Upcoming Patch: Magrider Nerfed, Vanguard & Prowler Buffed!

AP Prowler buffs excite me. I've been saying since launch that the prowler AP rounds were garbage.

I don't know about the vulcan changes though. Specifically the reduction in short range damage.

Praise the Lawd!

The velocity increases are definitely significant. What the prowler traded off for the bonuses from lockdown and its overall damage buff was the vulcan's effectiveness at short range and against air hovering up close, which should be very significant—almost like giving the saron the drop of a halberd or the ML-7 rocket launcher. Either way, I'm much interested in these changes because they'll be further diversifying the tanks rather than balancing them by making them the same. Who knows? Maybe the devs are on to something by overlooking turret stabilization for now and forcing the vanguard and prowler to stay still for accurate shots. I assume the velocity increase rather than implementing stabilization was to make shots harder to dodge at long range for the magrider, which might turn out in the long run to be just as effective as turret stabilization.
Even though real life technological features (eg: turret stabilization) are mostly "better" than those in PS2, it's a game, and we may have to ignore the comparison to real-life to get a more fun and balanced aspect of PS2. Sometimes devs may have to ignore the "best player ideas" to add their own and implement theirs instead. It may work out in the long run and we'll just have to play to find out, and give feedback accordingly.

If they didn't make a laser weapon hitscan, they aren't going to make a weapon that fires a hundred thousand times slower a hitscan weapon.
I would hope.

Seriously... A Reddit post by him talking about a post on PSU.com and his opinion changed from Tweets.

Yet absent from these forums.

WTF.

Increasing Prowler HEAT and AP damage by 25 and 20% whilst only buffing Vanguard top and side armor by 5% is probably going to leave the Vanguard at an even greater disadvantage against Prowlers.

There was nothing wrong with the Prowlers damage to begin with. Why buff it?

If Prowlers have such a low KDR vs other tanks, its probably because every time I come across a Prowler, he's equipped with HE and is too busy farming infantry to notice me 'sneaking' up behind him in my Vanguard.

MagicOnline is that you

Someone please tell me if I am wrong here, but if this goes live like that won't heat prowlers actually deal more damage to vehicles than my AP vanguard assuming they hit both their shots, while still retaining the best anti-infantry capabilities of all MBTs? Meanwhile the 5% armor increase wont probably be enough to actually shave off a shot to kill vs Magriders, let alone be able to offset the Prowler damage in any meaningful way.

Im really puzzled what they were thinking with these changes, making the Enforcer the new Saron is just as much bull as increasing the Prowler damage, or any tanks damage for that matter, by such a big amount.

They need to land two hits. Just... stay away from the Prowler? Vanguard is being made to be the best long range tank. Prowler the best short range one, and the Mag the best medium range one.

As an NC player I'm fine with it. Landing two shots is.... twice as hard. Plus I mean you've got a shield... Enough to prevent two volleys (4 AP shells) from hitting you. In the meantime you can whale on the Prowler with your AP shells.

I dunno. Prowler v. Van is fine iwth me.

This is exactly what I predicted would happen, they break the traction of the tanks and take far too long to fix it, people complain about the magrider being OP and they balance around the broken traction.

As someone in another thread pointed out, the TTK is already skewed heavily against the Magrider. For instance a Vanguard can have a 66% hit rate and still beat out a mag with 100% accuracy and I'm not sure if he included the shield time into that as well.

Buffing Prowler damage even more when the TTK for a Prowler to kill a Magrider is already twice as fast as it is the other way round?

And those Tank kill statistics, I wonder how many of those Magrider kills are on stupid people rolling up entire columns up to crown(or out of) from Zuvran and just letting the Magriders on Magrider hill pick them off

Just popping up quickly to say that, as Prowler driver, this patch buffs all the wrong things and will result in more problems without solving any of the existing issues.

We didn't need a damage increase, we needed a reliable way to hit targets, especially while moving. The slightest bump in the road makes me lose my target entirely from my screen even at close distances (10-20 meters). A damage buff will not help with this, it will only help us one shot infantry (just in the event a HA was using his shield perhaps?).

There is still no way in hell that most Prowler drivers will change smoke for deploy mode. That velocity increase won't help much when you're still having to re-adjust your aim after every single shot because of both recoil and terrain making you slide around like you're on ice.

And then the Vulcan nerf seems rather unnecessary. It is a very niche perpose weapon, essentially an anti-tank shotgun. Nerfing close range damage will simply mean it loses the benefit of having it. It also likely means we can't destroy aircraft with it any longer, which is likely the real reason behind the nerf. Long range damage increase you say? No, Vulcans do not hit anything reliably past 50 meters, just like the main gun can't hit anything past 100 meters unless it is luck shots, or unless being completely stationary. Still can't see the real problems here? Try driving the bloody thing and see for yourself then.

So in short, they buffed the wrong Prowler parts which will result in problems in other aspects of the game, they did not solve the real problems, and they nerfed the Vulcan. Crying will happen post patch that will see the only buff the Prowler gets undone, and we'll be back to where we were, with a slightly less useless deploy mode and a nerfed Vulcan.

Side note, I assume a 25% HEAT damage increase in reality means a 12.5% damage increase per shot, not 25% per shot... Right? Otherwise the Prowler would get a 50% damage increase on both rounds for HEAT.

Wow, If you can see that this buff is stupid and unneeded, what does that say about SOE?

When was the last time you saw them make buffs in the appropriate direction?

what would be funny is if they didn't change a thing and just let people think there is a buff. Watch how people that were complaining about their tank being underpowered suddenly rejoice at being able to destroy everyone...

One of the great things about the Magrider, we do not need to rush an objective and throw away our tanks to be useful. Get a Sauron and sit back and just snipe the turrets and other tanks. Make the enemy pull back their tanks from a distance. Magriders are not a unit you would want on the front lines. They can't take any sustained fire (2 rockets) and their weaponry is more suited for range, not bull rushing into a fray.

I play on Soltech, I rarely see Magriders rushing head first into The Crown. They are often on the hill near Cross Roads sniping at towers and vehicles while infantry rush in.

I do however see a lot of NC and TR on my server trying to do a tank rush on The Crown. That could just be my server though.

Tank playstyles factor into here. Magrider drivers know they can pick a fight at long ranges an win, where as for example Prowler drivers know they have to get up close to do anything. Prowler drivers also know their tank is best at killing infantry, so they often gamble, risk moving into an area where they will either blow up or get a big infantry kill streak. Can't really comment on Vanguards, even on Miller a Vanguard zerg is... unheard of.

They Nerfed the Mag so much and now they tell me they nerf it even more ?

Why not ?

Mag Gun has low Damage -> Nerf it !
Mag Rider can go up a Hill ? -> Nerf it !

Pure Logic, come on you Guys at Soe think this is Great for everybody ? You already nerfed the Mag so much,...

It´s not our Fault that some Players got no skill, you could not even 1 on 1 a 2 man skilled Prowler, as a Skilled Mag Rider in Close Distance, so you basically Forced us to use the Mag from the Distance.

Did you ever had this in Mind ? <- SOE

Idea for a lockdown replacement.

Think for a moment about the names of the tanks. The name Vanguard fits, because that tank is a heavily armored juggernaut with a shield, meant to fight the enemy head on. Magrider makes sense for obvious reasons, riding on air with the magburner providing a fantastic means of reaching bizarre locations. The Lightning is ridiculously fast, self explanatory. The Prowler.. doesn't prowl anywhere, instead locking itself in place and firing two cannons, making it even easier to locate via tracers than a regular tank.

So, my solution? A cloaking device akin to the infiltrator. Have it match the duration of the Vanguard's shield, allowing you to safely cross open areas and sneak up on your enemies, prowling as it were. Get caught in the open, break line of sight, cloak, and make a mad dash for a different area to surprise the enemy. An attentive eye could still see it and IRNV/thermal would counter it, but brief invisibility for a tank would be so fun.

I wonder if they will increase the price of the Enforcer ML, now that it's better than the Saron HRB, or they'll leave it at a quarter of a price.

The thing is that a prowler right now is twice as effective vs infantry against anything else. So it is common for prowlers to run with HE turrets. In contrast, Vanguards and magriders are nowhere near as good vs infantry, which mean that they run with HEAT or pure AP rounds. So while this is a big statistics sample, it doesn't tell the whole story about why there is such a huge difference.

I would also like to see how the same numbers compare when tanks go anti-infantry.

I see no reason for HEAT damage increase. There needs to be something that makes landing shots for an average tanker easier, like tank not sliding around or aim jumping like crazy. Maybe add projectile velocity or flatten projectory after that. Flat damage increase on the universal cannon wouldn't solve anything.