[Vehicle] First impressions: Buzzard

Alright everybody take a step back, take a deep breath and look where you are, you are in a chat about the buzzard, not about perceived stereotypes of other factions, not about the fury and what it can do. Keep on topic on people's views on the buzzard, it's stats, capabilities and theroies on how to use it effectively and possibly suggestions to make it as good as the other faction specific weapons.

Demigan, please stop being baited by them, let their comments go ignored in the thread as they should be

Now back on topic
This buzzard is probably the worst weapon in the game, I'd rank the candy cannon higher in deadlyness.

Still think it should be changed into a vehicle version of the rocket rifle

tru dat!

i krept up behind a burning lightning with the engi out repairing,
i was about 30m away, arched up my buzzard, fired, way too short, tried arching up further, nope maxed angle! i'm on the worlds smallest slope and i can't even hit a lightning 30m away!
by that time the lightning was only smoking, so i drive forwards slightly, begin shooting, finally i'm landing shots!
the shots are doing nothing...
the guy hops back in and nukes me.

its unwieldy, extremely difficult to aim, has a RIDICULOUS "arming range", its weak and ineffective at everything,
easily the worst weapon in the game with no contenders.

i do have faith that it'll get a buff,
i think it was Campagne that said it'd be good for the dev who designed it
to be punished with doing a livestream using only Buzzard,
it'd be hilarious and i hope they read it and do it! XD

A major aside but need to vent about TR/VS flashes. getting insta-gibbed by cloaking flashes is one of those "most annoying things ever".

50 nanite vehicle with literally devastating anti-tank potential that can cloak for ages, can be pulled from any base indefinitely (because unless you lose one every 10 seconds you will never run out of nanties to keep pulling them), they can be literally anywhere around the base or the nearest bases in seconds after you killed them, can climb any hill, run over maxes without fear.

I dont know why flashes are being made so strong. a flash with a fury can do unreasonable amounts of damage to a lightning even from the front, it does stupid amounts of damage for what it is.

and unless you're in the north of indar in an open field with nothing around you, you wont see it coming and then you're dead. why even have tanks at all why not just have dozens of 2/2 cloaking flashes scurrying around trying to out cloak and out hide each other..

with the current server latency issues (which i will admit ive not even been having that much of a problem with on the whole) as soon as you notice you start taking damage, to the server you are already dead so you can not actually react to it. the VS one being the worst culprit (because of course it is) flash appears behind you and bursts you with that dumb mini saron it has now, at the same time you also take a rocket to the rear you are instantly dead.

I'm afraid I can't take credit for that one, that wisdom belongs to Blackboemmel.

It's a copy of the falcon?
And it's supposed to be an ARTILLERY weapon? Can someone please explain to the devs how artillery projectiles actually work? I feel sorry for NC now, feels like they got the shaft completely, I thought it would have been like a bulldog or something similar.

The game could honestly use true artillery anyway. The Prowler is not an artillery, just a long range mobile turret. The Bulldog is barely true artillery and the underbarrel grenade launchers are laughable to say the least. With the way people trench up so hard it would at least shift the meta to make things more spread out.

planetside 2 players are players. not RTS units. pulling mass flashes to suicide bomb enemy vehicles is "silly" fun, not effective gameplay fun, cause each of these expendable units has to be played by someone they already lose their expendable nature. spitfires are expendable shooty units, players are players.

And you know what? I've already seen a mass flash with Starfalls which were both ludicrously effective (more so than with Furies) and almost unstoppable because of their cheapness. Who cares if you died once while attacking some tanks, if your group got more vehicle (and driver) kills than the amount of Flashes that died, you had more kills total and a positive vehicle-KD ratio. Compared to normal tank combat where it (should be) about even if both sides pull Sunderers, Lightnings, Harassers and MBT's it's a definite win-win situation if you use cheapo Flashes.

Strange thing ofcourse is that what you don't see are:
Mass Fury Flashes (they are supposed to be better tools than Starfall right? And Starfall is only available to people who grinded...)
Mass Pillager Flashes
Mass Buzzard Flashes
Mass Basilisk Flashes.

So why do we see mass Starfall Flashes then that are also actually effective?
Well because they are effective ofcourse.

And why wouldn't they be? It's a miniature Saron with extremely short exposure time and good accuracy!


Also you kept mentioning that the weapon can't one-clip infantry. But it has 6 shots dealing 200 damage each coming at 1200 damage, and with the 50 indirect damage added you are at 1500 damage. 4 shots hit and you got a kill!

oh no, people are using the new exclusive weapons that are equally effective as another weapon because they are new. stop the presses, this needs to get out now, people actually want to use new guns!
and the pillager is bad.
and the buzzard is terrible.
and the basilisk is garbage.

Considering this:


The Starfall isn't "equally as effective" but "much more effective due to accuracy at range compared to Fury, DPS and shorter exposure time.

For example, the Fury unloads 12 shots (which is the most efficient) in 4,2 seconds and reloads in 2,5 for 2100 damage each 6,7 seconds.
The Starfall has an RPM of 150, but looking at the video above you can see that at 17 seconds he opens fire and by the time 18 seconds comes around the last round has hit the Vanguard. So it takes a maximum of 1,5 seconds (more like 1 second but I'll give you that 0,5) to unload all 6 shots for 1200 damage. This would mean that the Starfall's RPM is for the fire between bursts rather than each burst. And what do you know... 150RPM comes out at 0,8 seconds to unload all 6 shots, which is close to the 1 seconds I would have guessed. If the RPM counted towards each individual shot than it would take 2,4 seconds to unload everything and that's just not the case.
So 0,8 seconds to unload 1200 damage, and 2,5 seconds reload. Compared to 4,2 seconds of exposure (4,2 times more exposure than the Starfall as there's a 1 second delay between decloaking and cloaking) and 2100 damage. This means the Starfall has a DPS of 636 with 1 second exposure time and the Fury a DPS of 313... Half of the Starfall and with 4x the exposure time. Which makes the sentence "equally effective" a rather... unconventional statement.

The Starfall is not just twice as powerful, it exposes you less, it's more likely to hit at range (less drop) and guarantees more damage in a short amount of time as it's nearly impossible to stop the Starfall before it's unloaded.

Yes ofcourse! That's my point! The Starfall is far superior than any of them even if you take into account the fact that they are build for different purposes. Pillager is very CQC and can damage the owner, Buzzard has extreme drop, restrictions on it's range both in terms of actual range and when the thing arms itself and it's total damage against enemies and the Starfall is an easy to use high-damage weapon without any restrictions that even helps you by burst-firing it's shots so you only have to click twice. And the Basilisk still is better than the Pillager and the Buzzard no matter if you use them against vehicles or infantry.

If you think this was a comparison to starcraft by coincidence you should think again. Planetside is a real time strategy game, it is also an FPS and MMO.

The POINT I was trying to make was that cheap units en masse can destroy tougher units with incredible ease. Thanks to ****** mcgee, tanks now not only take double damage from the rear which is 20% more than before, front armor is side armor, flashes can kill tanks in a burst from cloak, how ******* far is this gonna go? Tanks aren’t tanks, they are glorified soap boxes for role players and wrel is probably stroking his micro ***** to the fact that VS got the best flash weapon to cuck over the supposedly heaviest armored vehicle in the game even though resistance values make that title out to the lib.

Beyond that this is clearly not balanced and it’s been over a week since people have messed with the buzzard and reviewed all the guns and not a ******* peep that it’s going to be changed from a not meme weapon which tells me this is the exact ******** they wanna feed us to get us to buy other flash weapons and cosmetics.

Woops off tangent, long short mate, soldiers are completely expendable, why do you think people suicide C4 rooms prior? Why do you think people mad dash and get gunned down to learn nothing and do it over again? They are never punished for it. Tanks are punished for it because they’re expensive. That’s a fact.

I unlocked the buzzard last night. I used it for about 20 or so minutes, testing it on every target I could at every range I could. I hit an infil with all 3 rounds at close range. I shot a few clips at a decently populated sunderer. I attacked every vehicle type I could from harassers, lightnings, MBT and sunderers. I used the arming range to try splash damage. I even tried taking out vehicles already on fire.

Nothing. I killed nothing. Not a single kill.

I just unlocked it the other day, but I didn't test it out in live-fire.

Just rolling around in the VR though, I was actually shocked at how fast the projectiles drop. Trying to hit distant infantry was comical. I had to aim so high up I almost couldn't see what I was shooting at.

If it wasn't free I'd be really mad.

If the starfall was free I'd be really mad...oh wait.

The idea behind the buzzard is fine - using high splash and high drop to suppress an area from out of LOS. I've used the bulldog for just that before. The issue is that the flash is a bad platform for that (mortar work is very stationary and a stationary flash is a dead flash) and the buzzard isn't properly setup for it. For a start the initial shot angle needs to be at least 20 degrees above the cross hair so it shoots high by default. Second since the gunner can't see where they're targeting you need some kind of minimap ping as the shells come down so that you can gauge where they hit.

If you want a short range high drop mini mortar type weapon add it as an NS weapon to the lightning or ant or something. It doesn't suit the flash at all. Give the NC flash ravens or something instead.

Flash can go everywhere where infantry can go...so if you make it really strong vs infantry you run into trouble. Flahs vs vehicles is one thing, cause flash gets 1hit killed or can get run over....flash vs infantry is a different thing.

From PTS patchnotes

It might be useful to use it at longer range, but I think it won't be enough : it will buff buzzard from candycannon effectiveness to bad weapon.