I've search and found some threads talking about how useless this thing is now, but never anything from the devs. So I ask, is this thing working as intended? Or is this just part of some long term behavioral modification attempt?
I didn't get one, but it was very strongly encouraged in my outfit for a while. From what they have told me: the lockon can be disrupted by a passing butterfly, and you need to maintain lock to hit. If you get all your shots to land then you do more damage than your standard lockon. If you lose the lock: then you just wasted your time.
Not entirely true, the standard G2A and G2G lock-ons are still useful, since they can dumbfire and if you got 2-3 guys together you can kill those lolpodders that wait to the last sec to use flares. The striker? Useless, dont buy it and dont use it. There have been talk and the devs do know they need to do somthing about the striker, but i think they dont know what exactly. With its lock-on mechanic, its either going to be OP or UP.
It was incredibly OP when initially introduced, not because the weapon was OP itself but because using one was mostly a no-brainer for TR, hence everyone did. (Much like the old Annihilator where we originally witnessed this behaviour.) Any VS/NC vehicle getting anywhere near a TR infantry zerg would get pretty much instagibbed without Flares/Smoke, due to the sheer quantity of Strikers being used. It was overnerfed and near useless for quite a long while. It has recently been re-buffed partially in the last patch. So yea it is worth using it again.
Striker must maintain lock. They talked about adding the feature to every G2A lock on. If they do that, I guess Striker will become interesting again for this purpose.
So.. no one knows the devs intent for this weapon. Maybe the intent is to get people to buy Annihilators again. At least its fire and forget so you can be doing something else when it fails to hit the target 60% of the time. Making the other launchers worse wont make the Striker any better. And the so called "buff" this last patch that allows the user to maintain lock out to 700m isn't all that useful considering the amount of terrain everywhere (except the frozen lakes of Esamir) and the fact that the missiles are still easily out run.
It still sucks, It's the worst lock on. There is no reason not to take another lock on. The devs know it sucks but are scared it will become OP so we are all screwed.
I think giving it a much faster MV would fix the thing. Will kind of make it like the Lock-On Lancer, it wouldnt overlap the purpose of the lancer since the lockon range will be kept constant.
Nope, the buff it received was also received by the Annihilator. The problem most people have with the Striker is the fact that it is literally just a worse version of the Annihilator. If the Striker was the ONLY launcher that could lock on to Air and Ground it would just be 'not really worth it but its up to you' but atm the Annihilator is just the Striker 2.0 and everyone has access to it. The Annihilators DPS over time is actually higher than the Striker as its fire and forget. Also they are the same price. They are two guns which fulfill the EXACT same role, and the NS one is hands down better. Thats what we are annoyed about. What they did to the Striker was effectively remove it from the game but in a way so SOE wouldnt have to refund it. Essentially we have no ESRL, we just have a prototype Annihilator.
Striker is a completely useless weapon with no role. If you have a 1-pixel leaf or branch intersect with yourtarget you will lose lock-on. have to track your target. It is the absolute worst rocket launcher in the game.
And now that missiles are prone to hitting the ground ~5m away from you again, hitting a fast-moving target is... problematic.
I was wondering about this. I was using trials on all the RLs to find a G2A launcher, the Striker was the worst. If you stand in the open to wait for a lock in a large fight, you're just asking for a sniper to the face. Therefore, most of the time I'm behind some cover when shooting. Because of that, there's a small window of time where I can get a lock and fire. For the Grounder & Annihilator it's like 2s. For the Striker it's 4s, because I have to sit there and fire off at least 4 rockets to even do more damage than the other G2A launchers. This makes the weapon very situational and 90% of the time, I do more damage with the single shots, because I couldn't maintain lock on a target for 4s, before they're out of range or behind some obstacle. I didn't even bother trying it out against ground targets, because no tanker is going to be more than 2s away from a rock or hill to hide behind for repairs. The cons of the weapons far outweigh any pros. I agree that the Striker can't be a lock on launcher without stepping on the Annihilator. How about taking the default dumbfire launcher and dividing that into 5 shots? 1/5th the damage, 2x the speed, 1/2 splash radius and semi-auto (3s to shoot all 5). It seems to fit the TR motto of more pew-pew, but less damage. It's not an upgrade over any other dumbfire RL, because it will have the longest TTK. However, it's more newbie friendly so they can get feedback after each shot and walk the missiles into armour, while overall doing less damage.
That wasn't the reason. Gen1 Striker was basically an all around upgrade over the other lockons during test (I think it had dumbfire at first), and then became a double strength Annihilator when it hit live. At the time the Anni had 3.5 second lock, 750 or 800dmg, high velocity, fire and forget, and intercept flight mechanics. The Striker had a 2 second lock, 2500 dmg potential over 5 rockets (making it the only lockon to kill an ESF in a single attack), also high velocity, also intercept, also fire and forget AND had limited terrain avoidance (coupled with a fast turn rate). Lock range was also 400-500m, usually resulting in firing all 5 rounds before the lock could decay, at least 3 of them would hit before an ESF could AB out of chase range IF they started as a moving target. If the ESF slowed down, one striker was guaranteed down it if it didn't have flares equipped. It was a direct upgrade to every possible lockon at the time, leaving no reason to keep using the other ones. The fact every TR decided to get one just compounded the problem. 1 Striker was enough to majorly threaten air in the area. 3 could deny the airspace against small numbers of ESFs and Liberator. 5 could establish a no fly zone around them. A Squad's worth could tear up an air zerg, and a coordinated squad's worth of strikers could tear up anything.
You sure? I used it shortly after its release (first on trial, then bought it for alt-server happy fun times) and saw very consistent killing potential when the target didn't have flares ready. Oh, and looking back at some archives I got the damage values for the other RLs wrong. The Anni was 1200, the Lockons 1500, Stock RL 1700 and the Deci had 2000.
Yes, if I remember correctly, the Striker took 7 rockets to kill an ESF. 5 would only get it smoking, 6 on fire, and 7 to kill. It would only kill in a single volley if the target had already taken damage.
