Desert rifle

"This big rifle is now MINE!"

- Louis

"Grabbing the assault rifle."

- Nick

The Combat Rifle (also referred to as the Desert Rifle) is a Tier 2 Assault Rifle variant that has a capacity of 60 rounds per magazine. Unlike the other assault rifles, it fires a three-round burst. Contrary to burst rifles featured in other games, where the trigger must be pulled every time a burst is fired, this weapon can go full-auto on bursts, firing the next moments after the previous ones. Sustained bursts make for a more accurate spread of fire than the Assault Rifle.

The Combat Rifle is used by Bill, Louis, Nick, and Rochelle (as well as Zoey in the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead 2).

Official Description
Similar in firepower to the M-16 Assault Rifle, the Desert Rifle boasts a three-round burst from a single pull of the trigger. Sustained bursts make for a more accurate spread of fire than the M-16, with improved ammo conservation.

Tactics

 * The Combat Rifle is slightly more accurate than the Assault Rifle, and fires three-round bursts, making it effective for weakening and killing Special Infected from a distance. It can kill Common Infected with one burst, even on Expert. It also carries the most ammo per magazine out of all assault rifles.
 * The Combat Rifle also maintains high accuracy while moving, which allows you to cover or save teammates even while taking evasive maneuvers, moving to help another teammate, or attempting to reach a level objective.
 * The Combat Rifle's ability to continually fire bursts as long as the trigger is held down makes it effective against Hordes. Sweep your line of fire and swap to a melee weapon when appropriate to conserve ammunition. If you kneel down and shoot at the headline of the oncoming Horde, you can still get 1-shot-1-kill results.
 * A total of 420 rounds translates to 140 pulls of the trigger; watch your ammunition count and use your secondary weapon when appropriate.
 * Because the Combat Rifle's reload time is longer than its counterparts, it's highly recommended to reload only when you find a suitable interlude.
 * The Combat Rifle has the highest magazine capacity among assault rifles, providing high efficiency with Explosive Ammunition and Incendiary Ammunition. This is somewhat counteracted by burst which will eat up the ammo more than twice as fast as single shots with other assault rifles.
 * Prioritize accuracy with the Combat Rifle; an inaccurate player will waste three rounds at a time instead of one.

Pros

 * Best accuracy out of all assault rifle weapons, particularly while on the run and while being attacked.
 * Three-round burst helps inexperienced players conserve ammo and regain accuracy during sustained fire (the crosshair will tighten back between bursts).
 * Three-round burst also increases hit chance on individual targets—if the first bullet misses, the spread from that shot will cause the next two bullets to deviate from the crosshair, hitting targets next to the point of aim.
 * The consistent three-round burst on higher difficulties guarantees that the player will fire enough rounds to kill a Common Infected.
 * The large magazine size and enforced burst fire will keep this weapon loaded for as long as it takes Survivors with other weapons to empty their guns and reload. This prevents the team from running out of ammo at the same time.
 * When matched with a melee weapon, encourages weapon switching. With other rifles it is quite easy to lean on the trigger when surrounded, neglecting use of the secondary until ammo is depleted.
 * Highest magazine size and Damage per Magazine when compared to other Assault Rifles.
 * The Laser Sight compliments the rifle's already superior accuracy.
 * Quite effective at taking down Special Infected and The Tank at any range.
 * More specialized ammunition provided (Explosive Ammunition and Incendiary Ammunition) than other assault rifles (due to enlarged magazine size).
 * Can help save teammates with ease. Low friendly-fire damage and high accuracy make it highly effective in racking up protects, even when firing into complicated situations.

Cons

 * Has the lowest Damage Per Second of any automatic weapon except for the Submachine Gun (even the Silenced Submachine Gun, a tier 1 weapon, has a higher Damage Per Second), making it less effective than other automatic weapons at killing high-health infected at close range.
 * If you continually fire, you will find yourself running low on ammo quite often. Despite having a 60-round magazine and a carrying capacity of 360 rounds, you have effectively have 140 trigger-pulls in total, since every trigger-pull costs three shots.
 * Can deplete ammo faster than the other assault rifles when facing small numbers of Infected, especially on easy difficulty. While they can be used to pick off Infected at a distance with one shot (and careful timing of the fire button), the Combat Rifle will always fire three shots, regardless of how quickly the button is pressed.
 * This can be bypassed with a carefully timed melee shove during a burst, which will stop said burst in between shots, but this requires practice and can cause premature melee fatigue, resulting in unnecessary damage from Infected.
 * On higher difficulties, the enforced burst fire may force you to use more ammunition to kill a single Common Infected than other rifles. If only one or two of your first three-round burst hit a common infected, it may not have been killed, requiring you to use another three bullets to finish it off, whereas other rifles would allow you to use one or two bullets.
 * Low rate of fire per burst. This means when being surrounded, the burst shot makes it more difficult to clear away enemies as opposed to the fully automatic rifles.
 * Weapon has to be reloaded often- note that while having a 60-round magazine, the three-shot burst means that players have essentially 20 shots before reloading.
 * Longest reloading time for an assault rifle. Spending upwards of 3 seconds reloading is not feasible in many high-pressure situations. Players that instinctively reload after firing a few times will have to unlearn this usually commendable habit to use this weapon effectively.
 * The three-shot burst mode when using Special Ammo is particularly inefficient when picking off Infected at a distance. The other assault rifles are easier to fire single shots, which makes them more efficient with Special Ammo used at long range.

Differences
The Combat Rifle fires in three-round bursts as opposed to full-automatic, which translates the 60-round magazine to 20 shots. The individual bursts are highly accurate, and the weapon is still greatly accurate when running or being hit by Infected. DPS (368.4) is lower than both the Assault Rifle (376.2) and the AK-47 (446.0), and the reload time is the longest of the assault rifles; it takes a little over three seconds to reload the weapon.