What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and given that Kali’s primary weapon is so abysmally poor
for pushing forward, I think it can be safely said that there is a really good chance that
Kali players will be getting most of their kills with her secondary weapons instead.
And since her secondaries are so important to her, the question is: which one should you pick?
Sure, the semi-auto P226 Mk 25 used to be arguably one of the best pistols at the launch
of Rainbow Six Siege but does it stand any chance whatsoever against the C75 Auto?
Let’s compare to two guns stat by stat and find out!
During the great machine pistol recoil nerf of Operation Grim Sky, C75 Auto was the only
gun of that class that got away relatively unscathed.
It went from being the weakest secondary SMG (due to its lower fire rate and lack of attachments)
to quite probably the best, once all of the other options became almost impossible to
control during sustained bursts.
The C75 is undoubtedly a great gun although there are situations in which it has shown some weaknesses…
Well, it happens, right?
Sometimes you miss a couple of shots, so what?
It’s not as if EG threw away 5 match point rounds in a row and then ended up losing the
Pro League Season 9 final, all because of the one decision to switch to the C75…
Oh…
Well OK then.
So the fact remains that the C75 is still just a secondary weapon after all and despite
the fact that sometimes things can go wrong, it’s actually also a good one at that.
But let’s finally get to the stats to see how Kali’s two sidearm options compare to one another.
Here is the usual overview and at first glance, this provides a relatively balanced picture of the two guns.
The raw damage per shot is unsurprisingly better for the semi-auto pistol and even though the
damage drop-off distances are shorter for the pistol class than for the SMG class, you
can see that the P226 remains more powerful than the C75 at all ranges.
The rate of fire on the other hand is of course a slam dunk victory for the fully automatic
C75, despite the fact that 1000 RPM isn’t even that high for secondary SMGs in Rainbow Six Siege.
I retested the fire rate for the P226 and as in the past, managed to clock in varying
rates up to 490 odd RPM.
Achieving this rate consistently under combat conditions is very challenging for mouse and
keyboard users and probably near impossibly with a controller, so I am going to keep this
stat at the more realistically achievable rate of 450 RPM that I have been using in
my stat sheets for many seasons now.
But whichever way you slice it, even if you are literal machine at clicking mouse 1, the
fact remains that with the P226, you will never go beyond half the fire rate of the C75.
This fire rate advantage translates into a massive Damage Per Second advantage for the C75 as well.
The full-auto machine pistol manages to dish out between around 55% and up to over 70%
more damage every second compared to the semi-auto P226.
When we look at the practical takedown power against full health opponents, the effectiveness
seems split with the advantage going to either gun, depending on what criteria we use.
Because of the higher damage, the P226 requires on average 1.33 shots less to down or kill
any opponent at short range and at long range, after damage drop-off, that advantage rises
to an average of 1.75 shots less across all armour classes and strike locations.
But it’s not as simple as that because of course the damage drop-off distances are different
between the two guns.
In the middle distance, between 12 and 26 meters the earlier damage drop-off of the
P226 results in both guns needing the same number of shots to down or kill their opponents.
So even though the semi-auto is definitely the more powerful gun both before and after
drop-off, the advantage is not perfectly clear cut.
For the Time to Down/Kill, the advantage switches back over to the C75.
At all distances, the higher fire rate of the machine pistol results in a takedown time
that is on average around 100ms shorter at close ranges and a huge 237ms shorter at distance
and this time, the damage drop-off curves actually work in the favour of the winner
of this category.
BUT!
There is still one more caveat to look at.
As you may know, each shot to a limb will do between 25% and 35% less than the full
damage, depending on the armour type of your target and up until Operation Shifting Tides
that meant leg shots specifically because arms used to count towards the torso hitbox.
But now that we have the new limb penetration system, arms have been bumped back down to
limb status.
Now for the P226, that won’t make too much of a difference, because pistols are in the
simple penetration category, which means that the bullets will virtually over-penetrate
the arms and then do the same damage as whichever body part is behind the arms.
Most of the time, this will be the torso, resulting in full damage but of course in
some situations the bullet path might take it into the head of the opponent, which is of course a one-hit-kill.
The C75 on the other hand is in the “no penetration” category and that means that
arm strikes will not over-penetrate.
This results in a really random and unreliable nerf to the mach-ine pistol class because
if you spray at the body of an opponent, there is a very good chance that at least some of
your shots will be soaked up by the arms and therefore do less damage.
This results in extra shots to down/kill and therefore also longer times to take down your
targets and no matter how good your aim and recoil control, how many shots end up getting
absorbed is going to be relatively random.
I’m really not a fan of this solution; arms were purposefully modelled to do full damage
for a reason in the past and now for machine pistols (and also shotguns) have gone back
to the bad old days of unreliable damage and it will certainly affect the effectiveness
of the C75 in comparison to the P226.
By how much though?
Probably not enough to make the P226 the more effective weapon but results will vary from
engagement to engagement and there is no reliable way of measuring the impact until Ubisoft
have gathered some statistical data.
And even then it will just be a statistical average and won’t really tell you how each
individual engagement will go.
So at this stage, my conclusion would be that the C75 is definitely the more effective weapon
in terms of the time to down or kill with the caveat that it is also less reliable in
terms of the strike location each shot will get attributed to it.
When we take all of these various stats into consideration, then I would say that the C75
is still the clear winner in terms of overall takedown power.
More damage output per second, much higher fire rate (with all of the advantages that
brings) and much shorter times to down/kill just add up to a significantly more powerful weapon.
Add onto that the higher capacity of 11 extra shots per magazine and things are starting
to look pretty good for the C75 overall.
But as we know by now, power is not everything.
Usability, target acquisition and controllability stats are also important-- and that is where
the P226 starts to catch up!
Both of the reload times are quicker for the semi-auto pistol, although in fairness to
the C75 the tactical reload times for both guns are almost the same.
Aiming in is almost twice as fast with the P226, which is definitely a bonus when you
have to quickly react to an unexpected target or when you have to quickly aim in after switching
from your main weapon.
Nevertheless, 180ms is still pretty damn good, so even though this round goes to the P226,
you’ll still do pretty well with the C75.
When it comes to hip fire spreads, the P226 is again in the lead overall.
When you are stationary, so standing, kneeling or prone, the difference between the two guns
is relatively modest but if you are moving, you can already start to see a significant difference.
Once you then start shooting, the full-auto bloom of the C75 is gigantic compared to the
almost non-existent effect you get from the single fire of the P226.
And sure, in theory you could also switch the C75 over to single shot mode but that
would basically take away all of the advantages the gun has so far, so my advice would be…
yeah don’t do that.
Out of the box, the P226 is also far more controllable than the C75 and in addition
to that, the pistol can also attach a muzzle brake, which then basically reduces the recoil
down to almost zero.
The only muzzle attachment the C75 gets is the suppressor, so nothing that will help with recoil.
And while the recoil of the C75 might be better than any of the other secondary SMGs, it’s
still pretty challenging to get a handle on.
At 10m the groups already start to open up quite a bit and long range gunfights are definitely
not advisable with this weapon.
And after all that, there are a last couple of additional factors to consider.
With both of these guns you will have to rely on the out of the box iron sights and as you
can see, the sight picture you get out of each gun differs in a number of aspects.
The grip that Kali uses on each gun is a little different and that means that the C75 is held
much closer to the face, resulting in a much larger appearing gun model that blocks out
more of the centre of your screen when aiming downs sights.
The sights on the P226 themselves are also a little finer and obstruct less of your vision
but Kali’s hands on the other hand are much higher up and so you lose more vision on the
bottom of your screen.
Nevertheless, I think that the sight picture of the P226 definitely makes it easier to
acquire and maintain your target.
And then there is one more advantage that the pistol gets over the machine pistol.
With the C75 in hand, Kali will move at the regular speed of a level 2 armour operator
because of course even secondary SMGs still count exactly the same as main weapons when
it comes to operator movement speed.
Sure, this is still better than running with a giant sniper rifle in your hands because
Kali’s main weapon actually comes with a 10% movement speed penalty.
But if you pick the P226 instead, you will get an additional 5% movement speed bonus,
making Kali basically as fast as the default speed of level 1 armour operators.
And so in final conclusion, we basically have a tale of two halves here.
The C75 with its 1000 RPM fully automatic fire, higher DPS and higher capacity is undoubtedly
the better option when just comparing the raw takedown power and all other aspects are disregarded.
But when you look at all of the factors that go into target acquisition and control, the
P226 is just so much better.
Faster ADS time, faster movement speed, smaller hip fire, much easier to control recoil and
a better sight picture, all add up to a gun that is much easier to use and I think it’s
fair to say that once you get out to something like 10-15m, these aim related factors actually
become quite important.
So, surprise surprise, the choice between the C75 and the P226 is maybe not the slam
dunk for the machine pistol that you thought it might be.
Undoubtedly, at very close ranges, the controllability is less important and the raw power of the
C75 will make it the better choice for most players and arguably if you get into longer
range fights, then surely you should be using Kali’s CSRX 300 anyway, right?
So maybe the C75 takes the overall win after all but it’s not nearly as straight forward
as I was expecting it to be and I would be really interested how other players would
interpret these results.
What are your thoughts on these guns?
Which one have you been using?
Let me know in the poll on screen or leave a comment to elaborate on your thoughts.
And with that as always, many thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see
you in the next episode!