[Suggestion] reduce dmg of max bursters, but increase accuracy

After the nerf at AA maxes, they has become useless in this role.

Imho you should have nerfed the damage, not the accuracy.

Please re-evaluate the nerf and instead return to previous accuracy but nerf the damage.

I disagree they are exceptional at point defence, and what you're suggesting will only make them worse at that. Before the nerf they essentially created a huge no-fly zone around themselves.

That explains a lot, was wondering what was up with the AA max. Totally useless. You can't hit anything with the spread and the damage seems outright pathetic. You know you're playing an op class when the aircraft just stands still in the air at 150-200+ meters and fire you down without even moving. Not like they need to because you'll miss everything and the shots that hit doesn't seem to do any damage or "scare" them away.

I'm not saying the max units were any good in planetside 1, but seriously this is a joke even compared to them. At least the AA max weren't completely useless. Why did you remove the different types of AA anyways? The TR had real anti-air shells, NC had the current one and VS had lock-on ones(hilarious I might add). Anyways, they were a reason to be picked because they did AA fairly well. In ps2 everyone seems to fly around in aircrafts and just dominate everything. Good job.

What do you mean with point defense? I was standing inside a spawn and had 3 different aircrafts just flying around me, some even laughing by just hovering in the air at a distance because they knew I wouldn't hit them. Seems frickin' useless to me, add that up with 10 min timer(unless you cert and why would you), 350 resources, another big lol... resources in ps2, who came up with that brilliant idea? /sarcasm off.

I agree..!!

First time I have used dual bursters since nerf...oh dear more money/station cash down the drain. I am no longer going to buy weapons, it is just not worth it. I am useless at flying, so cannot join counter them that way. Annihilator and dual bursters...useless.

"Exceptional"? That is stretching it more than a bit. If you are talking about destroying BR3's who are hovering 100m from you, sure, they wreck.

But oh no, here comes Mr. BR85, and he knows you pose absolutely no threat. So Mr. BR85 farms your squad by not hovering around like an eejit, and you all have to hide indoors regardless of having a Burster MAX.

Inb4 "Use more than one". Mmmhm, and along comes another Reaver. And another. And another. 'Cos hey, Buster MAX is pretty damn bad now, and they can get away with whatever they want.

How does your "point defence" hold up when three or more Reavers hammer your Sunderer into scrap from 200+m away, with three or more Buster MAXes unable to do a damn thing about it?

Actually I'm talking about using bursters with ZOE at max rank, Flak armor 5, extended mags and playing with another burster MAX and killing ESF's almost before they can react, or Liberators before they get a chance to escape. I have a lot of success with them and the DPS is high so I don't see the issue. Bursters hit targets with every round hundreds of metres away in my experience since they Flak so the CoF isn't an issue for me, just means you can't dominate everything within render distance which makes sense.

...so not your average Buster MAX then. You've dumped thousands of certs into a MAX same as me, don't make the mistake in thinking that everyone has that luxury. Most Buster MAXes are not so well equipped, they get absolutely shredded by even average pilots. I'm a horrible pilot and the average Buster MAX is a joke to me.

...in which case, they were horrid pilots with the reaction times of sloths.

As do I, sometimes, but I have a LOT of Buster hours under my belt. Average players are really, really struggling.

Every round, hundreds of meters away. You are once more exaggerating, and it reduces the validity of your claims.


Addendum: You have 5% MAX play time.

I think they are fine now, they are still very strong up close, but rather bad at +150m. As they should be, it was silly when a max unit that can be resurrected and hide inside buildings was the strongest form of AA.

No actually, i'm talking about 2.5 seconds time-to-kill when with another MAX, so if you're coming down from a high angle like most pilots do rocket podding, you have 2.5 seconds to get out of line of sight before you're dead. Maybe you should learn to aim and lead the target instead? I have no issues with predicting the path ESF's will use to evade. And with practice it becomes an amazing cert farm.

My biggest issue with Bursters at the moment is that 50% of the time is use them these days they simply dont work.

This should be the priority fix rather than damage or accuracy changes...

Aha, going for a subtle insult. I can aim just fine, I do kill and I kill frequently.

I'll break this down for you, because you are studiously ignoring the points I've been making. Here, I'll write it big for you.

AVERAGE PLAYERS ARE STRUGGLING WITH BURSTERS.

I hope you finally got it that time. You are waxing lyrical about being so amazing, yet you spend VERY little time in a MAX suit. In all likelihood my aim is better than yours - I've been Buster MAXing since early Beta and do it on a regular basis.

Well, until the updates made it inaccurate as hell, but YOU seem to have no problem? How's that? Have you even tried since the update, because you make it sound like they are laser accurate out to hundreds of meters away.

So please, with your minimal MAX time, tell us all again how good Bursters are. Whilst you're at it, explain why your most used vehicle and highest score per minute is ESF..

..something fishy going on here.

but... if we buff flak, the dedicated aa platforms, they might kill the everything superiority fighters

Then the average players should practice more so they aren't average. If Starcraft 2 was balanced around the capabilities of bad players, then it would be terribly unbalanced at the highest level, and competitive play would be far less enjoyable. Because something requires skill that doesn't make it underpowered.

Bursters are now 'shotguns' - instead of working like flak. 1st 1-2 shots are relatively accurate and then the accuracy get worse exponentially. I have extended magazines on all bursters (all factions) and I can damage notably only the novice fly boys (ESF!). Any veteran who can reverse thrust and cuts engine power expertly will evade 4/5th of the flak even in 80m range, since you can't lead them.. especially with carp accuracy - any closer and even they fall.. but they make that mistake very-very rarely.
Killing with bursters is now mostly killstealing from skyguards and finishing off rooky ESF pilots who want to finish that target they keep lolpodding, so much they don't even register being showered by... flak.

Bursters are a joke atm - even with certifications.

Of course I should additionally note that it turns out that my hits were not registering last night, ie bugged, so cannot make any final judgement...

The AA MAX isn't much good anymore. It used to be fairly unrewarding but at least it would get some xp for damage and scare off aircraft. Now were in a worse position than we were in back in December as I barely get any xp due to high miss rate and aircraft no longer consider me threatening enough to retreat. Lock-on missiles are now the better option, even though every aircraft now runs flares.

And get flak'd from 700 meters? Nothx.

Before the Burster nerf, it was quite ridiculous. I could easily 1-clip ESFs with extended mags. With ZOE it just became absurd. The double-xp weekend that the MAX abilities came out, I didn't use ZOE to rack up infantry kills. I used it to play Burster MAX. On two occasions that weekend, I spend over an hour defending Camp Connery from the TR just outside of their warpgate. Any ESF which found itself within my firing arc was instagibbed. I was scoring in the range of 200-250k score/hour during these hour long fights.

Burster MAX isn't that bad in its current state. Damage is in a good place, and the current Burster is still pretty good at one-clipping ESFs which come in close to rocketpod. If anything, I would suggest giving them a slight buff (reduction) in bloom, but a nerf to projectile speed. They'll still be about as effective close-range, but they can now be used to scare away people standing still and rocketpodding or lib bombing a tower from a long distance. Moving targets flying in the distance will be hard to hit due to the slower projectile speed.

The biggest nerf to the Burster MAX was the resource cost increase for MAX units. Before, whenever there was any enemy air around, I would always pull a Burster MAX to keep the area above my team clear. 100 resources and I have the timer fully certed. It was an effective counter, and the killing power of the Burster MAX meant I would get my resources worth of XP. With the resource system changes I often don't have 350 spare infantry resources and even if I did I often can't justify spending them to scare away or destroy 1 or 2 rocketpod ESFs.

If any AA units need a change, it is (still) the Skyguard. Skyguard is still quite terrible especially considering it is now the primary ground-based anti-air weaponry. It still needs a bit tighter COF, and some brighter tracers would be nice to make it easier to lead.

Agree with OP. Lock down and ZOE are going to be weird to balance, but in stock burster mode killing an ESF is nigh on impossible.

For one; they can lolpod you with more accuracy than your flak has, from further away than your flak can reach. Granted, targets aren't always that easy to see from the air, but if you're trying to hold an outdoor point, they just dominate your infantry with 2esf:3burster ratios or similar.

Secondly; I don't care if the developers think bursters should be area denial rather than killing machines; but if you can't kill, you can't deny airspace. Average to decent pilots just take the first baton of flak on the chin, kill their intended target, then afterburn out to repair and repeat. I am at least average with bursters, and when I checked out my burster kills today (unrelated chance skimming of stats) I was hugely surprised to see that I've more kills with max punch than I have on my primary burster. I use bursters fairly regularly too.

Bursters aren't a deterrent to semi decent ESFs any more, and if there are a couple (or more) of them, they scale better than bursters do too.

don't have zoe/lockdown affect bursters.

buff bursters.

problem solved.