I've been flying the valkyrie for a while now. I strictly pilot, but I know how to move and position the valkyrie so the gunners have the best shot. Its handling, speed and thrust are spot on for what it needs to do. I use the valkyrie for attacking as well as support. However, there are a few hangups that have been left alone for the entire time this thing has been around. The things mostly wrong with the valkyrie are its weapons. I have all 5 weapons and have maxed out if not almost maxed out every one of them in certs and tested them before making my judgments about them. Wyvern: There is only one weapon that is truly worth pulling, and it's the wyvern. It has perfect all-purpose stats and is better than every other weapon for nearly every situation. Hellion: This is the only other weapon worth buying. It is good against large targets at extremely close ranges. At all other ranges, the wyvern outclasses it, which isn't a bad thing because the hellion is that much better at close range. CAS: It is okay at killing infantry, but the splash damage is so slight and damage so low that the wyvern can be used instead and you can still kill vehicles. Pelter rocket pods: This is possibly the worst weapon of the 5. The ammo pool is too low for how much damage this thing can do, the velocity is horrible, and the reload time is long for how little damage, accuracy, and splash this weapon has. The wyvern is better in every situation. Ask yourself: do you remember the last time, if ever, you were killed by pelters? VLG: If the pelter isn't the worst, the VLG is. The idea of a guided missile is good, but having a valkyrie fly faster than it is not. It causes problems when firing while moving at all and firing at moving targets. The DPS is horrible, so firing on stuff that is sitting still takes ages anyway. The damage is good on paper, but resistances make this weapon useless. The wyvern is better in every situation. The VLG should never be used. Solutions: Wyvern: Keep it as is. Hellion: Keep it as is. CAS: Decrease the magazine size (80 is ridiculously high for how slow this thing fires) to 30 (max 40) and increase the fire rate. For how brittle a Valkyrie is even with max composite armor, the valkyrie can not hover above a base and farm infantry. It is not designed for that. Pelter: Higher splash damage radius and velocity so it can actually hit things. Faster reload time. It needs about a 50% bigger ammo pool. VLG: Higher velocity. The worst part about this weapon is its velocity. Make it closer to an engineer turret, and keep the damage the same. The damage on this weapon wouldn't be bad if you could actually hit the target more reliably.
I have only recently begun upgrading my Valkyrie, the info you post is nice. I had already bought the VLG but I have to say while it's probably inferior as a mobile weapon, it can really do quite nicely if you treat the valk as a turret. I like landing on top of cliffs or rooftops and bombarding opponents from odd angles. Combined with 200m radar its quite useful. Still higher velocity wouldn't hurt .
Ask yourself if an engineer turret could do that job better. I've treated the vlg like a mobile turret as well but it is a gimmick at best. Good luck certing your valk though
valks are fine they are a small infantry passenger aircraft,they are not ment to be good,but you can have 4 engineers in the passenger repairing it as it gets damage making it practicly god mode, you can even have a healer healing the passengers if they get hit as well, the valk is fine other than that little exploit I just mentioned
Well it probably would (and I jump out and use it as well!), but if I am sat in the valks gunner seat, the radar stays active so I simultaneously get detect certs and kills. The engineer turrets is also very poor at looking down at things below you which the VLG is excellent for.
You don't fly the valk if you think 4 engineers make it godmode. Not only does this accomplish nothing, but you definitely will die from flak. Liberators can easily kill the valk even with 4 engineers.
VLG is the best weapon for a solo pilot seat swapper as well, because you can set it's course/target, then swap to pilot seat while it reloads, and it will keep on target where you last pointed it while you turn and fly away.
The Valkyrie is a spawnable, transport aircraft that also happens to have a gun on it. It doesn't need buffs to it's weapons when it has the power to drop troops anywhere on the battlefield.
Yep, I used this strategy for about an hour once. Then decided it wasn't worth my time. I also seat swap using the CAS and found it to be reasonably effective. I would argue that the CAS is probably the best weapon for the Valk, simply because it's the only weapon that suits the Valk's role. Which is infantry support for small-mid sized fights. If you try to use the Valk against a vehicle zerg, you won't be effective, unless you run into the unlikely event that the vehicle zerg literally has no AA. The Valk just doesn't have enough staying power to actually lay down any amount of damage on a vehicle. Even with the Hellion. If you try to use the Valk against air vehicles, you also won't be effective. Sure, if you're a BR80+ with high flying skill and an equally good gunner... you might win against a BR10 ESF pilot... but is that really an accomplishment? The only thing the Valk is good for (depending on what your definition of 'good' is I guess) is supporting small scale infantry fights and the CAS is by far the best option for that IMO. Edit: The one thing I agree with the OP on is that the Pelter rockets are completely useless for everything.
Solo valking is senseless really. There's no reason to solo valk over pulling an ESF or a liberator, unless you really don't have 350 nanites. Against a vehicle zerg, all air is ineffective at anything but hitting vehicles in the outskirts of the fight. The valk doesn't have the staying power to do damage to vehicles? Do you fly the valk at all? It excels at burst damage against vehicles. Which is what my suggestions do to the weapons. To make it more suited to what it was designed for. A vtol that can rush in, blow stuff up, maybe drop a couple troops off, and book it. The CAS as it is currently does not fit that role at all and is quite bad. It is a sustained fire weapon with 60(80) magazine size and a slow fire rate and must be focused on infantry for a long period of time while you are in a hover or near hover. You can do this on other factions with lockon launchers (es or ns), not just strikers. It's great against killing ground and air targets of any BR. The hate tells prove it.
you could do it with lock on launchers yeah though you'd need to keep decent range to not keep losing lock , but advantage to striker is the coyote mechanic where you can just spray at near by dancing esfs , speaking of this i've never seen a dedicated anti tank valkyrie using anti tank lockons , could be spooky.
I've done it with shooting lockon launchers from the valk as well. You just need to fly differently. In my videos, I fly the way I do because I know strikers act like coyotes. All factions can easily kill ESFs by immediately dropping their heavies out, staying low to the ground and circling the heavies, so the ESF will always be in lockon range. Anti tank lockons I think would be a waste, as they couldn't hit air, the valk's biggest threat. If you get an annihilator you can't dumbfire it, so the burst damage is gone. My favorite way to kill tanks is to swoop in behind them and unload quickly, and if the tank doesn't die, drop the heavies out and then strafe around them letting the gunner shoot at the tank. Staying at range locking on to ground targets just seems dangerous for the valk. Right now, the only nosegun that tries to be a high burst damage weapon on vehicles is the pelter, but it is so bad at what it does it is not worth pulling even when maxed out.
Mobile spawn point for your squad. While supplying bursts of support fire on enemies in the open. Not much, but the Valkyrie is incredibly fragile IMO. FYI, staying power is a term used to describe a units ability to stay in an area not its damage output. A Valk is large, slow and fragile... ie it has low 'staying power'. It seems that we are of a different opinion on what the Valk is supposed to be used for. You seem to think it's an assault vehicle. I disagree. I also disagree with the following: I've never seen a Valk squad using SAMs and actually being effective. The only reason why this works with the Striker is due to its coyote mechanic.
The valk can be used as a transport, yes, but it also is a great attack chopper. If you want a flying vehicle that can carry troops to a fight and hover around (staying power) pull a gal. But really, as long as you use terrain as cover, the valk can hang around long enough. I'll do my next runs with grounders and get back to you
It really boggles my mind how they created all these new weapons but made them so redicously weak that hardly anyone uses them. I get that the devs were worried about valks being OP on release but it's been well proven that they're anything but.
Oh no... ESF is purely more effective, even given higher cost. It's more of just ****ery. Surprised you could do much with CAS though... that thing is terribad. TR complain about Banshee nerf (and as a Banshee user, I agree it hurt... and was a tad over the top) and it's easily twice as bad.
Give the passengers small enginner AI mana turret style shields that only activate when sitting inside Tired of being a meatshield for flak and lockons
I have the Valk almost auraxiumed, and I disagree. The VLG is excellent on Indar. I have my biggest killstreaks with it. The pelter is also good, if you know how to use it. I think the best way to use it is to defend a bigger base with landing pats. The thing about Valkyrie weapons is that they are all very specialized, and only the Wyvern is a good alround weapon, but this is only because the Valkyrie also has rumble seats, which actually can be used as weapons too, so if you do not do this, then you often will lack the right weapons for situations.
