Comparing the Energy Firearm Weapons (Detailed Breakdown) Armored Core 6

Energy Firearm Specialization is a stat on your Generator that you can take advantage of to make an energy based AC in AC6! Learn about the differences of the energy weapons and choose the best one for your AC!

0:00 Basics and Stats
5:47 Pulse Weapons
10:06 Laser Shotguns
12:44 Laser Handgun
13:38 Laser Rifles
17:30 Plasma Rifles
19:45 KRSV (Karasawa)
22:25 Laser/Plasma Cannons (Back)
25:30 Summary

If you really don't read:

[Chrightt]

IMPORTANT: Coral weapons DO NOT count as energy weapons, and energy firearm specialization does not work on all energy weapons (i.e. launchers, drones, etc.).
Patch 1.03.1: Aurora is now an energy specialization weapon too.
I uploaded my spreadsheet, but I am still going to make adjustments/updates to better sort the other categories. You can make a copy to mess around with some stats, but definitely check back in for newer versions. The next video will be step-by-step optimization for an AC build.

[RamathRS]

That laser handgun has carried me through 4+ playthroughs. It is just so hard to surpass. Damage, rate of fire, cooling, range, and ammo capacity; it's such a great package.

[jonathangoldsmith]

We used to do breakdowns like this 20 years ago in this franchise. I am absolutely loving this series.

[Knights_of_the_Nine]

I think I FINALLY understand how FCS and Firearm Specialization works after testing!

The red reticle does two things, MOVE and LOCK.
* LOCKING only happens when the reticle is NEAR the target. So once the reticle is close to the target, it'll then snap onto and STICK to it. The speed or maybe radius of when it STICKS / LOCKS once it's CLOSE to the target is determined by your FCS.
* MOVING is different, but similar. Obviously the reticle has to MOVE towards the target before it can get CLOSE enough to LOCK. The speed of this movement is determined by your Firearm Specialization.

The big takeaway here is that high values of FCS or Firearm Specialization can OVERPOWER THE OTHER. The NACHTREIHER arms, for example, have such high Firearm Specialization [160] that even locking onto a target in a range with as low as 10 FCS aim assist is still SUPER FAST. On the other side, the WRECKER arms with a Firearm Specialization of only 26, can lock on in milliseconds, EVEN BEYOND 260 METERS, with something like the VE-21A which has 92 Long-Range Assist.

After you're locked, RECOIL is what determines your actual accuracy. RECOIL can make shots miss even when the bloom portion of the reticle is still center. If you go to the testing range, you'll notice that shots will veer off target after firing a couple of shots before the reticle blooms at all, but if you equip arms with a high recoil like the WRECKER arms, even some full auto weapons become a LASER BEAM with ZERO deviation.

Alright, there you go, now you know.
(This is copied from my reddit post on it)

[chaoschao]

I wanna say don't be discouraged about the bubble guns. I made a build I intended to be a meme: all bubble guns on the wheelchair to go fast and get close. It's not meta, but it works significantly better than I expected. Impact doesn't matter if your dps is high enough, and melting pulse armor is hilarious. Like, the armor will usually be gone before their animation even finishes. I highly recommend at least trying it. The only issue I had was the heat buildup forcing me to do hit and run tactics.

[meke-emwonder]

If this doesn't work out for you you should really consider deep see exploration since NOBODY goes as deep as you 😅

[luna]

Paired laser handguns are my favorite weapon, hands down. They pair with any back weapon setup without fail, they eat through standard MTs and even basic PCA enemies, and they _never_ run out. And because the charged attack sucks, you'll find yourself only using them for rapid single shots, so they never overheat. Always ready to chew through a staggered opponent.

[QuantumShenna]

another note about the plasma weapons, to deal their full damage the enemy needs to stay in the blast radius until the effect fades. This makes the uncharged shots effectively useless against moving targets combined with all of the other downsides.

[bakudo]

I overlooked the plasma cannons before thinking they would be a similar story to plasma rifles which felt bad against any target that moved, but seeing that heightened charged projectile speed has me pretty interested in trying a build out for them now. Thanks for the breakdown man.

[JokerDoom]

These videos are the best breakdowns of AC6 on the internet. I learned more in 5 minutes than I have from everyone else combined.

[Cheemsus]

The triple laser cannons is a followup execution. If you get a stagger after your melee or if they stagger at range. Charge it up and hold it until the stagger

[Whatever]

VE-20B is for light bipeds with Laser handguns or Wuergers, with some light missiles or drones on shoulder (you can't put anything affected by energy spec there - too heavy, or too EN hungry in case of Kranich).

Raw Impact is what breaks pulse shields. So it IS important against shielded bosses.

[masterofcorgis]

babe wake up, new chrightt analysis video just dropped

[dddish]

I tend to find the small energy rifle is very, effective with the 150 energy boost generator and fairly simple to fit into the build, making doubles a very real possibility

[YukitoOnline]

Laser Handgun is best used with *"Dual Wielding"* for DPS and *"Alternating the Shots"* to manage the cooling.

[jackandersen]

I've found that playing with exclusively pulse weapons, with HI-18s on the arms, and HI-16s on the back slots works surprisingly well, more or less eliminating the cooldown, like how running dual Ludlows and Chang-Chens gets rid of the reload.

[InternetHydra]

You should do a dedicated video for the Zimmerman, just in case it gets patch hammered before you do a projectile weapon breakdown. Such a bafflingly overstatted weapon should be immortalized.

[russell]

From my personal testing, the cooldown time is basically 1000/rate = (seconds to cool down) however if you overcharge a weapon and cause it to lock up until fully cooling down. It will add 0.5/1/1.5 seconds of extra time depending on the weapon. I have done my testing on about 80% of the weapons and this holds true. You can solidify this by doing frame breakdowns of the hu-bens and maybe I think the vp-66LR since you can get all the way up to almost 1000 heat build up. You can then calculate the amount of heat build up and speed that it goes back to 0 and find what the rate is and see if that is the same as the cooldown rate the game shows.

[TheGrumbliestPuppy]

I calculated the rough DPS of most of the laser weapons, taking into account the heat/cooling times (avoiding overheating). When you do this, the medium laser rifle comes out way better than you'd expect. Notice how little the heavy rifle's shorter charge time matters due to overheating every shot (overheating penalizes you with 18% slower cooldown). I assumed 100 Energy Specialization, but the 2nd number in parenthesis is with 150 specialization.
laser pistol - 437(546) dps
laser rifle (light) - 435(544) dps - charge 764 dps (985)
laser rifle (medium)- 513(641) dps - ch. 599 dps (975)
laser rifle (heavy) - 545(681) dps - ch. 250 dps (494 dps)

[Evil_Noah]

Hey man, I'm really glad you're making these AC6 videos and breakdowns of the gear. I really really hope you do arms next, because I would like to get a deeper understanding of how much recoil and recoil control affects your shots, and of it's more or less important than firearm specialization. Thanks man.