[Vehicle] Harassers Vs Tanks - Settled with Stats

https://voidwell.com/ps2/player/5428316104356186673/vehicles/12
An infantry farmer is giving vehicle to vehicle opinion? lmao
Oh he's a lightning main, explains his bias towards harassers lol

I mean I never claimed to be a vehicle main or a harasser superstar. But it's not like I've never used the vehicle before, and I do feel anyone with a pair of eyeballs or that participates in community discussions can understand that the harassers is ultimately the a2g of ground vehicles. A bit too powerful for what it's supposed to do. Quick look at stats anyways makes it apparent. I mean a buggy with uniform health that absorbs as much damage as tanks.

Infil is a broken class, I refuse to play the crutch unless I have to for directives or if I'm defending against a very large zerg with vehicles that prevent anything non-invisible from stepping out the spawn. Not sure if spies would really be infils, but glad it entertains you lol.

I doubt it's done much to harassers. As explained, it's much more efficient for them to kill the target and/or speed off to quickly repair together somewhere safe. The rumble seat was useful in some situations, but most people run fire suppression anyways, so it wasn't anything essential regardless, given how easy it is for the harasser to kill things while tanking damage and turbo away to repair.

I'm assuming the Valkyrie was more affected by the change, because unlike the harasser it is quite a slow and bulky target. On top of that, it needs to actually land to repair (yes I know they added aircraft synergy, but that's not really viable for quick repairs). So yeah I'm guessing it was quite a blow to some Valkyrie playstyles. But for harassers? I don't think the change was really noticeable.

of course.

Would you mind linking your stats that demonstrate you've got balanced playtime between all vehicles to substantiate your unbiased opinion?

cheers,

276 vehicle kills since closed beta.
You've killed more vehicles even with a Sunderer.

Maxed reload speed

It doesn't have lower ttk.
Solo AP cannon Vanguard with an effective range of ~300-400m has equal ttk to a cqc gun within range of ~20-30m if you have perfect accuracy and if all shots hit rear.

I did some more tests out of curiosity with rear shots and reload speed upgrades. Times are not frame perfect.
Vulcan-h ~6.9 sec as before
Lightning AP ~5.7 sec
Lightning HEAT ~5.6 sec
Lightning Viper ~6 sec
Harasser has lower ttk? Nope. Not even with the high dps close range gun.

Here u go:
https://voidwell.com/ps2/player/5428011263403366545/stats
https://voidwell.com/ps2/player/5428147970871219185/stats
https://voidwell.com/ps2/player/5428031585352362769/stats

Oh wow you barely ever use the lightning, and seem to mainly just play harasser, mbt and a2g. No bias here.

wut

weren't we talking about AP vanguard before?

Anyways just something to point out again.

You can check on the wiki it says the AP has a 3s reload. Takes 3 shots to kill a harasser/lightning. So that's 3x3 = 9s as the lowest possible ttk. Even with the 10% max reload reduction, that's still 8.1s. This makes sense considering the lightning usually dies against a harasser by the time it's done reloading/firing a second shot.

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You got secret tanks wrel buffed just for you or what?

idk why you are bringing this up exactly, but its worth remembering that because of the burst nature of firepower, the first shot is at 0. 3 Shots therefore take 2 reload cycles or 6 seconds, reduced to 5.4.

I don't know why people are complaining about harasser either way. If it was stronger than tanks, who cares? Its niche is different. Fewer harassers can exist in a space safely(because they need to move to dodge around and this takes up space), they are more vulnerable to infantry populations, and so on.

I feel the community overly tries to make things the same and does not appreciate asymmetric balance effects sufficiently, the devs as well perhaps.

No. It's niche is supposed to be different, but because it isn't properly balanced it greatly oversteps this niche. It's the most effective ground vehicle to deal with other vehicles and infantry.

It's mobility and small hitbox means it can easily avoid C4 - a vehicle's biggest threat - and dodge shots with ease. It's also capable of absorbing as much damage as a tank, with the ability to turbo away to repair.

On top of that it maintains firepower similar if not better than other vehicles. Does it make sense that a dune buggy that's much harder to hit can absorb as much damage as a tank, and deal as much as well? I'm sure to you it does.

When it was released, and even in the name, it suggested a vehicle meant as a stronger alternative to the flash for solo players, and a sort of killstealer/annoyance to harass armor columns and infantry. This is clearly not the case anymore, given how other vehicles have been nerfed while the harasser has continuously been buffed or left alone. Harassers can shred anything.

I can appreciate asymmetric balance. This has nothing to do with it. Most of the game was pretty decently balanced asymmetrically before, or require very minor tuning on a few weapons/vehicles. Instead the devs buff/nerf one side to the extreme, and don't address the rest. So you've got a newly "balanced" weapon with drastic changes, but the counterparts aren't touched. That's no longer asymmetric balance, it's just breaking the game. Should be clear just in how the harasser performs today which no longer has anything to do with harassing/provoking infantry and armor, but obliterating with little/no retaliation. The vehicle was asymmetrically balanced before they turned the harasser into a tank without the downsides.

You don't need to reload the first shot so it's only 2 reloads.

shoot-reload-shoot-reload-shoot-boom

Theoretically you could outdps a non-composite Harasser even if he sneaked up to you and is shooting you in the back if you react within 1 second.

It's not the most effective but it's the most fun imo.
For 2 players a 2/2 MBT or 2 Lightnings are going to be more effective for sure.
For killing infantry i agree but only because it can go inside certain bases.

Not really. The harassers are much more mobile and carry much more potential. You maybe debate with the mbts I guess, but it definitely trumps the lightning no question.

When I do play in a squad to destroy armor columns, we generally just pull harassers. Cheaper, much more effective, and pretty much everyone survives and shreds the enemy armor, and quickly drive to a new location afterwards.

Other vehicles are just too slow, bulky, and have weird physics mechanics that make navigating terrain, especially at higher speeds pretty much a death sentence. Even the flash is slower than the harasser. LOL.

Nah there's clearly a balancing issue, and removing rumble repairs and increasing nanite cost doesn't address any of it. I would definitely decrease the health at least. I would make it burning in one AP shot, or at least half health. This way composite armor would make the harasser tank 2-3 shots, which makes it slightly more reasonable. Also removing gun stabilizers, perhaps just introducing COF mechanics that decrease accuracy as the vehicle is moving fast or in the air.

Fair enough, must be my double reload bug ptsd popping up. Not sure why I didn't catch that earlier.

My experience in Harasser squads has been very different. Unless we completely outnumber the opponent some deaths are guaranteed.
Pulling Lightnings is a better idea since you don't have to organize gunners/drivers which takes time, they cost the same, you get 2x more vehicles and more firepower. Unless your squad is low on nanites and you plan to go to some base all across the map afterwards.

Harasser flips randomly on rough terrain sometimes

I think Harasser is somewhat ok right now, not great but not horrible. Maybe nanite cost is too high since rumble repairs have been removed.
I barely ever touch it anymore since i always get higher score/minute in MBTs.
And there are less harassers around, can't even remember the last time i got killed by a Harasser while driving a tank.

If this is all true, why does the Harasser get less infantry and vehicle kills each time it is pulled in comparison to the other ground combat vehicles?

A fair few explanations have been offered, but based off guarding my Sunderer at a centre Hossin fight yesterday night, here's another one - Harassers are a lot more likely to blindly run over tank mines. Since they zoom about, they don't have a huge amount of time to react to tank mines, even with 35m of mine detection if you happen to have a maxed Sweeper HUD. I saw a fair few fall afoul of mines laid on the areas I saw vehicles drive through nearby, and the slower Vanguards, Lightnings and Sunderers were much more likely to avoid or shoot the mines.

Based on this knowledge, I can assume one of the reasons for the lower average KPUs for Harassers in comparison is because they're more disposable. Harasser squads can pull a fresh one and be back in the field in no time compared to the slower MBTs. Combine this with the fact Tanks have much longer range with their main guns, MBTs having two whole guns for double the killing compared to the Harassers, learning to control the Harasser's speed and needing a good gunner (compared to the much easier to control Tanks, except the Magrider for some), along with all the reasons provided in this thread means Harassers end up with lower KPU.

They can still do serious damage and be as stupidly potent as others on this thread claim, but the learning curve regarding controlling one, the need for 2 people in order to even DO damage (compared to MBTs, at least), and the superior range and ease of use of a tank means they probably get pulled more often, means I probably won't become a Harasser main, and many new players won't either.

This is really what it amounts to. People will focus on something that has contextual power, grow obsessive over it, and take issue with it.

I see less than half the harassers that I see lightnings or MBTs. I see massive columns of tanks, but never harassers.

If the thing doesnt have contextual use, its wasted space in the game. It *should* be powerful when used well. Thats what asymmetric balance *is*. People whine about C4 when it works. People whine about Tanks when they Siege. People whine about Harassers when they do a strafing run that works.

We should be celebrating the functionality of each thing within its niche, while trying to ensure that it maintains that localized strength. If anything, this is why the vanguard is a problem now. They didn't allow it to retain a unique local strength.

Could have something to do with people like me pulling harassers for transport just because they are faster and safer than a flash?

Who knows.

We don't need numbers no one knows how to interpret to understand the harasser is quite unbalanced - it's easily observable in game.

I didn't mean my response to be a general response to all posts in this thread. It was just to the post I was replying to, that is similar to many others I read on these forums.

If you read the post I was replying to, and imagine the Harasser was just as described in that post, think how many kills the thing would be getting.

People like yourself and others have made good points why it might be the Harasser's K/D stats might have been lowered for none combat reasons. I don't think all of them when put together would change the stats that much (more than 0.3 either way) but I get that is just my opinion.

When I made the thread, I was interested to see what people who say the Harasser is basically a fast moving tank, that is pretty much amazing in every way, would have to say about it getting less kills than the other vehicles. The K/D stats go against that view more than anything else.

As I have been preaching from night one, statistics in general do not mean much of anything. They can be padded and altered in the worst way. Harassers in general were not really overpowered even before your Nerf, it was a simple issue of one or two of the top guns being easy to aim and the speed of them made it difficult to hit and therefor difficult to kill for most. The game was set Black Jack Style. You get killed by something, you come back in its counter to kill it. There was nothing more balanced than that. It was just people were too lazy to do what they needed to do. EXPLORE THEIR OPTIONS! Some how they think that if you call whatever you want, you should be able to defeat anything you challenge on the field. I did not even use Harassers and I was fighting to keep them the way they were... They were weak before. Now that they are as weakened as the forum begged, you all want to cry... No, DEAL with it. You asked for this.

This whole thing gives me an idea. Personally I like to drive the flash. By the whiners rules Nerf/Buff, I should be able to fight E.S.F.'s Liberators that I come in contact with by myself. Since that is not the case, Liberators and E.S.F.s should be Nerfed to better suit all Flash players. I mean it is only fair. I should be able to place a Ranger in place of my rumble seat. If I cry hard enough I think it should happen. Seeing this, I now fully believe it.

This change directly addresses what everyone here was crying about. "They can heal on the go, and that makes them way to hard to kill because you apparently can hit them at the speeds they travel." Plot twist... They cannot and therefore was not the reason they were so deadly at all... For the skilled, there is no difference in game play, at all. In fact they did Harassers a favor. I am hearing they bolstered defense so that means while they cannot heal on the go, they are now even harder to kill. Last time I checked, healing ability; unless it is super high, has always been far less important than total life especially for HIT AND RUN tactics.... Soooo.... Yeah. Keep on making life harder for yourselves.

Everything you just wrote has made me VIOLENTLY ANGRY. (Oh great, now I'm making DBZA references...)

The stat thing is true, but to pad the stats to the level we are talking would require a HUGE amount of work for the gain of... making one Vehicles KPU worse than the others. The stats do have value, but as I've said both missing data and in-game experience must also be used to draw a conclusion.

Harassers being OP is a whole argument (hence the thread) but calling them OP because the guns are easy to aim? Does that make every AP gun OP? Also, most Harasser players just pull another Harasser. If you die to an MBT in a Harasser, you went after it in another Harasser, you didn't pull an LA or another MBT. At least I assume so, not much of a Harasser player.

More than enough points in the thread have been made about it being un/necessary, and I saw next to no complaints about Rumble Repairs prior to the Test Server patch notes being revealed. A lot of players in these threads have outright stated they wouldn't mind if the Harasser kept Rumble Repair if its tank-grade armour resistances got nerfed. The only people whining are mostly those who didn't want the Harasser to be nerfed at all and thought it was balanced/underpowered. Those who wanted it to be nerfed have pretty much stated axe-ing Rumble Repair is not the play. Won't affect the viability much, they say, but there are bigger issues at play with the Harasser in their eyes. Barely anyone asked for this, and as I've said, their excuses fall flat when the Chimera serves as the biggest evidence as to why Rumble Repair was completely removed.

This metaphor is stupid. The Flash serves a completely different role, and according to most vets, needs a nerf as Wraith Cloak + Fury is too strong at AV for such a cheap price, on top of invisible roadkills. It most definitely should NOT have AA capabilities, frankly. Invisible AA sounds horrible, especially if you organise a gank squad together for that purpose. The only interactions Flash and ESFs/Liberators should share is if a Flash gets smushed or shot by one or if the Flash somehow secures a kill, be it by shooting from the ground or suicidally boosting off a hill at them while strapped with C4.

The defences of the Harasser did not get changed at all in the patch, only the Rumble Repair was touched. Healing made a huge difference in how often Harassers could escape certain death, and also allowed them to remain active for longer before needing to flee for proper repairs. I fail to see how this makes life harder for anyone except any Harasser mains who hard crutched on Rumble Repair to survive confrontations.

Just because people are whining does not give you an excuse to whine back. We are civilised Auraxians... or at least we try to be. I hope.