if he's dual wielding, he will end you solo without reloading, otherwise he's just a poor shot. as for other MAXes getting into cqc, yeah you do need that, because the maps consist of two things: outdoors where a tank, an aircraft or infantry will end you.. or you're indoors, where it is ALWAYS CQC
And that thing should be the king of killing MAXes really, really fast?.. Because last I checked just being king of sweeping a point in seconds was pretty much still putting them in league ahead of other MAX AI weapons, it shouldn't be both king of MAX fights and infantry clearing.
The blueshift has the lowest TTK of any Vanu max weapon, this has been calculated. Not only does it have the lowest TTK, it does the most damage per round. Is it the best? Well that depends if you have access to a lot of ammo.
The NC MAX is only good at really close range. It's your fault that your stupid VS MAX got right in it's face.
Honestly? ScatMAXes are fine. I laugh at TR and VS MAXs that get up in my face because they don't know their roles. TR has great hipfire weapons. Their MAX should just stand behind a line of soldiers and burn a NC MAX down. A TR mob is scary for a ScatMAX. So...many...bullets. VS MAX should range you and kite you. They are meant to stand back and blow infantry away. The NC MAX goes from building to building clearing infantry. That is where we excel at because we have dual shotguns. I can't tell you how many times an enemy MAX has caught me out in the open and they burn me down because I have no form of counter attack. You can't have a "MAX dual" because the roles of each MAX are different. They each have a niche and that is the way it should stay. You really can't ever have 1v1 duels in this game anyway...so why balance around that?...
I agree that the NC MAX is completely overpowered, seeing as a shotgun with 7 shells (4 to take down a Heavy without headshot) in one arm is just to strong. They should change the shotgun ammo to bouncy balls and reduce the shells in a magazine to 3. Buying the extended Mags for certs should then increase the mag size to 5 or 7, seeing as how a shotgun MUST be weaker then a pistol in CQC. Moreover the range of the hacksaw should be reduced, starting with weapon damage drop off at 5 meters range, and completely rendering the weapon useless at 10 meters or beyond. Further then that, our melee attack should be replaced with us swinging a Purple (FABULOUS) Ballon with the text "we are OP" on it.
I think the NC MAX is fine, but the VS and (I'm assuming TR) need an accuracy buff so that way the "tradeoff" the scattermaxes have is actually a tradeoff...I haven't played a TR MAX, but the Quasar has so much COF spread that it isn't really useful beyond close range...the same range the NC MAX is supposed to dominate. So leave NC MAX as it is, make the VS and TR better at medium range. If this is done by an accuracy buff, then the NC MAX gets to keep it's point-blank instadeath, and the VS and TR MAXs have a use. Win-win-win?
TR Dual Mercy MAX wins at medium to long range. NC Dual Hacksaw wins at short range. Working as designed. If you have trouble with them at medium range, I would suggest adding the "Spacebar", "Shift", "A", "D", & "S" keys to your dynamic strategic repertoire of "W", "R" & "Mouse 1". I turn corners into Hacksaw MAXs all the time and get my doo pushed in. That's where they shine. If I catch them outside and their Charge is on cooldown (or they don't have 2 brain cells to rub together), they are toast. If they do Charge, provided mine is up, I Charge to create distance. (Sprinting is obviously less effective, but works against terribles.) Jumping and crouching to make them miss shots (especially headshots) is a must. I would definitely agree with Spartan117, and take my Dual Mercy Max over a Dual Hacksaw MAX. You are more effective in more situations than a Hacksaw as long as you play intelligently. If a DH MAX gets the drop on you in close quarters, you will lose, but that is the trade-off of specialization. Keep in mind that they must ALWAYS be moving forward to be successful after making enemy contact, as creating distance and jumping/crouching is your best defense against them. It's far easier for a DM MAX to dodge HA Rockets, avoid C4SURPRISEBUTTSECKS and take down targets because they can engage them effectively at a distance. TLDR: Nerf the Dual Hacksaw MAX's, because they are successful in their specialization.
I actually run a max with dual extended mag hacksaws frequently (thank you double xp weekend!) and i'm here to say inside 15m there's not really an infantry unit in this game that can go toe to toe with the setup i have at the moment. With that said, outside of my 15m 'instagib' radius, it's like throwing handfuls of gravel at enemy units and hoping a stone gets lucky and hits an eye or something. Not to mention if i don't have a dedicated engineer with me i'm likely to run out of ammo very quickly. Dual chainguns, or whatever it is that the Vanu Maxes run seems much more effective outside of that 15m range, and as stated many times previously in this thread, if you're walking into an NC max hoping to headbutt it, you deserve what you get. Someone said earlier in this thread they'd swap hacksaws for chainguns any day... i don't agree with that. However I'd trade my Max for some comperable weapons to the carv/orion for my heavy in a heartbeat. tl;dr Hacksaws strong? yes. Op? nah.
I NO RITE? Like...I walk 10 feet in front of a NC MAX face to face and for some reason I die. What the heck is up with that? Sure, that guy next to me who was *11 FEET* away was out of range and sure the MAX gets like 5 bullets and then takes an hour to reload but should I really be penalized for attempting to hug a NC MAX?
Can we please just make it so that the TTK the hacksaws have in CQC, is something you'd need an AV max setup for and not AI? This goes for all empires. Gives purpose to AV weapons. Also as someone mentioned, anywhere you want to use a max over regular infantry, is CQC, anywhere else, regular, infantry kills you before you can kill them. (unless they stand in the middle of the open, in which case the NC scatters will kill him too.
The problem comes, yet again, from how base design works. You're forced into close quarters if you want to capture points in certain facilities/bases/outposts at which point the scattermax is dominant. I would still like to see the MAX shotguns go the way of the dodo and instead be given HMGs, or give all factions access to MAX shotguns, which would probably make the issue even worse.
Don't be dishonest. We've all played the game. We all know that the Quasar and Cycler have ranges well beyond the scattermax. No one is saying they can snipe people but they're effective well after the scatmax isn't. The scat max must be able to kill maxes in ultra close quarters without reloading because if they can't, we've already seen what happens. I'm guessing you didn't play beta, because the scattermax had 5 round in a mag on the default guns then and was completely and utterly worthless. There was a long period where NC didn't even bother with the max because you would always die reloading. You lost long range, medium range, and short range fights with equal uselessness. That's the thing, it HAS to be good at close quarters because it's the ONLY thing it's good at. If it isn't good at it, it's worthless. Having said that, the hacksaw needs a bigger downside IMO. Take one, maybe two rounds from the mag and you've got a reasonable downside especially when it already burns through ammo so fast. Essentially you risk not being able to down a MAX for crazy automatic fire.
Hmm that's odd, I was referring to dual hacksaws, however I've run into a few situations since then where maxes have outright stomped me with dual scatterguns of all types (well, basic, hacksaw and mauler)... some at very surprising ranges. My previous experience with them hasnt been nearly this bad... I would often go max just to roflstomp dual hacksaw maxes running amok... but recently things have not been going quite as smoothly. I'm pretty sure there's been no balance changes, so I'm guessing I can chock this one off as freak occurances, or general lack of player skill on the part of the enemy maxes. That said, I felt very strongly after the inclusions of shotguns in beta, that shotguns were overwhelmingly too powerful against maxes... Think I'll need to restate that lol While I dont think it's technically possible atm, and certainly not easy, an ideal solution would be to provide shotgun damage reduction to the maxes, which would fix both the discrepency of shotties vs maxxes and scattercannons vs maxes.
I played Beta back when we had flamethrowers (and they were rubbish! BUT I LOVED THEM ANYWAY) I also remember how scatmaxes were when a dual cycler would win at point blank vs them, it was ridiculous, I'm not disputing that, but this is too much of a swing in the other direction. 5-15 meters is not ultra close quarters.. that is the range you have to get into to push the enemy off a point, if a MAX cannot survive to push you off the point, because he goes down faster than a light assault, then how is that balanced? The game is centered around capturing bases, in which you have to get into CQC, where a scatmax will always win unless he is incompetent, sure I dont mind some empire variety in the NC being best at sweeping infantry in that setting.. but they should not be equally good at killing MAXes. As I said in my OP, I don't want to nerf the hacksaw in general, it's supposed to be a monster in CQC, BUT..it needs to be balanced vs other MAXes, because they are forced to enter your optimal range if you're sitting on a point, they cannot go outside your effective range and take pot shots at you because A: base design and B: their cone of fire is so random that unless you stand unmoving at a window for a minute or so, then you'll care less than if a infiltrator was meleeing you in the ****. Because MAXes cannot reliable engage infantry at ranges beyond lets be generous and say 40 meters (and at that range they'll still take half your health if they stand still, if they have cover.. you're screwed, because you have no aim, just a horrible cone of fire) Which forced the TR and VS MAXes to enter bases, because they won't get run over by vehicles or shot to hell by infantry beyond their effective range. Having to go into bases means risk walking face first into a scattermax if your fighting NC, in other words you're only hope of having a fair fight as a TR or VS MAX is to not fight NC. I guess I could summarize as this: Scattermax is as it is against normal infantry and that's fine, because infantry can flourish in other settings than the CQC of a point, BUT they should not be able to kill MAXes faster than dual AV guns on a MAX, because that means it is flat out impossible for TR or VS to push a point unless they have superior numbers.
And you are acting as if being useful outside scatmax range, is awesome. Its not. Frankly speaking once outside scatmax range, your TTK is so long they can kill you from cover, and you won't be able to do anything about it. Only once you kill at range are the once standing still letting you shoot them. They are "more" effective then scatmax, but "less" effective than just about every single riffle in this game. Also even if we discount the AI damage, The AI scat max setup shouldn't be that useful against maxunits. its like Airchav, you can't have one setup that is so good against anything you encounter indoors. It just means the other empires can only throw corpses at you till you reload, which is never ok.
I think maybe we're getting a bit distracted here. This thread, from my understanding, is about the balance of scatmaxes vs other maxes, we're not talking about the weapon's effectiveness overall. Currently there can be no debate that the realistic time to kill/burst damage done by scattermaxes to other maxes is absurdly disproportionate to the anti infantry weapons of the other factions max's vs maxes. The scattergun's distinctive burst, while not to my liking, I'd have to agree is fairly balanced in max vs infantry, when compared to the alternatives of the other maxes. However, when vs maxes, it's very clearly got a massive leg up. It's definately possible for a scattermax, using any form of scattergun, to completely kill another max in a matter of seconds, at a rather surprisingly generous range (esentially indoor operating range, with some exceptions in very large indoor areas). There is no other dual ai max that can come remotely close to this ability, even with dual anti vehicle weapons, you would have a difficult time killing a max that fast... I'd love to see a comparaison between the dual anti vehicle nc max and a dual hacksaw max in ttk, I would not be surprised at all if it was signifigantly faster. I dont think it's unreasonable in the slightest to believe that maxes using dual anti infantry weapons, should be relatively equal in their killing power when facing other maxes (which are classed as light armor, not plain infantry).
They were rubbish for TR and VS I had dual flamethrowers for my NC max and I loved them because they were better than the alternative. Luckily, people in tech test got them for free. I actually got quite good with them. I agree, the hacksaw kills maxes crazy fast. That's why my suggestion is to nerf the hacksaw to the beta scatmax, where it only has 5 or 6 rounds instead of 7. So that it's still better against infantry but suffers from the beta weakness of losing to maxes. I agree with that too. It's stupid that AV is so bad at everything. That should really be the counter to max vs max fights. I think the terrible state of AV weapons is what makes the current AI vs AI max stuff so important.
