1) The Bolter surprised me, accurate, good dispersion, good damage but hip firing/full-autoing or using a scope is just completely out of question. Iron-sight firing and headshots are what matters, just like a Dire Avenger. 2) Defense maps with framerate rollercoaster are near-unplayable as BolTac, it's impossible to keep track of anything. Marines are very affected by lag issues, much more than Eldar speed. On a regular map, I had no issue keeping tracks of space elves, on a defense map it was just frustrating. 3) Scorpions can actually be seen if one pays attention to blurred translucent silhouettes, did not know that. 4) Most Warlocks spam fast-attack with auto-tracking, Dbash, back-roll, burst fire, rinse & repeat. 5) Had no issue out-DPSing Dire Avengers, if caught off-guard, I broke line of sight. 6) It feels damn good to drop greenskins with a Bolter compared to the Shuricat. Starting character. I queued and rolled with Preset BolTac marine. First match, 5 minutes disaster getting stomped by Eldars on Maggon, roamed around hunting DAs, FDs and lone Warlocks. First match commendations, I expected struggling with accuracy, ended up thoroughly dominating each 1v1 encounter. About 4 defense games followed with abysmal framerate drops, I had a very bad time trying to aim and most of the time my Bolter would randomly cease firing. I feel sorry for Marine players having to deal with that crap. Second game, close victory against Chaos playing along with a LSM premade. Second game commendations, I fought hard to protect capture points and picked up a lot of assist supporting melee specialists. Third game, defeat against Orks with 16 kills and 16 assists, our team sadly did not clear vehicles and lost with 80% of the gauge filled. Fourth defense game against Eldars with clanmates, Eldar pugs got stomped and I racked a nice score. Morale of the story: I'm genuinely surprised with the Bolter's bad reputation, the weapon felt pretty good, with consistent damage, reliable accuracy and a good trade-off between short and medium range capability. However I can attest that framerate drops and lag affect a marine's performance very heavily. Eldar speed on the other hand did not really bother me. Thanks AGS for letting me pug along in your party and sorry to my fellow Myst members for purging you in the name of the Emprah, had a bunch of interesting hide-and-seek games with a scorpion and Hawks hunting sessions.
Bolter is not bad, its a stable weapon. The thing is that the DA and Shootas have just overall better guns. I have a rank 5 LSM wich I only play apoth and tac on, and when I tried Shoota ork and DA it felt so much more smooth and overall better to play with.
It's funny because when you play a lot Eldar, it's the opposite (you know it's the same shit on PS2 every faction want the dakka of the other one and when that happen they are angry that everyone have the same gun)...
To be honest, the Bolter and ShuriCat are, how to say it... Kinda different. The ShuriCat is an ambush weapon excelling at bursting down off-guard targets, it can still be somewhat effective against an immobile target at medium range but its accuracy past that range is just bad. Meanwhile the Bolter is just kind of a "jack of all trade" gun, it's good at everything but may be overwhelmed when other weapons users get to play on their strength. If I catch someone off-guard in close quarter, yeah the ShuriCat is better but in almost every other scenario, the Bolter will be better and I do not have any upgrade such as extended magazine yet. Against Orks there is simply no contest though, the Bolter is way better.
I can not stress enough about how much I disagree with this, after playing to rank 5 with almost purely Bolter, making an Ork character and just playing with the Shoota preset was such a relief, Its amazing in close quarters and you still get kills long range if you burst/tap. It was an overall joy playing both Shuriken and Shoota after playing bolter for so long.
What I meant to say, is that the Bolter is a lot better than the Shuriken Catapult when it comes to dealing with Greenskins. A shoota can indeed out-DPS a Bolter in close quarter, hell, it will even out-fight a Shuriken Catapult user thanks to orky toughness and higher HP. Sorry for the confusion.
That's objectively wrong, the Shoota has a better dps and more bullets and the accuracy is practically the same. It only makes a difference at very long range where you can't kill anything anyway.
The only change I'd propose for the Bolter is to increase its damage the further it travels rather than decrease it. It is a Rocket Propelled Bullet-Nade after all. The Stalker perhaps can return to the double shot of SM. There should be no question to which weapon people would want to choose over the staples of the other factions at long ranges. That said, the bolter should lose in CQC against the others. It's why you'd bring the Storm Bolter instead.
