Why do you say Pounders are OP?

I really can not understand why everyone says TR Pounders are OP and would love to be enlightened.


From using them myself, I find them quite terrible.

I can not really hit infantry with it directly and even 8 splashes barely kill anything when I use them.


They are good at AV, but since they are quite range limited...



Please stay friendly and constructive, I am really looking forward to see your points.

It's mainly because they're hands down the best anti-MAX weapon any MAX can use, and on top of that, they're much better at killing infantry than any other AV MAX weapon. This means a few Pounder MAXes can dominate the biolab, and enemy MAXes pretty much have to keep their distance.

Honestly, when I use Pounders I usually get shreddered by dual shotgun NC MAXes.

And against Infantry I find them meh...


They are usefull when you deploy, but that usefullness usually lasts for around five seconds then until you got murdered.

Because they outperform the other AV options vs infantry. However, most people conveniently overlook the fact that they underperform vs vehicles compared to the competition.

They're also great for taking out other maxes.

If the NC MAX manages to get in your face with shotguns, he deserves the kill.... but if you're running kinetic armor, even if he's running flak, you should still kill him first.

The only reason they appear to underperform vs. vehicles is that people constantly use them with no vehicle in sight (e.g. in the biolab). Of course their VKPH is going to be lower when they're not fighting vehicles. I would say they're pretty balanced compared to falcons and comets against vehicles.

Seriously?
It's a damn Grenade Launcher that can barely shoot to the other side of a Tower, of course it's going to be more useful for popping Infantry!

...You do realize that even AFTER buffing the Range, a Pounder still only has a Max Arch of 40 some meters, right?

And the other disclaimer to add here is that they don't outperform MAX AI weapons in KPH. It's really just a situation of a MAX weapon being too much of a multipurpose weapon -- when MAX weapons are specialized -- and it needs adjusting (buff in AV, nerf in AI)

After the convergence and range issues were alleviated, Pounders had (to have) their damage reduced because they were doing too good against Infantry. While doing this, however, SOE neglected to fix their resistance table values. The end result was a weapon that could still be decent against Infantry, but was now really poor against Vehicles.

The Fractures got it worse. When they lowered the damage to make it not so viable against Infantry, they also gave the weapon a rather unintuitive acceleration mechanic that makes leading against slightly distant targets moving across your field of view nontrivial.

If Pounders really must be nerfed in the AI department, I want them to be better at killing vehicles in exchange. They're much, much harder to use past close range than the Comet / Falcon.

Real talk here guys.

The Pounders are good vs enemy MAXes. They're not some sort of Godslayer bane of enemy MAX existence though. You have to hit all four shots and hope they're not running Flak (Because they can survive four hits just barely. This can be resolved by punching them, but that's not usually possible.) Plus NC Scatmaxes are still going to rek you.

They're pretty good vs Infantry, this is true. You're still better off with Mutilators/Mercies in almost every case vs infantry. Pounders are good because they're more versatile and have some respectable effective range when you've practiced with it.


But I ask you, how would you realistically nerf them vs infantry?

Right now it takes three direct hits to kill someone. Basically, that's 2/4 of your shots. (Because who isn't firing both arms at once...?) Making it take 5 hits to kill, so it'd be three hits from both arms, would be unreasonable and I hope everyone knows that. So you could hit rate of fire maybe, but that'd be a step away from TR, or you could buff mag size and decrease damage, but then you have Fractures. (Which are bad)

I just don't really know where you could realistically go with Pounders to make them not Fractures or Falcons if you wanted to mildly rework them or to not make them just really bad if you nerfed them vs infantry because Pounders are already worse vs vehicles than Comets/Falcons. (Although really, who uses Falcons when Ravens exist?)

as a vanu player that also sometimes faces pounders, i sure dont see ANY reason to nerf them. sure they hit like a truck when they make contact, but the velocity and arc are so terrible it's a good enough downside

rather get banshees (godlike infantry farmer) and ravens (best max AV weapon by large margin) nerfed first, they're the more pressing issues this game has right now

They kinda overperform at AI v. other AV weapon but they also do pretty badly against vehicles. However, they are brutal when used against other MAXes and can 3 hit kill infantry without flak armor.

Could probably use a rebalance.

They do make a great choke point suppression weapon, because the reload time and fire time line up nicely. A single max can alternate arms and keep a steady stream of explosions going until he runs out of ammunition.

Using them, I've never felt they were overly powerful. Falcons squish a single softy faster. Comets may be about the same, but have no spare magazine to cushion missed shots.

Just stared at a cluster**** of allies hopping into Pounder spam, the TR MAX was standing in a secured area and hadn't moved one bit for at least 3 minutes. Same spot was a death zone, people apparently thought it would stop. I had a nice farm of any TR trying to flank that room.

Because they basically AI grenade launchers, the other max AV weapons are atrocious against infantry except for the raven and thats only at medium to long range. Get a TR pounder max locked down on the other side of a door and goodluck getting in there.

Well just because you can't land direct hits against infantry, doesn't mean other people can't.

When I use Pounders, it's basically shoot, +1 kill, shoot, +1 kill, etc.

Pounders are great inside buildings and that's about it. Dual shotgun NC max's are even better in the same environment. Go ahead and nerf pounders. I barely use them anyways and don't care lol. Dual shotgun, dual raven and dual burster max's are the only ones worth using anyways.

http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kph&weapon1=15013&weapon2=16013&weapon3=17013
http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=kph&weapon1=15001&weapon2=17001&weapon3=16001

A bit of stats.
The big problem with the pounders is they are too effective against MAXes. As an NC MAX I always use Flak and I get slaughtered by pounder maxes because most of the damage is direct and Flak cannot reduce it.
NC MAXes has no possibility to get near a pounder MAX so easily, and they need to be at hugging distance because of the shotguns.