Throughout my 991 hours of playtime holy shit get a life I’ve seen many divers using the HMG at the lowest firerate possible, sometimes at 600RPM when just picking it up from a corpse or something, but people using it at 750RPM has been a VERY rare occurrency, at least as far as I could tell when I wasn’t busy surviving.
Obviously if you pick it up because you have no other option you’re going to go for the less uncomfortable setting, and if you’re trying to shoot down a gunship you won’t go Rambo with it, but other than such edge cases…
… what gives?
Why would you choose the ohfuckohshitohfuck stratagem and not use the ohfuckohshitohfuck setting when five hulks are chasing you (A.K.A. the ohfuckohshitohfuck situation)?
As far as I can tell THE appeal of the HMG is its insane DPS.
I like to think it’s a holdover from when the hmg had less ammo. Lots of folks liked to treat it like a marksman rifle. I remember at least one youtube channels that had a ‘tip’ to slow down the firerate.
Personally, for all the mgs, I always sit at the middle speed for engagements, and bump it up if enemies start to get too close. The accuracy you get from less recoil is good for longer ranges. Except for stalwart, that one’s always at max speed, it’s just too fun :)