In my current blind playthrough of Escape From Tarkov, I’ve found that the often discarded Hollow Point ammunition of the 5.45 x 39MM caliber is a straight up broken, fragmented hyper carry for those who lack AP ammunition.
Where the usefulness of the 5.45 caliber ammunition stems from its jack of all trades characteristics shaking hands with the common spawn rates and cheap prices among traders, the Hollow Points, in particular, provide increased usefulness often overlooked in favor of BT, BP, or Igolnik rounds.
The recoil reduction works in tandem with the increased accuracy, fragmentation rate, and high velocity to create a weapon that is good at harassing enemies from range and excellent at brute forcing kills through armor plates, napes, and leg shots.
Naturally, high armor penetration ammo relies on consistent thorax or headshots to perform well. This consistency is met with relatively low flat damage and low fragmentation percentage, meaning shots not connecting with the head and afterward not resulting in a deflection will take a consistent burst to be effective.
Contrary to this methodology, 5.45 HP ammunition allows players to take pop shots at opponents. Shots connecting with arms and legs are death sentences for any opponent who isn’t popping stims or painkillers. Following up with a grenade on an entrenched position where the occupant has been hit in the leg, for example, is a sure kill.
When facing chads who pop stims like addicts, the bleed chance, (30%) means that they are likely going to be busy dealing with your pop shots by constantly digging into their Zagustins and medical supplies. In this situation, time is on your side with 5.45 HP.
By baiting your opponent out with false grenades, pop shots, and audio queues, you keep let your opponent know that you’re willing to push them if they begin healing, while also keeping some distance to bait out their peaks.
Given this sort of fight strategy, your opponent has to constantly battle their bleed state while maintaining pain killers for movement ability and do it all while trying to prevent you from landing a grenades or pushes on their position.
(The round also has decent travel speed, making it viable for ranged attacks on maps like reserve or woods. Cheers.)
