Why nerf NC MAXes already pathetic range?

Hi guys,
I am genuinely confused as to why the NC MAX received across the board nerfs on all of its AI weapons for the "shotgun balance." I understand that people seemed to think that shotguns were imbalanced for infantry and that they needed a rework. I am not too upset about it to be honest, however, NC AI MAX weapons all got hit even harder than the infantry shotguns did. I don't really understand why because NC MAXes already were confined to a limited set of uses i.e. holding down a bio lab teleporter room or holding down the spawn area in a tower. But now with this new nerf NC MAXes max damage range has been drastically nerfed into oblivion, they used to be **** already, and now they are utterly useless. I made an excel document that shows the pre nerf damage and post nerf damage of the Mattocks and the Grinders which are the most commonly used weapons after the severe hacksaw nerf.


As you can see there is a small sweetspot in which the "nerf" actually does slightly more damage for both weapons, the Mattocks being exceedingly small. But from 0-5m all NC MAX AI weapons do less damage and after their "sweetspot" they do significantly less damage. Yes they improved the range for max damage slightly, but with the lower overall damage it is mostly insignificant. The damage at range, however, has been significantly reduced. For the Mattocks the damage was decreased from 90 to 70. This pretty much makes the gun useless because it did not receive any compensation for the nerf, the gun already did the lowest damage close up but now at 70 min damage at range it will all but tickle enemies at anything past 12m. That is a 22% damage nerf and the Grinders received a 16.67% damage nerf at range... Meanwhile the broken VS ZOEs get a slight increase in damage taken, 5% to be exact. Why all the NC MAX hate? I don't get it. People were barely even complaining about NC MAXes if at all and the community as a whole, including VS players, have been complaining about ZOE damage and yet NC MAXes get the nerf hammer.

In all honesty I think it is SOE's cruel scheme to nerf NC's faction specific weapons into oblivion so that they'll buy the flamethrowers when they come out, but the other factions will still be able to use their long range lmg MAX weapons while we use shotguns that will be inferior to flamethrowers and have no long range option. Dafuq is wrong with you SOE?

I hope this is foreshadowing to a Gauss type machine gun weapon about to be released meanwhile TR and VS get a similar spec shotgun. If not then I'll.... well then I guess I'll just do the same as all those other times that I made a statement that started like that and in the end was disappointed with the actual results. Nothing really, just die a bit inside.

The NC max is in a sad state...

One thing I notice is people seem to hold on to a memory of something that was OP and won't let go even after it has been nerfed. I wasn't playing before the previous NC max nerf, I never seen it at it's OP state, but I have still seen the odd "NC max is OP" thread on these forums. The same thing with ZOE, people have it stuck in their head that it is still SO bad, and yes it is challenging to deal with, but it has seen a significant nerf.

Nerfing is a bit out of control and we need to find the right balance. I want TR and VS to have some cool gear that is fun to use and effective, I want them to enjoy their experience and also provide a challenge for me, it makes it more excitng to overcome.

SOE Please fix the NC max AI weapons so that they are competitive again. Or replace them with something easier to balance than shotguns.

Does the graph account for slugs?

Slugs are **** on max weapons because you cannot ADS and they can hit literally anywhere in the CoF. The mattocks have the smallest CoF and their CoF is the size of the entire MAX crosshiar. Slugs might be decent on infantry shotguns but they are **** on MAXes. And not only that, they also make you a doormat at close range. It takes 13 shots to kill an enemy MAX if ALL pellets hit. It takes 20 slugs to kill a MAX at point blank. These numbers are not accounting for kinetic armor. At 20 slugs you have to land every single one of your shots with hacksaws, mattocks, and scat cannons using extended mags otherwise you will have to reload, with Grinders you have a 4 shot window. I will never use slugs on my MAX.

I had only played the NC Max a little bit when it was considered its most OP, I wasn't much interested in it then. Even from what little I played of it, it was pretty well OP. Killed basically everything effortlessly up to a good range away, I'm not even going to try to say it wasn't. You felt pretty well invincible, it was great, but you knew it would come to an end. However, the first nerf it received was far and beyond what was called for to niche it better, and the second nerf it received was just a continuation of the joke. I bet some of the balance guys are sitting alone in a room saying "LOL, it's not even good at shotgun range anymore! And that reload? ROFL" It's not even a viable unit anymore in light of TR and VS getting new weapons/abilities meanwhile for all intents and purposes the NC Max still only has what it started with, just nerfed to hell and back again while being given nothing in return.

Slugs are useless and not even worth the certs to unlock.

Yeah the Mattocks def have the best slugs, but even with those, I wouldn't chance it, too unreliable realistically speaking. The Mattocks have superior pellet spread and range, so why not just use pellets? Makes no sense to me. Most I would ever do is equip one arm pellets and one arm slugs.

Because magdumping to kill something 15m away is dumb. Why hit with like 1/3 of your pellets that are doing 90 damage each or less when you can just fire twice and crush them with slugs. It's super satisfying.

With the new resource cost changes, slugs are mandatory. It's too expensive to be niche and slugs are the closest things we have to real versatility, so nut up and start getting used to them.

Because I have slugs and that's not been my experience lol. It's not a fire and forget thing, you usually end up firing just as many slugs as you do pellets because when a slug misses it does zero damage. This happens a lot because of the Maxes abysmal CoF and Bloom. Yes standing and even crouching lessens the starting CoF, but who in their right mind stops and squats while under fire? Conversely when equipping slugs you lose all of your <10m power and sacrifice it all to a RNG. I don't like using slugs because every kill feels like a hail mary. I'd much rather use standard pellets and just pick my battles. Slugs are best when you are sitting behind the spawn shields camping because you know your enemies can't fire back so you are safe to sit and squat and it doesn't matter if your enemy doesn't fall before you have to reload. YMMV.

Guys just let it go until the flamethrower comes out then we can start spamming thread of why the **** VS/TR have CQC weapons while NC get another CQC weapon save all the fuel .

@Ginjewdictator: I'm 90% certain SOE does this on purpose - and that it's less about balancing weapons and more about incenting additional weapon purchases. If people are dumping Hacksaws in favor of other weapons then it must be working. I'm certain we'll see the weapons "rebalanced" again soon as another wave of purchases is sought by SOE. It's pretty clever on their part, and annoying on ours. The good news is that within the next 3-6 months the MAX will be useful again. That's my prediction.

FWIW: I do agree that the NC MAX is pretty useless right now. I had real trouble killing anything today in a MAX - with double Hacksaws.

No, I refuse to buy slugs for my Mattocks until I max out everything else and then it'll be a maybe.

Even with the extra range you get for infantry you are going to loose far to much versatility with slugs. Since GU11 Iv been sporting my dual Mattock MAX more than normal and in no point over those hours would slugs have been a better option than shot. When I go MAX it is for the long run to deal with anything I have to. Air, vehicles, infantry, and MAXes are my targets and slugs are only good for one of them, infantry. They are **** for MAX fights with the need of no less than 20 slugs to kill a MAX in the chest and can't do anything for soft vehicles without great luck and skill.

With shot I can take on infantry, MAXes, flashes, harassers, and even ESFs reliably within the very limited range of NC MAXes. I can do a lot with shot shells that slugs can't do. For as long as NC MAXes are forced to use nothing but shotguns (a weapon I don't like) shot shells are the only type I will use. 1,000 certs into the mandatory extended mags was bad enough. Adding another mandatory 300 would mean the weapon is not just broken in balance but that everything that defines a shotgun broken as well.

If we got Dragons Breath though, then I might give that a try just for the fear factor.

On top of all that, they now cost an arm and a leg. Or two arms, anyway.

You realize slugs do all this and more, and farther because their dropoff is MUCH less dramatic. I ****** hose down MAXes all the time, just don't be alone like an idiot but even then you can if your aim is good. Still worried? Use the shield! It's good for that at least.

Get the grinders and go slugs first, BOOM you're good.

The trade off compared to the VS and TR maxes is still garbage. NC maxes have one AI weapon, two if you want to count bursters. TR have four? VS have four?

Oh it is, the NC MAX is in a rough spot and slugs are a ****** band aid.

But they're all we've got for a long while.

You still forget that it takes 20 direct slug hits in order to kill an enemy MAX. If a dual mercy/mutilator or dual blueshift/cosmos MAX decides to prioritize you you will indeed die first because their CoF is so much smaller and they are more accurate, even than slugs, out to ranges of 20m or more. Simply put, slugs absolutely remove the already limited usefulness of the NC MAX which is a one trick pony. They are good in Biolabs for teleporter defense and in towers for spawn defense. If you are putting an NC MAX into situations where it is "mandatory to use slugs" then you are simply doing it wrong. Heavies accomplish the task immensely better. Leave NC MAXes to their small role which is now even smaller considering the latest nerf. Why on earth did they need a 22% damage nerf at range for Mattocks, 16.67% damage nerf for Grinders and Scats, and 10% damage nerf for Hacksaws? They were already **** as it was. Now a strong gust of wind will hit your targets harder than your shotguns will.

Additionally, you will probably say "just use your shield bro" in which case I will respond that in theory that is a great idea. However with the current state of the shield they are ridiculously easy to shoot around and do not work unless you are in a closed doorway, which also further limits NC MAXes to biolabs and towers. Try using a shield on open ground and you are a sitting duck.

I love how NC max drivers construct the perfect situation for being countered whenever people bring up the shield. It would appear, after reading quite a few NC whinging threads, that 1vs1 max duels are common and there is always room to manover around a shield user.

Well, lets take this down to the next level: The max is a support unit - meaning that they are heavy and fire hard but have significant downsides which requires help from infantry. Namely medics and engineers, but also other covering fire from HA etc.
So 1vs1 max duels doesn't actually happen. Stop using that as a crutch for your arguments, it is extremely silly and you should take off said silly hat before discussing this further.

Walking around the shield means and assumes that there is no line. There is always a line, outside of backcapping and extremely small skirmishes. The shield is wide enough to counter most angles if the opponent is more than 5 meters away, you can just turn against him and you're fine outside of your feet. And if the opponent has time to aim for your feet, you have time to disengage the shield and fill him up with shells or run out the nearest door for more support.

These are fallacies and the game doesn't actually work that way. The NC max is weak against range, but are insane against infantry. They can kill five infantry with one mag if they aim and are guaranteed at least two if they aren't terrible even in the chaos of battle. Which the TR/VS aren't. At all.

The TR/VS depend on aiming six bullets down range and that all hit. The NC max can a) frontload all the damage. b) use five shots from each arm when one from each will kill you, meaning they can spam and still kill you if you run and the battle is chaotic. c) always get the kill. You can backtrack around your own line from TR/VS maxes because they have to see, aim and shoot, and then hit with five bullets. The NC max has to see, aim and shoot one. TTK is zero, the second you're hit, you're dead.

NC still has the best MAX. The whinging on the forum is just people annoyed that it used to be so much better for such a long time they forgot how bad the others had it while they were camping all the cap points and biolabs in the game without a seconds though.
You can't compare shotguns vs LMGs using spreadsheets and stats without factoring in movement, chaos and frontload damage.

The NC MAXs I've been fighting haven't had any trouble killing me.

I have to jump on the bandwagon here.

The NC MAXs are complete crap right now. The bursters suck, the shotguns only do anything at point-blank and have an insane reload time and low clip ammo, the Falcon always has been crappy (I think it should be able to shoot at lest two rockets before a reload). The only thing that's really worth anything are the laser-guided missiles.

As far as I'm concerned, the Raven is the only thing that the NC MAX has going for it, and it costs 1000 certs or 750SC. Default MAXs are junk and aren't worth spawning unless you're going to camp a point. You'd be more effective using those resources for other infantry items.

The shotguns only encourage camping as that's literally all they're good for.

I know the NC isn't supposed to be accuracy-focused but heck, currently the NC has close to zero range effectiveness. They have to be right up in your face to do anything to you.