Should I use a foregrip BF3, Battlefield 3 gun mechanics and its too difficult to get unlocks

Thoughts from end of July/early August.
If you are looking for a definitive yes/no on the foregrip here it is: Use it on the AEK but none of the other popular assault rifles. That is basically it. If you run it on your M16 or M416 you are making yourself less effective as they lack horizontal recoil and the foregrip adds spread.

Update for June Patch / DLC. Some quick patch note comments.
Reduced the inaccuracy added when in suppression. There is still an enhanced suppression compared to the initial state in the game, but the effect is now less than it was in the last patch

• Slightly decreased the foregrip aimed accuracy penalty on the M4A1 to bring it in line with other guns.
• Slightly increased the foregrip aimed accuracy penalty on the SCAR-H to bring it in line with other guns.

I was not aware of specific “buggy” numbers so these changes are interesting. This means that currently (before the june patch / DLC) foregrips may have been useful on the SACR-H and M4A1!

• F2000 foregrip accuracy penalty reduced and recoil reduction bonus increased.
• AEK971 foregrip recoil reduction bonus increased.
• SG553 foregrip recoil reduction bonus increased.
• FAMAS foregrip recoil reduction bonus increased.

Pre-patch the AEK is the only assault weapon possibly worth using the foregrip on. I feel that these changes will make the AEK good with the foregrip, rather than just sitting the fence. Keeping in mind the foregrip mechanics of -horizontal recoil +spread, the other weapons listed above will still be less than spectacular. This is conjecture at this point as the patch is not yet available, however based on the fact that the current FAMAS/F2000 +spread is much larger than the recoil reduction, it is probably safe to assume that the reduction buff will not be large enough to offset this. However for the FAMAS it hinges on..

• Reduced some of the vertical recoil and zoomed accuracy penalties added to the FAMAS in the previous update.

Depending on this change, the foregrip may become useful on the FAMAS once more.

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Sir_Redrum writes… Sorry I did not note the post on Whirlpool.

Seems like you need close to 100 kills with a weapon before you have enough decent attachments to become a little bit more competitive.

No. I run AEK with bipod (just to fill the slot, not because I use it often), iron sights and flash suppressor. Flash suppressor could be replaced with heavy barrel or a silencer without many issues. You unlock heavy barrel at a whopping 20 kills. My basic setup would be working happily after 20 kills, as I mentioned before the bipod is not required and I only take it because I can, it is occasionally useful. So 20-40 kills if you want a sight.

If you hate ironsights and would rather run a scope you get a low zoom very early and either the US/RU red dot depending on the gun shortly after. If you need a very specific sight to perform well I look at how you play and why it works and see if you can translate this to other sights.

Before the patch I would have said that 100ish is correct because foregrip was pro and comes later.

Which leads to an important question: Should I use the foregrip after the most recent Battlefield 3 patch?

To which would be a resounding no. At least for assault and engineer weapons. You should also learn how to aim and fix the Battlefield 3 mouse acceleration.

Sure there are other sites that will give you numbers and back these up with statistics up with spread and recoil. They will then go to say it could be beneficial to use a foregrip on a few weapons – offset with other attachments. They will then leave selection in the readers court. By not forcing a view on readers I assume the authors of these articles are trying to be PC, or at the very least covering their asses in case their math is wrong, or that the trade offs leave the gun similar to the unmodified version.

Foregrip Before the Patch

Before the last patch the foregrip had a global flat horizontal recoil percentage reduction. This was good because for some guns it removed a good % of nothing recoil and for others it removed a good percentage of a lot, but not all recoil. The answer to should I use a foregrip was easy. The answer was yes unless you wanted to run a bipod on an LMG, but even then the global reduction was quite good and probably worth using over a bipod. Plus before the patch the bipod was not quite as useful as it is now. The pre-patch foregrip turned some of the weapons into freaking laser beams, and made me question if Dice had implemented their.. vision, for lack of a better word, correctly. At the time I did not know that the foregrip was a global reduction, just that it was awesome and that you should use it!

Why is a flat global reduction bad? Because some of the weapons were balanced to be used without a foregrip – adding one reduced the horizontal recoil to the point it was non-existent. For others it decreased it enough that the weapon became usable.

The Foregrip after the patch

Now the foregrip applys a different amount of horizontal recoil adjustment based on the weapon it is used on. This number is still decent across the board and if it were the only change then it would probably still be the go-to attachment for its slot, but only because there is little choice here.

The biggest problem with the foregrip and why you should not use it is because it adds spread.

Battlefield 3 gun mechanics 101 and the foregrip

A quick recap on gun mechanics. Till now I have mentioned recoil only. This is easy. You shoot and the weapon kicks. Easy to understand and in game it is easy to see how to control it – if you are spraying you simply aim down slightly to bring the weapon back to where you want it. Bit of interesting info: the first shot kicks more than the consecutive shots, but the first shot goes where you aim it unless the item is heavily affected by spread. This first bullet kick makes bursting less good than other ADS titles.

The second mechanic is spread. This is a completely random addition on top of recoil. Your first shot will go where you point it, provided the weapon does not have an assload of spread. If you are suppressed you receive additional recoil and spread. If you have a high amount of spread the first bullet does not go where you want it! It might appear to leave the gun at a very alarming angle, not at all out the front of the barrel.

Back to the Foregrip after the patch

So should you use it? No, not really. It adds a random, completely uncontrollable aspect to your weapon. Some players say to use a heavy barrel with a foregrip. Ok? The heavy barrel reduces spread when aiming down the sights but adds vertical recoil. The foregrip removes horizontal recoil and adds spread. The heavy barrel does not balance out a foregrip. True one removes spread and the other adds it – cancelling each other out? At the same time one reduces horizontal recoil and the other adds vertical recoil. No cancelling there at all. This is ignoring the other unrelated benefits of heavy barrel.

You should not use the foregrip because it adds randomness to every shot you fire. At least with the heavy barrel you can be selective and only ADS, knowing the hip firing incurs a penalty. The foregrip on the other hand always has a penalty.

To top it off each weapon has a different reduction from the foregrip. The popular M16A3 receives very little in the way of benefit from it while the AEK-971, FAMAS and F2000 receive more. But even here the weapons are all over the place and receive different reductions and just because a weapons sprays more does not guarantee that the foregrip will do anything useful.

So in short – don’t add uncontrollable randomness to your weapons. Learn how to control them instead.