What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here!
The Operation Chimera characters are out for Rainbow Six Siege and you will probably have
seen plenty of coverage of their abilities by now, so what I want to do in this video
instead, is explore the two new guns that these ops bring with them.
Are they good choices to run with?
How do they stack up against the guns of other attackers or against the alternative choices
for both Finka and Lion?
Let’s find out!
I will be judging both weapons on the following stats: damage output across all distances;
recoil; reload time & ADS time.
Look for a pinned comment below with timestamps to each of the relevant sections of the video.
So let’s take this one gun at a time, starting with Lion’s V308 submachine gun… hmmm,
Machine gun?
Battle carbine?
Ok, whatever a compact weapon, chambered for full-powered rifle cartridges is… that one!
I tested its damage drop-off (all data represented in my online spreadsheet, link in the description)
and the in game baseline damage stat of 44 points is accurate (I double checked) but
its drop-off occurs between 20 and 30m, which does not fit into any of the existing categories.
It is worse than that of the other assault rifles (25 to 35m) but better than SMGs (18
to 28m) and to a degree, I guess it makes sense for such a unique weapon to get its
own drop-off curve.
This unique drop-off of course makes the work of ‘fans like me’ just a little harder
but it won’t really have any perceptible impact on the effectiveness of the gun in
game, so ok…
I’ll accept it.
44 damage per shot sounds quite powerful but it is only one point above the average for
assault/battle rifles in the game (43), so I would call the V308 a medium powered gun.
What makes this weapon truly great on paper is its outstanding fire rate of 850 RPM which,
when combined with the baseline damage gives us a damage per second (or DPS) output of
623 against level 1 armour, up to 19m distance.
This is far better than any of the SMGs and amongst the assault rifles, it is only beaten
by the F2 and AK-12 on paper... and this is where things get a little tricky.
As part of my preparation for the evaluation of these two new guns, I thought that I would
double check some of the in-game info; not just damage but also recoil and maybe even
fire rate.
Checking the fire rate is a bit challenging (as I have discussed in previous videos) since
I can only record at 60 fps, which means that each frame is 16.67ms and when you are dealing
with guns that can fire 1 bullet every two or three frames, you end up with significant
rounding errors.
Now bear with me here, I promise it’s not going to get too technical but for instance,
for the Spear .308 (Finka’s gun), I fired three magazines and recorded average shot
intervals of between 81.967ms and 82.466ms, which results in an actual fire rate of between
728 and 732 RPM.
Now while that is significantly short of the 780 RPM the rifle is supposed to have, I would
still be happy to put the difference down to the limitations of my measurement technique.
So the bottom line there is that accurately measuring the in game fire rate of automatic
weapons is more or less impossible for me and I would expect to see some variation in
the results.
Nevertheless, when we come back to the V308 though, the results are pretty clear.
I fired three 50 round magazines (without the plus one) and the times were: 4.079, 4.162
and 4.179s.
Translate this into RPM and we end up with between 717 and 735 RPM… and that is definitely
nowhere near the advertised 850 RPM that the V308 is supposed to have.
And we don’t even need a frame by frame measurement to confirm this.
Just listen to a side by side comparison between the Spear and the V308:
If one of those guns is 780 RPM and the other 850, I’m eating my eating my spreadsheet.
They sound basically identical in terms of their cadence and if we then assume that my
earlier fire rate measurements are accurate, we end up with an actual DPS of 528 for the
V308 instead of the theoretical 623 I mentioned earlier.
What does this mean in terms of the gun’s performance in comparison to other weapons
in the game?
Well, firstly it’s a lot less effective than initially assumed and that could mean
that instead of being the third best rifle, in terms of damage output, it could be distinctly
mediocre instead.
But if the fire rate for the V308 is inaccurate, can we really trust any of the data I have
on the other guns?
And the answer is: “Of course not!”
None of the DPS or TTK stats in my sheet can be trusted apparently, so good news for me
I guess: I have just uncovered a really juicy topic to test in my next video: “What are
the real fire rates of all full-auto guns in Rainbow Six Siege?”
Look out for a video discussing this topic soon!
I also double checked the in-game recoil patterns for the two new guns by re-sizing and overlaying
them onto test patterns so that the first and second shot groups matched, plus, I also
used Dokkaebi as a rough and ready stand in for the approximate size of a character at
9m and the patterns fit quite well at this size.
If we then compare the in-game recoil pattern for the V308 with its actual test pattern,
it again does not seem to match as well as I would like it to but I suppose it’s close
enough given the fact that I’m pretty much eyeballing this.
Let’s compare this recoil to the rifle’s closest competitors in terms of damage, Jackal’s
C7E, Fuze’s AK-12 & Zofia’s M762.
Up against the C7 and AK, the recoil of the V308 is not that great in terms of muzzle
climb but better in terms of horizontal recoil.
Compared to the M762, it’s just outright better…
I don’t know if that pattern for Zofia’s gun is even accurate because it looks absolutely
horrible both for climb and horizontal dispersion.
I feel that double checking and comparing all of the recoil patterns should be another
future project… yeah, let’s put that onto the to-do list as well, why not.
Reload times for the V308 are: 3.31s from empty and 2.608s tactical.
These times are almost identical to those of the M762 and AK-12, not terrible but still
a bit below average.
But if we take into consideration that the V308 has a magazine capacity of 50 bullets
instead of the normal 30 or less, the slightly below average reload times start looking a
lot more attractive!
I’ll take almost double the ammo with virtually the same reload time any day!
The baseline ADS time of the Heavy Vector is 0.451s and 0.284s with the angled grip
(see my previous video on grip choice for a further insight into grips).
For the three competitors I have chosen here, the times are: M762 = 451ms, AK-12 = 451ms
and the only standout is in fact Jackal’s gun at 0.301s.
So the V308 is nothing special, neither in a positive or negative way.
It simply has the standard ADS time for most rifles.
Given that the C7E gets preferential treatment here, it looks like we have another worthwhile
topic for the future: “How do all of the guns in R6 stack up in terms of ADS time?”
yep, that’s another one for the to-do list!
And with that, in conclusion: the V308 should be one of the most effective guns in the game
(despite its earlier damage drop-off compared to the rifle class) but since there is such
a significant discrepancy between the theoretical and actual DPS values, it is hard to judge
how well this gun actually stacks up against other weapons.
For now, the fact is that it’s nowhere near as good as it was maybe initially supposed
to be.
Recoil is manageable and compares quite favourably to similar rifles.
Reload times are not outstanding but the 50 round mag capacity more than makes up for
this.
The ADS time is standard but if you’re comfortable with the baseline recoil you can go ahead
and attach the angled grip for an amazing ADS.
So, all in all, despite the slower than advertised fire rate, this gun is very competitive and
makes Lion a significant threat to the defenders and that’s before he even gets going with
his gadget.
And now, what about Finka’s rifle, the Spear .308?
It’s drop-off is quite straight forward, just like all of the other assault rifles
it starts at 25m and bottoms out at 35m BUT just to keep things interesting, the in game
baseline damage of 38 points is wrong since the gun will actually do 40 points of max
damage instead.
And even though the max damage is better than expected, it is still three points below the
average for rifles.
Its minimum damage at 35m is 25 points which is just a touch above the overall average
of 24.78.
As mentioned earlier, the rate of fire of the Spear is 780 RPM on paper but around 730
RPM according to my tests.
So even though the rifle’s theoretical 520 DPS would put it just below the rifle average
of 548 DPS we cannot say at this stage how the measured 487 DPS will stack up.
The in-game recoil pattern of the Spear actually matches my test pattern quite well; certainly
better than that of the V308.
If we compare this to the patterns of the most relevant competitors: Thatcher’s AR33,
Hibana’s TYPE-89 and maybe Buck’s C8-SFW, we can see that it’s pretty good… although…
given that the C8 supposedly has a great recoil and the TYPE-89 has the exact same as the
m762 but worse!...
I would say that maybe these patterns really do need some testing.
The day that the C8 has supposedly one of the best recoil patterns, is the day that
Mission Outbreak freezes over.
Reload times of the Spear are: 3.31s for a full reload and 2.407s for a tactical reload.
So interestingly, the full reload is just below average but the tactical reload is above
average.
This makes the Sear overall slightly quicker to reload compared to the AR33 and TYPE-89
but nowhere near as good as the C8, which happens to be the second best in class after
the C7.
The ADS time for Spear is the standard 0.451s and it is the same for all three of the guns
I have chosen as benchmarks.
To conclude: Finka’s rifle is again, pretty decent.
On paper it looks a little underpowered by comparison to other rifles but it makes up
for it with very good controllability.
The reload time from empty is not that great, so try to take advantage of the very good
tactical reload if you can and ADS time is unremarkable.
Running the Spear .308 makes Finka a definite threat to the defenders and even though she
has access to both the 6P41 LMG and the SASG-12 shotgun (both very good weapons in their own
right) I will probably still favour the Spear.
And that’s it!
At this stage, I would give both of the new guns a tentative seal of approval with the
caveat that every evaluation of every full-auto Rainbow Six gun, I have ever made could change
drastically once I test and calculate the actual fire rates.
Go ahead and subscribe to the channel if you want to make sure that you don’t miss out
on those results when they come out and until then I hope you enjoyed the video and I will
see you in the next episode!