I'm ignoring it because it's not a fact at all. Counterbalance on my Hawksaw is amazing. It has smallbore, hammerforged, and counterbalance. The range is incredible - MUCH better than Bad Juju. I hit 27 crits (max damage) across all ranges I engage at on current common maps. Only time I've seen it drop to 26 due to range was on Bastion, the massive Combined Arms map.

It's not a matter of "needing" counterbalance on the gun - that's a strawman. Clearly players can do very well without it. But with it, along with some range/stability perks, it's an amazing weapon. Is it required to make kills? Obviously not - Luminosity48 gets plenty of kills with a headseeker Hawksaw, stability not maxed.

Not to be a dick but you totally ignored my post. I explained why higher vertical recoil in exchange for zero horizontal recoil is not a problem, but I'll repeat it since you missed it:

a gun having big vertical recoil is not a problem at all. A good player learns to manually compensate for the recoil pattern. With horizontal+vertical recoil it's nearly impossible to correct the horizontal component perfectly. But with vertical only it's definitely possible to learn to manually compensate perfectly, even if it's big recoil like an AK47 in CS. I'll take high vertical-only recoil any day over low vertical+horizontal recoil. You can perfectly compensate pure vertical recoil. You can't compensate vertical+horizontal as effectively, especially on a controller using your thumbs instead of your wrist/arm with a mouse. It's much easier to just correct downward as the muzzle tries to climb, and to get used to how much downward pressing is needed according to how you're shooting.