In what situation would Lockdown be superior to ZOE?

Ha!

From my understanding, MAXes have momentum and supposedly don't 'suffer' from the AD bug. I seem to get hit plenty when strafing back and forth.

I can see anchoring needing a slight forward damage reduction from explosives. Although I haven't tried lockdown MAX with maxed out flak armor to see how resilient it is to peekaboo rocket shots.

Really?

Being main NC MAX, I was told that my MAX was OP because all meaningful combat was CQC.

I'm sure I could find a place to lockdown my TR MAX where CQC was important in a position that would make it both difficult to be spammed from and in an area where my pocket engineer had cover. If there's another entrance, 2nd lockdown MAX - same criteria. Anything that even thinks about walking through the door is melted instantly.

Area denial of CQC. Done.

Good luck trying to dodge doorway rockets or Anti-tank grenades when your glued to the floor. For lock down to work inside a building you can't be in direct view of the door and you need to be in a organised squad. Your better off not in lock down inside most building's.

The only real time you can use lock down is when your in a big battle and other tanks/infantry/max are on the front lines. As soon as you become a target you have to get out of lock down fast.

ZOE is far more effective as you get the same time to kill against infantry/max/tanks as a lock down max but you can dodge rockets/C4/grenades/tank fire. The increase in damage taken isn't even a weakness since all the max's main threats have now been reduced due to your speed increase.

Welcome to the world of NC where we were told that this isn't an issue.

In what situation?

Defense + Camping, which 95% of players like to do anyway. so actually it's pretty damn good.

The main reason the C4/Anti tank nade/Rocket through door tactics were created was to tackle the NC shotgun max because sending in infantry using guns was suicide. When your up against a max with a instant TTK against infantry you have to instantly kill it any way you can and since the max is slow C4 became the go to tool for taking out the NC max's.

Either way the main reason NC max was considered OP was that the 2 other maxes have a ttk of 0.5+ giving infantry time to take them out instead of the instant TTK of NC max shotguns.

With ZOE we don't even have that option because they move as fast as infantry. It's not hard to dodge rockets/C4/nades as infantry is it? ZOE removes the biggest weakness of all max's.

A fully certed Lockdown MAX will shred through vehicles whereas a ZOE max won't. The difference between Level 1 and Level 5 damage is negligible.

Wrong.

The lockdown max will dominate a Zoe MAX in any situation where the TR knows the enemy is coming towards them and not from behind them. A lockdown fracture max will dominate any Zoe or any NC scatmax.

I went into lockdown earlier tonight and farmed Zoe maxes trying to get through a doorway. As usual the TR have easy mode.

ZOE with Comets has the same TTK against tanks, max and infantry as a fracture lockdown max.

Even a child would be able to understand how lockdown works and where to setup lockdown maxes to completely dominate a room. In a biolab a lockdown fracture Max will kill anything coming through a doorway or up stairs. How many entrance points are there to those flags?

TR Fracture MAX obliterates anything the NC can do, now what do the NC excel at again?? With the striker, lockdown AA, lockdown fracmaxes, high DPS heavy armor you have the easiest faction, undoubtedly. Why do TR get such special treatment again and again. Go ahead and continue complaining about the Phoenix, with it's 300 meter range and the people standing still while guiding it....

MAX vs MAX combat could have easily been addressed by increasing resistance of MAX weapons. Though, I do agree - at the NC MAX's desired range, MAX vs MAX was overpowered. I personally believe they went too far with the nerf.

There's reams and reams of threads here specifically talking about Bio Labs and NC MAX camping a teleporter in (what was) the SCU shield room. There's 4 other entrances to that room and tactical nades but they were ignored since the entrance next to the teleporter was the only relevant entrance and NC MAX could melt you there. Nerf the NC MAX or I'm not going to a Bio Lab ever again.

I've got a TR MAX with Fractures (and a VS MAX with ZOE), I paid for them (Schmucko if you want to check - last time I was on a few hours ago I took out a Flash and helped take out a Vanguard but got owned by a few NC infantry with my Fractures out). I certed into Lockdown but haven't been in a position to use them effectively, I've always been offensive when I've pulled out my MAX. I invested in Level 4 for when I'm in a position to use them - and I can see the potential of the ability. I don't expect to be immortal with it and industrious infantry should be able to defeat me, but I would hope it would cost them.

If you remember back though, they gave us overdrive because lockdown sucked, now they just copied and pasted those two abilities, overdrive/zoe will always be better than lockdown, unless they majorly nerf the armour on ZOE but then it'll just be worthless.

Why would you use comets vs vehicles when you have vortices? Comets fly all over the place, they aren't accurate over range.
Iirc the CoF for the fractures is lower - but I haven't verified that.

Just fyi: Vortex = Fracture, in AV sense. And please try to kill infantry with vortex and see what happens.

The bigger the fight, the less viable ZOE gets, meanwhile Lockdown gets more potent when you have backup.

Why? Well essentially ZOE turns the VS MAX into an indoors Magrider.. and Magriders as you all know are great for long range combat and outmaneuvering a few enemies, But absolute trash when you need to make an armor column.

ZOE is the exact same, once the fight gets so big that you will be shot at by many, many targets then your increased damage taken will bring you down in a matter of seconds where you could have survived and escaped with Charge. Since there is a limit to how many people you can dodge and outmaneuver, there is not a limit to how many people can shoot you.

So yeah... You got a teamwork ability, get used to it because that argument has been used against people pointing out the flaws of the Lancer for ages by now.

Comets are as accurate over range as a fractures but have more damage per hit and a lot more slash damage then fractures. They may have limited rounds per mag but the reload is so fast its non-existent. They are by far a better anti-infantry and anti-max weapon then fractures due to their high damage+splash. Add ZOE to that damage and they drop a max in seconds and can set a sunderer burning in just 12 rounds. (6 both arm hits)

I tried the Vortex. It's as good as comets against tanks and slightly better against max but has a too slow TTK against infantry. The way the charge up mechanic works in planetside 2 is a bit of a fail. If it had no set charge level and would release its energy not as a level but based on how many 0.1 of a seconds you held down the trigger with much bigger DPS the longer you manage to hold it then maybe it would be worth it. The fact it fires as soon as you reach the last charge is stupid.

Defence.

erm 3-4 usually. so you need at least two MAX units per room, better you have more. you actually have no idea how lock down works nor how Biolab interior looks like

When deploying smoke as Vanu the ZOE actually detracts from the "stealth aspect" of the smoke because the enemy can see it's glowy bits. So I would say for point defence and even during attacks I would rather have a lockdown max. This advantage will only get bigger once we get the grenade launcher weaponry.