Says the Chez: GU07 Weapon Tuning

Yes, the damage buff and Ai further buff for Vanu and Tr.

Hey Devs, Give NC PROPER MID-RANGE Weapon!

You overnerfed our max, now you buff other further + give them lockdown for even MORE DAMAGE.

this changes will throw the ballance out of window, and you know it.

So while you tweaking vanu and tr, dont forget to balance Nc properly.

with Flamethrowers Tr and Vanu, have now great 0-10 range CQC abbility .

how about give Nc then something other then shotgun. mattocks are really really bad.

Here's an idea. Maybe they're not buffing the Mercy and are instead buffing the default chaingun and the Onslaught for the TR so that it's on par with the Mercy? The increased RoF on the Onslaught doesn't make up for its lower damage. Also: The grass is always greener on the other side. "My factions the most UP! All other factions are OP!" I hear it all the time. You know what wins in this game? Teamwork, skill, and numbers.

Seriously, you can't expect all of the balance issues to be fixed in one week. These balance passes probably take a while and it's also easier to balance a weapon within the same faction. Have you ever thought that it's easier to hit the TR MAX chainguns with the nerf bat AFTER the three of them are on par with each other?

For the record: I'm TR and think the mercies are OP.

the nc max out of a room is canned meat............i have maxed out max and guess what...i dont take it outdoors anymore ...cant no range no chioces.................tr/vs have the entire world to play a max in i do not.......little rooms and bio labs...big deal....boring.

you want increased close we want increased range....lets trade then see who whines

dude the devs dont give a rats *** about the nc never have never will...........we win by numbers and ...luck

I'm a long time NC player.
From my point of view, NC has always been harder to play. Basically working from a disadvantage from level 1. I won't lie, the under-dog mentality has been enjoyable. I'm working harder to get on par with the other factions, so it's been exciting when I succeed.
I'm at the point now where that $hit has lost it's luster. Every patch my character gets worse. My ground vehicles get killed faster. My MAX gets worse. My shotguns are worse. My rocket launchers stop locking on. My planes get shot down faster. My guns get outclassed by new guns. Worse and worse all the time.

It was hard to compete against my equal in another faction, but now I'm not sure it's even possible. Now, in this latest patch, SOE isn't even trying to sugar coat it. The patch notes read like a Christmas list for VS and TR. Coming this soon after a one-sided nerf to NC, it had to be planned. It's gone from "chaffing" to "enraging." Why would I continue to play NC? What part of playing Planetside 2 should I consider enjoyable as NC?

Maybe all the account unlocks were a plan to keep the NC players like me from quitting the game when NC got this bad. Was this an SOE plan to equalize the factions? Destroy all reasons to play NC until the factions are equal again?

I don't know. I don't have the answers. All I know is that my desire to log in has disappeared.

what does this even mean? are all vanu infantry/vehicle weapons going to do less damage at distance/longrange then?

It's the opposite. Vanu weapons used to do less damage at longer ranges than the NC/TR. This was an effort to balance the lack of bullet drop that VS enjoys.
After this patch the VS guns will all do as much damage as the NC/TR, but still enjoy not having any bullet drop.

I wouldn't care if Vanu received bullet drop. Our snipers and tanks, the only weapons that would benefit from not having any drop, do have drop. Battles mostly happen at ranges where drop doesn't occur anyway. I'm glad our weapons are getting a buff at ranges.
Our EDF doesn't have drop either, but has slow velocity. I would gladly trade its non-drop ability for the Mossie's velocity, or the NC's power. Clearly, having no drop on ARs is the weakest of all advantages for assault rifles. The only weapon it is decent with is the Shotgun with slugs, which is still crippled by slow velocity anyway.

A good patch, that will hopefully make MAXs on par with the NC's MAXs.

And they dont remember how bad pre-nerf phoenixes where.

Lol I have come to the same conclusion. You must admit, it's a brilliant marketing ploy. Which is why I dont really buy guns anymore. I will buy a few more for vehicles to round out my Lib and Gal but past that I dont see the point. A fully certed gun that is modified to your play style should be viable compared to any other gun.

as a vanu player, i believe this change is not good. let vanu's energy/plasma weapons do a bit less damage at range but let them have no bullet drop. a nice trade-off. in fact vanu weapons are fine as they are, why change it?

i still don't get what the hell the devs are thinking with this change

Being Vanu I dont really understand why they did the change. Its not like our small arms are weak (they only sound like toys ).

On a side note. Its not entirely a buff. VS will actually lose some close range damage. Right now we deal more damage under 71m and only drop under the TR/NC if its over 71m. With the cange we will deal exactly the same damage... so no close range bonus but also no long range penalty.

And because it cant be posted often enough. This is how its right now: http://ps2model-axiom.rhcloud.com/#dmg/la/1/22/24 . After the patch both VS and TR will look like the line for the Carv 9 (the orange one). You can also see that VS right now deals MORE damage if its 10-71m distance but LESS if its 71-100m+.

Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing since reading about this. For me as NC, I honestly view this as an overall slight nerf for VS in practice, with long range combat's relevance being what it is in this game.

It's an extremely marginal bonus though, even though VS have a damage advantage from 10-71m it is at most 2 points, but after that point it becomes a sharp disadvantage, resulting in a tier of damage loss (13 points). While that may have been *good* for mid-range weapons, it is a steep disadvantage for anything intended for long range as it will be packing less of a punch than TR or NC weapons.

We(at least the VS) do not have the entire world to play a max. Our cone of fire makes it so we HAVE to be close up in order to land even half the shots in our clips. NC maxes have the option of slugs for increasing your effective range, the other two factions get absolutely no equivalent. I really don't see what all the whining is about, I guess the NC and the TR have blocked the memory of their previous tear fest with the magrider and are now going for round 2.

i only say, flak nc max is better then mattock with slugs or without... mattocks just dont cut it. tested. the accuracy and rof is no near to be balanced.

i would play max more (outside of AA) if it had good midrange abbility.

I guess it is their way of making the TR and VS appeal more to people. There has been enough complaing at how the populations favour NC mostly, whether this is true or not I can't be sure across all servers but on Waterson NC and TR are pretty much equal only the VS lag 10% behind.

Anyway back to my point... NC have been for weeks now getting accused of being OP so if they buff the other empires slightly I guess their thinking is it will make some of the players that jumped to NC go back over to the other empires.

Not a real problem imo as there are only a few things wrong with NC as it stands that need to be fixed.

Maybe I'm way off but it seems the only reason why imo

There is no mention in the test patch notes about removal of bullet drop. In any case, even if they do remove it, the actual drop is negligible.

Overall it's a minor nerf for close to mid range combat and a considerable buff for long range. I'm happy with it, since it makes VS a bit more versatile than close to mid range combatants.

Yup, I have a BR 32 VS.

Nope, because my other character is NC and I notice bullet drop all the time with that character because I prefer mid to long range. Also, weapons with different projectile velocities have different bullet drop so it changes from weapon to weapon- this can make bullet drop more difficult to intuit because it is not the same on every weapon (like it is with VS).

Okay, if they dropped the VS damage degredation in return for adding the same bullet drop as other factions I would not think the change would raise any eyebrows.

Moreover, not sure if you're aware but the damage dropoff for VS has a smaller slope (i.e. damage drops less quickly) but continues to decrease after the min. damage of TR and NC- so, if all they do is halt the min. damage at the minimum then VS will have no bullet drop and less damage drop-off then either TR or NC. The tradeoff? Oh, there is none.

You may claim not to notice bullet drop but have you ever noticed the difference because your projectile was doing 112 at 120 meters instead of 125? Something tells me it would be difficult to tell whether those extra 13 points of damage were making any difference either.

IMO this seems unnecessary (since VS still have great performance in terms of the data), was not asked for (unless I am missing a mass of "remove our additional damage degredation threads"), and is a faction specific buff to every single weapon the VS have. It took NC 4+ months of pointing out the ridiculousness of the flinch mechanic and that was something that benefited weapon balance across the factions among the various ROF weapons- VS get to shed the faction weakness out of thin air? Seems strange, especially considering that after the flinch fix weapons like the Orion and Carv9 still can generate more flinch than the SAW because they can still put out more damage over time. Perhaps it will not make that much of a difference but I never saw signs the VS was struggling with the weapons anyway.

Speaking of the Orion and the Carv9- this change means that the only difference between the two is that the Orion has 0 drop and 50 less in the clip. Likewise, the Manticore is now a slightly less accurate Magshot but since it has 0 drop you can shoot at all targets while actually looking at the target instead of guessing where behind the gun graphic the target may be. So I can grab my ACX-11 (the 200 damage per shot NC iconic carbine) and watch as the damage degrades to the same min. damage as 167 tier damage weapons at the same distance, still have insane vertical recoil, terrible ROF, only 20 rounds in the clip and no extended mag options, bad COF bloom, bad HIP COF and the advantage is.... if you are in the small sweet spot you have slightly more damage per shot than other carbines (and are therefore on equal footing with the DPS if you can handle all the other bad values). Long range? Worthless, same damage as 167 tier weapons, slower ROF, greater recoil, worse COF bloom and slow projectile velocity so lots of leading and dropping- compare this to any VS weapon at range (especially after the buff) it just becomes ridiculous. My "hardest-hitting" carbine now no longer hits any harder and has lots of drawbacks- why?

Any stationary target at range, or target with little to no relative horizontal motion, will now be that much easier for VS to kill- no need to judge drop and no slightly less damage drawback for that ability means making headshots at range will be just as easy as it ever was and that much more rewarding.

No real evidence but I sure can empathize with the other posters who think this change is being implemented purely as a ploy to get people back playing VS- unfortunately, if this is the case, buffing a faction to create incentive to play them is probably not so great of an approach and would seem to set a dangerous precedent (want to be the OP faction? Join the one with the lowest pop.). Instead of redesigning VS to make them a more attractive option it does seems like the devs may be taking the shortcut and just saying "well if we just remove this little part of the code then VS can be OP and people will play them again".

Maybe it will not be so bad but I for one am about at the end of my limits with this game and have been thinking about canceling my subscription- I will hold out a verdict because nothing has even been released yet but I have to say that this is another one of those decisions that has me wondering how much longer I want to continue supporting the game. Some kind of information from the devs in terms of what they were seeing that prompted these kinds of things would be very welcomed because in the absence it just smells funny.