Currently rail guns are king as far as weapons go at the highest tiers. There are several popular builds that simply outperform other weapons.
You have the fighter with stabilize railgun
The interceptor and tacklers with the rapid fire railgun or heavy railgun
The only other weapon that really comes close is the hail plasma.
These rail guns in general have the very desirable traits of high burst, high speed, good accuracy, long overheat and good range. They also do good hull damage, which combined with high burst means they are the weapons of choice for scoring kills.
The other weapon types really could use some help to keep things interesting. However, I urge against an simple nerf to the railguns. Rather it would be much more exciting to add in bonus effects for other weapon types. For example, laser can do more damage the longer its being fired and plasma gun hits can increase weapon or module cool down etc; leaving the rail-guns the role of a solid all-round killing weapon.
Tacklers also use Assault Rails. At least I’ve found them to be very effective alongside all the slow. Moreso than Stabs, at least. Have not tested lasers, yet.
Railgun spam is likely born of meta; shields heal, hulls do not. Ergo, you want to maximise hull damage.
In higher tiers, the most survivable ships are Empire Engineers - ships with relatively low shields and lots of hull. If you want to kill a frigball you’ll want to be optimising your damage vs these ships, so railguns arw the obvious answer.
Next toughest are Guards. Iconically a Jericho class, they rely primarily on shields. Bizarrely, this is why railguns are so good vs them; they’ll be looking to build vs em or thermal and trust their natural resists to halt kinetics. Many Guards don’t seem to set their Special shield to resist kinetic either; about half never seem to switch away from thermal.
All of this helps keep the railgun as the weapon of choice.
Imo rail-guns are preferred simply because they are easier to land hits with.
As far as hull tanking goes, most pilots stack kinetic resistance anyway.
If you are just looking at damage type then plasma is the obvious winner.
Next toughest are Guards. Iconically a Jericho class, they rely primarily on shields. Bizarrely, this is why railguns are so good vs them; they’ll be looking to build vs em or thermal and trust their natural resists to halt kinetics. Many Guards don’t seem to set their Special shield to resist kinetic either; about half never seem to switch away from thermal.
I’ve seen that. So many times. As a devout Guard pilot, I am ashamed they do not even know how to use their ships.
I still feel like plasma is the surperior class of weaponds simply because u could switch between plasmic and kinetic dmg
I still feel like plasma is the surperior class of weaponds simply because u could switch between plasmic and kinetic dmg
The two damage types people plug almost immediately. They do have the highest dps to counter that.
I play in T3 and I see everything, heavy lasers, assault lassers, hail plasma, rapid plasma, heavy plasma, common plasma… I never felt that railgus are dominating or anything else.
I mainly use plasma, military RFP with mods to give is 2900 range and no overheat. If I think my damage is a little low, I’ll switch to needle deflector instead of my military booster. Because of stacking resists, it helps to check both anyway.
Also, mods the increase weapon speed or range can also increase damage, since you’re more likely to be in the optimal range. My booster gets about the same damage increase as a standard double deflector, but that 65% speed increase probably helps land a lot more far away targets…
While all weapons are used in T3 not all are optimal. Players with the highest k/d generally use one of the above mentioned weapons.
I’ve not seen any data on that. My own sampling is that interceptors tend to have plasma or RFRs, and engineers tend to have lasers or hail plasma. While I’ve seen some people try to do gunship builds with stabilized rails, it really hasn’t impressed me.
My death recaps show that there is a variance. We’d actually have to ask gaijin how weapons are distributed, and that’s probably secret sauce.
My death recaps show that there is a variance. We’d actually have to ask gaijin how weapons are distributed, and that’s probably secret sauce.
A large dataset on weapon damage, weapon damage absorbed, and weapons equipped would let you do some interesting calculations. Gaijin should have this data, and it doesn’t have to be secret, Bungie used to put all the equivalent Halo MP data online and let you poke around in it.
One thing I’ve noticed though, I get more kills than assists with RFR than RFP, even those the RFP did more damage, even when the kill happened while actively hitting and not just spraying. My RFR with all the critical boosts gives me 1k hits when it’s not spreading too much, and over 2k hits with my military orion. The only reason I threw that back into modules is it’s military and to work with it. I think it’s worth it. I don’t like “boost main weapon” mods, but when I’m getting at a frigate that’s being targeted by several ships, it helps. Getting more kills with RFR than RFP despite the damage makes me wonder how much I was robbed of kills. In a week or two I’ll probably boost it up to 1200 when it was mid to low 900’s with RFP on my Spirit. Right now I’m focusing on my Ricasso.
I play in T3 and I see everything, heavy lasers, assault lassers, hail plasma, rapid plasma, heavy plasma, common plasma… I never felt that railgus are dominating or anything else.
As do I. Though, to address Kommy’s statement:
While all weapons are used in T3 not all are optimal. Players with the highest k/d generally use one of the above mentioned weapons.
I warn against using the habits of players with high K/D as a metric to judge the effectiveness of weapons. Yes, rails are generally good at securing kills because kinetic hits hard against hull, but the other weapons have their purpose too. Amongst other things, plasma is great at blowing through shields, and lasers can rip ships out of cloak.
Besides, I’ve seen many people rack up those kills using something other than rails. They just played a little differently than your top rating hunters.