[Vehicle] inb4 Gatekeeper gets nerfed into the ground

This whole topic is a bit ahead of its time the thing is we have to let things settle down a bit the weapon might be over preforming because theres just so many on the battlefield that one is constantly landing a killing blow i mean if you look at the statistics for the last month even tho the Gatekeeper hasn't been out for a month its already been pulled more than its counterparts.The weapon could also be doing well just because of its desighn its completely desighned to compliment the Prowler and its doing well there because of that but on a harasser well the weapon is preforming just fine in between the other 2 new weapons even tho you would like to compare it to the other long range weapons i dont think you can because of the time they have been out. Its just too early to tell anything for sure right now i mean how many threads said the Vulcan was Op for the longest time and it was just fine.

Overall the gun might be Overpowered but its hard to tell at this point and ide prefer them to let things settle before nerfing it accordingly than obliterating it into an unusable state like they usually do with our weapons i mean this last patch finally made the striker usefull again its finally good enough its not amazing but its versatile.

So, how is this new PPA working out for TR? I see many harassers and tanks on hills just spamming the thing at not armor. How about reverting the current PPA to that old state and giving it a little bit of vehicle damage?

Unlike the Saron, the Gatekeeper is highly specialised against armour, and has close to zero AI capabilities.. It should be good at what it is specialised against - armour.

It actually has about the same splash stats as the Lasher, but that's an anti vehicle gun right?

I think the no bullet drop should be amended first and then monitor its performance before they kill it. Its actually quite boring to use, so i would have no issues on that but no cof or it will be pointless. On that note as i said to someone else, you could argue the VS need a buff on theirs and reduce the COF, its just to much at distance and to inaccurate.

I honestly reckon just taking it's muzzle velocity down to about 400m/s ought to do it. It's supposed to be a long range AV weapon - let it perform like a long range AV weapon, because it's already weak as hell in cqc.

Sure a velocity nerf could be one simple change, but it would also be nice for it to get a mechanic change that makes it more complex to use, something as simple as making the first two shots after reloading fire 2 barrels at once (with maybe a slightly higher CoF) before settling back into 1 shot at a time, this would make the weapon so much more interesting by giving it a little alpha for peek-a-boo situations and making there some decisions around reloading (though the reload speed cert should probably be nerfed/removed for this change).

That is just one suggestion, I'm sure the devs can do better, they came up with the Aphelion, and I honestly probably wouldn't have come up with a blend of charge up and spin up weapon like they did.

Hmm I just checked the oracle for the Harasser and the Gatekeeper is pretty close in KPH and VKPH.
KPU and VKPU are a lot higher though.

Which means it is about as powerful as it should be, but it survives longer than the competition.
The PPA looked kinda like this because a Magrider on a hill was almost unkillable for infantry, I don't really understand how that works for the GK on a NS vehicle.

On MBTs it is the other way around. KPU and VKPU are very close but KPH is 20% higher.
I expected the opposte, but very well.

The new NC and VS weapons are overperforming similarly as well, at least on the MBT

But there is only a two points for data in the oraclye yet. Could we wait for people to adjust to the new stuff and see how it fars in two weeks first?

The main reason the new weapons all seem to be over-performing is because their stats are based on just the past few days after release and the double XP weekend, while the gen 1 ESAV are based on averages for the entire preceeding 30 days. This inflates the new weapons stats, because we have just had a double whammy of vehicle play due to extra interest in playing vehicles (due to new shiny) and more players in general (because this is the first double XP for non-members for many months).

If you look at the total playtime with the MBT AP cannons which did not get any balance changes (and if anything have been indirectly nerfed with the HEAT/HE velocity changes), you can see the MBT playtime increased massively. So while there may be balance changes needed with the new weapons, don't read too much into the comparison between Gen 1 and Gen 2 yet.

http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=playtime&weapon1=3460&weapon2=4008&weapon3=3730

GK is currently OP because it's too easy to use at any distance, that's all.
It's OK if its COF stays the same but then GK should have more drop, less velocity (350-400 m/s) and I believe a bit less clip size or a longer reload.

I've used Prowler a lot and found it extremely effective in CQC (especially against Maggies) even with Halberd. With Vulcan you kill a Saron Mag in head2head and stay with 40% HP at least but if highly depends on distance. So overall it was like "get close and kill" for Prowler and "keep some distance, dodge and kill" for Mag. You can call it "unbalanced" but it really was not IMO. Most of Prowler drivers just bad make a lot of stupid mistakes like anchoring down just when they see an enemy regardless to situation and landscape. And also every tank can be caught in a situation where it has no chance to win.

Now we have GK and the most annoying thing with it is pretty effective premanent spam. Like Raven MAXes (or Vortex but for some reason I rarely see Vortex MAXes last months) it's annoying and makes you retreat. And also a Harasser parked between a ground bump/stone can spam this almost without any risk. Inb4 same as Halberd-H but NO by obvious reasons.
You also talk about GK CQC effectiveness but don't forget pls that P2-120 AP have 2500 damage with 2s (+0,5s between shots) reload speed while FPC and Titan have 3,25/1865 and 3,5/2075. So AP+GK combo is pretty effective against Mag even in CQC.
Vanny is another story; only AP+Vulcan combo can really outDPS it w/shield if you start first and both don't miss.
That's also why I think Aphelion is pretty useless addition: Mag has a worst DPS of three what makes it a poor tank for facing enemy permanently and dealing sustained damage. Meanwhile Aphelion-H works same as Vulcan so if you like such fun then it's OK.

GK is something like antieverything Cobalt

i think it needs some more time to judge the weapon. At the moment there is a spam of the new weapons, and each fraction needs to learn how to deal with those. I never thought that a NC harrasser can be THAT dangerous at close... . The biggest problem I see so far is that the GK is too silent. If you dont look at your health one cant notice that the tank is under fire...

Could the same not be said for Lancer/Vortex and Ravens?
You have to understand that this weapon is TR's only viable long range AV weapon. Sure it's annoying, but my lancer/vortex is a hitscan weapon and has been abused for months on end by my VS outfit (DPSO). These weapons require literally zero leading, have zero drop, and still hit like a cannon.
Ravens are laser guided (for god's sake) = 100% accuracy at all ranges, and they hit like decimators with each shot, and it has also been abused for months on end by NC outfits.

It's too early to say anything. Let the new weapons find their place in the game and let the dust settle, then we'll compare statistics and see which one is overperforming.
However, rather than balancing just yet, devs should be working on fixing up some of the bugs with the weapon, such as missing sounds (silent GK), and missing/invisible tracers - which makes the GK harrasser untrackable.

It has a CoF

All those VKPU and VKPH are high only because TR has nothing else to use. We use anything we can get our hands on and everyone joins in. Of course the stats will be higher compared to VS/NC counterparts.

Anyone who thinks a GK is good at anti infantry hasn't used it and is too dumb to move once fired upon. If you get hit by 5 shots you were either in the open with no cover and deserved it or asleep at the keyboard.

I love how some people are comparing it to the old PPA....lol. This things AE damage is nearly is nonexistant.

If you want to compare, it's an stock M20 Basilisk with different modifiers for Vehicles in damage profile. Has a smaller magazine but faster reload. I'm not even the first person to make this comparison.

I used the gatekeeper for a good ~18 hours over this last weekend. The complete lack of CoF / recoil makes it quite simple to fire at any range. When the damage appears from out of nowhere, and you aren't sure of the origin... it takes significantly longer to escape the line of fire. When I can farm Raven maxes from high ground at 650 meters, there is potentially some adjustment needed. This thing is MORE potent at AI then the PPA was at high range - the projectiles are sniper-rifle grade velocity, and the complete lack of any form of CoF / Bloom makes aiming simple.

As someone who used the PPA frequently, it's a fair comparison. The gatekeeper is NOT as potent at short or even mid range, but it is much better at high range - projectiles are 500m/s, and unlike the prenerf PPA, there is absolutely zero CoF. I fail to see how it couldn't be compared to the PPA, as it's intended to be used at the same ranges, but is capable of damage vehicles rather then just infantry. The Gatekeeper, as it currently exists, is closer to lancer velocity then it is the Saron, only with a potential for high zoom scopes, sustained fire, and no charge time required.

The single mitigating factor that this weapon has, compared to the Saron, is that it cannot be spam fired rapidly. The Prowler version even has a third extra magazine size compared to the harasser version, which scales it up to a greater degree then the Saron, which would require 9 shots per reload without further penalty, compared to the harasser version.


Change this:

To this:

And you have the exact same argument that many VS used when defending the prenerf PPA. We all know how that turned out.

Claiming that this weapon is fine as is... well, that's just as silly as claiming that the prenerf ZoE / PPA were fine.
They were not.

Personally, I say leave the Gatekeeper as is for a good 2-3 weeks, and see where things stand. Daybreak has quite a few stats that their API doesn't offer - let's give them time to collect more usage data before deciding what action needs to be taken.

In the very first sentence you already say "it's not outperforming the Halberd". After replying and reading on I'm putting an extra note here: you already mentioned the Harasser version needs a change, so don't see this as an attack but as more info.
I'm going to use the best stats of each Halberd regardless of faction: 5,22 KPU (NC), 2,78 VKPU (NC), 0,62 AKPU (TR)

Again, the Gatekeeper-H had a KPU of 8,16 (almost 3 kills more), 6,27 VKPU (3x more than the best Halberd) and an AKPU of 0,43. The Gatekeeper is only weaker in aircraft kills!

The MBT Halberd of the VS is the only one that performs similar to the Gatekeeper, the NC and TR versions are weaker. We can see here what kind of beast the Prowler is as the TR Halberd stats are way lower than the VS and NC, showing how much more power the Gatekeeper needs to have just to counteract the amount of kills the Prowler gets due to it's DPS and dual shot ability.

As for the rest, I'm not saying "nerf the Gatekeeper into the ground", I'm not even asking for a direct change to it's damage model. All I'm asking for is to make it more equivalent in long-range capabilities as the Enforcer and Saron, both of which have lower velocity (300m/s) and either a COF (Saron) or bullet drop (Enforcer). The ability to magdump is replaced by the ability of constant fire for extended periods of time, which makes it better for long-range as well as a miss is less punishing and you are guaranteed a more constant DPS than the Enforcer and Saron. Therefore the Gatekeeper has the advantage of speed (500m/s) and a lack of accuracy reducing mechanic (Bullet drop or COF). It needs something, so I suggest putting it's speed to 300m/s like the other two weapons and add a very slowly increasing COF, meaning you have a great accuracy for most of your magazine but need some trigger discipline for extended engagements, and it's anti-infantry ability for long-range are also reduced. It remains the best long-range canon but won't be the point&click weapon we have now.

Actually, that would be a reason it's stat would plummet.
All it's KPH, VKPH and AKPH stats are inflated yes, but if you look at how much each unique gets, you get a much clearer picture. We can assume that every player, good or bad, is using it. And with so many players using it there's a lot of chance they end up going 1v1, which would bring the VKPU for each at around 1 depending on who wins each time. Yet we see a much higher VKPU, as well as KPU, on these weapons.
People are using these weapons regardless of the situation, and will often be using it when they shouldn't just because it's new and shiny. This means they will often attack something that's too hard to chew and die, lowering the total stats. Yet so far it hasn't really been very bad has it?