Flinch, we all know what it is and we have all been on the receiving end of how frustrating it is. Flinch is a necessary mechanic of the game to combat scouts, pulses and more importantly, snipers. However its making the game less competitive, more based on RNG and above all making certain gun archetypes reign supreme. Which archetypes you ask? Doctrine of passing for autos Grasp of malok/ Clever dragon for pulses. Most people know that these gun archetypes are good, but most people dont realize why they are good. Flinch. Plain and simple the reason that these guns are good is flinch. Both guns are the best in class and they have the same thing in common, they are both the highest RoF/lowest damage for both. The reason these guns are reigning supreme isnt because you can make good skillful shots on the opponent its because they cause so much flinch on the opponent that if you get the first few shots off (with the pulses) its impossible for the opponent to do anything about. Flinch was recently buffed due to a high number of people on the forums complaining that it was a "broken mechanic". Many people said that it was easily "exploitable" due to the fact that it was predictable. However, this logic is flawed. The fact that it was a predictable thing meant that players who had little experience with the game couldn't take advantage of the patterns and learn to adjust their shots accordingly, and vice versa players that had become accustomed to the patterns could. To boil the argument down people were basically saying that if you knew how to predict the mechanic that it was broken. Even Call of duty has recoil and flinch patterns. some of which are easier to maintain than others. My point is that the difference between a good and bad player should be their ability to land precision shots on their opponent in a heated battle in a game that is a mix of an arena shooter and a loadout shooter. Not the ability to "outflinch' your opponent, which by the way takes little to no input on the giving end of the flinch. Most of the time the fight goes something like this: Player 1: Player 2: p1 shoots at p2 and lands the first burst on the head. p2 turns to shoot back and is robbed of an accurate shot due to the second burst hitting their head again and causing them to flinch, they take another burst to the head. repeat until player 2 is dead. Im not saying flinch is totally broken and im also not saying i want it out. I am saying i want it fixed. I feel the following guidelines would solve some of the problems with flinch. Mission statement---: Flinch is a mechanic intended to allow players to safely engage other players who have a target lock on them from a considerable distance. Flinch IS NOT intended to help a player succeed in anything closer than long range combat. This promotes players playing in an aggressive playstyle to help the game move quickly and smoothly. Changes: High ROF/Low impact guns in the auto rifle/ pulse rifle/ and scout rifle classes have their flinch lowered to be significantly less than guns in the same category with higher impact and lower ROF. for example: in pulse rifle classes the highest to lowest flich archetypes would be - Spare change .25 archetype, hopscotch pilgrim/red death, Hawksaw/bad juju/ suros pdx, grasp of malok/ The clever dragon. It doesnt make sense for guns with different damage values to all output the same amount of flinch. As the meta sits there is almost no reason to use the spare change .25 archetype due to the fact that the one shot you might get off will not hit accurately due to being flinched by the clever dragon/grasp of malok archetype. you could argue that guns with higher damage should equal less effort due to less trigger pulls and less times needed to aim, but all of that goes out of the window when your 2 shots that need to count almost never do because of the bullet hose style pulses and autos that exist. Imagine a meta where you would be forced to find a happy middle ground where low impact pulses and autos were countered by quick snipers. and where High impact pulses could counter snipers with heavy flinch. Of course there would need to be extensive testing to get some actual hard data, but as it sits its a glaring issue that high ROF guns will dominate in almost every gun class due to their ability to flinch. I appreciate any input people may have. Edit: Thanks for all the input guys, ive never had a thread get this much response lol thanks guys!