Why is AA such a rare sight?

it is unrewarding and it has been nerfed and nerfed so far that it is primarily to scare air away.
you won't get many kills with AA unless you're against idiots.
TR has it OK because you can play heavy and use striker for the AA duty.

Worthless in what regard? If air clears off I can easily perform other tasks in an ANT, it's also an extremely cheap Anti-Air method, only costing 200 Nanites as opposed to 350(Skyguard), or 450(Burster MAX) while being on a relatively equal effectiveness.

The ANT also has:

• Great climbing to escape ground foes(Can be assisted by Turbo)
• Moderate acceleration and top speed(Can be assisted by Turbo)
• High resistance against C4(Will not die in 2 bricks)
• No directional weakness(Making rocket pods barely effective, nose guns an annoyance, and only hornets a threat from ESFs)
• And also, the relaxing joy of driving around collecting Cortium for additional EXP and the possibility to assist nearby Construction-bases

The ANT is the superior AA method in the game right now and for quite a small investment compared to the alternatives.

Yeah, non combat vehicles performing better in combat than the actual tanks is kinda a theme in this game...

I'm one of those rare individuals that does the AA thing. I'm almost always running about in a AA sundy. However after reading JKomm's post above I'm gonna give AA ANT a try.

Isn't that "balance"?
Obviously sniper rifles don't need muzzle velocitys over regular CQC carbines, tanks don't need better AI than a schoolbus, infantry should be able to nuke everything and shotguns should be nerfed because they CQC okishly.

Makes about as much sense as the rest of the game.

Ineffective as airfags just run from any serious opposition unless they are in an organized group trying to take a certain objective and when they realize that air isnt working they go ground and wipe the AA.

AA is just too weak in most situations to actually do anything more than annoy or deter. Rarely do I see anyone get kills with AA and when I do see it it is usually with rocket launchers and not AA vehicles or maxes.

My Sunderer usually carries an AA gun. Originally used a Walker reargun for a while, later got a Ranger frontgun(but never carry both at the same time). In my experience, it's easier to hit with the Walker, but the Ranger does more damage when it hits, which makes absolutely no sense for a proximity flak gun to have less hits.

Most recent experience being an AA site was this morning, bugging some single-pilot Liberators with the Walker, all encountered had Tank Busters. One death versus them was after emptying two full magazines into a Lib, causing critical damage to it, killing it after I died. Shortly thereafter, they must have gotten annoyed with me, and did coordinated strike runs against me to make sure there was no time for my shields to recover or for me to repair(or even get out).


All in all, I find AA weapons to be very underpowered. It's pretty irritating to get killed by an ESF in a shielded Sunderer, even while scoring roughly 50% hits with a Walker - a very hard thing to do by the way. A fighter jet should not be that durable.

Because... it's boring duh.

Ive been using a double walker or walker/range shield sundy. It has a ton of hp when deployed and just about shuts air down in the area. One huge problem tho is that they always run and you rarely get kills. As a result of not getting kills no one will stay gunning the ******* thing for more than a minute or two.

Aircraft in this game are way too annoying. What really irritates me is when even the slightest nerf to ESFs is launched the skyknights are on here moaning about how horrible it is. They complain about how they are totally balanced and 30-100 kill steaks are perfectly normal.

As someone stated above, the AA guns need to do decent damage to infantry and not have stupid overly restricted firing angles. Why does having an AA gun have to make you totally defenseless against anything but aircraft which you are also ineffective at killing....

Imagine if AA guns were as versatile as rocket pods, dalton, airhammer or tankbuster.

Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences.

My experiences so far have been similar (w/burster max):

• The moment you pull AA and open fire, all the air in the hex vanishes
• The moment you put away your dedicated AA weaponry, they return
• Need to compensate for bullet travel, three dimensional movement and latency just to get some shots in before air flees.
• Majority of kills I've got against air with AA is either multiple AA units firing on one air unit, or the air unit hitting scenery while escaping. Trees are better AA than the dedicated AA weapons.
• Meanwhile, teammates die in droves.

I had better results when engaging ESF/Valks with the Gauss Saw - many ignore the small arms fire until it's too late.

I think that's a great question. I see a lot of great answers in this thread already.

And I think that same type of "why isn't x pulled more?" is a great question to ask of many, many units, roles, Certlines, etc. in the game.

Anti-Air certainly is not effective... personally I've shot down more ESFs with an assortment of Shotguns than I ever have with a Skyguard. And I've used the Skyguard more for Harassers than Anti-Air.

Were it up to me, I'd do a massive rebalancing of everything involving air... Ground to Air, Air to Ground, and Air to Air all need to be refined for the betterment of the game.

As a pilot who's flying more or less casually but still fairly consistently, I have not noticed this to be the case. If anything AA has increased due to the amount of it being camped underneath a skywall shield. Crafted Aspis Turrets, Walker sundies, skyguards, Ranger harassers, sometimes even landed galaxies do a pretty good job of zoning out the airspace surrounding the shield bubble.

Oh and there's some kind of exploit now since the last patch where you can get burster MAXes into the rumble seat of a valkyrie, so there's that.

Air is not an constant. People struggle so hard with the implications of this simple fact.

So the number #1 reason ppl dont pull AA is simply because air is a non-factor.
You dont pull it because you encounter it so rarely.

The number #2 reason. Air is simply not percived as an worthy opponent.
Time spent fighting air is time wasted no matter how many kills or 'well' you do.
Its like beating someone who is already down.

Groundpounding is so pathethic by moral design it flips the normal perceptions of combat.
So even if you get killed once in a rare moment you still win. You just sigh and write it off as an win.
And when you kill any groundpounder you still just loose.
Its like putting down a sad hurting animal. Its not combat, its kindness

The answer is easy: AA in PS2 is laughably weak in the 1 purpose it should shine in and completely useless for everything else.

So why should you pull that crap for a lot of ressources if it takes ages to kill any aircraft and as soon as the air is clean you can throw it in the trash as you can't use it for anything else? If the DEVs make AA a real threat for pilots and cause more than a "Oh, look AA. i should not farm here for tooooo long"-reaction more people might get it, otherwise it will stay that way

Skywalls can be seen from very far away and I've yet to encounter any serious player made base without AA turrets.
Most air seems to just keep a bit of a distance from the big glowing mushroom shield bubbles.

I like doing AA. But I resign myself to deterrence only and less action except for brief periods of which-target-to-choose.

All points in this thread are true though. Risk vs Reward is low for being AA. A few styles:

1. Pestering Heavy Assault AA: I use full rocket loads with armor add on, so either 9 missiles, or I think 36 strikers or 39 Swarms. I've started to prefer the Swarm.

I never plan to get kills. If I do, it's usually leeching. My desire here is deterrence--give the flybois something to think about or react to. Often, I go far out in the field, along the approach paths of enemy ESFs. Conversely, there are few enemy pilots whose patterns are predictable, so I often go behind my lines and wait for them to approach from the rear.

I use the Swarm now because it's air and ground, has plenty of ammo, missiles track better, but do less damage. Again, deterrence.

2. Sweepin' the Skies with Skyguard: Major deterrence, mobility. This chases the baddies away much faster but you're a more known target. Harder to hide a skyguard than a heavy assault when multiple enemy planes come along.

3. POW Surprise Prowler with Ranger: I am not a yoga guy or a hillbilly so I only drive prowlers. Cause man-stuff and whatnot. I often mount a Ranger on my prowler. When another TR player gets in he usually bails soon after....if there isn't a lot of air, a Ranger is boring. But oh lawdy lawd...when an enemy ESF comes along and eats a face full of Ranger..it's worth the wait.

With recent changes to the Ranger, I seem to hit more. I even get kills now.

4. Shoo Fly Sundy: I rarely mount AA anymore of my Sundy, but these can be effective when doubled up. I often fly Mosquitos and a dual AA sundy is a no-fly zone fo' sho'.

5. Massacre by MAX: If I really want to clear the skies and get kills then it's with a dual burster max with anti-explosive armor and lock-down. Hands down the best AA killer.

6. General Patton's Pistol: Every soldier needs to do this. No matter the weapon. If an enemy ESF arrives. MAN UP BUTTER CUP.

Exactly. And that's the proof of the ****** job that has been done at balancing A2G and G2A. I love the game but this is the biggest failure of the devs team so far. Now the specific flak cannon is outclassed by the Ranger in any way, and a Sunderer is even more flexible than it was before because it can have 2 Rangers.

If the ANT becomes a powerful AA unit while they Skyguard is credited to be a ****, then devs made a terrible job. The Ranger shouldn't be better than the Skyguard, it should just be a shorter range alternative.

And still big part of the problem is the completely idiotic Wrel's decision to give every ESF default engagment radar. First of all this completely flattened the variety of ESF loadouts because only a perfect ******** would now run something else from Stealth. And this made G2A even harder because aircraft cannot be spotted, can hide very easily, and it has passive protection from lock-on.

And in the meantime Liberators keep being outrageously OP and still no one in the dev team is doing anything after 4 years. This is seriously ********.

I had big expectations when Wrel joined the team, but the way he is treating A2G and G2A make me seriously doubt about his vision of the game.
We've been asking for deployable barricades and LA firing during flight and it took 4 years to the team to do something about it. How long do we have beg, cry and scream before they start balancing the A2G / G2A?

Skyguard needs a side rocket launcher (another firing mode) that's as powerful as a Decimater with slow velocity and slow reload (but would fill the niche of AV damage, OHK ESFs, and heavily damage low flying Liberators).


The problem isn't that AA is not effective. Dual Burster Max, experienced Walkers, and G2A launchers have always been fairly effective. Ranger was always a good deterrent but is now a killer with recent buff. The problem is that Skyguard offers zero help against other Ground and little alternatives against a low flying Tankbuster Lib.

I'd run MBT with a Ranger until Skyguard gets a side rocket launcher.

A side rocket launcher would be a better and easier solution to the G2A problem than revamping the Air system (one of the strengths and novelties
of Planetside 2 compared to other games).