Is it worth getting for the gunner slot on my prowler. I've heard HEAT is getting a nerf and I fancy something to help keep infantry off me and make up for the lack of splash from HEAT (because most infantry worth anything know to use cover and thus direct fire 'discouragements' from C4 heroes is no use). I'm close to getting the required cert cost for the Marauder but I tried it in VR and it seemed...underwhelming. Likewise I've heard random bits and bobs around that it's a bit trash. Am I missing something or is it genuinely a worthless toy? otherwise I'll probably grab thermals for the main gun or something. :S
Some bug have disable splash damage in VR, so marauder don't show it's real potential, you should better trail it to see how it work, with all it's splash damage. About HEAT shell : -Lightning splash damage will be reduced to 750@1m from 1000@1m -Prowler splash damage for 2 shell will be reduced to 750@1m from 1300@1m -Other MBT splash damage will be reduced to 750@1m from 1000@1.5m About HE shell : -Inner radius will be reduced to 1000@1m from 1000@1.5 (2m for magrider/vanguard) -Outer radius will be reduced to 1@5m from 1@8m.
The general consensus about the Marauder being bad is based on people who are spoiled from when it used to be gamebreakingly OP. The Marauder is an AI-fury, plain and simple. As a tradeoff for having no armor damage, like the PPA and Canister, the Marauder have greatly improved accuracy, a larger mag and a larger AOE. With the upcoming buff, it will also have slightly increased range. Overall, the bulk of the complaints about the Marauder is that it's too similar to the fury, and players refuse to make any tradeoffs and just want the good of everything. Most of the complaints really just translates to "It's not good at everything!!!!!" That said, it's still a reliable weapon, and unless you plan on taking your Fury for AV-duty, which is like putting on a HE cannon against a Vanguard, the Marauder will serve you just fine.The Fury is not bad, and thus neither is the Marauder. True, it does not have the range as an Anchored HE Prowler, but then again nothing does. It's good for HE duty in closer combat scenarios.
Marauder's garbage. If you want an AI secondary for your prowler, get a kobalt. But in all honesty, just roll with a halberd.
The Marauder's only downside is its range really, it wrecks face once you get within range of it. It's waaaaaay better than the C85. It's also better at actually killing than the PPA, it's just that the PPA can keep spamming longer and the lack of drop gives it better range. One thing that would probably help would be if they changed the crosshair for it, since the current crosshair does not correlate with its arc AT ALL. It needs a much taller crosshair that you can actually use to judge range. It is getting a velocity buff soon, which will improve the range. I expect the Marauder will be gaining much more from its buffs than the C85 does (mostly because it has more to start with), so I wouldn't rule it out.
In its current form, it's not very good. Part of it's just the amount of shots you need to drop someone, and yeah, the range. Not saying it's better than the C85 modified, but in the case of both vanguard and prowler, I'd pick the kobalt over the ESAI weapons since it's not reliant on getting in C4 range to kill someone.
Number of shots? Last time I manned a Marauder (which was post-nerf, the arc was horrible) it usually killed people in 2-3 hits, which were easy to get with its rate of fire. It took a bit more if they only caught the edge of the splash or were wearing flak armor, but I was pretty reliably killing as long as I was close enough. The hard part was guesstimating the range, and then trying to basically aim without sights because the crosshair sucks. Well, and then the fact that after that the VS pulled a vehicle zerg and then my driver was unable to get me in range of any infantry.
First, as someone said above, splash damage is broken in VR. The Banshee feels like true trash in VR; most players will tell you that isn't actually true, lol. If you want AI for your tank, you should get a Kobalt. Plain and simple. It only costs 100 certs, has a large magazine, decent CoF, and SOE likes to say it can defend you against ESFs. Perhaps point blank, don't count on it otherwise, though. This is the best advice in this thread: The Halberd, especially on an MBT, is still a formidable AI weapon, with arguably the best AV potential, too. Or, perhaps, our opinion is just tempered from experiencing the Marauder over it's entire life cycle. Starting with when it was unadulterated garbage, several buffs that did nothing to help, the brief time it was considered OP (following the release of the Harasser and the subsequent Fury nerf), and it returning to it's former role: being terrible. Since you ignored the last time I responded to you, take note that the Fury and Marauder have the same actual (ie, not tooltip) accuracy, but the Marauder has recoil per shell fired, whereas the Fury will let you mag-dump and hit every round in the exact same spot, provided you aren't moving. The larger magazine? Considering direct hits, the Marauder can do a whopping total of 30 more damage than the Fury, assuming both with max MagCap. They have the same amount of splash damage, so that 1 extra meter on the Marauder's radius means it does less overall damage, but over a greater area. The range means nothing. Most people don't even bother aiming for direct shots within the near half of it's current range, anything beyond that people play for splash, meaning it doesn't matter. At all. The bulk of the complaints about the Marauder are not that it's too similar to the Fury. The issue is they nerfed both of them substantially, and the current Marauder serves no niche where it surpasses the Fury, except (ironically, because of this thread) on top of an MBT, where you can't slot a Fury anyways. The Fury, an NS weapon albeit an expensive one, is superior to the Marauder in every single way besides magazine size (doesn't matter), splash damage profile (hitting knobs for <100 damage because you have an extra meter of radius? doesn't matter!), and reserve ammunition (the only point that actually matters). To the OP, get the Kobalt, or use the Halberd. The Marauder isn't worth your time or certs. With that said, it is fun to use... On a Harasser, where you aren't constantly gimped by the speed, agility, acceleration, etc. of being in an MBT.
Forget marauder on prowlers: It have too slow velocity and too much drop to hit reliably infantries at C4 safety range.
350 damage direct, 334 splash. 3 hits if you direct hit someone, 4 if you splash. Believe it goes up to an 18 shot magazine fully maxed, but a kobalt can kill in 6 shots at its max distance (assuming all shots hit for course). It also comes with 100 rounds out of the box and can upgrade to a 150 shot magazine. It doesn't do splash, but the potential to kill more people exists without special requirements (IE: people bunched up). That's why I say the kobalt over the marauder, barring the distance thing.
If you get a direct hit they take both the direct and splash damage. This doesn't happen in VR because VR doesn't do splash damage. So a direct hit is 684. If they're not wearing flak, two direct hits or one direct plus one splash will do it. Otherwise 334*3=1002, so three splashes will do it unless they're only catching the edge of it. It's really quite decent damage-wise, though I remember back when it was crazy good it was a one-shot kill with each shell and could do decent damage to vehicles, which basically made it a rapid fire mini-Viper. In its current state, it would be quite comparable to the PPA if it had a decent range. Though it kind of gets the faction traits backwards, with the Marauder having higher damage but a smaller magazine than the PPA.
Damn VR, ruining my math. Plus I thought the marauder had a bigger magazine, 14's pretty pathetic for a maxed out mag vs the baseline PPA though. Anyway, marauder was crazy good back in the day, and it did need some adjustments to its AV damage. I just think what they did with it was a little too much, especially considering the weapon's short range. Hopefully they'll go back, fix it, make it so it's not dependent on getting in suicide range to use effectively. If anything I blame the harasser for the adjustments made to the marauder and vulcan, since the prowler ones have been less useful than the harasser variants. Thanks for the corrections though, my lack of sleep lately seems to have been catching up to me.
Interesting convo, feel free to continue discussing the merits of the marauder. I ended up getting the halberd.
I'm in the same boat. VR has ruined all my calculations and I don't know what's what anymore. Thankfully dstock is a living harassencyclopedia so we need not worry! In dstock we trust!
Ztiller, the consensus about the Marauder being bad is because it is literally a bad weapon. It requires you to get suicidally close to infantry AV and this very small velocity buff did little to solve that. A huge reason the PPA is good is it can effectively kill infantry from over 100 meters away. You have constantly had a bad habit of refusing the obvious consensus that the Marauder/Vulcan are underperforming weapons that need some pretty significant buffs in the range department to make them competitive with weapons like the Halberd or Enforcer ML85. If a weapon is so bad that people aren't pulling it I'm pretty sure it's not because they "were spoiled" or by that logic none of the TR would've used Prowler HEAT which has been nerfed countless times, Mercies, ect.
It's a struggle for TR because the Maurader demands you get in medium range but the Prowler platform shines at long range. So a lot of times the gunner gets bored because you're out of effective range. Agreed; crosshair sucks... but it does for several weapons. Putting extra dots on your screen helps fill that gap =)
Prowler is infantry farm vehicle, your spawn camp tactic ignores gunners, your best choice for solo is Kobalt
Except that according to all statistics, it's not. And according to Higby, it's not underperforming at all. It is performing just as good as they want it to. No, it's not as good as the PPA, and neithershould it be to begin with. It doesn't require you to get "Suicidally close" to infantry. It requires you to take a risk. If you die while taking that risk, it boils down to you failing at paying attention to the threats around you. Yes, the PPA have longer range. But the Magrider is also a much weaker tank in itself, and if he stays at such a long range where the PPA can fire safely, then he cannot fire his primaries effective. The Prowler is the opposite, with long range maincannons, and shorter range secondaries. It's not about refusing, it's about applying logic and reasonable thought. I dismiss the general consensus, because the general consensus is very oftem completely unrealistic and have no actual logic behind it. It's just players asking for unbalanced weaponry. Just because a lot of people says something, doesn't mean they are right. It's also funny that you would say that, because you completely ignore everything that i say in rebuttal, no matter how well backed my argument is. Even when Higby himself says that the Marauder is ok, you refuse to accept it, in favor of your own subjective opinion. The Prowler is already the best long-range AOE-spam platform in the game. It should not get a long-range AOE secondary to make it even better at what it's already the best at. Actually, it can very well be good despite the general consensus. If everybody says that something is bad, people wont use it. Do you remember that the VS MAX used to have the least user numbers, but the highest K/D in the game before the ZOE? If it was so good, why didn't people use it? Because everybody thought, and said, that it was bad. The PPA was unchanged for months. Then all of a sudden usage skyrocketed within weeks. Why? Because people began complaining about how OP it was. How many Vortexes have you encountered in your game career? A dozen? Why? Because everybody says that they are bad, despite the fact that they are like Lancers on steroids. If everybody is nonstop going on about how horribly bad a weapon is, regardless of its actual effectiveness, it will negatively affect usage stats. These are all facts. Try not to dismiss them, for once.
