Borderlands 2: The Problem with Combat Rifles

[DJ_DEnM]

They also have the extremely annoying fashion of swaying all over the screen when ADS.

 

[Ravinoff]

I'm playing Zer0, and I like to keep a combat rifle in a quick select slot for handling rakk and similar fast things with low health. They get to be pretty handy against Buzzards too.

 

[Playful Pony]

I have found a few Elemental AR's, they are very rare, I think I've found 2 or 3 and i'm halfway through PL2. One in the Sanctuary chest, and 2 through sidequests, one from Incinerator Clayton. Although I alt+f4'd at least 6 times before accepting his reward and got a fire one

Ah! We did actually find a corrosive spingun on my character I play with just one friend. It seems we're having MUCH better drops with only 2 people than we did while playing as 4.

Hmmm...

In our 4 player game we all used our Golden Keys. Perhaps the sudden glut of purple gear caused something screwy to happen to the loot drop equation. Did you guys also use your keys in yours?

Yeah, two of us used the Golden Keys pretty much as soon as we saw the chest. I had no idea what it was to be honest, I kinda regret using it so early now and the weapons we got were not all that impressive! The drops seemed to 'fix' themselves in my game with only 1 friend, a seperate character. Now we're getting a much more sensible rareish drop rate, with blue items now and then and about 4 purple ones in total so far, which I don't consider too bad (we're lvl 21 on those chars now). Meanwhile on the 4 player game we're lvl 27 and only our Zero player has 2 purple items, the rest of us make due with greens and 1 blue. Not that color is everything, but it is a bit annoying that he keeps all the shiny items for himself!

 

[Templarixx]

Yeah, I noticed that they do seem under-powered to other weapons; hell, they even seem underpowered compared to the assault rifles in the last game.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Huh.

So I'm not the only one who finds good weapons in every category but AR.

I know good ones can exist, but it seems like every one I find either does fuck-all damage or sways around like it's half-way through a bottle of whisky and spends half its time reloading.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

Combat Rifles and SMGs are both meh, all you need is a shotgun, a sniper and a rocket launcher. The combat rifles and smgs just feel weak in comparison.

Do launchers actually not suck in this one? I never bothered to mess with them. I just keep a pistol, SMG (sometimes switch out for another pistol), sniper, and shotgun. Half my damage or so tends to me melee, too.

Yeah they're amazing, I was playing a sniper Zero and launchers were still doing really well for me even though they can't get critical hits.

 

[gigastar]

The only CRs which are not merely inferior SMGs are the Torque explosive ones which are, like all Torque guns, amazing and make all of your enemies explode into a shower of money, blowjobs, and kittens.

At level 40, i have found a Torgue shotgun that deals around 18000 damage for each brilliant shot that sounds suspiciously like a deity slamming its car door. Before the 13 glorious rockets find thier mark on whatever it was i wanted to die, that is.

OT: Assualt Rifles (as theyre called in 2, by the way) seem to be worse in early game only, furtherest ive gotten in is on True Vault Hunter mode (Playthrough 2) and the cheapo machine guns i can pull out of the vendors do more damage than this blue Hyperion SMG that i spent 8 mins locked in mortal combat with a Badass Varkid for less than a character level ago.

Also something i feel has to do with it is how differently the guns behave, I can trust a Jakobs or Vladof rifle to deliver a truckload of hurt on anything that looks at me funny so long as im not stuck with an ironsight.

Finally, with the exception of the Bandit brand, no gun maker makes both SMGs and Assualt Rifles, and since i rarely find a reason to use anything Bandit-made over any of the other manufacturers it mostly boils down to personal preference. The preference being whether i want to burn something to death, fill something with lead, an emergency hip-fire weapon for when im down or to make things explode in a shower of money, puppies and Eridium.

 

[omega 616]

I love my assault rifle so huggy wuggy much!

Fires a rocket that explodes into nades, I think I got it from a mission. Just aim at there feet and go bananas!

Here are the stats of the Torgue Stabbing Kerblaster:

Damage: 3337
Accuracy: 90.6
Fire rate: 2.5
Reload: 3.7
Mag size: 24

+50% melee
Consumes 4 ammo
Explosive damage.

Picking up 18 compared to 21 doesn't matter, just buy it every time you pass a vendor and pick it up when you pass an ammo crate.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I play cataclysm Maya, and I find both CRs and SMGs underwhelming.
Things are usually already dying, with massive amounts of elemental damage everywhere ... my weapons tend to be a revolver, shotgun, sniper rifle, launcher.
'cos the way I charge into combat and lay down global hurts, it's usually about abusing the time taken for the falling-over animation to happen 'cos everyone around is dying in the meantime. I'll just ... reload my 25k damage tediore launcher and get right back up, shall I?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Combat Rifles are more role-stratified than SMGs (which are close-quarters or bust for the most part).

-Vladof: Deep-mag assault rifle. IMO, the best choice for a CR if you're comparing it to an SMG. As your character increases in level Vladof magazine sizes seem to increase greatly, making them comparable.

-Torgue: Gyrojet bullets. More difficult to use on average, but higher raw damage.

-Jakobs: Ranging rifles. Worst combat rifle type on average. Two reasons:
1) Small magazine size. 2) No elemental mods (Jakobs doesn't deal in these)
Also, if a Jakobs rifle does not come with a scope, it's practically useless. Just use a sniper rifle at that point.

-Dahl: IMO, the best CRs for ranging if they come with a scope. High recoil control combined with burst fire makes them ideal for "striping" targets at mid range. If you find one with an elemental effect, consider yourself blessed.

Furthermore, all CRs, save for the Torgue (Gyrojet) models, have higher average shot velocity than SMGs, making them more effective at longer range.