[Suggestion] Yet Another Archer Thread

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by YellowJacketXV, Dec 28, 2019.

  1. YellowJacketXV

    So I was messing around with the archer/hammerhead in VR when I had the craziest thought. Why not just work the Archer so that it has no damage fallof? A lot of long-range anti-vehicle weapons have no falloff damage. If you keep that model, archer still will not have 1-hit headshot potential (which appears to be super controversial for some reason) and it's effectiveness as a long-range anti-vehicle/anti-max/anti-material weapon shines even more.

    Super simple, super easy, and helps solidify the niche of the weapon. What are your thoughts?
    • Up x 2
  2. adamts01

    Infantry shouldn't be able to effectively combat vehicles when those infantry don't even render to the vehicle. That's one thing CAI nailed. Launchers don't have damage drop off because they're slow and have terrible drop. Archers can easily peg tanks at render range. If anything, those anti-vehicle weapons need a 600 meter cap.
    • Up x 2
  3. ColdBackHAND

    That
    Thats what HA are for. I mean everyone is equal . Once upon a time a squad was 8-10 HA 1 med and one eng. There is bullet drop engies must compensate for. None are using more than 4x. Try it at 2000k and its ping ping and the vehicle is laughing at you. CAI was the equivalent nge.

    And while your head is up your ***. Lets nerf anti-vehicle terrt to the ground thats it never used and it be guided. it has less range than the archer and the archer does 125 dmg.

    You don't think things through.

    And no vehicle player is worried about the archer. The archer is not PEW PEW PWE. Its pew pew pew. A fly but you know that. 125dmg for thousands of kilometers is just OP.
  4. ColdBackHAND

    I frag m
    I frag more **** with my burster than archer. Archer, whats the point.
  5. ColdBackHAND

    Next out of your filthy mouth will be aa to powerful. You open your ******* mouth and have no idea what your talking about.

    You list one f'ing problem, past, and give no idea to fix whats being discussed. And CAI was Bad. Don't act like it was the savior of PS2. PS2 didn't grow.
  6. Campagne

    I don't necessarily think the Archer should have no damage drop at all, but even within its maximum damage range against a Magrider or Prowler it has a TTK of ~47s.

    Anyone who dies purely to archer fire in a vehicle deserves it. At 600+ meters there is no excuse for even taking a decent amount of damage if the player is at all mobile.
  7. adamts01

    You need to calm down and have a beer or something. But you say I don't think things through?...

    Nothing renders at 2,000 meters. Vehicles render at 1,100 and infantry render at up to 600, but usually 300 and down to ad little as 100 if you're flying in to a fight.

    Fix those render ranges and I'd happily support infantry weapons with insane range. But getting shot by opponents who won't render is absurd. And thankfully CAI mostly fixed that.

    I don't tank much and hate using the Archer, so I'm in no position to speak of its balance. I just have a problem with opponents damaging each other without rendering. Archer damage is also a tricky thing because it's so easy to land hits with the gun.
    • Up x 1
  8. Johannes Kaiser

    Archer is only really dangerous against MAX units. Vehicles are too tough to be taken down by anything less than at last half a squad worth or Archers, and against infantry there are a ton of better choices for about any scenario.
    I do agree on the render distance thing, however. What you don't see, shouldn't be able to kill you. At least as long as "not seeing" is caused by the thing not being rendered. But that goes both ways, to to be precise all the ways.
  9. Scroffel5

    If you guys die solely to an Archer who is shooting you for 500m away, you are kind of stupid. I recently switched to playing at 200m render distance, and I constantly get shot by stuff I can't see, but it is typically from a range where they won't hurt me. Long range AV is perfectly fine if they don't instantly obliterate you, and with an Archer, they won't. I think the AV damage should be buffed from behind, to make it pretty powerful if they get the flank on you, but that's just me. The alternative would be forcing anything that damages you to render, but thats a whole 'nother update that could go hilariously wrong.
  10. That_One_Kane_Guy

    Archer is for killing MAX suits, any capability to chip damage vehicles in excess of that function should be considered gravy, not something around which to conduct balance.
    • Up x 1
  11. YellowJacketXV

    And uhhh... Where exactly is there a huge stretch of open field where an Archer user with high render distance would actually make an armor column back up?

    Maybe Indar but honestly, the damage is still essentially negligible. I don't know if you're aware, but an Archer round does only 336 ish damage at close range (full damage and side/front) thanks to armor values. MBTs have 5k hp, it's basically a pinging tickle.

    You see I'd be more prone to agree with that but the Archer for nerfed from it's ORIGINAL purpose not only once but twice. Once from an outright damage nerf and twice from an armor upgrade available to MAXes that reduces AMR round damage by 20%.

    The only time I really get reliable kills from archers on maxes are when there's a maximum pressure alert and inverted maxes are running about. Even still, the 1.5 sec rechamber time generally means I get more assists (pittances) from ambush LAs with C4. I would honestly make more score simply from running around like a cool with tank mines as an engineer.

    These other options honestly make the Archer obsolete in almost every encounter thanks to the nerfs and redesigns. Because of this, the poor gun suffers from the "jack of all trades master of none" issue that game devs just seem to love because they forget the second half of the verse. All I'm doing is trying to provide ideas to ease more viability into what could be a great fire support weapon.
  12. Scroffel5

    We can make the Archer better just by making it have a much higher damage output when you shoot from behind, similar to the way the Tomoe does so much more damage when you hit the head. That makes it more balanced, as if you sit still and take giant chunks of damage and don't turn around, you are an idiot.
  13. adamts01

    How long have you been around? Do you not remember Lancer squads stopping a whole zerg from getting to the next base? Obviously there's Indar, but there are plenty of open spaces on Esamir, and plenty of mountains/plateaus on Amerish/Hossin overlooking the only paths vehicles can take.

    I know Archers are weak at range, that's half the point of CAI, dealing with balance disparities caused by this game's weak rendering abilities.
  14. YellowJacketXV

    CAI was an awful adjustment that basically made armor just a second hand way to play the game. I still see people jumping out of tanks to kill a single unit with C4. And I have yet to see a VS use a lancer. CAI was a rollback that was basically unnecessary to put armor into even more of a cornered playstyle of hinged obsolescence.

    Also I'm pretty sure a lancer squad could still massively hinder if not wreck an armor column so I'm really not sure where you're going with this.
  15. LodeTria

    It's been that way a long long time, before CAI. CAI was just catering to forumsiders/bad redditors.
  16. YellowJacketXV

    Honestly, I'm still mad about the removal of IR vision for infantry on tanks. I made an entire loadout based around support of fellow vehicles in a lightning with the base gun and IR optics. It allowed me to act as a deterrent for HAs and LAs and really boosted our survivability.

    Now it's more like "why would you waste 350 nanites on a non MBT tank instead of 450? Why would you spend nanites on a lightning that does like tissue paper to AV Harassers? Why would you spend nanites on a lightning when you have less firepower and armor even with a single gunner?"

    The only time I see lightnings is for skyguards now. CAI did this garbage. Worst part is people were all complaining about IR HESH but instead of simply removing the IR option for HESH they gotta remove it for ALL optics.

    Especially when they start releasing Infravision as a goddamn implant.
    • Up x 1
  17. adamts01

    CAI was awful. If you read what I said again I said the nerf to infantry anti-vehicle range was the only good thing to come out of it.
  18. KillerXDLZ

    The Archer even with falloff is an amazing AV weapon, being able to damage vehicles from a massive range (200 damage at minimum), have infinite ammo (engineer) and be pretty much invisible compared to most AV alternatives: ANTI-Vehicle mana turrets, MAX and Heavy Launchers. All of these show the projectiles coming miles away with a glowy effect and are extremely slow. The strongest part of the archer in my opinion is the infinite ammo provided by the engineer. It doesn't matter how good a MAX or a Heavy are doing with their Launchers, they need an engineer providing them ammo.

    Also the Archer doesn't need to kill to be effective, a single clip can take 10% of a sunderer health at 200+ meters and you're able to kill a harasser with 4 clips, even if you manage to land only 1 clip into a harasser thats 25% of their hp gone, almost anything else is capable of finishing the harasser at this point.

    The main idea of the Archer also is not to be a AV weapon but a Anti-MAX, so there's no actual reason to buff this weapon even more for damaging vehicles.