Heavy weapons are faction specific anti-infantry primary weapons, available exclusively to Heavy Assaults. All of them have limited use in actual combat, but due to uniqueness and fun-factor, have earned the love of many Heavy Assaults.

T7 Mini-Chaingun

Headshot Damage Multiplier: 1.5x
ADS Movespeed Multiplier: 0.5x
Fixed Cone of Fire in ADS Mode
Max Hip Fire CoF: 3.0

T7 Mini-Chaingun, as the name suggests, is a chaingun with a rotating barrel assembly. Mechanically, it is a very unique weapon with these defining features: 

MCG starts firing slowly, but over 1 second spins up to the full Rate of Fire.

Unlike most weapons, MCG doesn’t have Cone of Fire Bloom, meaning it doesn’t lose any accuracy during sustained fire, even if it’s not very accurate to begin with. 

MCG also has fixed ADS Cone of FIre. This means you can start firing from the hip, then aim down sights while firing, and still get an accuracy benefit. With most other weapons, you would have to stop firing if you wanted ADSing to actually do anything for you. 

MCG has maximum Hip Fire CoF of 3 degrees and jumping/falling CoF of 5 degrees. So if you jump or fall while firing, your CoF will increase to 5 degrees, but when you land, it will reduce to 3 degrees, even if you keep firing. With most other weapons, you would have to stop firing in order to restore accuracy.

MCG has only 1.5x headshot multiplier, and bad, but consistent accuracy, so it’s recommend to always aim for the center mass. 

MCG has unexpectedly good hip fire, especially when compared to LMGs. Often it’s better to hip fire and preserve full movement speed rather than slow yourself down with aiming down sights.

Due to these traits, MCG has a unique playstyle – you want to spin up the MCG, and fire without stopping until there are no more targets. It also benefits hugely from pre-firing – starting to fire before you actually see the enemy. 

Disadvantages

• Inflicting friendly fire is a big issue for the MCG, because you will be firing non-stop, and often unintentionally hit allies trying to run past your stream of bullets.
• MCG is often critiqued for being worse than default LMG, the CARV, which has similar effective DPS and magazine capacity, but much better accuracy, and can kill even faster with headshots.
• Another problem with MCG is that enemies just won’t let you stand in front of them and kill them one by one. Picking your engagements when enemies can’t return fire, using cover and overshields are very important.

Attachments

MCG has access to these rail attachments:

Ballistic Rapid Refire Toggle (BRRT) – an exclusive attachment, available only to the MCG. It reduces the RoF wind up time from 1 second to 0.5, and bumps up maximum rate of fire to 845, making it a highest DPS Heavy Assault primary weapon.

It reduces your disadvantage, when you suddenly bump into the enemy around the corner, and increase to the maximum fire rate improves already high DPS, ensuring that during MCG uptime you unleash maximum amount of DPS.

Recommended attachment, due to versatility. 

Laser Sight – reduces Hip Fire CoFs by 33%, making Hip Fire almost as accurate as aiming down sights, basically making it your primary engagement mode in most situations. 

Extended Magazine – doubles the magazine capacity. The least useful option. While the MCG benefits from firing without stopping, situations where you can live long enough to fire the whole magazine are rare.

Tactical Information

There are two big issues with MCG.

First, it has bad accuracy, therefore it does reduced effective damage at most ranges, and you can’t compensate it with skill. To put it into perspective, SMGs from the hip have the same initial accuracy as MCG with ADS. Of course, MCG has locked CoFs, but that’s another story.

And you can’t go for headshots at most ranges, meaning that beyond a certain skill level anyone with a classic primary weapon will be able to outDPS you with headshots.

MCG maximum bodyshot DPS with BRRT: ~2013
NS-7 PDW maximum headshot DPS: ~3100

Even when you are close enough to hit headshots, reduced headshot damage multiplier of 1.5x won’t let you benefit from them too much.

Second issue is mechanical differences from classic weapons. Spin-up and locked CoF make the weapon behave very differently, and most of your habits and instincts will be wrong. In order to work the MCG, you will have to make adjustments to your footwork and trigger finger, and it may take a while – just to make the weapon not suck completely.

You need to pre-fire the MCG , and un-learn these habits, that are normally crucial for gunplay:

• ADSing
• going for headshots
• burst firing
• holding fire for a second after landing – due to locked CoF, you can start firing mid-air, and you will regain full accuracy when you land
• resetting the burst when transitioning from hip fire to ADSing.

And even when played optimally, MCG isn’t stellar. For sure, MCG fills a unique niche. It is the highest raw DPS non-shotgun primary weapon for TR HA, and it can sustain that DPS for a while. It also has comparatively good hip fire.

But unless you’re bored and want something unique, or just a fan of chainguns, I wouldn’t recommend bothering with MCG at all. Any CARV-like LMG will do roughly the same thing roughly as good, and be much more versatile and hold more potential.

NC05 Jackhammer 

Headshot Damage Multiplier: 1.5x
Damage in burst mode: 112 @ 10m – 70 @ 30m
Measured Time Between Bursts: ~0.65 sec
Time Between Shots (Burst Mode): 0.133 sec
Extended Mags Bonus: +3 rounds
ADS Movespeed Multiplier: 0.75x

Jackhammer is a heavy shotgun. It has two fire modes. In semi auto mode it behaves like any other semi-auto shotgun. You can press “change fire modes key”, default “B”, to switch to burst fire mode. In this mode Jackhammer will fire off a 3 round burst at a double rate of fire. But it needs to be manually rechambered after each burst, like a pump action shotgun. 

Jackhammer has one of the best pellet spreads among shotguns, and no damage degradation in semi auto mode, which gives the Jackhammer the longest effective range among shotguns, and burstfire mode makes it extremely deadly in close quarters. A point blank burst is enough to kill a Heavy Assault through any kind of overshield, which can’t be said about any of the pump action shotguns.

The ability to switch fire modes on the fly and longest effective range make Jackhammer the most versatile shotgun, and a very strong option for any situation you might want to use a shotgun. Check the Shotgun Guide for some tips on how to use shotguns.

Lasher X2

Headshot Damage Multiplier: 2.0x
ADS Movespeed Multiplier: 0.5x

X2 Lasher is an automatic plasmagun that fires explosive orbs of plasma that do splash damage to infantry.  Lasher has:

• low rate of fire
• unusually low projectile velocity
• large battery capacity
• splash damage
• no Cone of Fire Bloom

Due to these combined factors, Lasher is mostly used as a suppression and sustained fire weapon. Since it’s hard to suppress enemy positions for a prolongued period of time without getting sniped or constantly shooting your own teammates, Lasher has limited use in actual combat.

Due to splash damage and the tendency to fire without stopping for a long time, Lasher really suffers from friendly fire issues, and when firing at an enemy at close quarters, it isn’t uncommon to even damage yourself.

Some tips:

• Lasher isn’t very strong up close, so it’s recommended to keep your distance, and fire at clumps of infantry from cover. Due to splash damage, you can even damage players hiding behind cover.
• When an enemy is far away, or actively dodging your fire, firing at his feet is a solid option. 
• Lasher has good hip fire accuracy, so in close quarters it’s often better to hip fire. 
• Due to weird interaction between splash damage applied on direct hits and MAX resistance values, Lasher is a rather strong anti-MAX weapon. 
• Indirect Damage is applied on direct hits. MAXes receive 50% of Indirect Damage and 20% of Direct Damage, same as from bullets.

Attachments

Lasher has access to these rail attachments:

Laser Sight – increases hip fire accuracy. It can help dish out damage more precisely in close quarters, but CQC is something you want to avoid with Lasher.

Extended Mags – doubles the magazine capacity from 75 to 150. Even without Extended Mags Lasher takes a while to fire off its magazine, and because you will be most likely firing from cover, at range, finding a moment to reload shouldn’t be a problem.

Lasher doesn’t really *need* any of these attachments. So you can even go with the Darklight Flashight. The fun thing is Lasher doesn’t really need the Flashlight either, since plasma disco balls offer sufficient illumination if you find yourself in darkness, and the splash damage can be used to search for infiltrators.