Yeah, good on shields but need to empty at least 2 clips to get the kill. Those challenges are all garbage anyways. That challenge should be 3 Pulse Carbine + any Pistol/Rifle Headshot combos. Make the challenges encourage the right use of weapons, items and combos, not just random.
I don’t use it to finish opponents, burst, burst switch to something kinetic to finish, it works fine within the wider sand box. And works great with the sidekick, or with a partner who is equipped with a headshot weapon. plasma weapons have always had a niche you just have to find it. I like it, but I am big into cycling weapons.
I’ve literally never been KO’d by someone with Plasma Carbine. People try, but they don’t succeed. If they swapped to a different weapon to finish me off, then they missed, I guess. And if you’re using it to take down shields, maybe that’s fine, but many other weapons are better for shield-stripping.
As for me, I’m decent with a variety of weapons. Better with some than others. But no matter what I do, I’m just a free KO to the enemy team when I attempt the Pulse Carbine.
you “endured the torture of horrific KD” which equates to “I threw the game because of a pointless challenge”.
Good try rationalizing it though.
Nah. Not even really close for me. Its actually really effective when used to melt shields and paired with the BR/Commando. Its a very situational weapon but in its role it is a very good tool. There have been many weapons throughout the series that are just bad weapons overall in almost any situation. As a standalone weapon though, yeah, it sucks. But the worst weapon in the franchise? I disagree.
Weapons off the top of my head that were worse imo :
H2 Magnum and H3 Pistol.
H3 Spiker
Reach Focus Rifle (post nerf)
H4 Suppressor
Reach Concussion Rifle
H4 Storm Rifle
H2 Needler
It’s pretty bad, but there have been worse guns. The main issue with it is that it’s designed as a crutch gun for campaign; the tracking works great on enemies who don’t actually think or react to your shots. Against enemies who can think, you are entirely reliant on either getting the jump on them or them having a bad strafe in order to land shots. While also hoping they are neither too close, where the tracking can’t keep up with linear movement, nor too far, where the shots are going to get dragged into a wall.
This is why people say it’s meant to break shields but not kill; you can rely on up to 1 burst landing properly, after which either too few shots will land to get a kill in decent time, or you will get lucky and land subsequent bursts but the tracking will steer your shots away from the head and extend the ttk anyways. So the best way to use it is to try to get a burst off and then swap to something that can quickly finish the shield and get the headshot.
I think the reason it feels so bad is partially down to the contrast of how good it feels in campaign withy how bad it is in pvp, but also because it is so close to being an awesome weapon. With faster projectiles and no tracking, it would be a great cqb precision weapon, a hard hitting alternative to the br that outperforms up close but starts to lose out at longer ranges. Instead, it’s used as a watered down plasma pistol.
It shares the same problem that many of Halo Infinite’s “bad” guns have: Unreliability.
In the case of the PC, it’s that it’s a precision weapon (headshot multiplier and everything) but it almost completely relies on its tracking function to actually do damage. In other words, it is only as good as the tracking, not the player’s skill.
Picking this thing up is met with so much uncertainty. If the enemy isn’t in a field exactly 20m away with no cover, it’s useless. Might as well just shoot them with your BR.
Agreed, some kind of rifle that shoots plasma in a straight line and kills shields would be really good for Halo. I wonder what we should call it…
It’s hard to get kills using only it, but it’s a good weapon to drain shields, drop (faster than swapping), and then using your other weapon to get the kill. Though I still prefer the plasma pistol for that function. And I miss the classic Carbine-- it was probably my favorite mid-range precision weapon outside of the CE magnum.
The problem is that all current progression is tied to challenges. Which means if you want to keep progressing you have to complete the challenges. If you want the weekly capstone, you have to complete the challenges. If you want to progress in the event pass YOU HAVE TO COMPLETE THE CHALLENGES.
They had a challenge to get pulse carbine kills for the fiesta event. How could you expect anyone to ever get kills with a pulse carbine? It’s not meant to get kills. Especially in fiesta. The game where you’re meant to use power weapons to rack up kills.
Do you not see or understand the issue?
i’d argue it is the best supporting weapon CURRENTLY in infinite, better than the trash of the plasma pistol. and if anything… it’s better than the plasma rifle, repeater, and storm rifle. it’s a good SHIELD buster… which was the original point of the plasma rifle, a shield buster over health. not really a KO gun, but a way to assist in dwindling the shields of an opponent from afar or close range-… too bad the disruptor exists. seriously, the distruptor technically stole the usefullness of the plasma pistol and pulse carbine
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I think the problem is that 343i has moved away from all weapons being purely damage output related. Theyve tried, and succeeded, in removing weapon redundancies. However, they went for combining certain weapons into one package, and forcing them into a utility function. Pulse carbine, heatwave, shock rifle, ravager, cindershot, commando and disruptor are all combinations of past weapons, returned to us as utility items instead of sheer damage output weapons.
This has created the illusion the idea that some weapons are inherently bad, instead of looking at the weapon in terms of its actual intended use.
Wad this the right choice? Yes and no. Is it best for the game moving foward? Maybe.
I mean you’re not wrong. They certainly moved away from making every weapon viable on its own and that’s perfectly fine. If you take a look at the Halo 3 sandbox you’ll instantly see that many of the weapons were not very good or useful on their own. They had specific uses such as the plasma Pistol being a shield -Yoink!- and a vehicle stopper. But now in infinite the plasma Pistol isn’t a vehicle stopper and it’s just a shield -Yoink!- and not a very good one at that. It’s only truly useful in close to mid-range combined with the sidekick or br. The shock weapons completely stole the plasma pistol’s original utility that got added in 3.
Not every gun needs to be able to win a fight at any point, but every gun should be capable of actually getting a kill. And right now there are several weapons that are virtually incapable of killing anything.
For some reason the filter decided to edit the word -Yoink!- ($+r!pper). So the above yoinks are actually that.
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Halo5 bolt shot was an op beast in close range!
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I still prefer the Halo 4 bolt shot
Agreed, weapons need to be viable as WEAPONS first, with utility as a secondary function. The shield-stripping nature of the plasma pistol is innately part of its usage since Halo’s early days(Halo 2?) In fact, plasma weapons had utility since the CE days; the plasma rifle was capable of stunning and slowing, while being a pure damage weapon, it was quite capable of melting targets.
Weapon viability is a problem, currently, in Infinite. I would suggest watching, the Home Slice, Ascend Hyperion’s channel for more info on this. He has alot of great insight.
The plasma pistol was probably at it’s strongest in CE. It was fully capable of getting kills on it’s own or pairing it with the magnum.
I’ve also been watching the home slice for a long while now (little over a year) and I usually agree with his opinions, but not always. Him and Late Night Gaming put out some great informative videos.
Unless they were overshielded, there’s no reason to use the plasma pistol with the CE Pistol at all.
I’d say Halo 2’s Plasma Pistol was better, it was extremely difficult to escape it’s tracking and worked well when used with either the battle rifle, smg or pistol. I believe this was the first game to allow it to disable vehicles too, or was that 3?
“Yoink” I love it fellow Spartan. The pulse carbine is a very interesting weapon that takes some patience and distance to be effective. Aquarius is a great map to run the weapon in mid-range battles. Good luck completing that challenge.
You’re thinking only from a multiplayer point of view. I’m also talking about campaign. And the emp was not added until 3, but the tracking was op because that was all the plasma pistol was meant to do in 2. Dual wield it with a pistol to strip Shields and pop heads or overcharge and swap to br.
But getting back to CE, using the plasma Pistol combined with the Magnum was a good way to conserve ammo on the Magnum in missions where you weren’t going to be finding it very much.
I’ve said this from day 1 and people have told me to ‘get good’ and ‘stop crying’ but I genuinely can’t get a kill with it, even in the campaign. It’s hilariously underpowered.