For some reason i can shoot aircraft with massive amounts of flax and they just fly away . Yet when i get hit in esf with maybe 10 rounds i explode. I have extended mags on dual bursters and doesnt seem to fade a esf . I can shoot them all the way across the sky and they just fly away , with giant explosions of fire on there aircraft !! I know the Tr have lock down , but NC busters are crap at the moment !!
Yeah, I spend a lot of time hammering away at aircraft in my MAX...seems about 2/3 of my ammo is duds...I guess AA is supposed to just be a 'deterrent' and not actually a 'threat' to the SkyKnights...
Well, there's your problem, you're shooting grain at them. Try loading your guns with something other than flax [sic] next time. Seriously though, just work on leading your targets, and maybe give them a little time to get closer before you open up. Despite what people say, flak is a serious threat to ESFs, and if they come under fire, they're going to pull away. If you want to get actual kills, you need to let them come in a little closer 'til it's too late to retreat. Also, a couple of buddies will help seal the deal.
Bursters are BROKEN AS FK and completely useless. ESF's and Gunships can hang out at 300 meters and snipe anything they want while moving around and dodging bursters. ESF's in particular can also just swing by and unload rockets into tanks or blow up squads of infantry while the bursters takes away almost no health from the ESF's. And you can completely forget about killing a Gunship with a burstermax, the gunship will kill you EASILY before you even get a chance to reload... I play Burstermax ALOT, extended mags and everything... yet i don't find ESF's or Gunships fearing me much unless i get to unload full clips into an ESF stupid enough to hang around for that time.... which they never are. It takes a BursterMax with extended mags 3 reloads to kill a Gunship.. aprox 10 seconds of firing each mag, then 3 seconds to reload each mag, thats 36 seconds, all the time in the world for the Gunship to either move away or just simply kill the MAX...
You are a Burster MAX; you are a soft counter; you are a deterrent. Don't stand in the middle of nowhere if you can afford it; use available cover wisely; move about regularly, including while firing; learn to lead your target; know when you can bait targets closer and know when you'll need to strike further out; learn to recognize targets that are zeroing in on you; ensure you have reliable support nearby. If you don't like that: pull an anti-Air rocket launcher, pull a Skyguard, or pull an ESF.
1. When you're flaking a gunship with bursters, you flak the main cannon (not the bulk body of the aircraft). Your flak will blind the gunner and make it very difficult for them to pin point you... the Liberator will usually have no choice but to fly away, because the gunner isn't going to be picking you off very easy. 2. ESFs take mega damage from bursters... you just need to make them feel safe and secure enough to come in for a pass. 3. There's a trick to making your flak feel like it's heavier to an aircraft than it really is; instead of firing both bursters at the same time, fire the left just before engaging the right, so your left and right bursters are firing not in sync, but in succession.... while it doesn't do any additional damage, the aircraft you're shooting will not know how many bursters is actually hitting it, and they will usually scurry away a lot faster.... plus, for #1, it continually blinds the gunners, and gives them no second of visibility. Just a few tips.
Bursters are fine. What you're experiencing is either focused fire, or lag(or a combination of both). Sometimes I die instantly out of nowhere from flak, and it's no doubt a lag spike. I've flow on all 3 factions enough to know that the flak is identical for it, with lock-down bursters on TR being a little better. And anyone who says bursters should be better is taking for granted that they can change the loadout after the enemy air leaves, and they can hide in their spawn or run into buildings to be more survivable.
Unless something broke in a patch recently, bursters were fine the last time I used them. This is actually due to server tickrates. The bursters (effectively 440RPM as you're firing 2 of them usually) deal damage faster than the rate that the server updates. If every burster round is hitting from both bursters... the pilot will see LARGE chunks of health coming off at once. If the tickrate was quicker it would come off in smaller chunks. This is where the AA instagib effect comes from. If you're close enough, they can lay in a full clip from both weapons and destroy you before you can get away. But if you're a decent enough distance away some shots miss and you don't get gibbed and can react quickly enough to survive. Doesn't just apply to bursters. All fast firing weapons do this. This is why (especially fighting as NC, as VS/TR heavies have the 750RPM weapons) when you play as a MAX you see your health drop in chunks when a single heavy is firing. It should be going down in small steady amounts, but instead it drops in eighths or sixths.
Flak is totally broken. It should just be a OHK and the explosion range increased by 50 meters. I'm tired of Air just completely running over every major fight. My skyguard dies instantly to ESF noseguns, and my burster max can barely shoot out of the spawn room shields. Half the time i have to step out of the spawn room and then they hit me with a zephyr and i have to run inside and wait for repairs. Shooting an airplane with flak would instantly destroy it. Maybe just lower render range on airplanes to 700 meters so that they would be safe as long as they stay at least 700 meters or so above the ground.
The only "it's too late too retreat" you can get is when they finish their attack run completely before going away. Any aircraft that starts above you at standstill can get away from you safely, and any aircraft in almost any situation will be able to get away safely from flak as well. AA deals a lot of damage against aircraft, but their escape speed is too high to actually kill them. With current mechanics for flak and lock-ons this is good for the aircraft, as it wouldn't be fun to be killed by something that can hardly miss at close ranges, and even at long ranges has a very large error margin for leading (although that same error margin means tons of misses no matter how accurate you are). This same system makes AA power scale too fast. If there's 5 guys shooting flak at you within 200m distance and even terrible aim is compensated by the massive skill-reduction of the flak range you are simply guaranteed to get a massive amount of damage and die. And that's why we should finally do away with the whole 4m flak range coupled with a large COF. It takes away the fun for both sides. A tiny COF, if it has a COF at all, and flak that explodes at something like 0,5m (1/8th of what we have now). Then boost it's DPS high enough that it can actually kill aircraft. Because Aircraft can now use dodging to actually avoid flak they can fly through heavy flak area's without a scratch, or a single flak weapon could tear them apart. Keep in mind that flak is still relatively slow. Similar things can be thought off for lock-ons.
Its the same for your enemies. When you shoot at aircraft with "massive amounts of flak" and they "just fly away", on their screen they go "wtf, like 10 rounds and i almost exploded!" Packets, lag, clientside, tickrates etc. all contributes in creating that illusion. There is nothing different about NC flak... Sometimes you also take damage from more than one source without noticing, making it seem like just one burster almost instantly killed you.
You don't fly much, do you? Bursters and AA guns in general completely cripple ESFs. It takes a while to get out of their firing range and even while dodging they will still often hit you. Bursters in particular can be used to great advantage because MAXes are smaller targets than dedicated AA batteries. If you position yourself right, the ESF won't even know you're there, and they'll find it hard to come close in the instance that they spot you because that'll involve exposing themselves to more flak damage. Flak is terrifyingly effective against ESFs at anything up to half-a-kilometre to 800m range, provided the gunner is good. The effective range of the Burster is albeit shorter, though it is still easy to take out an enemy fighter if you play it right. AA is an incredible counter to ESFs, and it will scare them off if they even begin to take hits. AA batteries are more potent, yes, though Bursters are by no means useless. As for the argument against Liberators, that isn't a fault of the Burster. It's a fault of the Liberator's balance. This thing has an awful lot of health, and it is very hard to bring a Liberator operated by a skilled crew down from the skies unless they're gravely outmatched. Galaxies are even harder to kill for AA and ESFs alike because they have so much health - too much, if you ask me. Bursters and AA batteries are brilliant at shooting down ESFs, or at least scaring them off at any rate, (taking out half an enemy fighter's health with a few shots means that your ESFs can swoop in and finish them off). AA is worse against Liberators and Galaxies because they have so much health, and are hard to kill irrelevant as to whether you're on the ground or in the air. This would completely ruin the game balance of flying. Flak, in real life, isn't designed to actually hit planes. It's designed to explode within the plane's vicinity and for the shrapnel and the explosion to progressively tear the plane to shreds. If flak guns were "OHK"s, then the Dambuster raids of the Second World wouldn't have been as successful as they were, because the flak would have torn down all the Avro Lancasters that were sent to destroy the dams. Flak guns aren't designed to hit enemy aircraft; they're designed to explode within the aircraft's proximity and the shrapnel will sequentially tear it to pieces. If it hits, then it's an added bonus, though then again a plane taking a flak round wouldn't necessarily be shot down either. When regarding the game, AA does hit because the ranges of combat in PlanetSide 2 are much less than those in real life. Henceforth, AA batteries hit their targets routinely. If flak brought down planes in single shots, then there would be no aircraft at all in the skies. AA is well balanced as it is. It's an effective counter to ESFs, and can suppress heavier aircraft with more health and scare them off. Guided rockets are also good ways of killing aircraft - ESFs can dodge them, though Liberators, Galaxies, (and sometimes Valkyries) can't dodge them once they've used their flares. When regarding AA guns, Bursters are ideally supposed to be used in conjunction with heavier guns or other Bursters to deter aircraft, and not destroy them. A single MAX unit with dual Bursters can single-handedly protect a Sunderer against multiple ESFs looking to destroy it, provided he knows what he's doing. If that Sunderer has its own weapons, they are an added bonus. Don't expect to kill things just because you have a gun. Bursters are designed to scare off aircraft, or at least damage them sufficiently, instead of destroy it. Destroying aircraft is a job for heavier AA batteries, guided rockets, and other aircraft. Just because a Burster doesn't kill something, that doesn't mean it's useless.
there are odd things like this, i know exactly what you mean, spend 10 seconds wailing on an esf to kill it with bursters, but if you're flying an esf and a burster max shoots you for 3 seconds you're dead XD
