[Suggestion] Magrider: let's stop pretending.

Out of curiosity I went to stats.dasanfall and looked up the characters of most people in these discussions about the Magrider. I noticed a trend pretty quickly that applied to every one I checked. The better someone was with the Magrider, the less they complained about it being bad and the more favorable opinion they had of its supposed strengths. The opposite was also true...

Yes but spreadsheets reflect the state of gameplay and is much more impartial than players with all their biases. You may think that X doesn't perform however the raw data may show that other players are able to make it work. I'm not saying that it necessarily applies to this situation however I do hate it when people ignore actual data because it doesn't align with their confirmation bias.

In one post you say "No amount of spreadsheets or statistics is going to convince any mag or prowler that the vanguard is on equal levels with the other 2"

and then you go on to say

That's fairly contradictory.

Because a Magrider that is dancing in and out of cover never has to expose their side armour. A vanguard trying to move around an obstacle to get to you has to expose its side armour.
Yes its not perfect and requires more skill than a stand out slugfest but then you shouldn't be engaging in a slug fest against a tank that is designed specifically for that purpose.
If you don't like it then that's fair enough. The problem is that if you start buffing the Mag too much then the ability to dodge shots and a stabilised cannon will simply scale way too effectively.

So you want the tank that has the easiest ability to get in behind an enemy to automatically win?

I was unaware the damage was identical to the halberd. I never used the halberd seriously back then.
However, as I so perilously recall, the splash damage had a ludicrously low radius. You basically had to shoot his feet to get splash damage, and if you were that good, you might as well shoot him. I generalized and said no splash.

The current Halberd has 1000 damage, so if the Old Saron were to be re-introduced with the identical stats it had before the 6 shooter, it would not be a copy of it.

I prefer the Old Saron, and I know that many prefer the New Saron. What I've always suggested was that the Old Saron be re-released alongside of the current Saron. I don't believe that it would effect the balance, other than making the Mag a more viable weapon at range. I'd struggle with it's firing delay any day. Give it a longer reload even.

The current halberd has 1500 damage. They changed resist values and now the stated damage numbers are pretty much incorrect for all AV weapons. Here's a table with actual damage numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...c1UEt6alFReHpQZW1LZEdENmc&usp=drive_web#gid=0

Also, many prefer the old saron. Or at least they used to. Maybe most that did have left already though, who knows.

How is that contradictory. I think the magrider is fine apart from it being a little sluggish(lower downward look on the saron as well now that I think of it) and I think the vanguard needs a nerf after extensive game play against them while in both magriders and prowlers. I haven't spent an extensive amount of time in a vanguard but the times that I did were pretty boring since no matter what kind of stupid sh*t I went and did I always had 8 seconds of invulnerability to fall back on which made the game play pretty lack luster in the excitement department. The vanguards skill ceiling is being able to reliably hit targets in 3rd person. Apart from that all you do is acquire target, bull rush, pop shield if needed, repair, and then rinse and repeat.

Spreadsheets can tell you any number of things and you can't really accurately depict what is actually going on in game. A spreadsheet telling you the deaths of a certain vehicle lacks detail. Do you think that numbers were accurate for the 6 months that the striker was completely OP? Or the numbers on A2Am kills while flares were broken for 2 months? Of course not. Any number of items could affect the outcome of the numbers so the only real say so in the end is seeing how the game plays out.

It can get over obstacles that other tanks can't sure but how about the vanguard getting the alpha on your tail, they always win. Mobility is life but so is durability and in tank vs tank game play durability plays a much larger role.

Of course? This could be said about countless posts on the forums The most you will get out of decent maggie tankers is that they want slightly better projectile velocity, higher gun elevation or more fuel for their magburner. The rest just want a front-line MBT and use it as such.

On that note though god dam is the infinite magburn glitch funny, had about 5 seconds air time off jumps just screwing around with it during the maintenance countdown (of course someone said they reported me for just strafing around them and not firing back )

You may find this comes as a surprise, but I don't advocate giving the magrider buffs to the mobility to the point where it -can-reliably dodge shots in most engagements. First of all it's been proven to be almost impossible to get right, but it's also something that would only benefit the good players, leaving the average ones in the dust.

With a few exceptions, the magrider itself isn't what I find to be the biggest problems.

Even so, the two guns, or at least their damage profiles, were identical.
Also, I refer to Qaz posts about the damage numbers, as they're very misleading.

Don't think that says anything specific about the Mag really.... It holds true in most areas.
Dunning-Kruger effect

The more experience and time spent in a particular vehicle means that you learn how to negate the natural weaknesses and enhance the natural strengths of it. Doesn't mean that the natural strengths and weaknesses are not out of whack and shouldn't be changed, balanced, etc. Nor does it mean its horribly bad either... it just means there needs to be a neutral assessment taken into account as well.

My personal view of things has morphed over time. I've now become so used to the Mag in its current state, burned by SOE multiple times (Saron, Mobility nerfs, AV turret additions, ESRLs back and forth)... that I'm afraid that if they look into "balancing" any part of MBTs that they will ruin what I have adapted to.

I've changed my playstyle multiple times since release in order to adapt to the various strengths/weaknesses that were given to the Mag. Its a hard road every time they do major changes, and i'm very comfortable right now. (there are still annoyances, like the overabundance of libs at the moment, AV turrets, velocity, etc) I'm just not looking forward to making major changes in playstyle again.


There is also the inherent problem with using mobility/maneuverabilty as the sole mitigation ability, when damage/armor is used in its direct competition. It's a 100% / 0% thing. Either you miss or you hit.... It's the reason that fast moving and agile vehicles are so hard to balance. (ESFs, Libs, Harassers) You can't just tweak some armor values or damage values and make things fall in line. It becomes a huge swing of OP/UP/OP/UP depending on whether someone hits or misses. Those that practice evasion skills and cover skills will seem OP, whereas those who don't, appear UP.

Honestly, there is a very high skill ceiling on the Mag. I'm still constantly learning new things, adapting to new situations and honing my skills. I also fail quite a bit in my attacks. My KDR in a Mag is much lower than the other elites because I push and attack in circumstances where the Mag is at a severe disadvantage, sometimes relying way too much on skill-differential in order to win the engagement. Makes for some good videos though.

Specifically the clips from 4 min to the end of the video. There is a bit of an adrenaline rush in fighting in those circumstances when you have less DPS, Armor and am outnumbered vs your opponents.

I can't see what's so bad abt the mag's current state. Prowlers are a unusable dps (as in its veeery hard to get all that dps outa it) machine, vannys have the big gun and shield. Mag has sweet mobility and a very nice esav. Mind you i'm no 1337 tanker, but i do have "some certs" in each one and so far i must say i find each have decently strong points to em

Only got this one once, was way too hilarious though... Had a hard time controlling my Mag in the area where I got it. Was like playing frogger with all the trees and rocks zipping past... trying not to slam into things. Only lasted about a minute or two until something I did reset it.

Back in the heyday of the horrible server lag, We'd have the extended burns due to that. I always liked having a bit more fuel... mostly for the non-combat travel times. Its so tedious to get around from one side of the map to another when battle lines shift dramatically. Especially with the new squad-spawning galaxies, it seems like the lines jump a bit more. Of Course the lag-induced extended burn came with the tradeoff of hitting someone with a shot and having to wait 5 seconds for the damage indicator to show up and for them to explode.... lol.

The problem is that a good sizable %age of VS try and use a Mag like a front-line Tank.. IE, how Vannies are used and are pretty decent at. This is where the weaknesses of the Mag really shine... and the strengths don't. Especially in larger armor battles where they start to bounce off each other and get in each others way. In order to line up shots, you have to re-position your whole tank a lot. This can get you in the way of another tank, bounce off one to your sides, back into objects (disrupting your aim), get you flipped over due to the wonky vehicle collision and CSHD physics, etc.

Mags are much more effective in smaller hunter packs hitting from different angles. If you try and push 5-6 Mags up through Broken Arch or other chokepoints, it seems like they start taking each other out more than the enemy does. You can see this in the suicide %ages for Mags. It's not just those that are daredeviling with them. If you get flipped by another vehicle, it shows up as a suicide as well.

Haha yer I still get the massive burner time every now and then due to lag because Australian internet sucks, damn you Tony Abbot...

It is easily reproducible, can tell you how in PM if you want to mess around with it So much fun strafing everywhere at 130km/h and doing jumps off every little hill, would probably be a useful feature in VR to help teach the newbies the nuances of the magburner mechanics.

Ah yes.. the reputation of the horrible Australian Internet access is well known... It's been that way for more than a decade. (I remember many an Australian accented squadmate ******** up a storm in TS over the years)

No thanks, I have enough problems with the constant changes to the UI, mouse sensitivities and FoV changes lately that its hard enough to keep adjusted to the Mag, let alone feeling the effects of that. I might get too used to it and be annoyed going back to the short-burst, long-burst timer in my head. Ignorance is bliss... I'd prefer to not know how nice it is...

Haha I am not making you use it like some long distance travel mode (I went from warpgate to xroads at 130km/h the whole way). Just to screw around with in warpgate or VR, it is loads of fun. I know what you mean though, driving all 3 tanks makes me miss so many shots when I swap in between factions to level pop, for some crazy reason I keep forgetting I hardly need to lead aircraft when going from maggie to vannie

to further elaborate:

seriously dodging is impossible.

Yeah, this is something that's barely ever talked about. Prowlers and Vanguards pretty much scale linearly as you ramp the numbers up. WIth mags you get get increases per added mag until the density becomes too high, at which point every additional mag decreases the overall utility of the pack because it gets hard to land shots with people bumping into each other constantly. Interestingly, a side effect of this is that mags are often dispersed completely around a base when attacking it, while the other tanks seem to disperse less beyond the obvious angles.

Well that is kinda the thing-just like with infiltrator and heavy assaults, you need more front line troops and tanks than you need flankers and stealth.

to effectively use magriders you need to build a predictable front line to flank and we don't have anything other than sundys and lightnings, combined with the fact that requires significantly more skill and coordination to pull off. It make sense that many feel it needs a rework.

basically: you can make a stealth van or prowler and it will just about as well as a stealth mag, but a magrider a front line fighter does not make.