NS Swarm vs Striker.. is there really a difference?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by TheRunDown, Aug 27, 2015.

  1. TheRunDown

    The NS Swarm is the Striker 1.0 with current Striker damage per rocket, am I right?
    From what I can gather, the Striker 1.0 was taken away from us because no one liked massive amounts of Lock-on weapons, and the current striker is the result from all that complaining..

    So how is it justified to take away our ES Launcher, break it, kinda make it useable, then break it again.. then give everyone the Striker 1.0?

    Can you at leased increase the splash damage on the Striker so it can be used on MAXs..
    The Swarm as it is, is a Striker but better, am I wrong or is the Striker still going to be buffed more to actually distinguish the two and make the Striker look like it isn't a slap in the face to all TR?

    The Swarm just looks like a weapon aimed to "please" everyone because it only didn't please anyone as a Empire Specific weapon, in any case, cash grab item..

    Don't get me wrong, the Swarm could be good, and so could the Striker, or the Swarm could be the bad one and just as useless as the current Striker.. I just think it's a kick in the left nut for all TR for have the same weapon in the game twice while the Striker remains slightly better but still useless, because of 1 rocket launcher shot that does 1000 or 5 shots that does 1000 over quadruple the time.. plus Reload.. remember that's the left nut..

    At this point, they should just give up on the Striker and give us the Rocklet Rifle..
    • Up x 1
  2. WetPatch

    My God, have TR players synchronized thier menstrual cycle or something?
  3. Jubikus

    Kind of 1 thing happened and everyone got pissed about it at the same time.
    The whole give everyone Vulcans then give everyone the better striker is kind of like having somone take a dump on the hood of your car. I mean i personally dint mind the vulcan thing because they at least functioned a bit differently for faction flavor but the new NS launcher is kind of a dick move.
    • Up x 8
  4. Ronin Oni

    TR are getting a long ranged AV for the prowler they've been demanding since before Harassers ever existed...

    and Striker was released broken OP and bugged. It was nerfed to being an INFERIOR annihilator.

    The "Striker" was lost a long LONG time ago.

    Be thankful it got transformed into something new and unique and actually fun (if not the best AV) rather than just elft as an inferior Annihilator.

    Swarm will probably take Striker 2.0's place as ultimately inferior Annihilator. Higher alpha damage IF all rounds hit and lower sustained damage regardless.
  5. Jolanar

    I don't appreciate responses like this. Your "Be thankful and get over it" attitude towards our ESRL shows just how little you know about the TR metagame for anti-vehicle warfare (there is none).

    SO what if our tank is getting a supposed buff. There is a huge difference between fighting armor and pulling armor. Most of the time, you end up on the ground, trying to deal with it as heavies or engineers. Our ESRL excels at absolutely nothing. You would expect that a close range, rapid-fire, dumbfire launcher would at least deal significant damage to tanks because of its inability to hit targets reliably at any range. The truth is that it does not do this. In fact, the idea that it is good against air is a fallacy, because in the same situation, a Lancer, Phoenix, or even standard dumbfire are just as effective when an ESF is hovering 20-30m above ground.

    Why does the Striker have to be "lost?" Why can't someone on the dev team take an afternoon out of their schedule to devise a more useful mechanic for this weapon? Why are we stuck with infantry and MAX AV options that are so inferior to other faction weapons, that you never see them used?

    I want to feel like I chose TR for a reason. At this point, I feel like the only reason to stick around with this faction is because I dumped so much money in early on that switching factions makes all of that money wasted.
    • Up x 9
  6. Biddion

    Another thread turn into this faction sucks because of this. And really the most effective weapon is not bought with certs, nor cash, it's teamwork. Stop whining.
  7. gigastar

    Striker got nerfed because of noclipping and otherwise unavoidable rockets, remember?

    And it got reworked becuase unlike the Pheonix and Lancer it had no unique attributes to call its own.

    Seems you mispelled 'infantry' there. Might want to correct that.
  8. axiom537

    Striker got nerfed because it had the same damage model as the Annihilator 1.0 and like the annihilator 1.0 it completely and utterly cleared TR occupied space of Air and ground vehicles.

    It was a mistake for the DEV's to give 1 faction an all in one lock-on launcher, that was superior to all of the NS lock-on launchers, even those that where dedicated to only one vehicle type. This was the equivalent of allowing the TR to use the annihaltor 1.0, while the best the VS & NC could use was the Annihilator 2.0.

    The Striker is unique and situational and is pretty much in line with the Phoenix. The Lancer on the other hand needs a few taps from the nerf hammer, seeing as it is performing twice as good as the other two ESRL.
    • Up x 1
  9. Liewec123

    its going to be nothing like old striker.
    its not going to be epicly long range,
    its not going to maintain lock if you lose line of sight,
    the missiles wont last for an eternity,
    they won't be ridiculously fast and agile,
    they won't fly through terrain, building and anything else in their path until they kill the target.

    its going to be like current annihilator,
    but it'll do "slightly more damage" but take longer to do it (so in reality it'll do similar damage)

    what you will see though, is an increase in VS/NC using groundlock, so beware flash and harassers!
  10. Peebuddy

    I for the life of me have no idea why they changed the striker 2.0, the striker that required a constant LOS lock. Could deal more damage but couldn't dumbfire, fixed the clipping issue because if LoS was lost for a split second then every rocket flew up into the air.

    It was frustrating at times but it worked and it mimicked the striker in PS1, this new one is atrocious. It might suck less if the rockets locked onto vehicles as well because Tr seriously lacks in long range infantry lvl AV. We rely so much on our prowlers for that and when we're on Esamir with out our tech plant it becomes seriously noticeable.

    What I really have issues with is that the Nc/ Vs are getting guns that fill holes in their arsenals while Tr are getting different flavor guns for roles we already have one for.

    Where are the guns for the Trs blind spots?
    • Up x 1
  11. Ronin Oni

    If you want old striker, get the Swarm.

    OId striker was just a nerfed Anni anyways, so I don't know why you're bemoaning it's loss. It was useless. You were better off using Annihilator than old striker.

    It's like why ZOE is such crap. It's a mobility power. It used to be better than Charge. That was broken OP though, so it was made worse than charge... but why would anyone ever take a weaker mobility power?

    You're in no worse place now with new striker than you were before the revamp. That's what I'm saying.

    The Striker could use less bloom, or better yet, faster bloom recovery, so that single shotting at long range targets can be done faster, increasing it's DPS on long range targets. THAT is what the striker needs.

    The Fracture also needs fixing. It's got stupidly large CoF bloom. It should have very VERY tight CoF bloom so that it could hit every shot on a Sunderer @ 300m if it aimed at the middle.

    The designs of the weapons are fine, they have accuracy or effective RoF problems, but these can be addressed and fixed.
  12. Jolanar

    I don't deny that VS have a bone to pick about the ZOE and possibly the PPA (but I haven't really used this) and you are right to complain about it. Lets be realistic about the shortcomings of our faction instead of bashing other factions because they have VERY REAL complaints.
  13. Ronin Oni

    I don't even care about ZOE or PPA.

    I think PPA has some potential to be a short range AI weapon along similiar performance of Marauder, but I agree the old version was terrible for gameplay and I'm glad it's gone

    Old ZOE was also broken beyond reprieve. New ZOE will always be inferior to Charge, though I can think of a couple tweaks to maybe make it slightly more useable.

    Just like Launch striker was. It completely shut down any vehicle use against TR for a couple months. I played both sides (I was maining TR at the time actually) and it was infuriating to get killed by strikers flying through mountains and after you flared. After they fixed all the bugs, it was still just a more powerful Anni. I didn't care it was more powerful though really, it was basically just a high alph Anni. It was boring to have as a ESRL though, and it offered nothing truly unique over the Anni. Then the Nerf hit which required active tracking and it became flat out worse.

    New Striker is more AA than AV, HOWEVER if they gave it faster CoF recovery to reduce the time delay between shots for perfect accuracy, it would actually be pretty decent at long range targets without having to deal with lock-on mechanics. I already use the Striker for long range and am quite accurate with it... the bloom recovery delay feels too long though for it's damage output. You SHOULD expect lowered DPS over range, but it's just too severe.

    That's literally the only problem with it. It's new velocity is great, it's not a Lancer, but Lancers aren't great at fighting off ESF's either (both work good, en masse, against heavier air). I'll do some tests sometime in VR to test against a 300m tank target and figure out how much bloom recovery needs to be buffed to put it on par.


    Fracture the problem is simply innaccuracy. You can't have a long range weapon that can't reliably hit the largest ground target at 300m.

    The DESIGN of the weapons are perfectly fine. The Striker is even fun IMO, and finally something UNIQUE. They just need some tweaking to some numbers to make them better.
  14. Ryo313

    well your points are invalid i tested it out and be surprised:

    its not going to be epicly long range, lock on range is ok.
    its not going to maintain lock if you lose line of sight, yes the rockets maintain the lock on ( thats nr1)
    the missiles wont last for an eternity,they lasted quite long tbh. 5-10s or something around that after i shot them.(nr2)
    they won't be ridiculously fast and agile, yes they are (nr3)
    they won't fly through terrain, building and anything else in their path until they kill the target. yeah ok but they don't need to they are fast enough to hit the target before it can escape in most situations.

    3 of your points are wrong ... test it out on the PTS and you'll see

    and it kinda is going to be like the old striker. the only difference is smaller mag and beeing able to change the velocity of the rockets.
    the weapon itself is a bad idea and on top of that it takes the TR trait and gives that to everyone.
    so the NS Phonenix and the NS Lancer are next?
    imo they shouldn't release the NS Swarm aka NS Striker...
    there are other problems they should focus first instead of making another NS weapon like ZOE needs a buff or Fractures and yes the Striker still needs a buff the last one was more of a joke tbh.

    well its kinda pointless to even type anything ... dbg gives a **** about what the community has to say.
    ppl were asking for a long range AV option for TR because they have none and yet TR still doesn't have one.
    (Fractures and Striker are still the same **** nothing has changed there.)
    • Up x 1
  15. LodeTria

    It's mostly an Annihilator with a 2nd mode that is only good VS escaping ESF flying in straight lines.
    Slow mode can catch up to any ground vehicle, Non-Racer Liberator, Galaxy or Valkyrie. They also travel for 1000m so they still have ludicrous range.

    There is very little reason to use Fast mode because of it's wild inaccuracy.
  16. zaspacer

    Weren't noclipping and otherwise unavoidable rockets unique attributes?
  17. gigastar

    TR liked to think so, i can tell you that much.
    • Up x 1
  18. Goretzu

    Well the Striker 1.0 was basically a better Annihilator (except vs MAX and turrets) that only ONE faction got, that was really the issue, because it made fights against the TR effectively no-fly zones and make taking ground vehicles against the TR very, very tricky too.

    So as an NS weapon that wouldn't be the issue again, because everyone would have the same troubles and advantages - although that might well be an issue in and of itself.

    Having said that this does seem like a kick in the teeth for the TR faction diversity-wise.
  19. OldMaster80

    The biggest difference is that 1) Swarm rockets in their slowest mode are dodgeable. 2) In the fast mode they are less precise so you can't be sure all of them will hit. 3) Total damage is more or less 1000hp like other rocket launchers, Striker 1.0 was more than that I think.
  20. McMan

    Striker 1.0
    -Could fire rockets through terrain and such!!
    -It could lock on from realy far.
    -Its rockets were very fast.
    -After it locked on, you could look away and still fire rockets on your target.
    -It did more damage than your normal rocket launcher.

    aka IT WAS BROKEN!!!

    Swarm
    -Can fire either far or realy fast, not both!
    -It does less damage than your normal rocket launcher
    -It wont be bugged (aka fire trough terrain or still fire when you look away)