Best ESF Dogfighters

Bump

Ok, finally found a GOOD ESF TR pilot.
Evylmeh


from ARC. Seriously, we had a go at it one night when snow land was pretty empty. He was protecting his outfits Lib (which I had a vendetta with).

After a few bouts in the air we took it to a private place on the map and had some fun fighting. I love doing stuff like that. Gives me a chance to brush up on what other pilots use for tactics and just to fight against decent opponents without getting zerged. (Poor poor VS pop)

I've seen Evylmeh flying the lib too, far as I can tell it might even be his stronger suit, so watch out

Zergs are take a bit of the fun out of things, especially when it's your own faction. You VS guys should feel a little lucky that you have so many targets to shoot at, and when you get rammed it's most likely not by a teammate.

Nevesnet, lib pilot/gunner for Vanu, I was having a ****** night already and his lib flying made it that much worse lol. Good lib flying, was at least a good break from ESF dogfights. Tonight was just not my night though all across the board.

I know the feeling. I was ambushed by Jaxom again and I gave TR Berg two easy deaths. Despite killing me, Jaxom wasnt full of joy since he had a terrible start k/d wise of this week.

Flying with this new population is quite frustrating. If its not getting smashed by a lvl 15 friendly lib, its getting 3 enemy ESF's with lock ons suicide chasing you down. Dont know how you guys on Waterson rolled, but we highly discouraged A2AM on Jaeger, and I rarely if ever got shot down by them premerger.

Granted it forces us all to step up our game, its just too da mn zergy now. Looks like I might need to start flying on Amerish, Esamir to enjoy more dogfighting.

I know exactly what you are talking about, giving the time of day, and the continent.... it can be nearly next to impossible to find a fight with a couple ESF's and not a whole air squadron of them... Its a pain in the ***, tbh they arent that great of pilots, but still the sheer numbers with A2A, and the fact that there are now 8 scythes chasing my lib instead of 3-4 is hilariously fun. Im going to have to start rethinking my approach to air combat in my lib.

Hey.

I BEAT YOU!!!!! 1v1 and you got a jump

Thundahawke scourge of Jaeger! Mosquito OP!

Was a good fight though. I was introducing my friend to PS2 while it was happening. He was like "this guy is pretty good" and I was like "ok, but he's gonna lose cause he's on blue team".

Because this seems to be a 13 page Jaeger thread, flying my alt on Jaeger I can say the best pilot is probably Potter on NC (though I killed him several times anyway b/c mosquito OP). Nevesnet (I think?) is one of the best lib pilots I've seen although, again, I killed him as well 1v2/3, don't remember which.

There's this one scrub pilot, though, on Jaeger: rocketchicken. He spams infantry with composite armor on and abused the repair bug for about two weeks. Very inflated ego and very limited craft control. Hes a funny dude.

After the repair bug got patched out, one of my funnest most best PS2 moments was crushing rocketchicken 3 times in a row without him being able to land a single shot on me and hearing his excuses in /tell.

Honestly, though: rocketchicken wouldn't even be a mid-tier pilot on Mattherson. Mattherson #1. Srs.

I know people hate the A2A missiles, but honestly, you just need to get used to them and not ***** about them. I'd only complain if I started out in a good dogfight with someone only to have them give up on that and try missiles.

Otherwise though, these things are part of the game and have been part of aerial combat for a long time. They do have some integration in dogfighting. When I rolled in a op with my old fighter squadron, we were going along with very strict wingman principles, and this was just the perfect example of where A2A missile are best. Covering your wingman, and friendly libs/galaxies, I think is where missile shine. That lock on itself can be enough to deter someone off your friend's tail, and while engaging with guns is fun and requires more skill and all, you'll rarely be able to break someone's attack faster than you could with a quick lock on.

Especially since A2A missiles got patched before GU2 to require a more precise lock to be able to fire, they are not just the easiest things in the world to use anymore. Still fairly simple, but using them well and not just spamming them is actually something you can potentially see. If I ever run a strict formation again with a wingman, I can almost guarantee you I will be flying with missiles. While I am confident enough in my skills to shoot down someone with guns only, that horribly limits my combat versatility, if we engage two enemy aircraft at once both myself and my wingman stand a better chance if I use missiles to at least get one to bug out before getting on the other's tail.

On another note though, the amount of air in the bigger battles since merger is quite overwhelming. A couple times I think my computer had trouble rendering everything and I would have a couple aircraft appear out of thin air just meters away from me.

Paperplanes for the VS is pretty good.

Hola! I fly every continent as Jax said. I've been really busy with work as of late though, so not much playing from my part. The only pilots I've managed to meet were shahz (who I already knew from streams), robotchicken(who I have to say is on par with fearmypewpew from helios which is who I view as the BEST esf pilot in the entire game), and crazyairbourne who gave me some fun fights. Very good pilot

I myself have been in a slump lately which has deterred me from entering the air much when I am on. Trying the ground pound. I've been slowly spending more time in the reaver though. Considering bringing an alt on VS or TR to waterson soon to take NC breaks every now and then. I also jump in my reaver when I spot someone active on this thread though. So, I'll see you all in the sky o7

edit: As for the a2a missiles most pilots on waterson have gotten pretty dang good at just ditching them and killing the offenders asap. I know they are a pain to deal with, but learning how to safely encounter them almost every time has made some great pilots from our server.

A2A missles are extremely easy to use, even after the nerf. Yeah they are there for a reason, yeah they are effective when used for that reason, but people seem to think they are amazing pilots using them. One person having them is no big issue, two people having them is. What I find most annoying is fighting or chasing someone and some guy comes flying up and proceeds to lock on, and your fight is basically over. This happens 9-10 times for me.

My experience so far, is chase someone, get into a fight, get lock on display, kill guy real fast and leave or just leave.

Maybe I'll make a video displaying some epic A2AMissle action.

I agree, Jaeger flying definatly was a different experience. You almost need a frame of mind when flying in Waterson and pushing the limit or making a small mistake can equal a full air force or squad of missles flying at you, Or Both!.

In my own defense, My internet has been running completely horrid since the merger. I'm sure anyone I talk to in-game will confirm how frustrated I am at my ISP.

I might get maybe 5 minutes out of my play time where vehicles are not teleporting, making them impossible to aim at, and equally challenging not to ram. I get behind someone and they teleport backwards under me and as soon as I slow down they are way ahead of me. It's quite annoying.

A2A missiles can be annoying but honestly I don't think I have been shot down by just A2A missiles in a long time. I find that, in a 1v1 at least, they get the first missile shot off and I find them and close the gap so quickly that they can't get another one after that. And I can take one missile hit easily. It's when they get me when I am already damaged or have SAM support nearby. But A2A has rarely in the past few weeks been the sole reason for a death.

Yeah they're easy to use, so what? That doesn't mean they can be mastered to some extent. Have I seen this in anyone? No. But it stands that they have their uses and we have to deal with them. Honestly, I would almost be pissed if there were no A2A missiles in this game. I wouldn't buy any bs that said so many years in the future we started using VTOL jets with just guns as our main air superiority fighters. I find it hard to believe we could have such a lapse back in air tech and tactics.

I feel sad that in 13 pages, ive never heard of half these pilots, and never seen the other half...

Anybody else agree it's funny when A2A missile pilots cannot lock onto you now?

I don't get what your trying to say. I'm guessing your trying to say A2Amissles can be mastered to some extent which I would disagree with if that was the case. Since it's there really involves no skill in using them. The only mastering you can do with A2A missles is having high accuracy with your cursor, which would make the rotary better and make the missles all together obselete.

Yeah we have to deal with them, but who isn't? No one is raging about how they are game breaking. Just stating they take the fun out of a otherwise fun flying game, and overall easy to use.

Not surpising with the huge amount of people on Waterson now.

On Jaeger you seen people you knew regularly, It was quite a different experience.

The post is almost 2 months old, a lot of the people might not play anymore, or as much.

That's a big statement. While I've never actually seen robotchicken fight someone, since we're both on VS, I started wanting to fly after watching thepurplebaron/fearmypewpew and he is just a beast.

I've probably only run into a few of these guys maybe one or two times, at least to my knowledge. So your statement doesn't surprise me

On another note, still waiting for an actual optimization to happen. Went on Amerish earlier and could barely reach 20fps ;( Dogfighting at 10-12fps isn't really doable

I know it's a big statement Fear/purplebaron (for the sake of sanity let us just call him Jagiel ha ha) is the reason I started flying as well. He is also the reason I decided to make an alt on helios. I've only killed him ONCE in fifteen fights, and it was due to some extreme luck. I'd say Jagiel is better than chicken, but I feel he isn't too far behind. Keep in mind these are my thoughts after only one encounter lol. It could have been a bad fight on my part, he got lucky, or a bunch of things. My immediate thoughts though are he is better than me and dayum.

I've only met two pilots from Jaeger so far really I think. That are on this list of course. I see tons of new names in the sky lately who I assume are from Jaeger, but none have struck me as difficult to deal with. Looking forward to finding more. I assume most of the better ones are on Indar due to bad habits of everyone staying there? I literally refuse to play on Indar these days unless I HAVE too. Way too worn out.

I've actually suffered a performance hit myself after this most recent patch. Where I used to get 100 fps dropping to maybe 40-50 in bigger fights I find myself barely hitting 20 at times. When the game first starts it's fine, but it looks like the memory leak is worse than ever. After about 20 minutes of play my frames take a huge hit. They idle at about 30 fps, 20 while flying, and as you said drop to 12-15 in a dogfight.