[Vehicle] Constructive PPA Feedback

Hello.

I am assuming you have seen and tested the revised PPA for yourselves, and opinions will vary, some might agree with the changes, others will revile them. However as it stands, the PPA is in a very precarious state at the moment, and in order to avoid another incident like the Striker, we must express our thoughts on what can be improved.

Personally I believe the PPA has been rendered far too similar to the Kobalt with the reduction/removal of the splash radius, and as a result, the PPA is rendered redundant in comparison, when used for its intended role against infantry. I have noticed that the damage dealt the ESFs is incredibly high, and MAX units melt in a short span of time with careful bursting. However the low ammunition clip with the COF bloom makes the PPA impractical against multiple infantry targets.

From what I can see, it appears that the PPA has no clear role when dealing with infantry, and the role it comes closest too already has a specialised weapon taking the position.


If I were to redesign the weapon, I would scrap the exploding orb/impact orb idea completely and focus on short range AOE AI. Implement a capped range of 20-35 metres, 200 direct damage, a 5-8 second refire time and a large blast radius with the inner blast extending out to 1.5 metres with 600 damage with a sharp damage drop entering the outer blaster with 1 damage outside of 8 metres. Note the radiuses for both the inner and outer blast are far greater than the main cannon, this is meant to emphasise a crowd control role, whilst reducing the single target effectiveness. Therefore we have created a suppression weapon on a platform that can make the most out of the short range.
I would like to imagine that the sprite for the round is an electrical arc, in the same manner as the tesla towers from RA2.

Am I going crazy? I swear there used to be a vehicle section to the forums. Not saying anything bad about your post, just wondering if I'm loosing it.

gj SOE time to nerf unskiled weapon

It's been a little while when they deemed the vehicle section unworthy of existence. A sad day it was.

Therefore we are left sticking annotations to the side of GD posts

Before this thread gets derailed, I think that the PPA nerfs seem to go overboard. Personally, a COF nerf would have been good enough since it would have reduced the spamability of the weapon greatly. The complete redesign of the weapon seems like a bad idea and will not be received well.

Hold the nerf on PTS for awhile, because right now it will be a nightmare of complaints in the days after the nerf.

Nerf it and the rest of the Mag guns to hell for all I care, guess I'll be using the lightning to suppress infantry now, time to auraxium the Viper and the Python AV...

If SOE wanted to balance and or remove the ranged aspect of the PPA there's this thing that is called damage degradation, reduce the speed of the orbs and increase the damage degradation so beyond 100m it does maybe 50 damage...

Otherwise just delete the Magrider as its a POS that needs the second gun to be strong just to compete against the others

Worst main guns on all the tanks = Magrider, Lightning comes a close second but has better refire rate and much better DPS
Slowest tank, yup the Vanguard is slightly quicker these days
Same Armour as a Prowler.

And if anyone says but it can go sideways and avoid damage, yes it can only at 150m+ or against infantry rockets, you know those things Prowlers murder with dual 120mm or the Vanguard just uses the shield...


The only reason the PPA became popular was that the Saron became useless at defence against infantry and then everyone switched...

Fix the Saron against infantry (1 shot without flak, 2 shots maybe with flak armour) then the PPA can get nerfed at the same time, otherwise expect the new VS tank to look like a Lightning

In case people haven't read Higby's reasoning for the changes over on SOE's official community portal, Reddit:

Source thread

They literally meant POINT BLANK huh?

Turn the PPA into THIS! @ 22:11 in the video

The CoF maximum extent needs to be the current second-shot extent. I'm all for a CoF introduction on the weapon, but as it stands firing more than three shots makes the gun hideously inaccurate even at close range. Burst firing or firing single shots alleviates this, but it makes the the RoF buff meaningless. It could also use a reload speed buff of a few hundred milliseconds.

That's my thoughts so far. Everything else aside from the above is acceptable.

Welcome to canister/marauder levels of ES AI potency, enjoy your stay.

Ironically Canister will have more effective range than the PPA after this.

I see 3 problems with PPA post change.
1. CoF bloom renders it effective at half the range of Kobalt. Before, PPA had slightly more effective range than Kobalt, but now Kobalt is better at anything over 50m.
2. It is too similar to Kobalt/Canister/Marauder in the sense of high burst damage at close range.
3. Too effective against vehicles. Will kills softies like flash and harasser as well as some esf’s in seconds.

SOE removed it.

It would be great on ESF. Basically rocketpods or a more banshee like weapon.
High fire rate, decent damage against armor. Good at killing groups of enemies.

Too bad they aren't revamping Light PPA.

Looks awfully like marauder.

Did they already move it to the live server or is there some other reason why this is not in the forum for discussing the test server?

To be honest I move on instinct and didn't think to create it in the PTS forum. I do however feel that there is an overarching point to be had for player input during a redesign, and since SOE didn't really listen to the players during the Striker redesign in the test server, I believe it is important to raise as much awareness as possible.

So you are giving them more players to not listen to? Good luck.

My advice is to just do the same as NC and TR have already done. Embrace the versatility of the Halberd.