"The percents are for any weapon with a kill during a match. If anyone changed weapons they would have added to each weapon they got a kill for."

When I asked what Thorn at 50% actually means, he said:

"50% of people that eon had at least one kill with thorn."

So Thorn wasn't used for 50% of kills, it was used by 50% of people to get at least one kill. This explains why the percentages don't add up to 100%, people are getting kills with more than one weapon per game.

That makes sense, except he also posted the percentages for the losing team on another tab in the spreadsheet. If you add those up, you get 163%..

lol - I give up then. :)

Uh, weird. Didn't even catch that, but it's actually "more wrong" than that. If you follow the link I posted all the way to the Google Spreadsheet and add up the percentages there, you get 195%. Somebody dun goofed.

Since they were using 50% of the game participants and ended up with 200% of the kills they should have... I'm guessing it's as simple as "we forgot that we cut the total in half". I bet if you halved those percentages, you'd end up with close to 100% total, and the numbers would line up with what really happened.

In PvE, Scout Rifles rule. Yes, a lot of situations hand cannons are better, but if enemies are tougher and you can;t stay out as long, a scout rifle is great. Taking out a cabal from a distance where they can;t shoot back, with say, VoC, makes stuff way easier. You sacrifice kill speed for safety, which is often a very good tradeoff.

This is my argument for hand cannons -- safety. Half a clip, then back into cover. Most maps are small enough that the range drop off doesn't matter much. To each his own, I guess.

I'd say I'm about 50/50 between scouts and hand cannons in PvE at the moment, and 50/50 pulse rifles and hand cannons in PvP.

According to this research, across 5000 games of Trials, using only the data from the winning team, here are the top 10 kill percentages:

50.26% Thorn
16.19% Felwinter's Lie
14.87% The Last Word
9.43% Matador 64
8.08% Party Crasher +1
8.03% Found Verdict
6.57% Hawkmoon
5.17% Red Death
4.37% Efrideet's Spear
3.94% Tomorrow's Answer

Also, respect for the one guy winning a Trials match and getting kills with the Khvostov.

In PvE, Scout Rifles rule. Yes, a lot of situations hand cannons are better, but if enemies are tougher and you can;t stay out as long, a scout rifle is great. Taking out a cabal from a distance where they can;t shoot back, with say, VoC, makes stuff way easier. You sacrifice kill speed for safety, which is often a very good tradeoff.

This is my argument for hand cannons -- safety. Half a clip, then back into cover. Most maps are small enough that the range drop off doesn't matter much. To each his own, I guess.

From what I can tell from this image

Shotties and Handcannons are about 1/3 of all kills since March. Its also interesting that the scout rifle gets no love at all, getting about as many kills as RL's. Autos aren't much better. Thats pretty weak considering they are primaries.

I think the biggest surprise on the graph is that fusion rifles still are pretty potent. Didn't expect that. It still looks like a little light tweaking is in order.

Vex and queen breakers throw off fusion rifle data as far as I can tell. They are going to be over represented because of those. I of course love my fusion rifles, but that's because I have about 4 that are absolutely insane.

I think the biggest surprise on the graph is that fusion rifles still are pretty potent. Didn't expect that. It still looks like a little light tweaking is in order.

Mythoclast probably throws those numbers quite a bit.

Shotties and Handcannons are about 1/3 of all kills since March. Its also interesting that the scout rifle gets no love at all, getting about as many kills as RL's. Autos aren't much better. Thats pretty weak considering they are primaries.

I think the biggest surprise on the graph is that fusion rifles still are pretty potent. Didn't expect that. It still looks like a little light tweaking is in order.

As it stands now, most handcannons are just better scout rifles with more impact and slower ROF's.

This has always bugged me. I'm a scout rifle guy, and I have to admit, scout rifles are just plain inferior most of the time to hand cannons. The few places where they shine is when you need mid-long range precision and periodic (slow-ish) damage up close. The templar fight towards the end, taking out goblins, oracles, and hobgoblins comes to mind as a near perfect setup for scout rifles. But in PvP especially, taking 4-5 shots to kill someone is just unreasonable. By the time you are far enough away to make that worthwhile, you're better off using a well scoped sniper rifle.

In PvE, Scout Rifles rule. Yes, a lot of situations hand cannons are better, but if enemies are tougher and you can;t stay out as long, a scout rifle is great. Taking out a cabal from a distance where they can;t shoot back, with say, VoC, makes stuff way easier. You sacrifice kill speed for safety, which is often a very good tradeoff.

As it stands now, most handcannons are just better scout rifles with more impact and slower ROF's.

This has always bugged me. I'm a scout rifle guy, and I have to admit, scout rifles are just plain inferior most of the time to hand cannons. The few places where they shine is when you need mid-long range precision and periodic (slow-ish) damage up close. The templar fight towards the end, taking out goblins, oracles, and hobgoblins comes to mind as a near perfect setup for scout rifles. But in PvP especially, taking 4-5 shots to kill someone is just unreasonable. By the time you are far enough away to make that worthwhile, you're better off using a well scoped sniper rifle.

Even the shadow 710x at full auto takes 5-8 shots depending on headshots. Time-wise it's similar to TDYK or Timur's lash, but you have to land every single shot, fighting the instability along the way. I really wanted to like this gun archetype, being very suros-like, but it didn't work out for me.

There's just not quite enough play space for a mid-range only weapon. In some ways they suffer the same fate as the auto-rifles, though they have more usable space IMO simply due to range.

But space handcannons you say! Yes I agree.

And this is probably why. =)