Infiltrators - when will you balance them?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by UberNoob1337101, Jun 6, 2022.

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  1. Ikarius77

    The spam is real and altmost every death from an infil it's extremely frustrating ... at least they should make it like max suits and have a cost to spawn it and reduce the numbers.

    besides... a well placed motion detector ruins any small-medium fight, well... an ever big fights.
  2. Westphilly0

    Just got a taste of Oshur coming back, the infil spam was absolutely unreal to the point of making anti vehicle work as an engineer/heavy assault literally impossible, infantry gameplay was pure cancer

    Infantry play was some of the most cancer I’ve ever seen in a long *** time, every time you try to engage someone who was closer to your position you got 5 different infills lobbing shots at you, It’s literally just a contest of who ever can spam the most vehicles and infills
    • Up x 2
  3. Sumowning

    It's almost like, there's more than 1 way of dealing with an infiltrator. Weird that.

    Ay, it's better to spam Heavies with Phoenix's/point blank Deci's right? Or would you rather be Ambush Jet/Shotgun combo?

    ./5head

    Oh no, you're on a stationary AV turret and getting shot. This is surprising.

    Imagine having put hundred/thousandss of hours into the game, still not knowing how to counter 1 sneaky boi and then spending your time on the forums whining about it whilst studying for finals. Couldn't be me.
    "Infils are broken" ~Random nobody on the forums
    Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining

    I swear this thread is getting sadder by the day xD
  4. MonnyMoony

    So many people playing infil is a symptom of a wider problem with the game.

    People play infil because oftentimes, it's the only way to survive for more than a few seconds. You have scat maxes, HESH spam, Banshee mossies and Mustang reavers, shotgun heavies (especially after the shotgun slug ammo buff), sweaty try-hard headshot kiddies, bastion spam etc - all coupled with clientside, you often don't stand a chance, especially as a noob.

    Getting gibbed the second you walk out of spawn is no fun - as an infil, at least you stand a chance of getting a few minutes of uninterrupted gameplay.
    • Up x 2
  5. UberNoob1337101

    Removal of Nanoweave small arms resistance massively buffed the TTK of many infil weapons, namely bolt action bodyshots (1.1s-1.5s, completely fine by me), semi automatic scout rifles and snipers (3-4 shots to kill, or ~0.48-0.6s TTK, comparable to CQC weapons), numerous pistols which are again mostly fine with some exceptions like Pilot going from ~0.5s to 0.32s bodyshot TTK. Given that cloak can give a big ~200ms advantage even if you're crouching close and right in front of someone, this means that players will have much less time to react to infiltrators.

    Addition of Sensor Shield and Avoidance implants letting infils be much more sneaky, to a lesser extent Catlike buffing crouch movespeed and jump height letting you flank much easier. Coupled with the suppressors it's impossible to detect an infil unless he kills you first or shoots some other target and you happen to spot him while he's out of cloak.

    Suppressor buffs which significantly reduced penalties of suppressors to -15% velocity and a slight reduction in minimum damage range. With the Arsenal Update a lot of weapons also have high velocity ammunition, which means that a lot of weapons have more or less the same velocity as their unsuppressed versions (effective -5% difference in velocity).

    Various weapon buffs in between.

    It's ironically the one that I'm almost completely fine with, snipers can have instant TTK but you need to headshot on a slow firing weapon and almost every weapon has half TTK or less with bodyshots. You gotta play smart and have the aim to back it up. If you jump one in CQC he's as good as dead.

    The only thing I would change is CQC bolters having scope sway and the same ADS time as the other snipers, as it's currently easier to use than the rest. Otherwise I've found hitting distracted and standing still targets easy, diagonally/left/right moving targets a bit harder and headshotting players that are deliberately dodging or using ambusher jets much more difficult.

    The best counter I know is to entirely give up ADSing and shooting them while they're looking at you, do some dodges and either hipfire or ADS while they're chambering the next shot, esp as a light assault most snipers seem to have issues if you move up.

    I can count the amount of times I've died from them on one hand, but I've auraxiumed it on my TR and VS and I'm about to auraxium the semi-auto on my NSO right now. They're very powerful, especially against other infiltrators where you OHK them with a headshot within 50m, or 2-shot for ~0.2s TTK. It's the best anti-infiltrator weapon that I know of alongside Commissioner and Harbinger sidearms. Players that despise infils but don't mind playing themselves should use it more often, it's brutal.

    Along with this, if you zoom with a 6x+ scope even at longer distances you can see cloaked infiltrators, which makes it ideal for infiltrator hunting.

    Addition of Weighted Receiver was mostly unnecessary and pushed it a little over the edge, I was fine with the effective damage buff it received, but now with it's unique properties it did obsolete every scout rifle and battle rifle, save for the Doku BRs and Vandal.


    IMO they should've added unique ammunition types for each semi-auto, round that have a similar effect to the NS Tranquility, rounds that prevent healing for a short time, a few unique attachments here and there and some of the kinda weak ones could receive Extented Mags. The semi-auto selection for infils is very crowded with no real reason to use the best one, unless you're farming for auraxium medals.

    As if infils will ever fight in a straight 1v1 against heavies lmao.

    I've had no problem with heavy assaults as an infil main, SMG user or otherwise, ever since Nanoweave had it's small arms removed. Now, heavies "only" have ~1450 HP and for some reason I kill a lot of them before they activate the overshield, back when heavies had a much beefier overshield and Nanoweave that increased HP I would've agreed but now it's more or less even.


    SMGs are so easy to use, have the advantage of walking or 0.75 ADS while firing and having the DPS that's comparable to all-rounders or better, on a class that can stay mostly invisible while crouched and still.

    The main issue is that cloak is designed for long-range play where you're invisible at long distances but obvious while moving fast at close range, meaning that snipers would have to keep distance for their safety. SMG users instead massively benefit from this by being effectively invisible at ranges they're not effective at letting them pull insane flanking maneuvers in plain sight, while they just uncloak and netcode enemies with lag and balanced weapons. The fact that SMGs are overstatted with 0.75 ADS, excellent recoil and hip-fire, great DPS and the only downside of damage drop-off doesn't help, meaning that even in a straight 1v1 scenario you're probably fighting an uphill battle unless you're using shotguns.

    The thing is, we already have balanced automatics for infils, they're full-auto scout rifles and NSO SMGs. Strong in their respective niche, but have below average DPS and aren't very versatile given that they're on a class that can dictate any engagement and can monitor where everyone is.

    You can't OHK them with rockets and tank shells if they're using composite armor, and their AV armament can bring Lighting HP to half from behind on an invisible flash that costs 50 nanites.

    Another can of worms is S12 Renegade which is a semi auto shotgun that can OHK, while the flash itself can't be OHKd from dedicated AV weapons.


    Auraxed it twice and on my way to aurax it on my NSO. I used it and it's pretty easy within it's effective range of ~20m.


    Before the Nanoweave nerf, yes. It had faster TTK than most sidearms but you had to land 3 bursts in (7/9 shots), which was often difficult. I liked the pistol and it did come in very handy when I could land headshots, but it often failed to kill more than 1 target, putting it in a niche of a good finisher and solid 1v1 pistol.

    Right now, it can fairly reliably get a 2-burst bodyshot kill at close range, which isn't terribly hard to do if you aim center of mass or if you can handle the recoil get the 1-burst headshot kill. Access to suppressor and extended mags unlike the revolvers, 600 damage bursts is great for a knife combo even with the Amaterasu, overall it's the best pistol for stalker infils, finishing off targets and even 1v1s. It wears too many hats at once, and it's not like other pistols have better effective range unless you're counting the Blackhand.



    It's not like there aren't other great pistols after the Arsenal Update : Repeater and Underboss are also fantastic, it's that it has the best DPS of the bunch by a long shot while being easier to use, to the point where full headshots with most sidearms are comparable to full bodyshot TTK of the Pilot, the 0.16s full headshot TTK notwithstanding.

    It's why I brought up bodyshots and not headshots, with the recoil it's actually fairly difficult to stack headshots with it, but bodyshots are much easier to do even while hipfiring.


    -50.5% was the exact pre-buff velocity decrease for sniper rifles, -40% for other weapons, -25% for carbines and -15% for SMGs AFAIK. With some calculations these debuffs ended up reducing velocity to ~300m/s, below the speed of sound which makes sense.

    "Turn on headphones", I turn volume up quite high, it still can't be used to reliably detect other players in a game where LMG, Basilisk, Raven and A2G earrape exist. Footsteps are also completely inaudible unless a MAX is running nearby.

    I should also bring up that unsuppressed weapons each have different spotting range based on type, most weapons make you glow on the minimap within 40m. Snipers would show up as red dots within 100m, which made relocation even at longer ranges vital. Suppressor buffs have indirectly affected long range infil weapons the most.

    At this point anything that doesn't give them the benefit of being invisible on the minimap for free would be welcome.

    Still insanely strong, even with existing delayed EMPs the advantage of popping instantly and being impossible to react to makes them much better in almost every scenario, esp since they were bugged for a long time and any targets caught 12-15m inside the blast would start shield regen instantly, not much of a nerf IMO.

    Ofc you'd not use them while someone is firing at you, either when the enemies aren't looking or throw them around a corner so they get affected but you don't. That way you have the HP advantage and can blitz them with 0-0.2s TTK.

    And now with nanoweave small arms removed, grenade bandolier + EMPs is very good.

    No. Also you've got no arguments other than "No." and "L2P".

    Almost like playing a guessing game if there's an invisible person in a room you can't detect or not.

    Jokes aside, if it was scope-only, had a longer zoom-in time, had an unique texture so you can immediately see who's using it and only worked up to 20-30m I don't see it as a big issue. A few extra methods that are unwieldy but can't be countered and aren't bugged would be nice.

    ...People use Infradine? Instead of C4 or medkits? But ye, IRNV spotting would make Infravision too good.
  6. UberNoob1337101

    If you want to post screenshots upload them first to the internet then post the uploaded image here. Had the same problem for some reason.


    The L2P argument is the same **** players have brought up when ZOE was broken, or when tankbuster was broken. Infil is literally my second most played class but someone didn't read the OP, I know how to play and play against infil. There's no good, consistent counter to above average infiltrators that isn't another infiltrator.

    We're way past the point of how to counter infiltrators, it's about how you can pull GOOD counters and still struggle to beat infils. It's when a class has counters to your counters where it becomes ridiculous, like Sensor Shield 5 + Avoidance + Suppressor means that you can't track the infiltrator at all unless you see him and track him while he's visible, all the while he's using sensor equipment to track your movement. It's the fact that infiltrators can completely control and dictate any small engagement while others have to cripple themselves to counter it, and the only major downsides of not having AV for sunderer killing and much more specialized, accuracy demanding weapons are gone.

    Should've added "bogus comparisons" in the "L2P" ""advice"" section, seems like it's the only thing I missed.


    Like you trying to explain why infil isn't OP by making ridiculous claims with no proof? Also, "gadgets"? The only one I know of is Darklight, and it's not good.

    Because they are. Darklights light you up for the duration you holding your weapon, pressing X to disable the flashlight does nothing, and it's only marginally useful to light up stalkers who barely move around, while everyone will know you're peeking a corner. You just told me you only play infiltrator without telling me you only play infiltrator.

    Mines are only available on Engineer and Infiltrator, and even then it's not a guaranteed kill with NC, VS and NSO mines. Also instantly detonated by EMP grenades or well placed regular ones. Didn't stop me once while playing infil.

    Barriers can actually work to your advantage since infils tend to have more precise weapons anyway. Jumping over and crouching mid-air is trivial and won't kill you unless you're rushing straight into a building full of enemies, where you're better off spamming grenades and strafing singular enemies anyway. It's something that makes entry into

    85% of my playtime is infiltrator and light assault, but sure.


    I'm confused as to why did you bring up barriers, but not Spitfires. Spitfires will actually deal some damage and help you in a 1v1 versus infils if they don't throw an EMP beforehand.

    If you want the best infiltrator counters, it's playing infiltrator yourself as you can get a drop on them that much easier. Second best pick being either Light Assault or vehicles, LA can jump around with jumpjets, even non-ambushers to avoid being headshotted while vehicles are virtually immune to anything infils throw at them, save for stalker infils.

    Motion spotters and recon darts or even Flash Sensor equipment, also infiltrator only save for the last one, let you detect and track the position of infils even while invisible, unfortunately infiltrators can simply equip Sensor Shield 5 and make your spotting equipment useless.

    Spitfires I already mentioned, like other turrets gets hard countered by EMPs, but can be very useful if EMPs aren't used.

    Cool, doesn't make infils any less cancer. A case of "tell me you're only playing infiltrator, without telling me you only play infiltrator".

    Heavy Overshield can seriously lag or not activate at all when you lag, which is annoying and can kill you.
    Medic healing ticks is almost irrelevant with how small the benefit is.
    Engineer benefit is marginal and on par with the rest's peekers advantage.
    Light Assault with ambushers has the major issue of not registering hits while mid-air or shots registering after I'm landed and behind cover, but it's a bit better now than when it first appeared in-game. Very annoying for both sides.

    Infils on the other hand, can straight up play the decloak sound and decloak after they kill you.


    Infils unfortunately also have the inverse issue where cloak becomes unresponsive if you have higher ping, which did happen to me regularly when I play on Emerald from Europe, so it's not one-sided, but whenever infils uncloaking and lag pop in you're dead, creating extremely frustrating gameplay.

    Deep operative is pretty good on stalker infils, but on hunter/nano-armor it's pretty weak. If you need to wait that long uncloaked to get benefits you were probably in no real danger in the first place.

    And while there aren't any infil-only implants that are great, it single handedly benefits the most from Assimilate, Critical Chain, Sensor Shield and Catlike. Those implants have such good synergy with the rest of your kit that any shortcoming of not having good implants is a very minor issue. I'd love to see actually good implants for infil, don't get me wrong, but it will probably have to be amazing to see any use besides the meta implants.

    >"Nobody cares" yet responds to the same guy for god knows how many times.

    Exactly. Take Oshur for example, there's virtually no cover on most of the islands, so the only way to survive and flank as infantry is play an invisible class. Or certain bases with overwhelming A2G/HESH spam presence, the best and often only way to get past them is play infil so you can actually have good gameplay.

    If there was actually good infantry AV in the game besides C4 and if Oshur was made bearable for infantry play I'm sure we'd see more non-infil gameplay.


    However, it's gone full circle where the best way to counter infiltrators is to play infiltrator yourself. No other class has this problem.
    • Up x 1
  7. Ikarius77

    Dude, its ok if you disagree with me but please be respectful. I had played this Game for something like 3000 hours and even before smgs was in the Game.

    I use the adrenaline+cyclone sometimes on crazy underpoped situations, and the pdw on open spaces... But holy s... Its completely crazy and easy to h.... Made killstreaks like crazy with a class that was not supposed to be a frontliner.

    Black on the day the cloak was much more weak, silencers was useless and the infiltrator havent access to all type of super fast ttk weapons at all ranges.
    • Up x 2
  8. BlackFox

    Cloaking as tool for moving around wouldn't be a problem, the issue is that it's the most effective ability in direct combat. It gives infiltrators the initiative, can be used to retreat from a fight and in combination with the fastest TTK weapons is most of the times just an unfair death.

    Somebody (sorry, not good in remembering names) has the idea of making the cloak a device that needs to be held for the cloak to work, preventing weapons from being used - that would be a good start.
    • Up x 1
  9. UberNoob1337101

    Here's a repost from one of... idk how many threads :

    • Up x 2
  10. warbrand2

    this here is all we need ot know that Sumowing is just a troll he just wants to muddy the water not talk facts or numbers. they just want to be superior with out actually being so.

    Everyone just ignore them, their words literally mean nothing.

    EDIT: he is willing to put 3 long paragraph posts "proving" nothing and yet will not read basic stats. yeah no.
    • Up x 2
  11. MonnyMoony


    We all have things that we'd like to change in the game.

    I for example hate the fact that heavies can pop overshields on whilst actively taking fire. I have lost count of the number of times I have got the drop on a HA, started to unload a magazine into their back, only for them to pop overshields, spin around and ping me in the head - and my death screen shows they still had 3/4 of their health left.

    The heavy overshield IMO should be a strategic breaching tool that has to be activated before starting a breaching maneuverer - not an instant "I win" button. IMO the HA overshield should be changed such that it cannot be activated within a certain amount of time after suffering damage - that way it would make HAs have to think much more tactically about when to use it.

    I personally suffer much more from HAs popping overshields than I do from infils. I actually quite like hunting infils - and when I run stalker main, this is often what I specialise at doing.
  12. BlackFox

    If you ask me they could ditch abilities all together and make the classes depend on equipment like LAs with their jetpack - The HAs have their missile launchers (which need a slight buff in projectile velocity and -drop) and the Infiltrators have sniper rifles, motion sensors and the hacking ability. Shield and cloak aren't really necessary for the gameplay other than making it easier to farm kills
    • Up x 1
  13. Sumowning

    My apologies lad, you kinda got the brunt end of frustrations when it comes to dealing with the general attitude of people replying in this thread and frankly, that wasn't fair to you.

    Infiltrators aren't frontline, you're correct. But they are flankers, same as Light Assault.

    And back in the day Heavy Assault were broken and SMGs were useless.

    The most played class by people both doing highly competitive gameplay (Think Jeager) and even on live is actually the Heavy, because you can just do most things. And getting killstreaks on a Heavy is quite easy, not that is bad. But each class can go on massive killstreaks if you play into their strengths.

    If you're doing well on an Infil, then that's good!
  14. Sumowning

    Honestly.. This is quite accurate.

    I also tend to go for a flanking playstyle, but it's not just shotguns, HESH, etc.
    In general the range of weapons in PS2 is very high, in small bases this often leads to getting deleted right from out of spawn. Or running up to where the current frontline is and just being met with a stagnant battle of sorts, if that makes sense?
    • Up x 1
  15. Sumowning

    How would you SMGs viable then? Other than for Heavies who can afford to get close? Long-range sniping in Planetside 2 isn't that great, especially considering the death-cam, unless you start farming like a 96+ stagnant battle here you have perfect view of the area they are holding.

    Reason why I am specific about this, is because yeah there's an argument for "You need to relocate.".

    But let's be honest here, it takes more time for a sniper to get into position than for someone to pull out their anti-infil loadout hop into nearest ESF drop on infil and kill them. And relocating isn't viable if there's not a whole lot of options for proper sniping, especially with some of the render glitches like the no-head glitch, which you know, is kinda important for the sniper :D
  16. Demigan

    What you describe is more to do with your playstyle.

    For example I dont often get killed by Infils when playing LA, because the places I visit an Infil wouldnt be looking for me. Especially when I'm behind enemy lines the Infils dont expect me and I'll surprise them instead, assuming I run into them at all.

    That doesnt mean I cannot see how the Infil might be broken, especially since I play Infil a lot too.

    Also what you describe with HA's is actually more lenient than you think. The deathscreen almost always has an outdated status of your opponent, meaning that someone who just lost their shields on the deathscreen might actually have 10 health left in reality.

    The HA problem is also a gameplay design problem. You can argue over if its designed right, if the shield it gives is good enough for the movement loss and higher visibility. The infiltrator on the other hand is making use of what is essentially an unavoidable bug in the game: the latency system that allows the mass of players we see in the game. The cloak benefits from this and creates unfair situations. Besides that the tools to counter infils are all detrimental to the user. They expose yourself to attack (including from the very thing you are trying to find) and they supplant other universal choices. The infil players will claim "we are the only class that has specific gadgets to counter us oh woe us", but they dont realize how GOOD that is. Instead of something that can kill enemies faster like higher accuracy laser sights you pick a tool that can only be used against one class, meaning far fewer people will pull it. There is also no NEED to counter other class abilities with special tools. The answer against an LA jetpack? Shoot them with more accuracy or firepower. The answer to a Medic healing/shield recharging? Shoot them more or use grenades to destroy the deployablem HA's? Shoot them. Engi's? Shoot them. The answer to all of them is to just shoot them except the Infil, which can avoid detection to get shot until its ready to fire.
    • Up x 3
  17. Demigan

    This is always a sign of incompetency. To quote from the Infiltrator book of excuses: just move. Only this time its not an excuse.

    - you are at long range. Even if your opponent knows where you are they are going to have to cross the distance to get to you. Unless you are holed up somewhere that lets enemies easily reach you without being exposed (which is entirely your own fault) you should be able to take shots at anyone trying to reach you.
    - you have recon equipment and should have at least a vague idea of the routes to your position. Maybe, you know, check those routes and use your recon advantage? Place a mine as well and you might get a free kill on top of stopping your enemy.
    - ambush the ambushers. One of the most brain-dead simple tactics is to kill some enemies, then move to a spot that overlooks the routes to that position and kill anyone who might come and see who killed them. They'll be focused on your previous spot, giving you an automatic ambush ability.
    - dont use vantage points that can strike a large area, those are dumb. You have cloak that works best at longer ranges, use it! Move to some piece of cover, fire a few shots, move on. Better yet: stop in the middle of the open (at range), fire shots and move on. Players cannot predict enemies suddenly appearing out in the open. Anything that gives you both the distance and a view of enemy pathways is good. This simultaneously prevents countersniping and enemies sneaking up on you.


    None of these techniques are hard to pull off. They require barely any skill beyond situational awareness of how you would try to reach your own position from the enemy spawn and the ability to use the WASD keys. Anyone who says that long-range sniping is hard because of the death cam is one of those dumb bricks that snipes from the same spot for 10 minutes straight and is then surprised someone came looking for them. It doesnt take the death cam to figure out where you were located if you stick to the same position for more than 3 minutes. Worse, they are usually the same people who will run to the same vantage point every single time and then be surprised someone knows where they were. You can literally drop mines on some spots and be guaranteed an infil kill as they move up there once a spawn opens up nearby.
    • Up x 1
  18. BlackFox

    Keeping them as good CQC alternative for people that know how to flank? Flanking isn't hard in Planetside with a little thinking - even without cloaking
  19. Sumowning

    Okay, so let's envision a Planetside2 without abilities, right. In an ideal situation where fights do not go above 24 v 24 players, you have a good chance of pulling off a horizontal flank with any sort aid of abilities.

    But now let's revisit current Planetside2, fights tend to scale well beyond the 30+ people on each side in smaller bases as well.
    You think with the amount of people present in a base, that is ever-scaling because it's an MMOFPS, Especially during primetime where we can have up to 200+ people on a base, you can pull off a successful flank with no abilities, without people being aware of you?

    Don't you think it'll just lead to the exact thing MonnyMoony was saying:

    In a game where most weapons perform extremely well at longer ranges, with high-accuracy, high magazines, and high damage. SMGs will simply be overshadowed by shotguns, and lack of abilities will negate any horizontal or vertical flanks.

    If anything, people will just end up being to afraid to move out with a Heavy shield to protect them, or Infil cloak to hide them, or a jetpack to help them go up.

    Don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible to make a game without abilities but I don't think that will be Planetside 2 anymore. It'd be more akin to CSGO/COD. 5v5, 6v6, or at most 12 v 12.
  20. JibbaJabba

    The solution to X being overpowered is not to remove X.

    All you do is fix the "not fun" for the previous victim by transferring the "not fun" to the player that was previously enjoying X.

    I do not advocate for removing weapons, removing the cloak or any of that.

    What needs fixed is the specific thing about X that makes it OP.

    In this case it's the decloak-on-fire mechanic that when combined with unavoidable clientside mechanics allows one player to kill another player before the network tells them about the decloak.

    Fix that.

    Put the sucker to like 2 seconds, or move the cloak to a (newly added) weapon slot so decloak is the same time as a weapon switch. Fix that part.

    Could you handle that?

    • Up x 4
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