How I would change Annihilators.

This was prior to the weapon's lock on time reduction, prior to the weapon's improved tracking, prior to the reduced damage on the liberator's zephyr, prior to the reduced thermal sights on vehicles, prior to the composite armor nerf, prior to the flak buff, prior to the HE nerf and prior to the magrider nerf. At this time in the game the infantry were nothing but fodder to be farmed by any and all vehicles in the game and not one shred of mercy or remorse was shown.

At the end of our night during our post operation meeting I was quoted in saying "This is exactly like the old launchers" and I was right. In addition to all of this a common concern amongst others including myself was the weapon making our previous purchases of the SKEP/Grounder/Burster completely useless. For $7 we had a weapon that could do everything those three weapons could do at a fraction of the cost.

Don't pretend like using OP/Effective stuff isn't fun because if it wasn't there wouldn't have been so many people using rocket pods, zephyr cannons, and HE shells on a very regular basis. The annihilator was the only solution to the problem at that time.

None of this changes the fact that this weapon was a poor solution to an even worse problem. Nothing short of it's removal will restore balance and credence to the other launchers.

Annihilator needs a serious buff. Atleast when it comes to lock-on time. It's impossible to take down a tank! Almost every tank driver will shoot you before you manage to lock onto him! Not to mention how it does barely no damage...

My proposal: Anti-air lock on stays long, anti-land lock on gets reduced!

I would rather see the annihilator getting a damage buff to match the other launchers and then give it the manual tracking system that the new engineer AV turret has. Then no-one can complain about a lack of skill because they are tricky to fire. The extra control you get over the dumb fire is compensated by the fact that you need to stay in the open while tracking which makes you very vulnerable.

Also, give us different warheads for all launchers. One HE for suppressing soft targets, one AV that does heavy damage to vehicles but has a very small blast radius to make it less effective against other target. Then a last one that is a dedicated AA warhead that works similarly to the bursters. It should have a large blast radious and be detonated by proximity rather than direct hit.

That would make all launchers need some skill and they would be more diverse in their application. I would also find them a lot more fun to use. The Annihilator is a boring weapon.

Rocket speeds are to slow for dumbfire to be effective outside of 20m.
Until that is fixed (yes fixed as it is complete BS) lock ons are the only way to fight vehicles and should remain in the game. And there is very little difference between 12 annihilators and 6 G2A + 6 G2G. The crying would go on.

Perhaps, but at least they would have to put some effort into it.

While that is true, the HA now becomes situational, it enables choice and organization rather than all in one wonder weapons.

Lock ons will always be lock ons, the problem with the annihilator is that it is a cookie cutter weapon.

You guys are right but people will still whine when all the outfits switch to 50% G2A and 50% G2G.
I already have the G2A launcher so by all means remove the annihilator, give me back my SC and I'll buy the G2G and we (by that I mean every organized Outfit/Squad) will continue to kill vehicles and they will continue to whine.

But that situation you suggested (removing the annihilator) is still more balanced than what we have now. People will whine, but god knows it won't be as much.

By the time the infantry would render your immunity would run out. And most of the troops would have locked on by then. Once that happens there are probably 5-8 rockets on you.

Remove + Refund PLEASE SOE. Please please please please. It'd be such a wonderful gesture that would make us truly feel listened to.

Swarm Launchers, the Lancer, wire-guided missiles... All pointless whilst the noskill variant still wins the day.





And Buzz, sorry, but you're just wrong about A2A lockons. They're cheap and lame. There is no situation where it is not better to use the rotary and extended afterburner or pods; no situation except when the enemy is better than you and you do not want to dogfight, you simply want to point and click. Also, the lunacy that is being able to lock on using mouselook NEEDS TO END. No one should be able to get a lock on a target that's 75 degrees above their actual angle. It's mindboggling that this still continues.

You'd see the way we fight in open planes change a lot without annihilators. I play on Connery (my main is on Mattherson) every friday night and the first thing I noticed was that no matter where you are, the fights involve an insane amount of armor and infantry pushing at eachother - the battles are huge and fun...and you know what's missing from the equation? Annihilators. For some reason, this server hasn't discovered the bullsh*it that is the lock-on swiss-army-launcher. That tells me this: if I want to see big armor lines alongside infantry, lots of explosions and fun, epic battles, get rid of the annihilator and it'll happen.

Of course, I'm making a large assumption, but I'm basing it off my experience at Connery when compared to the trench-warfare that is Mattherson where the only "winner" is the team with the most people zerging an area to the point where they're not even rendering anymore.

The answer to vehicles completely ruining battles by farming infantry without fear has to be somewhere INBETWEEN the complete removal of the annihilator and the nerf of vehicles overall.

Personally, I like BCP's suggestions (he's a jerk, but he always knows what he's talking about when it comes to Planetside 2). But my amendment to that is the removal of the annihilator completely with 700 SC refunded to everyone who had it. At the same time, developers can take a look at the current lock on launchers we have.

Now, you can argue "Well, it'll be the same thing except it'll be 6 G2A and 6 G2G instead of using universal lock-ons." True. But it'll force you to choose between them. At the moment, either get rid of annihilators or get rid of the other two rocket launchers because they're utterly useless as it stands when we've already got one that can target BOTH ground and air.

Either that, or limit the amount of launchers that can lock onto a single target at one time.

Or nerf the annihilator further. (Well, more like a balancing at; following BCP's advice, it'd be a nerf here or there but a buff in other places.)

Those are our options, those are the developer's options. As it stands, the annihilator's current state in the game is unanimously dreadful.

On connery the 666 use annihilators quite a bit, normally not enough to insta gib a tank column thankfully.
As for the other lock on being useless, they both pack more heat then the annihilator, but I don't think it's enough for anyone to really care.

So, you take a video of a highlight on YouTube? That means absolutely nothing in terms of this thread. We will use what is effective and easy. Right now, that is the Annihilator. We had the same concerns about this weapon in tech test, yet we used it all the same. Just because something is available and we disagree with it, doesn't mean we won't use it to our advantage... Any player with an ounce of common sense would do the same. They want to win.

What you are arguing is BCP himself and not the content of this thread. Please try and stay on topic here as this thread has nothing to do with Buzz or The Enclave. This thread has to do with the game itself.

A smart pilot waits to pop flares until the rockets starts to fly. Then he has the time it takes for me to reload, get my aim back, wait for the immunity to settle plus an additional three seconds for the lock to hit. By then he has completed his pod run and is already on the other side of cover.

I've seen it many many times. Experienced pilots don't care about annihilators. They play around them. It's pretty darn hard to hit a smart pilot with an annihilator. You need to be a pretty organized squad to take them down and that includes baiting the ESF into dropping his flares and then make sure that the rest of the squad all fires at the same ESF.

The Annihilator made it hard to hoverspam rockets which is a good thing. That was some serious BS. It is a very poor counter to strafing runs.

THe annihilator is a bigger problem on the ground than it is in the air. Tanks can't hid nearly as easily as aircraft can. A good magrider is hard to hit if he keeps dodging in and out of cover. A large tank column can be reduced to dust fairly quickly by even a disorganized squad of Annihilators. I've seen it happen several times. We completely stomped a large tank column in the ravine north of Hvar Techplant. Something like 50 tanks never made it much further than the shielded gate at the bottom. What they should have done was to go to the next ravine and change their attack plan. From the other direction, the Annihilators don't have nearly as good a spot to shoot from but they all preferred just sitting around getting killed.

That requires brain, organization. CoD-kiddies don't want to use brain. They are all about so-called 'skills', which are nothing more than mouse skills.

They want to farm helpless infantry. They don't want to organize. They don't want to bother about tactics, maneuvers, non-standard approaches. They want to farm and spam spawn rooms with radar-equipped NV rocketpod ESF.

That's why they are so whining and btching about lock-ons. They are stupid infantry-farmers. They could wipe an annie squad with tactics or with a single gal drop. But they are stupid. They cannot outsmart and outmaneuver, and lock-ons effectively stop them from farming and dumb zerging.