PPA would have to be nerfed inorder to balance it.

I insist that the statistics merely reveal that infantry dies more often than armor at long range and the PPA is the only weapon that can engage at those distances. All factions already have (secondary weapon) short-range AI options, and no buff will render the Marauder or the Canister viable at range. Main HEAT and HE guns already have comparable KPU (with the Vanguard underperforming, although this has been analyzed elsewhere), so just scrap the ES AI weapons for the TR and NC and make something that works from a distance!

Until all that's left is HA!!!

Wait, no... Rocket Primary is being nerfed, so it can't be HA....

They're crying for medics to be nerfed with revives...

LA? Does everyone want to be LA?

also Higby for some bizzare reason still wants to nerf the shields.


Honestly both nerfs are unneeded.


If SOE wanted to decrease rocket spam they would stop the 6 ES lock ons from being dumbfired anymore, its that simple.




And yea....... they are going to turn on each class after all the vehicles are nerfed.


If the HA falls its the beginning of the end, the HA is the "front line" class in more ways then 1.

Aegis is still better than ZOE, its largest downfall is the clientside hit detection.
You would seriously take the other abilities over the shield?
"With the shield all you do is stop shooting, take cover and repair (in most case's), pull back out and win." - IWINSHIELD couldn't have said it better myself.
Jackhammer / MCG>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Lasher

LA was already nerfed awhile back because you can't ADS anymore.

I already posted that it needs a tighter spread/longer range.

^This

It just needs comparable DPS output to ESF's like the Banshee

but it needs much better accuracy and damage normalization over range against infantry.

Quoting this since it makes the utter dismissal of the kill data sheets rather interesting. But that's fine, we can talk about the PPA over-performing by looking at something that transcends all worries about things like PPA being used because main gun/Saron or whatever aren't as good: look at the Kobalt.

Kobalt is the common-pool AI weapon for all factions. It has range, up to a 150 clip size, and deals no damage against armor. It is the baseline AI weapon that we can use to gauge how the others perform, and compare what the ESAI weapons offer or lose in comparison to this baseline.

Canister is worse in just about every regard. The Kobalt still shreds infantry in close range, but excels in range over the Canister. Even if we buffed the Canister's clip size, it doesn't compare to the 150 round Kobalt in AI ability, we would instead need to add something the Kobalt lacks in trade for the decreased range. An explosive element would require less precision and be easier to use, or we could give the Canister some light AV damage so it gains some versatility in exchange. The stats from that spreadsheet (while from a few months ago) support the fact that the Kobalt is generally better than the Canister, having over twice as many kills put up.

Marauder makes trades with the Kobalt. Lacking range and suppression, but has an explosive element making it easier to use if your gunner isn't as precise. Marauder actually has about twice as many kills as the Kobalt, though we can certainly see times where the Kobalt can be the better option. At range, or infantry elevated above you (where it's hard to splash them) the Kobalt is the better choice. Maybe AI needs to be buffed or nerfed, but no matter what we can see clear differences that make the choice between the two guns more meaningful.

PPA is better than the Kobalt in just about every regard. Accuracy and no bullet drop, plus an explosive element, makes it better at range. That same explosive element makes it better in close range as well, where you can hit infantry around corners and move quickly while still allowing your gunner to splash a target. It doesn't even give up on suppression, as the 50-round PPA has sustained fire just like the Kobalt's 150 rounds. In the stats, we see that the PPA has 80k kills, while the Kobalt has...about 1k. For Vanu, the choice for an AI gun seems to be a no-brainer. PPA > Kobalt.

So what do you do about the PPA to get it in line with the other AI weapons? Not saying you need to do all of these, but you need to create at least one weakness in comparison to the Kobalt if it's going to be superior in every other regard.

Suppression - Drop the ammo count so that the Kobalt is better at constant fire. Though honestly, even if you went down to a 20 clip size the PPA would still be favorable due to the splash being able to kill multiple foes. The current 50 round clip is obviously excessive. Dropping suppression means the gun is just as good at any range, but gives the enemy some period of breathing room between salvos.

Long Range - Give it bullet drop like a standard grenade launcher, or reduce the muzzle velocity so that slow-balling PPA rounds at distant infantry is more difficult. Alternatively, the rounds could just fizzle out or explode at a certain distance to give a hard cap to range. Given the Mag platform, I'd least like to see this be the option used, though it would match with the other ESAI theme of being closer-range than the Kobalt.

Short Range - Give the PPA some arming distance for splash, or have the explosion get larger as the PPA rounds travel and have time to destabilize. This makes the PPA more difficult to use as a point-defense weapon against infantry. This method however just enforces it as a long-range spawn room-spamming farm-device.

WAIT just a second there.

Before using the Kobalt as a baseline you have to answer this question:

Would I ever give up Halberd/Saron/Enforcer/Vulcan for it?

NO. No I most certainly would NOT.

Kobalt isn't good enough for 0 AV damage either and also needs to be buffed. It's just less interesting, and harder to fix really since you can't just give it a ton more ammo to make it more spammy. Reduce CoF and recoil so it's even more laser accurate? I dunno.

In any case, no, we should NOT use the Kobalt as baseline, it ALSO underperforms given that you're sacrificing all AV damage to take it.

Hell, I won't even take Kobalt over Basilisk.

The Halberd is the "Baseline" weapon, and is the second most effective "AI" weapon after the PPA, yet it's ALSO one of the most effective AV weapons.

And NO, it should NOT be nerfed either.

More than likely though, they'll just nerf PPA. Then EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, will run Halberd. So it'll get nerfed.

Main canons are already being nerfed, and by the end of the summer nobody will even bother pulling tanks anymore because Infantry is just more effective.

MOAR FOOTZERG FTMFW... amirite?

At the very least, our dedicated AI weapons need to be better at AI than the Halberd.

And I wouldn't even consider the Halberd a viable AI weapon, if it didn't do so much damage to armor it would suck too. That goes to show just how sad the state of most AI, including the Kobalt, is.

The Kobalt actually used to be pretty good but they nerfed its cone of fire for some reason, so now it's barely better than a C85...

Seriously the VS already have enough things with bullet drop. With the PPA/Kobalt you have the PPAs splash and no drop but painfully slow velocity you trade that for the kobalts high ROF and huge mag along with huge DPS and it is a semi effective deterrent to enemy ESFs.

More NC so far on the forums have stated they take the "Charge" over the shield. And u saying it's an IWIN button is laughable!
If more NC saw that post they would rip your statement to shreads.

Jackhammer is again an over rated PoS weapon, where the Baron G5 is a clear better choice, and reloads quick inbetween kills.

I'm sorry your "Lasher" is not the OP weapon you VS love to have. You have to deal with the fact that it's job is not for straight up killing and aimed at team based play.

I'd still run with the asymmetrical balance thing - magrider has the lamest main gun and weakest ES ability, so it having the best AI and AV secondaries isn't a problem imo.

Let's face it, if you're in the ideal infantry farming spot, would you rather be in the gunner slot with a PPA or driving a locked down HE Prowler? Thought so...

The Kobalt may indeed need a buff, and I'd wager that the Halberd gets so many infantry kills just out of virtue of being pulled so often. I'd like to see the Kobalt get a bit of accuracy back, the Marauder given it's clip size back, the Canister given splash or some AV damage, and the PPA's mag brought in to 20, with the ability to cert up to 25-30. I'd hope that the Vanu at least realize that 50 rounds in that thing is simply excessive.

PPA isn't actually too bad, just that currently it's superior to the Kobalt...and the Kobalt is superior to the Canister. I'd like some gentle tweeks rather than nerfing guns into oblivion.

I disagree, I think both the kobalt and Basilisk could use some tweak but make them set a standard. The Basilisk should be more like a twin barrel .50. It should be high damage, lower RoF, accurate and do some armor damage. In general the basilisk should be better at killing infantry then it is now. As the default secondary, it should set a middle ground between dedicated AI secondaries and dedicated AV secondaries, but have good killing potential and little suppression potential. Where as the dedicated AI secondaries should be unique, whilst good at killing, better at suppression. The Kobalt should be more of like a mounted 240b. It should have high RoF, low-medium damage, and decent accuracy with a very large magazine. It should act like a tuned up version of the best LMGs.

If the PPA gets its mag size lowered to 20... or even 30... it loses a huge chunk of that suppression potential as well as killing potential. So asking for mag size changes is just silly. Whilst some may bask in ignorance and believe the datasheets presented in this thread (that are either 1/10th of the whole picture, bugged, or from falsified data) are the whole picture... I could care less. There still has yet to be anywhere near complete evidence that the PPA is overpowered. If something *had* to be changed on the PPA, the best approach would be to reduce some of the direct hit damage and give a little to the splash damage. Giving the PPA indirect fire would make it more powerful then it is now so that is also silly, but just another sign of ignorance in the whole "no bullet drop is uber" crowd.

As far as the Canister, I would rather see this weapon act like the secondary fire mode of the Flak gun in Unreal tournament.
Have it actually shoot a canister out with high drop and low velocity, that explodes out chunks of metal in a cone effect when it lands or hits a target. Almost like a cannon that fires a pseudo claymore mine. Make it a 2HKO on direct canister hit at 0-15m and taper off quickly, but increase the mag size quite a bit to add a suppression effect. This will also keep the shotgun type trait. What I am imagining s as an infantry a Vanguard fires a canister at me from 30m and manages to hit the ground infront of me and another friendly a meter away, the metal shrapnel hitting both of us would be like taking a single hit from an auto shotty at 5m

As for the Marauder, I think it should act like a double barrel fury. It should fire 2 grenades at once with a little spread to maximize effective radius.


At the same time though, on the plane of going from asymmetrical balance to symmetrical. If you are going to buff the Canister and Marauder, much less make any changes to the PPA. You are going to have to buff the magrider in other ways including the main cannon... maybe even making the magburner be omni-directional and have a lower CD

Wow, really?

Because I'm nearly an adult, and I still play hide and seek.

Man, your life must suck.

PPA may be superior to Kobalt (which in turn is better than either Marauder or Canister) BUT... as I noted...

Kobalt is also clearly UP. So PPA should be clearly superior if it was actually where it was supposed to be.

I'd bring PPA down to 30 with cert up to 40.

I'd bring Marauder up to 20 with cert up to 30 (further testing may warrant increase in velocity and/or reduction in drop and/or increase of, or transfer of direct dmg to, splash dmg. 1 step at a time though)

I'd bring Canister up to 20 (no increase in mag size, reload speed only), add explosive damage (transfer some direct damage to splash), and tighten max pellet spread. (This thing is so far behind it needs a mutli stage buff)

For Kobalt I'd tighten it's CoF back up to near laser accuracy.

Pure AI secondaries for MBT should be clearly superior at AI over Halberd which is an AV weapon. (And halberd absolutely should NOT be nerfed in AI capability for this balancing either) PPA is properly superior at AI (maybe a tad too much). Kobalt clearly isn't, and it's the next best pure AI weapon with the TR and NC ES AI guns being flat out pathetic in performance.

Given SOE "balancing" in the past when the PPA does get nerfed, it will become about as useful and as common as the ZoE currently is. I'm betting clip size gets hit, along with the damage, fire rate and CoF.

Meanwhile the Marauder, Canister and Kobalt will no doubt become 1 hit kill weapons with next to no drop, massive clip size 150 - 200, insane fire rate etc etc.

Give the PPA the same damn spread, range and damage NC gets with C85 C and we'll call it even, they can spray as much as they want then, considering the C85 C at long range the enemies are about as scared of that as Luke Skywalker is afraid shots fired from a Storm trooper

Also

-VS get the only AI vehicle weapon that can hit targets at long range

Now you know how it feels TR to be running around in a NC Max with shotguns and having all the killing power past 40m as a slowly rolling tumbleweed as your enemies kill you a quarter way across the hex