Anti-Air

You have an armor upgrade that increases your HP by 25% at maximum rank.

So yeah.

I call it aircav because ts been called that in PS for almost 10 years now, not gonna stop here.

This is the simple rub. Aircav is very effective against Every. Single. Typeof. Unit. Inthegame.

Dual Burster max is (currently not) effective against..... Aircav... Only.

It's an extremely one-dimentional cert that spends long periods of time hitting the crap out of aircraft that it never kills.

Trust me that you're not talking to a guy that runs around saying dual burster should instaflame aircav whenever they meet. In fact I'm a proponent of making the range on burster max extremely short compared to what it is now. I don't think a dual burster should be much of a threat at all to maneuvering aircraft 500m away, but I do think that if a dual burster bides it's time and waits to open up hard on an aircraft thats within a couple hundred yards and closing, the aircraft should be smoked like clint eastwood. If an aircraft is hovering within burster range god should have no mercy on its soul. Neither of those is the case.

A good pilot flying a basic no-upgrade ESF that's on his toes should be able to escape a burster. A not so good pilot thats flying 5mph or hovering and rocketspaming should not. Problem is, right now they both will.

Aircav sucks against air.

It's like having an infantry unit that sucks against infantry.

Not nearly as bad as a dual burster sucks against any random BR1 that owns a no-upgrade carbine, an A key, and a D key.

I am pretty happy with my Max Dual burster, wouldn't mind if they would be better but they seem to do the job most of the time. I might not get a kill 75% of the time but it certainly scares them off.

O... GOD... its just ridiculous. I understand why they did it because it would of been insanely OP if they hadn't, but they really over did it. One second you are shredding a metal aircraft to pieces and a second later it turns in to a nerf gun when you encounter a flesh and bones infantry. I understand that they didn't want to make the bursters a viable option as a anti-infantry weapon but right now its just silly.

Heh., yeah. It's possible sometimes, but it's only the ones that obviously don't know what they're doing and stand there letting you land every single shot on them. If they're juking and making an effort you're going to be their lunch.

After countless hours of crying on the forum the rocket pod noobs got their will of being able to obliberate MBTs in seconds without any risk attached.
If I drive a lightning into a bunch of infantry I am dead.
If I fly a ESF above a huge zerg, I can gib some hapless tank before getting the **** out with the afterburner.

This whole "AA should only scare away" approach is ridiculous. Fighter pilots need to die, frequently, just like everyone else on the battlefield.

Ok then, why does the lone nerd in an ESF just need his left mouse button to kill an MBT and why do I need a whole dedicated squad doing the thankless job of shooting into the air to maybe kill a ESF, while I underperform and earn no certpoints whatsoever?

Oh, and what if the ESFs come in packs and do ~teamwork~? Then it's right back to the drawingboard for ******** opinions for you.

Exactly. If I spend 700 smedley bucks on a burster plus additional certpoints, I want ESFs to die, I want their bad pilots to send me tells that I am haxxoring the **** out of the game and I want their tears on the forum. Period.

Everytime an ESF pilot whines on the forum, Planetside 2 got a little better.

I am not sure whether to laugh of cry about this.

On the other side of the spectrum we have AT weapons that instagib infantry. If making sense was ever a paradigm in PS2s design, it's high time to put it back on the table.

or like NC infantry weapons compared to TR infantry weapons

I suggest an anti-air harpoon homing weapon to be put on tanks, if it hits it pulls the plane to the ground to eat dirt.

kind of funny how the intro cinematic shows a light assault taking out a galaxy with a piddly little machine gun, i want THAT gun but TANK sized.

What? I can unload like 6 clips of eng carbine 5m away on a burster and fail to kill him as he blows me up with his bursters. Are TR guns that good or something? If so you guys really need a nerf.

G2A anti-air won't get kills. The only way to reliably kill air is to use more air. That doesn't mean G2A AA isn't doing its job. Harrassed by bursters, skygaurds, missiles, etc., an ESF will probably be able to escape, but they won't be able to accomplish much.

Ground based Anti-Air is not meant to be a hard counter to air, but it's still very effective at shutting air down, even without killing it.

Besides, Air are some of the most obvious targets in the game, if they were too easy to take down, there wouldn't be an air game at all. Who would want to fly when climbing into an ESF would be certain death?

I can tell you from personal experience that you can unload both MAX bursters, hitting with (literally) every shot on a ESF that's taking his time to aim and shoot a volley of rockets on a tank and he'll still have time to fly away with at least 1/3rd of his health. That's not "doing his job", that's not "deterring", that's "mildly inconveniencing" at best.

I could live with AA and consider buying one if at least ESFs would be rocked so hard when hit by anti air that their pilots think they're in a cocktail shaker. but right now AA is useless at their intended role of defending against aircraft because you're not defended against a single ESF unless you bring a disproportionately amount of resources with you in the form of dedicated AA units.

If he's that bad, take your default starter HA rocket, and hit him with it.

It's OHKO.

AA should be what kills Air, AA has no other role and is locked into a specific role, ESF can run around in rocket pods and destroy tanks/infantryair, AA has one purpose and one purpose only and that is too shoot aircraft out of the sky, SOE ruined the balance by nerfing AA this much

ESF can spec to dogfight, but should not be near as effective as a skyguard or burster max who are siting ducks to everything else

The problem is that ESFs also hardcounter teamwork. More enemies = More target practice
If you do teamwork and get a squad of AA-Heavies or so then that just means that the ESF will get more kills when he fires his rockets and since you need like 4-6 HAs to kill an ESF that means a lot of kills for the pilot.

the problem right now is that the "other air" is as hellbent on farming the **** outta anything grounded as they are, so dont bother being anti air.

cant blame them, tho.

airwhoring = tons of certs in record time with barely no effort involved
antiair air = mediocre gain for the effort

Look 5 of us working in a team killing air, 4 heavies and an engineer. We were killing them before they hit their target.

Dual burster maxes shred aircraft, go check your facts a dual burster kills a esf in under 1 clip from each arm. Which means a dual burster kills a esf faster than the esf can kill you.
I can meet you on any server against any esf pilot you can find and show you if you like, i will record the hilarity.
No joke just send me a pm and i will set it up.
This will not happen because anyone who actually uses dual bursters knows they shred esfs in range and forum buloney and the pr campaign going on is nothing but a hollow whinefest.
What i see are lone wolves not wanting any air to ever hurt them wanting a team game turned into a giant cod map.
So "put your money where your mouth is" and i will meet anyone in this game 1 v1 with my dual burster and record it, i will wipe the floor with you.

If I'm alone a planning to get easy certs... I pull a reaver with rocket pods. (or play around in a biolab for an hour or so)
If air is bothering me and I'm on the ground... I pull a reaver with A2A and rotary.

Most AA is so utterly ineffective at it's role you need a handful of them before they begin having effect.

The Skyguard is to obvious a target, has to much spread and it's bullets are to slow.
The AA-Phalanx Turret dies incredibly quickly to rocket pods and takes ages to repair, on it's own it stands no chance to kill, not to mention even defend itself.
The A-30 Walker does to little damage (or has to low ROF) and it's bullets move to slow to be effective AA.

The AA HA lock on launcher is saved only because it can be used against tanks and even infantiry, it's the only AA capable weapon I'd consider to be competent at what it does.
Meanwhile the Burster MAX is only protected by the render range, it's damage is nice in balance with the ROF, but they could use a buff in their bullet speed.

With breaker rockets I can kill infantry in 4-5 shots, kill tanks by shooting them in their *** or using my main gun to finish them off if I head them anywhere else, They are effective against liberators and Galaxies, turrets stand no chance.
If I ever get caught in to Much AA I have the speed, manoeuvrability and structural integrity to fly out with minimal damage, repair, and fight somewhere else before they even know I'm gone.


Pilots keep argueing that AA is supposed to be a deterent, and requires Teamwork.

Then why does AA not deter Air? It doesn't kill them, it doesn't damage them, at worst it will put a bad pilot at half health and a good one won't even take scratch damage.
And why would AA, a highly specilized weapons platform with only one function be so bad at it's purpose that it require 3 times the number of pilots to even be able to 'deter' the air?
Why can air be so effective at killing so many targets without having to be working together?


AA is currently underpowered, or Air is Overpowerd, take you pick.

Maybe they just need to make xp in aircraft 1/10 If they can kill 10x faster thus gaining xp and certs 10x faster than infantry.

Bet this would reduce air a bit. Or if it takes 3 infantry to bring down air then 1/3 the exp while flying. I bombed the other night for the first time, had 20 kills in about 2min tops. Then TR finally got smart and stopped coming outside.

Right now its just too huge a benefit to fly and spam the ground infantry not to do it. Tanks are almost as bad, but since tanks are much easier to use i have seen 30 magriders all of a sudden facing 30 vanguards and huge HA zerg to fight them and they do not get away as easy as a plane, dipping into a valley, around a building or hill.