.

 

[SomeGuy]

It needs more ammo. That's all I think on it.

 

[Lessen]

I just want to point out that with Dex 3 (iirc?) you can fire perfectly accurate sniper shots while running, even without the 6 point level 2 upgrade. The sniper shots are basically smaller but quicker-moving P3 shots. I feel like there's an underexploited strategy between those two facts, although it's probably unexploited because it's really hard to do well.

Plus you can fire sniper shots mid roll.

In other news, Mandos can fire wrist blaster shots mid-kick, letting you go for a bit of a panic Flinch if your kick misses.

 

[Stassin]

Increased clip sounds like the best option overall. Doubling it should be good.

 

[CC-1119 'Appo']

It's only Westar M5 rank 2 that gives you perfect accuracy while moving and firing, dexterity 3 is only the movement/wallruns.

Increased clip sounds like the best option overall. Doubling it should be good.

I think this is definitely a change that would improve the situation, having 60 rounds in a clip would be a lot better, would definitely need an overall ammo increase though, unless you take ammo 3 you are pretty limited in that regard as well, more so than any other class.

 

[Lessen]

[...]

No no, trust me. Get M5-1 and the scope, and you'll have perfect accuracy in the scope while running. I think Dex 3 is a prereq for it, but mostly I just know that you can have M5-1+scope and have perfect scoped accuracy. What M5-2 gives you is unscoped accuracy.

edit: Tested and confirmed. With Dex 2 and the same setup, sniper shots go wide while running. Dex 3 is the prereq.

I don't remember where I read about this, though.