Man, i am finding this to be a challenge. When i play LA my normal strategy is to flank the fight and engage the enemy from the side or rear at what is normally mid-range. The damage drop off of smgs is downright brutal and it takes a substantial number of hits to kill an enemy. Using anything other than a MKV +grip+comp just does not work for me doing this. The cyclone has far too much horizontal shift and the blitz has bad shift and low round damage. Using a supressor makes it pretty tough also due to the added drop and even lower projectile speed....its like lobbing rocks. The weapon mechanics of the SMGs combined with the fairly recent cof jetpack buff to carbines puts you at a pretty huge disadvantage running with a smg. You deal much less damage at range and lose the ability to fire while flying. These things put you at a disadvantage when fighting other LAs as they will almost always be trying to jump flank and I feel tied to the ground because the second i get in the air my cof goes 4ft wide while thiers remains accurate. I try to avoid cqc as a LA unless i am jumping down and ambushing someone. Even then, i have to make sure that i am on the ground and that my crosshair has reset before i can start firing whereas, with a carbine i could have started shooting while dropping. The great hipfire of smgs really is no help when you want to avoid straight up cqc. Have any of you done this objective? Are there any tips you can offer?
Correct, SMGs are trash and aren't worth using for LA, especially after carbine flying CoF buff. You can find some tips for LA directives here: http://iridar.net/planetside2/classes/light-assault/#Directives_Walkthrough And how to use SMGs in general: http://iridar.net/planetside2/weapons/smgs/ Correct, that's why you shouldn't try to avoid it. Using SMGs requires three key things: 1. The art of getting close to enemies. Ideally, you want to be within 10-15m of each enemy before engaging. 2. Impeccable sense of measured aggression. You have to aggressively push in order to benefit from your weapon's strong points, but you cannot just braindeadly rush hordes of enemies on your own like you could with a pre-nerf shotgun. Ideally, you want your SMG engagements to always be 1-on-1, taking time to reload between them. 3. Great aiming skills. Just unavoidable. SMGs don't do that much DPS, and don't have much ammo. To consistently win those 1-v-1 fights you have to aim better than the enemy. Overall, using SMGs requires much more skill than other automatic weapons, because on their own they're simply inferior to CQC carbines.
I remember back in the day when the Cyclone was the highest DPS carbine the NC got lol They should replace the SMG directive with rocklet rifle or something...
the rocklet rifle helps a little, but even trying to go for vehicle kills, with an SMG equipped, you will incidentally get the SMG kills done faster than the vehicles. Now if it were sunderer or MBT kills, and a correspondingly lower amount of them, that would make sense as an LA specific objective...
Why go for SMG's? I haven't used a shotgun since the change, but they might still be more useful for the LA. The problem is that when you engage in CQC, you are extremely likely to be fighting multiple enemies. SMG's just aren't suited for that. Shotguns have many many drawbacks, but the only thing that shotguns do have is their immense amount of damage per magazine, if you can land enough shots. There's nothing like jumping in the middle of a group of players and laying waste to them with a shotgun because you never ever seem to run out of ammo (talking about the semi-auto shotguns here ofcourse). Naturally any CQC combat relies heavily on luck, situational awareness and luck. Even if you do get close to your enemies, just being accidentally flanked by an enemy is disastrous. Or having players turn around at the wrong moment, or being spotted by a motion-spotter that now doesn't pop up immediately even though it can see you, or players simply reacting immediately so your presence and being gunned down by 4 enemies. So if you do get in close and you get that opportunity to blow your enemies to pieces, you want to have a weapon that's capable of blowing away as many enemies as possible. Oh and don't be afraid that shotguns are "cheese" in any way, shape or form. Shotguns require more skill than most other weapons to use. Situational awareness skill, the ability to out-play your opponents, better knowledge of terrain and enemy movement and friendly movement (yes this is situational awareness but I wanted to underline it's importance), the ability to be stealthy without having stealth equipped, the ability to cross open distances to get close without being spotted, the ability to make every single shot count compared to hold-trigger-and-look-at-your-enemy automatic weapons... Compare that to the usual weapon skills which is "have your reticule at your enemies chest/neck/head, use trigger discipline, stick to cover and you are good at most ranges" and a shotgun's skill level is six times higher than that of any automatic weapon.
I have a natural disadvantage in the fact I like to use weapons that aren't common, most of the SMG you will find it incredibly tough to beat HA's toe to toe, except the fast ROF ones of each faction. The Armistice in my case is just as good close range as a the Jag is at medium, Buuuut like Iridir said, aiming is crucial and he doesnt mean just landing all your shots, the head has to take most of them or at least 1/4. Right now im grinding the SMG auraxim for the glow weapon, its a painful process and ive even had to lose all dignity and go Infil SMG because of the Hailstorm's lack luster, got the 2 NS weapons next then i get my shiny. maybe even try EMP nades to soften up your target before engaging them.
I struggle with this as well TBH. Its just not how i want to play light assault..... That said, i found you can sort of ease the pain with the NS7-PDW. SORT OF! That said, since the change i have been using the Tempest, seems to work a lot better and gives you a little extra range to work with. EDIT: Just realized you Vanu... Tempest not an option sorry. Try the NS7.
Forum Avatar =/= What Faction they play, and he has mentioned using the Cyclone and Blitz, both of which are NC Weapons. Tempest is an option, you derp.
Oh god.... 1160 kills with the rocklet rifle? Makes me feel ill just thinking about the frustration of that grind!?
imho they should just give SMGs the carbine CoF treatment, its only LAs who it'll effect anyway, and carbines and SMGs are fairly indistinguishable in function when your hipfiring in CQC. GD7F and Blitz may aswell be the same weapon
gosh the Hailstorm is so hard to be usefull, I had to leave my Gonads behind and go Infil with Hailtorm - Silencer - ALS just to get the directive moving. im on 770 at the min, then ive got the 2 NS weapons next and i finally get my Shuriken, I love the Armistice, hated it at first because of the low clip size but when you realize how fast to turns a HA's face in to a Connect 4 wall its pucka
I play all the empires. Thanks for the tip on the NS-7. I have since finished the directive and the NS-7 was the tool for it. When you outfit it for range (comp,grip) it is very accurate and can make up for some of its lost damage with stability. I found the cyclone and blitz to have too much horizontal shift to be really be used outside of cqc. Sure you can hit with those broncos but the NS-7 will just nail it to them with no ps2 pro wizardry required. After playing as a smg LA i have to say there is one thing more annoying to me than any other. I believe Iridar mentioned it in a vid i watched when first learning LA. When u jump down a ways or land from jetpacking your cone of fire is freeking huge if you fire immediately. Carbines no longer have this weakness. You have to wait a bit before u fire (1s?) for you CoF to unbloom. If you fire before it resets u get stormtrooper mode. This screwed me in many draw downs with other LAs. If u get caught in the air with a smg also = stormtrooper mode.
It wouldn't be as hard as you'd think as the rockletrifle functions off the same kill mechanics as vehicle weapons. both vehicles and infantry kills count. so thats 1160 sundy kills, (2 bricks of c4 and 1 rocklet burst) or 1160 flash kills (people just leave flashes lying around...) i'm not 100% sure but i believe terminal destructions count for the auraxium? (could someone test this?) I feel like there does need to be some replacement for the smg kills for the LA auraxium, there is almost no practical reason to use an smg on the LA, cqc carbines have a faster TTK and a longer effective range, additionally maintain a good COF while jump jetting. In present game play, the only advantage of an smg is that you can use it on all classes... even the tomato (the NSX auto scout) has a faster TTK and longer range than the farmastice. SMGs need a revamp in this game. The only class that kind of benefits from SMGs is infiltrator because you can hipfire them accurately. however the NSX tomato is almost as effective in extremely cqc yet maintains its kill potential out to very decent range. Im currently working on LA aurax and it appears that it is going to take a while. Im hoping that i can finish the LA kills before i have to resort to SMG kills. im not particularly looking forward to shotgun kills either mostly because i hate getting killed by shotguns so id rather not make other upset and use them, but if i must, i must
Update: Terminal kills do not count twards rocklet rifle aurax. but vehicle, infantry, and fixed base turrets do. im not sure about player made base structures yet either.
