How to Cert Out a Combat Valkyrie

I'm sitting on 5,000 certs and I'm looking to build a combat valk. Obviously it's just a valk so I'm not expecting it to single-handedly turn the tide of a battle or anything, but being able to contribute in combat (rather than just drop off troops) would be nice.

What should I invest my certs in, considering:
1. I'd probably be the pilot and have at least two passengers and we'd have voice chat. I assume one passenger would gun and one would repair.
2. Not sure what additional passengers would do though. Maybe pull Archers and plink at stuff? We tried loading up a valk with passengers armed with lock-on rockets and it proved to be too hard to maintain the lock during the movement of combat. We also loaded up the valk with light assaults for C4 special delivery, but we've used that tactic so often it's getting old.
3. We'd probably be going mainly after vehicles, with infantry as a secondary target.
4. I have no idea what we'd do against enemy ESFs, since we can't fight them and can't run. Die or bailout, I guess?

For utility -- flares or fire suppression?
Defense -- Armor or stealth?
Performance -- evasion or hover?
Gun -- I have no idea. The guided missile looks really cool but doesn't seem that useful...

Thank you for any advice!

A mate of mine flies his Valkyrie in an extremely aggressive way, approaching enemy tanks from the rear and diving almost to road level to offer his gunner a shot at the rear. Pelter rockets seem very effective for this kind of AV combat. Plus, they have a bit of splash to use against random infantry peasants.

If you want to go for something like that, I would recommend fire suppression and armor to max out the tankyness.

As for performance, I myself refuse to fly a Valkyrie that can't fly straight ahead, so I always use the hover mod... but that's really down to personal preference. Try it out in the VR.




My own Valkyrie isn't set up for combat but for support, I use the gattling gun, the scout radar (200m range!), autorep and hover mod.

If you are a TR include heavy assaults with strikers to your crew.

Ditto with Lancers if you're VS.

I had a crew that ran 2x engi and 2x HA. When we needed a retreat and repair, the engi on the gun and pilot switched with the HAs and we backed off. It was decent. Make sure your HAs know which side to poke out as you move in to attack. We treated it like the Tankbuster/Dalton combo.

Utility - In medium to heavy battles, flares. It increases survivability of course, but it's real purpose is to allow you to extend those gun runs without having to evasive behind a rock every time a lock happens. In very light battles (12v12, maybe 24v24) I like to run scout radar. In fact I highly prefer scout radar as it really helps the gunner locate targets. It also helps out the rest of your squad that may be running infantry in the vicinity.

Defense - Stealth. It doesn't help much with engagement radar anymore, but it's real use was stretching out that lock-on time by a second. It also lets you disappear and approach from a different angle between gun runs.

Performance - I like hover myself. As an odd quirk if you need to travel fast across the map you can nose *up* and hit descend to get a huge boost in speed. Gunner gets a great view during this. You don't.

Gun -
You mention primarily hitting vehicles? The Hellion is a beast for this. But... you need to spend some time as a gunner before you pilot. This thing works best with a looooong sustained fire. The spinup makes it questionable against infantry.

I usually run anti-infantry myself using the CAS. It's evil against infantry, and can still kill armor in a pinch.

The default M20, is fairly decent against armor. Gunners often have more success with it because it doesn't have the spin-up of the hellion. It kinda sucks against infantry though.

The VLG missile - I'm gonna say no. It requires a constant crosshair on the target to be effective. If you do any evasive maneuvers your shot is going to be ruined. I've practiced, but I simply can't get effective as a gunner with this.

So my advice: Hellion for AV, CAS for AI.

One more note about the CAS: Consider threat detection optics for it. It's an AI gun and threat detection highlights vehicles. This seems a downer but consider this: It highlights sundies well, even in trees. These are where your infantry are pouring out of. It also adds some measure of clarity against infantry just by switching things monochrome. But most importantly, it constrains gunner vision to the effective range of the gun. When combined with scout radar, I find my gunners racking up kills much faster because they are keeping their focus closer.


Edit: As for crew: You want an engie with tank mines. He should be repairing almost constantly. This will eliminate the need to set down to repair. You'll make gun runs more often, and those guns runs can get slowed down for your gunner since someone is fixing the chip damage. Tank mines are optional but your mobility allows you to mine a road ahead of armor you spot.

As a 4th crew member, consider someone with C4 for the boom drops, but also an infiltrator. You're going to be passing over a lot of enemy vehicle terminals behind lines. A sundy popping out for your squad can swing a battle.

More valk stuff:
You and your engies should carry repair grenades. If you have to set down to repair this will make the stop much quicker. Grenade yourself then start using the rep gun. Note: Do NOT try as a passenger to repair grenade the vehicle. It will only grenade-grenade the vehicle.

The Striker-Valk (2x HA with strikers is one of the deadliest metas in the game. If you are TR do this.)

The phoenix valk: Look, it's best not to. If you do, it's best to hover stationary. You can in theory run phoenixes but you need to spend a lot of time in VR to coordinate the team and get a feel for how the mechanics work.

The rules: Phoenix appears about 1m in front of where the shooter was at the time they pulled the trigger. However, it appears about 0.5 seconds after the trigger is pulled. What this means: If you are moving, the safe firing window gets very tight. If the missle appears after launch and is inside the hitbox of the valk, then you are immediately heading to the ground for repairs. Things that help mitigate: Fire about 10 degrees from forward when travelling forward. If firing to the side, keep level and yaw towards the side firing.

Bonus: The phoenix range is determined by range from the shooter. We've managed to get a phoenix to fly about 1km if we chase the missile. Conversely the range is about 50m if you fire it backwards. Combined with the difficulty in getting a clean shot, I'm not sure if this would every be useful in combat though.

Also, since you are gonna run a lot of engies consider Archers.

Agreed, its murderous, particularly on hossin its the devil incarnate.
Wondering when everyone else will realise this and therefore it will be nerfed, cant have a decent AI weapon afterall.

as a pilot you might want to consider doing it as medic and putting a few certs into Triage to heal your passengers

It just needs to lose the AOE so gunners actually have to aim once in a while.

If you remove the AOE the, direct damage would need to be buffed quite a bit, or the fire rate and ammo capacity. Would be a problem for tanks.

The AOE is appropriate. The banshee, air hammer, duster and other aircraft mounted AI weapons have the same.

But this brings up another point about the CAS. The pilot should try to achieve an overhead position on the target as much as possible. That way the gunner can get good splash damage. Kills are very fast this way. Trying to hit from the side or an angle is pretty tough, especially considering the bloom.

Pilots should spend some time as gunners to get a feel for this.

Thank you guys for the advice!

I main NC so I'm afraid the TR Striker valk is out. I hadn't thought about a Phoenix valk though... Previously we have tried several times to get a pack of cloaker flashes with Phoenix gunners to be the ultimate hit-and-run combo. It seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice it is much harder to pull off. I suspect we'd run into the same issues with a Phoenix valk...

This might be best for what I'm looking for. Most of my gunners would be low-to-mid BR players who tend to have an itchy trigger finger. This might be a case of ease-of-use winning out over straight up optimization...

I think I will do a trial of the Hellion, and if my gunners get good results I'll spend the certs on it, otherwise I'll go for the M20.

Liewec123 -- Being a Medic as the pilot, that's a good idea! I've already fully certed out Triage too!

JibbaJabba -- Repair grenades I can see being useful! Those must have been added in a recent patch?

Doc Jim -- I was thinking of armor+fire suppression combo too for maximum tankiness, but wouldn't the lack of stealth make it hard to sneak up behind tanks?

And what about ESFs? If some ESF if coming after me, I doubt I'd be able to fight him in the air. If I landed, maybe we could fight him better on the ground, or at least have an easier time repairing?

Better to cut the AOE and see what else needs to be done from there, in my opinion. It could probably be taken in a number of different directions.

Those other weapon are also rather overpowered and very unfun to be killed with. Same goes for the CAS with the AOE. I'm of the opinion "air" should not be synonymous with "overpowered." As above, the weapon can be adjusted in other ways if it is lacking without AOE.

I agree. A good pilot makes a great gunner.

Yeah repair grenades got added some months back.

Tidbits about them:

• They stick to vehicles and maxes.
• If you're doing max support, a bandolier gives you 4 of them.
• When doing a breach, throw your repair grenades at the same time everyone throws Concs, flashes and whatnot. Friendly maxes will charge in right after the explosions and find 5 seconds of free repairs already waiting on them.
• They do have a tiny explosion. Don't stand next to one when throwing at your vehicle. Repair to the side a bit.
• They are excellent on a AV mana turret!
• They don't stack and increase repair rate. One at a time only, even if multiple engineers.

ESFs: Bruh, you're in trouble. Your gunner can't kill them but he can keep them honest and firing from afar. Start running away immediately, and dodge to make him work for it. If you have engies aboard and repairing then you can stay ahead of the damage long enough to get someplace safe. (over friendly AA, back to warpgate, near friendly ESFs, etc).

Stealth: The added lock on time is the real benefit. It can also let you approach without being spotted on your first run. After that, someone will have Q spotted you, so you'll be on the map regardless. Sneaking up on tanks isn't super necessary. Stay above them and most secondary guns won't be able to hit you.

Huge deal: Gunner MUST Q spot continuously so you see your target on minimap. Stay in the back quadrant of tanks and you'll get rear damage regardless of where the rounds hit.

A cert farming trick with Valkyrie that also helps your faction, dubbed "The Divine Eye":

Requirements:

• Max stealth - such that the vehicle is not auto-detected on the minimap
• Max scout radar

How-to:

• Find a prime-time bio-lab fight - defense is preferred to offense due to reduced risk from ground vehicles
• Park the Valkyrie under the dome on top of one of its legs near the center
• Sit in it such that the radar provides complete overview to your faction

Every time an enemy is killed inside the bio-lab, you gain XP and also Recon ribbons from time to time.

Phoenix Valk is a 1 way ticket to TK town. Don't do it. You've been warned.

Step 1 - Be TR
Step 2 - Put Strikers and Engineers in Valk
Step 3 - Wreck everything

VS can wreck armor with a Lancer Valk, but they're sitting ducks to enemy air. TR is completely OP regarding Valks. There just isn't much NC can do with them, definitely nothing faction specific and nothing even close to as effective as the other factions.

So I tried out my certed up valkyrie. Alas, it didn't go well.

Loadout was:
Max fire suppression
Max armor
Max evasion
Gun: we used both M20 and the Hellion

Basically, we kept dying to enemy aircraft. I was expecting ESFs to be the main threat, but even Liberators and TR striker valks were taking us down in no time flat.

We were fighting around friendly ground forces who could provide some anti-air support, but even with this very "tanky" loadout we were in some cases going from full health to zero health in less than a second.

Enemy lock-ons were rarely encountered and easily avoided even without flares or stealth.

The good news was that when enemy air forces weren't around we were able to get some decent kills of both infantry and ground vehicles. But, we probably could have gotten even more kills if we'd been in any other aircraft.

So, right now I'd say an NC combat valk isn't really viable. But even though we died a lot we had fun trying something new.

It's VERY situational. The Valk shines in this sweet spot that's usually a 24v24 battle. Anything below that and you can't "hide" in the clutter of other friendly aircraft that may be around. ESFs tend to show up and rip you. Above a 48+ battle, and the ground fire becomes so thick that your gun runs are too short to be effective.

Don't give up. Do more runs. You'll get the feel for that sweet spot in battle population.

Concentrate on #1 staying alive. The dead don't practice. And #2, smooooothness. It's disorienting to be a gunner. The more you can keep it smooth the better. Note that smooth does not equal still. Keep moving to avoid dumbfires, but move in a straight line, then evade when your gunner is reloading.


I really like to run stealth + scout radar. It makes the gunner more effective.

After I've pounded on infantry for a bit they get tired of my crap and start pulling out AA rockets.

so..... what I usually end up running: Stealth + flares. More and more I end up starting with this even though I prefer radar.

so much this. trying to fly "smooth circles" just results in constant jitter and shaking and makes it incredibly hard to keep fire on a target. and as splash only with the CAS already takes 10 shots that basically means the gunner will kill absolutely nothing without the ability to line up shots for long enough to get a few direct hits.