I just bought this thing last night, and have had little chance to use it yet. I did try using it at a tower where we were surrounded. I got sniped or lobbed dead every single time as soon as I got on the turret. Totally worthless in that situation, for sure. I will say one thing though, which is kind of bizarre given the f2p/farming nature of the game and the hordes of players ravenous for xp, and that is, spotting seems to be overlooked by many, even though you can make a little bank with it. Sure, if you know where something is at and you want the kill for yourself, then you won't spot, but if you're team playing, or if you're trying to save the base, or if you can't take them all yourself, then you should spot! I do lots of spotting, I feel like I'm helping out the team even though I play the game like a roving farmer in it's current design. Many times I have continually spotted mana turrets because no one else will. Strange.
Still debating whether to buy it or not. If it's going to get nerfed soon, I'd be throwing my certs out the window. Trialed it numerous times already. The range needs a nerf for sure, as just changing the mouse settings makes it fairly easy to hit targets far off in the distance, regardless of whether or not they're in motion.
If I can't see the Prowler then it probably can't see me. The same is not true for AV MANA Turrets. Yesterday I was in a battle where these two AV turrets continuously rendered and unrendered. For a few seconds they're visible, for the next few they aren't even on my screen. Ask any regular tanker. It won't matter what faction. These things stop rendering regularly around 350m (slightly further than infantry range) or occasionally closer in truly massive battles, but can still hit you up to 800m or so. And even if they do actually render at this range I simply wouldn't know as I can't see them. I've been hit from Elli Tower while next to the Octagon. You can barely even see the base turret from that range.
Spotting does help, but only on turrets that render. If they aren't rendering for you then you simply can't spot them. If they're in the rare case where they're fluctuating between rendering and unrendering, you can still spot them when they render but it will immediately fade when they unrender.
This is blatantly wrong. I have never seen a MBT stop rendering at 236 meters, but I have seen an AV MANA turret do so. The render priority is different than infantry or aircraft, but it is not the same as vehicles. You cannot spot what you cannot see. I'd rather it wasn't nerfed, just fixed so that it's not impossible to see in some situations. At least they fixed the rocket trail. Use to be total **** to magically take hits out of thin air.
Since I haven't been able to reply since I started the thread, I'd like to reiterate my point. I can deal with how these turrets work. I don't mind that they cost nothing. I don't mind that engineers can hop off them, or have laser accuracy. What I do have a problem with is how they do not render and are unable to be spotted regularly, which SOE has already indicated is not intended as per PU02. If you want them to be buffed <300m in compensation then that is a different discussion entirely, and you can go make your own thread on it just as I have made mine here.
Except I'm probably one of the first people to ever use the thing as I bought it with SC the day it was put into the game. I'm probably one of the first to abuse the hell out of it as well as I recall having some of the most fun I'd ever had in this game with it, shooting at tanks literally 1000m away from the walls of Dahaka. I still love the thing, actually. As for the effectiveness, it is usually a situational weapon that doesn't generate much score/hour and mostly just serves to make the game less fun for anyone on the receiving end. I still think it is a fun weapon, but the playstyle isn't dynamic and, short of getting 2-3 of my other outfit mates together, I would be better off with my highly certed 2/2 AV Vanguard that I love to death.
At launch you could spam Q-spot. People were just blindly using it to find snipers in the mountains or spamming to find people in the dark. I might be wrong, but I believe in one of the updates SOE put a cooldown on Q-Spotting to prevent spam abuse.
If they refuse to fix the render issue, the weapon should be balanced around that. I pose an idea: Give it a scope that can be accessed with the same button as infantry sights/scopes. This scope highlights vehicles, and only vehicles. It also constricts field of view. In order to guide the rocket, the operator MUST be aiming down this scope, and he can only guide one rocket at a time. This would, in my mind, effectively increases the TTK on armored targets, allow them to maintain their ability to strike from 'hidden' positions, and makes them more vulnerable to enemy infantry.
They seem to be fine with the weapon itself. The only change they've done on this weapon was a projectile lifetime reduction - which just reduced the effective maximum range from 1.5km to 1km. lol...
At the very least it needs a cooldown on placement .. Should not be able to shoot > watch it destroyed > place another > shoot > watch it destroyed > place another > shoot > rinse repeat .. Just killed the same Engi and turret 6 times .. Only to see them rez and a new turret up 5 seconds later .... Rewarding gameplay and people wonder why most only care about farming and certs
Actually its really easy to use and is my preferred choice over HA for anti-vehicle purposes. If your base is under attack you just run up the nearest hill, deploy turret, start hitting enemy armour, they notice, turn to face you, you get off, run to the next hill deploy a new turret, start again. Quite safe to be honest, even when only a couple hundred metres away. But when your tank is getting shot near the crown by guys on the Allatum bio landing pad, dont say that its 'balanced' or they are 'vulnerable', remember snipers have a max OHK distance of 250 metres, so actually YOU CANT kill these engineers with one round to the head because they hop off and hide. Its safe, lucrative and stupid.
It seems that the AV Mana DOES render at 500m+. Unless that distance marker is way past where the base it. It just refuses to render as so unless you're in the middle of jack ****. Making them impossible to fight when your in anything close to a fight. To make it better, at this range with me using a 12X scope, I couldn't tell where my shots are landing making it 100% guess work finding the right mildot to aim with. Couldn't find the right spot before he took out the AA turret next to me and went poof from de-rendering when he got off of the AV Mana. The AV Mana itself still stayed rendered after get off of at though. They do render as vehicles. They just have NOTHING close to the threat level needed for their power making them the first things to de-render.
And if you manage to hit a moving target near the crown from allatum bio lab...then frankly...you deserve the kill...or maybe the title of "luckshot of the decade". I at least have serious problems to reliably hit a moving 1-pixel target on my screen with that small(often hardly visible) white target dot of my mana turret.
Luckyshot? there were a squad of 6-8 on the landing pad. It wasnt luck, it was pure rocket saturation on our tank convoy going towards crown from Ti Alloys, penned in, rear armour exposed, 16 tanks few escaped. If you think shooting tanks from that distance is hard, try shooting back at them. They werent rendered, we couldnt even retaliate, that was the real killer. Invisibility.
So yeah..if you pile up then they just shot at someone and hoped it will hit anyone down there. That it's easier to hit 16 large targets from a higher position than hitting 6 small targets from a lower position....that is called basic tactical warfare. ;-)
Yeah it is, but from 2 bases away? We COULDNT ACTUALLY shoot back since its out of render range? Okay, you seem to know your stuff, tell me how ANYONE as a tanker can counter this 'tactic'? What did we do wrong? We crossed a bridge? We pulled tanks in the first place? If your convoy gets attacked by a squad of invisible Mana turrets over two bases away, what do you do?
I'm just going to throw in that i have my reaver set up dropping myself off on mountain tops behind tank columns so i can take out a couple of tanks before air comes to get me. and i have an adjustable dpi mouse which would make it way easier to hit pixel perfect targets if i set it up for this game.
Riddle me this then. I'm on Indar Excavation, I can clearly see enemy vehicles at Quartz Ridge camp, but I never see any AV Mana turret, only their projectiles. And those said projectiles are coming out of thing air, and are CLOSER to me. Do they render as vehicles? No. They have MAX (no, not maximum, the exosuit) render priority. Vehicles / MAX & Turrets / Infantry.
