Rangers are broken OP

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by adamts01, Mar 21, 2018.

  1. adamts01

    That's not a solution, as the Skyguard and Ranger are just right against close range aircraft but much too powerful past 400m. Daybreak has handled this with modifiers but with no damage falloff the weapon will either be too weak up close or too strong at range.



    With a good gunner/pilot, there's not an option to hide from Libs at many bases. They don't have to shoot straight down you know. But there's also the problem of Gal/Valk drops from the flight ceiling to deal with.


    We're talking vehicle vs vehicle.
  2. Pacster3


    I bought Walkers for my ant tho. Walkers are just much better against infantry and vehicles. And a Walker under a skywall is still capable of fighting off liberators(while a cobalt ain't strong enough). If I just want to go hunting air I'd go with a harrasser with ranger or a skyguard tho...dual MAX is no good option there(too expensive and slow. Not deadly enough.) unless you have a ground fight going on at the same location so you can switch weapons and take part there afterwards.
    On sundys I'd go with a mix of walker and ranger...or ranger and cobalt.
    So I actually think they all got their role. Granted that some are more niche than others....
  3. LtBomber1

    Ranger is a prime example of a specialized combined arms weapon:
    It does ONE job damn well, and it is useless for everything else. It is worse than a skyguard (HP, Radar, almost equal mobility), and therefore on a cheaper plattform. Equipping a ranger makes you an easy prey for every AT weaponary, a 1/3 Harrasser can be even facetanked by a well hitting A2G ESF (Hornets, RPods), if you know where it will be. It scales very quickly, but everything does...
  4. adamts01

    My objection is its dominating effectiveness in the hands of a noob against a vet with an A2G loadout. Bottom line is that it's too effective for how little skill it takes and how cheap the platform is, even considering that it takes 2 players to be effective in the Harasser.
  5. Diilicious

    You know i read this thread and i thought "WOW, Rangers must have gotten a giant buff since I last played this game, if i really want to stick it to the Air nerds i should get two rangers on my sunderer!"

    so i did, and my friend and I tested it in the absolute most ideal circumstances, took our sunderer to Esamir, to the south west warpgate, when NC had pushed VS all the way back there, but it was late so there was hardly anyone playing, a full lib saw us, and we saw him, and they CHARGED towards us, and there we are plinking away from about 200m and we continued to shoot at it as it flew directly over us about 30 meters away and over towards the warp gate aand.... escaped..

    even my friend who with me, whom had been pushing for me to change my walkers to rangers "coz they're better now!" had nothing to say about that. both of us just sat like "huh"..

    then we were killed by a harrasser just to top it off lol..

    THE HYPE HAS DISAPPOINTED ME
    • Up x 2
  6. Silkensmooth

    The thing that you didnt know is that the harasser ranger and the sunderer ranger are different.

    The sunderer ranger has 30 indirect damage vs the harasser's 40. All flak damage vs airplanes is the indirect flak damage.

    Doesnt seem like a huge difference but Libs and ESF have -175% resistance to flak. That means that the harasser ranger does 40 plus 175% which is 70 for a total of 110 damage.

    On the other hand the sunderer ranger does 30 plaus 175% which is 52.5 for a total of 82.5.

    Its 25% less either way.

    Plus a harasser is much faster and far more maneuverable than a sunderer. Also much harder to hit due to being half the size of the sunderer, and of course the aforementioned speed and maneuverability.
    • Up x 1
  7. Azaltear

    They are not broken op - they are a hard counter. You get a super effective tool for the cost of it being useless in every other situation. You can't effectively shoot infantry or tanks with it. You can't defend yourself except by quickly driving away and hope the other one isn't an anti tank Harasser.

    Aside from that, you were giving us absolutely no explanation or further information why you think it is op - that won't convince anyone, and for all I know your base statement could be "I can't peacefully farm a2g because of effective aa".

    Personally I have no interest in simply getting farmed by esfs or watch like one sundy after another gets wrecked by libs because no friendly esf is anywhere to be seen. Of course "spent certs on the rocket launchers" would be the most convenient solution for the enemy esf pilots, but this game is not about making it convenient for the enemy. And "simply invest into an esf yourself" is not only a huge cert investment but anyone who gets an a2a esf simply for that occasion will get shot down by someone who farms a2g and probably spends 90% of their playtime airborn.

    So if at all it should reward skilled players using it and weaker in the hands of an unskilled one.
  8. adamts01

    This is a bad argument. What if there were a Harasser top gun that only damaged MBTs. It didn't hurt Lightnings, infantry, or anything else, but it could easily kill MBTs with little to no skill involved. Would that small option of targets justify the weapon? I'd argue not.

    This extreme rock-paper-scissors approach Daybreak is taking just isn't fun or balanced. They did a great job balancing the HESH and AP tank guns, but top guns are still a mess. Air is also becoming a frustrating place because of this approach. I HATE putting lock on missiles on my ESF. I HATE it. But without those, and without running in a gank squad, the most you can do to a Lib is chase it back to its warpgate, same with Gals and rep Valks. I also detest using Rangers, but my aim with a Walker just isn't rewarded, thanks to that AA weapon's versatility? Come on. If people want easy-mode AA, they should get weak results. Either change the Ranger to require some skill or drastically reduce its effectiveness.
  9. Diilicious


    haha, okay yea that IS silly.. the hell.. :rolleyes: :(
    • Up x 1
  10. LtBomber1

    Cant get you allways say "Skillless".

    With Ranger, you have to:
    Position yourself away from any meaningfull battle, since every vehicle AND Libs/Hornet ESFs can kill you.
    Bullet velocity is ****
    Accuraty is **** at anything at 200+m
    You are still a deterant, most times FireSup and Turbo gets air out of trouble, as long as they dont hover.
    IF you expect Flak/AA in the area, and do strafing runs, use cover etc, ranger is not more than annoying.

    Same story could be told saying Ranger is ****, every Ground vehicle, even a skyguard can kill me in a 1v1, with no option. The HESH/AP balance was and is considerd as the worst CAI change at all, since HESH is doing everything (but on Magrider, for reasons).
  11. adamts01

    Getting a feeling for lead is the one thing that might take someone a little while to get the hang of. But it's still one of the easiest weapons in the game to use. I had a gunner on my Ranger Harasser today who's only played the game for a week now. The two of us were able to chase off and suppress 2 Libs and at least 4 Reavers right outside NC's SE Indar Warpgate. That's about as fresh a player as you can get. Accuracy is ****, but that's half the reason the gun is so easy to use, there's just so much wiggle room. And yes, against good pilots you are just a deterrent. We only killed 2 Reavers over about 20 minutes, but they were stuck in their warpgate. It's an area denial weapon. A basically free one at that. It's just not right.



    HESH/AP balance is perfect at this point. HESH is the clear winner in infantry fights and AP is the winner in vehicle fights, especially at range. But neither weapon is at a severe disadvantage in either. Neither gun is overall better than the other, they're just best suited to their intended targets.
  12. AtckAtck

    I like the ranger, i like to shoot down those pesky ground pounders with it. I like to hunt down libs into extinction with it the same thing they did with us before. I just like it. I like the salty tears of libs pros that get angry when they get chased across the whole map.
  13. Azaltear

    As stated above, and completely ignored in your argumentation, the drastic nerf of anti air tank weaponry would turn any infantry into uncontested target practice for esf, shooting fish in a barrel, unlimited lolpod farm. Sure, pilots would be glad about it. But the vast majority of players play as infantry, and it is annoying enough as it is right now when a lolpod esf comes to farm you.

    So right now it takes skill for an esf pilot to evade aa flak cannons, but isn't skill what you are looking for? If they find and implement a way to increase the skill needed to use a Ranger (which they won't), then I demand they find a way to do the same with lolpods. Because right now you just have to find a Sundy, fly a curve, aim at it and click M1 for farm (and occasionally speeding away if someone pulls a burster max before turning around and farming again).

    And for the Warpgate deterrence: the Ranger bullet velocity is low and a lot of leading is required. In most cases it's enough to simply fly orthogonal to the aa tank with high speed (or varying the speed to mess with the lead) as well as taking the far side exit of the warpgate, or fly upwards quickly and get out of range. If they flew directly to or only slanting past you even though they knew there's some aa outside, then they deserved to be deterred and shot down.
  14. adamts01

    I don't want a nerf, I want stats changed to put the weapon in a better place. I want more velocity, better accuracy, damage falloff, a smaller burst radius, a smaller mag with a longer reload but much more burst damage and killing potential. I want more lethal AA, just AA that has to be aimed. But I'll settle for a damage reduction, which is the only way Daybreak seems to be able to try to balance these things.

    The Walker takes skill to evade. With flak's insane inaccuracy and burst radius, no maneuver you pull can keep you from getting wrecked within a few hundred meters. At least not against a gunner who's played a fps before. I swear, some people seem to think that the average player in this game can't hit the broad side of a barn unless they get some cheesy burst or lock mechanic.
    • Up x 1
  15. Inzababa



    I'm not sure about it, I never bought anti air on my ANT, however I have a feeling it's the same as on MBT; I'm on VS so use Magrider.

    I'm pretty sure the "walker" for Magrider isn't the same as the "Walker" for sundies. I feels like the Walker for my Magrider has a higher rate of fire than for my sundy, might also be the case for ANT?
  16. DQCraze

    I can tell you notice a huge difference between, Sunderer Rangers, Tank Rangers and Harasser Rangers. Harasser Rangers are by far the most damaging.
  17. Kdog559

    More OP threads and this time about ranger harasser?....Ranger sucked *** before and no one really used it and relied on sky guards or burster maxes or AA rockets.Even then sky guards were **** back then.I have been having fun using ranger harasser,But the only downfall is knowing how to guide and aim with it.The longer aircraft is away from ranger harasser it gets more difficult to aim. If aircraft gets close enough to the harasser you are doing it wrong as a ESF by putting yourself in danger of being killed by it. Learn to flank and avoid AA no matter who or what they use to counter air,But learn to counter.I have been able to kill ranger harassers many times.Ants have AA,Harassers have AA, Everything has AA. ***** about something else instead of complaining that you can't ESF the way you want because air used to be dominate before,But they have balanced it in a way were everyone has to work together.It's not solo arms,It's combined arms.
  18. strikearrow

    For your first, point, we'll just have to agree to disagree. As for your 2nd point, no infantry AV doesn't but a tank does and in fact they do - even an AP lightning does.
  19. DQCraze

    Flak should cut off at 350 meters, Im getting killed by ranger harrassers at 450+ meters, the ceiling on Indar in some places is under that range so basically if your in the air over those spots your getting shot down, players are exploiting this and sitting in those zones waiting for air because its a 100% kill rate. That is not right...
  20. frozen north

    The bit about rangers being never used before is definitely accurate. In fact, its far from the only weapon in game to be of this nature of useless before, and now frequently called OP. Interestingly, one other weapon that is frequently portrayed like this is another anti air weapon; the striker. That thing used to be pretty bad, where as now, a number of people cry out that its OP.

    Now, as for the ranger itself, I don't know what to say. On the one hand, once you manage to dial in its leading ( which is not always easy), it does become a very reliable and efficient weapon. However, it's also notoriously heavily specialized, and its effective range is not always reliable thanks to shot spread and its limited velocity.

    Not to mention it has rather abysmal direct damage output, which means it is completely useless against non air targets. As someone who likes vehicle combat, a weapon that is dedicated for AA quickly falls out of favor for me.

    Plus, as mentioned, unlike a lot of ground vehicle weapons, the ranger has no stat differences on different vehicles. A harassers only advantage when running it is that its fast. Every other platform for it boasts health instead, and for the sundy, you can take two of them, which means twice the damage output.