>>713744179
Recently I actually found myself wondering if the Assault Rifle was actually a shitter weapon or not, so I decided to do a gimmick run on Heroic where my stipulation was that it was the only "main" gun I use (still using grenades in some scenarios because I know it's not THAT much of a sleeper weapon) and I think it's actually more than solid as a starting weapon:
>Absolutely gargantuan amount of ammo, especially when the Flood show up to easily replenish
>Grunts get shredded easily of course
>If you tap your fire like >>713744491 you can easily shoot the exposed area of Jackal shields, and they always reel back/flinch so killing them is easy work
>Hunters are the weakest and most linear they've ever been in the series, it's easy to handle them outside of just being bullet sponges (but melee actually does do damage here, so you can alternate to not use up too much ammo)
>Blue and even red Elites can actually be handled better than you'd expect, you just really need to fight in close quarters or otherwise close the distance so that they're baited into trying to melee you, then you fuck them up with a backsmack (fastest and most consistent melee of all the weapons too)
>Weirdly enough, it's actually less effective against infected humans/Elites than I remember; they're not actually staggered/slowed down by the AR and will generally get up in your face if they're charging right at you, but I only just realized that if you're crouching (and maybe moving backwards?) it causes a surprising amount of their melee attacks to whiff
>Even weirder, despite being literal robots it seems like the Sentinels get fucked by the AR more than the Flood
I kept the grenades purely as a weapon against the gold and black Elites because I knew the AR alone would get absolutely raped by the strongest Elites, but if that's what it takes then I think it's actually great for what it is