How Does One Counter Hover Duelers?

Again, Scythe pilot on Waterson. I see that 90% of the PREY reavers on here like to reverse thrust and hover duel. How do I kill them before they gank me?
I've tried Hailstorm, and it does exactly jack even with a large percentage of hits.
I am buying Coyote missiles sometime later this week. Will they counter the spam of BR100 spawncamping reavers?

No method is too underhanded, except for hacks. I will use OP weapons. I have nothing against cheesiness. How do I counter these Daltons?

hover fight them back, you're in a scythe

I tried that. Vortek rotaries always win, even with me landing 60% of my shots.

uh, not in a hover fight... you're not actually hitting 60% of your shots otherwise you'd be the best pilot in the game, in a hover fight a scythe will always win provided you're on a even skill field, pretty much you just need to practice

You can't win, so don't bother.
They have way more skill than you.
You are just easy certs to them.

Why do you think a scythe has an advantage in a hover fight? Really, I want to hear this..

I think scythe is the worst A2A ESF in the game.. I see it as Mossie>Reaver>Scythe..

That's not the question. The question is how I can outcheese them. The current idea I am testing is hornets to the face.
The nosegun is a lost cause already, so how can I overcome the skill gap with OP weapons and cheese?

You cannot overcome the skill gap..
You have 4 hours of playtime in your scythe...
PREY pilots like rguitar have 60 DAYS (1440 hours) playtime in their reavers...

Hornets are way to slow, you will never land them..

The only way you can cheese a win is to have 3 friends with A2A missiles and get just close enough to get lock.
If you fight these guys headup with anything, you are going to lose every single engagement...

You can win without the need to use cheese mate.
They key is to use teamwork to force them out of hover mode, bring a friend and do the following.
You engage head on and once the target has entered hover mode you disengage and fly away. One of two things will happen after that, he will either be forced to go after you and leave hover mode, that's when your friends gets on his tail. Or he will go for your friends, that's when he flies away and you go on his tail. Just repeat this until he dies, the one that is being targeted will fly away and the other engage.

Evidently coyotes are useful, judging b the amount of BR50+ that cry about them.
All I do now is when they get in front of my I press and hold shift. Reaver kill and suicide.

The lowest amount of BR50+ reavers I've seen in one place is 3. They seem to like swarming me with 4 or 5 at once.

i have nothing against Ace Pilots, but PREY members are just too good for me, i normally run form them screaming like a little girl, you should do the same, i can practice with anyone else, but not them.

i have poor aim with my scythe since i have less then 5 hours, but simply going full speed and making passes on them is pretty effective so far. rank one airspeed frame and fully ranked fuel tanks has been working extremely well for me even with my lack of skill. just refuse to fight on their terms.

↑ This.

If you try and fight a group of PREY in a hover battle, you are going to be burning wreckage...

How do I fight PREY? Lancer party...

I wish... But I don't have a mic or a voice synthesizer.

This is my major problem with ESF A2A in this game, so much of the fight is decided by aim.

And oh wow you don't have a mic?

dodging has a pretty big role too

I would rate it totally the other way round, that would make it:-
Scythe>Reaver>Mossie

As a Reaver pilot, its much easier to outmanoeuvre a mossie than it is to outmanoeuvre a scythe.
What matters most in out-manoeuvring is brakes, and scythe has the best of those while mossie has the worse.

Brakes allows you to make sharper and faster turns.

And then there is the frontal profile, that gives the scythe an edge in hover-fights, along with the most accurate nose-gun.

Isn't the Scythe the "best" 1v1 hover duel ESF? Last time I watched the PTS tournaments there were like 70%+ Scythes and the other two ESFs got quickly eliminated from the tournament.

The reason that sounds the most logical to me is because of the favorable front surface of the Scythe, it's harder to hit and thus easier to dodge mid range hover fights with it.

While compared, the Reaver is a jumper, it's about getting the drop on somebody and more about dodging with higher velocities, thanks to the high burst of a Rotary and the strong Vector Thrust.

The Mossy seems to be the ideal skirmisher, it has the best hitbox from multiple angles and is in my opinion the best for swarming.

But I'm not a Pilot, this is merely an observation ...

You just aren't very good at it.

• Use the default nosegun. Rotaries are good for when you are jumping people and going for quick ganks, not so good in other cases mostly at the moment.
• Use hover airframe - without it you are pretty much a sitting duck when in hover mode
• Use your downthrust nearly as much as your upthrust. Most players expect people to ride the upthrust, so they will shoot above your cockpit so you are flying into their stream. You have to constantly be changing your vector. If you just hover you are an easy target.
• Practice a lot. The hardest part is trying to tell which way they are moving against a blank sky. The more you do it, the more obvious it should become.
• Juke on reloads. When you are reloading you don't need a stable platform to fire from. Do some crazy rolling and AB tapping to make yourself a very hard target while you are waiting to start firing again.
• Aim very carefully. Bullets aren't magic, you really have to guess where they will be and how much your bullets will drop.
• Bind a key to "Throttle Analog" and use that to enter hover. It is more reliable than the "s" for keeping you in a hover when you hit the afterburners.

That is all I can think of at the moment.