News - Is The Sidewinder Underrated Or Just Bad Warzone 2. Best Sidewinder Attachment Setups
This is the series where I go into great detail with all the stats as well as some excellent attachment combinations for every gun in Modern Warfare 3, and in today's episode we're going to be wrapping up the launch battle rifle category with the Sidewinder.
Full auto damage & multipliers
And starting it off as always let's have a look at our damage profile and we're going to start this off with our full auto damage profile since it will change quite a bit in semi-auto but in full auto mode, this gun is going to be a three to four shot kill although you're only going to see that four shot kill k at longer ranges, if you're hitting limb shots as long as you're hitting consistent torso shots you'll have quite a consistent three shot kill as for head shots in full a in the first two damage ranges you're actually capable of getting a two-shot kill to the head, as long as both of the shots hit the head so you can't shoot one to the body one to the head to get a twoot kill both of those have to hit the head and honestly that's pretty difficult to do with the Sidewinder when you factor in The Recoil outside of like Point Blank Range , in either case let's move on to our rate of fire in Fato and this is 375.
Full auto rate of fire & time to kill
Rounds per minute which is a very slow rate of fire for a full a gun but what this means is with a three-shot kill we're going to be killing our enemies in 320, milliseconds, which is definitely below average for this game but not by a massive margin I wouldn't say this is like a painfully slow time to kill; it's just not very competitive, unless of course we manage to land those two head shots in a row, which will give us a time to kill of 160 milliseconds with that two-shot kill , and that's pretty much it for full auto.
Semi auto damage & multipliers
Now let's get into semi-auto mode with this gun, which completely changes our damage profile, and, surprisingly, our limb damage is significantly decreased when we go into semi-auto mode, so it becomes a much higher risk, whereas our torso damage remains exactly the same, so we still have that infinite three-shot kill potential as long as we're hitting torso shots, but now it's more punishing if you hit limb shots.
However, in order to compensate for that, we do get significantly better headshot damage, and this is the one big area where I'd argue The Sidewinder actually has a lot of potential. With this headshot damage profile at any range, all you have to do is mix a torso shot with a head shot, and you will get a two-shot kill that's generally going to be a lot easier than Landing both of those shots to the head like you have to do in full auto, and if you're able to make this happen on a reasonably consistent basis, you actually have a pretty powerful gun on your hands, surprisingly.
Semi auto rate of fire & time to kill
Now, when it comes to a rate of fire in semi-auto, it's actually exactly the same as our full auto rate of fire at 375 rounds per minute, and that's also a slow enough fire rate that I would say most people should be able to reach that fire rate cap, but since that rate of fire is the same, our time to kill potentials are the same as well; it's going to kill in 320 milliseconds with a three-shot kill or 160 milliseconds with a two-shot kill.
Ranges & velocity
Next, let's get into our ranges, which are exactly the same in full auto or semi-auto mode, and again, as long as you're shooting in the Torso, it's actually going to take you the same number of shots to kill. We have the exact same damage to the Torso, but what we can see here is that our maximum damage range is about 19 M, whereas our second damage range dropoff is about 37 M.
As for our bullet velocity, this is quite slow for a battle rifle at 540 m/s, and this is the type of thing you'll definitely start to notice when you get to those longer-range engagements. For close to mid-range fights, this is totally fine; you probably won't notice any issues here; it's just when you start to get to those longer ranges that you will really start to notice this.
And then, finally, for ranges, let's have a look at hardcore game modes. This gun in full auto or semi-auto will be a one-hot kill anywhere in the body at any range as long as you're not shooting through.
Hipfire
Something next, let's have a look at our hitfire, which is actually the worst in the battle rifle category.
I mean, it's standard if you're just standing still, but the moment you start moving or shooting, our maximum hitfire spread is the worst out of the Modern Warfare 3 battle rifles.
Recoil (full auto & semi auto)
And now let's finally get into the worst part of Sidewinder. This is the recoil, and we're going to start this off with our full auto recoil, which is pretty terrible.
As you can see, there's a pretty big gap between every shot fired, especially with that initial recoil. The gun will bounce side to side a lot and very randomly as well, but most importantly, something that doesn't really show up in the recoil plots that I wanted to point out with the sidewinder is really frustrating.
It seems like the center speed is bugged or just way too low in its current state. Center speed is the speed at which your gun will return to the original point of origin when you fire a shot after the recoil is applied, so you shoot. When the recoil is applied, your gun kicks upward, and then it will automatically come back down to the center.
What I found with this is that it makes compensating for recoil that much more difficult because the gun will kick up and it doesn't start reentering on its own, so you manually make sure you're trying to reenter that, and then after you do that, the center speed finally catches up, and now it overcompensates.
With your recoil control, I do believe this is the big thing that makes this gun feel so terrible. When you look at the recoil pattern on the wall, it looks not only good but also not completely horrible; it looks like you should be able to manage that. However. I have to say it feels way worse than it actually looks, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem like switching to semi-auto really changes anything recoil-wise here since you do have the exact same rate of fire potential, and I don't think the recoil values change at all. You get pretty much the same sort of recoil where you're going to get a lot of random bouncing with those initial shots, a horrible center speed, and just really awkward recoil to predict and control, so this is definitely the worst part about the Sidewinder, and as of right now, all you can really do is stack heavy toward attachments that help with your recoil, just so you can get the gun in a usable state.
