As TR I love my Striker. On my other factions I run the G2A lock-on or (for hitting fast moving ground vehicles) the Annihilator. But both these weapons lack something for me. Lock on mechanic is a bit cheesy and takes too long in a lot of cases. On the other hand, I am an indifferent shot with dumb fire on moving targets at anything beyond close range I have been toying with the idea of getting the Masamune for NC and VS but I can't make up my mind after trying it out in VR. Does anyone have any thoughts/experience to share about using the Masamune in live combat? Thanks in advance.
I've run it exclusively for some time now: as AA it's mediocre, really good against Libs or Gals, usable as harrassment against CAS valks and only useful against really stupid hovering ESF. but sometimes it can be useful to hipfire at a close flyby and atleast get a few hits with the shotgun spread. against Infantry and MAXes it's usable, under 10m you can dumbfire and hit all rockets at once and especially against MAXes it's better to deal ~150 damage with just one rocket hitting than no damage. and at 50m plus you can just guide the rocket into the MAX and make it cry. Against tanks it, ofcourse, really shines. it has the same DPS as the lancer up close, but has much harsher "dropoff" than the lancer due to rocket flight/guide time. at 450m rangen the max for both, the masamune will have half the DPS. however it will still deal the exact same damage as at 10m, so you'll need fewer masamune users than lancer users for a nest. also harrassers tend to be somewhat hard to hit, any other ground vehicle is a sitting duck.
its my go-to launcher on NC, i'll only ever not be using it when i want to do some trolling with phoenix. great for cqc peaking around corners to damage a max but its ADS guiding mode also lets you damage targets way further than you could reliably do with a dumbfire. really solid launcher the only reason i don't run it for VS and TR is that i have way too much fun with lancer on VS and striker offers unparalleled infantry AA. (there are enough AV sources around that i like bringing AA) my only single complaint is that it doesn't offer RL directive progression, grinding for kraken is reeeeeaaaally boring with only dumbfires and lockons.
