Advice on next weapon

Don't know about the serpent, Nraged, but the VX6-7 reloads 0.6 seconds slower from empty than with a round still in the mag.

 

Yes. This is known as the short reload. The long reload happens when you completely empty your magazine and no longer have a bullet in the chamber.

Man, I gotta say, I was a die hard Serpent fanatic when I first started playing VS. My weapon of choice on NC is my GD-7F, which shares the exact same stats as the Serpent, with a little more CoF bloom per shot. Naturally, the first thing I picked up for VS was the Serpent. And of course, it worked out just fine for me, but I was still suffering from the same problems I was experiencing GD-7F.

The problem I saw with the Serpent was that the cone of fire would grow too rapidly to properly control after about 10 meters. When you're moving and firing from the hip, the Serpent already starts off with a larger cone of fire than the VX6-7 (2.0 versus the VX6-7's 1.75). Now this isn't really a huge deal at first glance, but when you combine the slightly larger cone-of-fire with a *higher* fire rate, the effects are definitely more prominent...

You will hit your maximum CoF faster

You will need to be closer for you to not suffer from the fast CoF buildup. If you happen to be just outside the Serpent's optimal range, you will have to burst sooner and more often. And if you don’t? You will miss. And then the time it will take you to react to your shots missing will cause you to miss a couple more. This all happens very quickly, which leads me to my next point…

You will empty your magazine faster

This is probably my biggest gripe with this gun. If your magazine runs out quicker, you will have to either switch to your pistol or evade and reload. As all of you already know, this is the point in a 1v1 fight where you are completely vulnerable and pretty fucked, especially if the guy is still shooting.

Running out of ammo in your magazine faster also means that your chances of potentially missing and wasting ammunition are significantly higher. As a result, you will consume your ammo pool much faster than you will with the VX6-7. The reaction time, accuracy, recoil/cof control required to be as conservative as possible while killing people as quickly as possible are extremely difficult to balance. Trust me.

When using something like the Solstice, have you ever killed someone and perhaps let a couple of more shots off during the time in which you saw you killed them and when you let go of the trigger? The amount of ammunition you will end up wasting because of your reaction time will be worse, especially after you've killed several people. That shit adds up. Fast.

You will take longer to reload, even if you leave a bullet in the chamber

The Serpent has the longest reload time out of all the VS carbines, taking as much as 2.65/3.8s (Short/long). When you combine the previous drawbacks with the increased reload time, you will put yourself at a greater risk when you’re out of ammunition. You will need to reload very often with this gun if you want to kill as many people as possible or even just survive while under attack.

Again, this carbine runs out of ammo the quickest and takes the longest to reload. This is a very risky combination! If used incorrectly, the Serpent’s rate of fire could cost you the fight very quickly. It will require some practice.

The Serpent’s near point-blank optimal range is, arguably, more of a liability than an advantage

In order to accurately and quickly kill someone with the Serpent while moving and shooting from the hip, you will need to stay at a range that puts you in the same neighborhood as other weaponry high DPS weaponry that can easily outperform it. Shotguns, for instance, are a huge threat when you’re using carbines made for close quarters. You will need to get closer to the enemy in order to kill them quickly and to conserve on ammo more than any other carbine.

The point blank range could completely work against you if your aim fails you at a certain point. If you’re holding the trigger down and the enemy you’re going after either jumps or strafes left/right, you will not land those shots. As mentioned earlier, the reaction time you usually take to know when to stop shooting and lifting your finger off your mouse will cost you more bullets than you’d like or are used to. This is a huge deal when you’re dealing with more than one opponent. Any mistake you make with your aim or ammo conservation during the fight with your first opponent (like missing a few shots or using a little more ammo than you intended) will make killing the second guy a lot less feasible, if not impossible. In other words, if you use half of your magazine on the first guy, you will most likely not get the second guy with the rest. It’ll either have to happen with your knife or your pistol, but rarely with the same magazine.

The Serpent is the only VS weapon whose recoil pulls up and to the left instead of the right

If a weapon doesn’t have uniform horizontal recoil distribution, it almost always will pull to the right. This motherfucker pulls to the left. If you’re use to compensating the horizontal recoil on other weapons carbines, this will take some getting used to. And while you’re getting used to it, you will miss some more. You might think “Oh well throw a forward grip and you’ll be fine.” That is not how this weapon is supposed to be used and if you do manage to control it, you are putting yourself at risk because you are aiming down the sights, something you shouldn’t be doing with this kind of weapon.

The Serpent has the slowest projectile velocity

If a guy is about 10m in front of you and sprinting perpendicular to where you are standing, you will need to lead your shots more than any other carbine. You will have to lead even more if you add a silencer or soft point ammunition to the thing. Don’t even think about combining the two. You might say “Learn 2 lead your shots”. Let me tell you that you will miss so fucking much if a guy starts unpredictably strafing left and right, or suddenly changes to a direction you didn’t anticipate or react fast enough to. If you’re doing a lot of leading on a target, you will have to compensate for this change very quickly to match their movement direction.

Let’s say you’re trying to shoot a guy and you have to aim about 7 meters in front of him from where you’re standing in order for your shots to hit. If he were to suddenly start moving in the opposite direction, you’d have to move your mouse to compensate for a total of 14 meters and then continue leading your shots 7 meters in front of him. In that brief moment, you will miss a bunch of shots that and put you at a very high risk of emptying your magazine (more with this gun, due to its rate of fire), even before the other guy has started shooting. You have no idea how many times I’ve taken advantage of this as a light assault.

In conclusion, sure the Serpent outputs more damage per second than any other available to the VS. There’s no denying that, but many don’t consider the idea that there is such a thing of a gun firing *too* fast. If you can put yourself in situations where all of these risk factors won’t have a significant impact on your performance, then get the Serpent. But coming from an experienced “NC Serpent” user, I can say that the VX6-7 answers all of these shortcomings. My kills and kills/minute have SKYROCKETED since I switched to the VX6-7.

But hey, in the end, playstyle and shit.

 

Hey vonic, and others thanks for the detailed analysis . After all the input i'll go for the VX

 

right on dude, you wont be disappointed.
make sure that you get both ranks of the laser sight, you will feel major diffence.

 

Vx6-7 >> All.
Maybe the new smg will be better if you manage to only use it in close quarters.

 

The SMG can kill you faster than the VX6-7 when you use it correctly

BUT...

• You only have 25 shots.
• You will empty the magazine faster.
• You will do less damage per magazine
• The range is shit. Once you go outside of the SMG's effective range, you'll hit nothing but thin air.
• You will need to hip fire closer than the VX6-7
• Very low bullet velocity. Once you start going outside of the SMG's effective range, you will need to lead your shots more.
• Most of the time, you will probably not kill two people in the same magazine.

I'd avoid using this for light assault. There are times where you need the extra range that the SMG can't provide. At all. Not even in the slightest. If you're missing from the hip at a given range, aiming down the sight will literally do nothing. There is no accuracy bonus when you aim down the sight.
It makes much more sense for infiltrators. The carbines will do what the SMG does better and at more ranges

 

On that note a heavy with an SMG ran up on me the other day, made my head spin in confusion.

 

Vonic, I love your posts man. Keep them rolling, good sir. Much appreciated.