MK50 Sidekick and its running joke

Games Halo Infinite
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I understand that even talking about this topic will easily put me at public enemy number 1 but i do not care, we as a community need to talk about this.

Ok, so we all know the sidearms in halo are a staple in the franchise. There as been good ones and the bad one, the use able, and the unreliable. However im having a horrible time wrapping my head around it. I believe its too powerful… Hear me out, its name is the “MK50 Sidekick”.
First off it operates way to quickily and reliable to be a 50cal, thats a given. Its recoil has no repercussion when being fired consecutively. Its accuracy is like a needle, as long as the crosshair is on target it will not miss and the range to target is not effected, unlike something else i know (Commando). Also people on pc can get more shots off then people on console, smh pls fix 343.
Second, Its called the sidekick but due to all that i stated above its literally everybodys go to. I am also a victim in this by immediately swapping to it after spawn. Its name does not fit its critical role and it kinda bugs me… and that is its running joke.

Personal opinion here. I believe its damage needs a nerfed by 30-35%. The only reason i see ppl using it the way they do is because it literally deletes the opponents shield from any range. Up close it can deal more of course but there needs to be a good balance for it to be given its role and name. Listen if we want a good sidearm, lets rally on 343 for our baby, the Magnum (and you have to go find it and pick it up) because that sounds fun and fair to me…

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It’s the Sidekick to the Mangler because that’s the real hero.

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Sidekick is too powerful and the mangler should have never been nerfed… The mangler was the only threat to the sidekick 1v1 and you had to go find the mangler and pick it up…

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Sidekick loses to a bunch of weapons at a bunch of ranges. Even the AR, but I would say I use the Sidekick a bit more than the AR. I think I have about double pistol medals compared to rifles (although SWAT Pistols would also contribute to that).

Mangler still dominates it. The gun is a 3 shot kill, has great accuracy at range and is a 2 shot shield pop. The melee nerf hasn’t changed much for me. Just made it less deadly at point blank but still good enough to trade with a lot of weapons in melee battle.

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I can agree to that. The mangler is still a good dominate weapon in that regard. However sense its nerf ive seen alot of inconsistencies with it that still allow the sidekick to overpower it easily. And so you can understand what i mean by the “sidekick” being a major go to for most people. Its a good gun, just too good for most situations.

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I feel like it’s getting shredded in Last Spartan Standing by almost everything else ha.

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Oh yeah, LSS its a great tool lol. But you ever notice the one pc guy still level 1 using the sidekick, Smh.

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I didn’t ha, they must have been dead too soon.

Mangler and AR shredded them honestly. Commando early on is devastating. Bulldog and BR is game over.

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Thank you for saying it! With how much the sidekick is out gunning the AR and other weapons in most cases, multi-player is starting to feel like Halo 5 and I don’t mean that as a compliment. A side arm souldnt be eclipsing the already baren sandbox.

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Oh no? You havent noticed the one guy skipping levels to commando/bulldog with the sidekick alone? The one individual in almost every game that sits in a position all game taking your kill or kills from across the map with the sidekick. You havent noticed that interesting… it might be you…

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I feel like I want to use the Sidekick over other supposedly more powerful weapons, that says a lot about it really. Is it because the other weapons are just a bit harder to use? If you’re not very good you tend to look to weapons that give some consistency and the Sidekick is one of those weapons.

Mangler, Commando are both weapons I can get nice kills with but they take some re-familiarising with after using other weapons. This is what I don’t like about the weapon sandbox.

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I completely agree with you all around. Except i must say the commando needs to be a little better then the sidekick. I feel like its accuracy needs to be tuned up. Thats just me

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That’s because it’s a 10mm. Also we’re supersoldiers, we can likely fire a .50AE at that rate so long as the mechanism can handle it.

The pistol was the go to in Halo: CE and Halo 5. A pistol being powerful is nothing new.

So you want a garbage gun that can’t do anything and is literally worse than the M6C/SOCOM in terms of damage?

With the magnum you want back it’d be far worse.

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Well that’s because it’s not a .50 cal (12.7mm) it’s a 10mm, it’s on the side of the pistol.

Regardless, have you seen the fire rate of the M6C/G/D in the hands of a Spartan?

Even the C/Socom makes little sense further in the hands of an ODST.

The G2 makes the most sense if you’re going off of physics alone.

But point remains: balancing around reality is boring and Halo has never had a reliance of ‘realism’. See multi-ton Spartans falling from unrealistic heights and surviving without a scratch, but dying to an couple hundred pound ATV going 20mph.

Unless you spam the shots

Fire rate is locked across the platforms/inputs, you can’t fire as fast as you can pull the trigger.

Anyone can pop off as fast as they can on a mouse with “fire” bound to a frictionless middle mouse wheel being spun at warp speed with compressed air as they can on the gankiest of stick drift, f-tier, 3rd party, trade-in controllers.

Much better argument. Its role is as a finisher, but it’s used often as a primary. With weapon roles specifically built for this title, it is a little out of place.

Not discounting CE’s pistol of course, but weapon roles weren’t really specifically accounted for, but functionality was.

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It’s quite simple. The AR is very easy to use. The Sidekick takes more effort, practice, and precision.

And considering the two share a range niche of close-mid before both starting to taper off in effectiveness, that makes them direct competitors to eachother.

When two weapons take up the exact same niche they fall into one of two categories:

1: They do it in a unique way to one another (Think Hammer vs Sword)

Or 2: One is harder to use, and so is balanced to be stronger.

The first option leads to either weapon having a situational advantage over the other, therefore being balanced. (The Hammer is capable of landing multikills in a single swing, and annihilating vehicles, but is slow to use. The Sword is very fast but can only damage one target at a time, and is ineffective against vehicles if you don’t directly hit the player inside it).

The second option leads to one weapon acting as more of a beginner option, being reliable enough to get you kills while you’re learning how to play the game. The other weapon, then, is a tool to allow skilled players to stand out above the pack. That’s the Sidekick in this scenario. It is the way it is by design, so that skilled players gain a noticeable advantage over unskilled ones.

The AR’s is so easy to stay on-target with, and RNG based, that shooting first is often the only real advantage you will get in a gunfight, meaning other skills like aim, bloom control, and strafing aren’t all that impactful on its performance. The Sidekick is different, it relies far more heavily on actual aiming and strafing to use, and fight back against. And the RNG is less omnipresent, and when it is present (which is only at decently long ranges) it’s skewed heavily in the favor of a player pacing shots over the one spamming the trigger.

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I level up as soon as I can. On the weekend I won 7 games of Last Spartan Standing in a row…

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The Sidekick is my favorite Halo pistol to date - though I wish the clip wouldn’t crap out just before confirming a kill. It’s the perfect combo of Halo CE’s hand cannon and Halo 2’s pinprick or die pistol styles.

It’s the first pistol since 2007 that doesn’t make me feel like I’m spraying a spritz of windex at mid-range opponents…

It feels… wonderfully pistol-like. Like a real pistol does at the range.

Now for the real controversial opinion: Every weapon that Halo has ever had should he added to this game and adjusted to fit within reason.

I would love an all pistols gametype where the CE pistol is a power weapon and we all have to contest it with sidekicks.

Halo pistol meta is and always has been MAD FUN. :stuck_out_tongue:

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???

Sidekick:

  • Optimal TTK: 1 crit, 6 shield (1.1s)
  • Low end TTK: 4 body, 6 shield (1.57s)

Mangler:

  • Optimal TTK: 1 crit, 2 shield (1.45s)
  • Low end TTK: 2 body, 2 shield (1.93s)

OP is 100% right, the SK carries me to the Commando in LSS… the Mangler is trash in comparison to the SK. Try skipping level ups until you hit 650 pts and see how much better you do.

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sorry but this take is superficial at best. especially when the AR can beat it. it’s in a perfect spot.
i swear, it’s people like you that we get so many unnecessary nerfs like the mangler.
just stop, you are ruining this game because you’ve had bad moments and want everyone else to conform?

entitled whiner

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The Mangler has zero bloom so it is significantly more reliable at max firing rate and you can 3 shot kill every time.

I won 7 games in a row on the weekend, not sure I can do too much better than that. Came 2nd in my 8th game (if only I used the Sidekick…)

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