When will heavy weapons (Lasher, Minigun, Jackhammer) be for more than just the lolz ?

Exactly, but some players feel they should be able to use it as a medium to long range sniping weapon. :/

I'm somebody who wants better long range accuracy on the MCG. No, I don't want a sniping MCG (strawman much?).

Did you know that the MCG does less dps than several assault rifles and carbines? The dps is good (better than LMGs) but it is not extraordinary. That's just on paper. In reality, accuracy is a huge factor in the effectiveness of a weapon,as is range flexibility.

I have about 250 kills with the MCG (I tried hard to find a situation where it shines) but in the end any of the LMGs are the better weapon.

For indoors fighting get an auto-shotgun. That thing kills before the MCG is even spun up.

LOL

Yep, that is where the splasher excels. Good lord that was hilarious.

I can't speak for the Jackhammer (as I haven't used it extensively) but the Lasher and the Minigun are fine as they are.

They are designed as specialist weapons for specific situations. They are not designed to be jack of all trades guns like LMGs/ARs/Carbines because that could easily result in major faction imbalance.

The minigun is basically 75% shotgun and 25% LMG for balancing purposes. The advantage of the minigun is that it has a shotgun-like aim from the hip reticle that isn't affected by movement or time firing, plus it has an absolutely massive magazine size and barely has to reload. This makes it a short range dedicated weapon, like a shotgun.

If you gave it a similar TTK to a shotgun it would be objectively better than a shotgun, due to hardly ever having to reload. One faction having the best short range infantry weapon would cause huge balance problems. As for being better at medium range, why should it? Non-slug shotguns are garbage at medium range as well.

The Lasher is a weapon for suppression and hitting large groups of clustered enemies. It's good at what it does. It's not a long range sniping weapon, nor is it a close range weapon, not is it is a solo weapon. The only problem with it is stupid Vanu puglets; SoE cannot fix stupidity.

My lasher is no

No it's the question of WHEN it's usable.

My Lasher works fantastic for area denial and moving enemies back off cover and I've seen the chaingun used to the same effect. If you choose to buy it and pretend it's a carbine, that's not an issue with the weapon, it's purely a PEBKAC situation.

Jackhammer is obviously broken. Discussion on it is moot until we see how they rework or buff it.

Being a heavy weapon, even in PlanetSide 1 I've always thought their purpose should be as a counter to MAX units. Stuff like the MCG should be the default defensive weapon for base assaults, mowing down infantry and MAX rushes alike.

Personally I think they should make MAX units slightly more resilient to small arms fire and make the heavy weapons their weakness. Easiest way to do that is make the MAX units armored (small damage reduction) and make the heavy weapons armor-piercing.

TR minigun has to be one of the worst unlocks that I have gotten. I lose 9/10 firefights with it, even if I get the jump on someone. The only thing it is good for is if you are sitting on a point defending in a good position. Even then you will lose most of the time.

I think the Jackhammer, in its current state should at least have something over the regular shotguns.

I think if it pierced infantry, i.e. your shots go through infantry and hit anything behind them, it could make it better as a heavy weapon.

My short sum-up to the Jackhammer: in really close CQC (~5m) that thing is - apart from it's tiny (6 shells) magazine - utterly lethal. Beyond 10m, it's utterly worthless, and that's honestly not even exxagerated.

That's right. If anyone thinks that the Lasher is bad, then that weapon is just not for you. It has it's own unique playstyle and can't be directly compared to any other regular weapon.

the problem is MCG and lasher are unique fun weapons, whereas jachammer is not unique. its just a normal shotgun.

jackhammer should have unique properties like mcg and lasher. the easiest way to solve this is larger magazine size like its awesome machine shotgun ancestor in ps1.

They laughed at my Lasher.
I laughed at their corpses.

That's what I thought when I went on a rampage with my lasher.
This thing is no longer "for the lolz", it's a god damn threat.

However, it seems to be impossible to kill medics with this thing.
Everything else dies super fast, even HAs, but medics just stay alive for some reason.

when more HAs use lasher at the same time, the aoe effect reaches a critical point where it isntantly kills everything. then no amount of heals or shields will help.

i wish jackhammer can feel the same. im TR, but in ps1 i always respected the jackhammer. when i hear the crunch crunch crunch of the shots , i know its gonna be a tough fight.

The Lasher seems fine other than aoe'ing teammates. It was changed in Planetside 1 so see no reason not to do the same here. Beyond that it'd just be some possible fine tuning adjustments and we're not really at a game balance point to worry about those really small details yet.

The TR's MCG seems ok, at least on the receiving end. It's probably not quite distinct enough from normal LMGs so could use some tweaks, but it's ok. I've gotten the jump on a guy a point blank range, start hip firing (and there wasn't a lot of strafing to account for wiffing a ton of shots). He was able to turn, spin up, and drop me. GG heavy shields... it's like they're good at infantry combat or something. I've also had a guy at an empty base peeking over a hill from 50m away that I danced around with for a good 5 minutes. He could hit me often enough/drop my shields fast enough that I couldn't just lawl and snipe him with an Assault Rifle. Spin up time is a penalty sure, but if you're honestly losing 9/10 of your gunfights it leads me to think you're not using the gun well enough or your facing nothing but super ace players.

Everyone agrees that the Jackhammer needs some serious work.

Tested both the MCG and the lasher yesterday, and i was positively surprised.
The MCG is a great weapon against multiple targets at close range. At mid range i can still work well for supressing (most people tend to keep their heads down if they see incoming fire, no matter if it hits or not). I can live with the spinup time, but there is one odd thing about it: you always get the full spinup time, even if you only let go of the trigger for a split second. If it has to spin up, it certainly will also take time to spin down, so this should definitely be changed. The MCG is especially great if you know there's a MAX coming around your corner. If anyone wants to give it a buff, i'd suggest to give it the ability to damage all air targets. Come on, what could be better for close range AA than a minigun?
The lasher is also a nice weapon. Very accurate, very low recoil, very low bloom. The ttk for 1vs1 is still pretty good considering its an area weapon. Its excellent to harass people with good cover (especially as the current HA rocket absolutely sucks at this). Its power against clustered enemies is obvious. The only thing i hate about it is that it completey gives away your position.

P.S. i was a little disappointed that there are no upgrades to research for the special weapons. Feels wrong to have a weapon that cant be improved or changed in any way.

I don't fear the Lasher much in open environments, but indoors it's a real pain because of it's AoE - especially when I can only find very small cover and can still be hit by that indirectly. Got killed a few times like this. Sure was annoyed, but the weapon needs to be good at something, and that's a pretty unique property, seeing that only the Rocket Launcher has AoE aswell of all the Infantry weapons.

ITT: people who think the MCG is good for mid range. I guess for some mid range means 20 meters?

You can do this in most fights if you're smart. Not exactly as gloriously, but you can fire at clumps of infantry from relative safety and get kills. Lasher is great other than its friendly fire issues.

The lasher is amazing for what it is.

An Assist Cannon.

The lasher is a very useful weapon. Unfortunately nobody cares about being useful. They care about farming xp.

Believe it or not if you use it right, you can probably get more xp from assists with the lasher than kills with an lmg.

/signed

I want my Station Cash back for the Jackhammer purchase.