Can we get old HEAT cannons back now?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Mystogan, Nov 12, 2014.

  1. Mystogan

    I honestly ask the guys/guys who nerfed HEAT cannons to the point where they no more base/all arounder/sidegrade weapon but straight downgrade from both AP and HE.

    Game is all about sidegrades. Old Heat was decent against armor, decent against infantry. AP was better at armor hitting, MUCH worse at infantry killing. HE was horrible against armor and better against infantry.

    Right now HEAT cannon is decent against armor/bad against infantry. It require DIRECT HIT to kill infantry.

    But AP cannon also require direct hit to kill infantry while having MUCH bigger potential against armor- that is not sidegrade anymore, that is upgrade. HE now have less damage against armor but it has back it's reload speed. So little less damage against armor while being most potent against infantry.

    Brainless nerfs are really not appreciate. HEAT should be brought back to being basic all-arounder weapon.

    Please rembemer- HEAT cannons are STOCK cannons, meaning that they are equipment designed for NEW PLAYERS. Old HEAT was perfect for new players. They could deal decent dmg to armor and being able with medium accuracy (1 meter lethal splash) to defend tank against infantry soldiers.

    Also it was d_carey who said regarding those tank update that we should not think about changes as done things, which can't be further adjusted (not direct quote, but I keep the point)- so I ask- can we get back to them and make HEAT usefull again, especially considering new players who wants to tank? I bet statistics are not in favourite of HEAT right now. I miss old HEAT because there is no point in equiping it right now.

    On my Vanguard I have either AP or HE. HEAT right now has no situation where pulling it is better then those other two options.

    Thank you.
    • Up x 1
  2. WTSherman

    Well, part of the problem is that right now HE actually IS old HEAT, minus a ton of direct damage. Which really sucks, especially for the Vanguard.

    So in order to get old HEAT back we're also going to have to buff HE so that it's not a straight downgrade. Which I think we should do.

    Either HE needs to get some of its extra blast radius back, or its splash damage needs to be raised to around 1200-1300 so that its maximum damage can get past flak 1/2 and its kill range for non-flak extends a little bit past its maximum damage range.
    • Up x 1
  3. Mystogan

    Yup, precisely. I now they wanted to nerf HE spam inside rooms, however that was most lazy way to just nerf HEAT on way. Especially that HEAT was greatly balanced weapon and didn't need any nerfs/buffs. All fuss was about HE.

    My proposition is to bring back old HEAT 1m lethal splash, HE old 2 meter lethal splash, but completly remove outer splash damage from HE, rise a bit direct damage (a bit). So it will still require aim (2 meter is sooo small) but it will actually be better at its role then HEAT, which then can be bring back to old state.

    I agreed/disagreed with many nerfs in this game.

    However HEAT cannons were so perfectly balanced that I didn't even think why anyone would want to nerf it....

    We need back HEAT becasue right now this cannon just FORCE you to buy HE or AP. And in game that devs speak SO MUCH about "sidegrades" it is just riddiculous.
  4. CNR4806

    I agree that HEAT was always fine the way it used to be.

    The devs need to suck up to their own decision to include HE in the first place by reworking it into something balanced and useful, WITHOUT taking the easy way out by nerfing HEAT into complete irrelevance.
  5. Mystogan

    Thats the point. This nerf was just lazy way to do it. They didn't spare time to rethink it (remember riddiculous reverse speed ideas or AP damage reduction??), just wanted to do it fast.

    If one weapon is a problem with performance, nerfing another one which is balanced and good- that is not the way.

    It like PPA was OP- so we will make PPA like Canister, while nerfing Canister and Marauder. Wow. Much balance!

    I don't understand such behaviour. What is that- temporary solution? Why not to do something once and good, instead just introduce broken solution that solves nothing and break more things that were working fine.

    Ech....wish Klypto be the one in SOE who make tank balance. This guy at least knows how game works....
  6. LibertyRevolution

  7. Alarox

    I'd rather SOE reduce the power of infantry AV (mainly range) than buff HEAT/HE.

    HE is actually worse at killing infantry than the old HEAT. It has zero advantages with these disadvantages:

    - Worse splash radius
    - Less velocity
    - Less direct damage

    I'm glad that almost every person in that thread disagreed. I'm not going to argue about whether or not AP should OHK infantry (that is already covered in depth in your thread), but there's a different point I want to make.

    You don't nerf something because you accidentally nerfed its alternatives too much. You should only nerf something if it is too powerful. Otherwise it's an endless nerf cycle where you ignore how a weapon fits into the game and only focus on how it fits into a category.
    • Up x 4
  8. KnightCole

    No, but you may trade in your tank and all it's certs for an SMG infil and some mines....
  9. eldarfalcongravtank

    - grenade launchers nerfed
    - HEAT/HE nerfed
    - Bulldogs nerfed
    - AV grenades nerfed (against infantry)
    - Dalton nerfed (against infantry)

    this is a list of ongoing (senseless) nerfs to any form of anti-infantry explosives. it wont surprise me if SOE keeps nerfing more stuff just to content infantryside even more. meanwhile:

    - C4 effectiveness vs vehicles remains the same
    - rocketlauncher effectiveness vs vehicles remains the same
    - AT mine effectiveness vs vehicles remains the same
    - AV grenade effectiveness buffed vs vehicles

    why are WE VEHICLE USERS always the disadvantaged in this balance cycle? why don't the devs reduce the socalled "lethality" of anti-vehicle weapons as well? it seems this game is becoming more and more biased toward infantry players. and not only ingame, as the removal of the vehicle forums were a signal strong enough to tell us where SOE's priorities are. i thought this was supposed to be a combined arms game:confused: yet all i see is a game that slowly turns into a CoD/TF2 clone which seems to feature vehicles as a mere sideproduct
    • Up x 2
  10. uhlan

    The vehicle layer will be constantly nerfed or changed because the game scales very, VERY badly.

    It's as simple as that.

    If you didn't happen to see 50 siege-tanks shelling a base with the ever-present zerg there would have been zero need to nerf anything.

    As a person who enjoys tank battles (or, at least, the thought of tank battles) in PS2, I see massive problems with our choice of combat.

    I don't think there are many folks working on this game any longer. At least, exclusively. It takes a lot of effort to really think out and substantially modify stuff in game.

    What is easy is to just change the parameters of the weapons now and again.

    This is where the game is at the moment and I don't think much is coming down the pipe.
  11. _itg

    There's actually a pretty easy solution to this problem. Give HEAT the OHK splash damage within whatever radius, then give HE the exact same radius but a faster RoF. Then nerf its damage vs. armor so its overall DPS is the same as it is now. There. Now HE is better for killing infantry than HEAT, and HEAT is better at it than AP.
  12. Taki

    Vehicles in this game are still a bit too powerful vs infantry. They are literally only ever used as relatively low risk/high reward infantry farming / spawn camping machines. The instances of them (air and ground alike) being used to fight one another are few and far between. Plus when was the last time you saw any vehicle-centric player without a disproportionately high K/D?

    So rather than worry about the ins and outs of HE etc, SOE need to concentrate on improving vehicle gameplay overall. The supposed combined arms gameplay just isn't there - it's either a mass of infantry shooting a couple of tanks/aircraft, or anything more than a handful of vehicles results in farming infantry / spawn camping! Good vehicle battles are almost non-existent and even good infantry battles are hard to find, but both are awesome if you can find them.
  13. SerasVic

    Just give HEAT a 1000 dmg blast for 0.35 m something like that
  14. BengalTiger


    With a bit over 12 500 kills total and more than 7 500 enemy vehicles destroyed, I'll disagree.
  15. leo4444

    The game was fine how it was after the first optimization patch, all the nerfs and resource changes imo made the game worse and a lot more spammy, which is the reason most long time players left. The heat nerf was unnecessary and not what the community wanted and the rocket nerf wasn't necessary either since more than half of community was against the nerf too. They should of the increased the resource cost for some vehicles instead of nerfing them. Instead they nerfed them and made them cost close to nothing.
  16. Inex

    I get SOE's desire to tone down the "Tank in the vicinity - all infantry lay down and die". So I don't think we'll be seeing any buffs to the HE splash. There are other ways to take the HEAT cannon though. Right now it's basically AP, but does about 75% of the damage and it's slower to boot. But what if we changed the second part instead of the first?

    Maybe the answer is to make HEAT a more "usable" round - possibly by upping the velocity by a few dozen m/s? If HEAT is the easiest to land shots with, then the comparison isn't direct damage anymore. You get back to the tradeoff of "OK, AP/HE do more damage to their intended target types, but are more likely to outright miss". It's not perfect, as you don't miss too much with AP to begin with and half the time HE needs direct hits too (hard to splash infantry if they aren't standing by a wall), but it should be easier to create that balance without monkeying with the infantry lethality of HE.