[Vehicle] HOW is the vanguard statistically the worst MBT

its a big fat slow moving tank that can get shot more than the others, thats it XD
this leads to a low skill ceiling.

magriders when played well are AMAZING, dodge incoming shots, flank enemy forces from impossible angles.

prowlers played well are death to any armor within render distance,
AP anchor has the single highest DPS in the game and also 370M/S velocity, thats not too far behind some sniper rifles.

vanguard played well...can take damage more?

i have all 3 tanks, my NC is my main but honestly i have more fun in my magrider or my maxed reload maxed anchor AP prowler

NC gear is good if you're actually good, and if you are good then you'll be good on the other Factions. The problem is that when you're not good, NC gear is not userfriendly.

I have no clue, fighting the damn things are impossible one on one in a Prowler.

At least in a Magrider, I usually make them miss one or two shots, which for a Vanguard is a fatal problem.

It's probably long range fighting. The TR is the King at it. When you lock down, and you're far, far away. The Magrider and Vanguard will go through hell to hit you. The vanguard has to stay still, and the Magrider even with no recoil has trouble hitting you will strafing.

Thats nice, except there are a lot more VGs rolling around with AP than prowlers and magriders with AP, so sheer numbers can push a weapon to the top even if its underperforming.
http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=uniques&weapon1=3730&weapon2=4008&weapon3=3460
http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=vKPU&weapon1=3730&weapon2=4008&weapon3=3460

Why don't you guys compare your pee sizes on Auraxis.info.. and find out which one of you has the higher contribution to the game.. ?

If you break it down by hours of use, even though there are less Prowlers running about, they account for far more MBT deaths than they should.

Like so:

The Prowler is easily the most lethal tank to other MBTs, far outpacing the Vanguard and Magrider.

It's an MMO team game where most tanks are destroyed in group battles trying to breach a base. one on one's might occur more, but it's only 1 vehicle destroyed each time, while the large tank column battles occur less but often have a stream of new tanks supporting the old column as tanks get destroyed.
The Vanguard has the worst base chassis in speed and abilities. Armor only works when getting shot at, while DPS (Prowler) and mobility (Magrider) are constant advantages. This means that in a Vanguard column, only the one's getting shot at are getting an 'advantage', while in the Magrider/Prowler column each tank constantly has an advantage. Magriders can get much more tanks facing the enemy column and dodge shots, which in fact easily allows the Magrider to be on par with the Vanguard as it nullifies the Vanguards extra bit of DPS and armor advantages if it dodges even one shot more than the Vanguard. And each extra Prowler in a column means more DPS and more killing power.
The shield works great no doubt, especially in one on one's it's the best ability to have. But in larger scale battles you can use it only once in a while to escape from harm, repair up... and then have no shield anymore for a long period of time. Also think of this: The Vanguard shield is the most used and probably the best MBT ability, Prowlers have Anchor which is rarely ever used in any battle. Despite that the Prowler is as often better than the Vanguard at MBT destroying as being slightly worse than the Vanguard.


As I've said before, the base chassis of the Vanguard needs some upgrades. Things that it'll always be able to do regardless of it's loadout.
For instance: The ability to push away any other tank. The Vanguard has the heaviest armor and chassis, thus needs the strongest engine. Allow the Vanguard to ram other vehicles and do more damage to them than it receives, then allow the Vanguard to start pushing the enemy tank away (except deployed Sunderers). This allows the Vanguard to have more advantage in CQC combat, especially through the ability to push the enemy tank over the pilots while they are repairing. This doesn't solve the base problem of the Vanguard not having a good tank column vs tank column chassis though.

Allow the Vanguard shell to pass through one target and hit another one behind it as a base ability.
This ability allows the Vanguard to deal more DPS against multiple targets, take out a damaged tank as it takes cover behind an ally or even try to hit the engineering crew. This would probably be enough utility to be useful in any battle and push the Vanguard stats up a notch or two. Hopefully high enough that we can start talking about changing the Vanguard shield to be more fun for the other two factions so people don't think it's an Iwin shield.

I mean it WOOOULLDD be fun if more 1v1 (2v2) tank duels happened. Bragging rights and all that... I'd happily take on anyone in any tank.

Most lethal, less survivability. In my magrider prowlers are pretty d*** easy to kill, no defensive special and no quick scoot option. In fact deployed prowlers are by far the easiest thing to kill (short-mid) or at the very least disrupt (at long ranges) than the other tanks. I honestly don't know why people complain about the prowler being OP.

Each tank has a way to one up the other tanks.

Vanguard can be pretty useless. But the Prowler and Magrider aren't too far above it. MBTs and ground vehicles in general are pretty useless outside a sunderer.

Walls, bridges, ledges, and buildings in general are impervious to attack. In fact to be able to capture.. or even get to most points you have to get out of the tank.

Even the best tanker in the world, god's gift to planetside cannot take a base even ghost capping with the enemy bending over and rolling out the red carpet upon his arrival, without getting out.

MBT's are sundy killers. Nothing more. Which works against a zerg. Not so much against a commander with any sort of sentience who orders a Galaxy to be pulled.

1000 Vanguards, 2000 Prowlers, and 3000 Magriders working together (well maybe if they stacked on top of each other and toppled over into the flight path) would still not be able to prevent a conscious undrunk, semi-high Gal pilot. But everyone is content to quote stats to show how balanced or unbalanced their useless vehicles are. I think you all know this.. but are not wont to admit to it.

These forums should be alit with protest on why vehicles lack a role in base assault. By why are you all content with just KDR padding and cert farming? Its been three years. You all should have all the certs done by now.

Which is why you work in tandem with a platoon/zerg, and preferably a good team of experienced tankers. Gals in orbit? Angle up and hold fire and all together shoot it down. It even easier in a deployed prowler, where you literally roflstomp large aircraft. So no, I would say pulling gals is not the end all solution. Nor is there a bunch of half-decent gal pilots out there. Sure, you could have super elite outfits survive on a single gal drop and a beacon, other than that, your push is over against an organized armor squad with (virtually any conscious) infantry support.

Here's an interesting view... taking a look at how each tank performs in one lifetime.

Average Lifetime (Hours Played / Total Deaths)
Vanguard- 0.0967 hours, 5 minutes and 48 seconds (814.3/8,420.7)
Prowler- 0.0878 hours, 5 minutes and 16 seconds (774.4//8,820.5)
Magrider- 0.0869 hours, 5 minutes and 13 seconds (657.6/7,570.9)

So on average a Vanguard will live for 32 seconds longer than a Prowler and 35 seconds longer than a Magrider. A Prowler will live on average 3 seconds longer than a Magrider.

You might find that rather surprising... that on average Prowlers survive longer than Magriders! By like 3 seconds... but there you go.

Anyhow... what does each tank do in their average life?

Infantry Kills per Life (HE KPH * Lifespan)
Prowler- 3.9 (44.79*0.0878)
Magrider- 3.9 (44.57*0.0869)
Vanguard- 3.6 (36.98*0.0967)

We see that most tanks kill under 4 people per life... though the Vanguard's longevity still doesn't make up for its woeful KPH.

Vehicle Kills per Life (AP VKPH * Lifespan)
Prowler- 1.2 (13.95*0.0878)
Vanguard- 1.1 (11.32*0.0967)
Magrider- 1.0 (11.94*0.0869)

Here most tanks will just kill one other vehicle before dying (kinda sad really). The Prowler hits the hardest of course per life, and in this case the Vanguard's increased longevity allows it to eek ahead of the Magrider (by 0.06 vehicle kills per life).

You know though... taking another look at the MBT cause of death statistics...

Vehicle Suicide
Magrider- 4.06%
Prowler- 2.02%
Vanguard- 1.95%

In other words for whatever reason Magriders jump off cliffs over twice as frequently as Prowlers or Vanguards do... making it the 7th leading cause of death and more lethal than Vulcan-Hs or AP Lightnings! So I think at least some of the Magrider's shorter life span is self-inflicted.

Vanguard is slightly faster then a mag so it can't be speed that's holding it back.
Vanguard does more DPS then a mag so that's not it either.
Vanguard has more health than a mag, so that's not it.

Do Vanguards bother to pick up gunners?

If they ran with a gunner they might do better, the only tank that doesn't need to have a gunner is the Lightning mk2 aka the Prowler (which is a direct upgrade, a 1/2 prowler to a lightning has more DPS, more armor, the other tanks just have more armor).

MBT 2/2 Usage Rates (Secondary Weapon Usage Time / Primary Weapon Usage Time)
Magrider- 51.3% (337.5/657.6)
Vanguard- 47.2% (384.6/814.3)
Prowler- 39.0% (301.9/774.4)

So Vanguards do pick up secondary gunners... and are only about 4% behind the VS. Their 2/2 usage rates are pretty comparable to Magriders.

Prowlers on the other hand lag behind Magriders by 12.3% and Vanguards by 8.2%. That's a much more significant gap.

Well............. statistically.

The Van is (and always has been) at best on-par or just sub-par to the other MBTs AV and AI-wise.

To put it in the terms of you paragraph, if you became an equally good Prowler or Magrider pilot/gunner then you'd get slightly better statistical performance.

Which is to say the Vanguard is not pants, it is not rubbish, it is not totally useless, but it is slightly below-par statistically.




When the shield was bugged the Vans performance plummeted so the likely reality is that the Vans stock chassis is plain poor compared to the Prowler and Magrider stock chassis, but the shield ability props the Van up (statistically) - this is likely because the extra bit of chassis defence doesn't make up for the Van poor overall mobility (compared to the better DPS and mobility of the Prowler and much better mobility of the Mag).

hmm I think you need to actually rephrase some of your questions. The title asks statistically UP, but you seem to ask for reasons for this statistical disadvantage.

As many said, on Oracle of death you can find a lot of stats that are from the live servers. You can see stats on more than just MBT's, so it is used often, correctly or incorrectly, to support theories with facts. Watch out for fallacies. As some people note, the AP Vanguard kills more MBT's than the other two, but there are more things to consider. Amount pulled, playtime, other tank kills, etc. Then you have to see the playstyle. The Prowler seems to be pulled nearly as much as the Vanguard at the moment, but doesn't have as much playtime. A likely explanation is that it is destroyed earlier than the Vanguard, as the Vanguard is focused on survival, while the Prowler locks himself to the ground to dish out amazing amounts of damage, but gets destroyed as it can't flee. Or maybe the Prowlers destroy their foes so quickly, that they reach a base and people get out and start capturing. Then again, in this shorter playtime, the Prowler is much more effective than the Vanguard, killing more Lightings, Sunderers and simply more kills. Is that all? No, you also have to consider secondary weapons and the other primary weapons, how often it is 1/2 or 2/2 (can't find that in the stats).... You have to interpret so much and the guess what the most likely explanation is. Occam's Razor helps (the simplest explanation, so the one with the least conditions, should be chosen).

I would say it's the worst for 2 reasons.

1) Big, slow and inaccurate. Quite easy to **** up with C4 and mines

2) Vulcan Harassers.

Essentially though the Vans way is to hope their opposition is daft enough to try to toe to toe them.

It is the mobility difference IMO (the Mag is overall much more mobile) as gunner rates are pretty similar.

When you look at them both as a whole, Magburner makes up for a lot and strafe more than makes up for the rest.

Or to put it the other way around, a bit more chassis toughness doesn't make up for being the least mobile of the MBTs, it is only the shield that is keeping the Van as close as it is statistically.

a racer vanguard maxes out at around 65 KPH
a racer magrider maxes out at 65KPH too, but can also strafe at the same time to move diagonally at 68KPH

the difference in DPS is so very tiny, infact iirc its just a very slight reload difference.

granted the turtle tank does have more HP,

what the mag has however is very manageable firing ability while moving rather than the other 2 bumping around all over the place,
and ZERO recoil, once you find the sweet spot to aim for you won't need to readjust after each shot.