This is not the Burster Nerf you're looking for.

The issue with the Burster (whether in Lockdown, ZOE, or neither) is not its damage against ESF, (or its rate of fire, or its reload time) but its range (IMHO.) Can we toy with the idea of reducing the Burster's effective range and increasing its damage falloff?

It's not a bullet that looses velocity, it's an explosive round that hits your aircraft. How does range have anything to with that?

It has everything to do with balance.
Flak needs to lose accuracy or have a damage dropoff at range.

getting lit up and 'sploded at 700m from a battlefield, without even seeing the enemy burster there, is beyond broken. this will fix it.

^this happened to me twice in the past week, and I am quite a good pilot.....which means I usually dont leave myself open to busters at 700m.

Damage fall off? Maybe not, I'd prefer a accuracy reduction and change flak to do the current damage on direct hit and less on indirect hit.

Need to fix lock ons too.

If it was self-propelled, with the explosive material being used for propulsion...

^^Please, imo Lock-ons need work before flak (though, obviously both need work)

I would be happy if they fixed either. Let's not waste time (and tempt Higby to too) debating which gaping hole in the sinking ship should be patched first

Cant argue with you there, that is for sure!

bursters just need higher rate of fire, and larger cone of fire, to keep them even in terms of DPS during a strafing run, but whilst lowering the effective range.

Solution to Lock-ons. You must maintain lock. This means that at far range the weapons will track reliably since there is less movement needed. They should not be fire and forget weapons.

With bursters, make them effective to about upper medium range, so that below 300ft, they will pretty much get shredded, but above that, you better have brought a skyguard. No damage dropoff needed, just take out some of their accuracy, larger COF.

Listen to this man SOE. I said LISTEN!

I fly ALLOT and i feel flak is perfect right now. Get on my level.


ZOE burster and lockdown bursters are OP yes and those abilities should have no effect on nanite system common pool weapons. as much as i enjoy using the lockdown burster.


food for thought... Small arms fire does not penetrate liberator and galaxy armor why does shrapnel from a burster shell pierce it? is that tiny piece of shrapnel more powerful than a guass saw round? look at the size of the burster barrel.

it would make more sense if the burster used armor piercing ammo instead of a HE flak ammo. and it would require more skill for long distance shots thus pleasing the people that want flak to lose damage over distance as absurd as that is.

Hell, within 100 meters I'd even argue Burster damage is too low - hovering at that range to get rotary shots should be even more dangerous. Damage is fine with bursters, they should melt ESFs who hover over infantry at close range, though I always liked the old system we had at release where direct impacts got extra damage. The direct impact model was cool because it allowed for bonus damage at close range and raised the skill ceiling since getting direct impacts is much tougher then just landing a proximity burst.

The only issue with bursters, that desperatly needs to be fixed is range. MAXes are a class that hardcounters every other class in the game, and they are cheap and revivable; meaning they can't be killed until an area has been completely cleared. This makes it so MAXes dominate everywhere, and with burster range being up to 800m this has resulted in a game where ESFs are constantly being hit by invisible unrendered flak. That's just horrible mechanically and it also forces nanite autorepair since it's impossible not to be insessantly damaged by invisible flak when flying.

I'd say it forces composite armor, not nanites.

I run stealth on my A2A loadouts (mostly) and nanite in high pop areas.
I run Comp on A2G or hybrid loadouts, because otherwise flak will eat me at range.

Bursters are very touchy only for the simple fact that "People" shouldn't be able to fire Flak weaponry. LOL..you don't see military running around with flak cannons. AA is all about Air Suppression, not Air Destruction.

You have to do one option or the other.

1. You have to Drastically decrease the range to 100-200 meters. Decrease the Rate of Fire. Keep the Cone of Fire and make it permanent, meaning It doesn't get shorter or wider. If you Decrease the Rate of Fire, you will need to increase the Damage. Not by a lot, but enough to offset the reductions.

-or-

2. Decrease the effective range to 100-200 meters. Keep the Rate of Fire. Keep the Cone of Fire and make it permanent. Decrease the amount of damage.

You can't totally negate bursters, otherwise there will be no use for them.

Also, the damage on the Skyguard still needs to be increase a little more and I would also suggest increasing the ammo capacity per clip a little bit more.

I agree, this was not the correct change. Reverting things back to the old system as follows would greatly help:
Burster direct hits do ~60% of current full damage, burster flak explosion does ~50% of current damage. On direct hits (close range or high skill/luck-shots) it does slightly more damage, at long range enemies can evade most of the incoming damage. Flying straight at a burster MAX is nigh-certain death, but killing an enemy in evasive maneuvers is much harder.

Skyguard flak retains 80%-100% the damage it does now as explosive damage to retain long-range viability and gets a direct damage equal to the damage it currently does to vehicles and infantry added onto its shells to allow skyguards to easily tear up any aircraft which gets too close or are stupid enough to hover.

AA turret direct hits do ~75% of the damage their explosives do now and gain explosive damage equal to ~50% of their current damage. In some respects they are cheaper than MAXes and their role should be point defense. A couple of turrets ought not be able to deter a focused air assault with multiple libs and escorts. However, against would-be lolpodders a turret would be a merciless killer.

Liberators and Galaxies take only ~ half the damage that a flak cannon's explosion does, with composite armour working on top of that. Direct hits with flak guns should be needed to quickly destroy large aircraft which are bullet-resistant to begin with.

I like the new bursters on the PTS. It takes a lot more to kill an aircraft that isn't hovering or flying towards you, and sniping is now impossible unless you burst fire them carefully.
Less accuracy is what people wanted and the devs listened, now let's see if the change makes flying less of a pita.

Uh.

The patch didnt change bursters at all. It only nerfed the BUFF the ZOE and Lockdown give AA Maxes.

lol.

Thats how it is today. If you put bursters in a player who has been using them for a while, they can rip an ESF to shreds with those micro bursts. its a 400m no-fly zone around two bursters for <4 coordinated ESFs.

From the GU11 thread:
"Bursters will be getting an accuracy penalty when moving and COF bloom is being added over sustained fire. The goal with this change is keep them just as effective at near range while dropping their effectiveness at extreme ranges (300+ meters)."

It's already on the pts, and you can see the difference while trying to hit a esf from far away.