Air is the only thing that doesn't fear its counter.

Who isn't? At least he has WAY more of a chance to escape with his life than any other unit.

I mean please. Can we have a show of hands here of who goes into a 96+ fight and doesn't die??

AA is like cold rain, it may annoy you to be rained on and cold at the same time, but you can conveniently reach shelter within a minute, warm up and then find an area without rain and stay there till the skies get cloudy.

Ah no.

If you look at the game design, Air was clearly not well thought out compared to ground combat, and AA wasn't made to kill effectively and that has caused bad repercussions in the games history.

Some posters like me seem to think AA is effective. I have brought up the fact that maybe things are different on different servers. For instance, Connery has more Aces and Air Zergs with AA adapted. (+ more people have bought AA weapons) to them. (I think Connery wins Air Server Smashes usually). Another lurking variable could be continent pop or a strong Infantry culture (i.e. Emerald).

This depends to the skill level of the pilot.
But anyway today you will get less kills compared before all those nerfs and BEEEP BEEEP.
Or you are MattiAce.

How do you figure? Do you mean like a 1 to 1 thing, like say a lockon HA versus say, a Liberator? Or a Burster MAX or Skyguard vs a Lib?

Or a flock of BR100 players in Flak turrets making several hexes a no fly zone? Because really - AA is good for Area Denial, if used properly.

So which do you mean?

We have some really 'special' players. Most of the complaints are:



Three Dimensional gameplay is not only disliked by many players. But it affects them physically. They get anxious, annoyed, heated, angry when killed by something that didn't attack them from the 2 dimensions they were SURE they had covered.

This is why Hossin is disliked. Because of the verticality of the bases. Players won't admit it. But that's what it is.

Its also why Light Assaults are over exaggerated. Its the weakest and most useless class in the game (mathematically inferior to the spitfire even), and players still want it nerfed. They veil it as C4 nerfs.. but last I saw.. Medics, Engies, and Heavies aren't the biggest users of C4. I don't normally see a dude with a white helmet running at my harasser.

Annoyed.. that's cute. Fly into a 48 player fight and see what happens. I can drive right in with a Harasser and escape relatively unscathed. The only thing I fear is latency (makes EOD hud a little useless sometimes), and MBTs that are alert to my presence. As a ESF... forget it. I can NOT do the same thing I can do in a harasser.

Those remote sundies, sometimes this happens and its a gold mine for a ESF. This is the only time it feels like an ESF is useful. And you can see it in the various montages of ESFs. Sure a guy racks up some kills on clueless noobs. But I have NEVER seen one where he actually helped take a base.

I've been able to pull it off myself. But the situations where it was possible are few and far between. Last time was about a week ago, there was a sundy parked near the road leading to one of the points in a base on Esamir near Saerro. I gauged they had limited air themselves and decided that my team was about to push on them. They just needed a distraction.

I took a mossie with Hellfires and bombarded the area in two passes. I think I got a total of like 2 or 3 kills. Not much. But the idea was to put 16 missiles hitting EVERYONE at least once, in each pass. It caused the enemy to scramble and most started shooting at me and not my friendlies. My team used this opportunity to rush forward and overwhelm the sundy.

I got shot down by small arms.. like TONS of small arms. And I knew it would happen. So after the first hits I took it down to try and land it behind a rock. Managed to do a hard landing, but the ESF blew up on impact with the ground, I took only a little shield damage and walked back about 200m to see the enemy routed due to my efforts.

Pretty good run. Disrupted the attackers, all 48-96 of them. Not too bad for 2-3 kills.

That's how ESFs should be used. But many just farm with them. I got that. And it p-sses you all to get killed by air without any way to do anything about it, or know its coming in some cases. But buffing the current AA isn't the way to do it.

AA game is pretty borked. A single person has little chance to do anything against multiple aircraft. Think about that for a moment. Imagine if AI sources were buffed to the level of what you all want AA to do? If a AI Mana turret could spray rounds across a infantry push and knock them all down. Curently can't do that as it takes a few rounds per person.

A Single AA source shouldn't deter more than one aircraft. That's what you all are asking for, essentially.

The issue isn't that AA isn't effective. The issue is AA is boring and not flexible. Why is it boring? Because it can only engage air. What can you do with a Skyguard when there is no Air? You can kinda kill infantry with it. Until a heavy realizes your TTK isn't fast enough to prevent him from getting a rocket off and dodging back.

This is why I've always suggested to remove flak from Skyguards and add that damage into the direct damage. Now you've got something that can engage Air, Infantry, and isn't totally outclassed by AV vehicles.. still disadvantaged, but not a free kill.

Because look at it this way. A rotary cannon ESF, and a Tankbuster Lib can still take on infantry and vehicles. Why can't a Skyguard? So why not make it an oversized Walker or Basilisk?

Oh and funny thing about Lockon Launchers. They give you an unknown flexibility:



Medium Anti-Armor Ordnance is the rates of Lockon Launchers. Those are you Annihilators, ES Launchers, and Swarm. But what I want to talk about is the AA ES Launchers, the Grounder, Hawk, and Nemesis. These launchers do a base of 1000 damage, just like their default dumbfire counterparts. Well a little less.. which is why at first they may seem unattractive.

What some of you may not know is their ability to do Medium Anti-Armor Ordnance damage as Dumbfire Rockets. Most use the Annihilator. Downside to this launcher is it cannot Dumbfire. But the ES AA launchers CAN.

What does that mean? It means to a Sundy you can deal 1500 damage. Whereas a decimator does 1502 damage but takes half a second to reload. So which do you want to use here? A decimator which can't lockon to aircraft, or do a whopping 2 less damage and get a lockon capability?

1500 damage to Lightnings, MBTs, Sundies... and 1700 to Harassers. Even does more damage to base turrets, 900 damage vs a Deci's 841.

But the dumbfires (ES defaults and Deci) do more damage to air.. alot more. But can you reliably hit them? Sometimes Point here.. is you've got some options that you probably didn't realize. If you're playing a heavy, you can do some sick AA duty alongside your normal AV duties. You just have to get a little talented at dumbfiring against ground. And the OP part about these ES AA launchers is their velocities and drop are similar (actually.. better, 100m/s vs 85m/s) to the default launcher.

Reason I bring this up is normally the AA launchers being used against me, and my teammates are NOT ES launchers. But usually Annihilators and Swarms. And well there's a reason for that. ES launcher is one buy for one faction. NS is for all three. I get it.

But having used the Hawk on NC for a long time. I always wondered why I saw better effects with it than the Shrike. Well a year ago I was looking at the chart I posted above and found out why. Its actually better.

Oversight by devs? Maybe. But one you all should be using to your advantage. Especially since a ES AA or AV lockon doing decimator damage to Sundies... I dunno about you all but that's huge. 100m/s decimator. Think about that.

Infantry's got options. Big ones at that.

Hmm. The HA that hides in a building or the ESF with 96+ enemy looking at him....

Seriously...lol.

Not to mention the 350 Nanites spent on the ESF.

"some posters like me".


(has ESF picture)

Balance & design wise.

By AA being weaker it has effectively allowed Air to have dominance issues since Launch.

Oh please. There is no fight where that many people are trying to kill air.

You are just talking major crap here.

Right like if I put a Magrider Avatar I would earn legit respect.

Hey I'm honest.

For all I know, you are a sour Vannie tanker who can't farm infantry cause of Air.

Bull.

A majority of HAs carry lock on launchers. Even dumb fire launchers are effective against so called "farming" ESFs. Archers are fun too.

Countering air is clumsy, but possible. When you are exposed to one source of anti-air among enemy forces, you are likely exposed to them all. It's just that not many people are willing to do it and that's probably because it feels like a chore more than a fun way to spend your time in a game. I think the "get off my lawn" -level of power is reasonable for an individual player

I'm not an air player or advocate, but how would you feel if you were easily killed from a long range by one guy alone? If you want them killed for good, then it's time to get your hands dirty on an ESF I suppose

Okay the Swarm, probably the best hand-held AA lock-on, has a whopping KPD of 0.47.

Go look up ESF A2G stats for a comparison.

Then kindly shut up.

Edit:

I'll go one further. Not a SINGLE hand held AV lock on in the game has a KPD even CLOSE to a 1. A measly 1.

Do you even get what that means?

There is a reason why AV lock ons have those stats. Pilots and Tankers hop out of their vehicle most of the time when it starts to flame to repair or deny a kill. Stats don't account for the cumulative effect of multiple lock ons. Furthermore, people have their LMG up and resort to launchers in the off. Additionally, dumb fire launchers offer cheap infantry and Max kills.

AV & AI threatens & eliminates the targets they focus on.


AA barely threatens.

Cyropaedia is really upset.

New flash, if a counter isn't good at countering... what ever its trying to counter becomes stronger then it actually is.

Nah. I know developers won't touch Air. Wrel has just been talking about guns in his videos. I got annoyed that you have had 5 threads on the same subject matter in the past 3 months. It becomes an insane asylum when everyone has to type the same thing in 5 different threads.

Y'ever notice that every last discussion about air on these forums goes in circles?

It's primarily because the majority of Planetside 2 players are far more interested in seeing their preferred playstyle favored than they are in seeing actual game balance. (And yes, I'm talking about air and ground players.)

Were it up to me, DBG would do a complete rework of the air/ground dynamic and not listen to a single one of you.