Minigun

“

She weighs one hundred fifty kilograms and fires two hundred dollar, custom-tooled cartridges at ten thousand rounds per minute. It costs four hundred thousand dollars to fire this weapon... for twelve seconds. Click to listen — The Heavy on Sasha

”

The Minigun (known affectionately as 'Sasha', sometimes misspelled 'Sascha') is the primary weapon for the Heavy class. It is a Gatling-style machine gun with a rotating barrel, complete with ammunition case underneath and two handles.

Delivering high damage per bullet with an incredible rate of fire, the Minigun is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It is able to fire 10 ammo per second, but has a large cone of fire and individual bullets suffer damage falloff with range. For each 1 ammo, the gun fires 4 bullets; if all 200 ammo count is fired, that equals 800 bullets. In order to fire, the gun requires approximately one second for the barrel to revolve at the correct speed before being ready. Players can begin the barrel spinning without wasting ammo or time with the correct bound key (default: Mouse2/Left Trigger [360]/L2 [PS3]). When either spinning or firing, the Heavy's movement speed is slowed considerably (to 37% speed). Furthermore, the Heavy cannot move while crouched and spinning or firing.

If a Heavy is stunned with The Sandman while his Minigun is spinning or firing, the Minigun will remain spinning for the duration of the stun.

Damage

See also: Damage

Range	Damage per 1 ammo	Critical damage	Damage per second
Point Blank	50-54	108	500-540 (Crit: 1080)
Medium	5-30	27/54/81/108	50-300 (Crit: 540)
Long	5-10	27/54	50-100 (Crit: 270)

• Base: 9 per bullet
• Max Ramp Up: 150% (13.5 damage per bullet)
• Max Fall Off: 50% (4.5 damage per bullet)
• Bullet Count: 4 per ammo
• Mini-Crit: 12 per bullet
• Critical hit: 27 per bullet

Base damage is subject to distance-based damage falloff.

Note: The Critical hit DPS; long range assumes 1 Crit bullet hits per 1 ammo, medium range assumes 2 Crit bullets hit per 1 ammo, point blank range assumes all 4 bullets hit per 1 ammo. Medium range is defined as the main resupply door to the opposite wall on the upper level of 2Fort. Long range is defined as battlement to battlement on 2Fort. Base damage is the damage done at 512 units before damage variance or bullet spread. Ramp up maxes out at 0 units. Fall off maxes out at 1024 units. Damages are approximate and determined by community testing.

Function times

• Attack Interval: 0.1
• Windup Time: .87

All times are in seconds. Times are approximate and determined by community testing.

Previous Changes

April 28, 2010 Patch

• Minigun spin-up/down time reduced by 25%
• Minigun firing movement speed increased to just under half-normal (from 80 to 110).

Trivia

• The Minigun is fired by pressing a trigger on the end of the gun, which is visible on the "Minigun Advertisement" poster on the Valve Store.
• The Minigun's bullets (four per 1 ammo) are the same in both power and range as the pellets fired from the Shotgun, it just fires much faster.
• In first-person mode, the barrels of the Minigun seem to be much shorter than they appear in third-person. This may have been deliberate so the player could see the entire Minigun during gameplay.
• The Heavy claims that it costs 400,000 dollars to use the Minigun for twelve seconds (not counting windup time). That means it costs an entire 666,660 dollars to fire until he runs out of ammo.

Gallery

• Minigun 1st person cropped.png

  1st person view.

• 

  Full 1st person view.

See also

• Minigun strategy