AE4

"Fully automatic directed energy weapon."

- In-game description

The AE4 is a directed energy assault rifle featured in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The AE4 and its variants were released on December 11 (in early access) for Season Pass owners on Xbox One and Xbox 360 and was released on January 13, 2015 for the other Season Pass owners on other platforms. The weapon is part of the first download content pack for Advanced Warfare named Havoc available on January 27, 2015 on Xbox platforms. As of an update in February 2015, the AE4 is now available in Exo Survival.

Multiplayer
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. Optical attachments aren't necessary, but are useful to bolster the weapon's long range capabilities.

The AE4's biggest weakness is its abysmally slow rate of fire; 500 RPM, making it difficult to kill anybody if the enemy is using a weapon with very high fire rate. 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.

The Widowmaker variant is obtained by getting the Season Pass, or buying the DLC.

Exo Survival
The AE4 can be unlocked at round 14 in Exo Survival, and costs 3 upgrade points. Unlike it's multiplayer variant, it cannot be equipped with a Heat Sink for unknown reasons.

Exo Zombies
The AE4 also appears in Exo Zombies. Unlike its multiplayer and Exo Survival counterpart, it doesn't have unlimited ammo. It has 70 shots per magazine, but never overheats.

Overall, it's not an ideal weapon to use, as the reserve ammo is very low, added on top of the fire rate and relatively low damage per shot which could leave the player dependent on Full Reload or their other weapon after one or two rounds. Its killing power is not very hindering. Additionally, the AE4 can gib zombies in the legs (leaving crawlers).

Attachments

 * Red Dot Sight
 * Hybrid Sight
 * Auto Focus Sight
 * Target Enhancer
 * Thermal Scope
 * ACOG Scope
 * Foregrip
 * Stock
 * Quickdraw Grip
 * Parabolic Microphone
 * Heat Sink
 * Extended Mags (in Exo Zombies only)

Trivia

 * Before the Havoc update, the size of the vertical bar on the AE4's iron sights varied from console to console. On the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, the vertical bar was significantly shorter, when the true point of impact was in between the two horizontal bars. On the Xbox 360 and PS3, however, the vertical bar went up to the correct point of impact. The Havoc update corrected the iron sights on the Next Gen consoles.
 * The promo image for the default AE4 has a different back sight. This can be seen on the third person models of other variants of the AE4, but in first person, they all appear to have the same sights as the standard AE4.
 * Also, the promo image for the Widowmaker variant lacks the back sights.
 * For some reason, players who downloaded the Havoc DLC acquired the Royalty camouflage by default.
 * The AE4 lacked the option to use the Thermal Scope before the release of the Havoc DLC.