Is This Weapon Overpowered. The Finals
As season 2 rolls in. I assume all the fellow rank grinders are finding the meta to be, well, exactly the same as season 1, which I personally found a little surprising, and it sparked a pretty hot topic in the community about the balance of the game and the reason why we aren't seeing any meta shifts, that being the SA26.
A lot of people are claiming this weapon is just overpowered. I'm going to be breaking down some of the insane details about this weapon's damage values, it's time to kill, and much more when it comes to comparing weapons and their strengths. Let's try to find out why this weapon is so strong in the current meta, and I'm pretty sure some of these details are going to shock you.
First, thank you to my one and only member, Melly Joyce. Let's take a look at the damage values that are relevant to this conversation. The SA 12-16's values are as follows: The damage is 91, which would be a total of 13 pellets, each doing seven damage. The RPM is 230, or if you count in the cycling, it is 135.5.
The DPS is Is. 348.15, point 6. For the number of shots you need to kill on light, it is two; on medium, it is three; and on heavy, it is four shots. The time to kill on light is 0.26 seconds, medium is 0.52, and heavy is 0.78 seconds. Now, considering all classes, you don't need more than four shots to kill, so the cycling time doesn't really apply to the ttk stats.
I wanted to show you that just in case you wanted to have that value as well. However, even if you look at a heavy, you're able to kill it in four shots before you even have to cycle, now that we have these stats. Let's take a look at the second fastest DPS weapon in the game, which doesn't take into consideration stuff like the dagger, which would be a one-shot mechanic, and that weapon being the M11.
Please keep in mind that this weapon's values are pretty similar to the XP 54 and the v9s in terms of time to kill. So for the M11, we have for damage 16 RPM, 1, 000 DPS, 266 time to kill on light, which is 0.54, medium is. 0.9, and heavy is 1.26. As a bonus stat, let's take the hypothetical approach that we are landing our head shot with 100% accuracy, and these are the ttk values we get, so if you are landing all of our head shot with the second fastest TDK weapon in the game versus light, it is 0.36, medium is 0.6, and heavy is 0.84, so in the hypothetical scenario where we land all of our head shot within our Max damage range, we still have a slower time to kill than the sa2 does.
Keep in mind that this weapon is in the light class, which comes with 150 HP, whereas the SA2 is in the heavy class, which gives you 350. The M11 also has a pretty bad TDK at longer ranges and plays at a similar range that you would be playing with the SA2. I understand that at this point you might be thinking, Well, that's a shotgun.
You may miss some pellets because of the spread. If you miss four pellets per spray, a roughly 30% damage decrease, you will end up with ttk values of versus light. 0.52, medium, 0.78, and heavy, 2.3, because of the cycle animation, so even if you miss four pallets, you still miss out on DPS, the second fastest DPS weapon.
The next point is that shotguns can't really be compared to full autos, so let's compare them to the other shotguns in the game. For the medium model 1887, you have ttk values of 0.91, versus light 0.91, versus medium you have 0.6, and versus heavy you have 4 seconds, which includes the fact that you have to reload the DPS at 250.
For the medium model 1887, you have ttk values of 0.91, versus light 0.91, versus medium, and versus heavy 1.82, with a DPS value of 140. Keep in mind that both of these shotguns are in classes again with lower health pools and suffer from longer reload times or reload issues in general, with the light having to reload every two shots and the medium having to suffer from a pretty long reload animation that can be pretty clunky at this point.
Please keep in mind that shotgun ttks and their DPS might feel offset because ttk values are calculated at the moment the first shot registers, which is why the light ttk looks great on medium and on light. However, this thing has the worst spread of the three and also suffers from a really bad drop-off.
If you miss one pellet when facing a light with this shotgun, the ttk goes up to 6. And if you miss 20% of your pellets on medium, it goes up to 4 seconds, making these shotguns far inferior in DPS and consistency versus the SA2. As a final note, I'd like to show you the average DPS of weapons in this game per class, so if we were to take out the average DPS of light, you get 195.
For medium, you get 152; for heavy, you get 73; and if you were to take heavy and remove the sa2, you get an average of 143. Take this information as you want. I just found it interesting that there is a trend of the lower HP class having a higher DPS as an average, but the SA2 sort of breaks this pattern because of its absurdly high DPS values.
Now typically, I'd say you can just position further away, don't go face a shotgun face, and then just play at range. The issue is that cash outs are often in close quarter areas, and even if they are in the open, the ability to drop domes and barricades and hold up a 1000 HP mesh means you can force close-range fights by basically being unkillable at far range, especially if you're bringing two people with a very similar Lotto.
If a double mesh SA 12 team pushes a cash out, they can steal and then force you to come close with all of the shields and meshes that they might be bringing in. This game requires you to play in close quarters in order to succeed on the objective, and this is why, in terms of meta, we often see the strongest picks often just being whatever has the fastest ddk, typically at close range, such as the F car and the SA2.
Now, if you're not someone who has been grinding rank, this may not seem as relevant because all of the other modes tend to be overrun by whatever is fun to play, such as light, and not what is the strongest. I know pretty much every time I go into Quick Play, I'm just using some sort of goofy loadout.
I'm just trying something new, or maybe just testing something, before I bring it into the rankings. I want to say season 2 has been an amazing update. I've been having a lot of fun with all the new weapons and gadgets. I was just very surprised that they didn't touch the SA12. Considering that a lot of the other Nerfs ended up doing this patch, I'm hoping that we can see a meta shift soon.
I also agree with the majority. In light of the fact that the F car is still a very meta pick, I'm hoping that weapon could be looked at in the future as well. I'm not too sure what type of nerf would be good for it because they have nerfed it twice, and it's still a top pick. I love all the new stuff that they added.
