[Vehicle] Harassers Vs Tanks - Settled with Stats

Your question is kinda leading, Harassers dont typically ball up into big vehicle zergs, they go off alone or small groups and look for targets. They spend a lot of time driving around and picking on something until it dies which can also take time depending on what it is and what terrain is available. Perhaps they 'only' manage to kill 2 Lightnings/MBTs before going deep and dying or getting chased down by another Harasser?

Tanks will very often ball up and its rarer for them to drive off on their own due to a lot of reasons like not being super fast like a Harasser and able to give aircraft a good exercise or just that a lot of people think its hard to drive and fire at the same time so they like to find good spots and park and just be artillery, preferably surrounded by half a dozen other tanks.

I think its just natural with how the two different types of vehicles want to play that in general tanks will simply survive longer boosting their K/D but that does not mean the Harasser is performing badly. If we want to look at stats then Harassers typically have the advantage over Lightnings on Vehicle KPU as well as the MBT 2ndary and all but the AP version of the main guns, so if the average vehicle kills per user for the Harasser gets more kills than Lightnings and MBT 2ndary as well as the main guns except AP versions, are the Harassers really doing so bad?

Seems pretty clear to me you want Harasser to be so bad nobody would dare use it for combat.

Tanks obviously have a place, no reason for the Harasser not to as well.

Seems pretty clear to me you didnt have any comeback and just decided to attempt to dismiss what I have to say by going after me as a person instead of the argument.

..and thats the whole point, Tanks have a place and Harassers should have a place as a harassing vehicle, use its speed to move around the battlefield and avoid actually getting into combat, swooping in to take out damaged vehicles, pick on them from range etc because tank shells should be scary, tanks shouldnt be more afraid of a tank shell than a buggy.

Electrotech and getting EMP grenades with an engineer

Listen, the ONLY redeeming quality of a Harasser's back seat now, is the ability to transport a MAX.

When we all found out about backseat reps, it went rampant, but before that, I was doing just fine driving the harasser around. The only problem I had, was when I hopped out of my vehicle to repair while my gunner was still shooting, I would get no assist for keeping the vehicle alive while he got a kill.

They blanket-nerfed valkyries, which some people would have a problem with because striker valks are still the best valks.

But I don't want them to suck the fun out of the game, I don't play TR, but I don't want them to suffer what old VS had to suffer, what with today's useless lancer and all.

When it comes to the ES rocket launchers, instead of constantly nerfing them, i wish they'd put the old launch speed and regular damage with 6 shots back on the lancer, but not the range.

And they'd make it so you could slow Phoenix rockets in the air to better control the direction of the rocket.

But you know what platform has the old rumble seats? PS4.

Sounds like you are looking at the gun stats. Don't forget the Harasser has a driver who doesn't get a gun, so wont be getting any vehicle kills. So the vehicle kills of a MBT, as a vehicle, would be the gunners vehicle kills + drivers vehicle kills. For the Harasser it will just be gunners kills. So from your numbers there that sounds like MBT are at a little less than double the vehicle kills from each life (same as I came to on original post).

The Lightning is getting around the same number of vehicle kills as the Harasser gunners, but in a Lightning you don't need someone else to drive you around to get those vehicle kills.

This is also my view of how the Harasser gets used. If we assume that the tanks and Harassers kill the same number of other vehicles (Sunderers/Flashes/ANTs), it must be that the tank is killing of the Harasser more often than the Harasser is killing off the tanks - therefore explaining the higher vehicle kills of the tanks. I guess its getting a bit complicated at this point. I still think the lack of vehicle kills the Harasser gets each time it is pulled shows its not the fast moving tanks it is sometimes made out to be. I come to the forums to defend it because I think they nerf it base on this idea and I want them to stop!

I do drive both Lightnings and Harassers - just throwing that out there.

Does it matter? its Vehicle KPU, meaning each player is getting around the same number of kills. The fact that Harassers are more effective than all MBT main guns other than the AP variants should be more than enough evidence that the Harassers were and still are performing really well even after the nerf.

With the power of math its already proven that Harassers ARE the fast moving tanks we made them out to be because they have ridiculous damage resistance against Light anti-vehicle and especially Tank shells compared to the actual tanks in the game, putting them on par with Lightnings and even MBTs on how many tank shells they can take before dying.

Its basically the same problem that ESFs have, no good weapons against them and they have all the initiative, making the best counter another one of them which should be obvious bad game balance to anyone not invested in the thing and dont want to lose their 'fun' ride.

I used the overall stats from PS2Alerts for the original post, but this is how I would work out vehicle KPU (kills per use) using Voidwell (made up weapons and stats used for a simple example):

MBT:
Gunner operated Halberd gets 3 vehicle kills on average every time the vehicle is spawned.
Driver operated cannon gets 3 vehicle kills on average every time vehicle is spawned.
This MBT would therefore, as a vehicle get 6 vehicle kills on average every time it is spawned.

Harasser:
Gunner operated Halberd gets 3 vehicle kills on average every time the vehicle is spawned.
Driver always counts as having 0 vehicle kills on average every time the vehicle is spawned as they don't have a gun.
This Harasser would therefore, as a vehicle get 3 vehicle kills on average every time it is spawned.

The back seat has plenty of uses other than the Max, however I agree with Harassers were doing just fine without Ru-pair.

So you are conveniently not counting the dozens of people the driver might be running over or the Flash/Javelins they also run over?
Same but the reverse, you are not counting the dozens of MBTs driving around without a gunner?

The problem with making up your own rules for how to read the stats is that there are multiple ways to do it, I can make the claim that a Harasser should or could be fully crewed and thus count some MAX/LA/HA/C4/Mines etc to the Harassers KPU because if the Harasser has someone on the back seat then they get some kills too that should be added to the Harassers stats and even if its a standard 2/3 Harasser its not uncommon for them to either jump out or switch to back seat to use C4/Mines to blow up a vehicle or Sunderer which is only possible to be done because they were in the Harasser = should count to the Harassers stats.

Either way, what I meant with "does it matter?" is that the Vehicle KPU is still currently a fairly even match between some Harasser weapons and Lightning/MBT weapons, if you are claiming the Harasser is weak or getting weaker do you mean the Harasser should actually be on par or above Lightning/MBT weapons?

I suppose I did group you in with the others using the same non-avatar a bit much. None of your statements have a very clear baseline, so perhaps I just read-in to them a bit much.

To be clear then, what exactly are you claiming is true about the Harasser as compared to tanks? Do you feel people want too many buffs for it and that we should be careful? Do you feel that its overtuned now and needs to be nerfed? Whats your stance here?

The people getting run over would not be vehicle kills, so wouldn't count towards the vehicle KPU. In my last post I used made up Voidwell weapon stats as an example - I took the stats in the original post from PS2Alerts. Out of interset PS2Alerts show that about 25% of Harasser kills come from roadkills.

People have made valid points about how the stats may not reflect exactly what is happening on the battlefield, you made one of those points above yourself. If it doesn't record back seat kills as Harasser kills (I'm not sure if it does or not) that would make the Harasser look weaker than it is; people driving MBTs without gunners will make the MBTs also look weaker than they actually are, as each time that happens for a full life the gunner weapons will count as having been used (I assume) but will get no kills as nobody is using them.

But what the servers record is what ends up on the stats website, and the servers don't record everything that happens for the website to display. K/D is a central stat and although imperfect, the imperfections, wouldn't make up the difference between it and the Tanks. If it was the Tank farming vehicle we are sometime lead to believe by others on forums like these the stats would be a lot different even with the imperfections.

You ask if I think it should be more or less powerful - I think its always worth remembering that the gunner of the Harasser is killing for two, as the driver is not adding damage other than the roadkills. I would like it to just be good enouth to be worth using and to fulfil its role on the battlefield. Its doing that now, although its not that strong, but I think if it gets nerfed again I think people will stop using it.

I think its overtuned now and has been for years.
I dont think what is basically a ESF on the ground needs to be able to soak enough tank shells to kill a Lightning/MBT and its getting frustrating having to explain why that is even a problem as if it shouldnt be painfully obvious why a vehicle with a massive superior speed and mobility advantage should not also be as durable as the other much slower vehicles.

As said before but perhaps in another thread, im not about to go look for it, the Harasser could take another -45% Tank Shell resistance to a total of -65% and they would have as much/little resistance to tank shells as actual armoured tanks have in the game when hit from the side and even that is kinda silly, that a Harasser would actually be as armoured up as a MBT but whatever.

Funny thing is that they would still take less damage than a tank because of how the damage is calculated but when you see a number as big as 45% being thrown around and it still wont bring parity to the damage they receive you should be concerned.

I see, well thanks for clarifying that at least.

Sadly that means I was right about your views and that in wanting further nerfs to the vehicle, you clearly seek to reduce it from a seldom-existing threat to a non-threat. The vehicle is pulled a third as often as lightnings, less often than MBTs, and is not exactly pulling a major about of kills. Some skilled people manage to use it successfully, in order to get a fraction of the vehicle kills MBTs achieve and you see those stray examples strung along and get upset by it.

You are not being motivated by statistics, clearly, and whatever anecdotal evidence you are relying on *radically* clashes with my own experience. You keep bringing up the specific vehicle stats in a vacuum, but both of us know that in a brawl it surely loses to an equivalently crewed tank, and at range it pales in comparison to a Lightning's boardment abilities.

So given all this, my conclusion must remain the same. You don't want the vehicle to be useful outside of transport.

Except that we have already brought up the stats and Harassers tend to perform above MBT main guns aside from AP variants so its far from a fraction of the vehicle kills that MBTs get and its kinda weird you are accusing me of putting things and comparing them in a vacuum when you are the one doing it but considering you dont bother to actually argue what I say and come up with your own words and motivations for me I guess it should be expected from now on.

I guess trying to argue that a Harasser should actually be able to take the same number of tank shells as a tank before dying is hard to do so you pick other stuff to talk about instead?

Im off to use my Javelin that "both of us know that in a brawl it surely loses to an equivalently crewed tank" and get some more tank kills, kinda funny to know that the only way im going to auraxium these weapons is to do the impossible on a daily basis.

My friend, that is true for just about everyone here who is asking for a Nerf under the guise of statistics... They scream stats because numbers have you doing the one thing you need to be doing in order to see for yourself, actually playing. I suppose it is natural though. When a child gets bitten by a dog too young, they seek to put a halt to that from happening again by demonizing dogs and shunning them as pets to anyone who will listen. There is no possible way it was their fault they got bit...

So yes, you were right.