Heavy Calibur On Soma?

[Yazeth]

I'm going for headshots w/ the Soma. Will Heavy Calibur give any noticible accuracy loss, or can I hit heads just fine? I'm looking for 20-30 meters headshots.

[Somedude1000]

If you dont max it, you should still get a negligible accuracy loss, however, I would personally recommend not putting heavy cal on because if you want to get the best of it, you will suffer horrible accuracy loss unless you are willing to throw in vile precision

[CommanderNewt]

Heavy Cal will drop your accuracy quite a bit, and will probably make it impossible to perform headshots. It will still be able to hit enemies in the distance, but heads would be a bit of a stretch. 

[HeelSouls]

I have a max heavy caliber on my 5 forma soma and the accuracy loss is hardly damaging to the guns accuracy and the damage increase of +165% is way more valuable than the slight accuracy loss. If you burst fire by tapping the trigger you wont struggle with headshots too much and as i said before the damage boost is invaluable, you will be putting your self at a massive damage disadvantage without it. Only Rank it half way if you are that worried about accuracy but personally i got used to it and it doesn't even bother me anymore.

Edited August 23, 2014 by JustTotallyEpic

[Darzk]

 

the damage increase of +165% is way more valuable than the slight accuracy loss... the damage boost is invaluable, you will be putting your self at a massive damage disadvantage without it.

To be clear, with Serration installed as well it's a proportional damage increase of 62%. That takes up a slot that could be HS/Element/Bane, or around 30%, so it's only a damage increase in comparison of ~25%.

 

IMO the accuracy loss is not worth doing 25% more damage, plus costing an extra forma to make most builds work. If one of the two SC bullets misses the headshot, you'd do 60% more damage if you hadn't equipped HCal.

[HeelSouls]

 

 

To be clear, with Serration installed as well it's a proportional damage increase of 62%. That takes up a slot that could be HS/Element/Bane, or around 30%, so it's only a damage increase in comparison of ~25%.

 

IMO the accuracy loss is not worth doing 25% more damage, plus costing an extra forma to make most builds work. If one of the two SC bullets misses the headshot, you'd do 60% more damage if you hadn't equipped HCal.

 

elemental mods and bane mods scale off your base damage ( Also your crit damage is affected by base damage too) This makes base damage higher priority compared to elemental and bane mods. Also to understand how he is going to use the weapon in most higher level missions there will be large numbers of enemies charging at you especially so with the infested meaning missing shots is less likely as they are most probably going to hit another enemy behind them if you are shooting at them.

When modding weapons you will always want the most base damage possible as it increases all other damage modifiers, on my soma I have Serration, Heavy cal, Split chamber, vital sense, Point strike and the appropriate elemental mods. That is with 5 forma so it depends on what you are going to use the gun for but it is worth it as the soma is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. 

Edited August 23, 2014 by JustTotallyEpic

[Quizel]

elemental mods and bane mods scale off your base damage ( Also your crit damage is affected by base damage too) This makes base damage higher priority compared to elemental and bane mods. 

Everything Darzk said took that into account. Any way you look at it,a max HC is a 62%'ish dps increase once a max serration is equipped.

 

To OP: Accuracy loss is a deadly for maximizing dps on the soma me thinks. I always took the "accuracy rating" provided in arsenal stats to be a measure of about how many meters you can stand away from you target and expect to hit it (kinda wish I actually knew what it meant >.>). Max HC shows 15.5m on the Soma.

 

In game tested and even at 15m had a few stray bullets hitting around the edge of the recticle/aimer w/e it is called (which is often larger then the targets head). At 25m, the spread looked pretty bad making even body shots not guaranteed.

 

I can't comment too much because I never really seen the soma as a marksman type (granted it has good accuracy w/o hc). I put HC on and hose down everything wasting about 85% of my ammo on the walls and 14% on a already dead body.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Quizel

[MagPrime]

I have a mostly ranked Heavy Cal on my Soma and I have no issue with head shots.

[Semshol]

I'm going for headshots w/ the Soma. Will Heavy Calibur give any noticible accuracy loss, or can I hit heads just fine? I'm looking for 20-30 meters headshots.

 

Rank 6 H Cal user here. You won't always be able to head-shot, but you can still do it at 20 - 30 meters. Want my professional advice though. If you're playing alone, you need a max H Cal. If playing in a team, get a Latron P for headshots. 

[Darzk]

The problem with using a lower rank is the damage gain becomes minimal. For example using a Rank 6 only gives you around 7% more damage than simply using a Bane/HS/Element mod - in this case I'd usually go for the option without any accuracy loss.

 

Rank 8 would be acceptable if you found the accuracy to be usable there; @ ~16% damage increase.

 

But really I tend to use HCal only on weapons with limited range or that don't aim for headshots - and critical weapons like the Soma are always better off used for headshots.

[Yazeth]

@Quizel

That actually makes a lot of sense.

So yeah, in the end I think I won't use Heavy Cal and instead use a Hammer Shot mod. Thanks for all the info.

[Dalawantahr]

I'm going for headshots w/ the Soma. Will Heavy Calibur give any noticible accuracy loss, or can I hit heads just fine? I'm looking for 20-30 meters headshots.

Not that I've experienced, got a rank 9 HC on mine and I can snipe pretty well with it at very long range.