Balance Pass Post 1: Vehicle Weapons and the Harasser

Primarily the Banshee... It can be done with the Rotory if you know where your target is on your fly over... but, if you use the Banshee, you can mow down groups of soldiers in quick succession. Not even MAX units last long against the Banshee. The bad thing about the Banshee, it leaves you heavily undefended against air... unless it's fully certed... so, you wanna fly low, fly fast, get in and get out and use stealth.

So can harasser get some sort of rumble cage or some perk that allows us to unflip the vehicle? Really stupid for the vehicle to just explode because of terrible terrain flips. Least let us get out and unflip it or something.

The best 'nerf' to Harassers would have been:

1. No Empire Specific Weapons allowed on a Nanite Systems vehicle.
(No more Vulcan, Saron, Enforcer Harassers - who are the main offenders at being 'OP')

2. Remove the 'Repair On The Go' ability.
NO other vehicle can do this, why was it allowed in the first place?
(The 3rd seat was intended for MAXs, but also other classes if they wanted to use only their personal weapon and shoot travelling backwards, like the Flash rumble seat, but the Repair Tool was an exploit plain and simple that SOE, somehow, overlooked or allowed to occur. Either way a terrible mistake.)

Once Harassers aren't zooming around with Vulcans, Sarons or Enforcers and have to go away and hide to repair, like every other vehicle, I guarantee they won't be OP any more.

What SOE is planning for the Harasser is their usual over-nerfing with little thought put what is actually causing the vehicle / weapon / whatever to be 'OP' in the first place.

Well some weapons are multi purpous like the/ blaster thing on the mag-rider/ enforcer- Vulcan, making them weaker against infantry not really a good idea.

Woah woah I didint know then enforcer was op

Well yeah, it isn't really, but in the interest of fairness I mentioned all the factions faction specific weapons for the Harasser...

Just removing the ability to repair on the move would do plenty to balance the harasser. Alternatively reducing its HP so people dont feel so comfortable driving right up on the backside of a tank knowing they immediately have the upper hand.

A harasser without backseat repair and a halberd is still ridiculous, but its a whole lot less fun for the harasser.
It just means they will have to retreat for reps like the rest of us, and they don't get cool toys.

It'd still be able to take 5 lightning AP shots with full composite.

Calling it right now, this is what makes the Vulcan completely useless - People complain about the weapon but it is only strong at short ranges. Even in this ranges it is still out performed by the Saron HRB with a good gunner. Yet the Saron is capable of shooting out to the furthest of ranges with controlled fire.

Seriously hope they strongly think about it. perhaps the other changes see the NC Anti Infantry weapon get some use!

Nope, as a Prowler with Anchor the only way I can survive long enough to be able to Mobilize and retreat is with Front Armor plating. Proximity will still see no use.

Im not expecting any less then that from soe

"Uselesshotgun" makes more sense

With the nanoweave changes, I surely hope that one-shotting infantry past the 150m mark will still be able to do, considering there are snipers out there (like myself) who will snipe at a 300+ range. If it doesn't 1 hit on anyone without nanorank 5, it's no use to snipe anymore.

If you implement the 150m 1-shot kill, you've successfully destroyed an entire way of game-play

Well it isnt, but is fair to remove all of the empire specific guns

My personal opinion on the harasser is that the armor is just so stupidly tough the whole thing should be removed and extensively reworked.
Even as a person who's been dabbling with harassers lately, i feel they are hopelessly powerful, being tougher to kill than lightnings and often MBTs. I dont feel that i'm playing fairly when driving a 3/3 harasse i can whiz past a tank, drop a vulcan mag in its backside, shrug off an incredible amount of damage as there are 3 engies hotswapping to repair - and scamper off to safety and repeat.

Speed/Armor/Firepower. pick two please.

Of course this isnt going to happen and i accept that. But it does make me giggle when players tell me its a comparable vehicle to a HMMWV - because a hmmwv will shrug off a 150mm armor piercing tank round travelling at 250m/s, wont it?

a few quickies
-Vehicle weight/ traction: why can a sunderer shove a vanguard to the side as they drive next to each other? Why can a harasser push a lightning?
- Death in a MAX. Why cant i right click a class on the spawn screen and set it as my default, with it being highlighted, so that when I die I am not suddenly light assault. I know, if I pay more attention the problem is negated, but its a small quality of life upgrade that would mean a lot to people.

now on to vehicles
-It would be awesome to see "tiers" of armor, and associated limitations. Lets say I have vehicle armor rank 5: front, and rank 2: side, could we perhaps mix and match, so front armor may be rank 3, and side armor may be rank 2?

-Lightning Design: This tank really suffers from a lot of maladies. One, a huge one, is that it gets stuck far, far too easy. Please redesign the treads so we get traction on the front and back of our model. I cant count the number of times I have gotten stuck over rough terrain. Back when there was no harasser, this was ok, now we have to compete with a stronger vehicle that can go over all terrain, while we are limited to roads.

-Lighting Guns: The lightning can be boring due to a lack of variety. I propose on the PTS trying out a modified version of the Liberator's shredder turret. It would be akin to a NS version of the TR Vulcan, but more erratic.

-Liberator: as an ESF pilot I have noticed a major flaw in liberators, a few actually. Defense. An experienced Lib team is dangerous, but it is not a novice friendly aircraft. I think the Shredder should be added as both a tail gun, and forward facing option. Perhaps modified a bit, but for how they are this would be a great addition to them, and compliment the option of the Tank buster with an even more inaccurate and wild spread, but at the cost of having to get in close, but also keep away your enemies.

-Flash: A cert that simply makes the rumble seat face forward, i would love to see how a forward facing rumble seat plays out on the PTS. This would be the ultimate in "harassers", dangerous, fun, rewarding.

I'm going to be very interested to see how you implement this.

The halberd doesn't travel fast enough to reliably hit a fast moving target at "longer ranges". SO, if you mean, it'll do more damage at longer range ... I would say "if you can hit anything".

Time and again in this game it's demonstrable that [short range, fast dealing damage] > [hard hitting long range capability].

This might work for the halberd in terms of it being ok against NC/TR heavy tanks or deployed AMSs, but it's going to be a poor second to the vulcan in the role of skirmishing.

Woah. No, this would be bad.

The Shredder is powerful. Putting that on a Lightning would sure be nice... but it'd make the Lightning into the godliest of tanks. The Shredder isn't a poor-man's Vulcan. The Vulcan is a poor-man's Shredder.

A lot of people under-appreciate just what the shredder can do - especially with some certs invested into it. There's a reason a fair few lib crews choose the shredder over the dalton.

http://i.4cdn.org/vg/src/1385526904337.png

Really do your Homework SOE and do it fast, because there are some "minor adjustments" but the ZOE max is an MAJOR issiue and not some "minor adjustments" after the months i am getting sick from playing against VS maxes in Easy mode..... it really SUX and the VS max can decide if they attack, if they retreat... if they activate or not... there is no downside of ZOE... REALLY NO DOWN SIDE!!!

So if you are taking much longer to release the next balance pass, please do a Hotfix where you REMOVE(!!!) The speed from ZOE because they where now for weeks and months op, STOP THIS NOW!!!!

I played for about three months past launch, gave up, and recently came back about 30 days ago.

The Harasser is bananas OP. It takes way the hell too much damage and the repair-on-the-go ability is insane especially considering even a low-ranking repair tool can get back to full in like six or seven seconds.

Reduce the hitpoints considerably and remove the repair-on-the-go ability. 5 shots from a damn Lightning AP? That's how many it takes me to destroy a freakin' MBT in an average engagement.

Two Lightning/Vannie AP hits should set it on fire forcing either a quick evac or a real flippin' quick repair.