AE4

"Fully automatic direct energy weapon."

- In-game description

The AE4 is a directed energy assault rifle in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The AE4 and its variants were released on December 11th (in early access) for Season Pass owners on Xbox One and Xbox 360 and will be released most likely in January 2015 for other Season Pass owners on other platforms. The weapon will be a part of the first download content pack for Advanced Warfare named Havoc available in January 2015 on Xbox.

Description
The AE4 is available from purchasing the upcoming Havoc DLC pack, or from owning the Season Pass.

The AE4 is a very high damage weapon, usually killing in three shots up close, or four shots at a distance. Its long range damage is the highest of all Assault Rifles in the game. Its range is decent, which is about twice the range of the BAL-27. Headshots give a bonus of 1.15x, allowing for a three shot kill with the minimum damage.

The AE4 is a very accurate weapon. The recoil is low, and the sight is clean. However, the exact point of impact is actually where the two bars intersect, and is not at the tip of the vertical bar, meaning players might unintentionally aim above their target. This is not applied on the Xbox 360, as the sight is correctly aligned (thus, bizarrely, making the iron sights different on the Xbox 360 games than the next gen consoles).

The AE4's biggest weakness is its fire rate. Its fire rate is abysmally slow, at 500 RPM, and the Widowmaker variant lowers it as well. Additionally, the AE4 is incapable of surface penetration, and therefore cannot shoot through objects; this really offsets its high damage. Furthermore, the shot limit is fairly low before the AE4 overheats, at 16 bullets; using a Heat Sink raises this to 21 bullets. Using the Widowmaker variant reduces the shot limit by two with and without the Heat Sink.

The biggest strength of the AE4 is its accuracy. A very high accuracy plays well with the damage output it has, allowing players to easily land hard-hitting shots. As well, the AE4 is always a one-shot kill in Hardcore except on players using Exo Stim. Another strength is that it has unlimited ammo, making Scavenger utterly useless.

There are few attachments for the AE4, limited to optical attachments, the Foregrip, Stock, the Parabolic Microphone, and the Heat Sink. Out of these attachments, it is recommended to use an optical attachment to get a visible hit point, and the Heat Sink to raise the shot count before overheating.

Attachments

 * Red Dot Sight
 * Hybrid Sight
 * Auto Focus Sight
 * Target Enhancer
 * Thermal Scope
 * ACOG Scope
 * Foregrip
 * Stock
 * Parabolic Microphone
 * Heat Sink

Supply Drop Variants

 * Widowmaker [Season Pass] (Accuracy +1, Fire Rate -1 ) (Blue Beam)
 * Supernova
 * Macroshock
 * Equinox
 * Vaporizer
 * Vortex
 * Void
 * Shocker
 * Gigawatt
 * Venom [Marksman (300 kills)] (Mobility +2, Range -2 )

Trivia

 * The AE4's iron sights, specifically the central bar, vary in size on different consoles. On the Xbox One and the PS4 versions of the game, the AE4's central post is significantly smaller, and the true point of impact is where the two horizontal bars intersect. On the Xbox 360, however, the bar is much larger and is correctly aligned.