Why the Anti-Material rifle SUCKS and how to fix

-WHY IT SUCKS-

1. you loose your primary so that you're confined to sit up somewhere far away and be almost useless and defenseless shooting from afar hoping to land shots.

2. Useless against infantry as intended, but this forces you, like I mentioned, to go far away to use this and still you're quite helpless against people sneaking up and snipers. You'll do okish against the few maxes you'll be able to hit (maybe) but your damage output is likely to suck to the point where it's almost useless. Aside from maybe being viable against maxes it absolutely, totally, completely SUCKS against anything else. Also consider that Maxes can actually run for cover like anyone else, bolt-snipers only work because they can kill people BEFORE they run. For that reason as well as the others, this weapon is fundamentally BROKEN!

3. Damage output especially at range where you'd be 90% of the time with this makes me HIGHLY question its usefulness. There are so many other ways you could help kill a max that would be actually worth doing. As it stands, using the anti-material rifle will make you 99% useless and 95% helpless. The damage output is questionable, I feel like you'd be able to get just as much or more damage done with an automatic weapon at a closer range if you were careful.

DO NOT RELEASE THIS **** INTO THE GAME! WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT RELEASE UNTIL YOU FIX! IT!!! REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID WITH THE CRAPPY STRIKER CHANGES!? THAT DID NOT GO OVER WELL WITH THE COMMUNITY! DON;T MAKE THIS MISTAKE, DON'T RELEASE UNTIL IT'S ACTUALLY GOOD AND WORTHWHILE.

-HOW TO FIX IT-
1. Make it do a bit more damage to vehicles specifically.
2. Remove sway from the lower zoom default optic.
3. Remove the magazine, make it draw directly from the ammo pool.
4. Not sure what to put here but i feel like it would still need another small buff to something.
5. Speed it up a wee bit.

the TR community maybe, the rest of us were having a celebration that the reign or tyranny was finally over!

That's besides the point, the fact is that they made it so bad that an entire clip would not kill a flash or an infantry and the bloom would make you miss at least 1 of the 5 shots
still kinda sucks too...
You follow the analogy?

i agree with your point, also i would like to hear a daybreak employee about the suggestion to make this gun available for the heavy assault and ofcourse THE INFILTRATOR.... not just engineers.... it would be a waiste of your hard work only to see 1/100 engineers pick this gun up and see it effective in battle... having infiltrators on the back line and also heavy assaults (whos role it is to take out vehicles) using this gun would be great!!!! also putting this gun in the TOOL SLOT would make a great difference... having this gun instead of a turret or launcher? better idea perhaps than fully take away the ability of killing infantry because this gun really sucks against it :/

anyway would love to hear a dev about these suggestions.. im a heavy main and was really exited on the post because it said also avalable for heavy assault......... pls... pls... make the community happy again

~captaindaan

Ah yes, I completely forgot to mention that it should be available for more classes and possibly NOT take the main weapon slot.
Great points, Captain! I totally agree.

Seeking dev response please!

It should also be on the Infiltrator.

Hm still don't understand why only for engineer.
I mean the whole idea was posted several times... in the infiltrator sub forum!
My suggestion would be:

-buff the dmg against vehicles and infantry
-give infiltrators a version of the AMSR with a modified headshot multiplier, allowing the rifle to one shot people up to 150-180 meter;
this range would be even lower than the weakest BASR and would enforce precise shots over bodyshots while also not snipe
from render distance which everyone seems to fear

It'd be cool if they made a larger AMR model for the HA that does as much damage as a fully charged Lancer, a slightly slower velocity, will take the launcher slot, and takes straight from the ammo pool instead of having magazines.

For the infiltrator, I feel like the AMR is going to lower its combat effectiveness. It can take out MAXs and do damage to vehicles, but against infantry, which the infiltrator mainly focuses on, it's horrible. In most battles there will be just a handful of MAXs and tons of infantry with a good chunk of them being medics and engies. Infiltrator has equipment made for disrupting infantry and suddenly giving the it an AV weapon is dumb when you have classes that can handle vehicles 100x better. Even if they modify the AMR to take down infantry faster, due to its power, it'll have a much lower ammo count than regular snipers for balance and I believe 1/1million infiltrators are going to use the AMR.

I miss the possibility, in the original Planetside, to carry two primary weapons (except for Infiltrators) in the back of your (well protecting) armor. With this, you can carry that kind of weapon since you always have another one and are thus not helpless.

For the new rifle, we should be able to kill a MAX with one or two shots, especially those AA MAX that are far away on top of a spawn or mountain.

i will admit , as a first iteration i am quite happy with the rifle , even if it makes it in like this , though any buffs to the rifle will be appreciated and preferred c:

I disagree the weapon shouldnt be effective at all against infantry or available to other classes and heres why.

The weapon i believe is intended to give the engineer a weapon to futher define its roll as a support class on the front lines pushing a base and not just there to give ammo and repair maxes sitting on the point but to actually push to it and this coincides with the tank mines on maxes and try to diversify the front lines so its not all heavy assults and medics.

As of right now most of your front lines will consist of medics and heavys with a few infils and light assults for ambushing/recon but mostly heavys because heavys can deal with anything they come across fairly well and well medics are needed to get them back up to continue a push.

Now with the anti max rifle you will likely see a few more engineers push bases and not just pushing when they are needed to support a max do to the rifles advantage of range over a heavys rocket launcher this will be especially usefull for dealing with raven maxes on indar.

As for giving other classes the weapon well you cant give infiltrators anti vehicle that works from any sort of distance 2-3 people cloaking around on a hill shooting at harassers and the such would be a bit unbalanced as vehicles will have a tough time fighting back itd be like getting pegged by vortexes that hit like a wet noodles and not being able to fight back because you cant see them and sure it wouldnt be the best way but they might get out to repair and get killed by a real sniper or be forced to leave and at the very least stop nanite repair if they had it. In the end Infiltrator is the one class the devs are most afraid to mess with beucase its so odd remember its the only class that has 100 less shield trade off for its abilities in addition to being the only class with nothing that can actually kill a vehicles outside of 20 of them with explosive bolts. That being said giving it to an infiltrator would likely be a waste of time as the weapon is meant for anti max and tho it might do a bit more damage than a bolt action sniper rifle the sniper rifle can still be really effective against the infantry say shooting the max in the head once or twice and then taking out the engineer when he pops out to repair.

Now as for the heavy assult they already have rocket launchers and this fills their roll against maxes so they dont need a rifle that they would never take over their lmg because they are the pushers and they need to still be effective against infantry now as a replacement for their rocket launcher i think this would just give the heavy another possitive and further it as the go to good at most things class and i believe the heavy is already used too much and there needs to be more neat tools for the other classes to be used on the field.

P.S i dont think heavys need nerfed they have to be the way they are to do their job but some neat tools for other classes that make them feel more usefull on the battlefield is definitely needed.

3 head shots to get a MAX down, 2 if you can get so close that your right in his face.
Not very useful.
Can't say as I'll be carrying it around, its even less useful against anything else.

OMG RIP T2 Striker

I honestly think its fine it just needs more damage vs. actual vehicles, 17 shots to kill a tank on the test server
from behind

but then again it has a straight pull bolt /w 5 ammunition in clip
and only on engineers so infinite ammo...

this wouldn't even tickle a blockade sundy lol

It IS useful but the problem is that sniping in a skill of it's own. If people don't play Infil, they will have a hard time sniping with this at all. Any decent Infil Sniper should be able to get 3 head shots on a MAX, even with this weapon's slow ROF.

This weapon isn't for people who want to play Infil and it's not for Engineers who want to snipe. I think this weapon is aimed at people who currently play Infil who want to have skills that transfer to another class.

what makes this weapon really useless is that its a primary and a bolt action sniper rifle BUT while being able to pierce armor its not able to OHK any other infantry in the head AND while being a sniper rifle it landed in the hands of the engy.
My god, this weapon is weak. ok i can understand why the weapon needs 3 headshots for a max, noone wants to pay 450certs for a max that get OHK by a sniper rifle BUT on the other hand it would make sense. the weapon IS able to pierce armor and so the bullet will smash the head inside of that helmet and the max-heads are not so big that it would be unfair it would only force them to strife or get a good position like any other class.
At the moment its possible to OHK maxes with C4 so why not with a good placed headshot.
And because this gun can pierce armor 3 bodyshots should be able to kill a max as long as not engy repairs it. Its a bolt action gun and is realy slow SO enough time to react for the max.
And as an armor piercing BASR it should really be able to do a OHK headshot to other infatry classes.

BUT the most important thing: ITS A SNIPER RIFLE SO GIVE IT TO THE SNIPERS.
--> the infiltrators are the only class that is not able fight armor and there is not really enough to infiltrate for infiltrators aside from hacking terminals and turretts. So give them the chance to fight armor.

yeh nah , its a sniper rifle yes but i believe and will continue to believe AV capabilities ( even if its ******) of course not counting the crossbow do not belong on the infiltrator , theres a reason they dont have other av weapons

besides you can still be annoying to maxes with normal BASR's

What specifically about this weapon makes it specifically a "sniper" rifle, the scope selection, the bolt action?
Why do infiltrators need a chance to fight armor? Why does every class need to be like the rest? The fact that we can switch classes at will removes the need for every class to be good at every thing. Having problems with vehicles, pull a class/load-out that can handle it. Don't like that guy up on the roof, grab a LA and come up and take care of it. If everyone gets all the toys, then we will end up with everyone playing a jet packing medic with a rocket launcher, which sounds stupidly boring to me.

Definitely for NOT giving this to infiltrators.
Notice how Infils have no C4?
No weapon with a grenade Launcher?
Because they don't do vehicles. And they shoudn't.
I could see this weapon with Engy, Heavy, but not with Infiltrators.
The rifle may be filling a niche no one even noticed so far, but fixing it by making it do things well that were specifically said it was designed not to do well kinda takes away the whole point.

From an Engineer perspective, this is like using Mana Turrets - Open to dying from anyone at range or up close when using... but use leads to results. A niche weapon that has a role, grouped up this could be formidable.

Imagine the back seat of a harasser with this baby or in a Valkyrie shooting down on cap point maxes while tossing av mines that explode as maxes walk over them.

Different play styles ensue...