Is TR using anything but Gatekeepers?

People pointed out the problems with Vulcans killing sundies and tanks in seconds in cheap harassers, and somehow they thought the answer was to make more of it. smh

The most difficult part to accept about all this, is that Vanu weapons have been nerfed severely for far less. The Saron in particular, its supposed counterpart, got its cone of fire widened when firing rapidly because people complained too much about its accuracy at distances. And then they introduce a weapon that fires extremely rapidly and is highly accurate at very long distances on the other faction. LOL Kinda defeated the purpose there.

None of the other weapons even come close to the Gatekeeper. It has the lowest cone of fire and the lowest bloom per shot. Making it more accurate and steadier than even Vulcans. It also has the largest max damage splash radius of all the turret weapons at 0.6 (larger than the PPA which has 0.1), and it has the fastest reload speed.

TR population these days is generally more or less double that of NC and Vanu. Magriders, especially, are now very rare. It's the hardest hit tank with the rise of the "run circles around you" weapons, because its main gun is fixed and can not track harassers fast enough.

ha ha ha!!

If that's not the case in Emerald, then either the TR there are horrendously bad at using their toys or the Vanu are very good.

Agreed - a high alpha-damage weapon (like AP cannons) relies on being able to actually land shots and hitting a high-speed buggy is tricky. The Vanguard isn't much better though thanks to its extremely slow acceleration, there is no escape.

Check out the vehicle death stats - the Gatekeeper-H and Vulcan-H are the only Harasser-based weapons that appear in the top-10 reasons for Magrider and Vanguard. Nothing else is even close (actually the Aphelion just sneaks into the top 25 against TR - hardly worth mentioning).

And yet here we are - 6 months after the Vulcan buff, 3 months after the GK introduction and exactly nothing has been done about it. Dwindling overall population and TR overpop is the norm which is a shame - and you'll still get people defending the current position.

But look on the bright side - we now have Snowmen to shoot ! AND - Infantryside is still reasonably close...

Every GK thread about PLEASE NERF is suddenly missing info about its damage. How convenient. GO check how much time it takes to kill someone with GK using its "pin point accuracy". (It takes forever) Oh my god, try once to play with a weapon before creating stupid nerf threads.

People clearly prefer TR.

I'l tell you why i prefer them

Aesthetics
Tenacity
The way people look out for eachother more
The variety in what people use
The kind of people it seems to draw in (seems to be more adults)


When I play on my nc alt, it is more often than not just like a bunch of cod kids in the way they play with minimal teamwork. Also I dislike the blue and yellow tramp aesthetics and the all round trampyness they adore.

When I play VS it's usually heavies, infis, magriders, scythes and maxes. Unless it's zerg play, very selfish and evasive play. I love the aesthetic artwork on some of their stuff A LOT but the ridiculous looking bug stuff and fluffy pink and purple just screams Walt Disney to me and I can't take it seriously.

This is my general experience in all 3 factions and is why I champion TR.

Remove Saron cof

Remove it's cqc mag dump ability as there's the Aphelion now

Lower or outright remove the enforcers bullet drop

Balanced.

Or just nerf the gk so that all 3 es long range are a little bit sht......

Oh yeah and fix gk so that people can hear it and know where they're getting shot from.

Now that's what I call tactical superiority.

Ok

Reduce GK velocity to 400, add drop and some bloom / CoF management to make distant shooting more difficult
Reduce bloom on Saron and increase velocity to 400, then remove the mag dump.
Reduce drop on Enforcer and increase velocity to 400.

Then fix the PPA, reduce the bloom, increase the damage degradation (so the shots do pitiful damage over 100m), add a bit more splash.

Or give the GK the PPA treatment, massively increase the fire rate, reduce damage and remove splash, massively increase the CoF and so it blooms almost to max after 2 shots and then call it balanced, after then proceeding to buff both the Saron and Enforcer.

I will simply quote my last post in another thread about nearly the same topic being to lazy to write nearly the same again
But in addition I have to disagree two arguments I read over and over again in this thread:
1. "Simply pull the CQC option to counter the GK".

In theory thats possible for Vanu, but you have to keep a distance lower than ~25m, before the Aphelion will spray enough bullets beside the target and the dps drops to the level of GK. Using the wave will drop dps in the same way. And the Mjolnir simply isn´t an option, is it?

Ironicly the highest dps CQC option is still the TR Vulcan, the Aphelion only has the adavantage of more versatility and again the Mjolnir no option at all.

2. "The dps is lower than its counterparts"

The direct counterparts are Saron/Enforcer (not Aphelion/Mjolnir). Simply wrong, read my quoted post.

How about you GO check how much time it takes to land a single hit with Halberd, Enforcer or what have you on a target that is 400m away and moving. GK's "forever" is much shorter than theirs. Do you always make balance statements based on things you find out in a VR?

Yeah i bet its fun to park near the red coral at IndarEx in perfect safety and start plinking the vehicles as soon as they show up in the northern gate of QR. From my point of view retaliation is next to impossible even if for the fact that the tank rounds need 2 seconds to fly across the desert there and the "OPshield" buys me maybe 50m... only 300m to go in order to get anywhere near MY effective range.

what kills fractures is large COF and bloom. Way more than any max weapon, that makes it garbage

To all the people claiming that it needs to have it's CoF made worse, and have bullet drop etc etc etc
That's a great way to make it freaking useless at range, which is the only thing the weapon is great at, making it about as useful as a Spitfire turret, or *shudders* Fractures....
That being said, it is a little bit too good against a lot of things it shouldn't be good at, like for example: Air.
I personally would rather suggest a cut in the angle at which it can look up, (to decrease effeciency against air, if only just a little), maybe some resistance tweaks, definately a small mag size on the Harasser, and maybe make a hard cap on the range? like engi turrets? At about 300-400m?
Not saying ALL my suggestions should be implemented, but definately some of them.
Oh, and to the genius who said "What's wrong with Vulcan for close range, and Halberd for everything else?"
Other factions have Enforcer and Saron, and you just recently got Mjolnir and Aphelion to compete with the Vulcan, equally, TR should have something empire specific that competes with Saron and Enforcer.

Just my thoughts about this whole thing.

[SARCASM] Yeah, because the Vulcan was in no way OP [/SARCASM]

The Vulcan is still tearing stuff up the way it was before, but the GateKeeper is even more over-powered than the Vulcan is.

The Vulcan and the Gate Keeper are both OP; however, the Gate Keeper is more OP than that Vulcan.

The Gate Keeper is at medium, long, and extreme ranges what the Vulcan is at close range.

As people have said, the Gate Keeper is devastating on all targets. It is the definition of OP.

What people always seem to fail to realize, or downplay, in evaluating weapons is what faction has access to it, and how this meshes with the game-play of the remaining two factions.

Obviously, only TR has the ability to use the gatekeeper. It is important to consider the fact that this means the TR do not have to contend with gatekeepers being used against them. The prowler is the absolute best MBT at range, and if the gatekeeper was used by the NC or VS, the TR would have the best counter of the factions without the gatekeeper, at least regarding MBTs.

To me this begs the question, why does the TR need even more long-range vehicle firepower?

"Well, the TR are supposed to have vehicles good at ranged combat"

This is fair enough, but here is where the imbalance comes into play.

I can't speak from first hand experience on the Vanguard, but I have dabbled with the Prowler and have fairly extensive experience piloting Magriders.

The Magrider is woefully inadequate compared to the other MBTs. This is actually what drew me to it, the challenge of using something odd and considered by many to be outclassed even by the lightning. The biggest single advantage the Magrider has is its ability to strafe incoming shells. With a lot of practice, a skilled pilot could out-damage an anchored Prowler, assuming it is a 1 on 1 engagement. This means that there could be no vulcan harassers, no ESFs, no Liberators, no sneaky Lightnings ect. The mere presence of any of these makes picking at a distant Prowler a risky situation.

With the addition of the gatekeeper, the ability to strafe shells and avoid damage is nullified. A gatekeeper with a half-competant gunner can keep a constant stream of damage on a distant Magrider. While a very, very skilled pilot could technically out-damage the Prowler still if every shell is dodged, the Magrider is going to be down to 1/4th health if not burning. In a realistic combat situation, a stray MANA turret rocket or an ESF plinking away from behind will finish you off.

Also, if a harasser is using the gatekeeper, it is able to turn the tables on the Magrider and strafe the Magriders shells. A distant harasser is essentially impossible to take down 1 on 1 with the Magriders slow velocity shells.

TL;DR:

Before Gatekeeper...
TR MBTs have a ranged advantage
VS MBTs have a mobility advantage

After Gatekeeper...
TR MBTs have a ranged advantage
VS MBTs are purple

Your MBTs advantage now nullifies and overpowers my MBTs advantage



If it was a VS weapon it would have been nerfed in the first week of release

...yeah, but mostly I don't want to undersell ALL the other Gunner options out there. Like I said, if you're on foot and a Marauder spots you, it doesn't even matter if you're a StalkerFiltrator like me... you're just dead on the spot. Same with Fury if you're in a lighter vehicle. Even the Halberd is still a STRONG competitor and everyone else I know who Tanks is always asking for it instead of the Enforcer like I prefer to use. TR have the most Blitzing options and VS have the least unless they do the kind of crap that MqCH pulls off. (BattleGal AV heavies & stuff) ..and I'm okay with all this b/c it requires more than 1 person to pull off

I can remedy that for you:
DPS on the GK is 453 over 13s
Saron is 460
Enforcer is 500 over 8s.

Soooo... difference in dps is negligible. But dont believe me, I never play TR or have an arx prowler.

My challenge to you is do the same in the other vehicles and time it. Do it over various ranges. Seriously, try it. Dont just be a forum warrior actually log in, and play the game and try it. Hell, do it in VR

In order to compete with the other weapons you would need to increase saron dmg per shot or increase mag size and keep a reasonable rate of fire otherwise the saron is useless. With full mag dump it only does 7dps more than that of the GK, at range you can halve its 460dps.