Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29781728-20170619004414

Alright, so I know a lot of people have been debating on whether to use the Minigun or M249 against Chronos. They're both great choices, let's get that out of the way, but let's look at it from a purely theoretical standpoint.

For this test, we are going for a completely optimal standpoint in total damage. The M249 user is bringing the Bulldozer, which grants it two extra clips. The Minigun user is bringing the Bulldozer - one extra clip.

The total damage of the two guns:

M249: 95 * (55 * 4) = 20900 total damage, dealt over ~27 (time to shoot bullets) + 5 * 3 (RELOAD TIME) seconds - 42 seconds to deal 20900 damage, so ~500 DPS.

Minigun: 65 * (150 * 3) = 29250 total damage, dealt over 18 (time to shoot bullets) + 5 * 2 (reload) + 1.5 * 5 (basically minimum amount of times you'll have to rev up) so ~36 seconds to deal 29250 damage -  812.5 DPS. This is with minimum rev-up time, but as you can see even if you rev up a couple more times the Minigun's DPS will still outperform the M249's.

However, the M249 is refillable. Thus, you technically have an infinite damage output of 500 DPS. This means it will take 900 seconds (15 minutes) to take down Chronos if he is AFK and you just shoot him. If you have five M249 users, this drops down to three minutes. If you have eight, this drops down to under a minute.

But Chronos has a heal ability, which means this time is extended - the most important thing to do against Chronos is to win in the least amount of time (this applies to ANY boss)m, this reduces your chances of losing survivors, getting unlucky, etc.

The Minigun against Chronos cannot kill him alone, obviously, but when you have five Minigun users, this knocks your time down of killing Chronos to under two minutes. Add on other survivors, and this will probably go down to under a minute with just five Minigun users. The same goes for the M249, but you have to note that with five M249 users, the time is still three minutes. Three minutes for Chronos to kill a couple M249 users, other survivors, blow up your ammo boxes so you can't refill, etc.

The Minigun, on the other hand, can shred Chronos even with five Minigun users, and with eight? No challenge at all, with added survivors. Also, you don't need to rely on ammo boxes, the overall cost is cheaper (Bulldozer more expensive than Bandolier, haha), and if you lose one you do take a heavy dent to kill time, but not as much as if you were using the M249.

Thus, for clear speed and safety, the Minigun is far superior to the M249. Also, it's more easily accessible, if you want to count that.

TL;DR: Although the M249 has much better total damage POSSIBILITY, it's better to shred Chronos in a minimal amount of time with the Minigun than needing to rely on a lot of M249 users not dying, ammo boxes not being blown up, and being able to kill Chronos fast enough that the chances of these things happening is relatively low. Minigun is better than the M249. 