since this has been buried over on the "General Discussion" i feel it should be here, since many people don't seem to know just how badly NC max perform on the PTS. Bazino over on reddit did the number crunching (note they aren't even NC but still recognise terrible balancing when they see it.) HERE is the 8m fully stats stats are TTKs assuming all pellets hit (which is very unlikely, so expect worse performance.) here is the TTK (both arms) vs infantry in CQC (within 8m) fastest first: Instant - Scatter cannon (all pellets required) 488ms - Onlaught 534ms - Cosmos 534ms - Quasar 564ms - Nebula 564ms - Mercy 574ms - Hacksaw 600ms - Heavy Cycler 600ms - Mutilator 656ms - Blueshift 666ms - Mattock 1 second - Grinder as you can see, in CQC, 2 of the NC shotguns are the absolute slowest killers, and the "high dps" Hacksaws kill slower than MERCY, TR's long range weapons. Scattercannons while retaining their "1 shot" require every pellet from both arms to hit. here is the TTK (both arms) vs MAX in CQC (within 8m) fastest first: 4,880ms - Onslaught 4,935ms - Nebula 5,250ms - Heavy Cycler 5,250ms - Mutilator 5,340ms - Cosmos 5,350ms - Quasar 5,640ms - Mercy 5,740ms - Blueshift 7,000ms - Scattercannon 7,522ms - Hacksaw 12,165ms - Mattock 12,500ms - Grinder as you can see, within CQC, the "shotgun max" gets absolutely destroyed by EVERY weapon that TR and VS maxes have in a max fight. and for kicks he did the 20m TTKs (again this is assuming every pellet hits, which would NEVER happen, but lets pretend.) you should check em out because it is HILARIOUS, Blueshift TTK against MAX? 5.7 seconds, grinder TTK against MAX? 33 seconds... On live NC have huge damage and no sustained fire, while TR and VS have high damage (but not insta kill) and very long sustained fire durations. that is how it is balanced, NC hit hardest but with a fraction of the sustained fire of TR and VS, yet some genius thought that for the PTS, NC should have both the lowest damage AND no sustained fire. this is the complete opposite of balance. this cannot go live. My suggestion increase the damage so NC atleast deal the most damage within 8m (obviously, they're shotguns.) and increase mag size, because currently the damage per mag is HUGELY unbalanced. an example being Grinders the "big ammo" NC weapon dealing a max of 7200 per mag, while Cosmos the "big ammo" VS weapon dealing a max of 25050 per mag. so: increase CQC damage so NC deal most of the 3 faction <8m. keep the hilarious PTS drop off so NC are worst of the 3 factions at range. increase mag size until damage per mag matches TR and VS. remove slugs.
So basically just don't touch nc max. It's true there is no reason for this change, and the devs shouldn't listen to the whining of noobs who get wrecked by scatmaxesup close. Then again, since I rarely play NC and I main LA, Engineer and HA, this Nerf works really well in my favor.
After the nerf, I think every remaining NC MAX will play with dual falcon. Just keep the current shotgun and remove the slugs and it will be somewhat balanced. Or rework NC MAXes so they no longer have dual shotgun that are too hard to balance. Or make a complete MAXes rework for ALL factions at the same time.
i agree on the suggestion to just remove slugs, but then we'd still have people QQing about getting insta-gibbed by charging into cqc against it. so if they really must nerf the damage i'd atleast expect NC to be doing the most CQC dmg, then i'd want mag size increases to fill the void, i don't care if they make the range as useless as it is on PTS because that isn't NC maxes role, but it still needs to be the superior cqc max. the current PTS variant is simply a joke, outgunned by EVERY VS and TR weapon in cqc, while having no range and no sustained fire. so whatever they do (hopefully just don't change the live version at all!) the current PTS version cannot go live! also on the subject of falcons, i used to run falcons religiously, but have stopped since they got a damage nerf, sometimes they don't even oneshot on a perfect double-shot anymore. i've saved up certs though and am ready to buy the terribly lame Gorgons, incase this nerf does go live, if i'm gonna have lame DPS then i might aswell have lame DPS and sustained fire.
Without slug at least that mean you won't get instant-killed at the supposed "safe range" because RNG decided to kill you. The idea to improve accuracy (RNG) and reduce frustration from instant-kill is nice, but the application of the idea is like the valkyrie small weapon nerf : it will be broken until they realize their mistake from live server data. I like bazino's idea : keep the awful nerf but increase mag size and ammo capacity a lot.
Bazino's suggestion still leaves the shotgun max doing similar cqc damage as tr and vs though, And with the hilarious damage drop off i would expect NC to be king of cqc, since they are utterly destroyed beyond 8m
NC maxes are close quarters maxes. Vanu and TR are much better at range against both infantry and vehicles. Lets face it - up close against vehicles means death. So the NC maxes are basically built as point holders. This means that they are pretty much confined to small areas where they are easy fodder for well used explosives. The balance is already there. The inability of Vanu and TR to out-rock-paper-scissor the NC Maxes is by lack of thought and not by lack of equipment to do the job. The ability for both TR and VANU EFS to strafe the heck out of infantry is either hacking or their equipment is too powerful against infantry. But there is always a rock-paper-scissors for that as well, correct?
Having weapons that rank 1st, 7th, 11th and 12th when ranked against the firepower of the other two factions doesn't make us the best at close quarters. I seriously doubt it furthermore because of our constant need to reload while your opponent is constantly firing away. The NC max spends way more time on its heels reloading behind a shield rather than dealing damage offensively. This proposed NC max nerf is a solution looking for a problem which will in turn create an actual problem which itself will never be fixed. Shelf the NC max nerf and move on to bigger and better things...
Wait...Bazino is the source?? Yeah, as much as I don't want to see NC screwed over with these changes, I'm going to need a second source on the data used. TYVM and TIA
How about "calculate it yourself"? Its not hard to pick 2 random weapons and a column from the calculations, then calculate those. If those numbers are correct than it can be assumed all of it is correct. Not satisfied? Pick a random weapon for each column and calculate that. If all of these are correct you can assume each column was correctly calculated. But ofcourse going "jargh someone did calculations and I disagree with the answer so I'll just say its untrustworthy and not take any effort to check for validity or accuracy because that might mean admitting I was wrong" is sooooo much easier.
I read "Hey I don't trust Bazino, I need to have more data". The data he used was here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/jan-31-2019-pts-update-max-changes.251230/ and from the test-server itself. He made these calculations: https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside...m_too_fair_we_cant_nerf_the_nc_max_like_that/ Now you ask for more data, but there is no other data because this is already all the available data you would ever need aside from the actual performance that will build up from hundreds of players using it for a few months. You can simply use the data readily available in that PTS update or go online on the PTS and check the stats yourself. Then you can pick a few random columns and weapons out of Bazino's calculations to check if he calculated it right. This is what I told you, I read you correctly the first time and if you meant something else you should have written it correctly.
