How is the Lancer an even remotely fair weapon?

DISCLAIMER: I play NC, and only NC. I play NC on Waterson, where the VS are pretty much constantly being sat on by the TR. My engagements with the VS are few, and I don't really play much armor.

That said... the discussion about AV weapons came up in a thread where some fool wanted the Lancer and Phoenix to OHK infantry (lol). I was curious so I went into training and played around with the weapons.

I wanted to see what had the fastest time from first moment of AV use to the moment your second magazine is depleted and hits the target.

Phoenix: Against a target 300 meters away (the hard range limit), the time between scoping up for your first shot and landing your second shot is just a hair over 20 seconds (got about 20.3 seconds). With 750 damage per missile, this means your DPS with the weapon is 36.94, so let's round up to 37 for simplicity.

Striker: Against a target 300 meters away (only fair since that's the Phoenix max range), the time between scoping up for your first volley and the time your last rocket hits on your second reload was, interestingly, almost exactly the same as the Phoenix: 20.2 seconds average. With 335 damage per missile and ten missiles fired, this gets you a DPS of 165.85, so let's round up to 166.

Lancer: Against a target 300 meters away, the time between charging + scoping (scope up time is irrelevant, you can scope or unscope while charging) until the time your second full charge with your second magazine lands is about 26.5 seconds. With 750 damage per shot, that translates to a DPS of 113.2.

Things to note:

1) The Phoenix firer is completely vulnerable during the weapon's use. The ability to fire from cover negates this somewhat.
2) The Phoenix missile is fairly obvious, relatively slow, and can be shot down mid-flight.
3) The Phoenix can be fired from cover and steered into targets.
4) The Phoenix has the most outrageously short range limit of just barely 300m. Note that this is 300m of distance traveled. If you steer it any, your range suffers.
5) The Phoenix is slower than light vehicles and ESFs. It is incredibly challenging to hit aircraft with it in general.

1) The Striker gives you a lock warning, allowing engagement of shields or retreat behind cover. It is also extremely easily broken by even momentary loss of LOS.
2) The Striker missiles are all immediately countered by a simple unlock for vehicles - smoke and flares.
3) The Striker requires the operator to keep LOS with the target for a long period of time. If you can see them, they can see you. The Phoenix at least works in cover, so the operator vulnerability is reduced.
4) The Striker missiles tend to have a very unpredictable flight path, sometimes slamming into the ground as they try to 'lead' the target.
5) The Striker has a lock range of 500m.

1) The Lancer can be charged on the move and you can scope up at the last minute, making operator engagement windows extremely small.
2) The Lancer has no warning and has no way to be countered.
3) A fully-charged Lancer has one of the fastest projectiles in the game, only beat by the Railjack.
4) The Lancer can strike vehicles out to the maximum render limit.

Here's what I concluded:

1) The Striker has the best DPS, but considering its drawbacks, I actually believe that this is the worst ESAV in the game. The warning, the operator vulnerability, and the ease with which it is countered is absolutely unacceptable.

2) The Phoenix is only slightly less bad than the Striker. The Phoenix can hit from cover, which can be situationally useful, but the bottom line is that that doesn't matter when you cannot even actually damage or kill your targets. The DPS is absolutely pathetic, and the missile's range and speed are so low that you can almost literally outrun the missile in a tank. A TANK. If the Phoenix guidance were any less maneuverable, it would almost be impossible to fire from cover as well. That said, the awfulness of the Striker definitely puts the TR in worse shape. Your missiles don't matter when you have to stand there for five seconds in view of the enemy to use it.

3) The Lancer is unbelievably powerful. I honestly couldn't believe you didn't even need to reload it after firing the first charged shot, or that you can charge it without being scoped in. While the Phoenix can be fired from cover, it also incredibly range limited. The Lancer not only can fire from a very, very brief engagement window (which is almost as good as firing completely from cover), but it gives no warning as to where the shot came from, which the Phoenix does (very visible smoke trail). The Lancer also, incredulously, can hit targets from more than twice the maximum infantry render range. Let me say that again. The maximum Phoenix range is 295 meters. This means that you have to be within render range of the enemy. The maximum Striker range is 500 meters. You are 200m out of render range. The Lancer is a whopping 700 meters. The enemy has to close 500 meters before you will even render to be able to be stopped.

How anyone can think that the Lancer is even remotely fair and balanced in its present iteration is beyond me. Can someone, *anyone*, please explain to me exactly what makes this thing balanced? What exactly is the counter here? It might have a little less DPS than the Striker, but it doesn't matter when you can hit every target you aim at with every shot, without any threat of retaliation since you aren't even rendering for them.

The only unfair aspect of the weapon is the ability to hit vehicles up to render distance. This needs changing and can be done by giving massive damage falloff at >300m ranges.

The Phoenix needs a versatility buff and the Striker needs an overhaul. I don't think the Lancer ought to be nerfed to their level of usefullness.

"The lancer...gives no warning as to where the shot came from"

That is simply wrong, it produces a VERY visible white beam which alerts every sniper in 200meter range. It's like a long finger pointing at the shooter saying "He is there, kill him!"
That is btw. a good counter for lancer squads: snipers.

Also the lancer has drawbacks, the damage is low and your whole ammo isn't enough to kill a single lightning. It is also not possible to oneshot infantry like you can do with normal launchers.

Nevertheless, the lancer is good. Not OP, but good. If you consider it OP, what is your opinion on AV turrets?

The sniper argument isn't very strong. You can't kill infantry at 301m, but a Lancer can still fire at that range. Even <300m a Lancer can be charged behind cover, then fired while exposed for only a moment. Plus, HAs can be rezzed.

As for there being no warning... from a tank's perspective you just suddenly lose a chunk of health. You can't dodge it, chances are you can't fight back effectively if they're at a reasonable distance, and if they're >300m away you can't even see the shot.

Not always. See if a group of Lancers (or MANA AV turrets, or whatever) is hitting vehicles at 500m the snipers 'protecting' those vehicles will have to be within 300m to see them. That means they have to be 200m ahead of the vehicles to be effective, which also means they have to be 200m away from any vehicle support (aka. Sunderers). This problem gets even worse in really busy areas, where infantry render range can drop to 100m or less while vehicles will continue to render out to 400m or more.

I don't know about you, but I think requiring a wave of snipers to lead an armor charge across the gulf between bases is pretty daft. And even then they're not accomplishing much because every infantry AV squad has medics on hand to revive anyone who goes down.

Infantry AV hitting vehicles outside of infantry render distance is just plain stupid. No other competitive game allows this kind of BS to go on for over a year.

Also, the 'sniper' argument applies to the Phoenix pretty easily and DEFINITELY applies to Strikers.

Against ground vehicles, the lock-on distance is currently 300m. Against air it's 450m IIRC.

Anyway, I predict a massive increase in Lancer use once the AV MANA is nerfed.

The lancer has a massive skill ceiling, you can be very good with it or absolutely gawd awful. I would get it if I played VS

You don't even need to be a sniper. You follow the flashing lights to the blinking dot and there's your target! They autospot themselves!

I agree. Lancer range reduction and a Striker re-work, are the big ticket action items that need addressed in the near term. AV Max weapons also need a range reduction/adjustment. In regards to the Phoenix, I use and it and don't see a need for buffs ATM.

I also forgot to mention that the Lancer is the only ESAV that is even remotely viable at close ranges too. In particular against MAX units. Charge it up, right before you reach the maximum charge you can just pop a shot off at a MAX even indoors. Is it easy? No, but it's at least possible. Go try to use the Phoenix and Striker against MAX units indoors. Let me know how that works out for you.



Anyway, here's my completely daft thoughts on the balance.

The Lancer needs a nerf. There's no way to balance the other ESAV weapons on the same level as the Lancer and still having the game even remotely playable as a tank. There's also no way to bring the Lancer down to the level of the Striker and Phoenix and have ESAV even remotely able to be taken seriously. Bring the Lancer down, bring the Striker and Phoenix up. Limit them all to roughly the same range, make them all take some degree of skill, make them all just as viable against as many targets as possible.

- I absolutely agree with the proposed damage dropoff after 300m, with the weapon losing all of its damage by 450m. This will limit its range to within that of the other two ESAV.

- The projectile needs to be slowed considerably. This will actually put it closer to PS1's Lancer which fired pretty slow projectiles. They certainly were not faster than most sniper rifles, as is the case of the Lancer right now. Sorry Vanus, leading a target the size of a building that can only move in two directions with a projectile that travels 800 meters per second is *not* hard. At even half range (which still puts you outside render distance), that's less than half a second of lead time. There is no challenge in leading just about anything bigger than a Flash with a half second of lead time.

- When the weapon is being charged, the player should be forced to scope-up and reduced to walking speed. This will put it on the same level as the limitations imposed on the other two ESAVs.

Hell yeah, patented SOE triple-nerf.

The Phoenix needs some major buffs. Firing from cover doesn't matter when it's almost impossible to ever destroy anything you want to hit. It needs some way to bring that godawful DPS up.

- Greatly increase the maneuverability, and tie it to the speed of the missile.

- Allow the firer to control the speed of the missile. At maximum speed it should be EXTREMELY fast (capable of catching a Flash... every other ESAV can, why can't the Phoenix), but has very poor maneuverability.

- When the operator releases guidance, the missile should continue on a straight path towards its target. It should, however, slow down from maximum speed to an 'average' speed.

- When the Phoenix is 300m from the firer (not distance traveled), it loses guidance and will fly in a straight line. At 400m it loses power and goes ballistic. At 450m it autodetonates. Add a timer for maximum guidance time, generous enough to let you guide it around but short enough that you can't just float a missile around and use it to scout like a little UAV.

- Completely eliminate the ability to shoot down the missile.

The Striker... I don't even know where to start. Lock-on weapons are skill-limited by nature, and as long as they are 'easy to use', people will demand a counter, such as smoke and flares. Which makes the weapon absolutely useless. The Striker should be as uncounterable as a Lancer and a Phoenix that can't be shot down, putting all three ESAV weapons on the same ground.

The only thing I can really think of to retain the 'flavor' of the Striker:

- When the Striker has no 'lock', your first shot with it will fire a 'tracer dart'. The tracer dart is wire-guided. When the tracer dart hits a target, the target does not get a 'lock warning', but it does make a noise when it hits that can be noticed by an attentive pilot. As soon as the tracer dart hits a viable vehicle target, all your missiles will guide into it. Pressing the fire mode key will break your current tracer dart lock (and force you to reload a new one). The tracer dart has a maximum range of 300m.

- When you have a lock, you can lob missiles and they'll guide in on the target. The target gets no warning that missiles are inbound. If you aim up, the missiles fly in a parabolic arc for a top-attack profile. If you aim straight, they fly faster and directly to the target. This lets the missile be fired from cover. The point of this is to make the operator feel as safe as the Phoenix and Lancer users. The Lancer retains its short windows of engagement (even with the scope nerf, you can still pop out and shoot), the Phoenix is the Phoenix, and the Striker only requires the operator to be exposed for a couple of seconds in order to get his tracer dart lock. At 400 meters, the missiles lose power and go ballistic, spreading out somewhat but still more or less heading in the direction of the target. At 450m they autodetonate.

- The only thing that counters this is going into cover.

What all this does:

1) All three AVs now require you to scope up to use. They all now have the same situational awareness penalty. Lancer becomes more difficult to use in close quarters.

2) All three AVs have similar range limits - only seriously effective out to 300m, less effective up to 400m, useless at 450m and beyond.

3) The Striker is safer to use for the user, making it closer to the other two.

4) None of the AVs have hard counters. Phoenix can't be shot down, Striker can't be decoyed with countermeasures.

5) All three weapons are more skill-based. TR has to guide in a tracer dart with a scope that has terrible zoom, Vanu have to lead their targets by a more significant degree. Phoenix... can't really be evaluated without testing. It suffices to say that the CURRENT Phoenix is nearly impossible to use against anything too close or anything at medium-long range that is moving. It probably will always be nearly impossible to use against ESF.

****, I don't know. Half these changes sound insane, but honestly I think they would all work to meet in the middle - Striker is no longer the only ES weapon in the game that gets countered with a single button-press, Phoenix can actually threaten enemies, Lancer comes down to simply be more fair. I'm sure the Vanu players will hate this though.

oh yes those phoenix users are so exposed when 5 of them shoot their blue noisy things from inside the spawn room.

I agree a Lancer squad is very useful, in an organized outfit, but lower ranks, unorganized players simply don't use it.
A Phoenix is very effective as single user, as wel as a Striker - I admit though Striker needs some changes, somewhere in between the before OPness and now

Lancer has a huge trade off on Inf damage. It is worthless against Infantry. (As I personally believe all AV weapons should be)

It's second trade off is DPS. I know your math shows it is the middle of the pack Damage per second but it's damage per shot sucks by time you can do enough to any armor they are LONG gone. You are pinking your target enough to know SOMEONE is hitting him. He just back up to cover and then repairs. Can only kill something that is already burning. You don't carry enough ammo to kill anything.

3rd is using it in combat isn't easy due to how long you can hold a charge. You only have 1.5 seconds to leave cover, scope up, find your target and fire. Hence USUALLY that isn't the way it is used. Most people aim the entire time they are charging so that as soon as full charge is achieved the trigger is pulled.

wat?

when did the lancer become OP?

it has less damage carried than any other rocket launcher, even the lock ons
the ONLY thing the lancer is really good for is nailing a wounded vehicle as it tries to flee out of lock on range, or if it decides that it wants to exploit flare lockon immunity.

and did you TRY hiting armor with an unscoped lancer? that is laughable. you already scope in the lancer for every shot, because if you don't you miss at anything more than point blank. a trait shared by ALL OTHER ROCKET LAUNCHERS


the OP admitited they never used the lancer in a real world combat scenario. i think you should to find out how different the VR lancer is compared to using it in real life.

if there is a situation where there is a protracted armor battle, you can be assured that i am flanking it as an infiltrator inorder to get some back line kills. engies, medics, enemy lock ons. anyone standing still really

heck if i am WITHIN 200m of my forces i often feel i am far to close to them for comfort

Do you think so? And after we limited the lancers range and gave it the projectile speed of a normal launcher, what was exactly the reason to use it again?

The hard thing is not to hit something with a lancer, the hard thing is to coordinate a whole lancer team, because, like I said, you cannot do s*** with a single lancer.
Same goes for Phoenix and Striker. You cannot instantly destroy something with it? What happens with a team of 5? What exactly will you do when there are 5 guided missles popping up behind cover and aiming for your tank? Do you think smoke can protect you long against like 50 striker missles a minute?

The triple lancer nerf and massive buff you want to give to the other two ESLs make me glad your are not a developer tbh.

Simply: Yes. You should not be able to counter an Anti-Tank weapon with tanks.

No, but I think a Vanguard shield can and then I back up behind a rock.

And then the missiles crash into the forcefield.

You're right. Tanking should rely on infantry and air dominance in order to be a factor.

Wait... what's the point of a tank again?

Lets take this outside of VR shall we? Here's the MBT kill statistics (i.e. what killed them); since the Lancer is so very OP lets have a look vehicle by vehicle shall we (excluding all tanks, air etc. and look at Heavy / Engineer only and excluding C4 which is around 10% accross the board and top killer for all three)?

Magrider
MANA Anti-Vehicle Turret 5.22%
Tank Mine 2.07%
NS Annihilator 1.62%
NS Decimator 1.55%
NC15 Phoenix 1.51%
T2 Striker 1.38%
So Phoenix kills slightly less then the NS launchers against Magrider.

Vanguard
MANA Anti-Vehicle Turret 6.58%
S1 3.66%
Tank Mine 2.18%
NS Decimator 1.77%
Lancer VS22 1.31%
NS Annihilator 1.28%
T2 Striker 1.22%
So the OP Lancer scores less kills against the Vanguard then the UP Phoenix does against Magriders.

Prowler
MANA Anti-Vehicle Turret 5.17%
S1 2.91%
Tank Mine 1.96%
NS Decimator 1.44%
NC15 Phoenix 1.40%
NS Annihilator 1.33%
Comet VM2 1.02%
Lancer VS22 0.97%
Again the OP Lancer kills less then the UP Phoenix! Even worse though the Comet AV MAX with the slowest missiles known in human history kills more.

So yes, on paper the Lancer is the best thing since sliced breed but in the reality of the game it's actual impact is less the the Phoenix. So next time you're trying to cry nerf because of paper stats and 5 min of VR time do bother to look up how things perform in reality as well.

Theres something called: Pierce, which is almost equivalent to your indirect damage, since lancer have not indirect damage, it is groose to heavy armor like MBT or Libs (becouse those things have a extra blindaje) this not counts to light armors like flash or max.
Those 2 full charged rounds of lancer equals to 90% of your primary HA rocket, that means 2 full charged rounds, will almost set on fire one ESF(up to 200m).