[Suggestion] Vanguard revamp ideas

Having a hard time reading this thread. Actually debating the dodging capabilities of the Magrider and the lack thereof for the Vanguard. Please logg into the game, pick a heavy assault and go fight a magrider with a dumbfire missile.
The vanguards acceleration is a complete disaster paired with the fact it isn't only bigger but significantly higher then other tanks.
Indeed when fighting other main battletanks I see them do things Vanguards simply "CAN'T" do.
Prowlers do to some success just hit reverse at a minor angel with dazzling speed, Maggy's strafe turn into warpspeed, seriously to act like thier mobility isn't a factor is insane.
When I see a prowler I pull a heavy, if I see a Maggy that knows how to play even half decently I would never do that.
The vanguards handling characteristics are its only problem, so what if it is slow okay fine, but stopping and reversing shouldn't mean an engine stall every time, nor should inclines be their biggest enemies.
Don't make me laugh acting like magriders struggle, they are constantly abusing the crap out of their strengths mobility and ignoring terrain, always stuck to an incline/hill. Strafing "destroys" dumbfire missile fire from heavies, they are suspended from the ground and can dodge fire that way, their strafe is accentuated by the fact their shape tapers to the sides, + they seamlessly strafe from left right, right left without hitting a so called inertia induced loss of control. P.S. A vanguard strafing would mean the longest part of its body the front, all but the whole things needs to come out of cover. How is it okay a vanguard can actually obstruct its own sight with its giant body just to be unable to fire down a hill because to get that downward angle would mean the whole thing sliding off the hill.

Prowlers are respectable, but playing mostly infantry and ofc tanks on occasion, I shouldn't be feeling like prowlers are pinata's compared to magriders. That said the force multiplier of prowlers in groups is very real with the double shot madness. Generally I have to sneak around with an engineer to deal with magriders because they're that mobile you have to exploit the fact they have no turret up top with the guided missiles and flanking, prowlers are the opposite because they can doublefire and lead their shots real easy so you pull a heavy.
If you take a vanguard under fire and drive over a non flat surface you will be stuck too long to survive under most situations Edit: or slide off a hill because you rotated your lopsided body to get a better shot or drive off. This adds a whole new dimension of danger and situation awareness to one of the basic activities of utilizing cover.
If vanguard are going to be this big and slow, they at least need traction, traction buff=fixed or maybe inertia.

^ This is a major issue with MBTs in the game.

...

Seriously?

Bolt-action sniper rifles don't exactly have a high DPS. Do people stop using them en-mass? Absolutely not, because they are useful in the way you can use them. Their stats support their role as it were.
Now compare bolt-actions to LMG's, Carbines, or the Shotgun. These things have a way higher DPS (especially the Shotgun which out-DPS's every single weapon in the game), more ammo, often great accuracy and less weapon sway while zoomed in. Does that make them inherently better? No, it depends on how you use it.

A Carbine has a higher DPS than an LMG. Still LMG's are generally better because of it's stats. It has higher ammo count, better accuracy, less damage drop at range etc. For most normal combat the LMG works perfectly despite it's lower DPS.
When you get in CQC the Carbine's DPS starts to become apparent. But it's drawbacks (low magazine count) become more apparent too.
So we have ascertained two things. The first is that the situation the weapon can be used in matters. The second that raw stats do not prove something is "effective". Having a weapon that deals 4000 raw damage but an 8 second reload would result in a DPS of 500. This doesn't make the weapon better than the Magrider. In fact it would result in other players having much better options to damage you, hide or even repair while you are reloading! You wouldn't be able to shoot the engineer crew repairing as a miss would be a phenomenal punishment in the form of the reload. It would also mean that you are less capable of dealing with infantry, which are always a factor in any fight. So having a higher DPS doesn't mean a thing. Ease-of-use of the weapon, it's stats supporting the role it's used for, those things matter.

So let's get back to the Magrider/Vanguard. If you look at the monthly stats so nicely provided by Oracle of Death and some players in this thread you can see what this "higher DPS", better armor and "OP Iwinshield" has as a result. What do you know! In the combined-arms area called "Planetside 2" a Vanguard doesn't perform as well as the Magrider and Prowler. Across 1 month the Vanguard consistently got a significant amount of kills less than both the Magrider and Prowler. The Vanguard also consistantly got a significant amount of Vehicle kills less than both the Magrider and Prowler. In fact if you look at the stats you can see the Vanguard was pulled about equal or more than the Magrider, showing the Vanguard was destroyed and taken again more often than the Magrider and Prowler.

So please stop stomping on this. The Vanguard is underperforming by a large margin. 1 Kill per hour less might seem little over a day, but we are talking consistantly 1 kill per hour less over a month. As in 720 kills less compared to the other two factions over a month.
We have also heard recently that the Vanguard survived the longest on the battlefield of all tanks. So despite their longer involvement in a battle the Vanguard managed to perform less. This means the Vanguard is simply less effective than both the Prowler and the Magrider. Despite the Magrider having a lower DPS.
Also, keep in mind that every single Vanguard (except new players) will use his shield in combat every single time. While I rarely see Anchored Prowlers or afterburning Magriders. Here comes the crux: Despite the fact that the Vanguard always uses it's ability where the other two rarely do in combat situations, the Vanguard is outperformed. This means that the Prowler and Magrider can outperform the Vanguard even more when their abilities come into play.
I think that should be proof enough that the Magrider, despite having a lower DPS; outperforms the Vanguard. This is because of the inherent abilities that the Magrider offers over the inherant abilities the Vanguard offers.
A Prowler's inherant ability is a higher DPS (also after applying all damage modifiers). This means that regardless of the Prowler getting shot, his "ability" of having a higher DPS will always work in their favor. Adding more Prowlers will increase this ability.
A Magrider has the inherent ability of mobility. It can float across rougher terrain that the other tanks wouldn't dream off, while also staying much more stable while moving around. The Vanguard and Prowler usually stand still for better accuracy since they have a very low tolerance for uneven terrain that the Magrider does not. This gives it a good advantage. People always focus on the "Dodge incoming shells/rockets" part but they forget the incredible advantages a stable moving platform can give, that can move/flee across more terrain than the other two. Allowing for attacks across almost any terrain, and fleeing across terrain that the other two cannot follow you.
A Vanguards abilities are armor and shield. Both are only usable when getting shot.

Is this enough? Will you give a proper reaction to this? I doubt you'll even read through it all...

Let's fix the Vanguard, then we can look at the Magrider's performance issues.

Like others have said, the vanguard is the best anti-tank MBT currently. My SPM is currently 415 with that thing. When more NC players realize that they should always be running AP with a halberd/enforcer, these threads will cease to exist.

The vanguard doesn't need anti-infantry capability. That's what HE lightnings and dual bulldog blockade sunderers(my favorite infantry-killing vehicle) are for.

With enough practice, it's also the best anti-air MBT when you use that AP cannon.

If more NC players ran AP vanguards, then the NC would have free reign to use whatever other anti-infantry vehicles they wish without fear of interruption by enemy armor.

I usually stop reading threads like this after the first page or two because it's the same facts being misrepresented or flat out wrong with pages of people rehashing discussion on opinions and correcting facts. It's still mildly amusing.

Kevmo told me in person the Magrider kills more tanks and Prowler kills more infantry. The Vanguard lives longer.

The problem is, even if that is currently true after the shield nerf, living the longest doesn’t really have much game impact, particularly when it’s so easy to pull a new tank under the current resource system. You can have an indestructible brick wall tank sitting on the battlefield (exaggeration for making a point), but what matters is what you can do with the tank that makes an impact on the battlefield while it's present, and the stats say the Vanguard has the least effective battlefield impact.

I’m not saying the Vanguard is trash by any means, I love the Vanguard. But currently in the hands of the average PS2 player, it is being outclassed in all performance metrics that matter for a MBT. If one faction’s MBT has the best AI and the other has the best AV, for balance I would at least expect the third to be in the middle for both AI & AV.

I just updated my old thread on "Vanguard Myths", and this is still the case as it was back in April.

If you calculate "kills per life" (which is simply taking into account AKPH, AKDR, and total hours played) the Magrider and the Vanguard are actually pretty close. The Magrider kills more things but doesn't live as long, whereas Vanguards live longer but don't kill things as quickly. The Prowler on the other hand far exceeds both NC and VS tanks; although it has the shortest life it also kills things extremely rapidly.

Lamat, I say you make another thread about this and make clear that discussion about OP/UP is off limits. Just post idea's that every player could agree with.

NC could provide your shield version, it doesn't matter if it's OP, UP or balanced. Any ability can be nerfed or boosted until it hits balance. Even a rechargable supershield can be balanced by increasing cooldown, decreasing health/regeneration or decreasing the length of time it's active.
TR/VS could provide an ability that they feel comfortable with. This can be completely UP for Vanguards or even make them worse than before. That doesn't matter. The point would be to get input to abilities that the Vanguard could use.

I would also like to see a portion where the inherent ability of the Vanguard is discussed. With "inherent ability" I mean any ability that every single MBT has at any point in the game, with or without certs. Magrider has floaty business, Prowler the most constant DPS due to a double barrel and short reload. Vanguard has slightly higher armor that barely helps coupled with good (single) burst damage and long reloads.
The Vanguard needs an ability that is always there whatever is equipped. I thought your original post idea could work. But there are other things that could be proposed at the core of the Vanguard's frame. Increasing it's weight for instance while keeping it's maximum speed and current acceleration. This would increase the damage the Vanguard can do by ramming enemies while decreasing damage done to the Vanguard. Another option would be to allow the Vanguard to push other vehicles. You could potentially push another vehicle with 40 KPH. This would give Vanguards an edge in point-blank fights, allowing the Vanguard to push other tanks into bad positions or prevent them from escaping. More idea's can be made in an instant.

I did my best trying to cover the bases to prevent this turning into an OP/UP debate and getting derailed with Magrider strafing non-sense that seems to crop-up into every thread no matter what the topic is. It’s true that this thread is a little tainted with crap that might make someone stop reading it, but it also has a lot of good things too. I think creating a new thread will just see the same thing happen anyways because this is the way of Forumside.

So let’s try to keep this one going and on track.

Rather than buffing the speed I'd rather they buff what it's strengths are and make them more meaningful - namely it's resists, possibly it's HP pool.

I can deal with a slow tortoise if it's armored like one.

Then what was the whole "Vanguard can't kill things" about?

Better job as a tank? Maybe. That's arguable.
Better job at taking damage? Stats say no.

As it is, the Vanguard has an innate 5% frontal resistance advantage and a 7% side resistance advantage versus the Magrider or Prowler. In other words if a Magrider or Prowler equips Reinforced Front or Side Armor, then they will have the same resistance as a Vanguard from the front and more resistance than a Vanguard from the sides.

Otherwise the Vanguard has a small 2% bonus to AP shells and machineguns. The only resistance of value that the Vanguard has is C4 resistance, which really doesn't matter in tank v. tank battles.

The extra 2,000HP from the shield is only useful 10-13% of the time, assuming that it is being spammed non-stop. Averaged out over time that's only a 200-260HP bonus.

they could not change the vanguard at all and I'd be content either way

I'd simply like to see more emphasis on faction traits and less this 'they're all the same except slightly inequal'

Well, I did go through the trouble to find the reload and Damage stats for the Primaries, so I'm not that lazy.

1. 1 less kill per hour looks bad in over time, but is that really a good statistic for a tanks effectiveness? There could be a multitude of factors for this.

2. More DMG per shot means more DPS when a small window for damage occurs or for quick ambushes.

3. Magburner is of course, never used in combat, except to run away.

4. Agreed on Mags abilities.

5. Magrider's ability is mobility, which is only useful while getting shot and trying to traverse terrain, while shield can also be used to retreat.

They can't kill things effectively (compared to the Magrider or Prowler)... they just live longer than Magriders and Prowlers. So by living longer they can kill more things over the course of their longer life.

For example, say you have two rabbits. One lives for one year, the other lives for two years. But the first rabbit eats two meals a day, while the second rabbit only eats one meal per day. After the first rabbit dies it has eaten 730 meals (365 days*2 meals per day*1 year). The second rabbit lives a whole year longer, and when it dies it has also eaten 730 meals (365 days*1 meal per day*2 years).

That's how the Magrider and Vanguard come out to about even in terms of kills per life. But the fact still stands that the Magrider is much better at killing things than the Vanguard.

Yes, its worse at killing things, but it kills the same amount of things. If resources mattered, that would actually make a difference.

You may have answered your own question here... but in case that wasn't clear...

Kills per life is pretty meaningless at figuring out the effectiveness of tanks, particularly as you mentioned because resources and tank costs don't matter. Yes if keeping your tank alive had real meaning then the Vanguard's longevity would be worth something. But because any Magrider or Prowler can pretty easily be replaced instantly, there's not much merit to the Vanguard living longer.

That's why AKPH and AVKPH are much more important than Kill Per Life, because all that matters is how much you can kill in as short a time as possible. And in that respect Vanguards are terrible.

Ehh, if they could actually put out nanite resource phases 2 and 3, Vanguard would have an advantage over the others. Not an OP one, just one.