Aphelion and Lancer needs to be buffed. They are garbage compared to other methods. Alphelion should AT LEAST be 100% accuracy otherwise use a Kobalt. Lancer needs harder shots or faster rate of fire by at least 2x.
Aphelion is fairly competitive with mjolnir and vulcan, the only buff i'd like to see is for the high powered shots to automatically be included in the rotation so you can just full auto with it. Lancer is actually pretty good (my go-to launcher for VS) its very good at chunking libs (and esfs if you can lead slightly) The only buff i'd think about giving Lancer is a bit of range increase and maaaaaybe velocity, but I don't have issues hitting targets with it anyway.
I feel like the spread on Aphelion is too much. Lancer can do decent work against ESFs that come in close enough range. I would only buff it a very tiny amount.
The problem with Aphelion, its bloom is so high, the skill lvl has its limits. While other guns the skill level has room to flourish. Yet they don't want to make it seem too similar to the vulcan so. However Aphelion does need some type of remix. Lancer, simply just doesn't do enough dps & if they raise the dps they are worried about sniping. Also needs a remix.
The Aphelion is meant to be burst fired, After every seventh shot you let go of the trigger and fire a Supercharged shot that is always pin point accurate, and your bloom resets. It's fine. Why are we comparing it to the Kobalt which is a completely different weapon with a completely different purpose? As for the Lancer; it's purpose is range and accuracy. If you want more DPS, there are other launchers for that.
Lancer velocity being lower than the Archer AM rifle is sad and cutting the damage by 50% past 300m is also sad for a weapon that is supposed to be a long range option. I dont think it should get any large buffs but being on par with the Archer on velocity and a 50-100 minimum damage increase would probably be more than enough(or longer minimum damage range for a similar effect).
If we're comparing faction specific rocket launchers, the Phoenix can't even fly more than 300 meters, so half damage after 300 sounds good to me. Then, between the flight time and the reload time, you only get approximately one shot every 30 seconds. Even if the individual Pheonix rockets do more than the Lancer, the Pheonix's dps is still really bad. "But the Pheonix can shoot around corners" Great! That means we have even more people sitting around in the spawn room. If you compare the Lancer to dumb fire rockets, it does more damage in the long run because you can land more hits. I've seen 20+ people shooting dumb fires at a Magrider while is just slowly strafed left and right, dodging everything. You might be thinking "those people just suck at this game", and to that I say "yes, we're NC". I don't have anything to say about the Aphelion, which must mean that it's bad. I basically never see anyone use it.
Love it anyway because it's super fun but the Aphelion honestly is a chuck of ****. versus infantry: It was meant as a high skill ceiling weapon with the bursting mechanic. The damage on it is very low and it only becomes adequate after the spin up is complete. When the spin up completes the CoF is so bad the effective DPS (from shots that actually hit) drops back down. It never really reaches adequate DPS outside a narrow range band. The vulcan has a similar issue (RPM vs CoF) but it's not as bad and most importantly isn't exacerbated by the very slow final rate of fire that the Aphelion has. To up that DPS comes the charged shot. Which has two complications. A shot like this favors the snap aim rather than the tracking aim. But the shot is only possible while the operator is already engaged in tracking aim. Furthermore it's a lift to fire weapon instead of a click to fire weapon. Net result: The "high skill ceiling" of the weapon is basically the operator overcoming the stupid mechanics of the gun to get it to put out mediocre damage. versus tanks: The perfect accuracy remains appreciated but doesn't help much at any range. Round is slow and targets move. Just not much to be gained here over the common Halberd. To keep the gun balanced they won't let the charged shot be too powerful. It's got pew-pew shots before that right? See infantry section above. Those pew pew shots just don't crank out the dps so do not make up for the weak charged shot. It needs the spin up mechanic removed or drastically shortened. The DPS on paper would rise slightly. The DPS in the real world would rise significantly and get it on par with the TR/NC counterparts.
Lancer is garbage as it's mainly intended to be nerfed from organized squads using it together which "nobody does".
It's just occurred to me how Lancer is getting a huge buff in the near future, without actually changing! Oshur is set to slow projectiles and increase their drop when they reach water. So a high velocity anti-vehicle weapon with no drop is going to be ridiculously OP. Easily ganking slow moving underwater vehicles with no way for them to retaliate. So unless DBG make AV rounds explode on the water surface, Lancer is going to be THE MOST busted thing on Oshur! I thought it was gonna be magrider that gave VS the biggest handicap, guess Wrel is going all-out for his bois.
Lancer can do damage at long range but you might as well use that anti-vehicle archer gun as it pretty much does the same thing or better. The Lancer should have Zoom At least if nothing got changed. The issue is when you tickle vehicle with the Lancer they just go and repair. It only makes sense for it's damage capabilities If you have more than 1 lancer shooting at the same target. I've hardly seen people use Lancer in groups or at all anymore. The Lancer should have Zoom and a faster charging time to start. There are plenty of other weapons that out perform the Lancer. There are other weapons that lock-on and track and aircraft creating the aircraft to lose Half it's HP pool when they all hit from nearly no effort compared to the Lancer. The most important thing to consider is the vehicles taking damage Will repair. It takes so much focus to aim the Lancer properly and waste your time charging up the weapon when you could've been doing other things that yielded more effect like pulling a Lightning with the anti-tank mount. When you have other non-faction specific (NS) weapons out performing your faction specific weapon, something should be done.
Just to reduce the theorycraft and get some actual numbers: https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...02900&startDate=2021-04-13&endDate=2022-01-11 https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...02899&startDate=2021-04-13&endDate=2022-01-11 https://voidwell.com/ps2/oracle?sta...04179&startDate=2021-11-10&endDate=2022-01-11
KPU = Kills Per Unique / basically Kills Per User(averaged between the users). Its a often useless stat that people like to use to show that "No see, its actually doing well/bad so its fine/needs a buff!" depending on how the stat is and what they want. Some of the vehicle weapons are not used nearly as much as the others which means a single individual has a much larger impact on the stat so a single great run with the Aphelion can and will boost its stats really high and so on. Imo its more relevant to look at the "Uniques" stat instead since thats basically a = How many uses it statistic. Both Lancer and Aphelion are either the bottom or close to the bottom, least used in their weapon class. There is also a very real possibility that these under used weapons gets a unfair evaluation in the other stats as well since we have to ask the question "Why are they using it when 'no one else' is?" Very possible its someone that really likes the weapon and thus could be really good with it = big impact on Kill / Death Ratio and such stats(much fewer newbies using the weapon diluting the good players results). That could mean that a lot of the other performance stats for these weapons "should" be lower than they are and are being inflated to look like they are performing decently simply because there are a few die hard fans who are really good with them and/or veterans going for Auraxium which basically means the same, high skill/experienced player using a under used weapon, stats for weapon goes up. Its why I think most stats are fairly useless, would need a few different ones to all point in the same direction for it to make sense bothering to use the stats but Uniques is always a relevant statistics since if no one uses a weapon its rarely because its good.. usually the other way around and the weapon is bad/hard to use/situational. This is mostly in general, these specific weapons I personally think the only thing Lancer needs is a small velocity buff(AM rifle Archer has higher velocity than the Lancer!) and a make so it loses a bit less damage over range. Aphelion.. its just a weird weapon, 'hard' to use and even when used well it brings little advantage over using another weapon which is less limited but its not bad either. Not really sure how to buff it without making it too good, a small max CoF reduction perhaps? I have not really used it that much and it was a while ago, is the charge blast still faster than the normal bullets because that was annoying too, leading a target with the spam bullets and then having to adjust the aim to not overshoot the charge blast.
I think lancer deserves a bit of an increase in projectile velocity. And also a small increase to damage vs tanks. Aphelion definitely needs more love. It has a far higher skill ceiling than the other guns but with, afaict, no real payoff. I'd like to see the spread on aphelion reduced. It is just so incredibly inaccurate, release burst excluded. I think the released burst should do more damage and maybe also a tad increas to its velocity. I still probably wouldn't use the aphelion anyways. I'm not good at making friends with good gunners in game. A lot of the time I can't even get anyone to gun for my magrider. But I play mostly during dead and low pop hours on Connery, so maybe it's easier when you actually have a decent population. I feel like in Planetside 1 it was so much easier to get gunner and gun for people. Like after a base capture, people would load up into gals, people would load up into liberators at the base, people would jump in your tank to gun for you much more than they do in Planetside 2.
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding! Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding! Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding! What the chart say? Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! What the chart say? Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho! Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho! Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho! What the chart say? Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff! Tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff! Joff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff
Vkpu=Vehicle kills per unique. I tend not to use infantry kill statistics for anti-vehicle weapons Yes you need to cross-reference it with other stats, but I expect people to do that (they probably wont). I am not going to do all the work for them, not this time. However even just the VKPU shows that the OP's statement is on thin ice. And while you are right that a single individual can have a much higher impact on the stats at low usage numbers, Voidwell shows a line of the average over weeks, months and years. This helps you get a clearer idea since a single individual who impacts the stats wont be online every day.
I mean, does it say the Lancer how it is, is actually good?? The Lancer goes garbage damage. Ok, the damage is great if repairs can't happen but they happen and happen fast. How do we sort the list to see all the launcher stats compared?
At the top you can add more launchers to the top, as well as other weapons. If you post a link only the weapon category selected will show up though. There is care needed when interpreting the stats. The Lancer for example is a good teamwork tool and mostly pulled for that purpose as far as I can tell. That means tnat for regular users it might be absolute shet while its performance stats are a bit bloated due to how teamwork can make use of it. Another example is CQC weapons. You can totally bring a longer ranged automatic weapon into CQC. You might be at a disadvantage but proper use can mitigate the disadvantage. Most of them have no problem getting sub 1 second TTK's on enemies in CQC. The other way around it doesnt work. A CQC weapon cant be used as effectively at range to compensate. This means that CQC weapons are almost exclusively used in their ideal ranges while the longer ranged weapons will be used outside of their ideal ranges. I so wish that DBG would release the average distances of kills, hits and missed shots. Perhaps even show the distances you were hit/killed FROM with each weapon. It would be incredibly useful to see how effective certain weapons are at their intended ranges, how much they are used outside it and how many times they are killed by a weapon inside/outside their intended ranges. They do have the potential for this data, after all each shot already carries the damage falloff modifier so range, weapon type and amount of hits are all recorded already.
