[Vehicle] First impressions: Buzzard

Well, the VS one seems fun. But seriously...hunting other vehicles that can one shot you still makes not much sense. Wraith flash is fun for trolling lonely tanks or harassers tho...but still:They see you and you are dead. Flash is for high speed travelling and maybe some AI work...not for AV. That's why you can't make AI weapons on it very strong cause that would be OP as hell.

Learning how to drive a Flash will help. Similar to how a Harasser "can be killed in way less shots than any MBT", the reality is that a Harasser is far harder to hit allowing it to keep going. Don't try to attack people straight on.

Fury Flashes can one-clip Magriders from the rear.

Hmmm... Vanu portret, only mentions the Magrider being one-clippable even though the Prowler has the exact same armor and health and the Lightning which has less armor and health... I smell porkies!

The only thing a Fury will be one-clipping is another Flash. It cant one-clip any other vehicle even from the rear.

The Starfall 2 clips anything lightning and below and is ~1 second faster than a fury there and 3 clips anything bigger and is ~2 seconds slower there.
it also trades away all AI capability the Fury has. sounds pretty balanced all around.

Take it from someone who (according to Dasanfall) has the worldwide top kills with 3 of the current Flash weapons: S12 Renegade, M40 Fury and M12 Kobalt...

...the LA7 Buzzard is awful. It's so ineffective in all regards there is absolutely no reason to use it. I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, but if I can't make the Buzzard at least equally effective as even the weakest of the existing weapons, then it's pretty conclusive that the weapon is under powered.

Hmm... Known Vanu player who's reaction to "Fury isnt as powerful as one-clipping Magriders or any other similar health vehicle" is "but VS weapon isnt as powerful". That wasnt the topic but nice to see VS inferiority complex is still active.

what VS inferiority complex? i simply told you the facts. i know that NC have an allergy to facts, but you still don't have to be dumb about it.

But why would you tell me? Imagine you were talking about a Lightning gun and I go "but tha NC has inferior DPS!!!". It doesnt matter to the context of the discussion.

Also nice how your inferiority complex misses things like how much faster the Starfall empties its mags for shorter vulnerabilities or the superior ranged capabilities compared to the Fury.

you are the person who engaged in discussion, if you didn't want to discuss the Starfall you could have just ignored the guy. but no, you wanted to yell about how inferior NC and how OP VS is, so you did

If you go back to the post that started this little tangental discussion, you would have noticed someone pointing out that the Magrider can be one-clipped by a Fury. This is untrue and also highly faction-biased as it insinuates the Magrider is somehow weaker than the other vehicles while the Prowler is the same and the Lightning is worse off and still cant be one-clipped.

NC portrait, condescending attitude, accusations of faction bias.

Hmmmmm….

Two can play at that game. I'm fully aware that Prowlers have the same HP as Magriders, and I fully expect them to suffer the same. And I can say with certainty that a Flash-mounted Fury can at least reduce a Magrider to burning with one clip, leaving it open to a single rocket or even AV grenade. But you wouldn't have firsthand experience with the matter, would you? Because the Vanguard has the highest HP of all MBTs, a damage mitigation ability and the second-highest top speed of all the MBTs.

I like how this went from the Buzzard, being murderous impractical, to the Fury-Flash & VS's new Starfall competing to 2-clip Tanks from the rear: Since someone mentioned how a flash should or shouldn't be engaging Tanks.
And how that is apparently, that bit, means the Flash-Saron is essentially balanced... since a Fury is similar, in some aspects..

When that never came up, as an issue (balanced or unbalanced to either side of that matter), in the actual thread's entire topic, or similar.
But now this Starfall is important, to what exactly? Right, be inferior or superior, or balanced..
How about the Buzzard? What is its own competing weapons? What does it better, or worse?
Aka, Lets talk about the Buzzard, with all that fire.
Rather than "Who can fire shots more, at the other side, based on profile, or history" over the Starfall.
Or is every NC thread, meant to be about VS not being equal, better, or worse, to the other options?

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Now, the Buzzard apparently is.. incredibly impractical.
Given the Arc, arming-distance (what in hell...), and damage-output, is this a correct summary?

I was about to say something, but hey someone else got it for me.

Long story short: Yes, it is impractical as all hell. Actually, no, hell was efficient, this is just landfill garbage. I can shoot further aiming my hose upwards, I've had sex that had bigger splash zones. Ok that last one was a bit too tmi but lets move on to TTKs and stats.

Buzzard:
RPM 100
Direct damage 300
Indirect 300/3m-10/5m
Reload speed 2.5 seconds
Maximum effective range (on flat ground) 95 meters.
EDIT: Magazine capacity 3

It takes 9 shots or 3 clips to kill a magrider from behind.
Approximately 10 seconds to kill one verses the far shorter fury flash.
7 shots to kill a harasser which is....9 seconds....verses the fury flash's.....

AV wise: It's garbage
Infantry wise: It will always need to reload unless you score one direct hit and 2 splash hits within 3 meters with the calculated drop and that's IF the guy doesn't kill you with your slow *** gun. Will never kill a flaked target.
Air wise: I mean...I put this down as a joke but hey, there was hope. It takes 5 shots for an ESF. AN E S ******* F.


Ok I give up. It's just garbage on all fronts. All it can really do well is splash infantry that are so ******* stupid that they're being shelled by this things maximum 90 feet that you might as well put them down with the amat or a ******* flaregun, hell just shoot them. It's far easier. If you want to be an artillery piece, spawn a tank, if you want to be an artillery piece of garbage, grind this for a good 5 hours and then pray by the end of your session that you don't want to rip your fingernails out to repent for what might be considered masochism or stupid.

I have never been so profoundly infuriated.

Correcting you is condescending now? And the a true accusation remains true. My NC portret has nothing to do with it.

Yes! But you should at least point out something that's actually wrong.

Then why point out that the Magrider can be one-clipped, but not mention the Prowler?

That would mean a Lightning can be OHK'd with one.
Fury has no weapon-specific damage resistance against tanks and 100% extra damage in the rear. 125 damage direct hit damage becomes 250 direct hit damage with 12 rounds at maximum per magazine. That's 3000 damage in one salvo at maximum. Lightning health is 4000 and Magrider health is 5000. It can't be put in burning state, it can't be OHK'd.

I have a Prowler and Magrider as well. Also the Vanguard used to have a higher armor rating, this was changed to extra health which meant a nerf to the Vanguard as it now needs longer repair times. The damage mitigation doesn't work for rear-armor and is pretty much the only thing the tank has really going for it now as the DPS of the Magrider is now higher (and the Prowler is still higher). Also the top-speeds of the Magrider and Vanguard are very close.

Also considering you think you can be OHK'd, you are the one who doesn't have any "firsthand experience" with it.

More on the Buzzard. First some stats:

4 non-AOE hits to kill infantry, 2 direct hits beyond arming distance for a OHK (unlikely due to a COF and aiming difficulties causing the shot to go over or fall short).
3 hits to kill a Flash
7 hits to kill a Harasser
15 shots on a Liberator
4 direct hits from range on a MAX, 6 in CQC without AOE damage
7 rear shots on a Lightning
9 rear shots on a Prowler/Magrider.

Now the good stuff:
On an even plane it has a maximum of 100m (or 102m), tested by placing a waypoint on myself, firing it and then driving to the impact site, the smoke trail remains long enough to pinpoint the exact location. 100m is relatively good considering the average range vehicle fights are in.
It has a large splash radius, 300 damage within 3m distance of the impact site.
It is an automatic weapon, you can just hold the trigger.
It took about 4 magazines to kill a Prowler from behind (although it was also under attack by other sources, so it could require more).

Now the bad stuff:
With 20m arming distance (2 Sunderer lengths!) you lose 20% of your range, and the only range where you would have a chance to accurately hit someone.
It deals 300 damage splash and has 3 shots in the magazine, so it can't one-clip anything despite it's slow ROF unless you get a direct hit.
It has a slow ROF.
Direct hits are pretty much out of the question, it has slow velocity and immense drop. I had to pretty much look into the sky to try and hit any infantry, and it has a small COF that makes things difficult for "longer ranges", where "longer ranges" is about 40m and up. Shooting at a large blob of infantry, it was impossible to score repeat hits even with splash despite the large AOE. Keep in mind that this thing deals damage in a 20m diameter circle (2 Sunderers) and it was still hard to keep hitting people! The height you need to aim make it impossible, and getting in close gets you the arming distance. As an artillery this thing is worthless. You are better off trying to kill vehicles with it, but all other AV options (including the Basilisk) are better.



In the meantime I've seen Starfall teams. a 2-man team with one in the back and one in the front leaves you with 1 shot before one kills you, even if you kill the one that is rear-ending you. Later I saw a 5-man team that simply melted through our tanks and Sunderers like they were nothing with cheap and quick ranged shots. Even if you killed 3 of them their cheapness made them easy to replace and they would have burned through 2 Lightnings and 2 Sunderers by the time you got there. The speed with which they unload means they take a fraction of the time of a Fury to deal damage, and the quick reload allows for much more DPS overall.

I've seen two flamethrower Flashes so far but can't tell anything about them yet.

Even if that was true: I have not been killed in my magrider by a flash more than two times in all those years. And seriously...a magrider without a second gunner is really by far the easiest target for flashes cause our main gun is the worst option when it comes to hunting down small and fast targets.
One shot is one shot. If you just got to hit a fast target once you may get lucky...if you have to hit it twice or 3 times then luck matters much, much less and the maneuverability of the target is much more important.
Or in other words: If I was a tanker and I had to choose between a target that I only got to hit once...but that kills my that fast that I can only shoot twice.....or a target that I need to hit twice but that allows me to shoot three times....I would pick the first one as easier target. Speed of harassers and flashes can be calculated(and is in both cases higher than that of tanks)...maneuverability(much more important cause that really makes it hard to get hit) is about the same...and the hit box doesn't compensate that either.

I currently don't think that flashes will become even close to as annoying as harassers. Simply due to being 1hit killed too easily. That you can use them in groups to become really deadly is out of question...but that counts for lightnings etc. too. If an organized small group of flashes attacks an organized group of lightnings then one lightning will go down and about all flashes. Flahses are cheaper...they will come back...but at the rate the you can buy lightnings forever too if always only one dies. ;-)

Time will show. But I don't expect to see much more VS flashes ihunting down tanks in a couple of weeks than a week ago.

The difference is that flashes are tiny cheap throw away vehicles that in groups can kill a tank from cloak.

Let me ask you, do you play starcraft? Know how zerglings work? They basically surround the target and deal damage in mass but the only difference between them and the workers is that they have twice the attack speed, less health and same damage and yet they are a popular choice because they can come out incredibly cheaply and hunt down bigger targets because you can expend the small units individual losses for something that costs a lot more.

So can a flash mob, equivalent to a tank kill that tank? 9 flashes can laughably alpha down a tank, whoever has the best weapon for it has the upper hand in all cases. Now you could say "Oh well 9 heavies could do the same to any vehicle", sure but the flash has the advantage of coming out of cloak to do this, you can't stop a flash mob as easy as you might think. The only real way would be to infantry and shoot them all off, but thats 9 flashes to the tanks resources, even if you lose one, the individual doesn't really care because of it's small amount of resources can regenerate while they're driving. If you can't keep your cloaking flash alive for more than a minute then that's when you pack it in.

I mean when you think about it, 2 flashes or a gunner crew can alpha down a tank really quickly STILL with just a deci and a fury for only 50 resources that cloaks. It's a meme but it's possibly one of the most effective anti-tank methods because it's so damn cheap to pull one at a time and kill tanks one by one. Even if you die afterwords, because rarely will people find your shimmer before you alpha them first.

You've done nothing but prove your own self-righteous arrogance. It's only happened to me once, but I also had a gunner that can vouch for me. And that memory is specifically of a cloaked Fury flash ambushing my freshly-spawned Magrider and one-clipping the vehicle from the rear. I barely had time to eject before my tank was destroyed. I don't think not mentioning the Prowler is an overwhelmingly huge deal; I'm communicating based on my experience, which doesn't include Prowlers, which can rotate their turrets to face and fend off enemies from the rear faster than the Magrider can completely turn their body around to accomplish the same task.

Really? How exactly? By correcting you?

Sounds more like a cheater, lag, lagswitcher or plain faulty memory than that the weapon is suddenly capable of something that I've experienced and even tested today in the VR only to find that oh yes I'm right and Magriders cant be one-clipped and never have been able to be one-clipped by a Fury flash.

And if telling someone who is not just wrong but proving himself to be ignorant and basing everything on a memory even though actual practice you can perform right now and the simple math tell otherwise is arrogance... Then Yeah I'm arrogant!

Except that a Magrider can turn its body around and prevent rear-hits faster than a Prowler. Dont be such a downer and only name the disadvantages in the hopes that I'm suddenly stupid and not think of the obvious advantages.