Happy Easter. The Lancer's a solid side-grade if you have a playstyle that meshes well with it - it offers essentially double the ammunition of other launchers and more firing concealment + high PV allows for greater accuracy at long range compared to a default launcher. There is however a cost, in that the weapon has no AOE and a damage penalty to killing infantry (you can still kill an infantryman with a fully charged shot followed by two normal shots if all three hit, but that's a substantial reduction to the default launcher or the 250-cert lockons). In terms of AA, the Lancer's increased PV offers some inherent value, though if you are good at swatting ESF's out of the sky with dumbfire rockets, the lancer may be a handicap to you. The striker and phoenix are... not in such strong positions. I couldn't think of a scenario in which I would advise people to farm up certs for a striker as opposed to buying other HA improvements or a cheaper AA launcher - the phoenix has the same problem in that it has many hurdles for being a TVGM, though as shown in footage and the final verdict screen, there are a couple plausible scenarios where one could potentially be useful. Also apparently you can cancel the TVG by pressing your vehicle/terminal interaction key.
afew things with phoenix, you cancel it in air (you hit E and the rocket begins to arc down (kinda like a slow moving decimator shot) this lets you cut a little bit off the reload if you aim it right, also lets it work like a dumbfire launcher if you fire and instantly hit E edit: i just realized you've wrote that at the end also you can change the speed using the aircraft manual throttle button, letting you make pretty sharp turns. also if you toggle the hud off (alt+f10 by default) you get to see the whole of your screen without that nasty letterbox UI imho its one of the better launchers, also striker is amazing for AA if you can lead targets
You can make it harder to hit the phoenix rocket by moving about, and coming in from above more. A lot of people don't look up. Phoenix is useful for taking out spawn beacons in otherwise hard to reach places. I wouldn't say no to a phoenix buff of course.
For the individual, I agree. The Lancer is a good alternative for a dumb-fire. However when you factor in even just the smallest bit of organization, the Phoenix is the ideal defensive AV weapon for the most common kind of fight - when one side is tuna canned inside of their base and the enemy is knocking on their door. Being able to scout out and hit targets without ever leaving cover (also means those that shell the base in tanks out of their range are no issue for Phoenix users looking for targets) and being able to slow the missile down for tight turns lets the Phoenix user be a nonstop harassment in a significant perimeter around the base. With just two or three phoenix users focusing their fire on one vehicle at a time, that harassment becomes a sure threat. No parking for Sunderers.
I laugh like an evil supervillian the most when I use the Phoenix. (compared to other weapons/vehicles) "where are you going lightning? you can't run...you can't leeeeave! mwahahaha!" "smoke behind a rock? someone's having car trouble, lets go help them!" One problem for me is I'm on Briggs, and so many payers don't seem to own one. Occasionally I'll get 2 Phoenix comrades nearby and I'll follow their shots. Slowing down the rocket cuts down on max travel distance a lot, still playing around with it.
The phoenix ignores AI MANA turret's shield, and shines in outdoors fights. Better dealing low damage to a Magrider than getting no hits with the dumbfire because is constantly moving. With the ground lock on you get more DPS, but have to expose yourself a lot (plz shoot at me) Also allows you to hit AA MAXes shooting from the landing pads of the base. The Striker is only useful against A2G ESF, which are either hovering or doing fast but really low altitude attacks in pretty much a straight line. Against Libs that don't stop to aim and just do bombing runs, you are going to have a hard time. Makes it possible for you to hit Galaxies that are acting as spawn point at top altitudfe over your base. Best used in Hossin.
Oh boy! just what I am looking for - which one is it please? NB I am a phoenix noob and I just love it.
Striker is the same at long range when you can't use lock because guy always run out or hide partially. You can use a classic dumbfire and the guy avoid you hit or use a striker and try to put rocket if you hit with all you have great damage if you partially hit you have low damage but is always better then nothing with assist you can kill. For aircraft learn to anticipate put you crosshair largelely in front and follow at the same moving speed and unload your clip. Great you have win a new medal striker level 2, now you can unload a full clip into aircraft and put him mid life before they run out or flare. Now try this on long range aircraft see around you the world, see direction he take and find area where he try to go (pod mountain to hide etc ...) unload your clip and miracle where normally you do nothing one or two rocket hit, little damage but in some case you can finish the guy. And you can do that at range where you can't lock. The counterpart this rl is really bad against player and max but it's the same for nc. But for infantry i have my lmg and for max i have c4 and my butcher. From this we have a variant , find an ammo pack and a tower largely use for aircraft spawn, pinpoint your crosshair too find the perfect angle to shoot take a visual landmark and unload you clip with a little time between each shoot to keep accuracy, and unload continually. Remove the chat too if you do that with a friend. All rl are good it's sure the more simple is vanu but all unlock scenarion where normally with a dumbfire you die or do nothing.
Since launch, the Phoenix has (and continues to) function by spawning in a missile that the game engine treats like a vehicle (the missiles are literally vehicles. Kamikaze vehicles, but vehicles nonetheless). But as of the April 2015 air mechanic changes, the Phoenix has been ruined for it's most competitive users (such as myself). The reason: The Phoenix missiles used to be considered "aircraft" by the engine, and were controlled via the Aircraft key bindings. In those keybindings, there is an option called "Throttle [Analog]". That keybinding was absolutely vital to the missile's use in many situations. It was so important that it's generally considered (by the relatively small Phoenix enthusiast community) to be the weapon's equivalent to hovermode for ESF's. This binding let a player slowly decelerate the missile down from it's max speed of 42 m/s to it's minimum speed of about 7.5 m/s. Now, the missile has almost exactly a 7.5 maximum flight time before it despawns (which appears as if the missile detonates midair). So when you slowed it down via the throttle, you were severely limiting the missile's potential range. However, in exchange you got to travel slower, which allowed the missile to maneuver through tight turns and angles or around obstacles that it could not handle at it's max speed. There in lies the issue. As of the April 2015 air mechanic changes, the Phoenix no longer uses air vehicle controls like it has since launch. It now uses ground vehicle controls. And ground vehicle keybindings do not have an equivalent to the throttle in the aircraft keybindings. The closest they have is the "handbrake" keybinding, which at most decreases the missile speed by about 2-5 m/s (depending on when you hit it in the missile's flight timeline) for about 0.5 seconds*. After that one use of decreased speed, the missile begins to accelerate back to full speed again. Spamming the handbrake does not seem to yield much of a result (you might squeeze a slightly larger deceleration, but then it again accelerates back to top speed. Regardless, the handbrake does not allow for a significant enough change to allow the missile to be used any more effectively than it would be without it. This utterly destroyed the Phoenix' meta game, and reduced it's skill cap to practically nonexistent. It is no longer even half the weapon it was in the hands of an experienced player, and desperately needs to be fixed. To those who've never used it much, or those on TR/VS who don't quite understand this, it's as if our faction has lost an entire vehicle from our arsenal. It's horrible, and what's worse is that no one (outside the immensely dedicated users such as myself, ArchdukeChocula, Felix135, BanBanBan, and possibly Karlsefni or slasmnam) seems to care. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Please note: While the change in flight mechanic has undeniably removed it's ability to use the aircraft control throttle and any semblance of it's versatility, I only have my many days of flight time to draw on how the weapon feels as if it's handling now after the changes. I can't actually seem to pin down the exact flight changes imposed by the ground keybinding of the handbrake, I only have what it feels like when used. I know it does impact it by a barely registerable level, so these numbers are just my very rough estimate. It does however influence the flight ever so slightly. Sorry I can't be more accurate on that front. If anyone has the know-how or ability to get exact numbers on this, please tell me!
Yes, Belthazor3457 is correct that the Phoenix has the issues of: -Aircraft and ground vehicles being able to outrun (excessively often, unintentionally) the missiles just by going about their business. -The missile can be shot and either entirely detonated (which is rare) or knocked off course, generally making that shot useless, by a single shot. -The missile has a max range of 300m (though there are some additional constraints as well that I will point out below in yellow text). -It doesn't do enough direct hit damage to OHK infantry. It used to, and it was OP back when it did. There is some debate as to whether it would still be OP, now that the issue of being able to see, here, and even shoot down the missiles has been fixed, where back then there was a bug that made it impossible to hear, see, or shoot the missiles. That made it incredibly overpowered, as no one could tell their impending doom was incoming. I personally say it's fine with the direct hit damage it does, with the exception that it needs to be able to OHK if you get a headshot (getting them is challenging, and it should reward headshots. Sadly at the moment because the missile is classified as a vehicle by the engine, it cannot nor ever has been able to headshot. Though there are plenty of ways to program it so it can, and they need to add that ability to it. A non-flak armor infiltrator shouldn't be able to take a high yield anti-armor missile to the face and live. -It's area damage is pitiful. This is annoying. I personally wish that it would have at least the ability to detonate C-4 and explosives with it's AOE damage (right now the max splash damage is not enough to detonate explosives or destroy deployables like beacons. I think the damage is fine, but it should have an EMP effect that destroys and detonates these types of things within it's flak range just to make it move viable against vehicles stuck with C-4. You know how sometimes an infantry will stick some C-4 to a vehicle, and you shoot the vehicle in the general area of said C-4, detonating it and getting the kill because of the combined damage of the explosive and your missile? Yeah, the Phoenix can't do that unless you hit the C-4 directly, which is virtually impossible in most every real combat situation there is. I feel that this shouldn't be the case for any rocket launcher.) -You cannot reload til you are no longer guiding the missile. This has been a major reason for people disliking the weapon, as it makes it's feature of high accuracy at range pointless in many many engagements except when fighting targets that die or are set on fire with one shot. To fix this, the best solution that those of us who are experts with this weapon and it's nuances have come up with is to give the weapon an ESF-like afterburner. This would let the missile excellerate fast enough to reduce the flight time, and the flight time is essentially extra reload time because it can't start reloading til it's no longer guided. While they could allow it to reload immediately, this would cause some issues. Primarily that it would not fix the low DPS issue Belthazor3457 mentioned. As well, adding an afterburner also solves the first issue he mentioned in his review. That of the enemy being able to outrun it even unintentionally. Simply put, an afterburner would be the best option for it. It would make it viable at range, and fix it's issue with vehicles evadingit so easily that many times they don't even realize they even did so. One last issue that Belthazor3457 was unaware of: Read my post here for that. Finally... I promised an explanation of the flight range constraints in yellow text: Those constraints are~ 1) The missile cannot exceed 300m away from the player's body. I tested this via a buddy with a turbo harasser and max racer running away from the direction of the missile was fired. The missile detonated if my body exceeded the 300m distance from the missile. 2) The missile despawns after a 7.5 second flight, regardless of how close your body is to it. I tested this by firing it forward parallel (and above us just enough that we would not collide with the missile) on a turbo flash with max turbo and racer, and having a buddy drive me forward as fast as we possibly could. The missile generally managed to get about 170-225m from us after repeating the process 10 times (with a few errors in which we got snagged, so we didn't count those tests as they were clearly inaccurate). In every instance, the missile detonated within bout 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) of the 7.5 second (7,500 milliseconds) flight time limit. When the missile despawns, it appears to detonate in the air, and the missile pilot is immediately disconnected from the camera just like when the shot hits the 300m limit (but without the red distance indicator hitting 300m from the pilot body's location). 3) The missile's 300m max distance changes with the infantry render distance. The infantry render distance is dynamic, which means in an area with a massive server load (which can be created in very large +96/+96 fights, and sometimes as low as 12-24/12-24 fights) is drastically limited. When this happens, the Phoenix' missile's max distance is lowered along with the infantry render distance. At one point back in November/December 2014, the distance was under 100m. Even though I had a wonderful ping at around 55-80 ms, the missile would detonate at anywhere from about 220m to about 85m! (Granted, this was the most extreme situation I've seen to date, but this is still an issue that cuts a good 30-60m or more off it's max distance on perturbingly regular occasions. With a 300m max range, 30m is 10%, and 60m is 20% it's max range. While getting as low as ~85m max is only a tiny 28.333-% of it's max potential range!) Needless to say, these limiting factors are outrageous. We at least deserve an explanation as to why the 7.5 second flight time exists, and to have it removed if at all possible. (As far as I know, as long as you don't exceed 300m, there are no issues with allowing the Phoenix to exceed 7.5 seconds of flight. Neither for balance nor for engine limitations.) So... I hope this has been helpful!
