What Happened to Assault Rifle?

[DarionLeonidas]

I have looked through the Forums for various updates, but I can't seem to find anything on what happened to Assault Rifle.
Specifically, "Auto Fire" seems to have been grossly nerfed, with a huge reduction in its spread/cone and barely half its former Range. 
I'm curious about the rationalization for this change, because "it was overpowered" simply isn't true.

[Dahkness]

I believe they just cut the animation time on full auto and burn. Not 100% sure but o don’t think they nerf’d it’s dmg

[SwitchFade]

Blaster version is the same as live, barring bugs.

 

Sentinel version.... Is sad.

[TheZag]

Due to the ammo shortage,  all heroes have been asked to fire in a more narrow cone and at shorter range.

[Jimpy2]

My assault rifle blaster has positively silly range thanks to enhancement sets and incarnate abilities. I hadn’t used one in over a decade so I don’t know if anything has changed, but I can sit back and use all my powers at well over 100 feet. I get in trouble some times because I accidentally shoot someone clear across the room. I’ve been known to full auto one group and also hit the next. That’s a long way to throw a smoke grenade (I’m devices). Full auto can take out most minions it hits if I’m playing at level. LRM rocket, munitions mastery,  has the same range as sniper rifle. It’s fun to ignite things way far away. It may have changed, I don’t know, but it is still a good set if you put some thought into it and have a tank that doesn’t mind you knocking back everything.

[cranebump]

Slotted KB to KD on all my AR powers that have it, giving my incarnate good damage and some soft control. Paired with Tac Arrow, so he has some support capabilities as well. Of my 50s, I play this one the most.

[huang3721]

In real life, assault rifles have hundreds of meters of effective range. My AR Blaster's maximum sniping range is 150 yards. That's barely 130 meters!

 

Also, to add insult to injury, that guy misses pretty often!

Edited July 17, 2021 by huang3721
whoopsie

[Omega Force]

Which AT?

[Luminara]

21 hours ago, DarionLeonidas said:

I have looked through the Forums for various updates, but I can't seem to find anything on what happened to Assault Rifle.
Specifically, "Auto Fire" seems to have been grossly nerfed, with a huge reduction in its spread/cone and barely half its former Range. 

 

Full Auto has always been a narrow cone (20°).  The range (80') hasn't been adjusted, either.  According to the patch note archive on the wiki, the only changes done to Full Auto, from Issue 0 onward, were reductions in activation time (from 6s to 4s (January 22, 2009), then from 4s to 2.5s (April 20, 2021)).

 

The sentinel version's range is reduced (40'), but it also has a significantly wider cone (90°).

[ZemX]

5 hours ago, Luminara said:

The sentinel version's range is reduced (40'), but it also has a significantly wider cone (90°).

 

It's interesting.  It actually ends up with a somewhat larger area and one could argue it's easier to hit a spread of enemies without having to stand off as far.  But it also looks like compared to the other AT versions it's been nerfed a bit in scale damage to bring it in line with the other Sent 90s nukes.   And whereas the radial nukes in other sets have an inner radius where everything is hit for extra damage, Full Auto gets its extra damage as a 16% chance effect on any enemy in the cone.    

 

I get where they came up with that number.  The inner radius of the other nukes represents 16% of the outer radius area, but a Sent with a radial nuke and a packed spawn in simply going to do more damage now than an AR sent with Full Auto.  It's only equivalent when the spawn is evenly distributed over the whole 25ft radius. 

 

Just add it to the list of somewhat baffling decisions that went into the current version of Sents, I guess.

[JayboH]

The last major revision buffed a bunch of abilities while nerfing Ignite.

 

Full Auto was never all that damaging but it comes back fairly quick which is nice.

 

Buckshot has never been a great power and is autoskip for me, I could see some grabbing it for a recharge proc perhaps.

 

Flamethrower takes a really long time to deal its damage.

 

Sniper Rifle is very prone to corpse blasting and I wish it was sped up a bit.

 

Otherwise the set is fine in my opinion.

[Bill Z Bubba]

This thread made me crank up an AR/Nrg Sentinel. Seems much is different over there.

 

For ST DPA, as per Mids at least, the best three are Dis Shot, Incinerator, Burst, so I skipped Slug.

For AoE DPA, it's Buckshot, Flamethrower, Full Auto so I skipped M30.

 

Ran her to 6 in Atlas then PLed her to 32. Hit 33 after first test spawn at +0/x8 so Full Auto is now 4 slotted. I did buy her 8 hours of all the amps at lvl 1 so she's got all those cheat buffs making her far more awesome than she really is, but regardless, she's a hoot.