What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and good news, I have finally completed my analysis of the
weapons available to Clash and since I was so slow in getting this done I even managed
to include the changes since the last patch, which significantly affected her ability to
switch from shield to guns.
I guess every cloud has a silver lining and all that, right?
As always, I have compared the in-game stats of the guns and conducted additional tests
to find out about the hidden stats behind each of the weapons.
So, when playing clash, should you be running the P-10C pistol or the SPSMG9?
What are their individual strengths and weaknesses?
Let’s go and find out, shall we?
But before we get into that, I want to say a quick thank you to Massdrop for sending
me one of these Sennheiser PC37X Gaming headsets to try out!
Those of you who follow my Twitch streams will have seen me wearing this headset for
the last couple of weeks and I’ve been really happy using it.
Sennheiser is of course known for making great quality speakers and great speakers translate
into great sound quality.
Light and comfortable to wear even over long time periods, I would say that this headset
is a great all in one solution for anyone looking for a mic and headphone combo but
don’t just take my word for it.
The item currently has 428 reviews on the Massdrop website, with a near perfect rating
of almost 5 out of 5 stars.
So if you’re in the market for a new headset, I can definitely recommend the PC37X and if
you use the link in the description below it shows Massdrop that you came from me!
And with that, let’s talk about Clash.
As a shield operator, she of course only has access to sidearms but unlike any other operator
in the past; she has access to a 2-shot burst fire machine pistol as well as the regular
semi-auto pistol used by most other operators.
In the past, having the choice between a pistol and a machine pistol was never a real choice.
Machine pistols have always been vastly superior up until the recent recoil changes but with
Clash her options have been designed from the ground up to be far more balanced.
Let’s start things off simple by examining in-game info for both guns.
The P-10 does 40 points of baseline damage versus 30 for the SMG9.
When suppressed, the P-10 will deal 34 points while the SMG9 does 25, which is around about
a 15% reduction for both guns.
Fire rate is semi-auto but of course from past tests, we know that it will be around
450 RPM under combat conditions (although I have managed to clock in up to 486 RPM when
clicking just about perfectly).
The fire rate of the SMG9 is listed as 980 but the gun does not have a full auto mode.
Instead, you have to fire two-shot bursts and when I tested this in-game, I found that
the rate at which you can put out these burst is exactly the same at which you can fire semi-auto pistols.
Since every pull of the trigger gives you two shots that would suggest that the true
maximum fire rate for semi-autos is 490 RPM.
This fits in perfectly with my near perfect run of 486 RPM but to me this remains a theoretical
value since getting a perfect clicking sequence while also trying to fight a moving target
is extremely difficult for most players, especially when using a regular console controller.
What does this mean for all of my later calculations?
Instead of the maximum 980 RPM listed in-game, I will instead be using a more realistically
achievable fire rate of 900 RPM and that’s still pretty decent by most standards.
Next up… urgh ok, let’s do this.
<<For the sake of the sanity of the viewer, analysis of the Mobility stat has been cut
from the final presentation.>>
… So, I know that spending 32 minutes on this might be considered excessive but I hope
that clears it up once and for all!
Moving on!
Capacity of the P-10 is a pretty average 15+1 and the SMG9 can hold 20+1 giving the latter
a bit of an advantage.
In terms of attachments, both weapons have access to the Muzzle Brake, suppressor and
laser while the SMG also gets the choice of the Flash Hider if that’s the kind of thing
that floats your boat.
Both weapons also have pre-attached red dot sights which (although not magnified) will
offer a somewhat better sight picture than the iron sights.
At least that is the case for most weapons in Rainbow Six and I assume it is probably the same here.
And now, let’s dig a little deeper into some of the less obvious stats so that I can
finally get into the meaty part of this discussion.
I’ll put all of the important numbers on screen for you now and then I will go over
the implications one by one.
As always, I tested and analysed the damage drop-off, reload speed, fire rate, hip-fire
spread, ADS time and specific to Clash also the switch time from shield to gun.
When comparing the P-10 and SMG9, the damage drop off rates don’t really tell us anything
that we couldn’t already have guessed from the baseline stats.
The P-10 is more powerful for each shot than the SMG at pretty much all ranges despite
the earlier pistol drop-off range of 12-22m.
The SMG9 compensates for this though by firing two shots at a time which effectively doubles
its damage output as long as both shots land on target.
I have calculated the full battery of “damage per second”, “shots to down/kill” and
“time to down/kill” stats and as always, you can look those up in my online spreadsheet.
The summary of that analysis when comparing the two guns is that while the shots to kill
are always higher for the SMG9, the time to kill is always lower because of the doubled
up fire rate; all this of course assuming that all shots will hit the upper body.
And before moving on, one more thing to note here is the comparison of each gun to other guns in its class.
Compared to other pistols, the P-10 is about the weakest you can find with the exception of the Polish RG15.
And just like with the RG15, I believe that the attached red dot sight is there to balance
out the disappointing damage output.
Comparing the SMG9 to other machine pistols gives us the same result; in terms of pure
damage output and time to kill stats, the SMG9 is by far the weakest machine pistol
in the game and it’s only redeeming factor is that the forced burst fire mode actually
makes the gun far more controllable than the other MPs after the recent nerf.
So the bottom line is that while the SMG9 provides slightly better damage output than
the P-10, both of Clash’s guns are pretty bad compared to the weapons available to other operators.
I’ve already mentioned capacity and there’s nothing much to add here, so over to reload speed.
The 2.2s taken by the P-10 for a full reload is bang on average for semi-auto pistols and
the 1.9s tactical reload is only just above the 1.8s semi-auto average.
As you might expect, the slightly clunkier SMG9 reloads a bit slower with 2.7s full and
2.2s tactical reloads.
Interestingly, the averages for machine pistols are 2.8s and 2s respectively, giving the new
gun a relatively good full reload but disappointing tactical reload.
Fire rate has already been discussed and ADS time is pretty straight forward as well.
200ms is the standard time for pistols, while 300ms is the standard for both primary and secondary SMGS.
Nothing unusual here but it is worth noting that, with times to down of between 200 & 300ms
for both guns against various distance and armour combinations, a 100ms advantage for
the P-10 goes an awfully long way in balancing out the TTK advantages of the SMG9.
In fact, in most cases, ADS+TTK added together will in fact be longer for the SMG than for
the P-10 (full details in the spreadsheet).
Now going over to the shield switching time: from a comparison perspective, there is not a lot to say really.
It takes 2s to switch from gun to shield and 1s to switch from shield to gun no matter
which weapon you choose.
This is only the case since the recent patch.
Before that you were able to shoot faster than the switching animation but since that
has been fixed, it’s simply 1s for both guns and that is irrespective of whether or
not you hip-fire or ADS after the switch.
For recoil management, the results are quite curious since the baseline recoil for the
P-10 is significantly worse than that of the SMG9 but once you use the best possible recoil
reducing attachments, the P-10 actually overtakes the SMG9.
So in conclusion, since there is no point in running a naked gun, the P-10 will always
be better when going in loud but will be more difficult to handle than the SMG9 when both
guns are suppressed.
And with that we go over to our final couple of criteria: Like all pistols, the P-10 will
provide Clash with a 5% movement speed bonus when equipped, while the SMG9 has no effect on speed.
5% may not sound like a lot but in a game where movement speed can decide gunfights,
every little bit counts, so this can definitely go in the plus column for the P-10.
Last and probably least important, let’s take a quick look at the hip fire spreads.
Hip firing is really not viable in most situations in Rainbow Six but heck, let’s look at it
anyway for completeness sake.
When standing still, the spread for both guns is 100% identical.
Stationary and kneeling or prone, the P-10 has a slight advantage but once you start
moving, the pistol becomes significantly worse.
And since movement is so important, I would actually give the SMG9 the win here despite
being at a slight disadvantage when keeling or lying down.
Conclusion time and if we tot up the wins for each weapon, the P-10 has better reload
times, ADS times, recoil when loud and movement speed, while the SPSMG9 has better damage
output, ammo capacity, recoil when suppressed and hip-fire spread.
Each gun wins in four out of eight categories, giving us a numerical draw.
Can we simply weight each category equally, no probably not but from a purely empirical
perspective, I find it hard to claim that for instance damage output is more important
than recoil or ADS time.
So it’s quite hard for me to judge.
Beyond this, I would say that irrespective of the wins and losses here, the performance
of the two guns in all categories is actually pretty closely matched.
The days when operators were introduced with a practically redundant pistol option and
a vastly superior machine pistol are well and truly gone.
It appears that a lot of thought and effort has been put into balancing P-10C and the SPSMG9.
And as much as I feel that this is kind of a cop out, I would personally conclude that
both guns are pretty much equally viable options and the choice will boil down to personal
preference for each player.
What are your thoughts on these guns?
Do you have a favourite out of the two?
Let me know in the comments section below!
Many thanks to everyone who has sent in clips to be featured in my videos.
I have had a great time going over your highlights and will be looking into spinning out a new
video series that will allow me to feature more of your awesome clips.
So, feel free to keep ‘em coming!
Send me an email at mail@rogue-9.com with a link to a YouTube video of your clip and
please also include a brief description of what I’ll be looking for.
Your operator, number of kills and any special occurrences in the clip would be great to
know so that I can gather the clips as efficiently as possible!
And with that, as always: thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video
and I will see you in the next episode!