[quote]But at longer range where damage drop off starts for hand cannons sidearms kill faster because they have less damage drop off.[/quote] Not exclusively though... granted with wide disparity in player skill that may be the case. They still have to be able to hit you consistently enough at the range in question to keep up with the output of the HC they face. Particular stats of the weapon can make a difference too (not all lower ranged models are the lowest impact model). Things can get a bit dicey beyond a player's comfortable range to target when spamming the trigger...who paces better and does a better job of aiming may be what ultimately determines the victor. Range/RF doesn't really extend the end of the fall-off curve, but more dramatically shifts it at the front end. They still floor at roughly the same end point with/without all the range perks. Sidearms only get about 5 or 6 meters of wiggle room at that front end, while HC's get around 12 or so. Even though HC's dig deeper at the end of their curve, since sidearms floor a lot closer in than HC's do it may not take a whole lot of range to bring a lower ranged hand cannon back up to par with a sidearm's falloff rate at that same distance. Depending on impact/RoF, it may only take a range stat of about 34 to sort of balance it out. For a 20/25 base range stat model, Hammer Forged pretty much fits that bill. Potentially allowing the gun that fires half as slow to hit for roughly twice the damage per shot. In such a setup, skill can become a factor again. Basically what I am saying, it isn't a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. When opposing players weapon stats are such that the potential DPS of the weapons are basically matched, anything can happen. Regardless of the math involved, range can simply be your best friend when it comes to dealing with Sidearms. Get far enough out, and it starts requiring them to unload a lot more ammo to kill you...potentially pushing their TTK beyond the 1 second mark. It would appear that distance isn't too far past the 30 meter mark were one can expect sidearms are hitting that 50% floor (keep in mind that is not an unreasonable range to still use a handgun either, regardless of caliber--a Honda Accord is about 4.9m in length, so talking the distance of 5 or 6 cars at a stoplight). Even if they managed to pull off 100% full crits at that range, it could take up to 7 hits for the kill when fall-off is capped. That is a potential theoretical TTK of about 1.05 seconds for the 0.60 TTK models if they pull 100% accuracy to the head. The big question then becomes, can the challenger's weapon of choice out-perform such a weapon at that range? If it is a strong enough HC set up with enough range, yes it may still pull out the win...depending on the skill gap between the players.