in Rainbow Six Siege.

Those of you who have been following my work for a while now will know that in the past,

I have branded the extended barrel as pointless.

But how have the recent changes to the damage drop-off modelling affected the extended barrel

and what about Ela's new shotgun, the FO-12?

There's only one way to find out!

Begin

The video will be divided into three parts

(timestamps in the comments section below): 1.

Part 1 will discuss the extended barrel function for rifles and SMGs,

plus some bugged drop-of curves I've uncovered.

Part 2 will discuss the extended barrel function for the shotgun

And part 3 will be an evaluation

Basically answering the question: should you use the extended barrel and if so, for which guns?

So let's start out by understanding how the extended barrel works.

The in-game description still claims that the EB provides "full damage over a longer

distance range" and as I demonstrated in my first video on this topic, this is incorrect.

The reality is that with the EB, damage drops off from exactly the same distance as without

it and the only difference is that the minimum damage is raised resulting in a flatter drop-off.

As you can see, max damage is not affected and we just have less drop-off with more power at distance.

And this is still how the EB works for most of the weapons after the recent update

as you can see from the table I put together here.

As always, if you are having trouble reading the numbers, you will find a link in the description

that will take you to an online spreadsheet that you can explore at your leisure.

This table covers the attacker weapons and apart from the R4-C and Para-308 which receive

a minor damage boost at close range against lvl 1 armour targets, all is as expected…

until we get to the defender weapons.

For Frost's 9mm C1, all is still good but that's where the consistency ends.

Caveira's M12 and the French GIGN P90 have no damage drop-off whatsoever once you attach the EB

Yep, max damage at all distances.

So the EB must make these guns super OP right?!

I would say, wait for the evaluation at the end.

Now while Jaeger's 416-C does experience a damage drop-off over the distances we would expect

to see but the EB also lowers max damage for his gun by almost 10%.

When it comes to the FBI's UMP45 all bets are off.

I tested the damage at point blank range, then 13, 18, 23, 28 & 40m and instead of following

the expected drop-off pattern, the damage was 5% higher at close range but then dropped down

radically to a minimum damage of 30.

Now given that the goal of bringing in a new damage drop-off model

was to add consistency to the game

It seem odd that the effect of the extended barrel should be so inconsistent for the defender weapons.

Some of it may even be by design, I don't know but whatever the case,

I've taken the liberty of reporting this as a bug to Ubisoft.

But now that we know how the EB works for the simple damage drop-off models of the rifles

and SMGs, it's time to get stuck into the interesting part of the video, testing Ela's

FO-12 shotgun.

As you can see here, the FO-12 deals its max damage of 35 points for each of the eight

pellets up to a range of around 6m and then the damage drops off to 24 points at 12m.

The damage plateaus here before dropping off again after 18m, reaching its minimum of 12

points by 21m distance.

Attaching the EB does pretty much what you would expect from it, it raises the mid-range

and long-range damage stats each by 5 points per pellet, with the only small inconsistency

appearing during that second drop-off range.

Here, I didn't see the nice smooth drop-off that I got for the gun without the EB but

instead, damage instantly dropped to 18 points per pellet before settling on the minimum

of 17 points.

But that small detail aside, I am quite happy with how consistent these numbers ended up

being and I am quite confident that the results are pretty accurate and dependable.

And now that we know how the extended barrel works for all of the weapons that can attach

it at all distances, it's time to evaluate these numbers to figure out whether or not

you should consider using the EB.

There are only two drawbacks to attaching the extended barrel.

It sticks out further so it can make you easier to spot when rounding a corner or hiding just

to the side of a door or window and you have the opportunity cost of missing out on one

of the other muzzle attachments that can improve your guns' recoil.

So the question we need to answer is: “does the damage benefit justify dealing with harsher

recoil and lower concealment?”

The damage benefit you get from the EB (as of the Blood Orchid update) ranges from a

mere 18% for the SMG-11 to up to 52% for the 416-C which sounds like a lot of variance

but if we calculate the required number of shots to kill, for each weapon

this become an awful lot simpler.

For almost all of the weapons, the number of shots to kill at the minimum damage range

is lowered by one and in the case of Ela's shotgun that difference is one pellet at mid-range

damage and three for long range.

Considering how nicely this has worked out, it makes me wonder if the way the EB works

for the M12 and P90 is maybe not actually a bug but by design.

The UMP45 on the other hand… that's still messed up.

The damage numbers I measured in my experiments mean that there is actually a range between

17 and 21m, depending on the armour of the opperator you are up against,

where the EB results in you needing one extra STK before needing the same and

then finally one less from 27m onwards.

That's stupid and nobody can tell me that that's working as intended.

Ok, so to summarise, with most of the guns, we need one less shot to kill.

That sounds decently useful, not OP but also not pointless, right?

But let's dig a little deeper here!

If we look at the ranges from which the additional damage starts giving you an actual benefit

for each of the guns, you can see that those ranges tend to be quite far out.

Against level 1 armour, the EB on the attacker rifles will not benefit you at all at ranges

below 29-32m.

And even for the defender weapons, the shortest range at which the EB results in one less

shot to kill is with the M12 at 21m and onwards.

If we calculate the STK benefits against level 2 & 3 armour we can see that the number will

usually be zero up to the 20-30m range and then “minus one” but can also on occasion

zero at all ranges or minus two.

The bottom line for rifles and SMGs is that since most of the combat takes place in doors,

you will rarely get to engage your target at distances where it will actually benefit

you and even if you do, all you can hope for in most cases is one less STK.

Does this justify missing out on the significant recoil and muzzle flash reduction you can

get from other attachments?

My general answer would still be no.

Sure, if you know that you will be spawn peeking or holding down a long corridor AND you are

using a gun that is controllable enough without a muzzle attachment, there could be an argument

for using the extended barrel.

But in most other cases, I do not think that the benefit of the EB is enough to make it worth using.

As before, the 9mm C1 is a special case here, since the gun does not have access to recoil

reducing muzzle attachments.

This removes the opportunity cost element from the equation and leaves the conclusion

that, as long as you are aware of the extra barrel length and how it can give away your

position, there is no reason not to opt for the extra damage at range.

But what about the Ela's FO-12?

This is the first shotgun that is capable of attaching an extended barrel and as we

can see in the STK table it can result in needing up to 3 less pellets on target to

achieve a kill against all three armour types.

In real life, a longer barrel on a shotgun would lead to a tighter spread pattern, which

would be really useful in Rainbow Six.

Sadly though, I compared the spread indicators in both cases and I can confirm that the EB

does not tighten up the pattern.

Now let's again dive a little deeper into analysing whether or not the damage boost

of the EB makes any difference for the FO-12.

With shotguns, their effectiveness is dictated by the number of pellets that can land on

target and as Prodigio Pete highlighted in one of his recent videos assessing the FO-12

and Six12, the way in which the 8 pellets are spread out in Rainbow Six is pretty random.

The pattern will always be different from shot to shot and there are only a couple of

rules that add at least some consistency.

Firstly, one of the pellets will always land precisely at your point of aim, so as long

as your aim is on target, you will always land at least that pellet.

The 7 remaining pellets will be spread out in a seemingly random pattern within the spread of your gun.

When hip firing, the spread indicator of the HUD will give you a perfect guide for this.

And finally, I believe there is one last rule that helps us understand the pellet pattern.

If we examine a screenshot form one of my past videos, it becomes clear that with enough

shots fired at the same spot, we end up with a donut ring pattern: many shots in the outer

half of the spread cone and distinctly fewer in the inner half.

So the summary is: one pellet in the centre and 7 patterned around the point of aim with

most of them landing in the outer half of your spread indicator.

If we use this knowledge and maybe an example test pattern we can assess how many

pellets are likely to hit at the distances at which the extended barrel will offer an

advantage and that is from 12-18m and then again from 20m onwards.

When hip firing the fact is that even at 12m distance, landing more than one or two pellets

on target is already fairly unlikely.

The FO-12 is most effective at ranges up to 6m, where you should reasonably be able to

expect a one shot kill and the maximum distance at which you can still reliably expect 2 pellets

to hit is around 10m.

Of course if you attach a laser or aim down sights, these distances are pushed out by a little bit further

and within these effective ranges the EB does offer a small damage advantage of up to 21%

but the more significant damage boost of 42% does not occur until ranges beyond 20m where

the FO-12 is simply not effective anymore.

The bottom line for the EB on the FO-12 is essentially the same as for the 9mm C1.

Attaching it is not going to make a world of difference but unless you want to run the

suppressor or you already know that you will be lurking in a spot of the map where the

additional length of the barrel might give away your position, there is no real reason

not to use the extended barrel, despite the fact that the benefits are rather insignificant.

Final conclusion, as in my previous video, I have to say that the EB for all guns will

only start to add a damage benefit at ranges that are fairly uncommon in a game where almost

all the combat occurs in doors.

Whenever you have the option of attaching a recoil reducing muzzle attachment, it is

almost always the better choice to take over the EB.

The EB only makes sense if you know that you will be guarding a long hallway or attempting

to snipe the opposition while still outside and only on guns where recoil is inherently manageable.

Apart from these very limited situations, my judgement of the EB remains as before.

It's pretty pointless.

If you have any questions or comments related to the EB, or if you have suggestions about

what I should test next, do go ahead and leave a comment below.

And with that, as always, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!