Alert Win Rates

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Gobbu, Nov 13, 2019.

  1. Demigan

    Hehe, ofcourse the "informed parts of the community" happens to be "everyone who agree's with me" right Tobi? And why try to prove your point if you can just try and shame everyone by saying they aren't informed right? Yeah you are so awesome! It's not like Campagne and me for example have done the numbers and came with the conclusion that the Magrider kills more vehicles and infantry per Magrider pulled than the other MBT's. Or that the Orion is the best starter-weapon out there which is a huge deal in a game like this.
    • Up x 1
  2. JudgeNu

    Because players realize losing sucks and join a winning faction plus the perks.
  3. JudgeNu


    I think you actually missed my point.
    I understand yours, but i gave you real reasons why i believe, and you just say im wrong.

    Whatever it really matters not.
  4. Demigan

    While organized outfits, platoons and squads are a factor, they are far from the only factor. PS2 is about large populations and that makes a huge impact. A single squad or platoon might cut off a Zerg, but once they do that the people in the Zerg do not instantly disappear, they relocate and form new Zergs. Also the times that an organized platoon or squad actually pulls something like that off is small and while influential at that moment most of the time it's the sheer mass of people and their actions that will decide for a win or loss of the continent.
    As an example how numbers can affect the outcome: If you give one faction a starter weapon that is both the easiest to master by newbies and arguably one of the best weapons in the game then the sheer mass of successes because of that equipment will have a noticeable effect.
    We also know that skill-wise all factions are more or less perfectly equal. We can see this in the NS and carbon-copy weapons like shotguns and snipers where each faction scores more or less equally to the other two. Then we look at the faction-specific weapons and find that despite this equal skill some of these faction weapons score massively better than the counterparts that other factions have. This also begs the question: If one team is superior in leadership, why would they only be superior in leadership? Leadership requires different skills to be successful at, so the weapons and skill in using such weapons would be different than that of the run-of-the-mill playerbase. Yet this kind of skill difference is non-existant between the 3 factions when looking at NS weapons.
    Now since the NS weapon performance stats are tied to the exact same population that wins or loses a continent we should see any differences in population back in the statistics. You guys have superior skills? Then your skillset overall will need to be different. You can't pick-and-choose. But since joining a faction is already a randomized event as far as probability goes and the NS weapons prove that the probability equalizes skilled players and unskilled players across all factions there is no magical superior leadership at any faction.

    Funny thing ofcourse is that so far the only "proof" of the VS being superior in leadership is anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately for that evidence I've been looking into the leadership skills on my server and found practically nothing the VS did better.

    Also you talk about probabilities, but you should know very well that given a large enough sample size and time period that probabilities equalize. Every faction has equal time and chances on the good and bad warpgates for example. Given a large enough sample size this should come out at 33% for each faction, give or take a few percentages.
    Yet the NC hasn't gotten that 33% by along shot. We know that the Vanguard is on a per-pull basis one of the worst vehicles in the game. We know that the NC have the least newby friendly starter weapon in the game for the most used class in the game... Is it really that much rocketscience to figure out that equipment is most definitely the only answer left that can properly explain the differences?
    • Up x 1
  5. Zizoubaba


    I think you got me or my post confused with someone else; I wasn't in a conversation with you up until now. I made 2 posts to the OP answering his or her question, and another to all the people debating which faction had better weapons.
  6. Zizoubaba


    Of course organised play isn't the only factor, I wrote (many times) that it was only one of many factors.

    So we agree ..

    The point was that faction balance, specifically whether a faction had better weapons or not, may come into play, but compared to all the other factors had an insignificant influence.

    The number one factor, and I mean like, by a very very big margin, if I had to pick just one, this would be it, the number one reason a faction will win or lose an alert (on average; ie in and outside of prime time) is population.

    But it isn't raw population figures, it's nothing to do with "how many there are".

    It's to do with "who is fighting who".

    Basically, any kid would understand, if most of the population of 2 factions is fighting each other, most of the population of the 3rd faction is conquering the entire map.

    That kind of thing (I know I'm repeating myself) outweighs any potential question regarding faction weapon balance. Compared to that kind of thing, whether VS has better weapons or not is irrelevant, it's insignificant, it certainly does not matter; to repeat that last example, if most of the population of 2 factions is fighting each other, the 3rd faction will conquer the map no matter what the deal is with the weapons, no matter whether they are balanced or not.


    Edit for those who (it happens to me sometimes :p) don't want to read too much stuff :

    Whatever the reason NC doesn't win as many alerts as the other 2 factions (assuming for the sake of argument that this is true), it has nothing to do with the weapons or the gear or anything else that is faction specific.
  7. pnkdth

    I think we should listen to more anecdotes and personal stories. Especially to those who doesn't massage our egos or reinforces already held beliefs.
    • Up x 1
  8. PanzerGoddess

    ....and to think I was always under the impression that alertzerging was a big contributor to winning lol....and THIS WHOLE TIME ITS BEEN BECAUSE OF WEAPONS!!!!!!! OMHGFL!!!

    who would of thought
    than again any reasonable person would think:

    going from even numbers to a unequal amount of numbers might influence an alert lol.
    the lowest pop faction usually loses an alert, unless the other two said factions just want to have dinner with each other then said low pop faction might and does win from time to time.

    scenario two, all factions are even, alert pops....oddly enough its much easier to switch to your "other" faction to hopefully gain said win for stuffs. Why play a losing battle when you can just go to the winning side lol.
    Some weapons are better than others, CIA really mashed balancing and and its a cluttered mess (thank you wrel, no seriously, thank....and I cant say it enough thank you, --sarcasm ensue).

    Faction jumping and population numbers can make all the difference in the world, remember all it takes is one well organized idiot to take his gang and make a huge difference if not in his current faction or just by switching to another. I see my friends list go crazy when the cont lock alert happens....its like thunderdome, one minute your having dinner with your buddies next thing ya know you are all going for each others killmail...
  9. JudgeNu

    I think the website is borked cuz this isnt the first time. cheers
    • Up x 1
  10. Xhaleon

    I will say one thing about NC's faction balance; whenever it comes to organized pushes on the infantry side of things the NC have a distinct disadvantage in their Maxes. The vast majority of engagements take place outside of shotgun effective range, PS2 has weirdly short ranged shotguns despite the very open map design, so pushes on an objective will be harder on them and require more coordination to get NC Maxes to where they need to be. That kind of happens even inside an objective room because again the vast majority of them are big enough that shotguns really only work on the doorway next to you; no option to help out one entrance from the other. The NS compromise option is as always less optimized than desirable.

    Regardless of a fight being a casual fun skirmish, a mindless cert farm or an actual organized competition, you will always see at least some VS and TR Maxes hanging around doing their thing while the big blue lunks are a rare sight because they can't pull their weight at all until they are escorted up to the front by everyone else. Well, the shotgun ones anyway, Raven ones can be seen hanging around sometimes.

    Poor Mattocks, poor crouching slugs hidden accuracy. I do miss them.
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  11. Demigan

    That is exactly my point: Organized play isn't half as powerful as you make it out to be and equipment is easily 80% or more of an influence on the numbers. I'll give you an example after establishing a baseline:

    We know that where on a continent your warpgate is matters, but we also know that across all servers we see these things change randomly all the time at all population numbers and prime times. With a large enough database across enough time we can assume that the probabilities will near enough equalize.

    Leadership is a factor of the population. Population is semi-randomly distributed as players pick their factions. There is a measure of choice and attraction to factions based on the descriptions and presentation. However we can test how player skill is distributed by looking at performance on similar equipment, in this case NS weapons. We can see that in effect the playerbase is equally skilled with almost every single NS weapons or carbon-copy weapon. Since this is the case we can safely say that no faction has a higher skilled playerbase, and again since leadership is a factor of population we can make a prediction about it: It has to be virtually the same across all factions.

    This leaves one thing: differences in equipment. And it's a huge deal. Here's the example:
    with 3 factions of equal skill and equal chance on the good and bad spots on a continent we give each a starter weapon.
    Faction 1 gets a weapon that is arguably the best weapon for newbies to learn and even for veterans to use.
    Faction 2 gets a weapon that is medium for newbies to learn and veterans to use.
    Faction 3 gets a weapon that is hard to learn for newbies but about similar in performance at veteran levels as faction 1.

    Per 100 players we have 40 newbies, 40 average players and 20 veterans.

    Per 100 battles Faction 1 gets (50 against each other faction) the 40 newbies will have a higher chance of winning each battle, and subsequently getting another kill after that or supporting an ally before dying. 40 average players have a good chance against both other factions as well, and 20 veterans are more or less equalized with the other two with a small advantage remaining.
    Per 100 battles Faction 2 gets the 40 newbies will have a higher chance against faction 3 but a lower chance against faction 1. The average players see a similar distribution and at the veteran tier the weapon will function the least against either other faction.

    This means that in a fight Faction 1 will have a higher chance to proceed and capture territory in 80 of the battles performed. In an ideal scenario each of these battles would have a 50% chance of being won or lose, but due to the advantage it would become something more to 55% or 60% chance of coming out on top. Using the "small" advantage of 55% chance to win the battle that would mean that on average you would win 44 of the 80 battles, and have 4 people more who proceed and can help allies than your enemies while your enemies have 4 less people who proceed and help their enemies. But the next battle these 4 have will again allow them a 55% chance of winning, meaning 2 will win their next battle as well. This starts compounding since we aren't talking about just 100 people but about 900 people or more on a single continent having constant battles with other players. This means Faction 1 has a larger chance of taking territory it needs to win, and that will be visible in the victory statistics.

    People have proclaimed this several times already so I've done a few random selections by checking Fisu, which has a specific indicator to track if one faction or another is being double teamed or not.
    So far all factions get double-teamed about equally across most servers. So the idea that it's 2 dogs fighting and the 3rd takes the bone causing one faction to win more is unfounded. It's like the people who proclaim that their faction is always 100% of the time double-teamed because they only check their own borders and don't check lattice connections and fights happening between the other two factions.

    In such a large-scale game like this where population skill has been proven to be more or less equal across the entire playerbase equipment is the most influential factor. If only because it's just about the only factor that can account for any discrepancies.


    It has everything to do with weapons and gear! How could it not be? Even a small advantage in gear has an absolutely insane effect on the capabilities of your faction!
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  12. Zizoubaba



    speaking to you is like speaking to a wall (quite literally as well as figuratively)
  13. Zizoubaba


    You'"re kidding me right?

    I do'nt even know where to start...

    I explained this a million times.

    Not only that, I re-phrased what I said just to be very clear.

    I provided examples. I provided arguments with logical steps, like 1+1= 2

    I ***** proved it even.

    I mean if you're gona say stuff like this, it really isn't worth discussing anything at all.

    But just one last time, then I'm ***** one with you forum warrior trolls.

    Whether a faction wins an alert or not depends on many factors, including weapon performance, however weapon performance is a TINY influence on the outcome.

    That was a statement. Normally I would back this up with arguments accompanied with illustrations.

    EXCEPT I ******* DID ALREADY.

    So maybe, instead of writing HUGE WALLS OF TEXT for no reason that say nothing new, have a little think about it, and if you wana know why I said what I said, then ***** scroll up.

    I don't post here because I like to randomly chat and theorise.
  14. Demigan

    I'm not kidding you. While you claim that there are lots and lots of factors they can all be brought down to 3 simple things:
    The terrain we fight on. Which over time is equally distributed so isnt a factor.
    The population differences. But we have statistics that prove that the average skill is equal across all servers.
    The faction-specific equipment.

    2 of these 3 are canceled out due to probabilities being equal or there being no difference between factions.

    Also as far as proof goes, the most tangible proof you offered was "if a zerg goes down a lane and a small team cuts them off they are screwed". But you failed to note the incidence of this happening (if it happens once in a blue moon it is far less influential than the Zerg itself, and usually a Zerg isnt easily cut off) and failed to prove that the currently winning factions have superior leadership to actually do this. This isnt proof, this is a hypothesis that still needs proving! And a hypothesis without an attempt to prove it is quite literally theorizing, that thing you say you dont do. Step up and prove your point!

    In the meantime I've given a simple example why having even a 5% higher chance than 50% to win with a common superior weapon is a pretty big deal in a game about large numbers.
  15. pnkdth


    Your baseline is held up by assumptions as well. I could see it work if players were bots though. Why is it that both VS/TR both manage to get nearly the same amount of alert wins? Surely, VS should have been utterly and completely dominant everywhere... Unless, of course, those 20% you attribute to leadership actually has a massive impact and it becomes much more important to manage population (just look to the controversy of redeployside to see how large effect that had). I mean, in Server Smash ground vehicles were effectively made irrelevant given how important it was to move quickly and effectively to cap bases. Why were DIG so hated and effective on alerts/Server Smash? Massive redeployment and they became really good at it. I can guarantee these platoons did not have a lot VS HA tryhards with BGs, no, they were off in "a good fight" padding their stats with the rest of the mouth-breathers.

    Your final conclusion (underlined/bolded) is a giant leap to a conclusion which is almost never ever true in real life. There's a good reason for why VCs invest in teams not just in the idea being presented, why companies will not hire "the best person" for the job based purely on skill. In sports, a single super diva can outright ruin an entire team, a poor manager squanders a team, and so on. There is absolutely no reason at all to assume personal FPS skills correlates to the same level of coordination/teamwork. Two very different skillsets.

    In short, give me 12 decent players who are willing to work together over a bunch of stat-focused tryhards with MLG ready stats any day. I'm sure they'll come out of it with better KDR but are also going to have zero base captures and 223844 base defence ribbons. Meanwhile my squad will fade into obscurity as a bunch of nameless few who contributed to winning (or at least tried) an alert.

    PS2 is a tug of war, after all, and the unfair part of it all is that some teams have more players willing to take their place at the rope. I wouldn't know how to put a number on it though. I wager none of you do either. Nor would I claim this is the only factor as currently we can clearly see the impacts of the MAX situation. It is honestly depressing to see what is going on and the lack of a backbone from DBG to acknowledge/fix it... But I am sure they'll release a couple of NC MAX arms which fixes the problem they created.

    TL;DR: Number of players matter, how you use them matter, and also equipment matter. The more organisation/leadership you have the less equipment matter, the more individualistic environment you have the more equipment matters.
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  16. Demigan

    The point about probability if you have equally skilled players is that given enough time that they will achieve the same results.

    So that 20% that you magically attribute to leadership (I didn't) would be equal on each side. Every time the VS would have a small squad that cuts off a Zerg the NC and TR would also have one that does the same given enough time. As I've already said a couple of times but somehow it goes over your heads: You have to prove that the factions who are winning more do so because they have a significantly large advantage in leadership.
    Unfortunately to prove that you would either need the actual numbers, which we don't have, or you need to find something equivalent that can tell us something about the playerbase's skill. We know that the skills of using tanks and infantry weapons differ, but across all 3 factions the NS weapons of both infantry and tanks score more or less the same. So we know that the skill of these players on both tank combat and infantry combat is virtually the same as well.
    So why would leadership skills suddenly see such a massive upheaval? Why would the skill in leadership be so massively different if every single other skill we can measure is equal across all factions? This isn't a sudden leap of logic like you claim, it is the only logical conclusion we can draw from this.

    But again, why don't you guys finally try to prove that the winning teams have superior leadership? There's only anecdotal evidence, which I've tried to ascertain and found no proof off, and I personally had to come up with Fisu's inaccurate and not conclusive top 50 players with ribbons deal while everyone claiming leadership is the culprit just flails about with "but I seen it I tells ya". Screw that, prove it. Give me the numbers, prove that despite being equally skilled in every single other skill in the game the VS and TR somehow magically are superior in skill in leadership. Then if you manage to do that, you still have to prove that leadership is more influential on the grand scheme than simply having superior weapons.
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  17. pnkdth

    In that regard, a point well made. My issue with it stems from what you make of it afterwards.

    Take Miller's 92-0 win against Emerald in Server Smash. Miller played as NC, Emerald TR. In the after talk, they for once talked about leadership structures. Emerald was using a single force commander whereas Miller had several based on lanes with one leader who was in charge of keeping them all on track. The benefits of this structure was less stress on the force commander thus Miller's leadership could focus on the task at hand and not getting what's called "battlefield fatigue" (probably incorrect use in its actual meaning but whatever) and lose focus/get tired, etc. More than that, you could observe several key moves made with specific timing in mind, indeed, tempo play (keeping your opponent responding to you) is an important part of Server Smash. Another curious question, why did not one choose VS?

    Now I am well aware that live and server smash isn't the same but it is the closest thing we have to a pure testing environment. Where we can see what gets used and discarded when winning is the priority. Not just what theoretically happens or what probably might happen but what does happen.

    Below you can find the video of the battle between Emerald versus Miller I was referring to. In fact, the entire season of this Server Smash is enjoyable as heck to watch because of all the effort put into it by the players and broadcasters.



    As for the ribbons, I distinctly remember platoon/squad/squad spawn ribbons being higher on VS/TR (since you had that exchange with me). You also went on a rant about how squad/platoons is the lowest form of teamwork and that it is little difference between that and reviving someone. Points for NC for getting lots of revives though?
    • Up x 1
  18. Demigan

    This is at least something. However the difference between server smashes and live has always been huge, which you do mention. The numbers of a server smash are paltry in comparison to live (240 vs 240) and it's only a 2-way battle. Additionally the reasons mentioned for not picking VS is purely "the pilots that can use the Scythe to pancake other ESF's aren't around". Also we are talking a Server Smash, where having a newby-friendly weapon does not matter since the people attracted to it are usually above-average to pro.
    The fact that this is a Server Smash and people specifically joined also means the population has done a filtering of it's own population. People who aren't in the mood to work together much will not join while those who do did join. This makes leading a lot easier since you can do things like Miller did where you can divide the work of lanes and have people know who's commands to follow when they are tasked to another lane. This is almost impossible in a live server, simply because the communication's infrastructure isn't in the game and people aren't divided in a proper command structure before they even join the game.

    There's also a huge difference between servers. Miller has had a higher standard for a lot of the time the Server Smash's were around (at least as far as I heard about it). However when not fighting another server this evens out. Those NC's on Miller would have been a mixture of TR, VS and NC players in reality (although for the Server Smash they'll likely have played the chosen faction a while beforehand). So when the Server Smash is over and they go back to liver servers they'll rejoin their original faction (or keep playing all 3 factions) and in effect the leadership is equal across all 3 factions again, meaning no differences between the winrates based on leadership.
    This makes sense since if Miller server picked the NC, then wouldn't the Miller NC have had a significantly higher leadership and won a lot more alerts in that era? Yet the NC only really started gaining some ground on the other factions after 2015 (when this Server Smash was). So the leadership likely didn't influence the winrate within the live servers that much.
  19. pnkdth


    Not relevant to my point as I only wanted to demonstrate the massive effect leadership/organisation has on the outcome. Furthermore, the lack of willingness to cooperate would then also have extremely negative effects. I have never heard of such an absurd reason to not pick VS (or even dumber to actually pick VS for that reason) had to been a joke since it was no secret that the Miller airforce LOVED the AH or that they were so brutally effective with it.

    Miller was pretty average in Server Smash before 2015 and got steamrolled by Emerald. It was the very reason Miller pulled itself up by its bootstraps and organised for the 2015 season. After this, it seemed like the interest for Server Smash more or less died out. Worse quality broadcasts and the events needed to be consolidated and be region versus region due to lack of people. Lane smash/infantry smash might still be running.

    So all of this + previous replies is my theory as to why SOE/DBG never dared to change NC. I mean how could they buff "the best competitive faction in the game?!" The backlash would have been huge. I am not entirely unsympathetic to the design challenge of having three factions each with differences in philosophy AND has to be designed in a way it can't break a part when it scales in number of players. For instance, skill based AA designed to kill would extremely quickly be abused.

    For me it is a combination of gear + player meta + outfits/leadership. I won't even hazard to guess which is more significant but it would be odd to see that on every server NC just happens to end up with the short end of the stick leadership-wise though I cannot rule out the snowball effect/meme that "NC are just the worst" eventually killed the faction (as in people looking for a certain style, e.g. teamwork actively being discouraged by the player base from joining the NC).
  20. Campagne

    I think we ought to discuss equipment differences as well, as I'm sure no one would completely disregard equipment balance entirely as a potential influencer of alert victories. (Though the value some may place on it varies.)

    As has been said, there is next to no evidence at all supporting player behaviour as a major contributing factor, with the highly circumstantial evidence of past server smashes being the best and only evidence to be put forth. The statistical probability of this having almost any influence on alert victories at all is astonishingly, abysmally small.

    With regards to equipment, it ought to be no contest to say difficult weapons with the same combat capabilities of easy weapons are worse than said easy weapons, but somehow that always brings up argument. Weapons like the SAW for example, are terrible for new players and aren't even all that great in the hands of most average players, but when used by veterans they can only kill in the exact same amount of time as the other two default LMGs, whether by headshots or bodyshots. However, difference does rise when in conjunction with anything that increases the shots to kill of the three. Nanoweave, resist shields, an auxiliary shield, any of the various other implants' effects or miscellaneous other sources of damage resistance such as nano-armour cloaking.

    Below is a basic table displaying the increase in shots to kill against a target with nanoweave, derived from Iridar's site:

    [IMG]

    The two most strongly impacted damage models are also the two with the lowest RoF. That is to say, the two weapon models with the highest damage, which rely on their damage more than any other model, lost the most damage per shot and have a far greater interval of time between subsequent shots.

    Any equal increase in the shots to kill with disproportionately penalize high damage, low RoF weapons much more than high RoF, low damage ones. This is most notably in terms of TTK (where both a low and high RoF weapon needing just one more shot with strongly favour the higher RoF), but is also ever present in a number of factors not always apparent. As has been demonstrated numerous times through the use of the CoF formula, --[y = i + xb], where y = final CoF, i = starting CoF, x = consecutive shots fired, and b = bloom per shot.-- weapon accuracy declines at a harsher rate for high damage weapons than it does for low damage ones.

    Here are the final CoF values for average shots to kill of most damage models: 5, 6, 7, 8, and as a bonus 15. Expected shots to kill are underlined. To demonstrate the trend is continuous simply substitute the number of shots fired with any number possible.

    Orion/Betelgeuse minimum values = 0.30, 0.34, 0.38, 0.42, 0.70
    MSW-R minimum values = 0.35, 0.40, 0.45, 0.50, 0.85
    Anchor minimum values = 0.33, 0.39, 0.45, 0.51, 0.93
    MAW minimum values = 0.33, 0.39, 0.45, 0.51, 0.93
    GOD/SAW minimum values = 0.35, 0.42, 0.49, 0.56, 1.05

    Orion/Betelgeuse maximum values = 0.60, 0.64, 0.68, 0.72, 1.00
    MSW-R maximum values = 0.60, 0.65, 0.70, 0.75, 1.10
    Anchor maximum values = 0.65, 0.71, 0.77, 0.83, 1.25
    MAW maximum values = 0.70, 0.76, 0.82, 0.88, 1.30
    GOD/SAW maximum values = 0.75, 0.82, 0.89, 0.96, 1.45

    Unless fired while totally stationary, low RoF/high DMG weapons are universally less accurate than high RoF/low DMG weapons.

    There are also some minor background stats which are punished by increasing the shots to kill of a high damage gun moreso than a low damage weapon. Magazine size for example, is among the lowest for NC weapons. This can range from just one or two to six or eight fewer rounds below the typical magazine size. (Compared to VS when TR/NS mags are larger due to faction traits.) This is often an entire bodyshot kill or more lost before a shot has been fired.

    Requiring just one more shot to kill from a weapon with lower accuracy and a longer TTK heavily punishes weapons which are disproportionately found within the NC's arsenal. And this is just looking at the main traits of NC-oriented/specific damage models for infantry!

    The Vanguard is a big fat brick with next to nothing going for it. High alpha damage but bottom-tier DPS, most health but longest repair times, greatest survivability but only against a single opponent, overshield but it with a limited time of use, limited area coverage, and with a directional resistance requiring full or at least high heath to be of any use.

    Topguns for both the harasser and Vanguard are awful. The Enforcer is weak with lower damage per shot and heavy drop, with a low RoF and magazine size of 8, dulled by a long reload. The Halberd sees about the same usage, and has just below the same DPS as the Enforcer. The Mjolnir is very inaccurate, slow, pathetically short-ranged and barely out-DPSes the competition in theory, but can never achieve this DPS in the "real word" due to its cripling limitations. The Canister is a shotgun which only deals 875 damage if all pellet hit the chest within the maximum damage range, and has a RoF of 180 RPM. This is worse than the default infantry semi-auto shotgun, which can still kill in two shots but has a much higher RoF.

    The Reaver is a big fat brick with wings. It has the highest vertical thrust and highest top speed when using afterburners, and has skill-demanding noseguns with the highest potential DPS. It's also the same or slower in every other respect and is the largest target from every angle, aside from a straight top-down of the Scythe. It requires accuracy to use effectively against two considerably smaller targets and has no health or resistance modifiers to aid it in dogfighting. It's the same or higher accuracy as an opponent (despite being the larger target by far) or death.

    The NC almost universally require more skill or are punished more for a lack of it when using their respective ES gear, but have little to nothing to gain for having adequate skill. If not dogfighting in a Reaver an NC will almost always be, at best, on roughly equal terms with the enemy.

    But yeah sure, it's probably just leadership or something. Must be because everyone says the NC are dumb. :p