NC-15 Phoenix

...agreed with most of the comments but especially regarding the fun factor - definitely one of the coolest weapons of the game. The 'camera guided' mechanic is great and I wish SoE would make more use of it.

All said though - I don't find it massively effective - just real fun.

Hope fully we NC get one on the lightning in the future. Bigger of course.

You sir, are a godsend!

Yeah that's pretty much what I thought when I was told.

I use lock on over the phoenix much easier to hit and I get a lot more kills then the phoenix.

It's still bugged as hell too. Every other shot flies straight into the ground and does no damage. Cuts its already low dps in half.

Last night I logged into my NC character and decided to play around with my skirmisher loadout for a bit. (It's the one with a phoenix) Within 2 lives I shot down a mossy, killed a retreating lightning, blew up an ESF landing for repairs and ruined the day of a cloaked flash. All within a 5 minute period while playing at 15fps!

...god I love this thing, it's quirky yes. But man is it fun!

It sucks against AA, AI and is weak against AV. Used it for the fun factor, but it's too situational to actually carry it as part of any loadout. It has the weakest DPS of any launcher (due to waiting for the reload) and now the bug which makes every second rocket to fail. It is pretty much broken and even after (and if) they repair the bug it will still be the worst launcher. Phoenix and NC6 Saw is why NC HA love to sundy/spawn camp rather than actually push forward, but hey, that's how the game is designed so what can we do.

Personally I find that the AI damage nerf was excessive. The slow speed of the rocket and being able to shoot it down was enough to render it balanced against infantry. All dumbfire (including the Lancer) are OHK (or can kill infantry with the whole mag) and you have no time to escape but nobody finds that OP. And for everybody who cried about phoenix OHK - I'm sorry buy either your aim or situational awareness requires some practice, not weapon-breaking nerfs. Wipe your tears and see below (in summary, some bad shot with a beamer was able to completely zone control 2 phoenix spammers... and there are people that complained over it?).

I find it funny how NC mostly complains about this weapon. But you see one guy that has some skill in using it and plays to it's strengths now all of a sudden people fall in love.

Not a knock against OP, i am glad he finally learned this weapon. I wish the NC and the TR would do that with the rest of theirs

People used to complain about the OHKO because, back when the Phoenix was first released, the weapon refused to render the missile reliably. Even if it would have been possible to dodge, and it's approach could be heard, there was no way to tell how to dodge something that wasn't rendering. Without a visual element on your client, you can't even shoot it down. Then, when SOE did finally get the missiles to render reliably, they always looked like they were flying up into the sky and you still couldn't tell where they were coming from or whether they were aiming for you.

I have no explanation as to why SOE doesn't want to restore the functionality, even though missile tracking and rendering is mostly flawless now.

Finally someone who remember how it was. I don't remember the missile failing to render at all. Only that it rendered as if it was flying in a straight line slightly upwards for 20m then disappearing. Anyway I well remember the surprise over that enemies never bothered avoiding the missile, which can also be seen on old phoenix videos. They can't see the missile coming at them.

Form a squad of Phoenix users only. Get an ammo Sundy. Find hilltop, cliff, tower etc. Rain blue balls of doom. Call the squad: "Blue Balls". Profit.

Give us Sunderer-mounted artillery. We shall be the outfit known as [CC], the "Cannon C0cks".

Move over, PPA spam on spawn rooms. Yous gonna be outclassed by people who don't even have to have line-of-sight to farm certs.

I think it's pretty good against AV as long as the enemy isn't pointing his cannon at you. Way easier to hit stuff 100m away.

Most players don't even bother avoiding it. They just sit there letting themselves be hit by it. Including engineers. Players are just dumb. Back when it was invisible they had an excuse.

Wrel is good and I enjoy his vids, but in all honesty there was nothing even close to impressive in that vid (it was just some background for his thoughts, that's it). He would triple his DPS and kills if he used a lock on or even a dumbfire. Everything which sucks about the phoenix is seen in that vid and the last thing I want to do after seeing it is to pick up sheit up.

Breakdown of rockets being fired with commentary:
1 - hit a burning tank that was reversing, didn't kill but got at least got an assist later on. Typical, you rarely get to destroy anything with that DPS so you rely on those assists as a pheonix user.
2 - hit a stationary tank, that's it, the damage could have been potentially repaired before he managed to reload the launcher.
3 - finished a stationary sundy that was under constant fire from multiple sources, he just happen to finish it
4 and 5 - hit a stationary sundy that was being repaired by an engi, some free repair XP for that bloke who is totally oblivious and couldn't care less although ROCKETS ARE FLYING AT HIS DIRECTION, ohh, wait a minute, it's just a phoenix - who cares!

Gets in proximity of a ammo pack

6 - shot a rocket at at a VS who rolls over in flash in front of him... um, that's some serious showcase of lack of skill on the VS dude part.
7 - probably aims for the MAX, but scores a direct hit at an infiltrator, who shrugs it off like a pigeon poop and just carries on
8 - hits the same sundy as in case of rocket 4 and 5, the same applies, THE END.

Why did people get their pants wet over it? His effectiveness is below average but it's not his fault, it's phoenix's fault.

It's got unique mechanics, can be used in very intriguing and creative ways, is generally fun when it works, and has the Engy's AV turrets guided capability, but without having to expose yourself as much to enemy fire.

I can think of a number of situations in the past where I couldn't deploy my AV turret because of overexposure to enemy fire or the finickiness of the tripod, where I could have profited off being able to fire down, around or up over obstacles to get to people and vehicles.

Case in point: There was this Goku Sunderer inside one of those energy elevator-equipped towers inside our base, at one point. You know, the towers that hold point on the no-vehicle shields. The ones with stairs a vehicle can drive up in and hide in. Well, I was on the tower opposite of it, and I had a shot on the Sunderer from the top of the tower, but couldn't get my AV turret up long enough to take shots at the Sunderer because the constant Goku reinforcements would blast the turret the second it came up.

What I could have really used in that situation is that Phoenix, to not even have to step out of cover to fire out into the air, then correct mid-air to come down on the Sunderer from above. Unfortunately, we lost the base because we couldn't do anything about that Sunderer. They eventually just flooded us out. One good Phoenix could have saved that entire base.

If they had reinforcements they probably had an engineer. Since Phoenix is the launcher with the LEAST DPS IN THE ENTIRE GAME, phoenix was the worst choice for the job. If they had the AMS shield on the sundy at level 1 or more you wouldn't even manage to shoot another rocket before the shield kicks in again.

If you had a coordinated squad of phoenixes than you just might have had a chance at it. Although a much better choice would be to drop a few LA with C4 (for example form a Valk or Galaxy) or one or two ESFs with lolpods would do the trick much quicker and would require just a few players to do so.

One phoenix can't outDPS a single engineer repairing a sunderer.

They'd had to have had an engineer to repair the thing. They might have, or they might not have had one. I didn't see the repair field ever go over the Sundy, so they might not have been paying attention to its damage. That often happens. Think your Sundy is safe, take your eyes off it for two seconds, check your HUD and it's at half-health and you're running back to try and save it.

You must not be very familiar with the phoenix, methinks. Or populated spawn points? In fact, I'm pretty sure that one engi could leave for a minute, come back to a smoking sundy, and repair it back to full before the phoenix could get another 3 rockets in.

There's a lot of 'could' in this debate. A lot of things 'could' have happened.

I suppose a better point would have been stated, that putting some DPS on target would have been better than putting 0 DPS on target. Things 'could' have happened differently from that point.