[Suggestion] Magrider Needs buffs

I consider 78% usage to be pretty dang close to equal. Identical vehicles (Skyguard Lightnings) are almost that far apart (87%).

With the new combined arms initiative stuff, maybe this will change, and it will get even closer to equal usage.

I personally am not satisfied with 78% at all. This number has definitely to be higher.

What is this new combined arms initiative stuff?

https://www.planetside2.com/news/dev-diary-combined-arms-ps2-2017

As a purely infantry player I find that getting stomped by superior numbers or massive tank columns happens occasionally regardless of which faction I play. All faction MBTs are equally lethal from my lowly, squishy perspective.

But at least the NC and TR tanks are a bit easier to hit most of the time and they don't tend to pop up on the top of mountains or scoot off with blues flames bursting out of their a$$.

If OP is just talking about the relative strengths and weaknesses of tank v tank then obviously I can't comment other than to say that numbers and skill have their own quality. Even supposedly inferior tanks that are used to their best effect or in greater numbers will presumably even the score.

Yeah, that is NOT how statistics work. At all.

And the Vanguard gets cloak.

You know, for sneaking up on your targets before you teamkill them.

Did anyone read past the 1st 3 paragraphs of my post? no comments on the rest?

I did, it sounds like some fantasy from the American Pie movies, not more to say about that..
And your posts starts with a speculative, unproven, argument grounded in a false preposition, its like saying ''I would argue that birds are forever destined to live in the trees because their wings don't provide enough lift''.

I'm one of the people who think the VS tank is OP and am against buffing it. The other two MBTs are pretty much constrained to move in fixed line segments, and often find themselves battling by spinning around on a point. On the other hand the magrider can move in circles around an enemy and fully exploit the 2D nature of the ground while never exposing anything but their strong front armor.

As for the ''gaming experience'', battling a magrider can be dreadful when your shots go beneath it or when the VS driver ADADs. So I would argue that's the reason NC and TR are always fighting each other over the VS, and therefore why they win all the time even if they were to be underpopped.

I think the People here are not clear about the definition of Underpowered.

With "Underpowered" i understand a clear unadvantage when taking the object.

As example:
Person A has the same skill as Person B.
Person A has the Tank 1, Person B has the Tank 2
No matter how hard Person A tries...Person B is always better. (With same skill)

With the Example we can asume that person A feels unhappy with Tank1 and wants to have it balanced...

The Happy Person B is proud of his Tank2 and wants to keep that advantage (EZ Game EZ Life)

So you can be 100% sure that Person B will try to convince Person A for all price that his Tank 1 is good and he just needs to learn more (WITH SAME SKILL).


This happens with Tanks, Weapons, ESF... Etc on this Forum since beginning...

I am already sick and tired of that....

And then they come and bring up the Statistics from 4 years ago where the gun may had be OP etc...

Churchill once said: "The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"

A statistic only shows what you want to show...

If you think the Magrider is tank 2 and not tank 1 you're gonna have to prove it.

I would distinguish underpowered and subordinate (oppositely overpowered and dominating) as such:

Subordinate: What you said above, i.e. the alternative one is subordinated too is always better. A concrete example would be in a Lightning vs Lightning match, where the dominating tank would have certed out reload speed, armor, etc, and the subordinate tank have stock loadout.

Underpowered: The underpowered alternative is generally worse off and behaves/is perceived similarly too a subordinate one, but it is hard too prove so because exceptions exist. An example would be MAX vs regular infantry: yes the MAX will be victorious if the regular infantry fights the max as other infantry, but the infantry does have superior speed and explosives that can be used to win quite easily.

It is important to note that these are binary relations and only considers how one object compares to another in a 1 vs 1, and not how they fit together with the faction as a whole in larger fights.

Finally there is statistically underpowered:

Statistically Underpowered: Statistics show that the underpowered object is not balanced against a comparable alternative. If for instance statistics shows that Assault rifles kill Carbines 60% of the time, it is reasonable to assume that your chance of survival on encountering an assault rifle wielding medic is given by this number. If it had been 50% one would have perfect balance. Being based on statistics, one can not know if it because carbines are less worth compared too assault rifles, or if other hidden variables influence the game, like 70% of medics having Nanoweave 5.

1. So, your proposition here is that when unorganized and under-crewed VS armor is hit by organized and crewed TR/NC armor that are responding to an infantry fight, they lose until they themselves get fully crewed and organized, and therefore the Magrider is underpowered because the organic armor component (1-2 tanks) of a conventional platoon can't immediately withstand a function specific armor response platoon purpose (6+ tanks) running a search and destroy on all armor on a point. You offer no statistical backing for this, merely an assertion that said evidence does exist.

2. Your proposition, "easy fix", is to give it a direct boost to its primary function, i.e. damage power, and overcharge its faction flavor ability (I.E. elevation and depression boosts).

3. This is the only sensible and positive thing in your entire suggestion.

4. Several concerns. 1, you're asking for a completely new mechanic. Which it'd have to be, otherwise its basically the Vanguard shield. This entails lots of coding to "improve" only one MBT.

The ability itself is unreasonable. You're basically saying that Magriders, which are already hard to hit, will have an automatic first shot advantage when they do get hit. Furthermore, the only weak spot will be the rear, which is the easiest spot for mag-riders to rotate away from the enemy.

This is like stacking a damage reduction with an evasion buff in something like DOTA.

5. The Magburner doesn't affect the Magrider's close quarters or conventional side-to-side evasivenes., which is what your shield carapace suggestion would be affecting the most.

6. Will those subscription boosts and DBG sales offset the loss of subscriptions and player participation, and can you answer that with any reasonable degree of accuracy?

Based upon these factors, your suggestion is not currently supportable, sound, or viable. Thank you for participating!

You are misinterpreting the facts, and making up a few to boot.
When defending, the attackers are guaranteed to have vehicle superiority (or the opposing force has a complete lack of vehicles), otherwise the attackers could never have safely deployed their Sunderers. This is a universal problem that plagues all factions, and isn't VS specific. Pulling new vehicles doesn't work, because you already lost the vehicle fight once, and it takes far more time, effort and boredom to build up a suitable vehicle column to beat theirs than it takes them to maintain their column while they aren't bored because they can just shoot at infantry and don't have to coordinate.
But here's a nice question: The TR/NC are being pushed back by the VS in infantry fights and then the TR/NC wipe the floor with the VS using vehicles and superior numbers... But if the TR/NC always have superior numbers to begin with, it means that the VS are extremely OP in infantry combat.

The Magrider is the chariot of the gods, and it doesn't need damage buffing.
Here's the advantages in a row:
VS: Mobility, extremely better movement on rough terrain compared to the other tanks, ability to move while shooting, not restricted to face it's tank in a specific direction to make use of cover or do pop-up attacks, DPS equal or higher compared to the NC, but in extended combat the VS gain more DPS (because of the bad reload of the Enforcer).
TR: High speed, decent mobility, best DPS powerhouse
NC: More armor, has a 6 second extra health ability that is the only thing keeping it somewhat competitive. It's alpha damage isn't an advantage: With a top-gunner (and only the TR can really go without a top-gunner) the VS have better alpha damage due to Saron magdump and the TR might have 0,5 seconds between it's first and second shot but it's not as if it's hard to hit that second one, giving the TR and VS both a higher alpha damage.
And you want to give the VS even more damage. Whoop dee doo!
Increasing the elevation range of the Magrider isn't an extremely bad suggestion, but it requires that the Vanguard, who is already barely a true MBT, to get upgrades as well.

Not a very good ability in any way, shape or form.
First and foremost, TR would be tons better against such Magriders than the NC. NC has mostly single-shot, long reload weapons. TR on the other hand has many many dakka weapons. TR's first main-cannon shot would get 30%, then it's second shot wouldn't get reduced at all. That's an overall 15% reduction for TR's first main-canon magazine while the NC get the full 30%. Additionally, the TR have the Vulcan and Gatekeeper, both weapons that depend on shooting a lot of small things to deal damage. If one of those fires first, the Magrider has lost his ability and reduced a single Vulcan/Gatekeeper weapon, yey! While in the meantime the NC Enforcer and even the Mjolnir deal more damage with the first hit.

Second, giving the Magrider more damage reduction? Kinda the NC's job. If you modified this ability you suggested so it doesn't extremely reduce the NC effectiveness while doing relatively little against the TR, then the Magrider would be a similar armored vehicle as the NC but have better mobility, better magdump capabilities, better movement while shooting, the ability to dodge shots (and dodging a single shot already negates the entire extra armor the NC has) etc etc.

From what I've seen, the VS populations started to drop when they felt hurt with the recent LMG changes, which they seem to think were 100% only VS nerfs that didn't nerf any NC/TR, which is untrue. This has nothing to do with the Magrider, in fact despite the Magrider being used around 30% less than the other two tanks it still manages to get a similar amount of kills per Magrider. And no, the VS does not compensate by using more Lightnings, as they have similar usage times as the NC and TR on the Lightning weapons.

After auruxing the prowler and close with vanguard (and already have the magrider). The prowler can get about 95 % of places the magrider can get. With a bit of brain. The innertia to the dodging made dodging impossible <200m, unless the other gunner is Helen Keller/Stevie Wonder.
I'll take the time to tell you where it is broken.
It has the lowest dmg and dps, it has the slowest muzzle, most drop on shot, 1 second boost with 20 second recharge (V.S anchor 48 % reload speed and 30 % muzzle, and a 2000 shield which share the vanguards armor. Lets do some math shall we. That means that nearly for every 2 second boost a magrider can use, the vanguard can use its i win button 2 times. Waow that seems... cool?), slowest tank (yes even slower than the vanguard by 6km/h), fixed turret with **** angle, equal armored to the prowler (which has nearly 2x the dps undeployed, imagine when deployed aswell as prowler beeing the fastest, most reactive tank, fastest muzzle when deployed and in the middle when undeployed, most dmg, shall i continue?), ******* **** hoover where it actually gets more prevented by uneven terrain than the other 2 (even when thats the point of having a hoover tank), innertia nerf while buffing muzzles. And that the magrider is pulled equal to a 100 hours of gametime LESS than the vanguard and prowler a month, why would that be?
I have seen a prowler REVERSING up a mountain that the magrider had to use full boost to get up. Mobility benefits? Magriders strengths are no longer. "magrider can climb stuff" - Okay lets nerf it then. "magrider is not so prevented when driving over uneven terrain" - Okay, even tho its the ******* point of having a hoover tank, lets also nerf this. "Magrider can dodge shots" - well this is also the point of having a hoover tank but lets give it innertia to the doging while buffing the muzzle of all tank weapons so its practically impossible to dodge at <300 meters, unless the other shooters are helen keller/stevie wonder. But lets also nerf this. Seriously, the magrider is the slowest tank in speed by 6 km/h behind the vanguard(but the magrider has better acceleration than the vanguard), it has the lowest dmg output, more drop, slowest muzzle on main weapon, the hoover nerf made it climb **** slower than the prowler does, and also get stuck on grass if the grass has not been cut an hour before (yes i also have a prowler and a vanguard and have magrider aurux, prowler about 95% aurux and vanguard about 80 % aurux so i know exacly what i am talking about), innertia nerf made the dodging ****, its 1 second boost with 20 second recharge(mind, this is at MAX lvl) is **** compared to 2000 shield that shares the vanguards armor and anchor where the allready best reload speed gets halved and gets 30 % more muzzle, it is to the point where the magrider is prevented more by uneven terrain than the other 2 because 1 slightly wrong move and you will look straight up in the air and use valuble time to get back to where you were.
A prowler is even better than a vanguard head to head trough shield if the prowler deployes and top gunner on prowler repairs, it is that easy. Get caught? Deploy, gunner out and repair, win. Rinse and repeat. The vanguard with it's "oh i ****** up, press f to correct mistake" should not be in the back, it should be a v shape infront of the tank where it got weaker the further back you got. That or that it could not shoot when it used shield.
Should i continue?

Seriously. A 100 hours of gametime a month, that is alot. Those numbers you guys present is the average vanguard/prowler driver to the good magrider drivers, because the good ones are about the only ones who pull the magrider. That makes those numbers kinda worthless. If you put Skillox (in my opinion hands down the best prowler driver in the game) against a average vanguard or an average (same average skill lvl on mag as the vanguard) them both will get ******* destroyed, not nessesarly because of the tank, but the sheer skill lvl between them. A good magrider driver will take down a average prowler/vanguard, tho after a 1 vs 1 feks a vanguard even if you flanked them, if they pop shield and turn, they will nearly take you out because of the survivability and higher dps.

So, tell me. How is it the tank that is the worst at practically every stat possible to proove is not getting a buff.

MBTs asymmetric balance focuses on situation and placement. In my experience, Mags have to be elusive to a certain extent, more so than their counterparts. Flanking is almost a requirement, but they possess the ability to do that easily. The more skilled mag users I've seen make sure they flank, and tend to strafe behind a sufficiently large object to block the enemy's incoming shots. I definitely think it takes a certain amount of time, effort and skill to strafe while shooting.

Imo the MBTs have been balanced much better than other aspects of the game, but that's just my opinion, and I don't Mag that much. I'm certainly not going to use stats as the infallible indicator that everything is fine, like some misguided people.

I can tell you all the reasons why you are wrong, but i'll just forweard you to my comment. All tanks can flank with a bit of brain.

Gonna forward you to my comment. The long one..

Yeaah, taking the average prowler/vanguard driver and comparing it to the good magrider drivers will do that. Because the good magrider drivers are about the only ones pulling magriders. I will forward you to my long comment on page 2.

Its okay because you dont play that tank i guess? Soo, it would be okay to nerf prowler/vanguard by 20 % and then say "we dont need to know what is stopping TR/NC from using the Vanguard/Prowler. ........" . We already know why. It is because it is the worst tank at practically every stat possible to proove.

There are average vs average. Not average vs good.

There is more to the MBTs than damage and health. This is why we compare them with all variables inadvertently accounted for (read my other posts).