Heavy Assault Rifle

"With high velocity rounds, the Heavy Assault Rifle is ideal for hitting fast-moving targets."

- Arsenal description

The Heavy Assault Rifle, or HAR, is a weapon featured in Doom (2016).

Based on the description and characteristics, the Heavy Assault Rifle is more like a heavy machine gun than an assault rifle by early 21st century standards. It fires from a closed bolt, but is belt fed. Additionally, it is stated that it fires a .50 caliber FMJ round. Judging by the cartridge's appearance, it is roughly equivalent to the .50 BMG round, which has historically only been used for heavy machine guns and sniper/anti-material rifles. Its size and power might explain why it has been supplemented by the Plasma Rifle. However, at least some UAC soldiers utilize a form of power armor, which might allow a single user to fire the high powered, high capacity gun as if it were an assault rifle, and the Doom Slayer in his Praetor Suit is more than capable of doing the same.

Tactical analysis
The Heavy Assault Rifle is a very well-rounded weapon that can be useful in virtually every situation, but is rarely the best weapon for any particular situation. It has a medium rate of fire, higher than that of semi-auto or pump action firearms, but lower than that of the Plasma Rifle or Chaingun. Its rounds are relatively low power, but they have the highest velocity, as well as good accuracy. However, the Heavy Assault Rifle suffers from crosshair bloom during sustained firing, meaning the longer the trigger is held down, the less accurate each shot becomes. This means the user is restricted to increasingly smaller bursts the farther away a target is. The weapon is effective at staggering early game demons, which can prove life saving on Nightmare.

Ammunition
The Heavy Assault Rifle shares its ammo pool with the Chaingun. The player can increase his max ammo cap by using Argent Cells and allocating its power to "Ammo" subsystem.

Multiplayer
The Heavy Assault Rifle can be unlocked in the multiplayer at level 2 (it's also available to use in level 1 by choosing "Ambusher" default loadout). The player spawns with 100 bullets (120 is the max ammo). The weapon features two fire modes:
 * Primary Fire - Fully automatic assault rifle with a digital scope. Each shot does 10 damage and 14 for headshot.
 * Weapon Mod - Enables the digital scope for extended range combat (Hold the Weapon Mod button).

Trivia

 * The weapon appears to be a belt fed machine gun (possibly based on the M249 Light Machine Gun).
 * If no ammo is available, the Heavy Assault Rifle's belt-fed cartridge will be visually empty.
 * The weapon shares ammo with the Chaingun despite the fact that it fires 12.7mm rounds and the Chaingun uses a 15mm tungsten slug. Also the rifle rounds and Micro Missiles share same ammo despite being obviously different from each other.
 * Featuring the Heavy Assault Rifle early, and the Chaingun later, is one way in which Doom (2016) takes after Doom 3 rather than the original Doom, with the HAR roughly equivalent to Doom 3's Machine Gun. In both cases, the guns fill the role of the Chaingun from classic Doom whereas the formal Chaingun in these games is more of a "super" version that only appears later.
 * The main difference between Doom 3's Machine Gun and the 2016 Doom's Heavy Assault Rifle is that the HAR inflicts more damage per shot, but its ammunition is relatively scarce compared to that for the Machine Gun. But the firing rate and accuracy of the two firearms are very similar, and both are called with the number 4 on the keyboard.