Thorolf

After reading WAY too much of this thread, this guy's post sums up my feelings on the matter pretty well. Magnum/AR all the way.

Yeah I see what you're saying with the lockout example and that's true enough I suppose, but I did feel during the beta and during much gameplay I've watched since, that the AR/magnum starts had much more map movement and were much faster paced than the BR start games where, especially in the higher level games I played, there was just a lot of corner camping and quite a few games felt stale, with the faster TTK and the reliability of the BR it was suicide to cross open ground without support. Normally I'd be BR's all the way in H2/3, but I really feel that the magnum replaces the need for it in H5 as a starting weapon that's less oppressive cross-map but still has all the qualities of the BR that we love (high skill gap, precision, strong defense/offense off spawn etc).

As much as I love my BR, Magnum/AR starts did work much better in the Beta in my experience for several reasons - The magnum isn't as oppressive cross-map due to less zoom, shorter red range, semi-auto is less forgiving than 3 round burst - Shallower mag, 5sk with 10 rounds in the mag as opposed to 4sk with 12 bursts. - Perfect TTK slightly faster than BR, but slightly less usable meaning it can contend with smg/br/DMR at medium range and beat the AR/SMG. At close range the magnum struggles against the SMG/AR but can stil contend, but fares equally against the BR/DMR. At long range it seems to be able to trade poke with a BR but ultimately would lose I feel, and the DMR would of course trounce it at long range. I feel like these interactions are quite good for a starting weapon, it offers great utility without being overly usable, forgiving and long ranged. Magnum starts seem like a perfect answer to the stale standoffish gameplay we saw in the Beta during BR starts.