Assault Rifles are a primary weapon class, available only to Combat Medics. They are known to be versatile, effective and easy to handle. Each faction has a large variety of Assault Rifles, giving players the opportunity to pick a rifle that suits their playstyle or situation.
You can find tips on using PlanetSide 2 weapons in the Gunplay Guide.
Assault Rifle Mechanics
Assault Rifles follow the same Weapon Mechanics as other weapons, and use same Weapon Attachments. Overall, they have the lowest recoil and damage degradation among primary weapons, and the best accuracy. Their hip fire is worse than carbines’, but still notably better than LMGs’.
There’s not much more to say about Assault Rifle Mechanics, since they are the most well-rounded, average weapons.
Starting Rifles
These rifles are available by default, and they come with free Forward Grip and 1x Reflex Sight. They are extremely versatile, and remain quite capable at any range.
T1 Cycler is arguably the best weapon in the game. For a weapon with such high DPS, it is surprisingly easy to control, and has a “good enough” effective range. Close range Assault Rifles sacrifice a ton of effective range to get a negligible advantage in DPS over Cycler.
Large magazine lets you comfortably ambush several enemies, or aggressively push forward in close quarters.
Gauss Rifle has little recoil for a 167 damage weapon, and has the longest effective range among starting rifles. It’s not so great in close quarters, unless the user can land headshots, in which case it kills blazingly fast.
Pulsar VS1 has very little Vertical Recoil, making it very comfortable to handle. It’s basically a point and click rifle. It also has one of the fastest Short Reloads in the game, giving it an edge when leading several back-to-back engagements.
Burst Variants
These are burstfire variants of starting Assault Rifles. They have similar stats overall, but with these differences:
Significantly less Horizontal Recoil, and better ADS accuracy.
However, the main trait of Burst Variants is that they cannot fire at full auto, and are locked to 2 or 3 round burst modes. In this burst mode, they have significantly reduced First Shot recoil, but increased recoil of 2nd and 3rd shots. Overall, this makes for more Vertical Recoil than starting rifles.
There is no mandatory pause between bursts, so a user with good trigger discipline can potentially reach the same Rate of Fire as with a Starting Rifle.
Overall, Burst Variants have potential to be more effective at range than starting rifles, but that potential can be hard to reach due to choppy recoil and requirement to click for each burst.
These variants of starting rifles have access to a wide variety of attachments, including underbarrel attachments. However, they have slightly worse stats, such as lower Rate of Fire, longer reload and higher Vertical Recoil.
They also get access to a burst fire mode, but it doesn’t have any special properties, and any player with a trigger finger can fire in the same short bursts in full auto mode.
Finally, Select Fire variants get lower First Shot Recoil than starting rifles, in all firemodes.
Worth using?
The only real advantage of Select Fire Variants is access to underbarrel attachments. On their own, these attachments are not stellar, but can be useful in certain situations. However, they occupy the rail slot, so you won’t be able to use a Forward Grip, and your ranged performance will suffer.
Additionally, Combat Medics are often busy healing and reviving people, and don’t get much time to fiddle with their weapon, switching back and forth to the underbarrel attachment, firing and reloading it.
It all depends on your mindset. If you often play in squads, take a supportive role, and let your allies handle the killing, then having an underbarrel attachment can increase the overall utility of the squad, and you won’t be bothered by your primary weapon losing a bit of killing power.
Then again, you might prefer a simpler and more reliable weapon, one that doesn’t take too much thought to handle, so you can focus on supporting.
If you are primarily a solo player, and prefer a one-man-army approach, then you’ll have to decide whether underbarrel attachments are worth using for you.
If you’re not going to use underbarrel attachments at all, then you’re better off staying away from Select Fire Variants altogether, since gaining access to other specializing attachments isn’t worth losing in important weapon stats.
Compared to basic Gauss Rifle, the S-version has 13% more Vertical Recoil per Shot. Taking reduced Rate of Fire into account, with Compensator the S-version will have only ~7% less Vertical Recoil per Second.
Assault Rifles have relatively low Vertical Recoil per Shot overall, so even without the Compensator, S-version is very manageable. It’s recommended to avoid using Compensator for general gameplay to avoid its penalties.
Where Gauss Rifle S does win out is Horizontal Recoil. It has 0.025 higher Maximum Horizontal Recoil, but lower Horizontal Recoil Tolerance of 0.35. Due to some convoluted recoil mechanics, that actually makes S-version more likely to keep closer to the center.
The Rate of Fire difference is inconsequential.
Overall, Gauss Rifle S makes a decent sidegrade to basic Gauss Rifle, getting you worse Vertical Recoil per Second, but better Horiozontal Recoil and First Shot Recoil Multiplier.
Equinox is a bit of a unique case. It has different damage model than Pulsar VS1, so it deals more damage per bullet at range. Of course, it comes with worse Vertical Recoil and lower RoF, but still. Other Select Fire Variants don’t get that.
Close and Medium Range
These rifles sacrifice effective range in favor of raw firepower and Hip Fire accuracy, and can tear through infantry at close range. However, due to combination of strong recoil and severe damage degradation, most of these rifles are effective only within 35m or so.
Some rifles retain acceptable accuracy and ranged damage, but they don’t get as much DPS either.
While all Assault Rifles have access to Forward Grips, be careful about putting one on a close range rifle. Most of them lose too much damage over range, and putting a Forward Grip on them wouldn’t really increase effective range.
TAR is the staple CQC rifle for Terran Republic. It deals significantly less damage at range than Cycler, but thanks to SPA and higher RoF, it still has higher overall DPS within 34m.
Excellent hip fire and 75% ADS speed, as well as access to Advanced Laser Sight make this gun very light and mobile, giving player the ability to quickly return fire – and a lot of it! – in any situation.
However, low damage at range, and strong Horizontal Recoil mean short effective range. Never forget that TAR is strictly a CQC weapon.
Cycler TRV has the highest DPS among all Assault Rifles. Compared to TAR, the TRV loses some hip fire accuracy and 75% ADS speed, but gets slightly less Vertical Recoil per Second, and an opposite Recoil Angle.
TAR and TRV are overall very similar, but TAR is arguably a better choice overall, since 75% ADS means more than 5% higher DPS.
TORQ has more Vertical Recoil than Cycler, but Compensator will reduce it to be just slightly above Cycler’s.
Despite dealing less damage per shot, TORQ has the same CoF Bloom per shot as Cycler, so TORQ will have to burst fire a bit more. However, TORQ has better ADS Moving starting CoF, so it all more or less evens out in the end.
Due to better Horizontal Recoil, TORQ can potentially be more controllable at range than Cycler, though higher Vertical Recoil and more CoF Bloom can potentially make it more challenging.
Within 10m (15m with SPA), TORQ and 143 damage weapons kill standard infantry targets in the same 4 headshots, but TORQ fires faster, so it will hold a TTK advantage.
TORQ loses a bit of Damage Per Magazine, but this is compensated by fastest reload among TR Assault Rifles.
Carnage is a customizable close-medium range automatic rifle. It gets access to both Advanced Laser Sight and Advanced Forward Grip, so it can be specialized to both close or medium range respectively. Carnage has bad Horizontal Recoil by default, and will struggle at range without the Forward Grip.
Carnage also gets increased Hip Fire accuracy and 75% ADS.
GR-22 is a more extremely tuned version of Carnage AR. It loses access to Advanced Forward Grip, but gains access to SPA. It keeps increased Hip Fire accuracy and 75% ADS speed, but gains a nasty Recoil Angle with high Variance, and deals less damage per shot at range.
Overall, it’s a classic case of “lose effective range to gain CQC power”.
Terminus is one of the few highly praised VS rifles. Thanks to SPA, great DPS and simple recoil, it has great performance in close to medium range, and can be further specialized for CQC with Advanced Laser Sight.
Similarly to Cycler, it is a simple and effective weapon.
H-V45 is a CQC bullet hose weapon. It has high DPS, increased Hip Fire accuracy and 75% ADS speed, and also gets access to SPA and Advanced Laser Sight. H-V45’s bad recoil and low ranged damage is comparable to other CQC ARs.
H-V45 shines in close range engagements due to its great hip fire. However, starting a fight at longer ranges is usually a bad idea due to severe damage degradation.
Due to long reload time, small magazine and high Rate of Fire, it’s better to always keep H-V45 fully loaded. Otherwise, you risk running out of ammo mid-fight.
– [RMIS] BadCoach
Terminus vs H-V45
This video is outdatedas far damage and some recoil numbers are concerned, but the overall relationship between these weapons remains the same.
Long Range
These rifles sacrifice raw firepower in favor of accuracy and smoother recoil. Some ranged rifles deal more damage per shot, but have lower Rate of Fire, further specializing them for ranged combat. They also usually have access to attachments like Compensator, Advanced Forward Grip and High Velocity Ammunition.
SABR is a ranged burst rifle. It gets an unusually strong benefit from Compensator, which reduces SABR’s Vertical Recoil by 25%.
Having access to Advanced Forward Grip and High Velocity Ammo, as well as having excellent stats by default, SABR is a beastly ranged weapon. Its only disadvantage is that it’s locked to 2x burst mode, which means the user has to click 5 times per second in order to reach full Rate of Fire.
SABR and NSX Yumi happen to be the only Assault Rifles available to TR, that deal more than 143 damage per shot, which means you’re effectively left without a good ranged option if you don’t like burst weapons.
Reaper DMR is a magnificent cannon of destruction. It deals the most damage per shot among all Assault Rifles, which makes it devastating in ranged combat.
It has hefty recoil in stock form, but you can and should tone it down with Compensator and Advanced Forward Grip. Similarly to SABR-13, Compensator reduces Reaper’s Vertical Recoil by 25%, which is significantly more than usual, making it a nearly mandatory attachment.
Low Rate of Fire and damage model make Reaper suffer in close quarters, especially when going for body shots against targets with Nanoweave. Going for headshots is highly recommended.
Reaper’s ADS Moving accuracy isn’t as good as you’d wish, so when engaging targets outside ~40m, make sure to either burst fire, or stand still when you can afford to.
A-Tross is a sidegrade to Reaper DMR. You can check the detailed comparison in the spoiler below, but the short of it is A-Tross has larger magazine, but reloads longer and has lower Rate of Fire. Everything else is nearly the same.
Due to impressive damage per mag, A-Tross has been referred to as “MAX buster”. If you can keep your distance and sustain fire on a MAX, you can kill him in 1-2 magazines, depending on your (headshot) accuracy.
Detailed comparison
Horizontal Recoil:identical.
Vertical Recoil:identical when Compensator used on both. Reaper DMR has more recoil by default, but it also gets more benefit from Compensator. In case of both these rifles, Compensator is a must, IMO.
First Shot Recoil Multiplier: 1.5x for Reaper and 1.33x for A-Tross. This makes for 0.495 and 0.47 First Shot Recoil respectively. Pretty much ignorable. The only way this would matter if we were for some reason comparing Reaper without Compensator to A-Tross with Compensator.
Recoil Angle: A-Tross gets negligible recoil angle, Reaper DMR has no angle. For practical purposes, they are identical in this regard.
Velocity: Reaper has 15 m/s higher velocity. Negligible-identical.
Ammo: A-Tross gets more ammo and longer reload. This is the biggest difference between them. However, even though Reaper holds only 24 rounds, those are 200-167 damage bullets, and I wouldn’t say that it suffers from DPM issues. A-Tross is nearly an LMG in that regard. We are dangerously close to the point where additional ammo doesn’t even matter, like in case with Failstorm.
RoF / DPS: second biggest difference. Reaper has whopping 6.6% higher RoF. Pretty much ignorable for practical purposes.
A-Tross also gets a 2x Burst fire mode with no special properties.
Other stats are identical. If you really want, you can pretend that these 3-5% stat differents are somehow important, and make an agonizing decision. However, if we’re being real, in this case you are free to choose whichever gun looks and sounds the best to you.
Both weapons are great, and you can’t go wrong with either. However, they are meant for medium-long range, and require headshots to win in close quarters engagements. Overall, they need more practice to get used to them, and use them effectively.
CME – stands for Coronal Mass Ejection – is the staple ranged AR for VS. It has the highest Projectile Velocity among Assault Rifles, and nearly non-existent Vertical Recoil, and good ADS Moving accuracy. CME also deals more damage at range than Pulsar VS1.
For some reason, CME has more Horizontal Recoil than Pulsar VS1, but it also gets access to Advanced Forward Grip. When both weapons are used with grips, they have roughly the same Horizontal Recoil.
Overall, CME is a great ranged weapon, and its only sin is that it’s arguably worse than NS-11A.
Corvus deals more damage per shot than any other VS AR, and has very little recoil, so it has an advantage in ranged combat.
Cross-Faction Rifles
These rifles can be used by all factions. If you purchase them with Daybreak Cash, they will be available on all your characters, regardless of faction. They have white tracers.
Attachments: Soft Point Ammunition, High Velocity Ammunition, Compensator, Flash Suppressor, Suppressor, Darklight Flashlight, Forward Grip, Laser Sight
NS-11A is a classic NS rifle. It has access to a large selection of attachments, and can be specialized for medium or long range. NS-11A would still have shorter effective range than dedicated ranged Assault Rifles, since it has worse Horizontal Recoil than them, and lower damage profile certainly doesn’t help. Still, overall it’s a very convenient and controllable rifle.
Due to low-ish DPS, it’s not very effective in close quarters, though increased Hip Fire accuracy and 75% ADS speed somewhat help to offset that.
NS-11A is especially popular among players that engage in competitive matches and Server Smashes, since it is available to all factions.
Here is a rundown of NS-11A by [RMIS] Cervello:
– Easily controlled recoil. – Only one tier of damage degradation, which makes for consistent 4 headshot kills against non-HA targets at any range. – 75% ADS Speed. – Good Cone of Fire statistics. Low CoF Bloom per Second due to low RoF. – Fast reload, good damage per mag. – Available on all factions.
High skill players
As a medic, most of the time, you’ll be positioned a few meters behind a Heavy Assault (1), with more cover at your disposal (2).
(1) This allows NS-11A’s easy handling to shine. Unlike many other guns, NS-11A’s Recoil and Cone of Fire do not give a reason to miss headshots across a room. So if your aim is true, you can get one of the shortest TTKs across point rooms, despite low raw DPS.
(2) This plays heavily into 75% ADS Speed. Players who use weapons with 0.5x ADS Speed, have very predictable movement when peeking from cover, as they can’t “widepeek” (they won’t be back in cover in time), so their ADAD pattern will have to be very tight.
With 75% ADS Speed, you effectively have extra 50% percent of “space” to maneuver in; thus you can have way more unpredictable strafing patterns.
Low skill players
Easy handling and forgiving CoF allow any player to engage enemies simply by pointing the gun at them. Using NS-11A is literally a point and click adventure when going for body shots, even at range where most rifles would require adequate recoil control and CoF management.
This allows to get higher effective DPS at range, but reduces it in CQC. This lack of raw firepower in close quarters is partly compensated by 75% ADS Speed. Low skill players generally shoot other low skill players on Live servers, and 75% ADS Speed is incredibly strong in this situation, as inexperienced shooters will struggle aiming at a fast moving target.
Also, the gun is unlocked across all factions with DBG cash, another good thing for new players.
All in all, for these players the NS11 is a ‘friendly gun’, with great performance at range, and good chances of winning in CQC because you can easily make your opponent miss his shots.
However, it is still better to equip a dedicated close range Assault Rifle when you expect a lot of close quarters engagements. Just keep in mind it would be much less effective at range.
– [RMIS] Cervello
I want to stress that skill of landing headshots is the key to being successful with this gun. Fortunately, great accuracy makes it easier to develop this skill.
Vertical Recoil: 0.22
First Shot Recoil Multiplier: 0x
Recoil Angle: 5 / 5
Horizontal Recoil: 0.12 / 0.12
Horizontal Recoil Tolerance: 0.2 (up to 1 kick)
Refire Time: 250 ms (for the purposes of recoil recovery delay) Recoil Recovery Delay: 50 ms
Recoil Recovery Rate: 16
Attachments: Grenade Launcher, Smoke Launcher, Soft Point Ammunition, High Velocity Ammunition, Flash Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Darklight Flashlight, Forward Grip, Compensator
NSX Yumi is a rather unique burst rifle. It fires in accurate 5 round bursts at extremely high RPM, but there is a short charge-up delay before each burst.
Yumi is an interesting weapon for medium and long range combat, and it gives a big advantage when firing first, more so than any other automatic weapon. But the burst delay makes the weapon bad in direct confrontation, especially if the enemy engages you first in close quarters.
Recoil and CoF have time to fully recover between bursts, so Yumi doesn’t require and doesn’t allow any CoF management.
Yumi is predominantly a medium-long range rifle, but it also has access to Underbarrel Grenade Launcher and Smoke Launcher. Yumi is probably the best rifle to use with these attachments, because it has very little Horizontal Recoil even without Forward Grip.
It’s worth noting that NSX Yumi does not count towards Assault Rifles directives, and instead counts for Nanite Exports directive.
These prestige variants of starting Assault Rifles have a cosmetic auraxium shader, as well as unique combination of attachments or special mechanics. You cannot modify any attachments, except Scopes.
The only way to obtain one of these rifles is to complete the auraxium level of Assault Rifle Directives, by getting auraxium medals (1160 kills) with 5 different Assault Rifles.
Keep in mind that not everything classified as “Assault Rifle” counts for these directives, so make sure to check your directives tab.
T1 Unity is a variant of T1 Cycler with SPA and Forward Grip. It can be considered a direct upgrade over the Cycler, if not for the inability to mount Flash Suppressor.
Gauss Prime is a variant of Gauss Rifle, with a preset combination of attachments that specialize it for ranged combat: Forward Grip, HVA and Compensator.
Darkstar is a variant of Pulsar VS1 with preset ranged attachments: Forward Grip and Compensator. Additionally, instead of conventional ammunition, Darkstar uses the Heat Mechanic, which effectively gives it infinite amount of spare ammo.
Firing the weapon accumulates Heat. When you stop firing, after Heat Recovery Delay, the weapon will start cooling down, at Heat Recovery Rate. If you overheat the weapon, instead of Heat Recovery Delay, you will suffer the Overheat Penalty.
Darkstar can fire 32 shots before overheating. It takes 2.24 seconds to recover heat from 31 shots, and 3.5 sec if you overheat the weapon. As you’ve noticed, Darkstar has more “ammo per magazine” than base Pulsar VS1, and this is intentional.
Darkstar will cool down even when not equipped, which makes it very convenient for Combat Medics: you can engage an enemy, and then switch to a sidearm or Med Tool, and Darkstar will be fully “reloaded” by the time you equip it back again.
This review is outdated as far as Darkstar’s damage and cooldown times are concerned.
Credits
Special thanks to members of Cobalt’s [RMIS] Red Mist, who provided their invaluable expertise for this guide: Nehylen, BadCoach, Cervello, ErnestCarvingway.
One thought on “Assault Rifles”
are you going to add the NSO aurax weapons ever to these lists ?
or 499 
are you going to add the NSO aurax weapons ever to these lists ?