[Suggestion] Strove: Pokes Holes in the PPA

Just plain lol at the people saying PPA is balanced. Tell you guys what, change the Canister effective range to render distance with no drop so I can go 1/2 harasser and snipe infantry with a shotgun 200m away on a mountain. If anyone complains...."This is balance, l2p and overcome this challenge."

Well, that's more personal preference. AH is still effective against ground, less so than the others, but effective, and is still able to dogfight. With PPA and to a lesser extent Banshee, you might as well just crash into the ground if you see air coming for you.

We'll let that happen when you buff projectile velocity of ppa and make it almost as effective as canister at close range.

The PPA is still viable after the nerf sledgehammer, but the Kobalt was already almost as good (In my opinion) as the prenerf PPA. At this point, I lug my 150 round Kobalt into battle more frequently then the PPA - and with ~1k rounds in reserve, I can afford to spend much longer away from ammo sources.

Once every other AI option is nerfed, I guarantee that people will start screaming about the kobalt - given that it will be the only real option left, it's all anyone will use. It will be toned down shortly thereafter.

Give the game a few months in that state, and everyone will be complaining about how there are no good AI options for vehicles - thus, the buff / nerf cycle continues.

As someone with a BR 100 of all three factions, I am actually happy with the current state of both the canister and the PPA, although I believe the marauder needs work. Balance what we have, many things are in a good state at the moment, if people could just leave their preconceptions of gear at the door, many would see that some current gear is underrated, while some things currently perceived as overpowered are nothing of the sort.

The PPA lost a significant portion of it's max ammo, and the max rounds per reload were dropped from 50 to 20, not to mention that it can no longer shoot through shields of any type. I personally think they overdid the clip size nerf by 5, but everything else was justified.

I'm not sure it's personal preference though. ESFs have 2 weapon slots, which means I always take Fuel or Coyotes, which means that the flexibility of the AH is actually less desirable than if it were really good against infantry but worse vs. air.

There are just certain types of weapons for certain roles which are outright better, and in this case the Banshee is much closer to the ideal than the other factions' choices.

Also worth noting is that the weapons are even tighter balanced (tank secondaries stats) when you just look at them after the PPA balance change.

• 3404 - Proton II PPA | KPH | Daily Average: 76.80
• 3707 - C85 Canister| KPH | Daily Average:69.46
• 4007 - P525 Marauder | KPH | Daily Average: 69.85

I had forgotten that people forget to change the date range, so they include data from the time before PPAs were tweaked. These averages are for Aug18-Sep27. So PPA are only 10.5% higher than the worst weapon (Canister) and while that's still more than the 7% I arbitrarily call "balanced", it's really close.

Obviously this means that the Magrider's main cannons need to be buffed significantly to put them within 7% performance of the Prowler. But we all know that will never happen.

No, that absolutely does need to happen.

Just as VS' secondaries need to be slightly toned down and TR's slightly improved.

Clearly that'd be better for balance overall.

Alright guys enough is enough. The PPA is not that good, you guys are blowing this up to insane levels of QQ.

Honestly SOE can remove the damn thing for all I care just to stop the tears. We will just move to another weapon. I use the Saron more than i use the PPA.

The PPA is effective against infantry, it does it's job. It's achilles heel is that it does nothing versus armor say an MBT. Absolutely nothing to it. Instead of spamming infantry at an Anti-Infantry weapon, use your head and maybe pull a MBT. or hell even an AP lightning can take out a PPA mag.

Yes, you were infantry, Yes it killed you. Deal with the situation and counter attack it. Enough of these "Nerf what killed me" threads. Ya know what forget it, SOE should just remove it so you guys can move onto something else to QQ about.

These forums have made me so jaded......

It's sad when people playing only tank on Vanu don't realize that PPA still needs to be looked at. I know it will hurt your performance but it's for the good of the game. I do only 2 things in this game: infiltrator and tank. IMO Marauder and Cannister don't need buffs because tanks are still pretty strong vs infrantry (even after the nerf) so only reasonable thing to do is to slightly nerf PPA. Maybe splash by 10% or something like that. I still feel sorry for other factions every time i use PPA.

An just to clarify; can we pull the information for MBT primaries?
Or, whats the site? So I can pull them.

nerf the ppa

10 mag

slow firerate done

Instead, can we replace the PPA with a pickle launcher? There's a chance the brine will get in a target's eyes, momentarily stinging them. This would be superior to what you suggest, not to mention highly amusing.

I already use my Kobalt 75% of the time. Insignificant drop within it's effective range, combined with the ~150 round clip and 1000+ max rounds already make it amazing, and every faction has access to it. My NC loves her Canister, although I will admit that the Marauder needs work. (Every ES AI secondary brings something unique to the table, save for the marauder. It's just a fury that gave up it's capacity to damage armor for a few extra rounds / range)

I'd be fine with giving the Canister a choke toggle for better range, and the marauder honestly needs a full redesign into something unique. Homogenizing ES secondaries into uselessness is not the answer here.

Really, the PPA and Marauder are just about inline with eachother. If looking at recent stats; post-PPA nerf. I believe Axehilt's number state within 7% performance variance. The canister holds only a little further back, at the 10% difference mark.

This leads me to believe; that the PPA and Marauder are pretty close to being even, while the Canister is only a touch behind.
But when put into perspective: The magrider is the inferior tanking platform against the Vanguard. And has far, far less damage output than the prowler.

Before we continue on this ES-secondary witch hunt; I suggest we balance main cannons within 7% performance margins and see how happy people are with that.

This would probably either net a buff to the NC, a sizable buff to VS. And / or, a reduction to the TR. (Last I read, the prowler was over performing substantially. Asking for more recent stats please, if anyone has them.)

Agreed, on essentially all counts. Personally, I play all three factions, and have all three MBTs certed to a high degree. I enjoy the prowler the most by far, it's main cannon absolutely obliterates anything you point it at, assuming you can compensate for recoil swiftly enough to reliably land shots. Secondaries need to be balanced in conjunction with the platform upon which they are used ... yet no one seems to take this into account. (Harassers are in a good enough spot here that I think we can leave the stats for the -H versions as they are for now, balance based on MBT performance seems a good starting point.)

I'm not saying that the prowler needs to be toned down (Although I use it to great enough affect that I think it could stand a balance pass) but I do agree that main cannons need a bit of balancing.

The vanguard is the easiest to balance on it's own (in my opinion) due to the single shot nature of all it's ES toys.

The prowler has lockdown and two shots per reload, making those elements difficult to balance, since the second shot makes it inherently superior vs infantry, giving it massive farming potential.

The magrider's main cannon feels extremely lackluster compared to using the other two (to me, at least) ... but the capability to hover up uneven terrain to reach otherwise difficult to reach firing positions scales directly with the skill of the user, making for a sizable gap in overall performance. I.E. ... hard to balance.

Oracle of Death. Stick to the KPH stats, as KPU and Total Kills mostly just measures weapon popularity (for example the Marauder is insanely less popular than the PPA, yet it has very similar KPH.)

That link should take you to the tank mainguns (specifically the AP comparison.)

God forbid a weapon be good at its intended role. How about instead crying nerf everytime a weapon kills you when you do something stupid, why dont we ask for buffs for equivalent weapons? The marauder is a fury reskin with some more ammo and no ability to hurt tanks like an actual fury. The canister's effective range is too damn short for vehicle combat ranges. Fix these two weapons first.

Thank you sir, and as expected: The only constant is the Prowler main guns are significantly over performing.

I could cherry pick from the charts and make some wild out of proportion looking charts; but I think I should refrain from posting numbers until I have the sit-down time to properly take an average.

Such is the way of forumside

I say go for it, since most vanu don't even bother with these forums our stuff gets nerfed into oblivion without anyone even posting one chart!! It's not fair i say!

I demand at least one counter argument chart per nerf thread lol

Yeah the Prowler has been the best solo tank by a strong margin, for quite some time.

Although about a week ago a poster made a very valid observation that when you add up maingun plus AV secondary, the Magrider actually pulls ahead of the Prowler (AP+Saron has a higher VKPH than AP+Vulcan or AP + TR Halberd.)

If you take lockons, you lose AB tanks, which really help when avoiding ground based AA flak/lockons, and just general escaping. Especially for Banshee, you'll find yourself simply not having enough speed to get into cover to avoid locks/flak/everything. PPA requires a little less, but you will have to quickly disengage hover mode, so AB is pretty much a must, as Mossy's faster acceleration is helpful.