Balance Pass Post 1: Vehicle Weapons and the Harasser

Lets see maxed surger,racer,comp,turbo,vulcan,marauder,halberd,fury,cobalt
I spent over 29 000 certs on it I guess ; got like 4,4mio exp on it thats 200xp per cert? 22k certs

I know I got also some other weapons for my Harasser, Halberd, Fury and saving up for Saron on VS and on my TR i got the Halberd, Vulcan and Marauder almost maxed. The little buggy Is my favorite toy and my biggest cert sink. Almost any cert it earns me gets reinvested into it.

It was just to point out what a Harasser worth it's name with a single good weapon will cost

I'm 12,000 certs into my TR harasser, and almost half that into my NC one. (bought the weapons with gold, not certs) and have all weapons for it including AA. Yes I'm that guy.

And this has some serious nerfs, but like all nerfs, it means becoming even better than I am and finding the right gunner for the best cohesion. Thank you SOE for making my life this much more............challenging!

If you want this to happen, then revamp it to have area denial roles. Currently the only real use for tank mines is pizza delivery on a deployed sunderer. C4 is more then enough for that role.
Minefield:

• Mines immune to damage(can only de disarmed by engineers)
• Deploy radius around each deployed mine to spread out the field and not have stackable damage(2 mines on each other is a deathtrap, that should not be the purpose)
• More mines/cert level, less resource cost/mine

Given the now-drastic nature of these changes, and the high entry cost into being able to use the Harasser successfully, I'd vehemently request that certs be refunded, whether partially or in whole. Having spent thousands of certs on my Harasser to have the abilities and traits mostly removed or entirely altered, only for it to be turned into a large Flash, is supremely upsetting. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, despite all the rejoicing from the COD fans who want kills on everything to be handed to them on a silver auraxium platter (see: cries for Dalton A2A nerfs), of course, they'll probably get their way with that as well.

Please tell me that, somewhere in this thread, a developer has come in and said, "by the way, we recognize that the Flash is badly broken at the moment, and are actively looking into fixing it."

Hear Hear!!

I have some ideas for redesigning the NC ES MBT/HSR secondaries as sidegrades of the Halberd (TR gets a sidegrade of the Fury, so it makes sense since the Halberd is practically an NC styled weapon as it is).

C85 will be redesigned into the ML45 Sentry: The ML45 will fire high explosive rockets that travel at 225m/s with lower direct impact damage, but a huge and deadly splash radius. Direct hit damage is 1000 and splash damage is 1000 with a 2m internal radius and falls to 1 damage at 6m. This rocket will have a refire time of 2.75s and with certs this could be lowered to 2.25s. This will be an anti-infantry specializing weapon obviously.



And I even have an idea to alter the rocket based Enforcer ML85 in order to make it perform its job in a not so boring non-NC way:

ML85 Enforcer: This will be an extremely high damage single shot rocket that travels at 325m/s and does 2000 damage per impact but has AP splash (nonexistent in reality, only there to add more damage to direct hits to ensure death of infantry and add more damage to MAX direct hits). The refire time on this weapon will be 4.25 seconds and with certs you can lower this to 3.75s.

This, I've literally been saying this (or one other variation) for months. Composite Armor is required because the vehicle is ineffective without it (just like Turbo). NAR doesn't do anything, as you will typically be focus-fired before they can kick in, but they do shorten the time to repair if you manage to escape. Mine-guard helps against one very serious threat, but most people don't even bother to use tank-mines as a precaution, they wait until the enemy is already on them, and as such, have already wasted the element of surprise. Stealth is the only option that's even worth considering currently, but it works best on AI loadouts, or paired with a Halberd. The AI loadouts can be fun, but if you're using a Halberd, you're likely focused on Armor, and it requires what amounts to ideal play (successful flank w/o being seen, superb accuracy) to score kills. Most players can't pull that off, and that's assuming a heavy cert investment to reach that point.

I've basically come to the conclusion that having Composite Armor simply makes it too complicated to balance the Harasser properly. There are 3 levels of operation for composite armor: the naked Harasser (r0), rank 3, and rank 4. Running without Composite, or a max rank of another defense, is basically suicide. You are very soft, and forced to work the edges at small-scale battles. Any real 'combined arms' fire forces you to leave. Composite 3 is the breaking point; it's cheap to get to, but it still doesn't give you that 'we might actually survive' feel like Composite 4. Composite 4 lets us engage any single target we want and expect to fight to a draw (mutual kill, someone picked off early by an outsider, we chose to disengage and flee, etc). The point I'm trying to make is that it is apparently too hard to tune the damage/survivability of everything when Harassers have 3 wildly different durabilities.

So, delete composite armor. Buff the base health or resistance. More health would require longer to repair, but would also make heavy hits (tank shells, turrets, rockets) seem more substantial. More base resistance has the opposite effect: you repair faster, healing more effective health per unit, and reducing the 'impact' of heavy rounds. I sadly think it needs a small tweak to both, set it at Composite 2 level (leave health the same) and go from there.

To answer the quote's question, the small arms bonus is currently noticeable and valuable, yet removing it was probably one of the smarter things done in this patch. It currently serves to allow the Harasser to survive against an overwhelming amount of infantry. With that said, if there are soo many infantry, why did no one setup mines, pull an AV max, or a HA, or tank, man the gun on that Sunderer, etc.? Combined with nerfing almost everything the Harasser has, it's basically a slap in the face. If SOE wants to pigeon-hole Harassers as AI, I can live with that. My problem is, the nerf list includes almost every facet of Harasser play that currently makes it good at this role. Once again, there is no moderation in the adjustments. It's like they surveyed the who's who of QQ, let everyone throw their ideal nerf suggestion in a box, and then said, 'Surprise, just kidding, we're going to do all of them!'

It is 250 xp per cert, your Harasser has earned you 17600 certs.

terrible idea, leave the game mechanic how it is, its already so much worst then it was when the game came out, its painful to play now for people who liked the game how it came out... of course the newbies do not realize this, i bet most of the players who been around after the release are gone now

vehicles need to be WAY stronger again... and reducing AV weapon damage to infantry is just the worst idea EVER

give us something new, instead of messing with the game mechanic... anything ... update the galaxy with new features... the continent ... anything would be appreciated ... its getting boring not to have any new content

every game mechanic update so far was a disaster , just leave the game alone for once and expand it rater then mutilating it

nov 20th my subscription will run out , i doubt i will be renewing it ... i wont support a game that is a sad excuse for what i signed up for 6 months ago !

Indeed, no use to try kill Harassers with mines as for some reason they always seem to detect mines even if it's night time and I try to place them cleverly. Dunno what cheats they use or maybe some thermal vision shows mines like MINE ---> HERE.

Well as I drive my harasser a lot. I can spot and avoid mines pretty easy as they always pop up at the same spots. Also I got a gunner with Thermal, if he sees a mine he just yells "Mines x o'clock xy m". I stop, he blows them up with the halberd and we drive on or i mark the spot in my head and avoid it till we got time. Same procedure with spawn beacons, abandoned vehicles.

Not exactly. I'm still saying it should be nerfed, it has too much freedom and I completely agree. But the problem is by nerfing the harasser this further proves that it's composite armor or nothing. No harasser will pick anything but composite armor. So what i'm saying is remove composite and make that the default stock harasser then balance around that. The option of composite armor vastly outplays any other option for the harasser and gives no diversity among harassers.

After rereading the whole nerf 2x times now. I am a bit confused to the fact that the Harasser takes a decent amount of Certs to get into. You need to get the beginning set of certs, then begin buying weapons, upgrades for the weapons, etc. Then you come around the block stating you will change stuff to this extent "Things are Buffed against the Harasser.". Then "....reducing the effectiveness of the Harasser.". I personal see two negatives here. You not only increased damage to it, you made it weaker. Then WITHOUT mass testing think this is great for the mass. Yeah, yeah let the Call of Crack players have their fun. Those guys only stick around for a month. Then you have people who actually play hardcore for months. Who won't quit, but you start to shake their hopes of this game(Looking up SWG).

I know you have a lot planned to come up, but you are not starting off well. All I see now is Vanguards own the field, my harasser.... Excuse me my 110 hours, some 20,000 cert harasser. Now will die from 1 C4, can't even plan to hurt a AP/Halberd Tank, now can't get away from the enemy, AND finally dies no matter what when engaging ANY armor. Thanks for the "Modification of the Core game."

Refund my certs on my harasser before this patch comes in or when it does so I can at least throw them somewhere else and have a little more fun before You Put the final nail in the game's coffin.

This is a nice change, but do you also work on the way mines cna be removed? So far we can disarm them, drive over them or shoot them to get rid of them. The shoot part is a problem as most tank drivers simply shoot them or they get killed by splash if you have a battle going on nearby. This way i loose around 40-60% of all the mines im placing somewhere.

Don't overdo the Harasser nerf SOE. What you've suggested is good but get pro harasser teams to test it out, make sure its still a useful transport vehicle. We don't need a flash 2.0

Since they added the 'Rank 6 repair tool can disable mines' feature, I've been arguing it should also work on your own personal mines. Not allied ones, just your own. I'm growing weary of watching my mines slide down a hill into some ditch where they won't do anything.

Welcome to Planetside. This game features slow-paced combat with lots of players that can't even render each other complaining how everything that kills them is absurdly OP and needs to be nerfed. If something seems unbalanced, wait 4-6 months, and the nerfs will rain from above like that fire suppression crap helicopters drop on forest fires.

SOE: 'Hey, we fixed it!'
Player Base: 'I don't care anymore, I'm playing [BF4/COD/CS:GO/DOTA/LOL/etc.] now.'

That's my biggest problem with the 'We don't do refunds or remove things from the game' mentality. Instead of just taking out things that are clearly broken (Composite Armor), the Devs are instead nerfing: Composite Armor, Turbo regen, all applicable Harasser weapons minus the C-85, tank shell resistance, small arms resistance, C4 resistance, AI weapon resistance, the ability to repair from the rear, the ability to bypass or circumvent tank-mines, and they're taking Proximity Radar out of a slot where people prefer their ES abilities, and into the defense slot, which indirectly screws Harassers even more.

Composite Armor is broken. The whole idea was stupid. SOE and the playerbase have borne witness to the same scenario, 'Hmm, all the Harassers are using Composite Armor.' Some of the players actually came to the correct conclusion, that the Harasser is simply too weak for its intended role without Composite Armor. I don't care whether you think the Harasser needs more health or better resistances, the fact remain it needs one or the other to have any purpose on the field of battle, even more so after this 'balance pass'.

So, instead of SOE manning up and just removing it, refunding people's certs, they are nerfing it into uselessness, effectively wasting our certs/playtime. You know why? Because if they returned certs on everything they nerfed/wanted to remove, we'd (everyone over BR ~40) all have piles of certs to spend on whatever we want, and no one would buy SC. Good Game, SOE, you're destroying your playerbase because you can't admit you were wrong.

I'd be mad, but I just don't care at this point. My subscription runs out in a month, I sure as hell won't be resubbing. I'll just enjoy this game until myself and the other 6 players inhabiting WattherWoodCeresHelioConnBriggsger give up and move on to Call of Battle 1072: The Norman Invasion. FTS

It's far too late for that. The end result of all the proposed changes leaves the Harasser worse than the Flash, being larger, approximately the same speed with little bonus to durability. It has an extra seat, and an enclosed cabin for seats 1 & 2. Those are the selling points, currently...

I'd be more than happy to test whatever they're doing to it, but I don't post on reddit, have a twitter account, or expect them to bother letting people try it before implementation. They've made far too much money on the Harasser, already.

Does the Harasser flip over constantly because you had the audacity to just try to drive it? No?

Not worse than the flash.

I say this harasser nerf is too harsh.... The way i see it, infantry in this game is getting waaaaay to powerful.

So comp armour has its resistance to small arms , tanks mines and tanks mines removed while nerfing the damage reduction potential at the same time? What will it do now?

SOE care to buff the sunderer comp armour ?

Instead of nerfing things why not buff everything else like tanks, lightnings and sundeerers?

I love how the ZOE max hasn't been touched, the harasser was the only thing in the NC arsenal that could effectively take out a ZOE max what will we use now?