Re-balance Phoenix Rockets or Forbit them at spawn

I can't say I honestly feel bad at all if aircraft are being damaged by something they can't fight back against.

Maybe, but if a bunch of tanks or a group of infantry or MAXes or whatever all just sit in front of the spawn shields no one is getting out of the room. Better if there's at least a little room to breath. 100 meters is more fair, but I don't personally see the need.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen or heard anyone actually call for mass Phoenixes from spawn. At most, I've joined and have had others join me in firing Phoenixes from a spawn in a few select bases after all hope of the cap is lost. Maybe five times in total.

I don't see where people are coming up with Phoenix spam from a spawnroom.

It needs a pretty darn good angle. The rockets are slow as Hell and turn even slower. Need to be fired from a little ways back behind cover to make it over and still turn down to hit something in front of it.

People will learn not to spawn camp, then they won't be an issue. I suppose they could stop Phoenixes at that point and have a minor blur effect to stop very long range shots from cover.

I think firing from inside a spawn is kinda BS with the Phoenix, but it's not easily remedied.

The spawns are located where they are and with openings facing the directions they face for a reason. Veterans remember *real* spawn camping that took place before the "spawn door" was turned into a "spawn room".

You are *supposed* to be able to fire out from them including with rockets. If this wasn't possible we would go back to the old way where spawns could be hosed with bullets continuously. Spawn room lockin was previously achievable by an offense that was smaller than the defense! It was bad. Not sure if many of you remember that far back.

If you remove the ability to fire rockets through the shields, you will get HESH camped on minute one of day one and it will never stop, ever.

As *always* I highly encourage you to get good with any weapon you request be nerfed. You'll find it's limitations and be able to mitigate if not fully counter it. The Phoenix is no exception.

In skilled hands the Phoenix can make some clever turns and get around some really good cover. Some turns and cover though it can't deal with well. That 90 degree downward shot for example only works at certain ranges. If no suitable cover is available, range is your friend. Every meter from the shooter lowers DPS. The Phoenix already has miserable DPS. I see some folks saying you can't out heal it with a single engineer.... bullcrap. It's easy to outrep a phoenix.

A final point: Don't confuse teamwork with an OP weapon. There are a vast range of weapons that are exponentially more deadly when used with teamwork. The Phoenix is one of them. Use your own teamwork to counter it! (2 repair guns and 3 folks shooting at missiles will render a team of 5 phoenix launchers impotent)

Last time I had them, I was sniping prowlers out from render range and killing libs and valks. Was not too used to it with ESF sniping but it was fun.

Not my fault yall can aim with frekin lazor bems

If you've already forced the enemy back into his spawnroom, you already have enough manpower to counter Phoenixes. Get some engineers to counterrepair and some randoms to shoot the blueberries out of the air. Also, park in a safer spot.
They're fine, you just need to stop offering up your vehicles like the sacrificial lamb.

Think you'll find that like Lancers, they are basically no longer used.

Sniping from render range is impressive considering neither has the option for a zoom - in fact the only render-range weapon I can think of that ever had that option was the pre-nerf Gatekeeper (which was ridiculously OP for 6 months - I did feel guilty using it).

You might need to ask yourself, when was the last time you were killed by a Lancer or Vortex ? Nope - I can't remember either...

For all you whelps who think disallowing shooting from spawnrooms is a good idea, this is day one after that patch

That goes against the very basic spirit of PvP. You do realize that right? I'm not saying AA is adequate, at least not on VS or NC, but people need the ability to kill their opponents, that's kind of rule number 1.

Because you don't fly. I've got almost 20 hours of Spawnroom Lockdown Burster Maxing under my belt. Depending on the base I can make aircraft turn away when they render. That's 1,100 meters! It's broken.

Yup, I remember some people mentioned the striker is OP when used in groups. That's really confounding groups with a weapon's ability.
To me, today's striker is just situational and overall below average launchers.

Although I agree the Phoenix can be locked out of the spawn room, it's a little much to suggest it can always kill sundies and such. In select situations it might be able to, but deployed sundies are often behind rocks that make the turn difficult or impossible. In addition, any 3-5 people can bring anything down with coordination, like 2 stealth flashes or a valk and then destroying it with explosives, or simply getting a LOS and grabbing any RL.

on it's own the Phoenix has an abysmal DPS due to only reloading after leaving the rocket and the flight times towards the target. Only in groups or with lots of patience you can bring things down, or hunting those precious nearly destroyed vehicles, but I'm always wondering if I would have been much better as an extra tank on the battlefield. There's only a few times I used the locked but awesome power, which was in a highly organised group. Half the squad was attacking, while the other half was directed very well to their targets so we blew each tank up in turn before pushing out. On the other hand we would be able to do such damage with lancers or even strikers as well, although less tempted to change roles if we were attacked by other infantry.

If you don't fly against it on a regular basis, you obviously won't see how OP it is.

The problem isn't about this or that weapon being balanced, or needing teamwork to be effective, it's about situationally extremely high reward with literally zero risk. Like my almost 20 hours as a Spawnroom Burster. That's not a fun role, I hate doing it, and I sure wouldn't do it if it weren't incredibly powerful.

Dude really. I start out that the Phoenix should be banned from spawnrooms. When you're outside and standing still with no vision, I hope that creates enough drawbacks for the risk/reward.

Psh, I don't even remember someone even using the vortex on me, it's only lancers when I'm in a lib, HOWEVER, just because a weapon is rarely used or seen does not mean it's bad. I don't remember the last time I've died to the lynx, ironically enough, but even though that's a great weapon, I don't see it often.

Plus if you claim it's as rare as it is and I'm getting good results with it, all that means is that people can't easily play around it.

Give AA Maxes a fighting chance and they might come out of spawn.

An AA Max lasts around 1 second against an ESF with a rotary nosegun or Mustang - even if it has full kinetic armour. ESFs can also pack both direct and indirect damage weapons (a Max can only protect against one type at a time).

We did have a slight chance when Max charge was a thing - it's removal was a massive defensive nerf.

Remove the ability for ESFs to one clip a Max, or at least give AA max weapons an equal chance in point blank engagements.

Another massive buff that air received recently is aerial anomalies. Free air! - whereas the AA counters still cost loads of nanites.

Aerial anomalies is an infantry farming skyknights dream ( I wonder how many of the devs play air )

My bad. I didn't really understand what you meant by "Although I agree the Phoenix can be locked out of the spawn room,".

I 100% agree. I've long advocated for lethal AA. But the lack of that is a different balance problem, and doesn't justify broken spawn room mechanics. I'd rather not **** ESF, as everything gets nerfed to uselessness, but rather give AA some real teeth, on the condition they're changed from area effect weapons like Flak, and no-skill weapons like lock-ons.

Shooting out of the spawnroom is the worst game mechanic in the game.

There is ONE incontrovertible law of PVP games (of which this is one) and that is you can never attack someone without risk of retaliation.

Its very simple. If you are sitting in the spawn room because you cant get out then the base is gone and its time to redeploy.

Burster maxes abusing spawn rooms is also beyond ridiculous.

Fix the game already. So many horrible game mechanics that dont add to the fun, they only subtract.

You clearly never played before this change was implemented.

It's an IQ test.

If you try to trade fire with someone who cannot be damaged, then you fail the IQ test and you die. This isn't a game mechanic problem, it's a low IQ problem.

The problem with lethal AA is it destroys combined arms.

You dont ever have to play anything besides tanks in this game. You can kill infantry with ease, you can kill other vehicles and you can kill air, all with vehicles.

Every vehicle in the game is an AA platform.

Dual ranger, basi or walker sundies. Why they changed the elevation angle of the basi i still cant figure out. Ranger ant, Ranger harasser. Walker ant Walker harasser. Skyguard. MBT with ranger, walker or basi.

This is why at EVERY battle you have huge vehicle zergs.

Deadly AA when you go to kill the vehicles with a lib and you are getting shot by them even before they render to you?

That would be like the time when bursters were super OP and you couldn't fly at all.

Now at least you have the option, if you are quick, to run away from the 3 skyguards, 4 rangers, 4 walkers, and 12 basilisks shooting at you at every fight.

Not to mention the ubiquitous heavy on every hill with the lock-ons in case you fly a little too low.

And of course the ESF who's actual job is to kill libs shooting you too. Although fortunately for libs there are often very few good ESF or even bad ESF pilots flying.

I've played lots of PVP games and never played one where people could attack without being attacked back. Thats just common sense, which really has nothing to do with IQ. Bad game mechanics are bad game mechanics regardless of IQ.

Also trolling is against tos.

If lethal AA kills combined Arms..
Then why is Lethal AV, and Lethal AI a thing?
Since, Aircraft can engage any target of any type, without issue.
To engage aircraft, you need specialized weapons - Which screw you against every other target type.
So on top of this, you think AA needs to be also unable to kill their target that can kill them easily... and kill any target type they please on top?
What exactly is combined-arms, about an Aircraft having no lethal non-spammed counter, but having a lethal infantry counter, a lethal vehicle counter in aircraft reach, a lethal AV counter in vehicle reach, a lethal AI counter in vehicle reach, and lethal AI for infantry with a handful at best of lethal AV counters for infantry.
What does that aircraft need? It has AI, it AV, it has the best AA, past spawn-room AA nests & Strikers.

If killing aircraft as a specialized Anti-air weapons-platform, that is vulnerable to everything that isn't air, kills of combined-arms..
Then Air needs to understand that, an Anti-air weapon that is vulnerable to the ground... is a perfect example of where combined-arms is; That aircraft if supported by land, is now free from AA fire, they don't survive their Dedicated-Counter that sacrificed everything for AA by literally just flying away or murdering their dedicated counter.

It's akin to if Killing Tanks killed combined-arms, as aircraft or infantry.
It makes no sense; Since Aircraft have universal weapons able to damage & kill, any type, not to mention straight kill...
But AA is a dedicated specialization that isn't allowed to kill without spam?
AV isn't like that
AI isn't like that
Why are aircraft so special to need dedicated weapons, to still not even prevent the death of the AA platform from the smallest aircraft?


Every vehicle that uses an AA top-gun, is screwed against an AV vehicle.
Every Max with Bursters, is sorta dead to anything outside a spawn room.
Skyguards, are dead to rights, against other lightnings even.

We have vehicle zergs, as they're not a ***** to fly in basic directions.
We have vehicle zergs, as vehicles actually work; AV & AI, are rewarding experiences for both sides of the engagement.
AA right now, is either **** for the operator, or **** for the pilot -- which either survives easily, or is near instantly deleted.

As AA requires spam to actually be effective - Deterring just drives the aircraft away for a short period, whom loses no nanites, keeps their skill streak, and is aware of the AA's position.
Whom must either stay AA, vulnerable to everything, and actually have nothing to do.
Once the AA is gone, Aircraft then reap souls quickly, till AA shows up, where the aircraft flies away, leaving the AA with nothing.
Or the AA is so ******* heavy, the aircraft just instantly dies.

AtG\GtA is the only damn field, where one side is firing specialized weapons that aren't lethal, while the other is faster, stronger, and lethal - and on top is expected to survive the encounter, to go attack people without the specialized weapons.