What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here! In relatively recent seasons, we have seen the extended
barrel introduced to a number of new weapons, including Maverick’s M4, Mozzie’s P10
RONI and now Mira and Goyo’s Vector .45 ACP. In addition to this, many of the existing
weapons that allow the use of the extended barrel have had damage nerfs and buffs since
I last explored this particular attachment, so the questions I will be answering in this video are:
Is the extended barrel a useful attachment
for any of the new guns since my last test? Has anything changed significantly for the
existing weapons? Which weapons does the extended barrel add the most value to and which ones
get almost no benefit at all? As always I have run some tests, crunched
the numbers and drawn some evidence based conclusions. Extended barrel: yay or nay?
Let’s go and find out!
First up let me tell you a little bit about today’s sponsor: “Raid: Shadow Legends”, the free to play
mobile RPG that was released just earlier this year!
I’ve been playing Raid: Shadow Legends on my Galaxy S6 (yes, I know my phone is old)
but one of the most surprising things about the game is how well it manages to run, with
full 3d character models, on such an old device. I would describe Raid as a JRPG style game,
with turn based combat where strategic thinking is the key to victory and it all starts out
with picking the best team for the job. Currently my favourite champions are from the Ork faction.
Galek’s Hellraiser ability is really useful and overall, I just really like the look of
the Orks. There’s a lot of depth to this game and
a lot of longevity with a substantial road map of new content already laid out.
The almost 320,000 players who have reviewed the game on Google Play so far have given
it an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars and on the Apple app store it has 4.8 out of 5 stars.
If you use the link in the description below, you will receive a new player bonus of 50,000
silver and a free epic level champion, so go ahead and give the game a go; it’s free
after all! And with that, let’s get back to the extended barrel!
When discussing the extended barrel let me first make sure that we’re all on the same
page by quickly going over some of the basics. If you start to notice that you already know
all of this, there will be a pinned comment below with timestamps to the relevant parts
of the video. As you may know, the extended barrel’s only
purpose in Rainbow Six Siege is to “Provide the full damage over a longer distance range,
which offers you more options in terms of positioning to take down your opponents.”
At least that’s what the in-game menu tells us. But not only is this description a bit
vague, I also think that it is somewhat misleading because what the extended barrel actually
does is that it flattens out the damage drop-off curve for each weapon that it is attached to.
For example, as you can see here, Jäger’s
416-C carbine will normally do 43 points of damage (with body shots against level 1 armour
opponents) up to 25m and then we have a linear decline down to 21 damage at 35m plus. Once
you attach the extended barrel, the minimum damage at long range is elevated to 32 points
per shot but as you can see, the close range damage and the inflection points of the drop-off
curve remain unchanged. So that is the benefit of the extended barrel
in a nutshell: flatter drop-off and more damage at long range.
Ok, that doesn’t sound too bad really. Are there any downsides to this attachment? Well,
good news everyone, the extended barrel does in fact not have any active disadvantages.
The only way in which the stats are modified is more damage and nothing else BUT!
Before we all start celebrating, there are a number of what we could call passive disadvantages.
First of all there is the opportunity cost of missing out on any of the other muzzle
attachments. Most of the guns (with the exception of Frost’s 9mm C1) have access to an array
of other muzzle devices that all come with different types of recoil benefits. If you
want to know exactly how each of the other attachments affect your guns’ recoil patterns,
I have a really good video on this topic and you can find a link to that in the end card
of this video or in the info card at the top right hand of your screen now!
And then not only do you miss out on reduced recoil when you attach the extended barrel
but (and this may not surprise you) the extended barrel also changes the profile of your gun
significantly and the additional length that it adds can, in some situations, give away
your position if you are hiding behind cover or trying to sneak around a corner.
Ok, so a few disadvantages after all but I guess if the damage buff to any of the guns
is high enough, this attachment may still be worth considering. Let’s go and take
a look at the damage stats now. Here is an overview of the damage stat boost
for each of the guns that can attach the extended barrel, with the exception of Ela’s FO-12
shotgun. I have covered that separately in a past video and you can find a link to that
at the end too if you like. As you can see, the additional damage added
to each gun by the extended barrel varies wildly. Some only get a max. boost of 11 or
13% while others get a 50% increase or even more! At first glance, this inconsistency
may seem confusing and completely random but I do believe that I may have come up with
a theory on why the range of additional damage is so diverse
But before we get to that, let’s quickly look at some of the new guns that have been
added and what the wondrous extended barrel can do for them! Maverick’s M4 gets a 22.2%
damage increase at 35m+ which is just below the average of all of the guns combined so
that looks fair enough at first glance. Here’s the issue though, 33 damage means that 3 hits
will leave a lvl. 1 armour opponent with 1 HP remaining and so the number of shots to
down or kill that enemy remains at 4. Not taking bullet penetration, leg shots or previous
damage into account that means that the extended barrel actually offers very little benefit
at all to Maverick and his M4 at least against level 1 armour defenders.
For the other two newer guns in the game that have access to the extended barrel, namely
Mira’s Vectors .45 and Mozzie’s P10 RONI, the damage boost at range is similarly small
to mediocre just like the M4’s but at least here there seems to be somewhat of a positive
impact. 15 damage is abysmal and will require 7 hits to lvl. 1 armour opponents and even
though 17 is not all that much better, it will at least mean one less bullet to down
or kill. And the same goes for the P10. Usually you would need 6 solid upper body hits at
27m or more and with the extended barrel it is “only” 5.
And this leads us very nicely to my theory as to why the damage boost is so inconsistent
across all of the different guns. It appears that, in almost all cases, the damage boost
was specifically chosen in order to reduce the number of required body shots to down
a full health, level 1 armour opponent by one less shot than it would normally take
without the extended barrel. This rule applies pretty consistently across all of the weapons
with the exception of the M4 as already mentioned and also Caveira’s M12 SMG. For some reason,
the 14% damage boost to this gun is just short of where it would need to be in order to reduce
the STD/K by the standard one hit. This inconsistency for the M12 also extends to lvl. 2 armour
opponents and it’s not until you come up against full health lvl. 3 armour opponents
that Caveira actually gets any benefit at all from the extended barrel. And since there
are only three lvl. 3 armour attackers in the game (Fuze, Gridlock and Monty), the conclusion
for the M12 is that the extended barrel has basically no benefit at all apart from when
you are taking down opponents that have already been damaged beforehand or maybe when shooting
through walls at long range or hitting the legs.
If we compare all of the guns’ required shots to down or kill against level 2 and
3 armour targets as well we can see that for the most part, the results remain fairly consistent
with usually one bullet less required to get the job done. There are some exceptions though,
such as Jäger’s 416-C which benefits by 2 hits against lvl. 2 armours and by 3 hits
against lvl. 3 armours. Buck’s C8 also benefits a bit more against level 3 armour defenders
and there are more occasions where guns don’t benefit at all against certain armour types,
e.g. Blackbeard’s Mk17 and the SMG-11. But all in all, the most common benefit has
quite successfully been calibrated to needing one less body shot for almost all weapons
against almost all opponents and that’s at least something, right?
Well actually… it’s not really something. It’s really not something at all… The
fundamental problem with the extended barrel remains the same as always. With all of the
weapons, you won’t start to really see a consistent benefit until you are fighting
at 27, 28 or even more meters distance and that has two separate issues.
First of all, you are giving up the added recoil control that you would normally have
with a different muzzle attachment and with the added recoil, at distances of 30m, it
will start to become rather challenging to hit your target consistently. So the one bullet
you save on average could actually be cancelled out by the fact that you end up missing more
shots than usual. But the absolute nail in the coffin for the
extended barrel (both for the existing weapons of the past and for the more recently added
ones) is that Siege is just an incredibly close quartered, fast paced game. There are
very few opportunities on any of the maps where you can actually fight an opponent at
more than 10-15m max. and putting up with higher recoil and a longer barrel that could
potentially give away your position in the wrong situation just isn’t ever worth the
pitiful damage gain your get at ridiculous ranges.
So, as much as I was hoping for a some revelation here, some unannounced update or at least
something about the new guns that would finally make the extended barrel worth using, the
sad fact is that this is still the most pointless attachment in the game. In most situations,
whether on attack or defence, you simply don’t get any used out of the extended barrel and
the disadvantages, as passive as they may be are just not worth putting up with for
such a small payoff. In conclusion, if you were excited about the
extended barrel coming to the Vector or maybe you have thought about using it on the P10
RONI or the M4… yeah don’t. But that’s just my personal opinion here. What are your
thoughts? Do you ever use the extended barrel? Or do you avoid it like the plague? Go ahead
and leave a vote in the poll by clicking in the top right-hand corner of your screen now
or feel free to elaborate on your thoughts in the comments section below. I look forward
to hearing what you have to say! And that’s it. As always, many thanks for
watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!