Another NC Max Post

Sorry, no.

I'm playing on VS. The air hammer sucks at times, yes. It's an effective gun in the right hands. The banshee though is feared.


Edit: And that nerf to direct damage was to reduce it's effectiveness in A2A because it was temporarily king of both. That nerf did nothing to diminish the A2G capability at all.

They ****** up those guns if you ask me. I'd rather see more direct damage and less splash on the AH and Banshee. The Banshee was no Rotary, but it worked well enough with a great pilot. Now you're forced to take sitter missiles with that gun. Halving splash would still get you easy infantry kills, but infantry would surely welcome the change. Most actual pilots would welcome the change. But nope, you need scissors to beat paper, and hopefully you brought ****ter missiles in case a rock comes along.

As for the Banshee nerf not mattering against infantry, I 100% disagree. Damage is damage, and that 50% reduction killed the gun against Maxes with flak armor, which is all any burster max should he running. If you're just spamming shots at range, then no, you won't notice much if a difference. But if you treat it like a Rotary with bonus splash and try to get multiple kills per run, then you really feel the nerf.

Against regular infantry the Banshee still melts before anything can be done. Currently I think there isn't anything short of a OHK which kills faster than the Banshee, except for the very rare Pilot triple-tap. Definitely needs further nerfing against infantry and probably a little buffing against armour, in my opinion.

I farm with all 3, and there's no reason to take the Banshee over the Air Hammer. I'll elaborate.

If an air hammer doesn't OHK, the second shot is much quicker than the required burst from the Banshee.

The Banshee can fire 13.3 shots per second, for a total of 1,330 direct damage and 1,995-266 splash (.5-2m). It provides 7,500 indirect damage per mag, and 5,000 direct.


The Air Hammer can fire 3 shots per second, for a total of 1,500 direct damage and 2,400-480 splash (.5-2m). It provides 11,200 splash per mag, and 7,280 direct.


The PPA can fire 4.45 shots per second, for a total of 1,335 direct damage (but good luck hitting anything directly) and 890-111 splash (1-3m). It provides up to 8,800 splash per mag, and 13,200 direct.

These are very asymmetrically balanced. Let's compare a few things.

• The Air Hammer, by a mile, not only provides the most killing potential per mag concerning splash, but it deals that damage MUCH faster than the other guns.
• The Air Hammer deals the most direct damage per second, and has 50% more capacity for direct damage compared to the Banshee.
• The Air Hammer is the least accurate, by far, but within its effective range there's zero contest. The Banshee and PPA can engage from further way, but rely almost entirely on splash due to poor accuracy, and with such sever AOE drop off, full mags often don't kill targets outside of Air Hammer ranges.
• Any way you slice it, the Air Hammer is the best, and the PPA the worst.

Any feelings that the Banshee is king are due to past trauma.
As for balance, like I said above, I 100% agree that the guns need a splash nerf and a direct buff. The PPA would need an entire rework. Much faster fire rate, more accuracy, and much larger mags. But then it would feel like a worse Banshee. They could do something gimmicky like burst, but gimmicks are usually trash.

Banshee is a 4-shot kill with direct hits, Airhammer is either 620 damage per blast if all pellets hit or 1320 damage if all direct hits, depending on how the splash damage works, I don't know, and the PPA is a 2-shot kill with direct hits. All are very lethal.

But with 4 shots at 13.3 shots per second the TTK is extremely short. While the Airhammer can presumably OHK it requires a very dangerous short range which the other two don't necessarily require. PPA is definitely the weakest one (though not too weak to kill) but between the Airhammer and Banshee it seems to me to be more of a personal choice.

TTKs are very comparable and both are on nigh unkillable platforms against their intended targets, while the AH can kill faster the Banshee has range and ease of use. Both have large enough magazines to easily kill multiple enemies in a row before reloading, but given the highly mobile air platform the magazine size doesn't need to be very large with the hit-and-run nature of ground-pounders flying away from any and all AA retaliation. Infantry are obliterated by either gun and in my opinion therefore DPS doesn't really matter against the primary target of the AI noseguns. Dead in 0.0s and 0.2s is dead either way.

I certainly don't think I'd call the AH better in every way, quite the opposite. However I will say that both alongside the PPA are too powerful coupled with their ideal weapon platform. Nerf plz.

The only difference on the receiving side of the banshee is being nuked from 100 meters away instead of 300. Either way, too quick and too far to fight back or flee, though with A2G that's always an issue.

If ya' want asymmetrical balance the PPA could be terrible against any kind of armour while good against infantry, while the AH is stronger against vehicles do to the shorter range with the Banshee being somewhere in the middle. Or my favourite option, nerf the **** out of all three.

They're all lethal, too much so against infantry, but not nearly enough against anything else, so we agree there. I ******* hate this rock-paper-scissors approach they've taken. You're right about infantry, in practice the Mossy can be a little bit safer to use, but you do sacrifice potential for that safety. I suppose my argument is that at their optimal ranges, the AH simply out performs everything else, no question about it. And I do admit the Banshee was out-performing both in the recent past.

To keep things relevant to Maxes, you need those direct hits because of their health pool and their AOE resistance. The Banshee needs to be within AH range to reliably kill them. And at that range, the AH kills them quicker.

Just give shields to all maxes and make that common pool, get rid of anchor and zealot overdrive and give Vanu and TR their own version of Hacksaws, case solved.

Maxes in general are caner. NC Maxes are just the most cancerous. Vehicles simply do not belong inside buildings and Galaxies.

Great punchline. Nice set-up and delivery, very Witty. Had me rolling. 9/10.

My reply to this would be echoing what was already mentioned in this thread: certain NC traits (including the I-WIN shield of vanguard) are slightly over the top effective in comparison to the other factions in the most commonly encountered gameplay scenarios. This includes the NC max.

In an open world sandbox environment, the necessity of specific counters (tank mines, decimators, C4) against a unit that can instagib in one or two shots, even at range with slugs, surrounded by infantry, engineering turrets, etc., ready to take out such counters is such a common game scenario.

Pulling a properly equipped NC Max to play the objective which is often inside rooms or in places with cover with a few infantry around, it is likely for someone to be engineer to provide repairs.

Compared to:

Having light assaults with C4 that are able and willing to make it to the NC max knowing their high chances to get instantly killed by the Max either in flight, by infantry on the way to the NC Max, on landing waiting for that nerfed C4 trigger, in the C4 explosion, or after landing by the infantry at the ready. Much less likely. Still less is having two or more light assaults, decimators, tank miners before hand focusing the NC max while some other infantry draws aggro of the infantry.

Meanwhile: TR and VS maxes get shot down by infantry numbers, alongside the same tactics. That extra 0.2 sec TTK difference or whatever it is plus the accuracy needed to aim at the head of infantry with proper duel mercies or 'crab claws' one infantry at a time adds up to a lot of room for just one heavy to land a decimator plus added 'chip' damage to pull the max on retreat.

No NC Max shield to resort to. Zoe-assisted escape is suicide. Lockdown plus the standard accuracy degradation at range (which should be their strong points) won't save the maxes from dying by killing immediate threats.

If NC Max is 'asymmetrically balanced' the way it is, fine: Boost TR and VS anti-infantry max weapons' accuracy at range, and damage dealt to other maxes, and damage output from lockdown, and mobility and damage output of Zoe.

This matches the common-scenario advantages of the NC max, with its ability to shield all damage for a time, without giving one faction a major advantage at the core of the game, objective play.

*sigh*

Nonetheless. The Banshee is feared, the Airhammer is not. Perhaps mistakenly, but there it is. Maybe it's the audio. Maybe it's that the banshee can be used at stand off distances that are too risky for the air hammer. Dunno.

I think you get a similar effect with say Walker vs Ranger... Walker is more effective on paper, but the ranger will chase off aircraft better.

It's ease of use at any range must benefit more players than I thought. Plus it was always multipurpose until recently, so I'm sure it was everywhere.

Honestly, I find the air hammer to be terrifying. Especially since half the pilots I see running it use it as an air to air tool in this sort of " bum rush into point blank range then blast a target apart" tactic. That's in addition to using it at air to ground, where it is also really good.

Yeah, don't get me wrong.... it sucks.


I'm just saying when I play VS I would run into an open field with airhammers circling overhead to get away from a similar one with banshees.


The banshee is terrifying to NC.
The airhammer is terrifying to TR
For the VS who face both.... banshee is the more terrifying by far.