[Suggestion] Liberators need a Nerf

A max with fully certed flak armor can survive 1.5 magazine of Zephyr, and atleast 2 dalton hits. Which means, either you had more than one lib shelling you... or you are lying to try to push your point across.

So, nerf it because you couldn't organize 20 people to shoot down one lib?
We had almost the same incident earlier today, but we had 3 libs shelling the spawn room at aurora materials on esamir.
We had 1,5 squads, we waited in the spawnroom with 7ish burster maxes, we all used our max sprint to get out of the spawn room and disperse, libs melted in less than 15 seconds and we only lost a few softies.
My point is, don't blame one weapon system because you lack the basic coordination to counter something that is really easy to counter.
But then again, you probably had a bunch of people with the annihilator thinking that "It's the shiniest toy and must work for everything"
In G2A, flak is king... and if air is not dropping fast enough, more flak is the solution.

Alright. I play a lot of infantry and I play the liberator often as well. I've both been camped inside a base by the liberator and I've done the camping myself as well. Here's how life is for a liberator crew: If there's an active turret in the base you better keep away from it. The turret can start shooting at you long before you can get it into sights and you might be dead by the time you do. If there's an AA max and you can locate it quickly, take it down. If you can't find it in a couple of secs you get away from the base. If there's more then one AA shooting at you, you better not get even close to the base or you'll be ripped to shreds.

Now once you've got to the barracks camping stage without AA resistance, it gets easier. You know where AA maxes will be coming out from and often you can take them out quickly, so I agree, there's not much resistance from the ground once you're securely above the base. But the ground is not what gets you killed most of the time. Here's what's a liberators worst nightmare. Enemy ESF. You're slower then it and you're less agile. It wears you down in small increments without your rear gunner being able to get more then a couple of shots off. If there's one, you might make it to friendly territory and have your own ESF guys take the enemy away from your tail. If there's two, you'll likely be dead before you cross the border.

The only time you are able to comfortably camp the spawn is when you have air supremacy over that base or just no other air at all. If that's not the case, you have about 20-30 seconds before an ESF gets you into his sights. Camping bases is a lot more risky then doing quick runs so that's what we usually do. We find places without any AA defense, clean out the base and move out before any resistance shows up. All the bases with active AA and patrolling ESF are pretty much out of reach.

So I actually agree that the problem exists for ground forces. I think it can be solved without resorting to nerfs though. If there would be multiple spawns in the base, it would make deterrence feasible for ground. If you can get and AA max out of the door without getting killed the problem is solved. Deterring can start.

But it's important you don't look at the problem without considering the option of getting an ESF if you're being farmed by air. It works and it works really well. When I find myself in a barracks with zepher rounds banging at the doors I first try to get an AA max and attempt to push out. If it works, the liberator will move to a base of less resistance. If I get instagibbed at the door, I don't even consider respawning at the same base. I get the closest base with air options, get an esf and about 80% of time the liberator will lie in a crumpled wreck on the ground in less then a minute. The strategy for ESF vs liberator is positioning. To not start blasting until you're in a position where you can finish the job.

Now when that liberator has friends in the form of escorting ESF, they have air supremacy. The only option in that case is to get friends, form an ESF A2A squadron and move out in team. And that's how it should be. If there's more of them and you can't handle it, you've lost the base. That's not a balance issue, that's how war is.

I hope that this point of view was of use for someone. I suggest you try liberator runs out with a friend of two. They're fun but they're not as easy and troubleless as they look from the ground.

then make the zepher one shot infantry ( kinda thought it did... every time i used it lol it one hit them if you aimed well enough, i could be thinking incorrectly though ) in any case, it should be a one shot then reload gun, good for those with skill.

if it needs to be that damage has to go up, let it, however people on the ground need to have a chance to fight back... a fully automatic HE skycannon with 5 or 7 rounds in its magazine is just outright overkill... then add on infrared, its over.

it should be a good gun, but its versatility at the moment is just too damn high
im just suggesting something that could be done, all i care is that something is done'

edit. a lib is 2 people usually, 3 maximum, if it takes more than 2 - 3 to kill it, the game is imbalanced.. period

It is not the libs them selves that are out of balance, but the entire ******* game.
There are SEVERAL compounding reasons that make both liberators, EFS and MBT's OP without being OP (well except for the magrider, that **** is just plain OP)

SOE was smoking some amazing drugs when they let EVERYONE have easy access to ALL the vehicles, and did not see that this game would devolve into a vehicleside with infantry just being there to get killed.

Liberators are too easy to spam, even when its not 2x cert weekend, its not uncommon to see formations of 6-7 libs hovering over 5 or more bases at a time, even when they have no adjacency to that base. The VS are notorious for having AT LEAST 4 libs spamming the spawn of every base within 2 hexes of the one they are currently capping, with a larger formation of 10+ libs moving with the main zerg(of which there are dozens of ESF's)

Just one single lib can lock down 90% of spawn bases out their, 4 libs mean you lost the base well before any infantry even showed up to cap it.

And the ******** about pulling an ESF to counter is well, ********. Most zergs have dozens of ESF's, and you spend most of your time as an ESF dodging missile locks and other fighters that the libs never get touched. Ground to Air AA is non-existent, and whatever the libs miss, the giant mass of tanks will finish off.

The problem is not the vehicles, its SOE complete and utter ********, stupid, moronic, and flat out incompetent game designer that though giving everyone access to these weapons that should be used sparingly to ASSIST the infantry, as opposed to how it is now, infantry's sole purpose is to stand at a cap point, because 99% of infantry combat does not exist when the defenders cant even get out of their spawn to you know...DEFEND.

And of course, along with the game designers being complete tools, who ever designed the bases are also 5 year old incompetent designers when they thought it would be cool to when they decided to throw out thousands of years of fortress/base designing that made then defensible, and instead made them look like something that was designed BY the enemy.

Outside spawn rooms combined with spammable tanks and aircraft? really SOE? WTF were you thinking. Oh way, thought is way beyond your comprehensions. I can't even say you were just being greedy(which is the reason the rest of the game is broken) because I see no monetary value to the ****** base designed. Wait I take that back. You were too busy fluffing the market and finding ways to nickle and dime people that you forgot you had to design a game, and just throw some **** together and called it a base.

So now our bases are 150% indefensible due to outside spawn rooms with easily spammable doors, either outside cap points that can be covered by one single liberator, or a tank that is sitting on a hilltop a mile away, and the indoor cap points have giant windows (err I mean Tank Assist Portals).

I remember when PS1 had actual bunkers, with small slots that made tank shells hard to get into, and ACTUAL DOORS that could not be opened by the enemy unless they were hacked.

Doors...yes they are these little square devices that can be closed to stop people from getting or shooting in...we had them in the 21st century, apparently SOE offices or the future don't have them.

But the sad thing is, if SOE decides to fix the issue of libs spamming spawn rooms, they will just nerf the lib, meaning even more tank zergs, and SOE will as usual, completely ignore the underlying reasons WHY the libs and tanks seem OP

Because or piss poor game design.

I'm pretty sure bombers operate at high speeds and don't fire artillery rounds horizontally.

Hovering Libs easy to kill with dumbfire? Nice joke. Yeah right, your rocket flies 10 seconds then Lib makes a small move and nothing. Stop lying. If you want to keep your farming machine, then say so.

Plus I love when Lib farmers are beginning to tell what ground AA should do to counter air. That's always the case on forums when something is OP. Now if you were an avid AA player and said something like - guys, this strategy here works, now that would be different. But you are a Lib farmer, and you know that ground AA is ineffective.

The problem here is - it doesn't take a skill to effectively use Lib, but it's a pain in the *** to deal with it from ground, or air. Don't joke me with ESF's being effective. You have your own ESFs flying around covering your *****. Fact of the matter is - who got more air wins.

Don't even tell me this can be stopped from ground:

It takes one max to make a lib fly off. Libs come in, get a burster max out.

I think at this point its a matter of tinkering with resources.

Umm that makes zero sense. A spawn room should be disabled when infantry on the ground manually disable a generator or something.

As it stands now, spawn rooms become essentially unusable when there are ZERO, that is NOT ONE SINGLE INFANTRY within 5000 meters of the base, simply because a few liberators show up.

Sorry, that is ********. Liberators should be there to assist the infantry with armor threats and large infantry threats.

They should NOT be the guaranteed win against a base, even when the base has 50 soldiers stuck inside the spawn room and the only enemy infantry within 1000 meters is at the point capping the base all by himself, despite the 50 soldiers stuck in a small room 30 meters away.

Libs and tanks should to assist infantry moving from base to base. Bases should be taken only by the skills of the infantry themselves, but except for biolabs and on occasion tech plants(if a sunderer is deployed inside) 90% of base are taken without a single enemy infantry ever having to worry about being shot unless he stands in front of the spawn room shields. Then many many tank and libs are making sure there is no defense ever possible.

That is ********. One max can make a lib with the default chain gun fly away, ya. But most libs will just nuke the Max shooting at them.

My outfit had three maxes all shooting at the same exact lib. In the time it took him to target and kill all three of us, we had it to only half health...that was three dual burster maxes (and i saw a few G2A rockets fly up but did not see explosions on those.)

and when I gun for a lib, we spend most of out time laughing at the AA giving away their position so we can destroy them with the dalton. Only enemy ESF's can make a lib run away, and even then chances are another EF will come and chase off anything chasing the lib. Only ESF with rockets(air to ground weapon, go figure) can kill a lob fast enough, and even THEN its iffy.

they ARE fine

buy a max and then go in front of door with 3-4 engineers repairing you if you were that much, other people buy 2-3 fighters at warpgate and rest of it just buys some aa tanks and 1 or 2 sunders at another close base to spawn outside and get air-lock-rockets and i swear this liberator wouldnt come back if you do so. always beginners are crying such things and destroy the gameplay with developers hearing this...

people shall learn to react the right way on different situations

the first weapon i buyed in planetside 2 was: a rocket launcher for aa! i played many times with my aa rocket launcher that i cant count the liberators anymore i got down with this funny thing, its just more then enough if you cant kill them to make them wide more ineffective. an liberator takes 20 minutes to respawn, infantry just starts around the corner a few seconds after you get rid of it.

50 infantry to camp a spawn room efficiently

10 MBT's to do it efficiently

1 Lib to do it efficiently

do the math

I spend 50% of my time as a pilot, 30% as heavy/light assault and 20% as dedicated AA max. I fly libs alot and know their strengths and weakness. I sure as hell know, how to counter enemy air. As lib pilot I either hunt enemy sunderers or atack enemy libs with tank burster, I do understand, how powerful air is.
But guess what - I spend my time countering air, I dont whibe on forums. Yesterday at vanu biolab VS had a nice army of liberators hovering all over the place - it took several groups of4 AA MAXes to bring em down or make them run and dont come back. The key is to spread as much as posdible and use cover to your advantage. Lot's of people stand in one group with engineers near them, they get shelked to death and start whining. But the thing is - it's their fault, not the lib being OP.
And to tge farming part - as Liberator pilot my certification gain rate is lower or the same as infantry. In big infantry fights I gain considerably more certificates. Lots of people think, that lib is I Win button, when in alk truth it is not.

Any Liberator pilot that's hovering over a target is doing it wrong. You're just begging to be drop-podded, rammed, or hit by a tank.

You're actually wrong here, I play every class, and every vehicle in this game depending on the situation. Ground AA is fine, and it's flak towers that are your worst enemy in a lib.

What makes libs so insanely Overpowered (and absurdly so, either everyone here sucks with a lib, or are lying) is that they are so tanky they can eat tank AP rounds, and laugh at ESFs. I can usually force an ESF into a ram, instagib it with my tankbuster, or flip my belly at it it so my gunner can kill instagib it. Only in very rare circumstances does the ESF actually make me flee (maybe 1/20 times an ESF engages me) and in these rare circumstance either they kill me because I'm already heavily wounded from flak, or I can make it to friendly air space and rearm/repair if I'm not, that or if your lib gets swarmed by 3 or more ESFs you're a dead lib, end of story. Keep in mind this is against your supposed counter. This would be fine if the lib was designed as a flying fortress and couldn't elminate entire tank columns, but it can. If it's going to be a glass cannon, it needs to be easily shatterable, a vehicle shouldn't be this devastating and this tanky, it just isn't balanced.

The only thing the lib defenders are telling the truth about is you absolutely must have a skilled gunner and be on a third party VOIP to use a lib effectively, and it does take considerable skill to be able to flip the belly and force rams against ESFs. Everything else they are straight up BSing about and acting like I can't just grab a lib and put a Dalton and tankbuster on it and see for myself how ridiculous it is.

You knew this was coming after triple cash. Grab a gunner, hover over a spawn and rack up the certs. Our Liberators shall blot out the sun!

Of course now that everyones bought Zephers/Daltons they'll add in some super AA weapon for everyone to buy that counters them.

lol, it takes one enemy air-vehicle to scare the lib away or hunt him for a time long enough to get the others out. just click the button to spawn at warpgate and buy an air-vehicle of your choice to do so, works 100% at all times.

spawncamp with lib take the heavy and shoot an unguided rocket, do this with 2-3 people at same time and this will keep him busy and if you hit he will run away. you could also additionally distract him with max-suite to shoot rockets at him from another side.

you guys are just foolish crybabys, dont know how to play

I admit, that sometumes I just ram esfs or shred them with tank burster, but still decent esf pilot will not ever alow you to ram him unless you get a jump on him. And rocketpods do deal alot of damage to the lib.
And hoing belly up requires a nice skill from the gunner to pull out that trick.

part of the issue is the dalton is as good vs infantry as it is vs armor.

Which would be the absolute worst thing to do since the Zepher is fine (and the Dalton is too except it's splash radius is too large, making it far too effective against infantry since it's supposedly an anti armor weapon), and they just have too much armor against rockets and AP rounds (tanks and heavy infantry dumbfire rockets should instantly kill them).

The AA is fine against libs, alot of people are right people need to learn to use the AA MAX more effectively, and most of the issue has to do with base design which encourages spawn camping, and if libs and ESFs were removed everyone would just complain about tanks because of it. This doesn't change the fact the lib can dish out and tank way too much damage with no real counter, if it's that narly offensively then it needs to be less beefy, or if it's meant to be that beefy, then it needs to dish out less damage.

TBH I expect libs to get a hit by the nerf bat. Reduced health probably.

I wont even read this topic, know that I made 1 one this yesterday and the lib lovers killed it. I am in support for nerf. (you exagerated in your pots, but it is pretty bad) There is no question about their OP'ness, and if you really argue that the are fine I want to question if you play lib, or if you even play the game... because even Lib people should see this

That's all that really needs to happen to them (though they need to be very careful here since flak towers and AA MAXes are effective against them already). That and the Dalton's splash radius makes it too good vs infantry.