Mass Effect 2: Weapon comparison thread (by sinosleep)

Reminder: This was posted by sinosleep on old BSN forums.


Mattock vs Carnifex comparison test vs armor

Basically the whole thing started up based on a debate about what weapon to take on the collector ship and whether or not the mattock would be redundant on certain classes. I mentioned that while it may kinda be redundant, I felt that it takes down armor at a faster rate than the pistol and would save you money and research materiels on upgrades you wouldn't have to get since pistol replacement is essentially what I use it for. This is helped by the fact that I tend to choose missions based entirelyon upgrade priority so on my playthroughs I tend to have stuff like 4/5 AR and Shotgun upgrades but 1/5 pistol upgrades. Any way, a direct comparison was called for so here it is.



Here are the numbers:
- 4/5 research upgrades for both
- Carnifex 11.8 seconds
- Mattock 11.297 seconds

take into account I missed wide right twice on the second round of mattock shots.

It's a small difference, but if it allows me to play through the game with only having to use 2 weapons instead of 3 or 4 then it's worth it IMO.

Reminder: This was posted by sinosleep on old BSN forums.


Shotgun comparison test vs shields

First things first, this vid isn't particularly practical but I couldn't think of too many other enemies to fight where a charged gps shot didn't kill them outright so YMIR mech it was. The reason this presents a problem is that for standard mobs a lot of what this video shows doesn't apply. For instance, the Evi looks particularly bad in this vid, but when it comes to standard mobs it's a one shot and melee finisher. The ammo rarely becomes an issue like it did in this vid forcing a reload 3/4 of the way into shooting off the shield and costing the gun a lot of time. I guess you could take away that if you are going to fight heavy duty minions with a shotgun, the evi might not be the one to do it with.

Secondly,the reason I melee is that you would be silly not to. There is a gap in between shots during which there is literally nothing else you could do to increase your damage out put other than to go ahead and melee in between shots. The number of melees for the different weapons are timed based on the number of frames in between reloads. You WILL lose DPS if you don't melee in between shots, even on the fast shooting scimitar.



Alright, with all that out of the way, here are the numbers:
- uncharged GPS 3.517
- first shot charged GPS 1.9
- evi 6.967
- scimi 4.9
- katana 4.683
- reload trick claymore 3.65
- claymore7.367



Shotgun comparison test vs armor

Ok, so you guys know what's up at this point no need for another long intro. Instead I'll start things off with what I'm sure is going to lead to a lot of WTF. How on earth did the charged shot gps take longer than the uncharged shot gps. Well, bad luck basically. I throw my melees in the same order every time and only do two in a row onthe evi where it fits in between the frames. If a weapon runs out of ammo after the melee strikes then I wait until I can shoot again to start using melee attacks again. And that's what happened to the GPS. Without the melee strike the first shot after the reload took an eternity and that's what made for the strange time.



Moving on though, here are all the times:
- gps no charge: 8.2 seconds
- gps charged on first shot: 8.35 seconds
- evi: 8.433 seconds
- scimi: 10.733
- katana: 9.483
- claymore reload trick: 7.317
- claymore: 10.1

The claymore makes it's triumphant return as king of the hill!