1. Bolt actions are sexy.
2. I actually have skill and I’m not a basic ♥♥♥♥♥ who uses the Mkb every round.
3. Rifleman is seriously an amazing class, and nobody seems to understand the power of it.

Am I actually suggesting that the rifleman is the strongest unit in the entire game? Well, maybe not. It comes very close. Many have a view of the humble rifleman that it should be played by inexperienced players and used like a meatshield. That’s somewhat true, but it detracts from the huge strength of the class and its potent bolt-action rifles.
Here I’ll go through advanced rifleman techniques that justify it to me as one of the best classes, particularly for attackers.

‘Hurr durr, this game isn’t CoD”, I hear you say. Why run around like a headless goose?

This isn’t what mobility is about, nor is running faster any help in running stupidly. Mobility is the ease with which a player can get from one place they don’t want to be, to one place they do want to be. And it’s an obvious rule that a guy with a bolty and two nades is going to run faster than oldmate squadleader, and blitz around engineers laden with satchels. Mobility is your friend. The only class lighter than you is assault/e-assault; and not by much. You should be attacking the capzone, and spamming all hell out of your nades. If you’re not getting onto the cap, then you’re being a waste of a rifleman. You can snipe, sure. But you shouldn’t.

Bolt-actions are the worst weapons in the game? No, but they aren’t exactly skill cannons either. One good bolty to the chest kills 10/10 times, but so does one out of the SVT, G41, or the MGs. But the MGs are totally another beast, and the only comparable weapons are the semiautos. And yes, the semiautos are better than the bolts in every practicable way, with the SVT having a significant edge over the G41 in terms of ammo cap and reload speed.

You need to know that all you need is one shot. As a cheeky Russian getting a flank on the enemy with your mosin you might face the unfortunate situation of bolting your gun and not being able to put down another shot quickly enough for angry-looking German #2’s torso. But with adequate accuracy the bolt actions have a real parity with the semiautos. And one-hitting kids is a real treat. Often I find myself plunging into the capzone and some mong with an MP40 jumps out, shoots me in the chest, and the proceeds to get absolutely wrecked by a quickshot to the chest. My accuracy with the bolt actions is about 50%, and I even think that’s a bit too low. You need to evaluate the oppositional dogmas of every shot you don’t take as being a missed shot, and of the fact that missing with the bolt actions is often tantamount to death.

But anyway, why is your weapon useful? Simply put, if you are using your mobility to full advantage and running in on that capzone… and you still die. It doesn’t matter one bit. An MG hipfiring up a capzone who gets killed now results in a net gain of one MG34/42 to the enemy team. Nobody cares if there’s one hundred rifles on the ground. You can push as much as you want with literally no risk of anything besides tickets. And if you’re really using your mobility and getting those cheeky flanks, you ought to get many more kills than deaths.

Moreover, there's nothing more variable than a rifle. 0m or 300m, you have at least decent strength at all ranges.

So you're going to play rifleman? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of course you are, you fabulous killer.

There's a few settings that you're going to want to delve into first before you even jump into it. Firstly, in the options menu, make sure you turn manual bolting on, and auto-reloading off.

Manual bolting:

You get 3 main advantages:

1. Increased speed.
2. Better melee capability.
3. Better reload capability.

Strangely enough, your character will bolt the gun faster with this option on. It might be a bit unwieldy at first, but you will quickly grow to love the double-tap mouse click that brings doom to the enemy. With a loaded gun and manual bolting on:

Click 1: Discharges the weapon.
Click 2: Bolts the weapon.

You'll learn soon enough how to operate this to maximal efficacy. Typically when shooting any enemy you'll simply want to double click as quickly as possible to ensure you waste no time when those seconds count.

But manual bolting gives more advantages over simply increased speed. Indeed, it offers a greater melee capability, and more variety in choosing when to reload.

The bolting animation cannot be interrupted. So if you begin bolting your gun after a missed shot at close range as per automatic bolting, you will be defenseless for an entire second as your enemy runs you through with his bayonet. With manual bolting you can choose not to bolt and you'll get the upper hand on an enemy. Typically, in CQB 1v1 situations where you're at 5-10m I'd recommend hipfiring at the enemy and then going for the bayo without bolting. Just keep in mind how useful melee really is for riflemen.

In terms of reloading, you will know that opening the bolt will eject any cartridge whether it is spent or not. Manual bolting means that after firing you can choose not to bolt your gun and do a top-up reload without using a clip and not waste an unspent cartridge.

Auto-reloading is itself just bad because it takes discretion regarding safe times to reload away from the player. The reload animation can be interrupted by melee attacks or some types of movement, however. Use that when you need it.

NB: For other conditions relating to game setup I urge you to refer to my tweak guide. It gives lots of other info not specific to rifleman.

http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=605737373

In RO2 you only get two choices.

Mosin, or K98. They seem functionally very similar, but such a cursory examination ends as soon as you really observe these guns.

Real-world representations aside...

K98 gets the edge in CQB. Mosin takes the cake at range.

Here's an annotated stats representation to justify that.

Weight:
K98 - 3.7kg
Mosin - 4kg

The slightly lighter K98 really helps when you're sprinting in there to jump on the cap.

Bullet speed:
K98 - 756m/s
Mosin - 865m/s

Extra bullet speed makes sniping and hitting moving targets a tad easier, contributing to your long range advantage.

Ammo:
K98 - 8 clips
Mosin - 12 clips

More strippers are always nice. 12 for your barrel will make you blow for a lot longer.

Penetration:
K98 - 23.5
Mosin - 22.8

Mmm... Love me some penetration. This stat makes almost no difference however. Both guns will still kill people through wooden fences and window frames. This might potentially make a difference at very long ranges, but I don't think I have noticed one.

Reload time:
K98 - 4.63 seconds
Mosin - 5.02 seconds

A quicker reload will give you an edge close up. The difference is almost negligible however.

Bayonet length:
K98 - 10 inches
Mosin - 17 inches

Gun length:
K98: 43.6 inches
Mosin: 48.5 inches

So you get an extra stab range approximately equaling the size of a black man's member (otherwise known as 1 foot for you politically correct folks) on the Mosin. But it makes the K98 easier to handle indoors.

Time to bolt:
K98 - 0.91 seconds
Mosin - 0.95 seconds

Very small difference you will hardly notice. It appears to be a cause of glitches for the K98 as well. This is with minimum level character and minimum level gun, with manual bolting on.

Damage:
K98 - 115
Mosin - 115

Players have 100 points of health. I cannot tell you how the infantry damage model works, as it appears nobody knows. However, shots to vital zones (chest, thorax) always kill. Strangely, shots that clip a player's shoulder will kill immediately as well, indicating that shoulders are included in the thorax zone. Below the thorax in the abdomen zone in which there appears to be some sort of organ modelling happening. Players will usually die from hits to this region from rifles, but may enter bleedout stance. Hits to the nuts (symbolized by nutcracker in kill feed) always kill, but shots to the rest of the groin area do not.

If you have any info about the damage model please contact me on steam or drop a post to my TWI forum thread.

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=116421

OTHER FACTORS:

Keep in mind as well that once you level the K98 to 50, the sight hood gets taken off. Those open sights help aiming all round. Before that, the sights are similar in nature.

Hampering the K98, however, is a range of glitches that don't appear as common on the Mosin. At least in my experience.

For starters, the actual length of the reload animation of the K98 is shorter than the time it takes for the 'weapon loaded' message to appear. That means that if you do an action which cancels the reload animation even well after your soldier has visibly inserted the ammunition and closed the bolt... you're back to the start of it all without passing 'GO' and collecting $200. It took me a long time to actually get past this and get accustomed to waiting a split second longer than it looks like I should have to.

Then there is the glitch where your gun literally just disappears. As far as I can tell this mostly affects the sniper rifles, AT rifles, Mkb and K98. Whilst rare, you will die if it happens to you.

Next there's the one where your gun bullets will make impact with the terrain but not players, be they friendly or enemy. This has only happened to me with the Mkb, K98, and American LMG. This very rare glitch has happened once with the other guns I've mentioned, but several times with the K98.

And my favourite one that has happened to me a good 10 times or so. Occasionally when reloading the K98 from a totally empty mag, your soldier will unbolt 5 phantom cartridges from the gun as if he didn't already do that. After unbolting those phantom rounds he them puts the stripper clip in and proceeds as normal to reload the gun. This has only happened once with the Mosin.

This glitch is aggravated by shooting either bolt action very fast. So quick, in fact, that it bugs the bolting animation. The marginally quicker bolting on the K98 seems to cause this.

With that being said, I will always take rifleman hero and use the opposing team's weapon for the added confusion factor. It is especially helpful to take the K98 as ♥♥♥♥♥♥, because the Russian hero rifleman skin has this weird light-green bodysuit on, as opposed to the standard yellowish greatcoat the rest of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ have. This has lead to a lot of people second-guessing their shots or passing me up. Doesn't happen much, but it's there. Recently I had a guy shoulder his weapon about 5m away from me and watch me do the full bandage animation after shooting dead a German without choosing to kill me. (I of course shot him in the chest as soon as I was bandaged). The funny thing is that he wasn't even a newbie; he was level 77.

As said before on ranging choice... Sure, the Mosin is a huge gun and you can bayonet people 2m away from you, but the marginally quicker bolting and open sights confer some benefit to CQB with the K98.

Grab which one you like, and play rifleman hero if you can.

Many people might say that hero should be left for MG/E-assault as ♥♥♥♥♥♥, since they will want MG34s and Mkbs. And hero in the Germans for E-rifleman/Assault to grab those sweet SVTs and PPSh 41s. But honestly, just grab hero if you can get it.

Here’s the real kicker. So far I’ve been describing rifleman as some sort of ‘budget assault class’, which lacks the real clout of one. But this is something assault can’t do. You should never spawn at the back of the map.

Ever.

Just no.

Don’t do it.

It’s bad.

But your SL dies, so you gotta make the 200m trek to the frontline? Nope. Just quickly open up the class select menu, look at available squads, and choose rifleman in another squad. Repeat until you find an alive SL in a good position. BUT ALWAYS FINISH THIS BEFORE THE SPAWN COUNTER GOES TO 0. You never want to wait for two ticks of the spawn counter. That’s baaaaaaad, too.

This strategy alone is something I have never heard anybody talk about before. It makes a huge difference, and you need to be using it.

The American bolty is better than the ♥♥♥ bolties in every way, and the unlock of the 16 inch bayonet at level 50 cancels any benefit to the ♥♥♥♥ automatically posessing bayos from the get-go.

But... You will never use it.

The Garand destroys the boltguns so significantly that there's no contest. The only limiting factor is the absolute attrocity that is the ghost ring defacing the Garand's sights.

Between the ♥♥♥ bolts there's not much to differ, so take your pick on which you like the best. Some will vehemently defend one or the other, but it's up to you.

Banzai charging adds only to the effective mobility of the rifleman, and is useless to rely on for combat. Banzai improves damage resist and decreases stamina drain. Use it to get where you want to go quickly and don't stop the charge till you get into cover or you will default back to your normal stance. For example, getting shot in the foot while charging won't slow you down, but as soon as you stop you'll go back to being crippled.

Using the American bolty as ♥♥♥♥ is a yes, yes, yes! But as Americans it's of limited benefit to adopt Japanese weaponry. There's a huge confusion factor because nobody espects it, but it honestly is a bit dumb aside from the insult of killing ♥♥♥♥ with their own guns.

DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND, I WILL DO A STATS COMP. Not gonna drop one just yet so please refer to this doc.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SQPMAlwhBHviXXSYdcprcK2CcB4R9PuyXTooYtC2WSU/edit#gid=2

BOLT ACTION TIMINGS ARE AS-YET UNKNOWN FOR RS. Please contact me with relevant timings if you are aware. They are in the game's code but I don't know how to access them. The timings needed are for manual bolting, not automatic.

Some things to remember about comparing RS bolties is that the Japanese bolts have less muzzle flash, and they use the same flash as pistols, making them harder to spy from the flash when poking out of a bush or at distance.

Keep in mind that as a rifleman you have literally no responsibilites to your team.

TL/SL: has to call arty, force, smoke, and coordinate team.
MG: has to suppress enemies.
Assault: has no variability. Is always locked into CQB and can't be effective at range.
Marksman: Is always locked out of CQB because the hefty scope impairs close engagements.

Furthermore, many players have a mental list of targets which they consider priorities to kill when given the opportunity. Riflemen are usually rock bottom on this list.

Here's what mine looks like, in order from most important to least important to put a bullet into.

ANYONE LOOKING DIRECTLY AT ME OR SHOOTING ME
Anyone stationary that is an easy kill
MGs
SLs
Anyone with a hero skin (Hero players are usually going to be the best players on the enemy team so they are valuable to shoot in all circumstances. I often find that a lot of people do this to me and try to personally hunt me down)
E-Assault
Assault
TL
Engineer
E-Rifleman
Sniper
Rifleman
Anti-tank

In Rising Storm, Flamer jumps to the top of the list. If TL is calling in arty he jumps to the top of the list, since delaying enemy arty by a minute is worth your death. If Engineer is trying to satchel tank traps or kill your tank he jumps to the top of the list.

Furthermore, anybody who is sprinting while out of stamina also gets bumped up a lot, since they're an easy kill. People who have a potential to harm me are also considered much better targets. For example, if a rifleman and an assaulter were shooting at me from 120m I would kill the rifleman first, because at that range SMG bullets just tickle you if they hit you.

When other players tell you to consider targets of priority and opportunity they mean this. Although in a fast-paced game such as RO2 thought processes sometimes go out the window. This is something that happens even to me.

I often find myself shooting some guy with his back turned to me simply because he was the first person I brought up in my sights and was closest to me. Then his buddy on the other side of the room who is looking at me to begin with slowly and gracefully puts bullets into every orifice I posses. All that you can draw from this is simply that you need to consider your targets appropriately as a rifleman. And to be successful you will. With all the automatic guns you can just put a hail of lead down range and hope for the best. With a rifle you need some thought.

Playing rifleman will make you better at the game as a whole. Using the bolt actions will make you better with the god-guns like the Mkb and the BAR. When you start using the Mkb like a 30-shot Mosin that you have to double-tap on enemies to kill, and reserving the automatic setting for hipfire and close engagements, you will be higher on the scoreboard than Yung Lean on DMT. When you bring the hefty BAR to battle in its secondary firemode with the one-shot-one-kill mentality like it's a 20-round Garand you'll start a digital Japanese genocide.

You can be as crazy as you want. You are free-form and effective at all ranges in all gameplay styles.


Rifleman is a suicidal beast who can charge into the heart of enemy territory and gun down fools with precision like it’s nobody’s business. He has no remorse, no regrets, and is a more effective assaulter than the assault class in many circumstances. Just book it in there with nades and go quick. You are Speedy Gonzales, Sanic-incarnate, Usain Bolt with the bolty. Go hard and go fast because your deaths mean nothing and your conquests mean everything.

K98 wins close up.
Mosin wins long range.

AS ATTACKERS:
Use your mobility to run into the cap. Even better, you should be trying to get some cheeky flanking going on. If you can spawn kill the enemies and keep their bodies off the cap, do it. Pushing up for you is easy since you are mobile and your worthless life means nothing.

AS DEFENDERS:
Get on the cap point always. Even better, get an enfilade fire position from in front of the cap point to spawn kill the enemies.

ON GRENADES:
You're a rifleman so don't expect to live long. Your life expectancy is shorter than Corey Hart's music career. Throw those hot potato nades quickly and get moving. Some people might tell you to save them for when you hear an enemy downstairs or in the next room over from you. In reality, if you hear an enemy downstairs or in the next room you should charge in there and shoot him in the balls. Don't be a coward, because you are a rifleman. RIFLEMEN ARE NOT COWARDS.

SL QUICKSWITCHING:
Do it.

SNIPING:
Probably don't do it.