In case you were wondering, DBG screwed us over once again.

Allow me to share what I wrote in regards to this proposed change in a different tread:

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Coming Soon (Not on PTS yet)

Striker

Increased damage to ground vehicles
Increased initial speed from 50 to 60
Increased max projectile speed from 180 to 220
Increased projectile acceleration from 0.75 to 1.25
Vehicle stealth no longer prevents rockets from seeking

If this goes live as-stated it will seriously help the Striker be viable. It's about all I've wanted done - the seeker range was terrible, IMHO, but I had no idea that vehicle stealth disabled it. That explains why I've seen Striker rounds nudge right past aircraft where it almost physically hit them. The velocity increase will also help on long-range aiming, making it less terrible to try and aim with this thing.
The only thing I'd ask for in addition to this is to increase the ROF a little - decreasing the period where the HA exposes himself to return fire, given that dumb-fires can pop out of cover and fire instantly, Phoenix from behind cover and Lancer can charge in cover and pop out for a second to fire.
Tightening the COF a little might also help at long range, but it will be good to see these changes as a start, it's sure to help A.LOT.

Assuming ofc, that it's on live inside of this year...


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So, basically your issue here is that the COF remains unchanged. That's what I'd love to see altered too, tighten that enough to make the weapon more viable at longer ranges.

However, unless you are utterly unable to read stats, and it seems you are, allow me to explain to you how this is going to actually make the weapon better for long ranges in spite of what you say.

First of all, blatant increase in damage to enemy ground vehicles. This is a straight up buff to damage, regardless of range. So at longer ranges, when you do hit, you hit harder, thus you need less hits in total. This is good.

Secondly, increase to initial projectile speed, max projectile speed and acceleration speed - all of these means your rounds will go further, faster, and are more likely to hit long range targets. This makes it more viable for long range. Let me repeat that.

...increase to initial projectile speed, max projectile speed and acceleration speed makes the Striker more viable for long range.

It's a blatant boost to it's long-range abilities. A careful one, to hopefully avoid making it a broken and OP weapon, but a boost all the same. If anything, it's a good start. We can always see if it's still sub-par or a valuable addition later on.

And finally, it will now track aircraft EVEN IF THAT AIRCRAFT HAS VEHICLE STEALTH ON OR NOT.

This is a massive change. It's going to make the Striker a viable launcher against Air. FINALLY.

With these changes, even as-is, the Striker will be considerably more useful, especially at longer ranges. Our only long-range options so far has been AV turrets (available to all) Archer AMR's (available to all) and lock-on launchers. (available to all)

Now, we get an ESRL that once again is a unique tool for armor destruction, and it's missile velocity is 220m/s at it's peak - in comparison, ML-7 is 85m/s, barely 25m/s above the Strikers initial velocity. Grounder is 100m/s, SKEP is 115m/s, Annie is 100m/s and Deci is 60m/s. The velocity alone makes this better at long range than any other launcher - you can't smoke to break the lock and you will get no lock-on warning either.

Honestly, you are roasting DBG way ahead of time - if serious alterations are done to these proposed changes, THEN it might be time for some flaming, if it's whined into the ground by other players, THEN you might have a point. At this point in time however, it's utterly unjustified to be this angry with them. I'd love to see the COF tightened a bit as well, but you can propose that in a civil manner.

You forgot the dev mainly read reddit more than the forums. So you might want go there instead with this XD

**** reddit srsly this is the main forum they should focus more on here instead of fagdit xD

Hyperbole. With the current stats, at 200 meter ranges I can easily hit tanks by aiming slightly above them on a flat plane, given enemy movement and elevation differences, it's not hard to compensate and find out how far away to lead in order to hit. Only issue is, it's still a dumb-fire rocket against armor, and the only way to make hitting at 200+ meters is to make the rockets seek against tanks as well as aircraft.

At 200+ meters, Annies and SKEP's still lock onto tanks. Though these can be countered with smoke and give the enemy warning. The striker take experience to hit with, but to be frank, it's now, thanks to projectile velocity, much easier to hit enemy targets because of the very weak drop and rapid speeds. Everything else about hitting targets at long ranges still apply - this is still not a Lancer or a Phoenix, but it IS a marked improvement over what we had, and it's far from impossible to hit targets out beyond 200 meters, let alone 100.

You know what's funny about the COF? It's irrelevant.

I did some testing today to check a theory I developed. Turns out to be accurate. If you hold down the trigger you mag-dump the Striker. This is a bad move, as rockets 4, 5 and 6 will go all over the place and the second and third one will be less accurate as well. However, spam-klicking the weapon on your own produces the same ROF with COF similar to the first rocket.

The down-side is ofc, that you got to klick it and can't hold the trigger down.

Yep. Cone of fire in this game does not reset as long as you have the trigger held down, no matter what your rate of fire is. It resets quite quickly as soon as the trigger is released. This of course can create somewhat silly or counter-intuitive results on weapons with a sufficiently low rate of fire.

For example, way back when Basilisks fired at 180 RPM or something like that, tap-firing them was vastly superior to holding the trigger down. Though there was a limit to how well that worked for them because their minimum CoF was quite large to begin with.

If you are crouching your CoF is also almost non-existent.

You've got one, its called an engineer AV turret. Making every faction identical just makes the game that much more boring. The lancer is only good with alot of people firing on targets in an armor column from a good vantage point, but if you're alone firing on something thats not extremely far away the lancer doesn't do much. I'll only use the lancer during our ops or if I see alot of other VS using it in a fight, otherwise I always take a decimator.

If TR could only get half that distance, it would be a massive improvement and a welcomed change.

Uhm... all of that does add to it's long range viability.
Maybe not by as much as you were hoping? (lancer status?) but it will make plucking at targets with single shots more reliable unquestionably, and hit for a little bit more damage when it does.
I already used it at 200-300m ranges for lack of AV lock in my aresenal to mild effect. A small velocity buff and slightly more dmg would maybe make that better.
You aren't supposed to be able to clip dump for high accuracy. Lancer can't even do that. Lancer has charge mode of course, but doesn't lock to aircraft either.
They're fixing the utterly broken stealth counter which completely decimated it's use at it's best, and the increased velocity will also extend it's effective AA range.
FRACTURES are what need to get some modicum of range back.

Actually they are going to get that feedback. We appreciate it being presented so constructively.

Yep, they are both features too but then Lancer has long exposure time as well and you are hihgly vulnerable when guiding a Phoenix so this is, I guess a common feature. I'm pretty sure Lancer has no burst damage and Phoenix burst damage is low like Striker although it does have a mechanic for reducing armour resistance.

I think maybe increasing Striker damage to vehicles will make it more like the Phoenix in terms of additional damage but overall I guess exposure time and poor AoE will continue to be balancing features of all ESRLs.

Personally I would have preferred a coyote mechanic against ground vehicles for faction uniqueness. Lancer has range and charge up and Phoneix has camera. Coyote against air is the TR faction trait, it seems. But it is not to be, seemingly

So in short, in order to avoid having the faction become to samey you are okay with the TR only having AV turrets - NS weapons that EVERYONE HAS - as their AV options?

And you are going to talk smack about the Lancer not being very good to excuse this?

If a 12-man squad of TR could do with the Striker what a 12-man squad of VS does with Lancers, there would be no problem.

Guess what though, 12-man Striker squads are a joke right now, and 12-man Lancer squads are tank - and air - erasers.

Your protest against the TR getting a viable faction-specific AV weapon is noted.

Fun fact: if the proposed changes go live, we will. The New Striker on PTS atm can reliably hit a target past 200 meters, assuming ofc the user can lead the target well and take the much milder drop into account.

Testing it myself, at 200 meters you only need to aim right above an enemy tank to hit it dead on. For instance, if you are shooting at a Vanguard at 200, aim for the turret, then pitch your cross-hairs just above it, then spam-click the trigger, don't hold it down. At that point, all you need to do is compensate for any movements the Vanguard makes.

The increased speeds and acceleration don't help it become better at range? The ability to lock on to vehicles while stealthed don't help it become more accurate?

You may be right (not saying either way), but you don't have to be an ******* about it.

WHAT?!?

NO!!!

The long range AV weapons must be entirely skillless to use! I DEMAND IT OR DBG DOESN'T CARE ABOUT US!!!

Am I doing it right?

Oh shoot... forgot to change my profile first

All of these changes are going to increase the Strikers accuracy, range and damage against vehicles...These changes are also going to make it more accurate and better vs fast moving vehicles and it is going to make it much better vs Air vehicles especially ESF's.

You will have to forgive me but what exactly is the issue?

I think this is a good start. These buffs should all make the Striker a better weapon, then it is currently and after a few months we can look at the numbers and see if it is enough or maybe even too much (My concern is vs Air vehicles)

Well that range is achieved with a 450 nanite AV MAX...I think the Fracture is a better candidate to buff, so that it can reach those same ranges as the Vortex and Ravens. Only the Lancer has that sort of range in a similar weapon and we all know that needs to be addressed, for the same reason, If the VS what that sort of infantry based AV range they should spawn a MAX just like the NC and TR, there ESRL should have the same range limitations as the Phoenix, Striker and AV Mana Turret.

I disagree

Maybe Fractures could do with a tiny buff to bring them inline more with Falcons ( If they need one, The stats are pretty close anyway ) , and it's Pounders that should be changed ..

By changing Pounders they can kill to birds with one stone .. Give TR a long range AV Max weapon that's comparable to Raven's and Vortex's

And

Address how powerful Pounders are versus infantry by the same tweaking.

Whoever said NC was the CQC only faction? Were you here in 2012? The entire reason my avatar is what it is was because NC was the only inf that started with BASR. The other 2 started with Se-S-A-R's that perform better in Mid-range. Also the SAW - terrible for midrange Hip-fire, only intended for longer range scoped burst Fire. Reaver: Also designed for hit and run and little else --- was hands down the worst dogfighter for the longest time with a terrible convergence & a hitbox profile 1.75x larger than Scythes and slower banking than Skeeters. Reavers only advantage was AB'ing into the skybox and mustang/Pod sniping. Our MBT ... STILL the fastest muzzle velocity = Long range intent. What all of this means is that NC is best played anywhere but Mid-Range & Medium Range. TR with their original CARVs and the Trac5 to this day (god what a monster that thing still is in perspective) owned Medium-close range. VS with their original SVA gimmick & STILL /w the orion have Mid range covered. So the NC is stuck in mediocrity -- not as good as the VS when it come to extreme range AV .... and having to share close range dominance with the now-nerfed DAKKA DAKKA red people.

....this is exactly what happens when the lines between the factions is blurred too much from the original release of the game. NC used to be Shotgun & LongRange Bust-fire who just plain die when caught with our pants down in medium range. VS is still MidRange & LongRange "Attrition through Accuracy". TR was the kings of Close range & BulletHosing. Did TR get nerfed the most without the most justification for it? ...yeah on pretty much EVERYTHING with the Banshee being the only one that deserved the hamfisting. But it's not *that hard* to get into medium range b/c I see your Harassers and light assaults doing it every couple minutes that I spend fighting TR.



EDIT:
Prowler probably needs a Close-Range survival buff. Maybe a stronger Side-Armor / Track-Armor than the other 2 Tanks to make up for its massive Profile size?

The striker changes on PTS are not nearly as useless as people make them out to be. The velocity increase (which decreases projectile drop) is very significant, and is much easier to use than traditional dumbfire RLs.

COF is not really an issue unless running around while ADS and holding down left-MB, preventing the bloom from being reset. If you crouch and click for each shots separately the rockets are almost laser accurate out to 200+ meters.