How to balance NC infantry?

pax you see all the numbers you write, but im not sure you actually give the weapons a decent run in the game... have you tried to hit a moving target with a single shot sidearm with 8/15 rounds in it while aiming down the sights? that is the only way you can kill with either the mag shot or the rebel because the hip-fire accuracy is so bad on both of them only 1 in every 5 rounds hits...

yes you can kill 3 people with the mag shot, if you hit them with every shot... what are you doing, sniping with it?

numbers are purely theoretical, you CANNOT base anything off them because in game in a combat situation theory goes out the window as a lot of other factors are added in... suppresion, moving, falling, jumping, prior health status, class type, versus class type, visability all factor into the equation of live =\= die

sure you can say on paper this weapon is better than that, but i made a VS character today and ran around using just the beamer and still came out with a 1.8kdr and 17k points per hour as the standard LA that you get dropped into combat in. couldnt do that on NC

Yes, actually.

Also, don't complain about the hipfire accuracy on the Mag-Shot and the Rebel. Their stationary rets cover half the area that the rets on the Beamer or Repeater do. This is one of those cases where the NC have a clear and demonstrable advantage, but complain about it anyway. The rets you see on your Mag-Shot when you are moving is how bad the rets are on the Beamer when standing still.

Let's assume you miss two thirds of your shots. The Mag-Shot can still kill someone without reloading, but the other two sidearms can't. How's that sound?

The relative potential of the weapons under ideal conditions is used to demonstrate the results you can expect in actual gameplay because all of the random factors that come into play in the game itself happen to everybody.

This is nonsense. Everyone moves, jumps, gets blown up, etc. Math is the only way that we can actually make sense of things, either by looking at the game files (which we have) or by analyzing aggregated data across the entire game (which SOE has). We use math instead of gut instinct because gut instinct is the least reliable method we have for determining anything. People, as a rule, are absolutely awful at accurately guessing from impressions. People who suck at math always insist that their awful guessing is sufficient, and they will always and everywhere be wrong.

This is funny, because when compared to the Solstice, the Mercenary has higher DPS, faster time to kill, recoil that doesn't pull to the side, higher damage per magazine, and 25% damage falloff with range compared to the Solstice's 30% damage falloff. The Solstice's advantages are that it reloads in 1.65s instead of 1.76s, and its projectiles travel at 515 instead of 500. The Mercenary is a straight up better weapon than the Solstice is.

If you did better with a worse gun, good for you. That still doesn't change which gun is the better one.

TR guns have high ROF with more ammo than NC. NC having high ROF guns with only 30 rounds and no extended mag option for at least 10 more rounds is what makes it annoying. This is why I prefer the Gauss Compact S for easier headshots due to its slow ROF.

I can play TR and run around with a Trac-5 and take down two enemy heavies with full shields on whereas I can only take down one with the GD-7F because of the missing 10 rounds and the moveshots aren't as good as the Trac-5 which leaves the NC to be more vulnerable to enemy fire.

Btw, if you haven't been playing NC lately, we've been getting ninja buffs in the patches. Our Jackhammer can now 2 shot enemies unlike before where it 4 shotted.
Rumor has it that NC will be receiving more buffs in the near future.

The GDF fires a lot faster than the TRAC (845 v 698 RPM), while doing the same damage per bullet (143). You are trading that extra damage for a smaller mag.

It can also be a gamble with the higher recoil and slower reload. This makes you wonder, is it more versatile or is it just meant to take out single targets and damage the other before reloading? Sometimes, if you get 95% of your shots into both enemies, you can kill both, but that's going to be harder over time as players will start getting armor.

The Jackhammer could drop an enemy in two shots by the end of beta. This is not a ninja buff, this is just NC players who don't pay attention to the weapon stats being surprised by what was already there.

But hey, if you think things are getting better, than that's freaking fantastic. The whining was all just based on NC perceptions anyway, so I'll celebrate you guys believing practically that will get you to put the pity-party on hold.

Have you tried the Jackhammer? I watch our members stream themselves playing and I've never heard anyone 2 shotting enemies with the Jackhammer unless it was point blank until now. Btw, the Jackhammer is getting another buff some time this week.

I'm pretty sure you speak to the devs more than the leaders of my outfit about what's coming up next.

It's jerky. You seem to be treating recoil as if it's nothing more than absolute deviation from center over time. Other important factors are horizontal vs. vertical deviation and whether it's gradual or this herky-jerky business. It's much easier to compensate for a controlled, gradual recoil than one that jerks around, especially when you take into account that a lower RoF means every individual bullet counts more. So recoil per bullet is high, and "importance" per bullet is high.

Even if two guns have identical TTK and identical chances in their CoF, they're not balanced if one is easier to aim than the other. In a game with .5 second TTK's, whoever is more accurate wins, unless a significant difference in TTK is introduced.

It has been demonstrated several times by this point that you don't know much about how weapons and attachments work. The Jackhammer was buffed in one of the last balance patches before the game went live. I believe it was the penultimate one, but I could be wrong. Either way, weapon stats have showed it having the same RoF and TTK as the Nova since the game went live, so either the change was in there since at least that point or the people pulling data from the game files are prescient and adjusted their spreadsheets to account for future patches.

The Jackhammer is pretty much identical to the Nova except with an extra shot in the magazine and its special fire.

Are these the same devs who told you that the Jackhammer wasn't killing in two shots at retail? Pffft.

No, no devs ever told us that the Jackhammer doesn't kill in two shots, it's what some NC felt after they installed the patch. Would you like to play the waiting game and see if they actually buff the Jackhammer this week?

This is stupid. You can just claim it was another "ninja buff" and point to some weapon statistic that hasn't been changed as though it was somehow worse before, exactly as you're claiming about the Jackhammer's damage. You thought they buffed it after the game went live, as a "ninja buff" when it was already buffed to its current state towards the end of beta.

You can look up the older weapon data spreadsheets if you doubt me. The Jackhammer has been a two shot kill since the game went live.

Maybe the two shots were just something people wanted to feel. However, the upcoming Jackhammer buff will be visible and you'll see why. It won't be "lower spread" or anything that people will assume, you'll see it on your screen when you equip it, shall we wait and see in a few days?

Apparently it hasn't registered with you that I am basing my claims about weapons from the weapon data directly, not from anecdotal guesswork.

Unless someone "wanted to feel" a value into a spreadsheet that's dumped directly from the game files, your claim is nonsense.

The claim that the Jackhammer was a four shot kill at release is demonstrably false, and will continue to be false whether they buff the Jackhammer in a visible way this week or not.

Keep the bandwagon going, folks.

So where's Pax's response to this? I see he's the sort who prefers rolling out numbers, because we all know that numbers don't lie. I'd like to see him run this around.

And asking me to get the EM1 (1000 certs) vs a stock LMG is absolutely, positively, calling this equivalent and equitable. Absolutely.

Let's try this: Can you, pax, with your numbers, show me empirically that an NC Gauss vs a TR/Vanu with same stock LMG's shooting at each other, with no shields, same health, same starting moment, and taking into account their COF, ROF *AND* flinch deviation, is completely equivalent?

I would honestly like to be surprised that the answer is yes, they are equivalent, as right now, it certainly (oh dear, gut feelings) appears otherwise.

You know, if the jerky recoil of the SAW is too much for you, there are 2 foregrips that make that problem go away. There's a noticeable improvement with 1 foregrip, if you're stingy.

The shakeing effect is the only thing that im having a problem with are rounds just fly away even if we are aiming direct on target. NC player<- otherwise are guns are fine just that one issue

the first bullet in the clip is fine its the other 29 or 98 that are the problem

Asking NC to buy their default weapons is like telling a TR to buy THEIR initial default weapons.

Default weapons need to be balanced regardless of whether or not there are "alternatives". Side grades people. Asking NC to buy default weapons like the higher ROF weapons (Which might I mention, TR also have access to. Can someone say 900 RPM AR?) to "balance" the factions out completely destroys the "sidegrade" notion of the F2P aspect of the game.

No one has a 900 rpm weapon. NC default weapon have more upgrades available then both VS and TR.