New Vanguard abilities

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Demigan, Aug 12, 2014.

  1. AkiyakiMaru

    Ill provide video of my character when you provide video of yours which shows how lacking the Vanguard is. Oh wait, that's not possible...
  2. EGuardian1

    Twenty Tank kills or twenty infantry kills?

    Twenty tank kills - Prove it.

    Twenty Infantry kills? HA. hahahahaha.

    My best streak was 46 with a Vanguard and took two hours of careful Stealth Vanguard and help from my outfit mates.- about half o those kills were Prowlers, ESFs, and a few sunderers with an AP cannon + Enforcer.

    What killed me? pair of C4 fairies.

    The Shield is NOT an I Win button. It's an "I'm on even ground now" button.
  3. Colt556

    Man, just reading your posts it's so painfully obvious that you are flat out lying. You're fabricating claims to show the VG is OP because you probably died to one. Any dedicated tanker on any faction can tell you that neither the VG itself nor the shield are OP. Hell, in the thread that sparked this one there were TR and VS tankers telling people that the shield isn't broken nor is the VG an especially good tank.

    The vanguard needs the shield just to be on par with a prowler, and the innate advantages of the magrider's hover also gives it a boost over the vanguard. No matter how mad you are that you died to a vanguard, coming on the forums and fabricating lies to paint it as some "OP as ****" tank really is a bit much. It's the weakest of the three tanks, so if the weakest tank is "OP as ****", why the hell aren't you crying about the other two tanks?
  4. CornyWarfare

    Wait, what?
  5. Sebastien

    If you can pull that off consistently, it would be impressive.
  6. Alarox

    INB4: "Shield is OP", No it isn't.
    INB4: "Vanguard is useless without the Shield", No it isn't.
    • Up x 1
  7. AkiyakiMaru

    Look i understand. You love playing the vanguard and you'd hate for your pwnmachine to get swatted by a nerf bat. So you go to the forums and defend it with your life and lie yourself knowing full well the vanguard needs to be nerfed. Damage control 101 with anything you don't agree with.

    As far as the magrider goes, using a little brain power goes a long way when aiming at a mag especially when you know it's next move is either a short and slow stroll left or right. It's not hard to lead a target 100-500m in front of you.

    And as far as it being the weakest tank, Do you actually believe the **** that you're saying? One of the biggest setbacks is that the NC basically has little to no leadership when it comes to general combat or even alerts which in turn NC players tend to go solo. No other tank class except for the vanguard allows for productive 1player v 1player tank battles. Im betting you're just mad because you end up over committing to a fight and run into 5 mags or 3 anchored prowlers and get angry because you didn't kill them all. Am i close?
  8. Odamit

    Would it be too much to ask for at least a week long mod enforced moratorium on Vanguard Shield Nerf / Adjustments / Vanguard Buff to validate tweaking the Shield / I hate iwinbutton/shield threads? I'm really not seeing anything new or constructive coming out of these threads anymore, it seems like people are just itching to point out possible flaws in arguments and spelling or grammar in these types of threads. People are just throwing numbers and hard to validate personal encounters around to try to substantiate their ideas.

    There might have been some feasible ideas way back when, good luck trying to hunt them down now since the Vehicle and Ideas and Suggestions thread have been consolidated with no word on the completion of threads created in 2014. At least then the threads about the shield changes seemed to reach a reasonable understanding of why most of the changes brought up weren't good.

    If the most significant change that the devs were comfortable with implementing was to reduce the amount of damage absorbed, and / or time the shield remains active, I'm skeptical that they'll run with the latest rehash of similar / same ideas with differing number values.

    I'll be waiting to see the impact of the changes to enforcing nerf threads, if not the plethora of ''I have an idea to change the VG shield like this...'' when it's really nothing new.
  9. Colt556

    You might wanna check my profile before you accuse me of "defending my pwnmachine" as I'm almost entirely infantry. However facts are facts and players from all sides agree with these facts. While not a worthless tank, as Alarox pointed out, the VG is more than capable of doing it's job. However it is the weakest and most underperforming of the three tanks. It's shield fills a role of giving the vanguard the ability to keep fighting, magrider has it's mobility and prowler has it's dps, vanguard has it's hp. It's hardly overpowered, it's just different.

    Also, I rather run if I see even two enemy tanks. When I do take my VG I go max stealth AP/Enforcer and hunt down other tanks. You know which tank I hate fighting the most? Magriders. Kind of funny how vanu hate fighting vanguards and I, an NC, hate fighting magriders.

    However, I'll tell you what. Since you accuse the vanguard of being overpowered, provide some numbers. Or being unable to do that, provide some kind of evidence, ANY kind of evidence, of vanguards out-performing the other two tanks. Because every time I've seen stats vanguard has always been in last place. If this has changed recently then by all means show me and I'll admit I'm wrong. I mean, surely you aren't saying that the VG is an overpowered "pwnmachine" based off nothing but you dying to them, right?
    • Up x 1
  10. Fleech



    i mainly play AV magrider.


    i'm sorry you have no clue how to engage vanguards properly and foster the incorrect opinion that the vanguard is any way OP.
    • Up x 1
  11. WTSherman

    Resist shield: will need a little more symmetry between duration/recharge (either a longer duration or shorter recharge) but could potentially be workable as long as it does run on a toggleable energy bar like the HA shield does.

    "Turret shield": lolno. Completely lose all ability to fight back for a shield that my opponent can easily shoot around, thus not even gaining anything in return? No thanks.

    Dome shield: Would potentially be workable if it worked like the shield generators in Supreme Commander. Friendlies can fire through it, but enemies cannot. If the shield stops friendly shots it would mostly just be annoying and used to troll people. This would actually change the Vanguard's role into a long-range tank, since now a Vanguard would want to keep at a distance where it can keep its shield up, and avoid getting close where an enemy can just drive through the shield and shoot them. At a minimum, the secondary gun should probably still be able to fire (making it kind of the polar opposite of anchor). This would still hurt the Vanguard's already sub-par score earning potential though, so maybe it would need some way to gain EXP for blocking enemy damage?

    Deploy-shield: "A lot less health"? The current AMS shield can only stop ONE shell. So this shield would stop a whopping zero shells? Wow. Instead of dying instantly I get a half second to bail before my tank dies of fire damage, Vanguard stronk.

    Though really the current shield isn't OP at all. If anything it's a little weak in most situations. The only "problem" with it is that it annoys some people because somehow they weren't expecting it, so they overcommit forgetting that securing a kill on a Vanguard usually takes a couple extra seconds.

    I guess one thing we could possibly do is just make it so the Vanguard shield is always on and has to be disabled through damage, so then at least people know it's there, know it can break, and it doesn't surprise them. Though that would raise the question of how such a passive shield should handle recharging.
  12. Demigan

    Ladies, gentlemen (I assume we have both somewhere on this forum).

    There is no reason to start shouting 'OP Vanguard' or 'UP Vanguard' here. The whole goal is to find a solution that both the OP shouters and the UP shouters agree with, not to start another battle.



    Please take an example from WTSherman:

    Allright. The actual numbers are up to SOE ofcourse, but I thought this would be neat.

    So you would find this shield more balanced if it was broad enough to defend the entire side? The reason I don't let the secondary hit people over the shield is because people will complain about it. I would like to let it hit targets by firing over the shield though.
    The shield, if broad enough to defend the side, would have incredible uses. Both to get in close and personal with your enemy as well as turning it on before repairing.

    Good idea's. I had my doubts about disallowing people to shoot through the shield from the inside. Since this will be an option that you need to activate long before the battle it's not as if it's an 'Iwin' button. As you put it, it wouldn't even that bad to allow the primary+secondary to be active. If you do deactivate the primary and/or secondary than the shields health should go up to make it effective.

    I've shot 3 AP shells at a Sunderer and it's shield was still up. I have no idea how much health that thing has but it's a ton from my experience. I do have the idea that a lot of people have differing idea's about the strength of the shield. Ofcourse it should be useful, so if the current sunderer shield stops very little damage than my idea should get an improvement to health to be on-par with Sunderers or even better.

    I'm hoping to avoid more of the current Vanguard shield discussions. People are divided about them. I would like to ask everyone to just reply to the idea's or supply their own idea's for abilities that would, in their mind, be a balanced feature for the vanguard.
  13. Colt556

    Well, since you asked, I'll give my feedback too.

    This has been the only idea presented in any thread that could work, the numbers presented are always bad, though. It'd need a longer duration and need to be toggleable with a relatively short cooldown. I mean compare magburn or anchor and see how often those can be spammed. If the vanguard only gets damage mitigation it needs to be way more spammable than what it currently has.

    You lost me at "the main cannon cannot be fired". It really seems that people don't understand the purpose of the shield. The point of the shield is -NOT- to allow the vanguard to escape. The shield is to allow the vanguard to kill what is attacking it. The vanguard's reverse speed is around 20kph, it's not going ANYWHERE if it has to retreat with it's shield up. The only time the shield is useful for retreating is when you're shelling infantry from 100 meters away while on a hill. In tank battles, which this is about, you simply can't escape, the enemy will chase you and kill you. If the vanguard can't return fire then it';s shield is worthless as the enemy will just flank around and kill it. Either that or the enemy just shoots it until it goes down and then just finishes the battle. All in all it's completely worthless for the vanguard.

    Now, if the weapon systems could still fire, then you'd have something to work with. As at that point it would actually be fulfilling it's role of giving the vanguard a chance to kill what's attacking it before it dies. I would also say the shield needs to be wide enough to give 100% protection to the sides. Not only does this mean the shield is useful no matter what side is attacked (otherwise they'd just shoot around the shield making it non-existent on the sides) but since it's wide it also allows infantry to hide behind the shield when you're facing forward. This would provide teamplay as the vanguard could advance with infantry using it's shield for cover.

    So to sum it up, the shield's width needs to be slightly wider than the length of the tank. It needs to be very durable since it only protects one side, you shouldn't want to attack a vanguard's shield you should want to flank it. I mean look at how tanky a max lvl aegis shield is. The weapons need to be able to fire through the shield. It's recharge rate should work like the aegis and the time it takes is proportionate to how much damage it's sustained.

    Big "no" on this one. It's a nice ability that I could see on some kind of support vehicle, but it doesn't belong on an MBT. The vanguard's job is to kill things, not sit in place pretending it's a shield generator.

    You do realize that this is basically a useless version of what we currently have, right? Although I have always felt the vanguard should have gotten the anchor ability rather than the prowler. I'd condone this ability if it buffed the vanguard's velocity so it could pretend it's actually artillery instead of a tank. However at this point you really are stepping into the prowler's territory, and the shield would be WORTHLESS for tank combat.

    Actually as I'm typing this I'm realizing that is is generally just a bad idea as it serves no real purpose. It's 100% useless in tank combat as tank combat requires the ability to move. It's also 100% worthless when shelling infantry because you're going to either be too far away for them to reliably hit you, or you're going to need the ability to get out of their fire to repair. If you're in a situation where you'd need this shield against infantry, they would have killed you before the shield activated. So all in all this is entirely worthless.

    The buff to velocity/damage would have to be pretty significant to make this worth it. I mean look at the prowler, it's anchored mode let's it pop off shots literally once a second. Otherwise it seems fairly pointless since if you're in close range you really don't need faster shells, and if you're at long range the enemy will move to cover before you can get the second or third shot off. So kind of like the deploy shield it really just has no situations where it'd actually be useful.
  14. Alarox

    I think we should just stop already. If enough people complained about the Beamer on these forums it would get nerfed in a month.

    You too OP. Don't try to fix what isn't broken. Bad players will complain about everything, They will latch on to anything they can find and explain their failures away. The Shield is visually prevalent so it will always be used as an excuse. It doesn't matter whether or not it absorbed 2000 health, 3000 health, 500 health, or was a resist shield.
  15. Goretzu

    The stats show how it is performing, on-par at best and sub-par at worst (with a fair bit of the latter). Much clearer and more informative than most any video. :confused:
  16. Goretzu


    The problem is (and has been forever, basically), that the Vanguard chassis (i.e. the tank without the shield) underperforms compared to the Prowler or the Van (with or without their ES-abilities).

    The only thing the Van has to make up that gap is the shield, and even with the pre-nerf shield (never mind the current nerfed shield) it doesn't actually do that, it just gets a lot closer than without the shield.

    Yes the Van was (and is) strong in some circumstances (with the shield - without the shield it is weaker in the majority), but over all it is at best on-par and at worst sub-par in performance to the other tanks.



    The idea that the Van is overperforming or overpowered is ridculous, pretty much even in a toe to toe sense since the shield nerf.



    However the problem is that without fixing the Vans chassis performance any messing (and lets be honest here what everyone means by this is making the shield WEAKER - whether or not it needs it statstically) with the shield is just hamstringing the Vanguard.

    The Van chassis needs fixing to be on-par with the other MBTs, then the ability can be changed to suit.
  17. Demigan

    Thanks for the feedback :)

    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"
    You lost me at "the main cannon cannot be fired". It really seems that people don't understand the purpose of the shield. The point of the shield is -NOT- to allow the vanguard to escape. The shield is to allow the vanguard to kill what is attacking it. The vanguard's reverse speed is around 20kph, it's not going ANYWHERE if it has to retreat with it's shield up. The only time the shield is useful for retreating is when you're shelling infantry from 100 meters away while on a hill. In tank battles, which this is about, you simply can't escape, the enemy will chase you and kill you. If the vanguard can't return fire then it';s shield is worthless as the enemy will just flank around and kill it. Either that or the enemy just shoots it until it goes down and then just finishes the battle. All in all it's completely worthless for the vanguard.



    Now, if the weapon systems could still fire, then you'd have something to work with. As at that point it would actually be fulfilling it's role of giving the vanguard a chance to kill what's attacking it before it dies. I would also say the shield needs to be wide enough to give 100% protection to the sides. Not only does this mean the shield is useful no matter what side is attacked (otherwise they'd just shoot around the shield making it non-existent on the sides) but since it's wide it also allows infantry to hide behind the shield when you're facing forward. This would provide teamplay as the vanguard could advance with infantry using it's shield for cover.

    So to sum it up, the shield's width needs to be slightly wider than the length of the tank. It needs to be very durable since it only protects one side, you shouldn't want to attack a vanguard's shield you should want to flank it. I mean look at how tanky a max lvl aegis shield is. The weapons need to be able to fire through the shield. It's recharge rate should work like the aegis and the time it takes is proportionate to how much damage it's sustained.
    [/quote]

    I'm not too sure... On one hand, allowing the cannon to fire while the shield is up would make this thing a beast. Especially if it has AEGIS shield properties. You can tank what, 3 or 4 rockets with that thing? that would mean translated to the Vanguard turret-shield it would have about 4500-6000 health or so? I doubt all the 1vs1 junkies would agree to any of this, as it would mean the Vanguard could only lose when attacked by multiple people. You can reduce the maximum amount of health and have it work like the AEGIS shield in that it can be toggled on/off at any time and recharges when off.

    I like the idea of making it broad enough to defend the sides, especially when aimed to the front it could indeed protect infantry... or 2 fellow Vanguards. Maybe we could build in several advantages weighed down with disadvantages? Have the shield deplete energy as you have it on similar to the Heavy shield. People won't have it turned on constantly then and it takes more skill to use. With that system you can give the shield an enormous amount of health, the Vanguard can then suddenly brawl like no other but due to it's current underperforming chassis be vulnerable to flankings. The Chassis would need an upgrade anyway in the future, but I don't think this shield is exactly bad. It would basically be a direct upgrade to the chassis, allowing a good tanker to stay in a fight longer as long as he's not overwhelmed.

    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"Big "no" on this one. It's a nice ability that I could see on some kind of support vehicle, but it doesn't belong on an MBT. The vanguard's job is to kill things, not sit in place pretending it's a shield generator.[/quote]

    Fair enough. second shield-ability for the Sunderer comming up :)



    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"You do realize that this is basically a useless version of what we currently have, right? Although I have always felt the vanguard should have gotten the anchor ability rather than the prowler. I'd condone this ability if it buffed the vanguard's velocity so it could pretend it's actually artillery instead of a tank. However at this point you really are stepping into the prowler's territory, and the shield would be WORTHLESS for tank combat.[/quote]

    Now hold on. Just think about it: a Vanguard, anchored, immobile and shield up. Imagine if he can suddenly tank 10 shots more? Regenerate his shield when the enemy stops shooting? The NC would be able to tank the most damage of anyone... at the cost of mobility. Imagine the enemy pushing through at Broken Arch, you just place a line of anchored Vanguards at Crossroads and watch how the enemy futilely tries to kill one.
    Granted, this idea needs tweaking and alterations. Perhaps get the shield up almost instantly. Perhaps it indeed increases the muzzle-velocity so it become the best long-range tank version, tanking long-range damage while being able to snipe some enemies himself.


    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"The buff to velocity/damage would have to be pretty significant to make this worth it. I mean look at the prowler, it's anchored mode let's it pop off shots literally once a second. Otherwise it seems fairly pointless since if you're in close range you really don't need faster shells, and if you're at long range the enemy will move to cover before you can get the second or third shot off. So kind of like the deploy shield it really just has no situations where it'd actually be useful.[/quote]

    200% velocity increase and 50% damage increase? Just throwing something out there. Since this can be used on the move, unlike the Prowler, it has it's own staple of usefulness. Heck, if that's not enough you can make the ability work for the secondary turret as well.
  18. Colt556

    If it had a time limit it'd have to be a rather lengthy one. This game isn't designed or balanced around 1v1 so nobody should ever use that in an argument. If something is strong in 1v1, well then don't 1v1 it. You can't really beat a MAX 1v1 unless you outplay it (or abuse stupid **** like c4 fairies), really C4 fairies are the only things that can 1v1 a max. Anyone else may damage it, but they'll end up getting killed. The only exception is if they simply outplay the MAX, but that'd apply here too. Outplay the vanguard and it doesn't matter how strong it's directional shield is.

    Reason I mention all that is because if you balance it around 1v1, it may very well end useless in group fights. Say we add a time limit to it, for 1v1 balance. Ok, well, how long is the time limit? 10 seconds? You couldn't even push up the hill to quartz ridge in that time. Ok so what about 20 seconds? Well that's 5 shots the vanguard gets while you're doing 0 damage to it, doesn't sound very balanced in a 1v1 there. See the problem here? You balance it for 1v1 and it becomes worthless in real battles, you balance it around real battles and it's OP in 1v1.

    The only possible solution I can think to this would be to make it front, period. Not turret bound, but front bound. So the vanguard would have to keep it's front facing you, so if you can circle around you can bypass the shield. Given the vanguard's turn rate this is an entirely possible strategy. So if we went with this idea you'd essentially be giving the vanguard the ability to become invulnerable to frontal attacks. I don't know how that'd sit with people who cry about the current shield, considering they want it changed because they can't beat it as is. I doubt they'd be skilled enough to beat this version.



    I can see various problems with this. It could be stupidly powerful if you did your scenario, the NC would basically be unbreakable as they could just plonk down walls of vanguard and nothing would get past. AP guns for the main cannons, AA turrets for the top guns and suddenly no vehicle can get anywhere near them. Ammo sundies and infantry offering support and you've created the great wall of indar right there.

    I don't do numbers, more... results. When I think of damage/hp changes I think of practical numbers. Would this rail gun allow a vanguard to kill a prowler/magrider with say... 3 shots to the front instead of 5? two shots to the rear? One shot? That's what I care about, not percentages as those mean nothing to me. All in all, I'm not a fan of this idea whether it'd work or not, it seems kind of cartoony. It reminds me of a typical MMO, buffing yourself for increased damage for a short period of time. I'm not a fan of MMORPG tier abilities.
  19. Shatters

    So I take this as a "I dont have any experience driving a vanguard, but I got killed by one and therefore they are OP".
  20. Demigan

    You are right. A Magrider would in CQC lose from a Prowler right now as the Prowler simply has more twice the DPS and the same armor.

    You could make the shield last 20 seconds, or even 30 seconds. However, this is when the shield never gets hit. Similar to the HA shield it loses hitpoints in time. So after 15 seconds you would have half your shield left, after 30 seconds no shield at all, even though it was never hit. When it does get hit the duration goes down with it as the health depletes.
    Perhaps add something similar as with the Jumpjet. If you deplete all energy it takes longer before it regenerates completely. So if you drop your shield while there's still a sliver of health/energy left it takes much shorter to regenerate completely. Say it takes the same time to regenerate as it depletes. It would still offer much more health potential than the current shield ever has, but much more directional. You can turn it on/off whenever you like for extra protection, but won't be running around with the shield constantly on.


    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"I can see various problems with this. It could be stupidly powerful if you did your scenario, the NC would basically be unbreakable as they could just plonk down walls of vanguard and nothing would get past. AP guns for the main cannons, AA turrets for the top guns and suddenly no vehicle can get anywhere near them. Ammo sundies and infantry offering support and you've created the great wall of indar right there.[/quote]

    I was overcompensating. You said the entire idea wouldn't work, but the way I put it the idea would be too powerful. So somewhere there's a middle-ground where the feature is useful and perhaps neither OP or UP in a given scenario.
    Also, this scenario would still have lots of flaws. Since you are anchored down the enemy could limit their vision to just one Vanguard, concentrate fire and destroy it. This is assuming ofcourse they are comming around a bend in the road.



    [quote="Colt556, post: 2868284, member: 29899"I don't do numbers, more... results. When I think of damage/hp changes I think of practical numbers. Would this rail gun allow a vanguard to kill a prowler/magrider with say... 3 shots to the front instead of 5? two shots to the rear? One shot? That's what I care about, not percentages as those mean nothing to me. All in all, I'm not a fan of this idea whether it'd work or not, it seems kind of cartoony. It reminds me of a typical MMO, buffing yourself for increased damage for a short period of time. I'm not a fan of MMORPG tier abilities.[/quote]

    Fair enough. I added something like this as the NC are the prototype faction. It was the only thing I could think off at the time as a non-shield ability that wouldn't intrude too much on the Prowlers/Magriders abilities.
    Perhaps a different approach: A simple second shell. You can activate this 'ability' which allows you to fire a shell regardless of you having one reloaded or not. This allows you to, once in a while, fire two shots in quick succession. A killing-blow shot. As a backdraw it could reset your reload if you were reloading. It could be a prototype second loader in your Vanguard as explanation. It simply uses your own shells.
    I actually like this idea a lot better. It might not be the awesome double-fire-rate that the Prowlers have in Anchor mode or give the runaway abilities of the Magrider, but in a moving battle this could prove an incredibly valuable feat with the high damage per shot of the Vanguard. Give it a short cooldown and it is pretty balanced against the more versatile chassis and weapons that the Prowler and Magrider I think.

    Yours sincerely,
    Demigan.