did anything happen to the lightning ?

I'm pretty sure the complaints happened after a legit change that caused it to start one-shotting infantry. I don't remember it doing that originally, yeah?

Did for as long as I can remember.

I searched through the announcement section for "viper" and the only damage buff was in GU1. Then in PU2 the ratio of direct and splash was changed, still OHK. I could not find the 2014 nerf though.

When the game first came out and for months afterwards the Viper was total garbage, HE was better than it in every way shape and form. Then they over buffed it to where it was out performing HE and HEAT at their roles so it got nerfed to where it is today.

I'm pretty sure that actually gave it turret stability, since it didn't have any to begin with from what I remember.

Well it could've been on the receiving end. My hunch is it was the Nanoweave change, where previously the bonus HP from even low nanoweave ranks gave you enough health to survive being one-shot.

I distinctly remember thinking Vipers were solid for a long time, then they got noticeably better. At the time I sort of felt it carved out a clear role for the Lightning (lightnings were best AA and AI, and MBTs were best AV) and wouldn't have minded keeping that relationship.

Bingo. Old viper used to around 1050 damage a shot on a direct hit, but since most players had either flak or nanoweave, 1 hit KO's were extremely rare.

Then the nanoweave nerf comes and bam, one shot kills everywhere. Oh, and the stupid thing could 4-clip an unarmored sunderer, believe it or not.

I don't think flak protected against direct hits until nanoweave. The cert to survive viper hits was switched from nanoweave to flak armor. More than 50% of my shots killed the target with 1 hit so not everyone was running around with protection.

I red that initial gravity of viper was 10 which later got changed to 4. Quite a big change, much more range.

It was 1050 total (direct + indirect), not 1050 direct. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the indirect damage was the greater of the two (around 600+), which meant that any level of flak armor would reduce the total damage to below 1000 purely by reducing the indirect damage.

Also they messed up how the lighting handles. No more stopping and turning the direction you intended or reversing the direction you intended without some craptastic invisible hand turning the other direction for a few seconds. All the weapon changes are like any other, they do well for a while, someone complains and those weapons get a nerf. The Lightning's handling, how it drives now is - to me - unforgivable, no one cried foul about lightnings handling too well.

That got changed as well, but even the damage was crap back then. It was rather common to dump and entire mag at a single infantry and he would survive.

The splash got hit a bit , HEAT is good at fending off enemy lightnings , harassers and sundies while being able to kill infantry better than the AP.
Viper's splash got hit also it's still good if enemies are clustered or on lowerground.
This is all from experience as a vehicle driver, sorry I don't do the maths.

wait hold it hold it, the viper got nerfed because nanoweave got nerfed ?

Don't see why it wouldn't be the case. A lot of weapons were brought down for that reason (MAX AV weapons for example).

The radar change was a collateral damage from a change that supposedly benefits MBTs (who almost always use ES abilities in utilty) and Sunderers (AMS was still utility back then).

Still, it doesn't change one bit how ridiculously unnecessary and harmful it was to the Lightning. It was the last straw for me that I actually ragequitted the game for a very good while, and nowadays I barely even touch the Lightning.

wait who in SOE thought it would be a good idea to have infantry survive an entire mag of tank shells ?

so its a case of lets change this vehicles because we changed the others, it seems things have gotten worse since I left *sigh*

so did SOE get flak for making such dumb change ?

Even though the flak armor update made it protected against them.

it had adequate resistance to it before getting buffed ?