First off, I've never used the flash outside transportation. Nothing on it is certed, it's all completely stock. I don't use Smedbux for weapons, everything I buy is with certs. With that being said, and with my Armistice auraxium slowly approaching which would grant me 200 certs, I currently have 860-ish certs saved up. Secondly, I just can't see putting those certs into another 1000 cert infantry weapon, and I'm getting slightly bored with infantry and grinding the sniper rifle directive tree. Having known SalemBeats for a little while, and his affinity for the AV flash, he makes it out like the AV flash is an entire playstyle within itself. I don't really know if I want to invest some more time into learning an entire new playstyle, especially when I'm just starting to learn tanking on my NC alt. The most important question to ask me is probably what I want out of the AV flash. I want a semi-effective vehicle hunter to stop or at least slow down heavy armor. I also want to be able to help take out AMSes. TL;DR I'm sick of being a spectator to vehicle combat. Convince me that certing into the AV flash will make it a threat to heavy armor and an effective means to help take out AMS sundies.
I'm hardly an expert, but just to let you know, my experience has been that AV flash is NOT an effective means to take out sunderers (well, maybe if you stick a bunch of c4 to it and go suicide bombing, but that's a different story). It will take multiple mags just to bring down the deployment shield. Better to just farm the infantry around the sunderer. I've had the most success hunting down damaged tanks as they escape or try to repair. Even got a few mosquitoes which had landed for repairs, which was pretty entertaining. I'm too much of a lone wolf for this, but if you've got a friend with a fury flash, together you can one-clip a tank from the rear (I think you need at least a 10-round mag for this?). This is far more effective than hunting solo. It's not what you asked about, but if your only goal is to have an effective means of fighting armor, you might also look into certing out your Pounder MAX. 250 certs for the second Pounder arm, a few hundred for a few ranks of flak armor or auto-repair, and you've got a solid loadout which is great at AV/anti-MAX and not bad at killing infantry.
Dont know who your friend is, salem, but a flash is defo not effective AV imo, sure it can work and be alot of fun to try but its not effective. I lean around to scratch an itch each time i feel the fury shots hitting my tank, 99.9% of the time, unless im already 99.9% dead, itl end up in the flash exploding. Dont let that deter you tho, fun is the main aim here.
I'm not good enough to take on tanks by myself with the fury unless they are critically damaged. If they are not, even when I attack them from the rear they just do a 360 with their turret and frag me with one shot before I can deal any serious damage. (Edit: Now that I think about it, Mags may be a bit easier to take on, as they have to turn the whole damn tank to fire at the guy behind them... No idea, I play Vanu.) I find the wraith flash to be a lot more effective at taking out infantry with fury or kobalt. But then again, unless you enemies are downright stupid, you can't keep on raiding the same area of the battlefield again and again: they'll be waiting for you, you make a very obvious target, and LMGs especially will kill you real fast once their wielders know you are around. Banzaï flash is another story all together. You switch to engineer, put 2 to 4 blocks of C4 on the front of your fury wraith flash, switch back to infiltrator, cloak and go find yourself a tank or sunderer. Stop right next to them, uncloak, fire fury at point blank range. The blasts from the fury will detonate the C4. It's relatively easy to pull, but you sacrifice a life, a flash and some C4 blocks so... Meh. I do it from time to time when I'm bored and need a good laugh, but I wouldn't call that a "playstyle", as it's not all that cost effective and you can't really improve it with more skill. Also, about your "completely stock" flash. Even if you don't use it as a weapon, certing into your wraith module makes the flash a lot easier to use as a quick insertion method, be it for sniping or stalking in places far away from any friendly spawn.
Credit goes to Paqu on this one. This is probably the biggest driving force behind me certing the Flash. Here's his channel, there are many more videos here too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChG2wqYz8vkADGccTEoHh9g This ones credit goes to SalemBeats. There's a lot of superb opportunity kills and some seemingly insane ranged shots taken. Salem also has a guide he put out, but it isn't free so I didn't get it and really can't comment further on it. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxCe1Ac0ULhMsVLuIONibQ SalemBeats youtube channel also has some more of his flash videos. I hope that these videos can inspire something. Fury flash is probably my favorite type of killing in this game, even if I use it incorrectly and keep going for clumps of infantry next to Sunderers.
Hi SevenDrunkMidgets, First the bad news... I think you will need more then 1000 certs for a fully functional AV flash. 1000 certs for fury, then ~1000 certs for wraith and again a few hundred certs to get more fury ammo and magazine size. But now the good news... AV flash is extremely fun and in my opinion indeed a unique playstyle within the game. You will first have problems with it, like playing with an infiltrator the first time. But in the end you will laugh your *** of when you win a 1vs1 against a lightning or even better a mag or a prowler. You have to pick your fights and you need to know how you can use the terrain and the flow of the battle to compensate the advantages of your enemies (like playing a stalker infi). So in the end you will mainly kill tanks (from behind) who are under attack and/or are in a low state of health (e.g. 50% health on an MBT). But the better you get, the higher are the chances to kill a MBT just with your little wraith flash (sunderers sadly aren`t in the flash killing food chain, except you get help from friendly tanks). At the moment I play mainly as a wraith flash infi to get the flash directive, so i have a bit of experience in every flash playing style. For me the most fun was playing with the fury. Destroying the hated tanks who chain-spawn-killed me a few minutes ago is like eating the cherry on the cream cake. TL;DR: If you don`t want to learn a new playstyle, i recommend you to just pull a lightning or an AV max, but if you want a challenge and much fun, try the AV flash
Already lots of good input above. I will mention a couple of other wraith flash benefits. 1) You get the BEST panoramic views of the battle. Driving in the center of a big nighttime battle is a really cool experience. It is one of those special planetside2 things that you simply don't see in other games. Certainly not in any other FPS. 2) You will get almost no XP for this, but you will save tons of friendly vehicles by clearing AT mines. The flash is small and can pass quite near a mine without triggering. I probably clean up 3 or 4 mine traps per hour.
After reading your original post it seems I somehow overlooked that you already knew Salem so my pointing out his channel may be redundant. Still I think seeing how a well played flash run goes is great motivation. For load out I recommend start with rank 1 surger chassis, at least rank 2 of extended mags on your fury, at least rank 3 of wraith module, and thermal sights on the fury as a minimum before you try to kill things on your flash.
The fact that an ATV can even mount a weapon capable of significantly damaging heavy armor is ridiculous and stupid. If it must deal damage, fine -- but a dinky, relatively low-caliber HE grenade shouldn't do half the damage it does now against heavy tanks and Sunderers. It's just one more weird nuisance to put up with as a vehicle pilot.
You can get an aerial with a glowing tennis ball on top.... What more do you need? Seriously though, there is on good reason to cert the wraith falsh..... its bloody good fun!!
Just because you rock a fury doesn't mean you can't kill infantry. The Fury will definitely murder some people. Plus you can use it at a decent range. So if you cert into it and find that you think it's too hard to kill vehicles or if you want to kill infantry on the way to that smoking tank it's there. With the flash, you're primary targets should be smoking tanks and sundys, lightnings, other flashes, solo harrassers, and groups of infantry grouped up by a sundy. Never ever take on a full health MBT or a harasser team unless you are feeling frisky or just really good. Sundys are not really worth your time either. So basically, you'll want to ride around looking for smoke or ride around with a group of av flashes or you may even support an av harraser or mbt but riding around solo trying to kill vehicles is near suicide unless you pick the right targets. It may take a while to find one. One thing I like to do is engage tanks or harrasers that are already engaged with other tanks or harrasers. The worst thing that can happen is they turn their attention to you for the easy kill before they die and let your teammate take them out. IMO the wraith flash is the absolute funnest part of this game. I would definitely max your cloak and pick either the fury or renegade depending on what you want to kill. Renegade infantry farming will net you more success. It's so much fun when the sundys or tanks chase you. Not so much when harrasers chase you
Okay. First, you want cloak and either repair or stealth. I like the scrapper chassis since you're less likely to flip, but that's less of an issue nowadays. You want the Fury on the front unless you're specifically going after infantry in open ground, in which case you want the shotgun. Option 1: Stick 3 or 4 C-4 to the front as an Engineer with utility pouch, then switch back to Infiltrator and hop on. Cloak and drive up to an MBT or Lightning that's spamming shells at a spawn room somewhere, stick your nose up his tailpipe, uncloak, and unload your Fury. The splash damage from your Fury will detonate your C-4, and will kill both you and the MBT/Lightning. Word of warning: this does not work consistently on Sunderers. For whatever reason, C-4 on a Flash does reduced damage to other vehicles, and even with 4 on the front Sunderers will still usually have plenty of health left. 3 is good enough for an MBT most of the time though. Option 2: Get an Engineer friend with tank mines or C-4 on the back, and repeat option 1. Before you suicide on one tank, drop off your friend by another tank first. Two tanks in one run--you should be able to pretty much singlehandedly (well, twohandedly) decimate a tank column this way by chain pulling Flashes. Option 3 (for the non-suicidal): Get a Heavy friend with a Decimator, AV grenades, Grenade Bandolier, and C-4 to sit on your rumble seat. Get behind a tank, uncloak, and throw 2 AV grenades onto the tank's tailpipe. Wait for them to go off before firing your Fury and Decimator. You should be able to pretty much instantly wreck the tank if you time all your damage to happen at once. Remember that if you're going to be sitting next to an MBT for this long, you probably want to max the Stealth certification so you don't show up on his mini-map. You can also park right next to the tank, have your Heavy friend throw his C-4, then speed off while you detonate it.
If you have 4-6 people with the right things certed, pull 3 cloaker flashes with Phoenix (or faction equivalent wire guided launcher) heavies on the back. Its the most fun I have ever had on Planetside. You co-ordinate the flashes to drive around the rear of enemy armour, uncloak, launch the rockets, then recloak and bug out while the heavies are remote controlling the rockets into the enemies rear armour. Its actually a really effective way to kill enemy MBTs & Sundies (though enemy harassers will kind of wreck you if you are unlucky)
I used to do it when I had maxed out my stockpile of infantry explosives back in the day when we had to micro manage our toys. I would spam my entire C4 inventory on freshly spawned enemy armour. Only the custom jobs though....respect.
Well. I dont know, but going from 300 spm to 600 spm with the infiltrator since starting to use the fury and flash. Could that be convincing enough?
i like my flash in big battles, looking for max's to shoot with my fury and roadkill infantry it's real funny if all the infantry hides behind a rock and me driving in to them killing damaged tanks and lone wolf tanks one time i chased a harasser over half the map, me shooting at the harasser and a engi repairing it the flash you play for fun and fun you will have, guaranteed
