On comparing the Raider VS Piranha, one must not forget that the Raider can be weight glitched. Would think BSN would be all over this by now...
Piranha is still pretty light even with extra weight IIRC.
This. 120% with one Heavy Mod on most kits, I think. Plus, if someone drops out and another player joins mid-match and you've got the HVB and Omni-Blade on the Raider enjoy your 12 second cooldowns...
...but I still like the Raider more.
It's my Destroyer's side arm. I use him as a machinegun pillbox, but he wanted something small and cuddly as well.
Only if you are out of ammo for the Raider.
This. This is litterally the ONLY way a GI Piranha is better than a GI Raider. There's just no comparison whatsoever.
This. This is litterally the ONLY way a GI Piranha is better than a GI Raider. There's just no comparison whatsoever.
Hmmm .. i'm not sure on that. I understand the theoretical damage tables, but in game things are quite different.
Having used both many, many times, the GI/Piranha kills the bosses faster than the GI/Raider .. although it is close (and the only reason for that is when you squeeze extra shots out of the Raider clip)
Really, the question should be how do those 2 set-ups compare to the GI/Javelin and GI/Hurricane
Hmmm .. i'm not sure on that. I understand the theoretical damage tables, but in game things are quite different.
Having used both many, many times, the GI/Piranha kills the bosses faster than the GI/Raider .. although it is close (and the only reason for that is when you squeeze extra shots out of the Raider clip)
Really, the question should be how do those 2 set-ups compare to the GI/Javelin and GI/Hurricane
Can't see how a piranha would kill bosses faster than a raider, honestly. And I'm talking about the 2-shots raider. It has superior sustained DPS, and a helluvalot more burst DPS. It's a better gun, not much else to say.
GI hurricane reigns supreme among those setups you proposed and is only trumped by the GI talon, in my opinion. GI javelin is awesome and if used right has the potential to kill bosses even faster than the other setups, but it loses its edge against mooks of course.
What about on Platinum? It's one of my go to weapons for that difficulty.
On the GI, the GT or generally?
IMO it's still ridiculously powerful on the GI on Platinum. I mean, when I first started playing Plat, it was that, the Talon GI and the Flamer GT which were my go-to classes.
But I'm OK with using ridiculously powerful weapons on Platinum. I mean, it's not like you're bringing a Harrier TGI to Bronze or anything.
Just used it yesterday on my BatGuard, and I felt like megabeast running around playing reckless and taking down no names, all in the name of epeen. 
Also remembered why megabeast said it's not op if you take power only in passives, cause I mentioned to him I have a weakness for choosing all weapon dmg + at least up to headshot bonus in passives. He's a clever beast, alright, playing me like that.
a helluvalot more burst DPS
To be fair, burst DPS shouldn't really be used when talking about the Raider, it essentially fires a single double-shot, if you get what I mean. It only makes sense when you can fire for any significant length of time. Shuriken would have better burst DPS than Saber if you had to reload it after every burst. 
How come my GI Piranha can one clip a Banshee's armor.. but my GI Raider can't? How does that mean the Raider is a better boss killer? It maybe a better Atlas/Crab/Scion killer.. but on thinner targets, Piranha is better.
... I sincerely hope you're kidding 
To be fair, burst DPS shouldn't really be used when talking about the Raider, it essentially fires a single double-shot, if you get what I mean. It only makes sense when you can fire for any significant length of time. Shuriken would have better burst DPS than Saber if you had to reload it after every burst.
Silly as it might seem, burst DPS is a meaningful stat when we're talking about the Raider. You see, it would be completely meaningful for one-shot weapons too - if it wasn't mathematically impossible to compute. You just have to give it the meaning it has, and nothing more. You go around a corner and find an atlas down to armor being shot at by all the team: you fire - how much damage are you able to squeeze in that small time frame? Burst DPS is a better answer than sustained DPS, and the Raider having a helluva lot more burst DPS than the Piranha means that in that situation the Raider is capable of squeezing a helluva lot more damage in
That said, burst damage would be a much better stat to reason with. At least it doesn't have any problem with one-shot weapons. And even if you go by that stat, a Raider has a helluva lot more burst damage than a Piranha.
Thunderdome!!!!!
Edit - 100 posts. w00t!!!!
Thunderdome!!!!!
Edit - 100 posts. w00t!!!!
Get out of here n00b!!!!!
Can't see how a piranha would kill bosses faster than a raider, honestly. And I'm talking about the 2-shots raider. It has superior sustained DPS, and a helluvalot more burst DPS. It's a better gun, not much else to say.
GI hurricane reigns supreme among those setups you proposed and is only trumped by the GI talon, in my opinion. GI javelin is awesome and if used right has the potential to kill bosses even faster than the other setups, but it loses its edge against mooks of course.
Could be one of those differences between PC and console versions. There are more of those than people talk about ...
Mega is right, GI/Piranha can one clip the armor of a Gold Banshee fairly reliably (assuming the correct build and consumables obv), but GI/Raider typically does not.
Also, theoretically the Piranha can outperform the Hurricane, assuming you can control the recoil and quick switch on targets (which isn't really feasable). In reality the Hurricane is better for mook killing, the Piranha better for bosses. Again, this is just my personal experience in game with these two .. not counting the damage tables (I am aware the Hurricane on paper should be better)
I will say the GI/Javelin seems to be the wild card in this. I have a good player on my FL (pretty sure he is not a BSNer) who uses the GI/Javelin regularly (Warp IV, sniper amp III and Sniper gear), and I have seen him one shot Gold Banshee armor from full (I had just finished removing the barriers when I heard the 'thoom' noise, watched all the Banshee armor bars flicker .. then gone .. nice headshot!)
As far as the GI/Talon goes, it is beastly .. but even moreso on PC, AFAICT.
My asari vanguard and Valkyrie score more headshots with Piranha than most other kits with sniper rifles.
Like Mel puts it... you're never looking at the shotgun the same way again once you've seen what the asari can do with it.
Silly as it might seem, burst DPS is a meaningful stat when we're talking about the Raider. You see, it would be completely meaningful for one-shot weapons too - if it wasn't mathematically impossible to compute. You just have to give it the meaning it has, and nothing more. You go around a corner and find an atlas down to armor being shot at by all the team: you fire - how much damage are you able to squeeze in that small time frame? Burst DPS is a better answer than sustained DPS, and the Raider having a helluva lot more burst DPS than the Piranha means that in that situation the Raider is capable of squeezing a helluva lot more damage in
I think you're grasping at straws here. There are so many variables at play: damage-per-shot, how many shots can you get in, how fast is that Atlas going down without you... those things matter much more than BDSP. Even if it's "a better answer" than SDPS, it's still the wrong stat to look at.
If you double Raider's ROF, you're obviously doubling its BDPS, but it's only a 23% increase to its SDPS. Do you really think doubling the BDPS would have any significant benefit beyond the increase in SDPS in that Atlas situation? In a corner case it might give you the kill instead of a teammate, but you really care about such things?
Sure, BDPS may be a meaningful stat in that it does indeed contain some information, but it's not a practical or useful stat for Raider. In fact, it's only truly practical or useful for weapons that deal their damage in smaller chunks, have numerous shots per clip (5+) and take several seconds at least to empty their clips. For weapons like BW, Wraith, Valiant, Crusader and especially Raider burst DPS is just not an interesting stat. Why "especially"? Because when a divisor gets close to zero (it takes 0.3 seconds to empty the clip), the result becomes uncontrollably large. You know that.
Also, the fact that calculating BDPS for single-shot weapons involves a division by zero should already tell you that it's indeed completely, absolutely meaningless stat for them, there's no "it would be if". Look at other stats instead, like damage per shot or effective ROF, those are the things that matter.
To Deerber and Aedolon: Neither burst nor sustained DPS is really a truly accurate picture. This is because burst ignores the time length of the burst, as Aedolon states. However, sustained is also useless if the enemy dies in a burst.
The best way is as follows: 
These damage numbers are for a typical GI build, with AP against armor. Best case scenario for the Raider is an enemy around 6000, which it will kill about .75 seconds faster. Best case for the Piranha is an enemy around 7500, which it will kill about .5 seconds faster. As you continue up to the big boss numbers (eg 20000 ish) the Raider begins to pull ahead by more as its superior DPS comes into play. However, they remain close enough that there are damage numbers the Piranha will hit first all the way up to 44700 damage, though the Raider is generally ahead here.
Just a function I was trying to add to my calculator, figured it would be useful here.
Nice graphs there, Tybo! May I ask which program you used to create them?
Note that I wasn't arguing that Piranha is better than Raider or that SDPS is always a superior stat to BDPS - just what I said a couple posts ago: burst DPS shouldn't really be used when talking about the Raider. At least not as an argument to show its superiority.
I couldnt give a flying fortress which is statistically better, as a mostly off-host player, the triple shot raider has completely replaced anything I once used the piranha on.
plus, the raider has a more satisfying sound, almost a crunch
Nice graphs there, Tybo! May I ask which program you used to create them?
Note that I wasn't arguing that Piranha is better than Raider or that SDPS is always a superior stat to BDPS - just what I said a couple posts ago: burst DPS shouldn't really be used when talking about the Raider. At least not as an argument to show its superiority.
What's the pellet spread on one weapon versus the other? Could be a factor on enemies with high health pools but small cross sections, IE Banshees, Primes?
Also is the Banshee hit box larger when ranged?
So someone hooked the Raider and Piranha up to an oscilloscope or something?
Silly as it might seem, burst DPS is a meaningful stat when we're talking about the Raider. You see, it would be completely meaningful for one-shot weapons too - if it wasn't mathematically impossible to compute. You just have to give it the meaning it has, and nothing more. You go around a corner and find an atlas down to armor being shot at by all the team: you fire - how much damage are you able to squeeze in that small time frame? Burst DPS is a better answer than sustained DPS, and the Raider having a helluva lot more burst DPS than the Piranha means that in that situation the Raider is capable of squeezing a helluva lot more damage in
Deerber, why didn't you just say epeen points instead of making me read all that effort to beat around the bush about it. 
Deerber, why didn't you just say epeen points instead of making me read all that effort to beat around the bush about it.
I couldnt give a flying fortress which is statistically better, as a mostly off-host player, the triple shot raider has completely replaced anything I once used the piranha on.
plus, the raider has a more satisfying sound, almost a crunch
I freaking hate that NES game (thanks, dad >_<). But just want to say, number crunching and weapons comparisons greatly interest me on this site. And some of the things brought up do not disappoint. Thanks, Tybo!
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