What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and today we’re taking another look at the extended barrel
in Rainbow Six Siege.
Those of you who have been following my work for a while now will know that in the past,
I have branded the extended barrel as pointless.
But how have the recent changes to the damage drop-off modelling affected the extended barrel
and what about Ela’s new shotgun, the FO-12?
There's only one way to find out!
Begin
The video will be divided into three parts
(timestamps in the comments section below): 1.
Part 1 will discuss the extended barrel function for rifles and SMGs,
plus some bugged drop-of curves I've uncovered.
Part 2 will discuss the extended barrel function for the shotgun
And part 3 will be an evaluation
Basically answering the question: should you use the extended barrel and if so, for which guns?
So let’s start out by understanding how the extended barrel works.
The in-game description still claims that the EB provides "full damage over a longer
distance range" and as I demonstrated in my first video on this topic, this is incorrect.
The reality is that with the EB, damage drops off from exactly the same distance as without
it and the only difference is that the minimum damage is raised resulting in a flatter drop-off.
As you can see, max damage is not affected and we just have less drop-off with more power at distance.
And this is still how the EB works for most of the weapons after the recent update
as you can see from the table I put together here.
As always, if you are having trouble reading the numbers, you will find a link in the description
that will take you to an online spreadsheet that you can explore at your leisure.
This table covers the attacker weapons and apart from the R4-C and Para-308 which receive
a minor damage boost at close range against lvl 1 armour targets, all is as expected…
until we get to the defender weapons.
For Frost’s 9mm C1, all is still good but that’s where the consistency ends.
Caveira’s M12 and the French GIGN P90 have no damage drop-off whatsoever once you attach the EB
Yep, max damage at all distances.
So the EB must make these guns super OP right?!
I would say, wait for the evaluation at the end.
Now while Jaeger’s 416-C does experience a damage drop-off over the distances we would expect
to see but the EB also lowers max damage for his gun by almost 10%.
When it comes to the FBI’s UMP45 all bets are off.
I tested the damage at point blank range, then 13, 18, 23, 28 & 40m and instead of following
the expected drop-off pattern, the damage was 5% higher at close range but then dropped down
radically to a minimum damage of 30.
Now given that the goal of bringing in a new damage drop-off model
was to add consistency to the game
It seem odd that the effect of the extended barrel should be so inconsistent for the defender weapons.
Some of it may even be by design, I don't know but whatever the case,
I've taken the liberty of reporting this as a bug to Ubisoft.
But now that we know how the EB works for the simple damage drop-off models of the rifles
and SMGs, it’s time to get stuck into the interesting part of the video, testing Ela’s
FO-12 shotgun.
As you can see here, the FO-12 deals its max damage of 35 points for each of the eight
pellets up to a range of around 6m and then the damage drops off to 24 points at 12m.
The damage plateaus here before dropping off again after 18m, reaching its minimum of 12
points by 21m distance.
Attaching the EB does pretty much what you would expect from it, it raises the mid-range
and long-range damage stats each by 5 points per pellet, with the only small inconsistency
appearing during that second drop-off range.
Here, I didn’t see the nice smooth drop-off that I got for the gun without the EB but
instead, damage instantly dropped to 18 points per pellet before settling on the minimum
of 17 points.
But that small detail aside, I am quite happy with how consistent these numbers ended up
being and I am quite confident that the results are pretty accurate and dependable.
And now that we know how the extended barrel works for all of the weapons that can attach
it at all distances, it’s time to evaluate these numbers to figure out whether or not
you should consider using the EB.
There are only two drawbacks to attaching the extended barrel.
It sticks out further so it can make you easier to spot when rounding a corner or hiding just
to the side of a door or window and you have the opportunity cost of missing out on one
of the other muzzle attachments that can improve your guns’ recoil.
So the question we need to answer is: “does the damage benefit justify dealing with harsher
recoil and lower concealment?”
The damage benefit you get from the EB (as of the Blood Orchid update) ranges from a
mere 18% for the SMG-11 to up to 52% for the 416-C which sounds like a lot of variance
but if we calculate the required number of shots to kill, for each weapon
this become an awful lot simpler.
For almost all of the weapons, the number of shots to kill at the minimum damage range
is lowered by one and in the case of Ela’s shotgun that difference is one pellet at mid-range
damage and three for long range.
Considering how nicely this has worked out, it makes me wonder if the way the EB works
for the M12 and P90 is maybe not actually a bug but by design.
The UMP45 on the other hand… that’s still messed up.
The damage numbers I measured in my experiments mean that there is actually a range between
17 and 21m, depending on the armour of the opperator you are up against,
where the EB results in you needing one extra STK before needing the same and
then finally one less from 27m onwards.
That’s stupid and nobody can tell me that that’s working as intended.
Ok, so to summarise, with most of the guns, we need one less shot to kill.
That sounds decently useful, not OP but also not pointless, right?
But let’s dig a little deeper here!
If we look at the ranges from which the additional damage starts giving you an actual benefit
for each of the guns, you can see that those ranges tend to be quite far out.
Against level 1 armour, the EB on the attacker rifles will not benefit you at all at ranges
below 29-32m.
And even for the defender weapons, the shortest range at which the EB results in one less
shot to kill is with the M12 at 21m and onwards.
If we calculate the STK benefits against level 2 & 3 armour we can see that the number will
usually be zero up to the 20-30m range and then “minus one” but can also on occasion
zero at all ranges or minus two.
The bottom line for rifles and SMGs is that since most of the combat takes place in doors,
you will rarely get to engage your target at distances where it will actually benefit
you and even if you do, all you can hope for in most cases is one less STK.
Does this justify missing out on the significant recoil and muzzle flash reduction you can
get from other attachments?
My general answer would still be no.
Sure, if you know that you will be spawn peeking or holding down a long corridor AND you are
using a gun that is controllable enough without a muzzle attachment, there could be an argument
for using the extended barrel.
But in most other cases, I do not think that the benefit of the EB is enough to make it worth using.
As before, the 9mm C1 is a special case here, since the gun does not have access to recoil
reducing muzzle attachments.
This removes the opportunity cost element from the equation and leaves the conclusion
that, as long as you are aware of the extra barrel length and how it can give away your
position, there is no reason not to opt for the extra damage at range.
But what about the Ela’s FO-12?
This is the first shotgun that is capable of attaching an extended barrel and as we
can see in the STK table it can result in needing up to 3 less pellets on target to
achieve a kill against all three armour types.
In real life, a longer barrel on a shotgun would lead to a tighter spread pattern, which
would be really useful in Rainbow Six.
Sadly though, I compared the spread indicators in both cases and I can confirm that the EB
does not tighten up the pattern.
Now let’s again dive a little deeper into analysing whether or not the damage boost
of the EB makes any difference for the FO-12.
With shotguns, their effectiveness is dictated by the number of pellets that can land on
target and as Prodigio Pete highlighted in one of his recent videos assessing the FO-12
and Six12, the way in which the 8 pellets are spread out in Rainbow Six is pretty random.
The pattern will always be different from shot to shot and there are only a couple of
rules that add at least some consistency.
Firstly, one of the pellets will always land precisely at your point of aim, so as long
as your aim is on target, you will always land at least that pellet.
The 7 remaining pellets will be spread out in a seemingly random pattern within the spread of your gun.
When hip firing, the spread indicator of the HUD will give you a perfect guide for this.
And finally, I believe there is one last rule that helps us understand the pellet pattern.
If we examine a screenshot form one of my past videos, it becomes clear that with enough
shots fired at the same spot, we end up with a donut ring pattern: many shots in the outer
half of the spread cone and distinctly fewer in the inner half.
So the summary is: one pellet in the centre and 7 patterned around the point of aim with
most of them landing in the outer half of your spread indicator.
If we use this knowledge and maybe an example test pattern we can assess how many
pellets are likely to hit at the distances at which the extended barrel will offer an
advantage and that is from 12-18m and then again from 20m onwards.
When hip firing the fact is that even at 12m distance, landing more than one or two pellets
on target is already fairly unlikely.
The FO-12 is most effective at ranges up to 6m, where you should reasonably be able to
expect a one shot kill and the maximum distance at which you can still reliably expect 2 pellets
to hit is around 10m.
Of course if you attach a laser or aim down sights, these distances are pushed out by a little bit further
and within these effective ranges the EB does offer a small damage advantage of up to 21%
but the more significant damage boost of 42% does not occur until ranges beyond 20m where
the FO-12 is simply not effective anymore.
The bottom line for the EB on the FO-12 is essentially the same as for the 9mm C1.
Attaching it is not going to make a world of difference but unless you want to run the
suppressor or you already know that you will be lurking in a spot of the map where the
additional length of the barrel might give away your position, there is no real reason
not to use the extended barrel, despite the fact that the benefits are rather insignificant.
Final conclusion, as in my previous video, I have to say that the EB for all guns will
only start to add a damage benefit at ranges that are fairly uncommon in a game where almost
all the combat occurs in doors.
Whenever you have the option of attaching a recoil reducing muzzle attachment, it is
almost always the better choice to take over the EB.
The EB only makes sense if you know that you will be guarding a long hallway or attempting
to snipe the opposition while still outside and only on guns where recoil is inherently manageable.
Apart from these very limited situations, my judgement of the EB remains as before.
It’s pretty pointless.
If you have any questions or comments related to the EB, or if you have suggestions about
what I should test next, do go ahead and leave a comment below.
And with that, as always, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!