It would be valuable because it does more damage to the front and sides, taking presumably one shot less (two shot side kill, three shot front kill) than the default AV weapon. If the devs feel that ground vehicles are OP, they should increase the resource cost + timer, not make infantry able to instagib a vehicle that costs resources + has a long timer. Again this is all speculation, but presumably two HA with decimators will be able to basically instakill a tank with either side or rear hits.
I see you have been playing since late October - which I believe was after the multiple HA rocket buffs. The rockets when beta first started were MUCH slower and had MUCH greater drop to them - I suspect the new Decimator will handle similarly to the old rockets - that said it still wasn't that hard to kill tanks - at that point in the beta lock on's didn't exist and people still handled it fine - so its extreme damage isn't *needed* for balance. That kind of extreme damage also doesn't fit into the existing design philosophy - the lock on does 20% less damage than the dumbfire, the AA does an additional -10%. The default 2 shots - the other two will put the tank into critical (burning) with 2 shots which is usually as good as as kill. Going from -20%, to -10%, to +100% seems very out of line. I think what you might be able to look forward to is something along the lines of +25% which would make it a 1 hit *critical* - which would be FANTASTIC and very much worth using - devastating to tanks without having what would be frankly a cheesy OHK weapon.
They are giving us weapons to deal with ground threats lol HA's have no problem dealing with ANY ground threats. Air is the problem not ground.I rather have my old ground to air launcher that could fire at both air and ground.
Mags in general are a problem, massed heavy armor are another. This weapon will help against the latter.
I just hope it isn't called the Decimator. dec-i-mate: to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
Call me crazy if you like but do believe I might like to actually play with it before I talk about it. Mind you if the render distance really isn't fixed next week, then potentially vehicle wrecking missiles fired from invisible and invulnerable infantry against all too visible and vulnerable vehicles.... ...what could go wrong.
dec·i·mate /ˈdesəˌmāt/ Verb Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of. That's the old latin meaning I believe when it was used as a form of execution.
What I don't get about the move is that it doesn't actually resolve the main problem withe the launchers. They are dead accurate when dumbfired. I haven't seen much concern about the damage launchers do to tanks or air when its just 1 or two people, dumbfire or otherwise. The complaint has been the ease with which they can be used to pick off infantry and MAXs Since the Decimator will let you do that still - on top of being the only launcher aside from stock that wont have you standing in the open announcing your attack for 6 seconds - people will want it. And since its way easier for an HA to get xp for firing at vehicles/infantry than aircraft, they'll basically want this equipped all the time as its a path of least resistance. I'm interested to see what effect the changes and introduction of a distinct dumbfire upgrade will have on Air defense.
