News - Is The 556 Icarus Underrated Warzone 2. Gun Guide Ep. 26
Intro
And in today's episode, we're going to be moving on to the 556 Icarus LNG as well, known as the "fight light" NCR.
Damage & multipliers
And, starting it off as always, let's have a look at our damage profile. With this gun, it's generally going to be a three- to five-shot kill. Additionally, headshots are not particularly useful with this gun, and in the vast majority of gunfights, you're in, but if you do tend to hit a lot of limb shots, mixing in a headshot can ensure that you maintain a three-shot kill potential.
Rate of fire & ttk
Up close then, let's get into our rate of fire, and with this, there's no open bolt delay unlike some of the lmgs, and our rate of fire is faster than the hdr56. At 779 rounds per minute, this means we are going to have a faster time to kill at 154 milliseconds, which is a very, very fast time to kill in this game, and even with a four-shot kill at 231 milliseconds, that's still a very competitive time to kill, especially for mid-ranges.
Ranges
Next up, our bullet velocity is just standard for the LMG category at 700 meters per seconds, and then let's get into our range values, and that's one area where this is slightly worse than the HCR 56.
Our three-shot kill potential extends out to 24 meters, whereas our four-shot kill potential is 40.5 meters. So, unlike the HDR, you have to be a little bit more aware of your range values here, and you will be dropping into that five-shot kill potential quite a bit more often on the 6v6 maps.
Hipfire & sway
But after that, let's have a look at our hip fire spread, which is just standard for LMGs. Generally speaking, you only want to hit fire right up close and personal. Then let's get into our idle sway, and as you can see here, there's definitely a fair amount of movement with the sights while aiming down sights, and that could potentially limit you in longer-range engagements unless you compensate for that with attachments.
Recoil
And, now, let's move on to our recoil, and as we can see here, this gun kicks initially basically straight up for the first five or six shots or so, and then it starts to cut fairly hard to the right generally. As long as you make sure you get those first shots on target, this is a very easy gun to control. However, as you continue to spray, you will have to start compensating for that horizontal recoil, which is a little more difficult than vertical recoil.
Handling
Next up, let's get into our handling stats, and our aim down sight time is actually best in the LMG category at 370 milliseconds, so that's great if you're looking to be a bit more aggressive with an LNG.
Our sprint-to-fire time is still quite slow, and it's basically standard for LMGs at 250 milliseconds. As for the reload ad time, this is quite slow at 5.67 seconds. It's not the slowest reloading LMG out there, but this is still a very slow reload time, and you definitely have to plan ahead and prepare for this in the middle of a match.
Mobility
Then finally for the base stats, let's get into our mobility, and with this gun we have the fastest basal movement speed out of the LMGs at 4.38 meters per second. Our sprint speed is also a little on the fast side for LMGs but not too far out of the ordinary, and finally, our aim walking movement speed is also the fastest in the LMG category at 2.03 seconds.
This is still quite a slow aim-walk movement speed though, so it's not like you'll really be able to take full advantage of this in a gunfight, and that right there wraps it up for all of the base stats of this gun. But now let's move on to some of the attachments, and we're going to cover barrels and their ranges, And, as we can see here, there are only two barrels to use on the 556 Icarus.
Barrel ranges
The first one is the F-TAC cold-forged 16-inch barrel, and with this one we get a 28-yard boost to our ranges, which is a very nice boost for this game.
The second barrel, the f-tac SB, does hurt our ranges by 14, which isn't great, especially since we don't have an amazing range profile for an LMG to begin with.
Barrel recoil
For how these impact our recoil with the first barrel, typically the barrels that increase our ranges will also help with recoil, but this barrel doesn't, and if anything, just looking at the recoil plots, it seems very slightly worse than the bass recoil on this gun, but that could just be down to the little bit of randomness that's included in the recoil, whereas with the F-TAC SB barrel, this one significantly increases our horizontal recoil, especially, but even with those initial shots fired, you can see the gaps are much higher, and therefore I would consider that to be a fairly significant increase to the total recoil of the gun.
Barrel ads speeds
And finally, for these barrel attachments, let's have a look at our aim-down sight speeds. That 16-inch cold forge barrel unfortunately adds a lot of aim-down sight time at 450 milliseconds. Whereas the SB Barrel improves our aim-down sight time by about 20 milliseconds , additionally.
Magazine ads speeds
I just wanted to have a quick look at our magazine attachments. We only have one magazine attachment on this gun, which is a 100-round box magazine, and this one will slow our aim and sight speed down to 410 milliseconds, to be honest.
Unless it's a class designed for shooting down streaks, I don't really think this penalty to your aimed outside time is worth the extra 25 rounds.
All around build
With that, that wraps it up for all of the important stats that I wanted to cover. Now let's move into some excellent attachment combinations, and the first one I'm going to share with you guys is my all-arounder.
With this build, the best combination that I found for recoil with muzzle and underbell attachments was the second tread 40 muzzle as well as the VX pineapple under barrel, the OLED laser, the Slimline Pro optic, and the X10 grip, and with this, our aim down sight speed is still pretty reasonable for an LMG at 410 milliseconds, our sprint out time is improved to the point where it's now better than all of the assault rifles in the game, and quite importantly, this improves our recoil very nicely. This is a very accurate and easy-to-control gun with a reasonable enough aim-down sight speed.
All around 2.0 build
Now, I did want to point out a little alternative to this one. It's not an entirely different build, but if you don't mind the iron sights on this gun, you can drop that Slimline Pro optic, and I'd recommend putting the Ravage 8 stock on there.
That will bring your aim down sight speed a little bit faster, but you just lose that added precision of having the optic, and therefore I feel like you start limiting yourself a bit at really long ranges overall.
Canted laser build
Though this is an excellent build to use with this gun and my preferred way of running it, let's move on to a second build about which I've got thoughts.
