Can someone explain Vulcan changes to me?

So i woke up about 10 mins ago and the first thing my eyes focus on in the GU13 patch notes is this;

So can someone explain how this doesnt completely wreck the already fragile MBT balance, and doesnt turn the Vulcan into the new GU10 Saron/Enforcer?

Because pilots were complaining it was OP against air? I dunno...I thought the Vulcan was in a pretty good spot as it was. I can understand pilots being cranky though...because they're ALWAYS cranky.

Nevermind, didn't read correctly.

Essentially they've changed the damage type from light ordinance to Armor piercing bullets. Light Ord did 30% more damage to tanks and aircraft. My guess is that armor piercing does like 70% damage or something.

Essentially the damage against tanks will remain the same/slighter lower, the damage against aircraft will be lower, but the vulcan will now kill infantry in 4-5 shots instead of 9-10.

Also, the sunderer went from 70% to 75% damage resistance to armor piercing bullets. This means the vulcan will now do 20% less damage to sunderers and also may do less damage to harassers that use composite armor.

In summary: Significantly better versus infantry, somewhat worse versus vehicles, much worse versus aircraft.

Edit: Guy below me got the exact numbers.

Opinions on the new weapon: I always saw the Vulcan as an opportunity cost weapon. It destroyed aircraft, shredded tanks, but was absolute trash against infantry. I intend to do a fair bit of combat testing tomorrow. If the change makes for killing infantry easily, I will be using the vulcan in all situations instead of the halberd.

The previous damage type was "light ordnance" to which ESFs have a resistance of -75% (which is why it was so powerful) and to which MBTs had 20% resist. Each bullet did 210 effective damage to an ESF (which has 3000 health) and 96 to a MBT (which has 4000 hp).
For armor piercing, ESFs have 55% resist and MBTs have 60 (62 for vanguard). Each bullet will deal 112 effective damage against ESFs and 100 to an MBT.

It's going to be slightly more powerful against tanks, but a TON less powerful against aircraft. And will 4 or 5-shot-kill infantry, which is at least fair considering that both the enforcer and the saron can 2-shot them.

edit: for reference read this spreadsheet. It contains the resist values taken from the game files (resistinfo.txt)

In b4 vulcan still gets called op against aircraft, and is now called op vs infantry.

I will enjoy this update immensely.

IIRC you could down an ESF with less than half of the Vulcans mag right now, so you can still melt them if you don't miss too much.

fantastic change.....

but the didn't make it more accurate at range which will limit its usefulness still.

One of the only worthwhile changes... Shame it sorts out ESFs at the same time as they *********** the nose guns... What the **** is the point in an air-superiority weapon with a clip of almost half the size of the competition, with rate of fire 25% lower, 20% less damage per clip, and 'near identical' time-to-empty... Hilarious.

Nice

So now the Vulcan is even more powerful verses tank and much more powerful verses infantry.

Good idea. Why not make it lock on also

Having said that, if the Harrasser's armour / durabilty reduction has made a reall difference in game then this change could be all good.

People will complain on the vulcan untill they finally change it so its just a guy sitting on top of your tank going "Ratatatatatatatat" or the new vulcan sound "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

Oh look, the few TR kids who tried hopelessly to defend its dmg vs aircraft. Look what happend.

What worry me is the increase in ttk against sunderers, wasn't it already a lot longer then the other AV secondarys?

The reaver was immensely overpowered until this patch. Now it's back in the line with other aircraft.
If you disagree with me, tell me your factual reasons.

Vulcan was extremely op against air. It could one clip a low flying lib. It could 1.5-2 clip a moderately low flying galaxy up to 400-500 meters. Granted it takes some skill with it to do this and some nooby pilots as well since the ToF is very long at those ranges, requiring pretty long leads.

Honestly, I just wish they would give some love to the skyguard. It is so weak right now, it feels like 1 burster...like 1 burster arm.

by more powerful vs tanks... its like 2 damage difference...

So an extremely high ROF gatling cannon kills infantry with 4-5 shots while a slow firing slow projectile rocket launcher needs still two...
Tottaly balanced. Tottaly.

Yup. The "extremely high rof" kicks in after 1 second of "slow as hell rof" and gets very inaccurate very fast.

But of course forumside is whining even before the patch hits live, that's expected.

It got a buff against something it can attack and a nerf against something it could barely shoot at to begin with due to its low elevation angle? Sounds more like a buff to me.

I mainly spend my time in ps2 flying around in ESF. So don't really care much about how it performs vs tanks and infantry. But the 16 shots pre patch to kill an ESF was beyond ********. And its now fixed - or brought more in line.

This and striker (lock on) nerfs in next patch and PS2 is looking good a again.