In other news, I may have to pimp out my Gauss SAW. I was kicking ass with it unupgraded last night, and when the Phoenix comes out I'll probably be playing a lot more HA. How do the various scopes compare on it? I was thinking the 2X reflex for variety.
2x reflex is the best sight on the SAW, full stop. I wouldn't be too upset if it came welded on. Good vision, enough zoom to engage at the ranges where the SAW dominates but not so much that you can't ADS in closer fights. There is rarely a reason to use anything else.
That said, I also own the 4x Truesight for long range, static engagements. Anything with more zoom or that obscures more of the screen makes you useless in close/mid range, while 4x zoom is enough to be an effective sniper from nearly any range. The one big problem I have right now is that playing on my resolution (1366x768) I have to have render quality over 95% for the vertical crosshair bar to render when the scope is stationary. I rarely have my render quality anywhere near that so using the scope becomes a lot harder.
In any case, I've been moving away from that sort of engagement. It can be fun to pad your KDA as well as being a semi-useful role you can play while lagging in a large fight. But any time there is a chance for that kind of thing there are a dozen snipers making the kill shots while you are getting assists and spot bonuses. It's a nice option to have, but I no longer go looking for chances to use it.
As for other attachments;
- Advanced forwards grip
- Compensator
These two are permanent attachments on all loadouts. They make the recoil easily controllable and make even fully automatic fire viable.
- High velocity ammo
I like this for long range where it makes hitting moving targets easier, but it essentially cancels out the compensator when it comes to recoil. I also don't think the added damage (or rather reduced damage falloff) is that important. One area this really shines is spraying ESFs. You hardly have to lead them at all, so long as you remember to burst a little bit more conservatively than usual. I use it with the 4x scope and with my desperation anti-air loadout, but other than that I don't think it's a good tradeoff.
- Laser dot
I tried this for a while but it's frankly not worth it. You just can't make the SAW good at hipfire. The foregrip gives more benefit even in situations the laser was designed for.
- Flashlight
Hahahahahahaha.
- Suppressor
I've actually been tempted by this because I often make flanking runs on enemy armour groups where I want the first sound I make to be a tank or two blowing up. Revealing myself on the map is a quick way to invite some HE shells before I can get close, while leaving infantry alive on the way in allows people to spot and/or shoot you. That said, it's even more situational than the long range loadout and losing the compensator would
suck.
To the mouse discussion, I use a Logitech G700 wireless gaming mouse. Mostly because I'm on a laptop moving around a lot and have killed three other mouse cables. Performance is close enough to perfect that I couldn't say it isn't unless I'd read tech articles on the thing. Battery life isn't good, but the battery it came with can be charged through a USB cable (regular micro-USB as well, I can substitute my phone charging cable if need be) that is no more restrictive and
more robust than a common mouse cable, so it just turns into a wired mouse every so often. It gives an obvious low battery warning extremely early (I'd say with about an hour's use to go) so you can wait for some downtime before finding the cable to plug it in.
I haven't fully settled on a button setup for PS2, but one thing I
always have is right/left tilt on the scroll wheel assigned to volume up/down. Being able to make volume adjustments on the fly is a godsend. I also have a profile completely assigned to Foobar controls, including music volume independent of global volume. Music during fights is a bad idea. Silence while wandering between bases is tedious.