NC-15 Phoenix

I just found out about this weapon after watching one of Wrel's videos, where he used the thing to great effect. So I log into my NC alt and queue up HA and the Phoenix. Much lulz followed.

How is this not the coolest weapon in the game? You can fire the bleedin' thing from over a wall, perfectly safe from everything but airpower, and just rain destructive lovin' down upon thy enemy masses. It can even track well on aircraft.

I want one of these things for TR. Seriously. All this complaining about not having an empire-specific TR weapon against Magriders, and along comes this thing--the Engy's AV turret on steroids. You don't even have to stay exposed to the enemy to guide the rocket along. You don't even have to look at the target area first. You can just toss a rocket in a general direction and play tag with targets of opportunity. It nearly one-shots Scythes. It takes about 3 rockets to whip a Mag, whereas the AV turret takes, like, 5 hits.

Give me an ammo pack, fellow Engies. I'm playing missile tag.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

It's mostly maligned because of the 300 meter limit (and the fact that they removed the infantry OHK, but like it or not it NEEDED to be removed), and low solo DPS, given the time it takes to guide and reload. Still, it's a very fun weapon, and with only a touch of teamwork becomes much more powerful.

Still, for my money, the Lancer is the best of the three. The Striker used to be strong, if boring. I haven't used it since the recent changes.

You're pretty much a magnet for infiltrators when you use it and personally I haven't touched it ever since I unlocked the Deci. I think it'd be a lot better if it were laser guided like the ravens.

The Phoenix is pretty situational... I would say far more niche than the Lancer at least.

The Phoenix works best when you have a height advantage and the enemy is pretty close. I've had success with it in the Indar Canyons where there's a base right below you (Arroyo Torre Station comes to mind). The close distance plus lack of cover for enemy vehicles when you're shooting from above plays to the Phoenix's strengths.

The Phoenix does have plenty of drawbacks though which make it much more situational.

The biggest is the 300m range, which automatically restricts it to close-ish range engagements (in vehicle terms). And most often it's less than 300m because that's rocket travel distance... and deviations from a straight line will eat up the meager range of the Phoenix even more.

Contrary to popular belief, the Phoenix cannot shoot around corners or hit vehicles that are in deep cover (unless attacking from a high angle). The rocket itself is relatively difficult to maneuver, so you can really only hit targets that are behind gentle cover. Hitting fast-moving targets like Harassers or aircraft is out of the question (compounded by the range limitation).

Also very few people attempt to shoot down the big glowy target that is the Phoenix weapon. Only time I remember that consistently happening was one fight at Howling Pass. Unlike any other projectile in the game, the Phoenix can be shot down. Small arms will do the trick.

The Phoenix also trades poor sustained DPS for a high alpha strike. In other words you'll hit them hard, but you won't hit them often. Reloading is slow and only happens after a rocket is gone. Thus misses (or the rare shoot-down) will penalize the Phoenix even more than other AT launchers.

In the end the Phoenix is a really special tool. I usually run around with the dumbfire launcher which is more useful in most situations and only switch to the Phoenix when specific orders are issued to form a Phoenix squad. I have 7.4 hours with the dumbfire Shrike, but the Phoenix doesn't even show up on my stats feed.

It's the greatest launcher. GOON uses it in coordinated nests as often as humanly possible and it always wrecks shop

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Remember it uses flight controls, so binding pitch up/down (maximum speed up and down with one button) and analog throttle (cuts engine power entirely, use sparingly as the projectile is time limited and not distance limited) will give you a lot more flexibility in usage and salt generation.

I can stand at the bottom of the Xenotech butte, fire my Phoenix directly up, and hit an engie turret on the lower terrace on the other side of the top. Quick use of the throttle will also allow you to hit objects on the other side of a wall.

It's bugged right now mind you, so make sure you scope and unscope before firing a 2nd round. It's a pain but it's less of a DPS loss than a floppy rocket

It works great on a battlefield, we have SCREEE buses we pull that just ferry a bunch of HAs and engies and medics from cover to cover to keep them within 300m of the armor blob we're pushing back. It's stupidly effective, especially with a deploy shield on the sundy preventing any armor from rushing it and blowing it up before your rockets can take care of them.

If I would suggest a single change, it would be to make the crouch status (i.e. crouching or not) persist during guidance. Right now it's pretty silly to be standing stock still in the middle of a field, it would be nice to stay crouched when I shoot. (also fix the dumbfire 'glitch')

But yeah, the Phoenix is the greatest gun in the game! Look out, baddies! I'm flying a little blue fireball of suicidal FREEDOM!

Wow a person that understands how awesome the Phoenix is... GO OUT THERE AND GIVE THEM THE VOICE OF FREEDOOM
*SCREEE SCREEE SCREEE SCREEE SCREEE*

And do not give a crap about people doing the math about "dps" , "infil heaven" and such absurdities , you can hide behind freagin walls man!! oh and 2 hit maxes , which happens often because maxes will just stand over that hill thinking they're safe after losing half their hp.

If you have a mouse that can increase your sensitivity, that can help greatly with sharper manuverability.

Or just boosting your sensitivity, period.

Also aiming ahead of your target if you're aiming at a moving harasser or lightning.

Speaking of the dumbfire bug, knife the air right after you reload (you don't need to complete the entire reload animation) and the next shot won't bug out.

Phoenix is a fun RL and can be incredible when paired up with other RL's. Just not necessarily other Phoenix's. The primary benefit of the Phoenix isn't that it can shoot from behind cover, it's that it can hit things that can't be hit with lock ons or dumbfires. That's not to say it's as good as hitting things behind cover as many people think, just that it is able to where other RL's can't. The optimal use of the Phoenix is to use it to support a lock on squad, which has far higher DPS than the phoenix. When the enemy tank tries to run behind cover, the phoenix can finish it off. You can have a phoenix squad, but it's going to be less effective in general than a squad of G2G lock ons. As stated before, however, it is probably the most useful RL against AV MAX's, and infantry turrets, of course.

Now, if you want to talk about a GREAT teamplay RL, let's talk about the lancer...

PS Don't even pretend the phoenix is very useful against air. You're better off using a dumbfire.

On Cobalt, due to lag, the Phoenix has been turned in a dumb-fire rocket launcher.

I'm sorry but no. if you pick the wrong place to fire one you deserve the OHK tank round that got you before your rocket hit my tank.

I don't like peek-a-bo tactics but i would dislike bads even more using phoenix in places they shouldn't firing in a locked crouched position.

You are not meant to use the phoenix while you are exposed, fire them from behind cover. being cemented where you are is the price you pay for piloting the missle.

It's much too specialise for me tbh - I just stick with the Hawk.

It is most definately fun, and it is situationally very powerful (it is however very situational).

It has very low DPS though (lowest of any RL by a way).
It has a maximum horizontal range of about 295m (not 300m it actually disappears before 300m), in reality this works out to about 290m maximum horizontal range even with a very straight shot - with any real turning the range, of course, is much lower.
It leaves you very vulenrable - it is most definately NOT just Air, snipers, long range tanks, close range Inflitrators, the HA that somehow penetrated the 100 allies all around you to shotgun you in the back etc. etc.
It can be shot down and if people know what is what it is actually very easily shot down (it has a big hit box and is slow, very slow).

As for one shotting Scythes...... if the Air on your server is bad enough that you can regularly land Pheonixes, then lucky you, but in reality the Pheonixs AA performance is about on-par with the Lancers (i.e. very low), and the Pheonixes AV performance is much lower than the Lancer, the Phoenixes AI performance is pretty decent for an AV weapon though.

I didn't know this for ages either (this game needs a manual - even the retail version didn't have one), until someone told me on here, but if you hold crouch rather than toggle it you do stay crouched when firing a Phoenix! Makes a nice difference in a lot of places.

Any regular Pheonix user can tell you the only safe place to fire a Phoenix from is the spawn room, everywhere else (literally) something will get you with varying frequencies no matter how careful you are.

The one biggest factor for survival in PS2 is constant movement, nothing else keeps you alive like that, and you just cannot do it with the Pheonix (not saying you should be able too, but equally it is a monsterous drawback to the weapon).

All this downside about being exposed to flanking and rear attacks. Is it any different with the Phoenix than it is with the Engy's AV turret?

God, another phoenix camper -_-..

Yeah, engineer turrets have to be exposed all the time, but the engineer can bail at any time, a phoenix user can find some cover from tanks, can't defend or move while the missile in flight (so basically you have to rely/hope team mates will defend you.)

Similar issues, but you have much more situational awareness with an Engi AV turret (and you used to have much more range too), you can, of course, jump in fire, aim, and jump out too.

And it is also about the alternatives too, Phoenix or dumbfire? Pheonix or AA launcher (which you can dumbfire too), Pheonix vs Anni, etc. (or indeed vs Lancer/Striker). Even if a HA could take an engi AV turret or a Pheonix, I'm not sure the Pheonix would do well out of that choice.

Needed because they couldn't make the d*** missile render until months later.