I think that burster max and skyguard should be swapped on effectivity. Max advantege: Infinite ammo everywhere on the battlefield with any engee around Higher damage, shorter reload Faster bullets Can switch to AI and AV role almost instantly. Can be revived. Renders FAR LATER so allows to more surprise gibs Can defend himself against C4 Cons: Can be run over (does not happen with half a brain cell) Skyguard advantage Speed (not important as it's most effective as a part of column) Can't be run over Can have Air Radar (meh) Cons: Can't defend himself against C4 Is not a burster max.
..i agree mostly with your points on max ..but wait ..what ? infinite ammo .. "if" any engi around ..& i'm not gonna mentioning engis where are available around , but unaware of it & keep sitting duck on turrets for example & so on.. happens not much , but still often. higher damage ..not really , max have very short range where the shells are effective ..so , damage depends on range of the target, as like the skyguard too ..except the skyguard have higher range & more accuracy. shorter reload , a must have ..because the max has a very low pool of ammo/clip even with extended mags. yes ..faster bullets , but only useful in close range as mentioned above. on wider angle ..the shells spread all over the clouds for rarely nothing. defend himself against c4 , a good fairy blows him immediately to the nirvana from straight above ..blind spot. it doesn't need full a brain cell to prevent to run over ..most of the roll-over's are accidently , doesn't matter if you or your own comrades are unaware & or capable to be a genius or not. ..as for the skyguard: speed .. is most important for my playstyle , because i neither act soloing like a sitting duck upon a hill & got ambushed by a lib backwards, nor do i zerging in a column & giving up the fabulous fast mobility where a racer-lightning me can give. to hunt or to be hunt. ..can have air radar , i wish i could have an' air radar , but all i got is a proximity radar where prevent me in combination with thermal vision & racer chassis (to dodge that flying fairy while on air...it helps also to dodge bullets from dalton by drive fast forward-backwards btw) awesome against c4.
They already swapped them around once. Burster used to be much more accurate than the SG, and has more ammo than the SG. And then the nerf bat hit, Burster lost its accuracy while SG got a significant magazine size boost and a negligible velocity increase, effectively making SG the prime long(er) range flak platform while Burster MAX is relegated to close range defense. The only thing left to argue is whether the SG is effective enough as the long range AA option.
I know they were, thing is, Burster Max is still much much better long range option due to velocity of bullets, leaving SG with nothing in my opinion. I'm not saying nerf maxes - I'm saying buff SG, and to biggest surprise I'm mediocre but still "air jockey" how people label those kind of players. SG rounds velocity is just an atrocious joke, and In my view Burster is much more accurate than SG.
No. Skyguard is already overpowered. Its an extremely easy to use vehicle that with small numbers can totally dominate all air. The range on skyguard is silly. Its a weapon designed to prevent ESF and libs from hovering and making low altitude strafing runs. The design intent was never that you should be able to sit on the ground in what is basically a mobile turret and just kill any airplane that flies by. The reasons that skyguard should not be dominating the skies are pretty simple from a balance point of view. Flak already creates no-fly zones around any large competitive battle. By competitive i dont mean one side has 50 tanks and they are pinning the other team inside the spawn room. At any real competitive fight there is so much flak and so many locks that air has no role to play. Skyguard already keeps the sky clear over any major battle. Anyone who isnt happy with that and wants skyguard to be stronger thinks that they should be able to jump in a skyguard and go solo ESF and libs simply because skyguard is the "dedicated" AA platform. I agree that the range of flak is rather ridiculous atm. People are constantly manning turrets at bases that are a hex or two away from the actual battle and shooting airplanes. AV turrets are the same way. Some guy at the crown is shooting my tank over on the bridge between TI alloys and allatum. That range is not necessary.
it is possible to lead targets, but it requires a lot of skill and practice along with some minor powers of premonition.
Leading targets at extreme range doesn't mean much. One slight direction change by the pilot and most of your shells will miss anyway. Getting a kill at that range requires cooperation by the victim (ie. fly in a straight line like a moron), which is something that they should NEVER do.
There was a hack I noticed when I first started playing the game..... It was revealed in probably the most obvious way I'd ever seen so it wasn't "skill". It happened right near the warpgate when I drove a flash out. And when I came in range of a specific hill, I started taking damage from a scythe's nose gun. I looked up and there was nothing, no scythe. Spotting did nothing so I ran away. Flash exploded so I pulled another vehicle. Drove to the same spot .... it was so far into the sky box its tracers weren't rendering. It eventually blew up that vehicle too which I stayed inside just to make sure I got the player's name and could report them. Finally Flew up toward the sky's ceiling and they rendered into view. looked like he was actually afk & hovering, almost like a farming bot.... Whatever it was for, it made it obvious that there was ways "see" past the client render limit. A couple times after that I'd also get headshotted by a tank round from the next hex over .... while cloaked as an infiltrator. Which can't even happen anymore thanks to that culling being moved Server-side. But vehicles may not be entirely serverside so I always assume that someone way way far away knows where I am when driving them. Every now and then driving an MBT, I'll hear this "tink tink tink" and look around. No tracers anywhere. Just the obvious slow death to someone's scythe that's so far away it's not rendering. If someone could tell me WTF happened to the instant recording options, I'd have video of it too.
I can't really agree. An armored hovering lib can get off 5 dalton rounds before even feeling even slightly intimidated by a skyguard. I don't see the skill in holding a mouse button down for nearly 30 seconds at a stationary target. I don't bother engaging distant targets or even medium ones for that matter. You're supposed to get kills in this game, who would want to sit in a SG if all they got was some poor Air damage XP? Do you think there would be as many annoying banshee farmers (with a ttk of less than a second) if they just 'detered' infantry. Shooting down ESF farmers was one of the main reasons I got the Skyguard, becase they annoy me and I think it's easy mode tbh. I've done it one and I actually felt guilty at how easy it was. Yet it still takes quite a bit of sustained fire to take out a single ESF and msot of the time there are 10 of the things flying about. ESF's are ok to take down, they are still the only really viable targets you'll be able to drop (with some luck) solo.I think the TTK is still a bit long tbh.
Why should a solo ez mode weapon beat a team vehicle anyway? If you are fighting a lib, thats 2-3 people. 2-3 people in a vehicle meant to kill tanks vs 1 person in a tank meant to kill airplanes. 2-3 people should beat one with relative ease. Especially when we are talking about weapons as simple as skyguard. You aim in the general direction and hit things. Easiest weapon in the game. If you had 2 skyguard you would smoke any solo lib that came at you. Unless you lack situational and positional awareness, then thats just bad play. The skill ceiling is so low with skyguard that skill can never really be considered a factor aside from positioning and awareness. Pretty much anyone can learn to aim a skyguard within a few hours and after that there is no way to improve. If you want a weapon that has a very high skill ceiling and is extremely effective against libs, learn to fly an ESF. If you dont think firing a dalton requires skill you should try it. There is a lot of bullet drop and you actually have to aim very accurately. As opposed to flak which is just aim the big circle and hit every time. Also why are you just sitting still while a lib is shooting dalton rounds at you? Arent you using trees and buildings for cover? Are you sitting on top of the highest most open hill in the hex thinking that you should just kill anything that flies because you are in the 'dedicated' G2A platform?
And if you had a trio of Infiltrators, you could just snipe the pilot and gunner out of the Lib. Or if you had a quartet of Medics, you could join hands and sing Kumbaya until the Libs realized that violence really isn't the answer. Please, my sides, they're killing me. A lib will eat a pair of Skyguards alive anywhere but northern Indar.
Because its our job to swat you out of the sky like a gnat. Pilots by far are the worst and whiniest bunch. They get used to farming helpless Infantry, lone tanks, and newbie pilots - and when they come up against something they have to run from and cannot beat, they want it nerfed until it no longer poses a threat. On a side note, they are also the ones that come back the most, specifically seeking the one that killed them out for vengeance. I get the most hate tells from Pilots by far...I even had a thread about it until it was removed for 'naming and shaming' though I was just posting chat messages. And lemme tell you, they are the most delicious things in the game. Im a bad pilot and I still rarely get shot down by AA. I get shot down by good pilots most of the time. Every once in a great while, I get caught off guard in a place I cant get out of fast enough; and usually Ive taken damage from rockets and/or small arms when flak does manage to take me down. If I can go out there as a garbage pilot and not get shot by flak, you must be doing something wrong. Maybe you're too caught up in farming to pay attention. Since I suck, farming is not what I do and Im paying attention.
Skyguards need to do more damage to libs. They can already take out ESFs pretty easily. I would also like to see skyguards do better damage to light vehicles so that they have more to do.
A Skyguard should have the same TTK against a Liberator as a Liberator has against the Skyguard. Either buff Skyguard durability to air attacks, or increase Liberator vulnerability to Skyguard attacks. Crew size is irrelevant. A 2 person Liberator can still take down a 12 person Sunderer, and a 2 person Liberator has a pretty easy time picking apart a 2 person MBT. Not to mention that a 1 person ESF is supposed to be the counter to a 2 person Liberator. Essentially if the Liberator sees the Skyguard first and opens fire, the Skyguard should die. But if the Skyguard sees the Liberator first and opens fire, the Liberator should die. That ought to be the rule for counter v. counter situations.
Well, duh. You're not a dedicated A2G platform yet you can take out infantry, tanks, transports and air as well offen with impunity. you see the thing about trees and buildings is they limit your LOS. I can tell you've never actually used a SG that much. ESF's can flight right over the top of you at 20 meters alt AND STILL get away if they have ab and you hit every round in your clip. TR are the wrost offenders for air and farming. We have four skyguards all within sight of each other when we were pushing on a base on Indar. There were about ~20 mosquitos and 5 libs flying around. We were shooting some of them down occasionaly but most of the time they got away. The sg's SOLE PURPOSE is to kill air units. It should completely excell at that considering it can't do anything else. Not take a full 30 seconds dedicated to trying to shoot down a single ESF thats hovering whilst it gets farmed by the other 15. What I think is the solution: Increase SG damage, ROF and velocity but add a steep damage fall off mechanic. That way, libs and ESF's that take the piss by coming up close without any stratagy get swatted but those far away or med distance take a lesser amount of damage. Adding a lock on mechanic, similar to the ones infantry have.and 4 missile launchers, where only one can be fired every X seconds would make the sg more interesting to play and also provile a 'follow up' to pilots that just out range the unit but have already taken damged from flak. That way the SG can at least defend itself from air.....
this is the mark of someone who has never fired flak. why should vehicles that get to travel 3x to 4x faster than most ground vehicles THROUGH THE AIR get to murder anything with impunity? last i checked mobility was a pretty hefty advantage in a large scale game like this. the ability to bypass any and all terrain combined with massive speed advantages grants that mobility.
The skyguard is fair against ESFs, so a damage increase is not necessary, just reduce damage resistance for liberators and galaxies against Skyguard.
