[Suggestion] Reduce Archer Damage Against Valkyries

Background

The Archer was substantially buffed against vehicles as part of the Combined Arms Initiative (CAI). As a result, it became drastically more effective against aircraft.

There was much complaining, and its damage was reduced against Galaxies and Liberators, on the premise that they were large enough targets that they were being constantly pelted by un-sourceable chip damage.

The Valkyrie, unfortunately, was again left out of this line of thinking, despite that fact that it is as fast as the Liberator, but still big enough to be hit fairly easily. It currently knocks off about 10% per hit, causing serious damage, and frequently also becomes a post-engagement vulture gun - after successfully disengaging from a particularly hairy scenario, a random unavoidable archer round appears from nowhere and puts you under burning.

Unlike the ESF, the Valkyrie is a transport. Its not just 1 Pilot vs. 1 Engineer. Its 1 Engineer vs. 5 other people. There is a broader community to think of then simply "Well he wants his special snowflake protected."

Its not just about me. Its also about the team. If you ride in Valks, this issue matters to you.

What I'm asking for:

Damage resist parity against the Archer between the Valkyrie and the Galaxy/Liberator.

But its a light aircraft?

Same logic applies to the Valk as applies to the Galaxy/Liberator in regards to their buff against Archer. Its big enough to hit, and the archer is effectively a source of unlimited, random aggro chip damage. Unlike lock-ons or flak, it has little or generally no damage sourcing - you can't tell you're being engaged until you lose 10% of your health, even then, the round rarely explodes as its supposed to, meaning you are flying around being randomly hit once or twice before you realize you're under attack.

Well then just don't go low to the ground

Archer has an extreme range, low bullet drop, and high velocity.
Also, Valkyries are supposed to fly low to the ground. Its how we avoid damage from everything else, get our people in undetected and uncontested, and provide CAS.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is a heretic.

Well you just need to learn to dodge then.

I am one of the most artful dodgers in the airframe. People can get airsick from my flight style.
My KDR suffers mostly because I guarantee deliveries. Also, I like to fly under bridges in my spare time.
Trust me, this is a significant problem, and the Valkyrie community is kind of getting fed up with it. Its not at the level of "You gipped us on Pelters again." but it is getting up there.

It can't be fixed. Don't waste dev time on it.

Yes, yes it can. It was already fixed for the Galaxy and Liberator. Its a minor value tweak that will require a very minor amount of fore-thought and white-boarding before being rolled up in a future build.

Specifically, it is either resist type 5 (I believe it was changed to that label) or resist type 40, as per the notes.

I recommend setting the value against archers at between 0 and 10. The liberator is at 0, but it has a higher health pool that the Valkyrie. The Galaxy is set at 25.

What about ESFs?

Not recommending it for ESFs - they aren't generally targeted by them, because they're smaller, and also, I'm not poking any form of "Buff ESF" argument with a 10 foot pole.

Conclusion


Thanks for listening, let me know what you think, but if you're going to go on a tear about "But the archer is great" then please don't, and don't vote-brigade because of it.

Why is this our problem?

If you happen to be an ESF player, then advocating for the Valkyrie will move the needle should Archer prove to be problematic for ESFs, a notion that some Archer enthusiasts evangelize for.

If you're in Lib or Gal, then it's important to re-affirm the notion that the Archer was not intended, as part of CAI, to be an anti-aircraft weapon.

If you are a ground vehicle main, then you too likely feel the effects of the Archer's extreme range. This issue is thus important for you as a means of validating and verifying the issues that vehicles as a whole are having with the Archer.
No seriously, why is this our problem?

It can be made your problem if the issue persists. We're Valkers.
We'll find a way.

Overall with my time with the archer it just lacks at everything. Basically only to take out Max suits or be a "last hit" kill steal weapon on vehicles. Other than that it's a harassment weapon and the kills/cert gain with it isn't that great seeing as the target usually gets away. In case of max suits usually an allie gets last hit or takes it first. What's worse... I find myself in snipe fights against infiltrators who have advantage that can 1 shot me on a head shot but if i get a head shot on them they don't die. What's annoying is that typically 2 shots I die to them and 3 - 4 to kill them (unless I get multiple head shots) not to mention a lot of them have rapid fire snipe guns or 3 shot fast fire vs bolt action archer.

Well thought post btw.

I guess I'm ok with how it is now. I'm a frequent Valk pilot doing CAS work. Life is rough for sure. You gotta spend a lot of time managing fire from the ground. Dodging, breaking LOS, etc. The archer does suck but it doesn't do that "sprise bhutsecks!" damage. It's not quite chipshot though. You can't ignore it.

If someone manages to wing me while I'm on fire and retreating, good for him.

As always though: Let attacker and defender in any scenario get a good look at each other. As long as air gets a free Q spot out of folks damaging them then the game is afoot.

I'm also a heavy archer user. It has it's uses. Air deterrence is a pretty good one. I mainly use it for long distance shots deep into buildings to clear maxes holding a point.

I would agree to a damage reduction of the Archer against Valks if you remove the ability for Engineers to repair on the fly.

Any nerf to the Archer would be kicking the worst weapon in the game square in the balls. As someone who is trying to Aurax this thing it needs all the help it can get. That said I can fully understand that for Valk pilots it must be **** annoying to be constantly plinked by the thing from range. I know myself that it is very easy to hit Valks at distance though I don't know why I bother because all you can do is piss it off.

Give it slower velocity perhaps, making it harder to hit distant targets. In compensation, it needs to OHK infantry on a headshot in medium to close range.

After reading the OP I get the impression that this is an ESF player who got killed by the Archer when in a Valkyrie and now want it nerfed because it can kill them.

I have to ask here, have you ever actually played with the Archer?
And I dont mean just tested in in VR against the static targets there, but used it in actual combat.
Playing as an Engineer I have used the Archer extensively, and can say that the bullet drop is greater than the OP gives the impression of, especially at longer ranges and the bullet speed is also slower than what the OP gives the impression of.

Given both the bullet drop and the slower speed of the projectile you should not have any problem evading most shots if you are the artful dodger you claim to be.
However a skilled player or a lucky shot should still be able to take you out and just because you had a bad day or a bad experience is not good enough reason to ask for it to be made even more useless than it is

The Archer is an Anti-Material rifle, which means its designed with the purpose of being able to damage and even destroy hard targets such as vehicles and aircraft.
However with the recent nerf to it due to people like the OP complaining about it, its become useless.
Before the nerf I seem to remember it taking me 5 shots to down a Valkyrie, after the nerf it takes me at least 7, and given the long reload time of the Archer that should give you plenty of time to find cover from the shots, yet you still want to have it nerfed even more?

Yes, I have used the Archer. It is fairly straightforward to hit slower aircraft.

Also, I have 9 Hours in ESFs

Compared to 13 Days in Valkyries.

The archer was not nerfed. It was buffed in CAI, then had its damage vs. aircraft reduced, because it was not intended for that. On net, it remains massively buffed compared to pre-CAI.

It concerns me that you had to go to ad hominem immediately to try and mount a defense of the Archer vs. Aircraft.

This is what I was able to accomplish a few months ago, when I was out of practice for a few weeks.



Finally, if you will recall ages and ages ago, there was a major nerf done to the MANA AV Turret. The expressed reason for this was the reduction of unsourceable chip damage at range to vehicles, which was rightly regarded as annoying and disruptive to the game balance.

Then, in this past update, lock-ons received a range reduction with a number of other salient buffs in compensation. Again, the expressed desire was to reduce engagements beyond render range, giving both sides fair time to react in an engagement.

Pair this with the general winding in of range of most vehicle weapons.

Now we turn to the archer, which received no functional reduction in range and a massive boost in damage vs. vehicles. Which was immediately pared down against some vehicles. Does the premise of the archer seem in line with the rest of the CAI, or, as many have contended, an unintentional side effect of a desperate attempt to buff MAXes indirectly by giving the Archer something else to do besides shoot at MAXes, thus allowing the devs to drop the damage on the Archer?

I find it funny that you claim I'm using ad hominems when you yourself specifically stated that anyone who disagrees with you about the Archer is a heretic, where as all I did was tell you what my impression of you were not that it was how you were.
But if you want to take that as an ad hominem thats on you.

Given how you talk about changes to the game long ago, I believe you have played the game longer than I have.
However that does not change the fact that I have played extensively with the Archer, more than long enough to now full well its current capabilities.

You also claim to be speaking on behalf of the entire Valkyrie community yet I have not seen a single a single person supporting your claim, not even in the Community Issue tracker you linked to.
If you had the support you claim to have, then we should have seen at least some of them show their support, but all I have seen are people who disagree with your claims.

I also did a quick test in VR with the Archer.
It takes 10 shots to kill a Valkyrie with the Archer in VR.
Now I could be mistaken but from what I understand thats the basic version with no armor, if thats the case then it will take even more shots to kill a Valkyrie.
And that is not taking into account the long refire rate(1.5 seconds ) and reload times(4.25 seconds) of the archer, and you want to nerf it even further?

If you were the "artful dodger" you claim to be then this should not be an issue for you.
But the fact that you are trying to make such a big issue of the Archer strongly suggests to me that you are nowhere near as good as you claim to be.
I am in fact inclined to believe that you are just trying to get things you way, by having a weapon you consider a problem for you personally nerfed further so you dont have to deal with it.

As far as I can tell, Insignus has a half-joking "code" for dedicated Valkyrie users. I wouldn't take the meaning to be 100% serious.

On the flipside, literally your first sentence in the thread tries to point to a possible conflict of interest. Attack the argument, not the person. You wouldn't need to do that if your argument was sound on its own.

And please don't pull the "all I did was make comments that impede on constructive discussion, it's on you if you take it that way" card.

An appeal to experience won't work here. I also have extensive experience with the Archer (1650+ kills, haven't looked at usage times), and yet I disagree with you.

Yes, a thread that's been up for not even a day on a single location for PS2 discussion is a great indicator of community opinion.

Also, I 'liked' Insignus' posts here. I think that counts as supporting a claim.

You clearly tested at long range, way to be intellectually honest. Admittedly, I haven't tested exact shots-to-kill for the Valk, but I know for certain that a full mag at closer ranges puts it well below half HP.

Sure, focus on the Archer's long application time, and leave out how the Valk also has relatively long exposure.

Sigh. Again with the personal attacks.

Get in a Valkyrie and try to dodge a 525m/s sniper round. Several times.

The Archer is meant to apply accurate and steady supporting damage to any target out to long range. Compared to other interactions, it deals way too much damage to a Valkyrie given the ease of application. Personally, I do think the Archer should outperform launchers in some scenarios since it's a primary that incurs sacrifices to equip; but taking a multi-person squad vehicle down to "retreat now" health in 6-8 seconds with near guaranteed hits is an outlier in the ground/air relationship.

Beyond that, I believe Insignus is good at avoiding the "buff my unit" mentality, and can look at things as a whole.

Realistically, any flyer that isn't an ESF is just godawful right now.

So a buff to survivablility to anything but ESF is good in my book.

As to the line about Heresy, I should perhaps have made it more clear, if you read the sentence more closely:

The phrase about heresy is attached to that specific line about how the Valk is flown. Sazukata is correct in that I have a psuedo-serious code about flying the Valk. The heresy comment is NOT attached to my views on the Archer.

It specifically is incorporated as a reflexive rebuttal against the counter-arguments that many people themselves make reflexively about aircraft "Oh well just fly higher brah." The Valkyrie was designed and is intended to fly low and close to the ground, which is its appropriate niche airspace, for reasons relating to:

High Maneuverability enabling accurate close terrain flying; the necessity of achieving precision, surprise drops to maintain transport parity against the more capacious galaxies; turret weapons with abysmal COF; scout radar that has only a 200m range; the generic discomfort that many ESF pilots feel with close terrain operations; the necessity of breaking lock-ons using terrain; favorable geometry that provides additional protection vs. collisions and crashes; 50% bottom armor; and additional ephemeral arguments that largely revolve around philosophical arguments and ecumenical politics.

For these reasons, flying the Valk at high altitude is generally viewed as not maximizing the airframe. Its not heretical to do so, as we all do it as the situation demands. But it is heretical to advocate and train others to do so as a general flight style.

In the spirit of continuing with my line of mystical sarcasm, I should disclose that I am also the head of the autocephalous fake-religion governing the Valkyrie, the Falkyrate, as well as a generically nice person that runs people over in the Valkyrie as a hobby.

I only use my powers for good. I promise. Except for that one time I wrote a Children's Book. That was mildly evil on a few different levels.

Let me clarify a bit more.

Firstly, under the current Air Meta, Composite Armor Valks are exceedingly rare - the low observability provided by Vehicle Stealth is simply too valuable against ESFs, which have in-built Engagement Radar.

Second, Valks are frequently at 80% or below in engagements, due to random chip damage.

Third, whereas other weapons generally reveal their position (Flak with tracers and explosions, Lock-ons having warnings and red dots that track in on you), the Archer does not reveal its position. Theoretically, its supposed to, and should provide an explosive bloom over a certain range. But this rarely renders on the Valk when flying in third person. So unless you're looking right at the archer in 3rd person, you're going to have a very hard time tracking it - which is important for the purposes of dodging and evading it. With Skyguards, when one is running in the area, you can hear it from a fair distance away and see it lighting up the sky. This lets you work around it or leave the area.

The archer does not have that mechanic. It is almost entirely unsourceable, and could be engaging you anywhere from 400m to 50m away with no discernible reference, particularly in the hum and drum of battle that can wash out the sound. You'll just start randomly losing health.

Might try flying away. Nerf the Archer and eventually people will find another way to knock you out of the sky.

Archer is not only a Problem for the Sky,

2 Archer on range, own every vihecle, exept the slow Vang MBT.
but you guys like Wrel, so don`T cry about inf based Gameplay, take it and Play it.

So many words.

Look I haven't checked recently. What is the number of rounds to put a Valk on fire with an Archer?

If I picture myself flying and also picture the pace of shots (done a lot of flying, also done a lot of shooting with that gun). I may or may not notice the first couple shots hitting, but I can scoot out of there before it kills me.

I don't think a valk-buff or archer-nerf is the solution.


As possibly a middle ground suggestion: Fix the spotting. Make the engy appear on minimap and Q spot when they make a hit with the archer.

You need at least 7 shot, if you assume the archer is dealing damage from max damage range and doesn't hit the 50% bottom armor. On worst condition, you'll need 28 shots.
7 shot with a solo archer mean a TTK of 9,5 sec.

I don't agree with auto-spot on damage. If the guy that shot at you is enough concealed so you don't spot him immediately, he shouldn't be punished for that.

Yea, not claiming my suggestion there was fair. Right now though the Valk gets punished just for trying to play. I think auto-spotting the archer the same way the AV MANA does with vehicles is a middle ground.

Being spotted doesn't mean the fun is over. It might be for a lazy engineer I suppose

One of the multiple reason why AV mana turret is near-useless is because of this "feature". (it's not the only one tho)

Considering the TTK difference between an archer engineer with flak armor and auxiliary shield against a stock valkyrie with CAS-14, yes being spotted does mean the fun is over for the engineer. Because lazy or not, once spotted he's dead.

If an engineer shot from a bush and get automatically spotted, it's not fair for him.
If the valk crew can't spot an enemy firing at them from the middle of a plain with the assistance of the "damage came from here" arrow/mark then it's the crew's fault for being blind / focused on other things.

The issue is that the impact doesn't render. When fighting against other damage types (Rockets, lock-ons, flak, AAA) there are tracers, tones, and trails that cue the pilot as to where they can dodge to. So someone was being sneaky and launcher a deci at me? I can hear it distinctively and try to bounce up out of the way, then come back and engage him.

Getting tones from a lock-on? I can break for terrain to get an idea of what blocks it (Simple dirty geometry will give me a direction on where he could be), and if he actually launches, the little red dot will give me a rough idea of where I should avoid.

For Flak and Triple A, there are tracers and flak detonations going off, as well as lots of noise.

With Archer, there is no warning or track-back. They could be literally anywhere, and unless you are looking right at them, you're SOL.

Worst is when the Engi doesnt render at all, impossible to find the damage source.

Not something that can be fixed, even if they brought the range down to 100m it wouldnt always help.
Had a Phalanx turret not render 50m infront of me at regent rock yesterday......thats unacceptable, sorry devs but youve ****** up royaly on that one.

Please, no ******* Archer nerfs.
The gun finally gained some usability and was finally turned from a Max area denial piece of **** into a proper utility gun.
Now Maxes can actually be used again and Archer is finally useful for more roles than just getting dusted off if some kind of moron decides to take a Max even though there's a dedicated Max killer gun available.