Burster Max vs. ESF

I wish this thread was titled "ESF vs Medic".

It would have been a much shorter discussion.

any good esf pilot,can in a burster max predict esf movements ...not perfectly ...but you can chew up his armour for the assist anyway.

by the same token.....any good esf pilot ...knows what his vulnerabilities are and finds a way to hit target,dies or doesnt,and stops whining like a 9 year old girl about this

you just totally changed my post, i was talking about the AA stacking places pretty hard. An organized squad is something totally different, 2 AA maxes take out a 3/3 liberator pretty fast, this is a combined arms game you're right. But AA is always in places that cant be reach by tanks, only skyguards can be take out fairly but those get destroyed pretty fast and honestly deserves a buff comparing to the AA maxes since the skyguards get obliverated too. In a combined arms game there should be some balance between infantry, ground vehicles and air vehicles, instakilling weapons shouldnt really be.

Yeah if u play ESF enough u know how fast things move and what direction esp other ESF i can usually get a kill with my single burster, if i had the duo bursters most ESF would not stand a chance. Those ESF which do fast fly by, usually end up wreckage half way. The ones which survive are the ones which skim the edge of the visible range stalking to do a fast popup attack then fly off to repair for a minute or so..

AA doesn't even bother me, it's the invisible lock-ons that piss me off.

But an ESF can't kill a MAX in one pass.

Some of the nose cannons certainly can, though maybe not rockets against a Flak armor 5 MAX.

Dual bursters are too strong, particularly at long range.
Skyguards are too weak at all ranges.
Cut MAX damage by 20%, increase Skyguard damage by 20%.
A MAX can just switch arms at a terminal when the air threat is gone, the Skyguard is stuck with its AA weapon... and it's a bigger target that can't hide in buildings.

How about the ESF equips armor against ground fire and flak instead? I like that solution a lot more. Gee, I remember back when they actually used to do that. When was that... Oh, right. Way back in the day when ESFs would blow up any time a ground target looked at them and no one had rockets yet.

MAX is too strong against all air targets. It should be significantly weaker than the Skyguard, since it can pop in and out of buildings and Skyguard is a much bigger commitment to anti-air.

If you stopping to hover your doing it wrong?

I disagree, nerfing AA Maxes will only make us flyboys that much more powerful and disregard teamwork. If I'm facing dual burster maxes, I ask my team or anyone else to take it out before moving in.

I mean, let's facing it, us rocket blasting them with 12 rounds to get a kill is no different than AA maxes gunning us down for being too close.

My 2 cents.

-Burster VS ESF... WAY too much damage.
-ALL AA in general have no damage degrade at range if I'm not mistaken. Meaning a burster can snipe ESFs from 500m (if they're stupid and standing still).
-Tower AA is not effective enough, the accuracy of it is seriously lacking (only the lacking.. damage is perfect on the towers).
-A Skyguard SHOULD have the range, damage, and accuracy of the current dual burster. Actually, switch everything about the burster with the skyguard. The Skyguard is only effective against hover lolpodders.. and even then it's not likely to get the kill.
-Damage against liberators (from bursters) is very well balanced. It DETERS the lib from farming that area.

WHY should a burster be effective at nothing more than detering an ESF?
Because, the burster can be rezzed infinitely. Those resources could potentially never go to waste. The ESF can be dropped in 5 seconds from a single burster, and then the player is out the 200 resources. That is terrible balance.





Kiling a max as an ESF is not hard, it takes mabye 1 seconds if you use the main rotary gun and get within about 50m. If you rocket pod that max..you're probably doing it wrong, rocket pods suck against maxes and the max will kill you faster everytime, unless the max is just really really bad.

Because of all the whining, too many forms of AA have been implemented in this game. But none of them except the max bother me, because it's just ridiculous that a max can be rezzed at all. It's the only resource in this game that could never be wasted potentially. A max should explode like any other armor resource and be done.

The max should NOT be nerfed if the Skyguard and/or turrets are not buffed. This will lead to the hover lolpodding all over again. The Skyguard was designed to be the god of AA, but since release it has continued to suck. The Clip is too small, the range is fine, the projectile speed is crap, the damage is crap, and the reload speed is crap. If I'm not mistaken.. isn't a single burster just effective as a Skyguard??

Back in beta I remember people require 4-6 dual bursters to take on air.. that was bad. But, needing just ONE is also bad.

Things that would fix it for me? (some.. maybe no all of them)
-Switch all statistics between the Skyguard and a dual burster.
-Make all maxes death permanent (just like every other resource in this game)
-Instead of nerfing the burster range directly, give them actual spread and drop off. Tower turrets have an insane amount of spread and they're stationary turrets.. the burster can walk and move around and have the same spread at almost and ranges :/ why does that even make sense?? Those flak shells should be going all over the place if the burster is walking around.. its a dude holding his arms up in the air FFS -.-

TLDR; make the freaking skyguard the king of AA.. NOT the burster maxes and remove max resurrection.
The BURSTER needs to be nerfed, but the other forms of AA need some adjusting also.
Max = too effective
Skyguard = Not effective at all pretty much
Turrets = Effective at near range, too much spread though. Damage and fire rate would be PERFECT for the max.


Here is my profile
https://players.planetside2.com/#!/5428010618041455793/vehicles
I have around 500 kills with my ESF and I'm not the greatest pilot. Half of them are armor (keeping in mind libs and MBT hold more than one guy)
I'm not simply some guy looking to pod farm infantry. More often then not I use my ESF to farm and clean ARMOR and liberators. I'll Infantry farm if the opportunity arises.. but I usually don't.

NO.

All you have to do is go look at ANY players burster stats and you will see a very very very very very very very very low kills per shots fired.
Maxes are fine bads and greedy pilots like Pat want to swoop in against whole squads and live to tell about it.

Maxes are a deterrent the stats prove it move along nothing to see here.

Having played Skyguard for a while and owning dual extended burster max I really think AA is fine. Alone I may be able to tear some unaware lolpodders apart and occasionally destroy some more skilled ones if I guess right their maneuvers. If I am not alone and there is at least one additional dual burster I see ESFs just flying away in panic. As it is quite rare we see wolf packs farming infantry just bunch lone wolfs w/o communication so if you take one down others won't usually even notice their "friend" was destroyed. So in my point of view they are fine – alone you can destroy single ESFs if you are good, two obliterates constantly lone wolves but if they come in hordes with proper target marking and tactics you really can't do s*it unless you are organized too.

On the other hand Skyguard could use a little buff, although I have managed to get better with it and even downing alone some of those ESFs, the problem mainly is clip size and ridiculously slow speed of bullets. It is a pleasure to see that nowadays I am not alone running skyguard in a tank zerg, usually there are total of 3-4 running with prowler zergs managing to take most of the air threats down quite nicely. Also those all shooting up to sky from different parts of the zerg looks quite neat.

It is also annoying that most of the time you don't get kills with AA due to either pilots bailing into ground or just running for their lives all the time. Running is fine but I guess the problem with people crashing to ground or w/e has been addressed several times on ESF vs. ESF threads (haven't seen anyone decons anything but a gal midair yet).

The combat balance is almost perfect, possibly MAX's need a slight damage buff IMO... Just to stop me flattening them in my scythe, literally!

Just yesterday I squashed no less than SIX double burster MAX's by just landing on them because they failed to find cover, surprisingly effective. (Poor bastards)

The issue is the risk and - more importantly - the reward aspect of AA.

Being AA is a thankless, boring, reward-less job. You might scrape a kill out of it every.. 5... maybe 10 mins? More likely to get some surface to air damage, maybe an assist because that dumb-*** pilot crashed instead of landing, or died to someone else.
Essentially the roll of a single, and even a duo of AA ( of any kind ) is to act as a bug zapper with a giant sign saying " Don't fly here, you will explode" And that's a roll you fill really well! It's just a shame you're not rewarded in any way.

I honestly feel sorry for burster MAX's in my scythe, most of the time I get away on 60-70% health and go kill things elsewhere. I can always come back in 5-10 mins when the MAX has moved on or died to someone else. ( And frankly, MAX's can't look everywhere, I've killed plenty simply because they didn't get enough warning - I've died in the same way. You just can't look EVERYWHERE all on your own )

There's really no threat posed by a single MAX if the pilot just does a bit of scouting in advance -
An honest tip to all newby pilots out there is just do a dumby-run first. If you immediately start getting lock-ons and peppered with flak, you're just in the wrong place. If you think there's a manageable amount of AA by all means run, repair, and come back and have a crack at them - But don't assume that you can survive if someone with any kind of AA decides they don't want you in that area.


Edit: Keeping in mind this is coming from quite an experienced pilot. I had a lot of scythe hours logged in the beta and a reasonable amount ( somewhere around 50 last time I checked) since release. I'm by no means setting records for time played ( I'm looking at you Munter on Briggs) but it's safe to say I know what the hell I'm doing. - Which is more than I can say for a lot of pilots -

Edit2: Seriously though, increase the rewards for surface to air damage, even 30 instead of 20 xp base would make a MASSIVE difference in the xp generation.

If you nerf the burster now it will be buffed later. If you can't escape from a single dual burster max you're just bad at flying... I'm terrible in an ESF and I can still get away easily. If you're flying with your head lodged in a hole then you may get killed before you can get away but really it shouldn't be a problem.

I recommend lowering damage of the burster by a percentage and then raising it back up the same amount it was lowered, just to cut out the step between the two where ESFs kill everything that moves, or stands still.

Agreed, Most of the top players on the ladder are Pilots, so I don't really see an issue, yeah most of that was from the early days, but sorry, we don't want to go back there.

When someone puts a second burster on his MAX, it's not for farming and getting an insane amount of certs. The burster arm can't even come close to some of the other weapons that are better for farming. Burster MAX is a support class.