AE4

"Fully automatic directed 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 was released on January 13th, 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 27th, 2015 on Xbox platforms.

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. 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 and PS3, as the sight is correctly aligned (thus, bizarrely, making the iron sights different on the Xbox 360 and PS3 than the next gen consoles).

The AE4's biggest weakness is its abysmally slow rate of fire; 500 RPM, and the Widowmaker variant lowers it as well, and is impossible to kill anybody if your 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 Zombies
The AE4 also appears in Exo Zombies. Unlike its multiplayer 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

 * The AE4's iron sights, specifically the central bar, vary in size on different consoles. On the Xbox One and 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 and PS3 versions however, the bar is much larger and is correctly aligned.
 * After the Havoc update, the iron sights were corrected on all consoles, so the central post reaches the point of impact.
 * 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 got royalty camouflage by default.