The Tale of the Striker. A short story.

It's all the rocket pods fault in the end. I really wish ESF would have their A2G against infantry significantly nerfed. But in return, infantry have their G2A also significantly nerfed. Increase ESF health, give Skyguard a buff, and leave burster AA alone. Then we can all be happy?

Funny you mention that. The Striker can't dumbfire or lock-on to either turrets or MAXes. There are serious drawbacks that the other lock-ons don't have to worry about.

The Striker is balanced. Deal with it.

Regardless, the Striker grants complete air superiority to the TR, and having spent most of my time in the past few days piloting a 3-man Lib squad over Amerish, it's dreadfully overpowered. We weren't even able to Dalton the guy on top of the Tech Plant because the sheer barrage of rockets pouring from the Striker kept us well away from the Tech Plant. We received word over Orders chat that the Tech Plant needed air support, but we, with a fully tricked out Lib (Walker, Dalton, Thermals, Afterburner) weren't able to approach without getting shot out of the sky.

Furthermore, as an ESF, it's impossible to fly more than a hex into TR territory (at least on Connery) without getting nuked by the Striker.

It really is that bad.

If you don't believe me, create a VS or NC character and grab an ESF, then fly over to a TR contested battle on any continent. With or without flares, you've got literally no chance of survival.

New to me that any lockon can lock on MAXes, never used the Noobilator, so maybe that's what i missed.
Also the Striker missiles go through terrain, the other A2G launcher don't that's broken, not balanced.
Also the range on all lockons is to long, also broken. Lockon range 500m > render range 300, both numbers should be equal to be balanced.

imo just get rid of striker, refund TR 10k certs each. and fuhgedaboudit

Those who say striker doesn't clip through terrain need to check higby's twitter-because they are working on fixing that exact bug.

The only one who say it doesn't are the TR. Hell, most of them should have their score rolled back for using the exploit of this weapon

Reroll all Chars to day 1 and refund all certs
A river of tears and flames, it will be glorious^^

Yeah but when VS and NC pick G2A they are making a concious choice to effectively remove themselves from the land battle to deter the air threat. ****** repeater rockets remove this tactical choice and deal more damage with better tracking to boot. Also with flak there is this whole thing about leading your target and limited clip size. The probability of a single buster max dropping an ESF is pretty low unless he give you 3 clips worth flying directly at you. A problem not encountered with a lock on weapon.

That launcher should be G2G only, prob dumbfire.

Another forum warrior crying for nerf TR we already got nerfed 10 times over while NC/TR gotten buffed every patch amazinggggg

NOOOOOOOOOOO. You can't argue faction balance in completely different realms of combat. Tank balance has no effect on ESF/AA balance. Just because we've got it bad somewhere else on the spectrum, doesn't mean that should impact an unrelated vehicle.

You can't draw those comparisons. It's just not valid!

Magburner is forward thrust only, by the way. If you're reversing, and you activate magburner, it launches you forward at 100kph. If you're strafing, and you active magburner, you will keep strafing a tiny bit (same lateral speed) while being launched 100kph forward. You can't use it to dodge as the Magrider is the longest tank, and presenting its enormous side profile to avoid fire is a bad idea. And you can't use it to run away while under fire because you're forced to present rear armor, which takes more than twice as much damage as front armor.

I actually think the Striker is completely useless against the Magrider, but it's _not_ because of Magburner or dodging. It's because Magriders actually have a very strong incentive to run Smoke, and Smoke 4 is extremely good against lock-ons (5 seconds up, 10 seconds down). And in heavy assaults, I run reinforced front armor. Your entire Striker clip deals 20% damage to my tank, and the total refire time of a Striker clip is over 10 seconds. Sometimes I will literally hop out of my tank and start easily outrepairing 1-2 TR HA's spamming Strikers, just to demoralize them. I play very aggressively against Striker users. As a dedicated tanker, I think it's a garbage weapon against tanks, worse than either the Lancer or Phoenix by a wide margin. That's why I don't think it's OP.

But by the way, all the bugs people have talked about in this thread exist. They exist. Stop being stupid.

The Striker doesn't always clip through terrain, but it _definitely_ can. I have had it do so in cases that weren't even arguable. The developers have _confirmed_ this bug and have said they're working on fixing it, so you're 100% deluding yourself if you think this doesn't happen.

The Striker also has very good pathfinding. All lock-ons got their pathfinding upgraded in gu08. Again, 100% not arguable and widely accepted by all players who aren't gleefully ignorant. They're much better at avoiding terrain LoS, and the old nose-down trick for ditching Strikers in the air no longer works. If you haven't noticed these changes, then you honestly lack the observational skills to make any qualified comment on the Striker. You would have noticed them immediately if you use the Striker nearly as much as some of you (apparently falsely) claim.

And yes, the Striker can hit a target after they flare. Not always, but it can and does happen. Sometimes you activate it, and some or all of the missiles hit anyway. I've had this happen to me in both the scythe and in the magrider. And yes, they hit me by _tracking me_ not by simply continuing on their previous path after tracking is broken. As in, I hit flares or smoke, took significant evasive action, had no lock on me anymore, and I still got hit a while later.

Oh, and let me explain something to those of you defending these problems. The Striker isn't really OP at all. It's not. It's less effective than the Hawk/Grounder/Nemesis. If you offered to trade your Striker for my Nemesis, I'd actually say no. I like my Nem because I can use it pretty well against vehicles, infantry, and MAX's with its dumbfire, plus it's still solid against air. One Nem rocket = 3 Striker rockets. The Striker is only good against air and either **** or subpar against everything else.

But these bugs do exist. You just sound like imbeciles trying to deny them. If you want a non-stupid argument, try pointing out that the bugs and broken mechanics which make the Striker OP and annoying are actually common to ALL LOCK-ONS. As it stands, you look like ostriches with your heads buried in the sand.

...if you can dumbfire you can't use it against MAXes. Because I can't dumbfire, I can't do anything against MAXes.

Rocket pods are such trash. It's amazing that people still ***** about them.

It's irrelevant that the Striker can't dumbfire. When players use the Striker, they tend to do so when far away from the enemy (i.e. so they don't get shot while locking on). If someone knows they're going to be in close-range combat, they will simply swap the Striker out for a dumbfire (unless they're lazy).