prowler against ESF.

AI has already nerfed to the ground, HEAT on Prowler is a disgusting joke with 0.5 blast radius and HEs are mainly good for suppressive reasons. I mostly run AP since sniping infantry is usually more effective than spamming HEs to general direction, also it reduces drastically amount of accidental friendly fire. And with AP I am not defenseless against other tanks which I would like to fight more if everyone and their grandmother weren't threat to a MBT.

Its been nerfed, but it still feels much more effective compared to Van/Mag main guns in killing infantry.

A locked HE prowler in the right place is an infantry farming machine. If you can lob shells into the upper corridor of a tower or similar choke point during a large fight, you're looking at 50+ kills in 10 minutes. It can also clean out the upper floor of a spawnroom just by hitting the shells on the ceiling. This is an amazing strength of the tank and needs to be balanced by deficiencies elsewhere, which largely it is - Vanguard destroys it 1 on 1, and Magriders have the mobility (they're probably the weakest tank overall, but used right strafing can avoid more damage then some VS players like to admit).

I don't find the lack of a one-shot versus air a big deal. Especially with the autorepair nerf, and vulnerability to small arms, it's pretty rare an ESF is at 100% health anyway. In that event, it's better to have two chances to hit and finish it, versus one.

Actually just yesterday I was having situation where I would rather get AP OHKO on ESFs instead of spammable AoE rounds. Was flanking enemy tank zerg and two scythes arrived, I managed to hit them both undeployed with an AP round due to how stupidly they played against me... they just afterburned away to come back to lolpod me even more (I actually managed to deter them twice the same way before got flanked by an AP magrider).

I don't care about HEs, yes it is more effective than maggie or vannie HE, I wouldn't even mind if they removed whole disaster of a vehicle balance right away (making tanks getting nerfed more and more vs infantry due to QQ caused by encouraged habit of farming, and this making basically everything tank vs. tank combat related frustrating). I actually never claimed they aren't better. And they surely are great tool of suppression, but not as infernal hellmachines as people tend to exaggerate. But I am really more interested on APs than those.

Armor piercing shot should always down an ESF if it is playing so stupidly (ie predictably, greedy) that a MBT is able to land a shot (which in that case is a) luck b) skill). Or if it is too much of a deal to give any AP shot OHKO an ESF, an idea would be to then make them lose control (inverted controls and such, like with conc grenade) for a couple of seconds (3, 4?) which would give high flying a2a aces getting shot randomly a chance to survive but most likely will drive a greedy lolpodder down to its death straight away. At least by logic getting hit by a tank round would make piloting any high speed flying machine drastically harder for some time.

Normally I find one hit on ESF is enough. They usually take enough AA or Flak damage prior or post my tank shell to be dead. Libs well, not so easy to kill anymore full stop. It used to be that a hovering Libs was auto gibbed with 4 shots. Now it is much harder.

Solution is fairly simple, and should be done with any slow-firing attack. That is, sim-shots.