This is a combination of rant and guide where I will explain every angle of all the vehicles and why nothing is OP, players are just lazy and not thinking about their situation. I will compare different methods of OP'ness to show that people are focusing on narrow tactics that are overused and easily counterable. People just want to cry when their farming tactic it countered by something and demand it nerfed. People are also pushing way too hard for this to become an INFANTRY only game which is already extremely powerful versus everything. It's a Massively multiplayer online game, there SHOULD be A CRAP TON of tanks and air coming my way! At the same time, I should feel like I could kick the crap outta that tank column as infantry or in my own tanks. which i do! Infantry: YOU ARE SO Overpowered if you play your class right! LA: you can fly above the battle and reign C4 on groups of other infantry trying to get into a defended base. You will get more kills per C4 than HE round and they won't even see you coming. You can take out a full health MBT also without being seen. You can equip an advanced laser sight and jet pack AROUND your enemy infantry and hip fire him to death. And you complain that it takes an entire rocket pod to kill you when you can just jet pack away from splash. An HE round can kill you? It's a TANK, why are you in front of it. Play smart, dont let him see you, reign C4. (Only balance issue here is being spawn locked by tanks which Dev's are aware of) Engineer: A LITERAL one man army. You can take down every ground vehicle in the game in one shot! Anti-tank mines mean you can rock an AMS and everyone around it instantly (Guy has AT ARMOR? oh no!, UTILITY BELT time! 4 mines with level 2!). How about 3 C4, that will work on ANY AMS! Upgrade your repair tool if you're a vehicle driver and you'll spend more time on the field and less time outside your tank. Flak armor makes you invincible to a round you didnt see coming at you while repairing and you can just jump right in your tank. You complete the one man army by then resupplying to grab your prox mines to mine out the base from infantry as well! YES, you can have C4, AT mines, and Prox mines out ALL at once! Medic: You can heal any damage done to you and REVIVE your all important teamates who are engi's, LAs, and Heavies, which bring you, as a squad extreme versatility. Reviving them is more important to your goal than you getting kills and healing yourself. You can revive AS MANY times as you want. Stay hidden, bring med packs, and you'll have the enemy wondering HOW the hell the infantry they just killed is alive again (THIS IS WHY YOU target the medic in a group FIRST) Heavy Assault: Nanoweave armor plus resist shield, means nanoweave armor is DOUBLED. You are the paladin of infantry. Everything you go up against will wonder why it took them almost 2.5x (1.25 x 2) the time. Flak armor + resist will make tanks think you're hacking. You can fire and forget rockets to ground and air that are replenished by ammo packs! A heavy on an engi pack creates amazing area denial. Flares take longer than you think to replenish. Multiple heavies create exponential area denial. Great TR video going around of lock-on engi's on a hill destroying a zerg (led by that crazy guy barking orders? forgot his name). Infiltrator: UNBALANCE DETECTED. I agree that infiltrators need a buff. The infiltrator's cloak is often seen by NV tanks and ATV's with proximity detector, which undermines the fact that infiltrator's should be in very unexpected places, including near and behind enemy lines. You should HACK EVERYTHING. It's extremely annoying to the enemy first off. Second, you can then hack the terminal, pull a sundy, deploy it, and start a battle before the enemy even realizes it! Hack an AA or AT base turret and shred nearby ESFs who probably won't realize whats happening in time OR destroy a tank who has his rear to the base he thinks is safe to have his back to. Now, unfortunately, being an "up in the face" hacker conflicts with getting long range head shots. Luckily, Infil's do get rapid fire close range weapons that I actually haven't tried for myself, so that may make hacker role more viable. Also, knife a lot behind enemy lines and re cloack. MAX: THERE IS UNBALANCE HERE. This one area where great unbalance still exists in my mind. Burster MAXes can DOWN a full health ESF at crossroads from the Crown (if he's being stupid and flying straight and you know how to lead) If you lead correctly, you can kill an ESF nearby in SECONDS, meanwhile it takes like 2 full clips of rocket pods to kill you! When i'm watching other AA maxes nearby me, i see NONE of their shots exploding. You have to learn to lead! The range on AA MAXes needs a slight nerf, I couldnt believe how powerful I was post-patch, and the range my god. Anti-infantry MAXes are also extremely unbalanced between factions, but there are enough threads on that here.If you're a MAX who thinks you're weak AI you're probably not NC, but TR and VS aren't complete crap either. If you, on the other hand, think MAXes are OP? grab your light assault and drop a C4 on their slow heads. VEHICLES: YOU ARE SO Overpowered if you play your class right! (see the pattern?) MBT: You can decimate sunderer spawns. You can kill a tank in 2-3 shots if you get behind them. (If you're looking at tanks who don't know you're in the fight, MAKE IT YOUR GOAL to GET BEHIND THEM without them knowing!) You should not be taking a tank head on if you don't have to! Every tank is good in their own way. Magriders have amazing strafe ability, but it's slower than your tank strafing back on forth on its side. If you can lead, Mag's should be no trouble strafing. You can ram them and FLIP them! Vanguards, you are invincible at the time of your choosing with the MOST armor! Prowlers, Find a hill near the fight, bunker down and DPS the hell out of everything! (If you find a spot behind them and do this, you can destroy entire tank columns. Make sure to focus one tank at a time so as to not draw too much attention. Zergs are stupid and dont care about their neighbor tank) MBT VS ESF: A common topic on here. If you see an ESF, TURN TOWARD them, don't give them the shot. They can't hurt you if its not in the rear. If they have multiple ESFs or even if a solo has the ability to KEEP strafing you and wasting his pods on your side/front, YOU are too far from friendly AA! (you are asking to die here) MBT VS infantry: Heat/default rounds make you devastating vs AI and tanks! HE are still very powerful. But not too powerful as I already explained how EASY it is for tanks to go down in this game. Lightning: People say if your MBT is available, why would you take your Lightning... Why? You're lightning is so fast and powerful. But you have less armor. How do you play to your strengths? Strafe A LOT (meaning get side armor). DO NOT EVER take a tank head on. BE a HUNTER. You can get behind unknowing MBTs so fast and kill them in 3 hits with the HEAT.You can wreck infantry balls and run away from an LA trying to land on you and Heavies dumbfiring you with your speed. Also, if you you are solo, you might as well bring Lightning, don't think you're amazing cause you're trying to a double seat an MBT at the expense of that speed, get a secondary gunner, or use a lightning. BALANCE note: the HE nerf might have been too severe as HEAT rounds actually output more anti-infantry DPS I feel. HE might be redundant now! (NOTE to devs: THIS DOES NOT MEAN NERF HEAT, it means re-buff the AI capability of HE and nerf it's Anti-tank damage or force the tank to be weaker somehow, a glass cannon to infantry if you will) Skyguard: Got a deserved damage buff! No problems with that. Problem here, is the same as I've noticed with AA bursters who complain. You just aren't leading well! A second major tip (strategy wise): it's HARD to tell what a lightning is from above. Don't shoot everything that flies. Wait for something to get close enough, so that once you start firing, you know you'll be able to finish him off on the way out! Use the element of surprise. (That's right, YOU surprising the ESF! The ESF thinks you're a lowly HE farmer because you didnt start shooting him a mile away, now its too late when he gets too close in for the kill! mwahahah) Libs: All these previous nerfs came for a reason, you are gods of the sky, but a single decent ESF CAN and SHOULD take you down. When I'm a lone ESF, if I see a Lib alone, it's dead, no questions asked. I think its been nerfed enough now. It's still powerful but not nearly as much as it was.NV/IR nerf was also stupid for air because it was shortened waaaay behind the effective range of Air units, even versus other air! ESF: These nerfs hit the ESF WAY harder than the Libs. TOO hard.The composite armor nerf on the ESF with a flak buff was a stupid double whammy. composite nerf was VERY unnecessary and SHOULD BE REVERTED. BUT, you're not useless! If you're in a group, you are very powerful, libs go down, ESFs go down, tanks go down. You should focus on AA first. If you see a group of ESFs, grab your OP AA MAX and get free kills. one or two of those stupid ESFs will try to pod you and you WILL (should: if you know how to lead) get a free kill! AN equal number of skyguards and/or MAXes are vastly superior to ESFs. AA focus firing ESFs will kill faster than ESFs focusing a ground target! Solo ESFs: you have been nerfed into the ground by point and click A2A missiles, G2A missiles that actually hit (A necessary and good buff), devastating flak buff AND a nerf to your armor, when Libs needed the armor nerf... Your job is now Lib/ESF hunting and taking out infantry stragglers and tank stragglers. If you see a tank in the open alone, get BEHIND him and unload for a free kill (These are the kiddies who come and complain to the forum that ESFs are OP when they should not be there) All in all, ESFs can no longer be a part of most ground battles which kind of ruins them for planetside. Reverting the composite nerf may make it more balanced in my mind so that ESFs will at least feel like they stand a chance if they try to support their ground troops once they've already completed in clearing the skies! Stop the AIR tweaking please! -I'm BR43 with 161 hours of play time. (Which doesn't really mean much) (This is not my character name) And this was my rant or guide that hopefully shows any situation is OP in the right hands. -If you are fighting for more nerfs to tanks and Air, you are probably one of the more, close minded, infantry players of Planetside, no offense. -I'm a tank (MBT and lightning) *****, I'm an ESF *****, I'm LA *****, and an Engi *****. in no particular order. -I have gone on crazy kill streaks with every one of my favorite roles, which include air,tank, and infantry equally, and gotten many Multi-kills with each. -The final point. PLAY EVERYTHING. If you try Every vehicle you will know what makes them tick and what they hate. BE WHAT THEY HATE! Even if you're one of those "well I only like infantry", play enough so you understand your enemy. Meta stuff: -Servers need merges NOT transfer tokens (everyone will just shift to already populated servers and make low pops worse) -ROTATE the warpgates (This is so obvious and such a no brainer I don't get why its not in game yet) -Get rid of K/D and boost that support XP so support is favored over lone wolf farming. Hopefully people will think this is well-reasoned and not too faction biased. -I will try to update this with common counters I have found to many "OMGWTFFBBQ ONE SIDED" situations that people respond here with, as I'm sure I've missed many. IF anyone actually reads this whole thing... Thank you . Even if you do end up thinking I'm just another moron who killing this game (the usual forum response) Also, sorry for grammer mistakes and whatnot.
I don't even have a response that does this justice. I think every point you brought up was quite valid, and I agree that the roles are (for the most part) fairly balanced. If you're playing something and it feels underpowered, play something else that you are good at. As mentioned, try out everything. Find the things you're good at; when you're doing something you can do well, you do better and feel more powerful. I really liked the idea of being the medicine man, tried medic out for awhile, but it just didn't end up being my style. I tried Light Assault (which I had been staying away from), and that's my main infantry class now (I use engineer more, but mostly as a repairman). Not good at fighting? Pick up a support role! The players I know who use MAX suits LOVE pocket engineers! Medics can get a lot of certs in biolabs! There are so many ways to play this game that it would be crazy if you couldn't find one role you like. Thank you very much for the post, Doodles. Not only did it bring up a good point, but it even works as a general guide for different classes and vehicles.
Thank you very much altonyc! I was hoping for more responses to this as my goal was to address the most common threads I find myself repeating over and over again... vehicle spam, AIR OP... etc... As someone whose found ways to "farm" equally well with tanks/air/infantry I wasn't getting people's threads at all. What it came down to was the fact that people didn't know how to deal with the situation at hand! What's worse, is that these misinformed players who don't even care to try, are the ones SOE went ahead and listened to and nerfed things like ESFs way too far the other way, which led to less ESFs and MORE LIBs!! lol. Listening to players who don't play the whole game will lead to reflex balancing for whiners which doesn't take into account the whole battlefield.
I just kinda skimmed through your post. What i read, mostly tje infantry part, was spot on. I have the most fun playing as infantry, more so on my NC soldier. IMO NC are the strongest on the ground. Too many damn kids whining cause they can't learn to control the NC weapons.
Probably the most ridiculous statement you put above. Personally I liked the majority of what your wrote, although all of it was situational. But the quoted part is almost completely untrue, Sure you can turn towards them, but that doesn't stop the ESF from still ****** you, it will just take an extra reload.
I'm not trying to be an arsehole (comes naturally) but they really should put some kind of word limit on these forums. Who in their right mind cares about your opinions in essay form. Be more concise or G T F O.
Like I said, if he can keep strafing you must be in the middle of nowhere. In my experience I was top-podded, I would get out, repair, and quickly get behind or near a building or try and put myself in a position to nose gun him when he comes back. Hes gonna waste at least 3 pods on me to kill me, I'm gonna get cover, or I'm just gonna back up to my teamates with AA. I've never seen an ESF make multiple passes on me without going down from my friendly AAs. I was bored in class
Another pure example of how vehicle spam is ruining the game! In all seriousness, he makes perfect use of exactly how to deal with tanks using C4, come from the side. He makes use of all his extras, He barely ever fires his weapon! INFANTRY OP
Just finished reading the whole thing. But most of it comes down to the situations that the player will experience. It is a great comeback argument against those players who seem it complain to the point where it's not even constructive and it becomes a typical childish reaction of 'If you don't agree with me, then **** you! BLAHBLAHBLEEBLARR! etc, etc.' You are correct on one thing, and that is being versatile and aware of your surroundings, and your capabilities, during a fight. Regardless of what class you play, there's a way to fight back. And if there's not? Then suck in that pride and leg it!
Well, personally I don't 'strafe', if i'm going for a kill, i'll circle them with just spacebar and loop around til he goes down, i'd say 80% of my kills on tanks come that way, the other 20% is when i get lucky and see a tanks *** first, but I never go around a tank to get a butt shot. and 9/10 times, their isn't an AA in sight, like i said, situational...
Just one thing I disagree with. You do NOT target the medic first. You target someone else first, and use them as bait to get the medic to stand still.
