News - Is The Sidewinder Lmg Kit Any Good Warzone 2. Jak Thunder Kit Stat Breakdown
And with this kit, I've really been looking forward to it since Sidewinder is really bad by default. I still consider it to be one of, if not the worst, guns in the entire game, so I thought maybe this kit will finally make the Sidewinder good, or at least a lot more viable than the base version of the gun, and that's what we're going to be having a look at today.
Basic information
So let's just dive right into it, and we're going to look at the in-game stats first.
In the description, it mentions that it has a large capacity magazine that ramps up in fire rate the longer you hold down the trigger. Additionally, this harms all of our mobility speeds, handling speeds, reload time, as well as our damage values, with very few upsides listed in the advanced stats.
Our rate of fire improves, and our range values do improve with this.
How the ramping rate of fire works
As well, and let's start it off with that rate of fire that just ramps up over time. How exactly does this work? Does it ramp up after X number of shots are fired? Or what exactly happens here? Well, it turns out that when you first start firing the gun, it will fire at roughly the standard fire rate for The Sidewinder, which is 375 rounds per minute, and then from there it will ramp up to about 852 rounds per minute once you get toward the end of your magazine, and I decided to map out this rate of fire increase in chunks of 10 bullets at a time, so while this does start immediately wrapping up the rate of fire from the moment you shoot.
I just took a look at this in 10 round increments and took the average rate of fire within each 10 round increment to map this out for you guys just so you can see what the general curve looks like, and this is also post patch. This actually changed yesterday with an update, and this actually really starts to ramp up at the 15-round mark.
So after you fire 15 rounds continually, this is when that ramp up really takes off until it reaches 852 rounds per minute, and you'll reach that maximum fire rate at around 30 to 35 rounds. I should also point out that this ramp-up resets when you stop firing, so you have to be firing continuously. Without releasing the trigger in order to take full advantage of this ramp up, the moment you release that, it resets it back to the initial fire rate, so let's have a look at what that actually looks like in game while also taking a look at the recoil.
Recoil
I'm letting the recoil do its thing here; I'm not trying to control it at all, and as you can see, it does start off very slow, and then as it ramps up over time, so does your recoil, so it does kick up very high if you don't try to control this recoil, and just like the base side winder, this recoil is pretty difficult to get a handle on and control.
This is what it looks like when I'm trying to control the recoil. So unfortunately, there's no improvement there, and that's one of the big hopes that I had for this LMG kit. I thought maybe with that extra weight they could justify decreasing the recoil on that, and that would suddenly make the Sidewinder a lot more viable, but that's just not the case.
Damage & ttk changes (full-auto)
Next, let's get into the damage changes, which you'll notice in the advanced stats. You do see less damage with this, and we're going to start this off when this kit is in full auto mode, which is the default. All of our damage values are reduced compared to the base Sidewinder, and instead of being a three-shot kill potential at any range, now it's going to be a four-, five-, or six-shot kill to the body, and the only way you're getting a three-shot kill now is if every one of those bullets hits the head.
What does this mean for our time to kill potential since we have a variable fire rate here early on in the mag when you first start firing, which is going to be the majority of gunfights you get into? Our time to kill with a four-shot kill is 480 milliseconds. That is extremely slow for this game, like that's almost double the time to kill of many of the guns in this game, and at longer ranges with a six-shot kill, it's going to take you 8.00 milliseconds to kill, which is just stupidly slow for this game now in saying that if we happen to get the kill with the last few bullets of our magazine, our time to kill potential is insane.
It's really good; it's 211 milliseconds with a four-shot kill, but the problem is you're going to have to fire like 45 rounds before you get to that time to kill without letting go of the trigger, and that's just not a realistic situation at all now. Of course, I am just showing you the two extremes.
There are middle grounds, like if you kill in the middle of the magazine, it'll be somewhere in between these Time to Kill potentials, but still, like I said, in the majority of gunfights you get into, you should be killing within the first 5 to 10 shots that you fire. So when it comes to raw power in time to kill, it's not looking too good.
Damage & ttk changes (semi-auto)
But I did want to take a look at semi-auto as well, since with battle rifles, you tend to see a totally different damage profile in semi-auto, and it's no different with the Sidewinder kit. It turns out that with this, our torso and arm damage when you swap over to semi-auto is the same as our full auto damage profile for the torso and arms.
However, we actually see very noticeably reduced damage to the legs, so it's a lot more punishing with leg shots when you're in semi-auto. And in order to compensate for that, we do get very noticeably boosted head shot damage in semi-auto, so it does require you to be a little more precise with your shots, and you will be rewarded for that if you can hit those head shots because you can now get a two-shot kill to the head, but still, when you compare this to the base side, in a semi-auto, you're dealing noticeably more damage to the base side.
Winder like our headshot damage up close without this kit in semi-auto is 120 rather than 80. I guess I should also mention that when you swap over to semi-auto, it appears that our rate to fire caps is identical to when we're using this in full AO, so it still ramps up over time. You are going to be capped early on, but you can ramp up as you keep firing, as long as your trigger finger keeps up with that.
Range comparison
And with that, let's take a look at a range comparison with the Sidewinder, comparing the base gun to this kit. As we can see here, with the base gun, we have infinite three-shot kill potential as long as you're hitting the right multipliers.
