Reaver pilots, Does the air hammer still suck?

If I put 3 mag upgrades on it and thermo sites, would it be decent?

I'm no Reaver pilot, but it's still a viable A2A weapon.
I had a /tell conversation with a NC pilot who used the Air Hammer. He destroyed me 3 times. :/

He said the weapon is still great and just not ridiculous like it was before, and trust me, it feels like that.
It kills an ESF in a flash.

All you have to do is get close. Not touching each other close, but still close.

Once you upgrade the mag size its pretty decent, otherwise its complete garbage with a 3 round mag, its does a lot of damage to ground vehicles and 1 shots infantry pretty easily as well.

You need atleast 3 levels into the clip size , else it's rubbish.
After the nose cannon changes I pick it more often over my Vortek cuz the new Vortek doesn't forgive for missing.

It's still better than the PPA for A2A. If you manage to land a PPA shot on an ESF that TR/NC pilot is HORRIBAD.

It's a good A2A weapon definitely, though it probably wasn't intended to be.
As for A2G, it does good damage to tanks and infantry, but it requires you to get within a really short range, a range that you usually can't afford to be hovering in.

And like what everyone's said above, it's garbage without certs into mag size.

Its not bad.
But it requires a heavy cert investment in both, mag size capacity and ammo capacity to make it worth.

At least 700 certs for mag size, Thermal optics(200), and whatever you can put on ammo capacity if you dont want to have a flight autonomy of 3 minutes.

Its very good against infantry but it will usually put you on dumbfire rockets "easy hitting" distance.
If you plan on taking armor out with it, you will struggle a tad, since you need to get close and keep an steady aim. Not to mention that depending on you ammo capacity certs you will find yourself needing to resupply constantly.
Against ESF's is good, but if you get yourself on a hover fight you will get wrecked most times by any other esf using an anti air nose gun.
Against liberators and galaxies... well you usually want to stick to your 2ndary, try to hunt em down when they are really damaged or look for another target.

I like it and used to run it all the time till a few pilot buddies advised switching to the rotary...

Against air, it really needs two certed magazines to take them down, considering pellet spread and generally lower damage. As said, doing the whole hover in front of one another really doesn't end well - shooting buggers in the sides and top is what's needed. It does however make up for bad aim big time (like dealing with far away smoking aircraft, without using tomcats) Against infantry, I've personally found flying straight down at them makes the best use out of the pellet spread (literally 90 degrees straight down). Same thing with vehicles - plus you get to go tree hugging if you pull up too late

It'll kill vehicles just fine, so long as rockets and flak aren't that bad due to really short effective range (think smg ranges )

Its super hit-or-miss. Against other air its viable, but against infantry you could easily put a full magazine on a target and not kill it due to the spread. They really ought to tighten up the spread just a hair on it.

It's the only thing a working man's NC pilot should be using if he wants to be effective. Post-Rotary nerf, you can run Vortek if you want to feel like you are playing with a handicap to improve your skills, but that's about all it's good for now.

my first kills with it were of me sneaking up o some infintrators. by the time thay saw me, i was close enough for them to jump on my landing skids. then BAM! SURPRISE!

Surprisingly, Air Hammer is worse at killing infantry than rotary. Effective range is much more limited, and low ammo count makes multiple kills slower than with rotary

Air Hammer is better than rotary against Libs, Gals, and any ground vehicle (aside from Flash)

Air Hammer is slightly inferior to rotary against other ESF, when both pilots are good.

Luckily Sony nerfed it. It would have been effective like the vulcan or the ZOE,

The m30 AH has the worst synergy as a AI gun, largest ESF with an almost CQC weapon. On the other hand, it is good against libs and dumb esf pilots that decided to sit their and try to farm; you can really mess them up before they can react.
IMO it can be a lot of fun now, since lock ons are fixed (sorta). But it can also be a real PITA.

That's twice now in two days people have claimed it's bad synergy. It's not bad synergy to put a close-ranged weapon on a fast vehicle -- in fact that's about as synergistic as you can get!

The problem is one of weapon balance. If the Mustang AH is shorter ranged than the other options, then it needs to be stronger than the other options up close to account for that.

Scattercannon variants are probably a good example, since the best one (Mattock) is still pretty weak at medium range, but it makes up for it by being brutal at close range. And unless you're running with a squad, you take Sprint because speed synergizes better with close-ranged weaponry, and then you have a really dominant combination.

So it's not a synergy problem, it's a matter of not being good enough at close range to be worth it compared with the other empire's options which are effective at a more comfortable range of engagement for aircraft. The cruddy default clip size is why I've barely bothered with the AH (that and the fact that it's definitely weaker in Air vs. Air, meaning you really need to rely on air superiority to take it.) Same exact deal as the C85. If these weapons have harsher effective ranges, they need to be brutal at close range -- and neither weapon feels brutal enough to be worth it right now.

It's an average gun, I run it often because of how much Fun i have with it, killing people is a gamble, sometimes many pellet will hit, sometimes almost none, it's best feature when compared to the other ES nose guns is that it's more versatile, I mean you can take on enemy AIR / Infantry and maybe some ground vehicles too, altough the damage is kind of a joke, if not from the rear on tanks (which is sitll pretty low), so in the end you get a funny weapon against all kind of targets, if you want to dogfight with it you'd better not let them make distance from you or them else you're wasted, oh and forget about it without mag size and thermal. atleast level 3 as reccomended above of this post

I doubt people can Dogfight with the PPA/Banshee, it's definetly worse than the Banshee at AI duty, but works as AA, how does it compare to the PPA i don't know, never tried that yet.

You raise a bunch of good points also a man like you knows how to capitalize fun, also ive been drinking

I have my stock A2A Hammer. Pretty awesome weapon. I can only imagine it with upgrades...

Airhammer can be quite fun to use but is not a weapon for inexperienced pilots. You have to have good aim and a good sense of timing.

Been thinking about using stealth with AH and Lockons... dive in fast to maybe alpha them. Good pilot will try to open range so you lock them.. bad pilot or good pilot that sees the lock ons will remain in close range.

Its just ok. It's really hard to trace the pellets when you fire them, they should make them easier to trace.

I have it completely maxed out. It's pretty bad in a dogfight, its decent if you can sneak up on someone and hammer them fast... its ok versus infantry and its pretty good against libs ect. However its much easier to stay at range with the mustang and long range a2a rockets and just lulz at libs while circling them. The air hammer really puts you too close to libs in a lot of situations.

The weapon is my choice weapon, but really.. they nerfed it and it didn't need a nerf at all. For some reason SoE is obsessed with nerfing NC toys that have a modicrum amount of success, but will leave TR atrocities out there for months and let the OP faction go.