RIP lightning, it's now officially nerfed into complete uselessness AA - Skyguard is pointless now with lib buffs AI - The only real role lightning could perform with any degree of proficiency, first the HE nerf, now viper AV - you must be joking, right? If they had to nerf anything than it would have to be thermal vision which is the actual killer in lightning viper configuration. It is thermal/viper combination which made it capable of fast-sniping infantry. Now, a lightning won't be able to defend itself against a fairy godmother raining C4... with its 75mm gun. Guys, that's 3 inch caliber, you're telling me that a 3inch tank shell shouldn't be able to kill an infantryman at point blank range? This is plain ridiculous. I don't know what the devs are smoking but their quest for "balancing" is leading them into greater and greater heights of absurdity - like aircraft with more armor than MBTs and 75mm tank cannon shells incapable of killing infantry. It's just laughable. The way I see it this game is (should) be balanced is that every weapon has its natural prey and nemesis. In a lightning, you knew you prey on infantry but run as hell when you see a MBT. Air was iffy - you could get a skyguard on and put the fear of god in them. Now.. You run from MBTs, you run from air (the other day i unloaded a full skyguard clip point blank into a SMOKING lib and it just flew over me and nuked me down in less than 2 sec ttk, as an afterthought) and now you run even from goddamn infantry. Pretty much the only viable prey left for a lighting are other lightnings which makes the vehicle itself redundant. Why don't they simply remove them from the game and be over with it? Remove all tanks while you're at it, it's quite obvious to all that you have no real conception what they are and what their role on the battlefield should be.
I mean, this is indicative of a much wider phenomenon of "incremental balancing" in games. By blindly following metrics the game's weapons and systems are slowly loosing their distinctiveness. It's all becoming a matter of skins rather than substance as a poster above me elaborated. In my old lightning certed out for infantry hunting and scouting for sundis (viper/thermal/rival/nanites - never get out of your tank if there's infantry around) I knew that I'm the terror incarnate for the grunts on the ground. If i found a cluster of them hiding behind a rock somewhere then oh my, feathers would fly. On the other hand, if a couple of AV turret engis or good shot HA's got my range I'd be in trouble. Open ground - you're blind and very soon dead (hence rival, never stray out in the open). If I rounded a corner into a MBT I'd be toast before you can say "UPGRADE NOW"... Air were also nothing to be sneezed at... See what I'm aiming at? It was a specialized weapon system, very specialized and the skill and thrill in using it was in how long can you keep up placing yourself in situations where you find your specialization useful. The point is - ALL weapons should be OP against some opponent or the other. Also ALL weapons should fear some other weapon. That's what makes the game interesting, that's what makes it "combined arms". By making all weapons "equal" to all others you're basically destroying the depth and therefore staying power of the game. Instead of "buffing what's weaker" and "nefing what's stronger" which leads to a flat boring line, good balancing should do exactly the opposite - make specialist weapons even better at their role while balancing it with weaknesses in other areas. You should take into account the game as a whole, the weapon ecology so to speak and create a good exciting balance in depth. What's going on right now is "spreadsheet balancing" - it is lazy, it is dull and unimaginative and it is slowly destroying this game. With all that said, I agree that viper was pretty strong against infantry... but it was crap against pretty much anything else. Too strong against armor? You must be joking... You try to land all 6 of those hideously recoiling shots on top of a moving MBT while you yourself are manoeuvering away from those 2-shot ap guns of his.... Sigh.. I started playing PS2 because I was drawn to the idea of realy big actual tank warfare. An actual huge map persistent game with TANKS!! Started off with Vanu, didn't realize how ridiculous and un-tanky this giant floaty magic pillow of a magrider is. Well ok, I'll drive a lightning - it's like a tank isn't it? And now... I'm BR 58 and I'll have to switch empires to maybe get some actual tank play out of this great "combined arms" game. Thank you SOE. Maybe I should just go air as it seems that that's where the action is but I can't fly for crap thanks to your ludicrous control scheme (and this is coming from a 20 year flight sim veteran)
C75 needed AV damage nerf, NOT AI damage nerf. It will now be useless and all Pythons (EVEN HE!!!) will be straight upgrades. I could see making it so even Rank 1 (or 2) Flak armor saved you from C75, but not even killing a non-flak infantry with a direct hit of a 75mm round??? They need to bring back some splash radius or something at LEAST so it can go back into a suppression role or something at least. Glad I didn't cert reload reudction on it (I knew it was due for a nerf) and I'll be happily going back to HEAT (already fully certed) now, but this kinda screws over baseline lightnings *cough*free players*cough* It's just too much.
I beg to differ. Making all weapon arms the same is not the only way of balancing the game. Let's take a look at the current modern state of combined arms warfare. You've got infantry, armor and air there represented at pretty much the same proportion since WWII. It goes like this: Infantry << Armor << Air In other words, armor kills infantry, air kills armor AND infantry while infantry.... And yet... you don't see infantry or armor disappearing. And why is that? It's because wars are not solely about who gets the better k/d. They are about territorial conquest and control. Air, while killing everything, can't capture or hold anything Armor, infantry killer, can capture but cannot hold. If armor stops it is dead. (which is not how it works in PS2 and which might be the real cause of all armor balancing problems we have, as i'll go into later) Infantry, preyed upon by the other two, is the only arm which can actually hold territory and that is why infantry is never ever going away (as they predicted at the end of WWI, and WWII, and even more recently) Imo the real reason why the devs have no idea what to do with armor is because their tanks are all configured wrong at a conceptual level. Tanks should never stop moving. That's why they cannot hold territory - a sitting tank is a dead tank, especially in close quarters, surrounded by infantry. PS2 tanks feel more like WWI contraptions or mobile artillery than modern tanks - they should ALL have stabilized turrets which would enable them to fire on the move. They should all have their HP roughly halved, which would FORCE them to keep moving. This would make tank-camping spawn points pretty much impossible and increase the skill (and excitement) in driving a tank. Imo the whole tank arm in PS2 needs a bottom-up overhaul. The only tank playing reasonably close to what driving a modern MBT feels like is Lightning, the rest are ridiculous WWI clunkers (except Magrider and I don't know what the hell it is but it sure ain't a tank.) All tanks need serious overhaul on the basic conceptual level. As it is, they're nowhere, playing a role that simply does not fit into modern combnined arms system. A tank should be an armored beast with tremendous punch. It's charge should strike terror into hearts of infantry. However, a tank that stops under fire should be nothing more than a deathtrap for its crew. It should be the embodiment of MOBILE warfare, as it actually is in RL, rather than a dull semi-mobile artillery piece it is now in PS2. Make em fast, furious and fiery - but at the same time decrease their armor and hp. In a way, make their gameplay feel more like infantry - let them rely on movement and dodging and aiming on the move (gun stabilization on all MBTs NAU) rather than horrifyingly dull dps/hp static shouting matches we have now. TL;DR: SOE keeps nerfing armor DPS into the ground, especially towards infantry. This is SERIOUSLY misguided and is slowly making the whole arm feel ridiculous and actually redundant. Imo this all stems from the lack of comprehension how modern MBTs actually fit into combined-arms system and it is incrementally leading the game into such laughable absurdities as 75mm tank rounds being unable to kill a man standing 10m away. It is not the tanks' dps that is the problem but their overabundance of armor and lack of mobility. SOE's conception of tank warfare is on a childish naive level that was pretty much disproved some time immediately following the First World War (ffs!)
You left out that in the real world infantry are a couple orders of magnitude more numerous on the battlefield than tanks and planes, because they're a lot cheaper to buy and maintain. Not everyone involved in an actual war has the choice to just tool around in an MBT or gunship or air superiority fighter all day, because there are 100 guys on the field for every one Abrams or AC-130 or F22. Games don't work that way because if they did people would ***** that they never get a chance to play with the shiny wheely things. So they make vehicles available to everyone, which means they have to balance them assuming everyone can and will have one. The only way to make it so that everyone doesn't wind up in a vehicle all the time is to make them no more powerful on the whole than infantry, and usually a little bit less. There might be other ways to balance vehicles vs. infantry in a game, but this game hasn't gone any of those routes, and it won't within the lifetime of this iteration of it, because the underlying premise is too deeply ingrained across its entire itemization scheme.
Actually the cheapness or cost is not the real issue - if everyone could be riding in a tank or fly a fighter-bomber, you'd still have poor bloody infantry on the ground. That's why you see modern tanks and aircraft go relatively more and more expensive per unit as time goes by, rather than more numerous and cheap - there is a certain amount of armor and air that is optional in proportion to the mass of infantry. There were experiments with amor-only or air-only warfare but they all came back to having all three arms, again in roughly the same proportion, if you want to capture and hold territory. I, personally, when playing infantry, have absolutely no problem with being preyed upon by armor and air. It's a fact of life and I have options, I can take specialized counter weapon (AA or AV), I can wait for my side to counter (everybody loves it when the cavalry arrives), I can spawn a murderous vehicle on my own, or I can simply choose to ignore them and stay in the buildings - where the actual objectives of the game reside and which they cannot reach. So, I don't feel put-down by this state of affairs, in fact I love it for the depth and complexity. Yes, I actually enjoy the excitement and thrill of playing hide-and-seek with armor and air, I'm funny that way. Being able to go toe-to-toe with a MBT as a gun toting infantryman is not my route to gamer's immersion and happiness.
The vanguard shield needs a charge up time like the HA is about to get. Lowering the maximum active time is pretty meaning less for the complaints that VS and TR have that even if they sneak up behind one they don't get any reward for doing so. A charge up time would fix that.
Wow this patch is a joke... Weapons The prowler was already the most boring tank since the great Vulcan nerfs of 2013, and now its only useful gimmick - having spammable HEAT is now useless because they gave it 1m splash radius! But in the end it doesn't matter for anyone who actually mains tanks cos everyone uses AP which instakills regardless of flak armour... As for the Enforcer modified - either give it splash damage like the air hammer, make it a chain-fed fully-auto spam cannon or get rid of it and come up with something useful. Other than the angle change these 'buffs' are a joke that don't actually address the problem. I'm glad I never bothered certing up my Enforcer in the first place, looks like it will be going back into the "no-reason-to-use-it-over-the-NS-halberd cupboard" again - Halberd masterrace ftw Basi changes are probably quite warranted, although like Aesir said the Ammo pool needs to be adjusted (especially on stock MBTs, the basilisk ammo capacity on those is a joke) Vulcan changes are missing the actual problem - and I thought SOE had finally learnt from their over-nerfing tendencies and were actually about to attempt finding a sweet spot for a weapon that went from OP as **** to useless in a single patch. Viper changes are yet another blatant overnerf - instead of specialising it they're making it useless in both AI and AV categories. I'll admit it did feel a bit too good against infantry with 6 potential instakills per mag, but that's probably just because I'm used to driving a Vanguard... I completely agree with Aesir's envisioned role for the Kobalt, although I still think they need to fix the stupid CoF bloom on it, as I can never seem to hit more than 2 shots per burst outside of 50m... Abilities They better be refunding certs on these changes because as they stand they're basically all just removing the benefits of sinking certs into the max level of the abilities. Vanguard shield max rank is no longer worth 1000 certs for just a 5 sec faster cooldown, especially while there is no visible cooldown bar displayed. I have max or 2nd to max rank nanites on all of my vehicles but the flash and harasser and that was all a huge waste of certs now as the minimal increase to repair efficiency was negligible compared to the 12-8 second cooldown time improvement. The Vanguard shield change is a lazy cop-out - even though I'm a fairly frequent Vanguard driver/gunner myself I've played against them on other factions and recognise how much of a crutch it is in its current state. Instead of just making my 2000 cert investment into it a waste due to a fixed 6 second time, they should have made the shield more tactical and adjusted the vanguard as a whole to compensate, preferably through some added agility, AI capabilities, or even <cough> WWII-era turret stabilisation. The one change that is probably a good thing is the Prowler Anchor mode change, which means that Rank 1 is no longer totally useless, while the higher ranks still gain a significant advantage in a different area.
Is that what people do on Waterson lol? On Mattherson the popular thing is the bull rush. Low on health or not they pop shield and kill you before their shield goes down. The TTK to kill another tank is basically within the duration of the shield which is why taking on vanguards is suicide unless you get a tail shot alpha.
This Enforcer nerf is really frustrating because it makes the Enforcer inferior to the Halberd for AV... The Halberd's sustained DPS is higher than the Enforcer after this nerf. The big problem is that for the first few seconds of continuous fire, the Halberd and the Enforcer deal similar amounts of damage. As you near the end of the Enforcers magazine, it takes the lead in DPS. Then, it falls behind once it needs to reload. You cut down the magazine size by 20% and increase the reload, and you make it a frustrating weapon to use. Nothing is worse than being unable to fire at crucial moments. The Halberd keeps firing, the Enforcer does not. This update reinforces this downside and tries to minimize the reason you would use the Enforcer over the Halberd in the first place.
*cough* I'm not the slightest responsible for that reckless usage of the shield ... not one bit *cough* The Halberd has initially more dps on entering the fight compared to the Enforcer. It takes the Enforcer to fire 4 rounds to catch up to a maxed Halberd. By that time the enemy is already more than half dead if you focus fire with an AP Maingun. For me the Halberd already was the better "group" AV weapon, it was better having 2 AP and 2 Halberds firing on the same target than the usage of Enforcers. Because your initial volume of fire is just so much higher because you just have more alpha preloaded. High Alpha guns usually have more dps the shorter the battle is ...
Just a bunch of unneeded nerfs. Glad I got to enjoy the viper for 1.5 years and purple it. Now from nowhere its losing its awesomeness. Magburner should get a big buff in everything darn it. I wish kobalt got its laser precision restored with a buff in damage to 220 or so. Vulcan needs to be less of a close range only weapon.
Not to glorify the Viper, it was the best AI weapon tankers had at their disposal and it really was the best way to farm early certs on a character. I would have been ok with a nerf aimed to shift it more into what the current Python HEAT is. Meaning it should maintain it's direct hit damage and lose on the splash side that it needs 2 hits to kill, 3 for FLAK users. Or keep the OHK on Infantry but lower it's AV damage down and add a bit more drop and a slight CoF to it. That it needed a nerf is kinda obvious, but instead of wreaking the thing I would have been more happy with a "further" specialization theme to it ...
I personally save it for "oh dear, this poor pleab might actually have a chance of killing me now" and then crush their pointless hopes of defeating me. It's probably more efficient to take the damage up on a temporary shield that dissipates leaving less to repair, but I want to give them the false sense that they even had a chance. Oddly enough I don't even need the shield in a lot of 1v1's. It is embarrassing though when you crush another tank and they barely left a scratch without using the shield.
For solo running an AP Vanguard I would highly agree with your usage of it and I do so myself when I'm alone or not in any organized squad. But when you take a look at my Video, I was never alone, it was all about keeping the momentum. Keeping the drive going for as long as possible and once you exhausted your momentum you hunker down to gather it again. We constantly rotated out the lead Tank, used it as a shield or batteringram and kept always pushing, absorbing what ever got thrown our way. Once the lead Tank could no longer coupe with the incoming fire the Tank behind it would take the lead, while the former lead Tank had one goal only, recover as quickly as possible to repeat the process. I'm used to playing EVE Online and I was a logistic Pilot, mainly in a Guardian, later a Archon. That's where the idea comes from and I dubbed the whole thing "Damage Control". The issue about this entire thing however is and the reason why I'm no longer as interested in organized Armor play is the fact that you gain nothing by holding Armor superiority ... The most impact to have on the battle as a Tanker is to cut enemy mobile spawns and the best way to do this is in smaller formations and in some sort of interdicting role around the main battle line. It's really boring to farm Infantry ... and while a bit more challenging, the best way is to kill Sundy's is while they are on the move, before they can setup, which makes them easy pray and again boring ... I had some awesome Tank battles in beta and the early release days, three-four Vanguard taking on 15+ Magriders(prior to the Velocity changes) plus tons of Sundy's. That was about the most fun time I ever had in PS2 and chances that any of that will make a return is nonexistent. I found Tank combat to be the most challenging thing in the game on an organization level, it's less about individual skill, but more about managing things correctly.
The Viper nerfs seems strange - especially for the NC as it has effectively no other AI tank really. The Vanguard shield seems pointless - fixes nothing, changes nothing really, just nerfs it in a way that won't change 99% of complaints about it. Enforcer nerfed again. Anchor seems to be pretty significantly buffed though.
Thats no buff directly. It just makes progression better. It really sucked at under rank 3 and only got useful from that point. Now it is atleast useful starting rank 1. The same change however has also been extended to the Vanguard, since the rank 1 shield now also starts with 6 seconds and all you cert down is it's cooldown. MagBurner also got a buff to the lower ranks. So max Rank nothing has changed other than the Vanguard Shield and as you said, those 2 seconds less don't change much ... I was hoping for either a rework or harder nerf with tweaks elsewhere to the Vanguard ...
