Vanguard shield still insanely overpowered. Make it frontal armor only with more damage absorbtion.

Magrider Does AI better? Yes 10x better. AT? lol no.

It really isn't. It allows them to tank a couple extra hits which as others have said a 2/2 AP magrider/prowler can drop that thing FAST. It's really not that much of a game changer.

Magrider is the single best AT tank in the game... at range. It's nearly impossible to kill a decent magrider that's ADAD spamming at range. Up close it can still cause you miss a shot every now and then when it glides over terrain in a way you didn't expect. But you're right when it comes to close range, at close range it's good enough, it can win, but it's not the best. At close range, like bloody everything in the NC, the NC is the strongest. You don't brawl with a vanguard, any experienced tanker on any faction will tell you this. If you try to brawl with a vanguard they WILL win because they will last longer than you and at melee range they're not going to miss.

That's why you utilize actual tactics. A magrider or prowler utilizing AT set-ups can demolish vanguards, fast. A max stealth max racer AP/halberd prowler can literally just drive up behind a vanguard, deploy, and pump an endless stream of shells into his ***. That vanguard is gonna have less than half health before he even pops his shield, the prowler will win that fight. Same thing with the magrider, just float on up behind a vanguard and shoot him in the ***.

As I said, the numbers don't lie and vanguards don't even get the most tank kills or infantry kills or anything. I believe, last time I checked, vanguards came in third in every category. So to say their shield is OP is silly at best.

Unless you're in a Lightning, in which case Vanguards are simply unbeatable in a 1 on 1 scenario whilst all other tanks can be destroyed easily when flanked, and a single missed shot with a Magrider AP + Halberd versus Vanguard AP + Enforcer will mean a loss or mutual destruction, even when flanked. And of course the Vanguard has lower DPS than an unanchored prowler, all tanks do that's the point as they require 2 shots per reload. I agree with the nerf, it should either be a resist shield, or should not absorb damage to the rear. They can give the Vanguard some other buff but the shield is by far the most frustrating thing in this game, i use Lighting AP as often as there is a reason to.

lol

Requiring two/four extra shots to kill is a GIGANTIC advantage in a fight where getting even one extra shot on your opponent can sway the outcome..

Something can be broken and stupid and still be part of a mediocre package.

lol. This cannot be serious.

Prowler is the best AT tank at range no contest. The magrider has literally the worst weapons for AV engagements. A prolwer will shred a magrider at range. And again "I mean they can STRAFE AT 20KPH!!!!". You are really overstating how strong the strafe is.

If you're in an AP lightning fighting a 1/2 AP vanguard, his shield aint gonna save him unless you're bad. Besides, even then a vanguard is stronger than a lightning, one player in an AP lightning is and SHOULD be weaker than one player in an AP vanguard, I don't know you think you'd have an equal fight there because you wouldn't. As for the magrider missing scenario, vanguards can't hardly bloody move, how would you miss?

Ultimately, the vanguard is the weakest tank of the three in all roles, it's also the least performing tank. It most certainly does not need a pointless nerf. If you have a problem killing a vanguard that's on you, but again I must stress that the numbers don't lie, the shield isn't the problem, your ability is. Before you call for a nerf to the shield maybe you should explain how the vanguard is the worst performing tank in terms of tank vs tank if it has such an OP ability.

Being able to boost away and escape any engagement that's going badly for you is a GIGANTIC advantage in a fight.

Being able to fire your main gun with a literal one second reload time is a GIGANT advantage in a fight.

All the abilities do useful things, that doesn't make them broken. Stop trying to brawl with a vanguard and maybe you'll die a little less often. As I said right above this, before calling for a nerf you might want to explain why the Vanguard is the worst at tank vs tank battles in terms of overall kills if it's shield is so OP. Because last time I checked both the Prowler and Magrider have more tank kills than the vanguard.

I am absoutly disgusted by this thread. So many threads crying about the vanguard shield. If you think it is op or a game changer you are an idiot. If you Nerf the shield then remove a barrel from the prowler. Wait what? That doesn't sound fair? Stop the whining about the crap. Seriously l2p or quit. Forum side is cry baby haven.

If you honestly think that mere 20kph is not absurdly powerful at range you've clearly never fought a magrider. An anchored prowler is easy to hit and can die at range. A vanguard is slow and sluggish, it is easy to hit and can die at range. The magrider? You aint hitting that thing unless it's driver is bad. I am not even joking, at range it is 100% impossible to land a hit on a magrider unless the driver screws up. The only ones who will ever dispute this are VS only players. ANYONE who's driven a prowler or vanguard and fought a magrider will atest that that mere 20kph makes them virtually immortal at range.

Bottom line, Vanguard has had the worst performance stats throughout the history of the game and the only place it has been on top is against aircraft. That was before the most recent nerf to the shield.

What that means, and a lot of Vanguard drivers agree, is that a nerf to the shield is perfectly okay so long as the rest of the tank gets another pass because we would all (and I mean every faction) be better off if the Vanguard was in an overall better position but one that relied less on the shield.

Further more if you engage in a tank battle, a stationary battle. Then you ******* deserve to lose. Hey a vanguard let's stay still then cry when we die. Seriously don't get in a tank then come cry on the forum because you are to much of a dolt to drive and operate a tank efficiently.

Magburn is a one second unidirectional speedboost, and to use it to escape you need to expose your rear or side armor to the enemy directly. It's awful for everything outside of getting to difficult-to-reach areas.

Lockdown? lololol, didn't you say it was easy to hit stationary targets?

Sitting still in a tank is a death sentence and its advantages are vastly overshadowed by its disadvantages, nice attempt. Try that line on EliteEskimo and tell me his reaction.

I don't want the shield nerfed, I want it adjusted.

Give it 25% more health (2500 total I believe) and disable firing the primary cannon while it is active. That would prevent it from being used as an "iwinlol" crutch while letting the Vanguard absorb more damage while getting into position/away from danger, you know, like Aegis.

^^^^^^

Then you just aren't using it properly. I've lost many fights because my opponent magburned behind cover and outmaneuvered me. If you're going to lose a fight anyways then exposing your side armor to a single shot is hardly a big deal if it means you can disengage from the fight.

If you're in a slugging match against a vanguard and you get the first shot due to your stealth, lockdown WILL beat the vanguard shield. You fire once every second, even if the vanguard is landing all his shots your DPS will simply be too high, especially since your initial strike will hit his rear. If you're stupid and lockdown on some hill 200 meters away then yeah, you're an idiot.

Also, I don't think I've ever seen Eskimo disagree with me on tank related stuff, ever. I'm sure he'd tell you the same thing, a full stealth full anchor prowler sneaking up behind a vanguard will demolish them so absurdly quickly.

So the Prowler gets an ability that can be used to great effect in combat. The magrider has an ability that can be used in combat or to get away from combat. And the vanguard would have an ability that lets it sit there worthless for a few seconds before dying? If they can't bloody fight back they may as well not even have the shield at all since the second it drops their enemy would just finish them off as if nothing had happened. What an absolutely horrid idea, how you could think that would be even remotely fair is beyond me.

The vanguard shield is perfectly fine as is. Sure it could be changed but as others said, you'd have to buff the vanguard overall in order to balance any change to it's shield. And then we'd be right back here with people crying that vanguards are OP because of reasons.

Again I will restate the obvious, if the vanguard's shield was broken it wouldn't be the most under performing of the three tanks.

That's a tacit admission you don't know what you're doing; you always keep your strongest armor facing the enemy, this is rule numero uno. The fact that you not only admit that you need to do this to use it but also that you lost to someone doing this is very telling. That's not me being a meanie, that's just reality.

In what universe will a Vanguard not take cover in the face of a lockdown Prowler, and in what alternate universe does a Prowler stay locked down when faced with mobile opponents? What your saying doesn't happen, ever, both parties in that situation would be ridiculously stupid.

Have fun doing that in open combat.

lol

Several seconds, which is a huge deal in a fight that lasts 15 seconds.

In reality, not every fight is a 1v1; unless the Vanguard is absurdly over extending then he'll be within a few seconds of an allied unit. Every second the enemy spends shooting the Vanguard who is invulnerable is a second his allies are butchering him.

It's not OP, it's cheap.

The new Spiker pistol can OHK at close range, but the gun on the whole in practice is god awful. There can be good or even great aspects of bad items or weapons.

Not sure if joking or not. If you're disenaging from the battle it doesn't matter if he gets a shot on your side, he wont be able to get any additional shots to finish you off. A shot to the side, a shot to the front, it doesn't matter because you'll be repairing it after you've buggered out regardless. I seriously can't comprehend how you think letting your opponent land a hit to the side is some unacceptable act of noobishry if you're LEAVING THE BATTLE. I mean what, is he going to teleport to you to finish you off because you dared show your side? Jeez man.

Maybe you should learn tanking, if exposing yourself to additional damage can guarantee you live to fight another day, you do it. If the alternative is to take a hit to the front, stay in combat, and die then you take the side shot, it's not complicated.

Cover where? The prowler's right behind him and if the vanguard does make a move to run, y'know what you do? You bloody undeploy. Your arguments rely on the operators being braindead ********, you know that right? The prowler is faster than a vanguard, a vanguard CAN'T escape, the prowler will catch it no matter what the vanguard does, especially since the vanguard will be forced to drive in reverse. So even if he dies try to run the prowler just follows and finishes it off, not exactly hard or complicated.

It's one extra shot on the vanguard's part, stop exaggerating. He gets to fire ONE extra shot. If the battle was that close that one shot makes all the difference, you messed up your engagement. But on the flip side, if the battle was that close then it's a pretty equal fight, and equal is balanced.

The same applies to his opponents, then. That magrider has friendly magriders and if you're all focus-firing the vanguard he's gonna die quickly with or without the shield. And even if you aren't focus-firing they're drawing fire by attacking the vanguard's allies which basically cancels each other out rendering it effectively 1v1.

You don't balance games around what's "cheap" you balance them around whether both sides can achieve similar results. Nobody cares if you find the shield cheap, it's not overpowered so it doesn't need a change, it's balanced as is and if ANY change is needed it's a buff, not a nerf. You find it cheap, I find it fair, why do you seem to think your opinion means more than mine?

Then if it's performing as it should it doesn't need a change. Another way to look at it is that you, personally, dislike it but again the game isn't balanced around your personal likes and dislikes. If it's performing properly across the board it's balanced. It may tip the scales in individual combat but then, shock gasp, that's exactly what it's suppose to do. On a whole it's perfectly balanced hence why the vanguard performs similarly to the magrider and prowler. Your dislike of the ability doesn't mean it needs to be changed.

you don't need to expose your rear to back down from a fight. 80% all i have to is turn left or right and then boost, exposing the mags thin hard to hit profile.

he wont take cover in the face of a lockdown prowler if can't take cover. lockdown should only ever be used with 100% certainty of its effectiveness. i can't tell you the number of times i've had prowlers lockdown on me, and expose a tiny part of their now non moving hit box i can hit from complete safety.

if we're talking an open flat surface the prowler still has a higher DPS than can drop shields quickly.

several seconds every 40 seconds. learn to bait them into using the shield where it won't matter.

sure its cheap. its a lazy mechanic, whatever. it still doesn't need to be changed in any way especially regarding the vanguards other limitations.

and in practice the shield is a 6 second gamble. when fighting vanguards you always have to find a way to control the engagement so the shield won't be a problem. always assume that the shield will be ready to activate at any moment, and engage accordingly.

Liar liar pants on fire?
1 Brick of C4 takes what, 3000 health from a MBT?
Vanguard shield is 2000 health (used to be 3000 and perhaps in the beginning 4000). So one C4 is enough to break the shield. 4 bricks annihilate ANY Vanguard with shield at ANY time since launch.

How does your resist shield work? you realize that the current shield gives a 50% health increase. And your suggestion gives it a 45% damage decrease which comes down to about the same. However, the 45% damage decrease is BETTER because the shield doesn't falter after X damage, because if you get hit in the back you can handle more damage than with the current shield, which still takes damage reduction from front/side/top/back into account. If you stand near a repair sundy (which I recommend), you can handle even more than 50% damage. And your shield is more 'OP' than the current one, way to go!

Highly overrated. With careful aiming and judging you can easily hit them especially at range. All magrider users have a standard way they strafe and they don't move incredible distances, just compensate and get those hits in. Magriders have much lower muzzle velocity and higher bullet drop and have a lot more trouble judging the right distance and height.
In fact, why don't you guys do some strafing of your own? In long-range fights I often just park my Vanguard sideways. Gives them a larger hit-area but also allows me to move forwards and backwards. Maggies have a slow muzzle velocity and fires giant lightshows so it's easy seeing and dodging the shots.

An anchored Prowler behind you? Even with shield and 100% health you go down before you can fire your 3rd shot. Usually they can even kill you in what, 4 shots from behind? That's just one reload in between and bye bye.

This is a massive nerf. 'Hey, let's give them 500 extra health to their ability but remove their ability to fire'.
Here let me spell it out for you with a Prowler vs Vanguard comparison:


This is the TTK for a Prowler vs a Vanguard. The Prowler shooting the Vanguard is in the left red box, the Vanguard shooting the Prowler in the right.
Now this is the TTK of a Prowler HEAT vs a Vanguard HEAT completely vanilla. But let's add a shield to the Vanguard. There's a simple rule here: the shield adds 2000 health which is 50% extra. If half the TTK is higher than 6 seconds, you cannot deal 2000 health within those 6 seconds. This means you cannot break the shield and the shield adds a maximum of 6 seconds to the TTK.
If you do break the shield, you simply add half the TTK to it as the shield only adds 50% more health.

So we get this. Vanilla Prowler killing a Shielded Vanguard becomes:
Front: 24,44 seconds
Top/sides: 21,69 seconds
back: 10,035

Shielded Vanguard killing a vanilla Prowler stays the same.

What do we see? Against a shielded Vanguard the Vanilla Prowler nearly matches the prowler when shooting the front. And loses when shooting the side, top or back. However, we are talking about a SHIELDED vanguard versus a fresh, brand-new Prowler without any certs! Imagine if the Prowler has an anchor mode increasing it's reload speed and damage...
Strange isn't it? The OP shield allows a Vanguard to barely beat a completely uncerted Prowler.
And you know what, this is when the Vanguard CAN shoot when his shield is on! Imagine if he CAN'T shoot while his shield is on, but hey, he gets a lousy 500 health which translates to one shot completely and one shot partially deflected. Yey!

The Magrider might need an increase in AT power, but it's AI power is tons higher than the Vanguard. The Vanguard simply cannot protect himself against infantry trying to blow it up with rockets and C4. This gives a strange balance between the Magrider and the Vanguard: Magrider loses from the Vanguard in almost every battle, Magrider survives much much more infantry attacks than the Vanguard who loses almost every infantry engagement.

Yours sincerely.
Demigan.

Seconds that it'll spend not shooting back and forfeiting any hope at all of escape? Gee that sounds sooooo useful.

Honestly, the current shield has a tiny amount of HP and a laughably short duration for a ridiculously long cooldown. If you can't fight through or around it, you are just a horrible tanker. Considering the Vanguard's performance stats, every other tanker in the game manages to fight the Vanguard shield and win just fine. You know what I do when I'm gunning for a Prowler/Magrider and a Vanguard pops shield? I just keep shooting. Most of the time, unless we were outnumbered in the first place the shield goes down and we kill it.

In its current form, it's only better than fire suppression if you're right up in someone's face where you can keep damaging them while it's up. If a tank using fire suppression fought a Vanguard and managed to get into cover while the shield was up, the Fire Suppression tank would actually have the advantage because their tank would be repaired and the Vanguard wouldn't.

A directional shield would technically be possible to balance, but I don't think TR/VS would like what the balancing requires because a directional shield would have to be waaaaaay more durable than the current shield, and protect more than just the tank (ie it would have to extend past the sides of the tank so other people can hide behind it). It'd also need a lot more uptime, because a chunk of cover that's going to disappear in 6 seconds isn't very useful.

All this stuff about disabling the gun and locking the tank in place is just a no-go though. The utility is supposed to HELP the tank, not serve you a guaranteed kill on a silver platter.

Your first part just kinda proves my point, you only hit a mag at range if the driver screws up. You yourself even say "all magrider users have a standard way they strafe", being predictable is screwing up. As for strafing myself, I personally don't do it not because the magrider, but because the inevitable HA's/MAXes. I never die to any tank at long range, it's always bloody infantry pelting me with six billion rockets that force me back, and exposing my side to them wont do any good. When I do fight just a single vanguard I don't even bother engaging at range, I do it the NC way and try to get in close.