While we have a few 10th prestige ponies in the clan, most of us are still working on it. I don't know about you guys, but I'm trying to max out as quickly as possible (lol japanese collector fetish), and it occurred to me that the secondary weapons are a pretty great way to get experience fast for a very simple reason: you get 10,000 experience for each one that hits level 10*. More explanation after the jump.
I'm working from this chart:
The fastest I know of is the revolvers - assuming no headshots or multikills, it takes 26 kills to get them to level 5**, when you unlock Akimbo. At that point, you have 24 kills left until you get the Marksman III bonus and unlock the tactical knife, which is their last attachment. Basically, if you take the revolvers up to level 7 (at which point they instantly jump to level 10 from the challenge xp), you're getting better than 300 experience per kill. Put another way, if you don't headshot anybody while you're leveling your revolvers, kill #50 is worth 11,600 experience.Now, the semiautos take a little longer - you need 12,100 to get to extended mags and the bonus xp. Sadly, even though you unlock Silencers earlier than Akimbo, the bonus 750 experience doesn't change how many kills you need... unless you start getting bonus exp. for headshots and the Expert challenges! If you can get 15 headshots and 40 silenced kills, you'll only need a total of 61 before your challenge exp. gets you to level 10 and the 10,000 point prize. I know I don't headshot 1/4 of my kills, though, so 75 to get Marksman IV may be more realistic. With no headshots, the semiautos end up being just shy of 300 exp. per kill.
The machine pistols are exactly the same, except easier since they're automatic. Awesome.
So, with 4 semiautos, 4 machine pistols, and two revolvers, that's a total of 210,800 experience for 700 kills - better than 300 per kill. Get out there and pistol whip some chumps!
PS Tactical Knife melees count for pistol experience, so don't be shy about using it to finish leveling the gun - it's very, very difficult to get a 7+ streak with the limited ammo supply pistols come with.
PPS I got the experience chart from http://www.callofdutymw3xpchart.com/mw3-xp-chart/
Points for discussion: do you have any awesome pistol strategies to make this easier? How about tricks for getting experience?
*Technically, each one which unlocks every proficiency, but since it only takes 12,100 experience to max them, it's pretty much over once you get the last attachment.
**2,600 from kills + 500 from Marksman I + 1000 from Marksman II = 4,100 experience
Update: the Desert Eagle, as it turns out, only gets Akimbo and Tac Knife, just like the revolvers, so its kills are worth slightly more, but you get slightly less exp. overall when maxing it since you only need ~50 kills instead of ~75. Overall, I think this is a good thing, since the deagle is terrible.
Now Whargarbl, what I'd really appreciate is if you could dig through your past few games and let us know how many kills you average compared to how many you usually get. If you're getting only a third of the kills, then maybe it's not so worth it. Having said that, I do recall you getting some sickeningly high numbers in some games with pistols . . .
ReplyDeleteSo I sat down and ran the numbers, and this prestige, for the MK14, I've gotten just over 200 exp per kill, including all the challenges. Now, I'm not going to pretend that using pistols has been great for my K/D - overall I'm 1.34 with the MK14 and my best pistol is the MP412 at 1.04 - but on matches where I am able to use pistols successfully, I usually run in the 10-18 range for kills. The main issue is identifying games where I'm able to get a lot of flanking, etc. going on, and that I'm playing against guys who can't aim, vs. ones where pistols lose to rifles and shotguns every time, as they should.
ReplyDeleteIn games where pistols are an option, I don't think that they actually slow my kill per minute down very much, since when I spot somebody, as long as another teammate doesn't kill them before I can sneak close enough, I can usually get the kill, so I'm not sure I'm losing that much time when I spot someone, stalk for 10 seconds, then kill vs kill instantly, then look for somebody for 10 more seconds. I do lose out on a lot of possible double kills, but it's not like those are guaranteed with a better weapon anyway.
Bottom line is that secondaries generate a lot more exp. per kill, and they don't slow down my game that much if I'm selective about when I use them. Considering that they can only get you about 1/5 of the experience for a prestige anyway, I think using secondaries as much as possible, and pulling out primaries when it's obvious that secondaries aren't working, is a great way to quicken your prestiging.
The 10,000xp bonus when unlocking the final attachment is worth 100 TDM kills sans any bonuses. Depending on how well you normally do, that might be 4-10 games' worth of kills, so this bonus can make a pretty significant difference in xp gain, even at fairly high levels of play. Additionally, pistols of any kind are more likely to proc Longshot bonuses, which is more extra xp.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was ranking up, I used machine pistols pretty much exclusively as secondaries, and I would max 3 or 4 of them every prestige. Adding to their efficacy, I have a tendency to quick swap to my secondary when my primary runs dry instead of reloading during protracted firefights. Quick swapping will also make you look super pro! I got a lot of mileage out of the machine pistols, especially early on in a prestige, where a measly 55-65 FMG9 kills meant several levels gained.
I'm not super sold on revolvers, mostly due to their worse matchups in firefights, and the fact that you cannot use attachments on them for more than half of the time you would be using them. They also top out pretty early at 60-65 kills, but getting the thirty kills before you unlock akimbo was pretty tough for me. It may just be a matter of playstyles, though. If you can make it work with revolvers, it seems like a good idea. I just couldn't make it work, personally.
I'm not sure I like the pistols at long range - at their final damage dropoff, they're all six hit kills except the deagle at 4, which is still just silly.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how were you topping out the FMG9 at 55-60 kills? Are you seriously getting 1/3 kills to be headshots, or did I miss something?
Hey, the Desert Eagle isn't terrible! D:
ReplyDeleteIf you can counteract the recoil while shooting, which not many people can do, then it is a great secondary weapon of choice. (I will say that the range of efficiency, referring to damage, is terrible, though. They need to fix that.)
Other than that addition, nice post, very informative. This strategy is what I used to rank up to 10th with 5 days played. (That, and Specialist Bonus.)