How do you justify 800m range on the Lancer & Vortex?

These weapons should have been nerfed based on render issues a long time ago, anyone who says other wise is a clueless moron that doesn't give a **** about balance. They killed this game by giving infantry too many options and giving vehicle/aircraft players almost no options.

Because -- ridiculously weak damage. In the time you can fire 1 vortex or lancer shot with damage equaling 1 rocket, you can have fired 3 rockets.....

The DPS is super low. In fact, insanely low -- PLUS distance lowers damage -- something other AV weapons don't have...

This thread got friendly.

I personally run around with a G2A lock on more than the lancer or any faction specific because I just find the alpha damage better, being less sniper bait, and good to lob at groups of infantry. Rockets always feel more overall useful than me running about poking at armor and risking getting dead by an infiltrator while I charge up.

Worse?

Have you seen the updated changes?


https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/3agoob/additional_potential_lmg_changes_for_pts/



Compare the PTS MSW-R with the PTS Orion.

800m is INSANE.


Tell me WHY does it need 800m range out of all the other balance proven ranges?

Consider infantry render distance is more or less 300m we are talking about a 500m+ difference.

Are you forgetting the charge up mechanic or how much damage a uncharged shot does?

The charge up mechanic is good and bad. Great if you can chill out unmolested, but I know when I'm running infiltrator duty on NC or TR lancers are like free candy.

Go ingame and point a waypoint down.

See how far 800m actually is.

Well so far every post someone has made with casual, calm, rational reasons have been ignored. And you continue to just re-post the question with any reason why this is over powered to the point you call it Insane. Just like most of your posts you have yet to drop any stats or facts to back up your opinion. After my last post I took it upon myself to look up your previously created posts. And a curious thing appeared....you supporting buffs for ground vehicles and nerfs for everything that damages them. After nine pages your created threads it was a pretty solid trend. Another trend....55 posts of "SIGH....." [0]=117362]see

Most of the time you just show up here in an attempt to create some kind of drama or perhaps you are just a really boring troll. Either way, if you are going to try and start a discussion, actually replying to the thought out posts that you asked for instead of just repeating your original post over and over again.

Just go ingame, place down a waypoint 800m away and look at the distance on the map.

Why should any AV weapon have that range, when at that range nothing can counter you?

I actually have a good question.

What are the most common ranges Lancers/Vortex/Lancer Squads engage targets?

I already said I prefer the S1 for it's increased damage output. And it's free. The slow muzzle velocity is the trade off.

If you're talking about coordinated squads? Somewhere away from main fights, because less chance of actual retaliation, or warpgate camping.

In a decent sized battle, a lancer squad while able to threaten the vehicles also is at much greater risk of bullets flying at their heads, barring of course Indar, but indar is like "LETS PLAY WHO CAN THROW CRAP THE FURTHEST!" and even then things like behind hill prowlers are stupidly annoying too.

A coordinated lancer squad might set up a base away from a fight that is crumbling, but that is a stopgap somewhat, as the zerg rolls in they still have issues (and good ESFs can take advantage of flanking around and such to cause trouble).

Why should any AV have that range? Why should any AV be guided? Why should any AV lock on? Those are pretty rhetorical questions since why? because that makes the weapons unique.

How they function overall comes into play more than one aspect, and if anything a lancer is possibly the best weapon to exploit BAD vehicle drivers, ones that ignore terrain, always follow the road, move in straight lines, sit still, position badly, etc.

Pros:
Huge range
Easy to use for large or stationary targets. (no arcs)
Good damage with charge
Fabulous teamwork weapon.

Cons:
Charge makes you a sitting duck during it.
No guidance means it relys on player aim (which as we all know varies, so there some who are amazing, some who couldn't hit 3 galaxies stacked on eachother)
Relatively long reload
Very bad alpha damage (if you're only getting one or two shots or being pressured, not a good choice)
Tickles infantry
Not much zoom (making those long range shots more dependent on very good aim, see aim above)
Horrible for close engagement due to charge (might wrap into alpha damage)


Those seem overall a reasonable mix of pros and cons, requiring a player to be decently skilled and/or working in a team to make the most use of an item.

Just because something has a long range doesn't make it super powered, and the magical lancer squads really only work superbly when they can be done outside the focus of a major battle, since they are really very harshly countered by any sort of sniper fire or skilled infiltrators (really, cloak that flash and get on them), or proper use of terrain to get close enough to give a kiss with shells.


As far as comparing to other AV, it doesn't overpower others in general, each have their benefits (when I'm MAXing for example I HATE the phoenix, surprise rockets in my face are not pleasent when I am not sure where they heck they are coming from), and I still mourn for the striker and fractures since they really are weak at the moment and TR needs some kind of niche benefit imo.

As far as vehicles being too weak or too much AV? Eh, that sounds more like too much lightning of esf play, a good MBT team (2 people in the tank darnit!) of any faction can do wonders and survive for a good bit. (Vanguards hurt the face)

No I have not. Lancer is 150 damage uncharged. To charge it you have to hold the charge for more than 5 seconds (thats more time than it takes to reload the slowest rocket launcher) And THEN it only does 3/4th as much damage as a rocket, about half as much as the high damage dumbfire rocket (I always get Annihilator and Decimator confused-- I think Decimator yes? The one that does over 1300 damage....) before armor modifiers make it do even less relatively. At a slower fire rate.

It still has a travel time, so misses are penalized far more than rocket misses because of the time lost (you coulda fired multiple dumbfire rockets in this time frame)Of course there is no zoom.

And THEN it loses damage with distance -- Striker and Phoenix do not. Or any OTHER infantry (or max) av gun in the game. The FRACTURE is more deadly. Think about that -- fracture wipes its rear with the Lancer.

The range means that the Lancer can take a pot shot (1) at an almost burning aircraft or vehicle about to escape assuming you charged it up ahead of time and sat there waiting for the vehicle to bug out and maybe steal a kill. The lancer can, when used with a groupd of 5-6 other heavies destroy armor if they are moving across an open field. Of course -- this is true of any group of AV weapons.

But I have yet to hear any reasonable arguments as to how the Lancer needs nerfing. If you cannot factor in and discuss the other characteristics inherent to that weapon, but instead get your thinking stuck on the insane range the thing has (range beyond render distance), then you are obviously myopic and faction biased. Yes, I am aware this is our first time talking directly to each other on the forums and I usually do not start talking with people in a less than polite manner -- but completely dropping all context makes rational conversation impossible and I do not have the patience to waste my time with it.

I await a thoughtful and intelligent reply.

PS. Speaking as someone that used it in the PS4 beta for a fair bit TRYING my BEST to like it, and this is probably not hyperbole, You could honestly delete the weapon entirely and not 1/100th of a percent of Vanu players would care. We at Vanu would ALL be happier if y'all cut the range in half and cut the charge time to 3 seconds and buffed the damage to do at LEAST as much as the basic rocket launcher at max charge. Then it would have similar DPS to rocket launchers and everyone could be happy.

EDIT note: I forget -- what is the range and DPS on the Phoenix? Do some faction comparison for once!

You didn't read the thread at all did you?

If we take the raw numbers, the Phoenix also does 750 damage, same as a charged Lancer. However, its need to slowly travel to the target at 42 m/s before it can begin reloading significantly reduces its DPS. The range, of course, is about 270-290 meters depending on how much turning you do (the counter IIRC will always show about 285 before you burn out due to it actually being a timer rather than a real distance measurement, and lag puts it slightly off).

Of course, you probably know from being hit by one that there's no way the Phoenix does a measly 750 damage. It has a damage multiplier against tanks: 2.67x damage. Everything has a damage multiplier of some sort against tanks. If you had read the thread, you would know the Lancer has one too: 2x.

The Lancer doesn't do 750 damage when it hits a tank, it does 1500. Since it can fire twice before reloading, that's 3,000 damage per reload.

It also only loses damage with distance if you don't charge it: our attempts at reverse-engineering it have been unable to detect any reduction of long-range damage when the shot is fully charged.

The reload isn't that long either. Most rocket launchers, including the Phoenix, have a reload of 5.2 seconds. The Lancer has 5 seconds even. So it's an average reload for a rocket launcher, just a tiny bit on the fast side.

In good hands, the Lancer is essentially a lock-on (damage-wise) with a short lock (charge) time, a two shot magazine, and a range of 800m. Maybe you should try aiming with a mouse?

Resist values exist. Lancer has extremely good resist values.

Lancer takes 3 seconds to reach full charge. 5 seconds is when it automatically fires. You literally cannot hold it for more than 5 seconds.

Even if you had to hold it for the whole 5 seconds, the slowest reloading launcher (deci) takes 5.7 seconds to reload. Basic dumbfire takes 5.2 seconds to reload. Both of those are more than 5.

With resistances, lancer does 1500 damage to a prowler front with effective 10810 health.
Compared to a default dumbfire that does 1702 damage to that same prowler front.
1500/1702 = 88%

Deci does 2003 damage to that prowler.
1500/2003 = 75%

Armor directional modifiers affect all weapons equally. Except maybe the archer, don't quote me but I heard it ignores something about tank armor. Not relevant here though.

After the initial 3 second charge, the lancer then has a .3 second refire delay, and then charges up for another 3 seconds. Firing takes a total of 6.6 seconds, then reload takes 5 seconds. Total cycle is 11.6 seconds for 2 shots, or 5.8 seconds per shot.

This is the only part where you're right. The deci fires barely faster at 5.7 seconds per shot, and default is a little faster than that. But when you factor in .2 seconds ADS delay after each reload for the dumbfires that the lancer can do while charging, the deci is suddenly slower.

Ok great, so you're penalized at worst by either .6 or .1 more seconds than the other launchers. But the lancer has 800 m/s projectiles with no COF or drop, as opposed to 60 or 85 m/s projectiles with tons of drop and a COF. It's almost impossible to miss with lancers, but the dumbfires are slow enough to dodge in a tank.

You forgot to mention the lack of zoom on every single launcher in the game. Or the fact that lancer sight actually tells you where center screen is, unlike the dumbfires.

Vortex and archer lose damage with distance. Phoenix travel time is a gigantic DPS limiter. Every weapon that isn't archer or lancer has literally less range than those two, because the projectiles disappear after a shorter distance. Ravens for instance have 350m maximum range if the projectiles go in a straight line.

The fracture is also mounted on a 450 resource platform that happens to be much more vulnerable to damage, on top of having multiple range-limiting attributes.

Lancer is functional with 4-6 people total. Depends on range and whether you're fighting vanguards, prowlers, or none of the above.

If by "open field" you mean "exposed for 3.xx seconds on the lancer users' screens," I guess so. It's a good thing that there aren't multiple places where lancers can sit with a view of everything for several hundred meters, nullifying cover use entirely. Haha oh wait. That describes the entirety of indar and esamir, and a huge portion of amerish.

Yes, any AV weapon can destroy armor when used with a small squad of dudes - but the lancer does it above and beyond what the other AV weapons do. And FYI, mana turrets and ravens and all that other cheesy long range AV **** isn't balanced either. Lancer is just the most ridiculous uncounterable standout option.

It has insane range. Not just render-defying range, but even if the lancer users render we're talking about an ADAD warping cover peeking pixel even with the maximum tank cannon zoom. If you seriously think you can direct hit that multiple times in a row you're using cheats or fighting completely inept lancer abusers. I regularly get hackusations for sniping maxes, tiny corners on vehicles, and mana turrets, but hitting lancers is out of the question even with the vehicle most suited for dealing with them.

There's also the fact that lancer is disgustingly easy to use. Same reason the walker is easy to use, except without the requirement for constant tracking. You could be a mentally handicapped chimp and you'd still be able to land lancer shots.

And to top it all off the lancer ALSO does the exact same thing to air and maxes. Again, same reason the walker is a better weapon than ranger or skyguard - it does better damage AND is easier to use. For maxes it's like an archer on steroids, and I think we know how angry max mains got when that was added.

Add onto that the complete lack of counters available to the receiving end - locks give the indicators and generally have enough warning for you to get into cover, as well as being counterable with smoke/flares/cloak/brief breaks of LOS. Dumbfires are just completely ineffective beyond a few dozen meters. But lancers will hit you no matter what kind of crazy movement you try in your slow ground vehicle (except maybe flash), or any utility/defense slots you use, or how good your hulldown position is for avoiding other damage.

So lancer is basically a weapon that deals nearly as much damage as other launchers - 1 more shot to kill on prowler front than the standard dumbfire and 2 more than deci - while also having insane range, versatility, ease of use, AND it has no counter. At best, you can stay at range to try to decrease the damage, but it still takes less than 1 squad to gib you. Considering how ineffective rocket primary is compared to just shooting nerds, that's not a serious downside either.

At point blank we're talking about a deci shot every 5.2-6 seconds, depending on lag. If you can land that slow, accelerating shot in close quarters without dying immediately since you're standing still, you deserve to do a lot of damage. At range you have to add on several seconds of flight time, however long it takes for the thing to go up to 295 meters (its maximum range). On top of that phoenix will almost never hit a harasser or flash, has issues hitting anything moving or more than 4 feet behind cover, and can be shot down. And occasionally it will "wet noodle" as I call it, when the rocket just refuses to become guided before it flops into the ground. And it does only standard dumbfire damage to aircraft despite being completely unable to hit anyone with half a functional brain cell.

Hey now. Ask SOLx (especially 0diamond0) whether I lance them in infantry fights. If I didn't want the launcher banner I'd be using lancer instead of crappy lockons or s1.

That's probably because being farmed by tanks doesn't exactly convince newer players to keep playing.

Whatever the case, the vehicles in this game are still pretty beast in the right hands.

Some of your post is good numbers wise, but then you start bringing in opinion and anecdote. Weapons cannot be balanced around good players purely, so things like "I find it easy to use!" or "If you can't aim and hit you're bad!" which the poster before kind of did are moot. For every weapon you find easy, theres others that find them difficult or just neutral. That is the game we are playing.

Myself for example not sure what it is but I'm horrible at hitting faster targets with the lancer in general unless they stay on a straight path or stop, similar why I find the orion horrible to use, just doesn't jive for me.

You can't balance around the assumption that "good players do great with this!" and thats really where lancer falls, in the hands of a high skilled user who can max out distance views and steadily snipe things with the charge up, it is a fabulous tool. In the hands of someone average, it will be hit and miss.

It fills the long range AV role very well, it fails in closer in fights, I honestly don't know why people say they would carry it all the time, if you're running around in base fights on Hossin the lancer will be much weaker than if you're playing base to base bombard tag on Indar, for the exact reasons of the weapon's nature.

No weaknesses? The fact you need to charge up is RIGHT THERE, you are literally standing there for those seconds. Is that great if you're pelting stuff way way out, sure, but it is absolutely atrocious for your survival if you're at medium/close fight range because GIANT GLOWY BEAM may as well say "proceed to aim in this area to murder the person".

I spent the last few hours running a skyguard on TR, with VS at 51% pop on Esamir, guess how much I got shot by lancers? None, nada. I took more damage from scythes dive bombing me than I even SAW a lancer fire, and I was riding around on the road. If it is so amazingballs, why werent DaPP or GOKU people pulling that out and just LOLing at any sundies, lightnings, or prowlers that rolled in?

The logic doesn't fit with game experience, lancer squads wrecking havoc on everyone from 800ish distance is an artefact, not the norm, and getting bent out of shape about this supposedly plague of lancers that are killing everyone is silly at best, and purposfully disingenuous due to faction bias and wanting to 'stiggit to the vanu'.


As to the phoenix, it has a different role and that really really is to be able to throw explosives from safety or hit targets that you otherwise couldnt, decent range but it excels at targets that other factions would need to get in close or pull some other trick to get to while every HA could start lobbing them from relative safety to pound an otherwise safe target. Does it have its own limitations? Yes, thats what balances it out.

Striker feels a bit more kind for attacking air, I still don't like it though, needs somemore oopmh or faster firing or something if it is suppose to be a bunch of little red rockets of pain.



Wrel really put it best about the lancer though.

See:

All three have their drawbacks (and positives) in different, but largely balanced, ways.

The Striker 2.0 needs a small AV boost though, as it is relatively underperforming there (not my anything like as much as some forum post would have everyone believe however).

The Orion still has a slower reload speed, worse horizontal tolerance, no SPA, or Adv. Laser while the only advantages are better stock hip fire stats and a slightly better ADS bloom.

Hipfire is literally worthless on LMG's if you know anything about them.

If ti's insane to you then I'll accept that as balanced since you've proven time and again that you have literally zero concept of what constitutes balance or even a basic knowledge of game mechanics and how they interact with weapons.

This is a completely correct post.

The Phoenix and Lancer are pretty well balanced considering they work in entirely different ways while I've said for months the Striker needs a velocity buff. That buff is scheduled to be on PTS soon along with a slight damage to ground vehicles buff so hopefully the TR get a solid ESRL that's competitive with the Phoenix and Lancer.

The Anchor,Orion & MSW-R all got changes.

Also you should try to have PTS Orions vs PTS MSW-R or PTS Anchors sometime.

The fights are even.

That logic is so screwed up, but would explain why you blindly defend certain things aslong as they are purple & you have abused them.