The loadout progression feels off in LSS. I’ve won a decent amount of games since it’s release and I noticed if you hold onto the side kick instead of immediately leveling up you will have significantly better time. Swapping for a mangler seems like a huge disadvantage for a few reasons.
- Projectile speed is much slower
- Bullet drop is huge
- TTK for perfect kill isn’t much faster than sidekick TTK on all body shots. Sidekick perfect TTK is much faster.
Most encounters happen in mid range so the mangler just punishes you for trying. TTK is already long and if you miss shots good luck. Even in close range without the instant melee ability it doesn’t compete well with the sidekick. You can just rapid fire the SK up close.
Waiting until the commando is available seems to be the most optimal strategy, as its the only weapon that outclasses the sidekick in range and TTK.
If I could choose which weapon in my loadout to swap, I would maybe drop the stun gun for the mangler. It does incredible health damage if you need to finish off someone who is one shot without reloading the SK. As it stands the loadouts are fixed and the mangler/stungun and mangler/AR loadouts feel awful. You are better off waiting until you get 650 points to nab a commando.
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Personally I think that when you level up, you should be given the option to take the new gun and which gun you want to replace. i’d rather have shotty + pistol than shotty + AR.
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I love the Mangler.
Only loadout I don’t like is Commando/AR. Both guns are too similar so you don’t get as much coverage at all ranges. I think Mangler is better at close range than AR most the time.
I was surprised it didn’t let you choose which gun you wanted to swap cause I thought that would be a pretty obvious thing to do - at least to me.
I’ll disagree. Its been painfully obvious to me just how much range the Commando has over the AR with a map like Breaker. There’s been very little a person with an AR can do against me with a Commando and vice versa as long as there’s enough of a distance between us.
I mean the loadout where you get a Commando and an AR.
The Commando is super good and beats AR at most range of not all. So the AR feels a bit pointless to have at that point.
Ah, I see what you mean. In regards to that, I think the AR is still a good weapon to have with close quarters. The Commando can be good but that recoil and finicky aiming at close quarters tends to leave a lot of room for error that you don’t have to worry as much with an AR.
Yeah if I had the choice I think I’d keep the Mangler or Sidekick over the AR.
I’m a fan of swapping weapon you’re holding to level up instead of the fixed loadout. I would love to see that change.
Also more loadouts in general. Maybe they need more weapons adding into the game first but a Cov/Banished variant would be fun later down the line.
I agree that having the AR is a waste in most scenarios. I always level up though to get better weapons faster.
Funnily enough I never realised that you start with the sidekick as a secondary. I thought you start with only the disrupter. It took me about 4 games to realise.
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I randomly figured this out last night, held onto the Sidekick for my first 7-8 kills or so. Absolutely cleaned out players with the Mangler and MA40. It’s almost like 343 forgot they made the Sidekick a pretty damn viable weapon as long as you’re a good shot. I didn’t level up until there were only 5 spartans left, and after I collected some bonus XP, I leveled up from the first loadout straight to the BR and Bulldog. I won that match and proceeded to keep doing the exact same thing. It just makes way more sense, I use the Sidekick way more in Arena, and the TTK combined with its range outclasses the Mangler every time.
I definitely expect this to be the meta by next week, all the good players will hold onto the first loadout until they can go straight to Commando-Bulldog at minimum
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