As a main LA I feel really at disadvantage against vehicles now... Harassers need 2 c4's to kill, previously all you needed was to drop a c4 in the ground and blow up when the driver tried a road kill. Needing a second on the ground often takes too much time. Trying to "predict" where the harasser is going to come from next and just dropping to c4's in the same spot is basically trashing nanites away. Getting one c4 on a harasser was already a challenge, two is almost impossible, plus double nanite cost if you miss it. Harassers are too fast to get constistant shots and shooting with carabine or rocklets don't even scare them off. Why DBG made them more tanky makes absolutely no sense to me, it still farming infantary while being more resistant against everything. The recent sunderer buff as well is abysmal. So, I spend time flanking... SOMEHOW I manage to sneak around 40+ pair of eyes spawning from that bus (how I pull that out while using the shiniest shoot-me neon cammo is my problem), Take the time to get 2 c4s, blow it up and a rocklet to finish IF the sunder was not using deploy shield or composite armor. That was already hard to do. Now it takes one extra rocklet dump to kill it and if an engineer gets a repair on, all my trip was for absolutely nothing because the long reload that rocklets have. Sunderers died too quickly because 80% of the players are playing heavy assault and the few engineers are petting maxes... The vehicle was not weak... It died too quickly because no one cared about defending it.
I actually disagree, kinda. Never use C4, so all I've got is a Rocklet Rifle. Most vehicles are practically untouchable anyway without C4, but the damn thing finally has the ammo capacity to ever kill something. Blowing sunndies to pieces left and right it seems, and occasionally I can actually damage a tank. Pre-CAI the RR was just awful and useless. Better now, in my opinion. About the only good thing to come out of the CAI.
LAs got off pretty good with the update. A new jetpack, better rocklet rifle, and vehicles had their anti-infantry capabilities nerfed which significantly benefits LA. So overall it was a net bonus for the LA. Throwing down a brick of C4 and hoping the harasser drove over it was always a risky strategy that could easily result in lost nanites or worse. Sundies got a slight buff to health but considering that downtime is bad and most of the downtime in this game is the result of a faction not having spawn logistics to a good fight ... the sundy change is good as it will help with the downtime problem.
I totally agree that a Harasser Buff was an odd choice, mostly the same reasons too. The Harasser is NOT a tank, it fulfils a fundamentally different role, it is a small fast flanking unit that survives by evading threats and keeping on the move so it doesn't get pinned down. 1 C4 or 3 Python AP shots to kill both required the attacker to out-skill the driver unless he/she was caught with their metaphorical pants down. Either way, it was fair, the LA might as well ignore Harassers now, even if caught unawares all he has to do is hear your jets as you drop one C4 then boost away before you can complete the attack at least other units aren't as fast and take the same amount of C4. As for Sunderers, I already avoided using C4 on them where possible. 2 Tank mines with a Sticky nade was the same nanites and could kill most Sunderers in one blast. Plus if you died before setting off the mines the enemy wouldn't always spot and remove the mines while C4 was wasted regardless. The Rocklet rifle was the only thing that made C4 viable, and I concur that weakening the LA's overall anti-sunderer firepower is a flawed strategy that limits skilled players from influencing the game by solo plays. This I suspect is an attempt to encourage group play but will likely only result in more static battles as it becomes harder for sneak assaults from LAs to dislodge an entrenched position. They need to balance the spread of classes better by incentivising the use of classes that are lacking in a hex.
I don't play LA much but I also don't understand the harrasser buff. I can sort of make sense of it when considering how the C4 throwing was smoothed. The first day after CAI, a harrasser tried running me over (was a medic). It was coming uphill, so I was able to jump over it and land a C4 on the windshield at the same time. I doubt I would've been able to do it wit the old C4 throwing. The C4 killed it because I'd been hitting it with my primary for a while. Admittedly this is a niche case. Solo harrassers should be punished, or rather, ALL harrassers should be punished for sitting in one spot. They're made for mobility, but now they're much safer if they want to be a static kobalt turret. My C4 game has been through the roof since CAI, though. But I don't do it as an LA so I can't speak to that
As a LA main I actually feel they are a bit too powerful vs vehicles now. Despite the slight loss of damage, the RR is now more accurate at range and the double ammo makes it a premium tool for destroying sundies and Main Battle Tanks. Throw in c4 and even a single LA has a lot of strength when it comes to destroying things.
I am not a fan of the LA as solo Sunderer Killer. It's just too easy for LA to get to a Sunderer in many maps and Sunderer placements. Which results in too many medium and small fights ending "prematurely" and those medium/small fights becoming too short and too scarce. They buffed the Sunderer resistance to ESFs a while back, and I was glad. I used ESFs too, but always felt it was dumb to have 1 ESF able to shut down or prevent small and medium fights.
That's a great point. Many bases just have crap locations for a Sunderer (All of Hossin), and once they knew where it was it was game over, there's just too much cover and concealment to jet pack through on your way to an easy kill. I'd rather side towards too much sundy health than too little. But Harassers..... and I'll add Flashes to the list, they need a serious health nerf, especially against C4 and dumbfires.
Agreed. I'm totally down with that. Harassers are a pox. And Flashes are either terribad or a pox (Wraith used beyond a taxi).
I also found it was disturbing for me when I tried to kill a Harassers with the usual 1 C4 brick, but often games will tweak the numerical truth to make the game more playable. In this situation they made the harasser cheat what is really logical, and not have them be poofed too early by a good LA. Honestly loosing anything you pulled from a terminal feels bad, and for a while it was very easy for a LA to poof things, and it still is.
