What is the difference between Minigun and Rifle?

Cos I just realised thanks to the Assaults' benefit from Total Recoil, better accuracy and a **** ton of crits, with added mobility and better capabilities vs. assassins and snipers I can't seem to think of a reason why anyone would pick gunner. :/

It seems rather troublesome because I would have put the gunner down as "anti-pro area lockdown" but his "anti-pro" bit is really quite lacking if he didn't get the drop on them. And his "area lockdown" bit wittles down to just "defending the moneyball" if there's, god forbid, a sniper on the other team. Even then he has problems with his deploy arc and without deploy his minigun is just a more cumbersome assault rifle minus the crits and rapid reload.

On the other hand I would have considered assault to be the class that supresses or eliminates snipers and prevents the front line from becoming a brick wall, but no, with his mobility, crits, firepower and skills combined he can just break through anything to the point he could solo a match if it wasn't for assassins likely trashing their bots stopping an assault on the moneyball. Speaking of which, although I would have the assault be a tricky target for assassins, he's far more capable of eliminating them instead of tanks and gunners who are the "heavy" classes I thought "bot killers" (or "Lane sabetours") should avoid, but instead absolutely demolish with shuriken.

Is there something I missed? Because my Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock web of counters seems to be folding in on itself to form a pyramid of "I win".

Minigun does more damage if spun up fully before shooting, and combined with the clever use of Deploy - those bonus crits come into effect the moment you enter the deploying animation - will tear up every class. Just keep your minigun spun up in danger zones and you'll be fine.

*Waits for someone to post pictures of a minigun and an assault rifle, then ask what the difference is*.

Seriously though, the damage output of the minigun is much higher at every range than that of the AR. Especially at beyond-medium range the AR becomes useless and the minigun is still a show stopper in my experience. Don't get me wrong, the AR is awesome, but if you have to deal with multiple people at a time, the minigun gets the job done MUCH better.

Of course, the assault has his own way of dealing with that, but the topic is about minigun vs AR.

Except thats when you swap to grenade and it seems to do more damage against the accuracy loss of the minigun...

And even then, yeah sure, you might have great spawn-camping abilities using the minigun + deploy but then it only takes ONE assassin or sniper to deal with you and you're back in the spawn queue.

If you do have to spin up to do significantly more damage then it must take an absurd amount of time to spin up since I can't actually see any difference between spun up and not besides knowing you spin up automatically when shooting and the slow movement speed.

I can't tell then, but is there a problem with the minigun if you try to fire it right away without spinning up? I've had some serious inconsistencies on maps like Steel Peel then where I'm firing from centre to the outer upper ring and sometimes I hardly so much as dust lightly with damage whilst destroying the occasional other pro. Sometimes I go entire clips and don't manage to kill a target with a high hit rate. :/

I believe that the Dual mini spins up considerably faster than the one you start with. Also, you can start firing way before it's revving at full speed. The normal minigun can spew lead almost right when you click, but it takes quite some time before it's spewing lead at full throttle.

Also, are you now comparing the grenade launcher to the minigun? I might just be me, but these have nothing in common. And I really wouldn't call the grenade launcher a more effective weapon at mid range, tbh. Sure it deals great damage IF you can hit. Being a non-hitscan weapon, that's a lot less trivial than with the minigun.

Heeeeeeey Mike, well honestly. The rifle excels at a certain range. And only at that range against big burly guys. The gunners minigun absolutely tears through assault armor, and I had a Gold Armor Endorsment0 too. The reason why I retreated back all the time, is because every second I spend trying to one on one you or pick off your teammates, you not just chip away at my health, you take CHUNKS.

My rifle only chips your health, which makes me rely heavily on bombs and charges to finish the job. It's kind of like the whole scout factor in TF2. If you got good tracking, accuracy, and a good team; you can keep that scout at bay or finish him off.

If it wasn't for your heavy gunning, I probably would of broken through and just raped everything in site.

Dunno who you were thinking of: Today I tried playing pretty much nothing but Tank to practice him somewhat.

Not really part of this thread but now I'm considering he may be a tad borked in this game as well in terms of strategy, though he varies wildly from map to map. LazeRazor or possibly Steel Peel he's good, but sadly Grenade (sniper favoured) and Spunky (a load of crap) he's up for being mashed to a pulp by the opposition.

Also slightly off topic, Bouncers spawned by the map are a bad idea, especially when they start piling up like Blackjacks do. But that still doesn't quite make up for the single-lane, endless stalemate with two fairly decent teams boring you to death. Even with juice there's hardly any time for a change to take place.

In general, and tl;dnr, ehhhhhh... As long as Uber doesn't lose interest in working hard on MNC it'll probably work itself right in the end.

I find the Tank to be fine "in terms of strategy," although might be because I favor the Tank myself.

Imo LaseRazor and Spunky are the best maps for Tanks and Supports. The Tank can easily and effortlessly control the bots. Supports can do the same and fortify near impenetrable defenses. GrenADEiii and Steel Peel are Sniper "favored" maps but still don't take away from Tank strategies. Ammo Mule, imo, is a Gunner "favored" map. That being said there are ways for all Pros to excel at on all 5 maps as well as there being "traps" for each Pro. It all boils down to situational awareness.

With the Bouncers if you are talking Spunky I think it's a nice change of pace and fits that map quite nicely. To me Spunky is the best map to push and control bots on. I will agree if both teams just let the bots duke it out in the middle it will be a stalemate. Spunky Arena is all about control of the front of the enemies base, not the middle by the Annihilator like the other 4 maps. Also the way the map is laid out once the shields are down on a Moneyball it is the easiest to keep down due to the shape and setup of the map. For example the hallways ground level the left of you base is a perfect line up for an enemy Pro to peek in, put a shot into the Moneyball, and duck back into cover.

I agree that the Bouncer spam on Spunky get ridiculous after a while. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a Blitz game where all you do it killing waves and waves of bouncers. But if you're experimenting with the tank, killing bots is his special thing so the bouncers shouldn't be a big problem. Just spam product grenades lvl3 at every clump of bots you see and watch the money and juice roll in.