What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and today, I want to revisit the Loadout META for Alibi!
Most of you will know by now that the Italian ACS12 full auto shotgun has been reworked
to fire 12 gauge slugs instead of buckshot in Operation Steel Wave and so the question
we now need to answer is whether or not there is any point to bringing this gun on Alibi.
We’ve already checked how the reworked ACS12 fairs on Maestro and unsurprisingly the ALDA
is still an absolute beast of a gun that will always be the better choice but for Alibi
and her Mx4 Storm, things might not be as clear cut.
Let’s go and take a look!
The initial stat overview instantly looks a lot more balanced than last time but while
the single shot damage for the ACS looks pretty good compared to the Mx4, the fire rate and
DPS are still atrocious and it will be questionable whether the stats will add up to making the
ACS12 a viable choice.
As always, we will dive into the combat capabilities first and the pretty significant damage advantage
of the slug shotgun means that it will require a lot less shots to take down an opponent,
no matter what type of armour they are wearing or where you hit them.
This not only goes for close range, as the wonderfully crafted tables on the left show
us, but of course also for long range and another detail wroth highlighting here is
that the damage drop-off for the ACS is much shallower than for the Mx4 and only bottoms
out at 35m instead of 28m.
When it comes to shots to kill, the ACS was always going to be the winner here but once
we factor in the fire rate the fact is that the Mx4 will have the shorter takedown time
in almost all circumstances.
Only against medium armoured attackers, at short range, when all shots land on the torso,
will the shotgun have a quicker time to kill.
Anything apart from that and the ACS will have a significant disadvantage, especially
at longer ranges, where the time to kill will be on average almost half a second longer.
That’s huge but the ACS does have some other factors that we need to consider before writing it off completely.
With the new penetration system introduced during Operation Shifting Tides, the slug
shotguns were given full penetration capabilities (i.e. they can shoot through a number of opponents
and still hit targets in behind) whereas the Mx4 only has simple limb penetration, which
only means that you can still land headshots even if the bullet hits the arm of the same character first.
As a shotgun, the ACS also has the capability of opening hatches with a single shot, as
well as taking out the wooden* studs in breachable walls.
Fair enough, compared to almost all other shotguns in Rainbow Six Siege, the breaching
capabilities of the ACS12 are about as useful as a paper parachute.
Not completely useless but probably not enough to do you much good either and as much as
the full penetration capabilities might sound really useful, the number of times that you’ll
get your opponents to line up nicely for you in any given season is probably also going
to be… let’s say limited.
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For a shotgun, the ACS has an amazing capacity but compared to an SMG, it’s still nothing
special, so the simple fact is that if you want to make taking downs enemies as efficient
as possible, the Mx4 should still be your go-to choice.
Sure, once we start looking at the handling of the two guns, things initially look quite good for the ACS.
You will get faster reload times out of the shotgun… not sure how that makes sense when
you’re trying to juggle gigantic, 30 shot, 12 gauge, rotary magazines… compared to
simple Beretta SMG mags but there it is.
From empty the ACS will be almost half a second quicker to reload and the tactical reload
offers literally twice the time saving but that one benefit is then immediately undercut
by the slower Aim Down Sight Times (with or without the angled grip) where the ACS will
be a full third slower than the Mx4.
Hip fire stats for slug shotguns are really weird, because they are always the same, no
matter what stance your character is in (I’m guessing this is just a leftover artefact
from being part of the shotgun class).
As you can see here, the hip fire cone for the slug gun stays the same, while the Mx4
becomes increasingly smaller as we go from standing,
through kneeling
to prone.
When jogging, the ACS is again surprisingly good for such a large clunky weapon and it’s
actually a lot better than the far smaller and lighter Mx4… until you start shooting,
which will cause the ACS spread to bloom out let’s say… quite considerably; a bit like
how gravity causes this crocodile to spread out quite considerably.
Probably the greatest strength of the ACS is its controllability and let’s also take
this opportunity to talk about the optimal attachments for each gun.
Checking the in game recoil stats for both guns, we have the default patterns first.
Then for the ACS is the gun with the vertical grip attached (since that is the only recoil
mitigating option we get) and for the Mx4 it’s first the combo of Angled Grip and
Muzzle Brake and then Vertical Grip and Flash Hider and I’ll explain my thoughts on those combos shortly.
Easy stuff first though and when it comes to the setup of the ACS, I would definitely
recommend the angled grip over the vertical, because the gun’s vertical recoil is so
mild, that when I personally attached the vertical grip during my trials, I actually
ended up overcompensating and pulling the point of aim down.
Of course, there is always the caveat that I use a mouse and keyboard and things are
a little different with a controller but all in all, if you can manage any of the other
guns in the game, you can also manage the ACS with the angled grip.
Getting that 40% aim down sight time reduction is really worth it in this case!
The Mx4 also has a relatively manageable recoil overall but it does also have a tendency to
kick out to the left suddenly at random about midway through a long burst.
There’s no attachment that is able to eliminate this issue, so it’s best to limit your bursts
to half a mag or so and with that in mind, I have two suggested setups for the gun.
The angled grip is still incredibly useful on this gun and is best paired with the muzzle
brake in order to minimise the pretty hefty first shot recoil.
Do keep in mind though that this will mean a little more random recoil throughout the
burst and a lot more vertical recoil.
The alternative option is bite the bullet when it comes to ADS time (after all, 300ms
is still pretty good) and go for the vertical grip instead, which then also allows us to
use the flash hider, since the nasty first shot recoil is nowhere near as bad anymore.
This attachment combo provides the best all-round recoil reduction for longer bursts, while
still keeping the first shot recoil to a manageable level.
The Mx4 also has the option of attaching the Extended Barrel, which will raise the gun’s
long range damage from 19 points to 23 points per shot.
This will give you exactly 1 less shot to kill against all armour types for chest strikes
and 2 shots less for limb strikes at the cost of default recoil.
Now that does sound pretty good, right?
But let’s not forget that you only get the full benefit of this attachment from 28m and
onwards and with the higher recoil you will face it is doubtful whether or not you will
even be able to hit all of your shots at that range.
Plus, there are only very few areas on a handful of maps where you can even get anywhere near
that kind of range.
You can make up your own opinion on this but I’m sticking with my conclusion that I formed
the very first time I analysed the extended barrel and that is that this attachment is
still 99.4% completely pointless;
just likeI have been telling everyone for literally the last three and a half years!
The suppressor is in theory also an option for Alibi’s SMG but you will be needing
an extra chest shot to down or kill against level 1 and 3 armours at close range… and
level 2 and 3 armours at long range; not ideal for a gun that already needs at least 4 to
7 chest shots and 6 to 12 limb shots depending on range.
The choice is yours but I’ll give it a pass, thanks.
So, after all of that, where do we end up?
Sadly, even on Alibi, the only things the ACS12 has going for it are the high single
shot damage (whop-dee-do), faster reload speed (meh ok…) and decent vertical recoil control.
When it comes to using her primary guns as actual weapons the ACS’ purposefully “ok-but-not-great”
balancing just cannot keep up with the far more powerful SMG and for me personally, the
lacklustre breaching capability and ability to hit multiple targets with a single shot
are just not enough to make this gun worth a pick.
After having examined both Maestro and Alibi with this brand new reworked slug gun, I think
the best conclusion is that we have ended up with a situation that is similar to Dokkaebi and Vigil’s.
Yes, the shotgun can do some work and it has a few interesting unique features but it will
simply never be able to stand up to the alternative options available to each character.
The fire rate of the real life AA12 is only 300 RPM, so buffing the ACS in that way is
kind of off the table and there is no way that Ubisoft can increase the damage any more;
the gun is already a 2 shot weapon at close range.
That means that we’re probably stuck here with two characters that each have one decent
primary and one meme-cannon.
And that’s fine really.
Not every character needs to have an actual choice in primaries; sure it would be nice
to have but in fairness, it’s not necessary.
But, having said all that… if the ACS12 is always going to be a mediocre meme-gun…
then maybe, just maybe… the devs should go all in on that concept.
Seriously though, I think an ACOG on this gun would be no more harmful than of the TCSG;
actually the limited fire rate would definitely make it less harmful… so yeah, go on Ubisoft:
#ACSACOG, please and thank you!
And that’s it!
Have you been using the ACS at all since its rework?
What are your thoughts on the gun getting an ACOG?
Leave your comments below and with that, many thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the
video and I will see you in the next episode!