Been struggling with how to take out armor/air and looking at weapons (NC Heavy). I have been using Annihilator a bit but noticed that even after locking on and firing at aircraft it doesn't hit half the time. Why is this happening? Was looking at the godsaw as an option. But I see that in the armor piercing mode it takes MORE shots to kill a lot of armor/air than in regular small-arms mode (like vs harasser or ESF). Am I understanding that right? Seems backwards. Tried engineer and had some luck. But sometimes I'll drop 5 tank mines under a sunderer and sticky grenade to set the stack off and it still doesn't die! Annihilator seems to do a good job deterring armor (rarely get kills unless I have help or they are not running away which seems fair). Looked at the crow for armor but it almost seems worse than the annihilator? Longer shot time with only slightly more damage... but much shorter lockon range. It can dumbfire but if I am going in close I just use decimator for that. Is the crow worth getting? It seems bad. Anyhow haven't been having much luck. Any advice on what to try?
So the first and foremost thing to remember here is that it cost you almost no resources to spawn as heavy, while their vehicle cost them resources, so they're justified in being at an advantage here. That said you do have options. In heavy you've got your launcher. if you're going lockon AA, just try locking on and getting them to bug out. If they leave, congrats! You won! There's ways while flying to avoid lockons which include Flares, running the missile into a nearby terrain obstacle, and sometimes afterburning out of range, but that last one's finnicky. If you're TR, Striker has a bit more utility and effectiveness than the lockon launchers so use that instead (dumbfire, but semi-auto and flak). Outside of heavy, the burster max is the best infantry counter to air. Against ground vehicles, you're still using your launcher, but there's a couple of things to note. Decimator is mostly just the best all around launcher here. Everything else, is mostly "get it if you really love it". Next, regardless of what you're using, tanks take additional damage from the back. Always try to hit them there if you can. Last, c4. C4 is great, but tricky to place if you're not playing light assault. Also keep in mind that light assault (usually considered the kings of c-4) also has an anti-vehicle weapon, the "rocklet rifle" which is like an anti-vehicle shotgun. Combined with c4 and good awareness, you can sort of go toe-to-toe with a tank. Don't be afraid to pull a vehicle to try fighting them that way. They'll probably be better than you at first, but you'll get better over time. Also you might create a window for others to take them out. Or you might kill them. Sometimes all it takes to pop a sunderer is a surprise lightning.
It also has to do with the nerfs the devs so happily slapped on heavy's to limit AA lock on range. once a missile that is airborne, it travels a certain distance it usually will de-spawn. in addition to this the target may fly behind a mountain or other debree to block the missiles path. As for targeting vehicles such as tanks. Don't bother. unless you have a squad of other heavy's with you, the light assault overpop will kill it with C-4 spam long before you make any meaningful progress. I actually suggest using the faction specific AA launchers as they have more versatility in ambush roles. That being where infantry shine when fighting tanks. If you really must engage tanks however. Use a lock on launcher only if fighting at long range and don't expect to be vary effective unless you have a sweet shot into their rear armor. your best bet when fighting tanks is to engage them in ambushes with other heavy assaults and hit them either with a concentrated attack at their rear armor. or in a multiple direction attack the nullifies their ability to rotate. aircraft-wise team up with other AA launchers to volly fire AA missiles and instant kill ESFs and heavily damage liberators. Or team up with a max to finish off aircraft they damage with bursters. Sky-jockeys usually bug out from a MAX attack when their health reaches about half. And by the time they get out of range their health is usually at about a third. (Trust me. I'm the current top holder of AA kills as a MAX on console. We LOVE AA buddies)
Learn to aim with the decimator, you can take out esf's with 1 hit which can really help your team if getting ground pounded by them. I do use the alt mode of the godsaw, it has great range and is a great deterrent, either against libs or harassers.
Keep in mind that a vehicle generally has several players maintaining it, and cost a significant amount of resources to buy. As infantry, you don't pay resources except for something like C-4, mines, or AV grenades (and even then, you only pay if you actually deploy and have to replace them). So don't expect to kill most vehicles by yourself without some kind of trick, since that'd be unfair to the 2 or more players who are working together and paid resources. And if you're fighting a firing line of tanks and vehicles that are entrenched in good cover, you simply aren't going to make a difference without some coordination on your own team as well. That being said, a clever Heavy can kill a sleeping or unaware main battle tank or lower with a couple C-4 and a follow-up rocket, so long as you can get close enough to plant the C-4 directly on the vehicle. This'll also work for an unshielded Sunderer. You need to get close without getting spotted though, so don't expect to make this happen in an open field. The tank needs to overcommit first before you can punish. Light Assault is probably better for this though. If C-4 is too short-ranged for your situation, you can also do significant damage by taking a grenade bandolier and a Decimator. AV grenades do about as much damage as a rocket hit, so if you catch a tank in a bad position throw all 4 grenades and then fire a rocket. AV grenades stick, and by the time the first one goes off your first rocket will hit, so that's pretty big alpha strike. You probably won't be soloing any tanks this way, but if you come across an already damaged one or you have help, you'll be getting plenty of vehicle kills. This is only effective probably out to 50-75m, so again focus on tanks that overcommited and don't go running into the open. The Decimator can also one-shot ESFs. You're not going to land a Decimator hit without some luck and the target flying low and slow, but on the plus side they don't get a chance to run away when they take damage. At longer ranges, you are going to want to use some of the less damaging but longer ranged Heavy options. Lock-ons will work out to 300 meters depending on the variant. Keep in mind the specialized lock on launchers do more damage, but the more versatile ones like the Annihilator trade some of that DPS for range and being able to hit any target. This is where teamwork comes into play. Three Heavies with dedicated anti-air launchers can one shot an ESF if they call their target and fire all together. If you don't have a third, with two players you can take out an ESF that is slightly damaged in one volley, so take the Target Focus implant to check their health first before deciding when to fire. Against anything on the ground but harassers, you'll want a group of 3 or more Heavies with lock-ons. As NC, Phoenixes when coordinated will be way better than lock-ons against a firing line of tanks or stationary Sunderers (at slightly less range). Good luck hitting a called target when they're moving full speed though, so save that for stand-off fights. Again, have at least one person using Target Focus and calling targets based on how low their health is, since if you let a damaged tank get behind cover they'll just be back in the fight at full health in 20 seconds or so. Another trick is to have at least one Infiltrator in your pack of Heavies. At longer ranges you can often force a tank to repair behind imperfect cover (or maybe even just the 2 engineers using their own tank for cover). Your infiltrator can wait for that moment and then snipe the engineers or at least force them to stop repairing, leaving the tank vulnerable to finish off. Remember that Sunderers that take the Shield option are much harder to kill by yourself, and will probably require teamwork to dislodge. Identify whether a Sunderer has shields before attacking it (you can shoot it with small arms to see if it has a shimmer) and adjust accordingly. It sucks to waste a bunch of mines or C-4 on a shielded Sunderer if you don't have the ability to follow through and finish it off. All of that advice applied to the Heavy class, but if you are really frustrated and willing to blow some resources of your own, I have some more... unorthodox... methods you can try. Stack up on C-4, AV grenades, mines, etcetera, and buy an ESF with ejection seats. Fly in over a stationary or slow target and eject on top of them at the last second, ideally crashing nearby and causing some smoke and fire to distract. You should usually have time to do serious damage to anything but an unshielded Sunderer before you get noticed. Shoot some Hornets as you're going in to make it a sure thing. As a squad you can do the same thing with a Valkyrie. Similar to above, against a crowded Sunderer spawn point, you can take a Harasser or Sunderer, put smoke screen on it, and kamikaze in for road kills while popping smoke. Hop out at the last moment so the momentum carries your vehicle through the crowd, use the smoke for cover, and drop mines/C-4/AV grenades. Go infiltrator with a Heavy or Light Assault buddy, and take them on a cloaked Flash through vehicle groups. Look for a slow or vulnerable one, drive over, and drop your buddy on em at close range for an easy kill. You never even need to decloak. With Heavies, they might not even have to jump off. Decloaking, dumping 4 AV grenades and Decimator shot with a Fury magazine all into someone's rear armor should kill pretty much anything except a Sunderer, so long as neither turret is facing backwards. Downside is you will be vulnerable to any surrounding tanks until you re-cloak, so look for people who have accidentally isolated themselves. Go Engineer with Demolition Pouches, stick 4 C-4 to the front of a Wraith-equipped Flash with a Fury on the front. Then switch back to Infiltrator, and drive it cloaked right up next to a target vehicle. Uncloak and use the self-damage from the Fury to detonate your C-4. It's an invisible kamikaze Flash bomb. Doesn't work on fast moving targets due to latency, so aim for slower targets or learn to compensate for the latency delay.
I'm playing NC and i specialized in taking out vehicles (and having fun). The Godsaw does indeed less damage to light armour (Flash, ESF, Harasser) when using the alt fire mode. Exception is the Valkyrie (that takes more damage from the alt fire mode). The meta for killing vehicles is using vehicles. Best way to take out ESFs are AP cannons. Best counter for groundpounding ESF = Decimator. Best counter for groundpounding Valkyries = High drifting LA with C4. Best counter for Liberators = 1 Skyguard close to 1 (stealth!) tank with AP cannon. Best counter for infantry pounding tanks = C4 fairy. Magriders can be hard to kill, quick tip: You can crouch under them when they try to roadkill and stick some bricks at them.
As a lone heavy? For armor recklessly rushing said vehicle with c4 and using dumbfire launcher to finish off._ for air.. Sheer blind luck with dumbfire launcher. Both methods mentioned are completely unreliable and suicidle. For a slightly safer method i recommend useing a cloak grenade flash for armor and maybe lightning skyguard. For air. Can always try ramming kamikaze style with galaxy or lib but ive not had much success with that either.
Fighting vehicles as infantry is situational. For air, unless the aircraft is very close (and even then you have to be lucky), you want lock ons. You won't kill any, probably not at least, but you eventually make them leave. Either to go repair, or go somewhere else. Just be careful that when you target an aircraft with lock ons, they know where you are. For land, it depends on the distance between you and the vehicle. Dumb fire rockets are great if the vehicles aren't too far and you can hit them with it. They are great because you can take cover while you reload, and you only need a very short time out of cover to shoot. Lock ons is probably you're only solution if the enemy vehicle is far away, unless, (I'll tell u what "unless" after this). C4 is the obvious best weapon for vehicles, because 2 c4 will kill anything, except some that have composite armour and sunderers but even then, you'll get them burning. However, you need to be close enough to be able to drop it, and since they (thanks again Wrel ******* genius) changed the animation, it can be tricky. Don't hesitate to change class and go on Light Assault, equip the dumbifre anti armour rocklets. LAs have a lot more mobility, enabling you either to dodge the vehicle's shots, or to cover ground fast and drop some c4 on them. Those rocklets are short range though. So, the "unless". When the vehicle is far away, you can't hit it with a dumbfire rocket launcher, I was saying that lock-ons were your best bet. Unless you've got a Light Assault that can cover groudn fast (can't remember the name, pheonix jump maybe? the one that makes you jump forward). If you're defending something, like a sunderer, part of your job is to draw aggro, just like you would on a monster in WoW, so that the tanks focuses on you. Flying towards him with a LA often works, and if you get close enough, you should be able to do some damage. ____ That said, as a general rule (there are exceptions), if you have to choose only one rocket launcher, the decimator is by far the best one. It hits like a truck. It has a very slow reload, but that's ok, cause it hits like a truck, that's what counts
I'm a pretty average player and I can say most of these tactics only really work in theory and some only work if the enemy tank is fairly bad. Good tank players tend to give a bit of distance between you and them so c4 is not very useful. Most good tank players will see a stealthed flash and will hear it also. They will dip out and in and will hide behind rocks to heal after rocket fire, my opinion is that 350/450 resources is not enough of a cost given how hard they can be to destroy and that ASP can even bring this price down, most good tank players can sustain. The only downside to the tank is that it can't really control points or go in buildings, or go into bases with lots of cover. I don't really find planes to be overly oppressive, but perhaps that is just my opinion. I have been deterring air with hawk quite successfully, really good players that spawn camp can be quite difficult and that is fairly common to see. If they start to annoy me I swap to infiltrator, they can virtually never see you. Again the really good pilots will never come into dumbfire range so I don't really believe decimator is worth purchasing as it doesn't even one shot infantry, if you kill someone like that then they were probably going to crash on some terrain 30 seconds later anyway. Again air is not really terribly amazing at influencing a point capture, staying inside buildings and largely ignoring it is best, if you land a lock-on rocket he's at least going to go behind a rock to repair and that is a lot of down time. I'm not the best pilot but at least this for me is interesting and sometimes if I get lucky I can take out the max BR pilots with my vortek rotary. Pulling a tank versus another tank seems illogical, well because they are more practiced at lobbing projectiles and it's still usually difficult to push them out of their tactical position and may result off in a stand off or a suicide mission depending on your playstyle. Not to mention playing tank is honestly boring for most people and I don't think you will be playing to enjoy yourself. I think buying Crow is the best solution, annihilator in my opinion is bad because it cannot dumbfire and your only defense against an oncoming infantry is to dumbfire at them and land a few pistol shots. Again not to try kill them so to speak but just to deter them from coming into your space. I recently bought hornet missiles, I would need to play test a little more, but it doesn't seem like such a bad thing, especially when you come in from behind, I've tried the whole jump out of the plane thing, usually they notice and by the time you land they would be outside of your C4 range or just about ready to run over you, so I recommend just staying in the plane and also not idling in their space for too long as to get otk'd. TLR vehicles are just slightly more powerful than infantry in most cases, Hawk and Crow are the most reliable ways to deter, you probably won't kill them as often as they kill you, I would like to see vehicles nerfed by being made more expensive, maybe 650/750, maxes should get the same treatment, they should feel strong but a tank should not be able to die and then pull another and successfully chain them together constantly if remaining alive for large periods of time.
For busting ground armor, being persistent with AF-22 Crow or learning to use the Decimator is the way to go. Most advanced players use the Deci for its high damage, but it takes time to start hitting shots consistently. You aren't a tank and aren't taking things on head-on, you're running between buildings hitting the sides and rear of tanks, or sticking C4 if you're close enough. I rarely use heavy now that I've mastered the ambusher jump jets on the light assault, it's just easier to surprise armor than the getting high above with drifters like I used to. It's high-risk high-reward and it's some of the most fun I have in the game. Run the Safefall implant of course. For air, that's tough, I hate fighting air. The Hawk GD-68 is going to do more a little more damage. Having the Hardlight Canopy tactical deployable for your AA loadout helps for defense. The Decimator again is a favorite, but man hitting shots is hard, but the upside is they 1-hit (!) ESFs who are bold enough to get close, and man, that feels good. I usually get impatient and pull a Skyguard Lightening or AA MAX.
Honestly dont even bother, the rockets suck in this game, especially against anti air. Best thing to do if you are being harrassed by a air unit, take max with double AA cannons, or be a c4 fairy againsts tanks. The LA rocket rifle is better then pretty much all of the HA rocket launchers so.
