Patch Notes for 1/13/2012 - Go live tonight!

Imo it will make you actually have to spend points in to Composite armor.

But I do agree that ESF's were fine in the first place. Should've nerfed Lib comp armor instead.

Reavers!!!!! I don't care how much AA gets buffed - at least i'll be able to play to some of the Reaver's strengths - Afterburner & Air Hammer.

My view: Liberators will still dominate the ****e out of and blind anything on the ground.

Relax, you're still OP.

Good that they're fixing the Reaver.
Seems like ESFs are completely screwed if the enemy has any flak present. Really would have preferred a hard rocket pod nerf, since this will hurt A2A ESFs fighting libs far more than it will hurt Liberators themselves.

Expect even more Liberators with all the ESFs dropping like flies to flak.

Bout time they added a downside to HE. AP tanks should now have a definitive edge vs HE tanks. Though I still think AP tank rounds need a higher velocity. They should be capable of sniping enemy tanks that are moving more consistently, especially from long range, which would severely penalize HE tank zergs.

If I'm understanding the notes correctly it's not an absolute 20% increase in damage. There is an associated decrease in damage as noted in the flak mechanics changes section. Still, I'm happy with any improvements to the Skyguard.

Hope the G2A launcher are now back to their old selves. Frustrating watching missiles clearly detonate and not dealing damage.

Using 100 for an arbitrary damage-per-flak-burst number to demonstrate via calculations, actual number is irrelevant when speaking in terms of percentages...

Prior to patch:
100 x 0.70 = 70 damage

After patch:
100 x 1.06 x 0.75 = 79.5 damage

79.5 / 70 = 1.1357... ~= 13.6% damage increase from burster maxes against ESF.


Not huge, but enough to make ESFs think a little bit more about the risk involved with lolpodding troops.

The only thing I find stupid about the ESF nerf is it should not apply to the Reaver, it has 2x the hit box of the others and that means AA will be 2X more effective on Reavers. I keep being told Reaver is big bulky and slow because it has more armor but the spread sheet doesn't show it...

SOE should really come up with a better ESF design for NC, small tr/scythe hit box to the XL Reaver design is not very good.

I hope to see a buff to galaxies composite armor with the buffs to AA 10% at max level might be too little now =/

If you had read the notes for the 30th of january patch , max's will now render more efficiently to air .

So this will all balance out .. Air is too strong , not anymore .

Luckily i am a burster max most of the time , boy am i going to give those flyboys a hard(er) time than i already did .. Hopefully now they cant come spam their rockets and kill everyone then fly away unharmed .

If you are too lazy to fly near landing pads where most MAX camp, its your own fault. sweep them off the pad by ramming them. it kills them instantly an you just fly over the end an keep going.

also remember they are removing the direct damage from flak so it will be less that a straight up percentage upgrade (for all we know the direct damage could have been the majority amount of damage inflicted)

I would have preferred a simple blast radius reduction nerf on the HE lib rounds to all this. This will hopefully enhance infantry fights, but I'm worried the gigantic tank zergs of beta will once again dominate the landscape. Kill the wolves, the rabbits will multiply.

I love that they're on this quickly, but I have to ask:
Why for all that is holy is there a composite nerf for ESFs exclusively, when composite armor is increasingly out of favor on ESFs but a huge problem (along with base flak resistance) on Liberators?

In fact, this is an insane double-buff for Liberators: First, direct hit bonuses are removed. They were mostly applying to AA shooting Liberators, particularly low-flying ones that are farming infantry. Second ESFs are weakened by comparison.


I do love that this has been happening quickly, but ESF-targeted nerfs give me a sense that the problem isn't being understood. Liberators are a huge problem. ESFs farm infantry a bit too easily with rocketpods and really shouldn't be rewarded for anything but direct/near-direct hits, but in general they are in an okay place.

(Really, composite armor changes to ESFs screams out-of-touch, because it's not a thing that is currently important to the game or ESFs)

skilled pilots will always r a p e, no matter how hard the nerfs.

Good changes.

We'll know soon enough.

Edit: Oops, quoted instead of editing.

I can't say I didn't see this coming, but paired with the draw distance of Max's, these buffs/nerfs might prove a little too nasty between now and the major update. We'll just have to see though.

Yeah, it won't be a 13.6% increase in all cases, just in pure burst cases. There were previously some number of cases (likely much more prevalent in head-on fights) where you were getting burst + direct hit damage. This actually likely explains the phenomenon of Burster vs. Landed ESF being a pretty fast kill, and some pilots complaining about a single burster buttpounding them: scenarios where a majority of the hits were burst + direct would deal substantially more DPS than much more typical burst-only situations (lateral traverse, evasive targets, etc.)