BR5 Feedback: The 9 Rifleman + Select-Fire Rifle Meta(edited)

Suggestions Weapons
1

Hello everyone!
I’ve been playing Enlisted since 2021, and I’ve experienced almost every major meta the game has had: the 9 Riflemen + gas grenade era, impact grenades, grenade launchers, and now the current 9 Riflemen with select-fire rifles while rotating 3 squads.

In my opinion, this meta is turning BR5 into a mode that’s mostly about spamming infantry and constantly cycling squads for both teams. Even many veteran players have stopped using other classes because Rifleman is simply the strongest and most efficient choice. I think this has become one of BR5’s biggest balance problems.

Suggestion 1: Remove Select-Fire Rifles from Riflemen
Riflemen should no longer be able to equip select-fire rifles, such as:
FG 42,AVS-36,T20,Type Hei Automatic
Yes, this would reduce their firepower, but a Rifleman squad still has 9 soldiers, so I think the trade-off is fair.

Suggestion 2: Reduce Rifleman Squads from 9 to 7 Soldier
Another option is to reduce Rifleman squads to 7 soldiers, matching most other infantry squads.
This would directly reduce the effectiveness of the current strategy where players rotate three 9-man Rifleman squads nonstop. If you’ve played BR5 for a while, you’ve probably seen—or even used—this tactic yourself.
It’s frustrating for both sides:
Attackers overwhelm objectives through sheer numbers.
Defenders have unlimited respawn tickets, making endless 9-man infantry rotations extremely difficult to deal with and turning matches into pure infantry spam.

Suggestion 3: Nerf Select-Fire Rifles by Removing Recoil Control
I think this is the simplest and most effective solution.
Instead of removing the weapons entirely, remove or significantly reduce their recoil control. These rifles should be much harder to control in full-auto, preventing players from spraying with unrealistically high accuracy.
That way, 9 Riflemen would still be a viable option, but it would become a situational tactical choice instead of the default meta for BR5.

Final Thoughts
This is just my opinion on the current BR5 meta. Ironically, I use this strategy too, but that’s exactly why I think it’s unhealthy—most other classes have been pushed into secondary roles while Rifleman dominates almost every match.
I’d love to hear your thoughts:
Do you think the 9 Rifleman meta is too strong?
Which of these suggestions do you agree with?
Do you have a better balancing idea?
Let’s discuss it in the comments. Thanks for reading!
P.S. If anyone doubts that I’ve been playing since 2021, I’ll attach my in-game profile below.

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  • Suggestion 1: Remove Select-Fire Rifles from Riflemen
  • Suggestion 2: Reduce Rifleman Squads from 9 to 7 Soldier
  • Suggestion 3: Nerf Select-Fire Rifles by Removing Recoil Control
  • This is BR5 so No
0 voters
2 Likes
2

9 men rifleman squads are actually fine and balanced below BR 5 as you are sacrificing a good amount of automatic weapons for more numbers in your squad basically. Now, this suddenly doesn’t apply on BR 5 due to the fact that every rifleman can running around with top tier fully automatic meta weapon that is SF rifles. I think nerf SF rifles altogether alone will fix this problem albeit not entirely ofc.

11 Likes
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Here’s my take on the various ideas:

If anything, SF-rifles should perhaps only exist for Riflemen…?

I’m not seriously arguing for this, but Riflemen are already a very bland class with no unique features. Why turn every other specialist into just a better Rifleman…? Seems silly to me, what’s the reason for even bringing one if that’s the case…? Just… cycle AT squads instead, they can do the same thing AND take out tanks… or Engineer squads for that matter…

A overhanded response… SF-rifle META is only an issue in BR V, this would cripple the Rifleman squad in all other BRs, where Assaulters and MG gunners already reign supreme…

This is essentially what was going to happen before, and it was clearly unpopular. Now, I think it’s entierly fair for SF rifles to have the same recoil per shot as semi-auto rifles do, but I am in the minority.

Personally, I quite like @Valkay’s take on how a nerf should be performed:

1 Like
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The craziest thing about SFRs is that the concept itself was proven to be unviable in WW2.

The Soviets started the war with AVS and AVT, but both were quite quickly either phased out or converted back to SLRs.

The Americans realized that Automatic Garand is not feasible and cancelled the project.

The Germans never really tried something like G43 with full rifle cartridge in auto mode at all (FG-42 being a whole different specialized paratrooper universal weapon).

Japan couldn’t even adopt a reliable SLR (Autohei is origami).

It was clear that the battle rifle form factor just can’t handle the rifle cartridge with any sort of recoil control, reliability or maintenance.

Meanwhile, in Enlisted SFRs are the BR5 go-to proto-AK weapons and the bane of anyone who dares to equip a G43/SVT-40 on BR4 as well.

I think:

  • SFRs should have been scarce, only available to Automatic Rifleman class (e.g. 1 per squad)
  • SFRs should have been realistically difficult to control, so that a player would actually have to choose between the precision of SVT-40 or the full auto of AVT-40 and they both would have pros and cons
  • SFRs should have been made difficult to use and placed on about BR3-4 with BAR level of power instead of being the endgame M-16

IMG_3162

3 Likes
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Completely removing recoil control would make them so horrible oh god and the other 2 arent even changing anything about the gun itself just making the squad completely worthless in either br 1-4 or 5

6

SF rifles shouldnt go on riflemen.

7

My flamethrower loves how many of you are on point ready to be crispered.
I don’t run a rifle squad and I think they’re decently counterable.
It’s annoying yeah and good luck to anyone stuck in BR IV but I don’t think it’s untenable.

If we need to nerf it then maybe make the AI only use Semi-Auto mode on them? Suddenly way less damage going out and now you can tell who the player is.

Give the BR IV and BR V rifles their grenade attachment variants and now we have the counter to them, Good ol’ AoE

8

Think they should be for the TT paratrooper squads

9

So then rifleman would be useless/significantly weaker on all brs?

10

Stop trying to dumb down BRV.

This is literally making an entire squad type useless in a certain BR… what? G-43s, SVT, Garand and type 4s against automatic weapons?

However that’s exactly what you want… all these “meta” changes serve to do is push an entirely different “meta”

11

There should be a Suggestion 4: Bring up other weapon types and squads to match BR 5 Rifleman w/ Select-Fire strength.

This can be done in a few different ways, and any sort of issue that could result from it is a problem that likely needed addressing anyways.

Would BR 4 be much weaker in comparison? Yes, but it’s already pretty weak for the most part (except BR 4 Germany event and Premiums). Either adjust the strength of BR 4 (since it’s essentially BR 3.25 right now, especially in the rifle department), or decompress a-la War Thunder to make a BR 5 and BR 6.

Any sort of issues people have with the current BR 5 combat pace/speed would be resolved by -0/+0 matchmaking, and them sticking with the resulting BR 4 or 5 from this thought experiment (One BR below the top BR).

3 Likes
12

Bro, I’m talking about the Rifleman class specifically.

Engineers, AT soldiers, and many other classes would still be able to use select-fire rifles, right? My point is the current 9-man Rifleman rotation meta—not SFRs themselves.

Here’s a hypothetical example: if this change were implemented, would people still bring 9-man G43, SVT, Garand, or Type 4 Rifleman squads into BR5? Probably not(or yes), and that’s exactly my point.

I want 9-man Riflemen to be a situational choice based on the battlefield, not the default squad that every competitive BR5 player feels forced to run.

And yes, players will always create a new meta—that’s inevitable. But that’s a discussion for the future. Right now, we’re talking about this meta. atw thanks you for reading my post i would like to hear your thought farther about your perspective and suggestions regarding this matter. Or you can leave a vote so everyone knows.

13

Nah this would only make the alredy massive skill gap between average sniper enjoyer from average sweat even bigger

7 man will make bots easier to hide and 2 lifes stilk not that so much of a problem

Btw gotta remind you that flammetrowers can have 8 soldiers so anyone would just switch to flammetropers and fill slots with SF

Nerfing recoil? That will mske sf harder to use and well Xd eventually sweats will get used to and this was alredy done once and ppl dislike it

Remove SF? yoo wtf XD?

if we follow that logic i could give SF to any other class as you said and spam SF on enggi squads and assulters with SF (dispite having less numbers sf on assulters will be fucking worse i mean they can go even more cracked than riffleman since they got more perks + do you know the existence of federov avtomat?

Ts is a SF on smg slot

1 Like
14

I’m actually fine with it the way it is. I pretty much play all my nine man rifle squads with the SF rifles in BR5, but since just about everyone does as well I don’t think there is an advantage or disadvantage. I don’t know how most everyone else sets up their squad BR lineups, but my BR1-2 are almost entirely assaulter SMG squads, BR3 is mainly MG squads and BR5 are my rifle squads. I mainly like to play BR1-BR3 and on occasion play BR5.

I would be more happy if BR4 and BR5 were separated. If they were, I would probably build more BR4 squads and use some of my nine man rifle squads there. I enjoy the BR4 Semi auto’s better, but don’t really use them since I would end up playing in BR 5 and they are overpowered in BR5.

1 Like
15

Yeah… removing their ability to use the automatic rifles would make them completely irrelevant in 5… all in the effort of making other classes more desirable?

??? Which is a problem because they all use auto rifles… your suggestions also involve making them more difficult to use which would negatively impact engineers - BIG NO.

And? You want to make the entire class useless in 5? No… nobody would be running rifleman… and to act like 2 extra dudes are that big of a problem or benefit is irrational.

You don’t have to do anything. I have a friend who refused to use rifleman because they are boring and would rather have high cap mgs and assault rifles… and why AR i don’t know… but they have become greatly improved since they buffed their dispersion… but yes are outshadowed by a complete squad of auto rifles… i don’t think that matters… you can use what you want… you aren’t forced to run anything… plenty of people run off meta classes and can still do damage.

What? So you can nerf the next high performing thing in the BR that’s main focus is that?

I have none. I think it’s fine where it is, if you don’t like it don’t use it… i personally think if you HAVE to rely on 3x rifleman cycle todo well in 5 then you are a sub par player and can’t do well without it… i think i would know as im in that bracket… i dont enjoy having only 4 or 3 dudes to be the main heavy hitters of the squad… in 5 that limit is broken and you can have a whole squad of good weapons with perks not specialized to building, reloading etc.

If anything buff the other weapons… remove the movement dispersion from mgs… he’ll even allow you to equip the high tier weapons on any class and yes that means 7x federov, hyde etc… and why would that be so bad? You can already have 7x Auto rifles which are soooo good apparently… so why can’t we have 7x AR that suck soooo much… but tbh 7x mg might get out of hand.

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Its either everyone else being underpowered or just riflemen. By your definition.

17

Reduce damage of all SFRs to 13.2, like machine guns.

1 Like
18

Make a TT para squad, and give select fires to them. The power of the guns are already balanced around paras on the premium side, just keep them para weapons and give rifles new semi autos that are good enough to justifies the 9 man size.

FG42 already have para in the game.

That way the balance of select fire is as is currently with paras at lower BRs, you either get 6 strong fighters right away or you wait for the para drop for more weapon options.

Like lets be honest, the only reason this is not done is because it would eat the the soviet premium para’s lunch, just give them a new OP gun and still keep the weapons swappable or something.

Like I don’t even understand why this is a problem from a business standpoint, it makes ALL the other BR5 premium paras more attractive. That is more money for snail.

19

Not like the soviets already have the top tier SFs and ARs.