[Suggestion] Vanguard revamp ideas

Beside the fact that one players experience says basically nothing about the whole balance situation but you should consider that your VKPH/KPH with the Vanguard are about 12/24 which makes you a better vehicle destroyer than the average Vanguard driver. However, you are still barely reaching the performance of the average Magrider/Prowler drivers on these metrics (according to the oracle-of-death states).

Not that in my humble opinion the MBT balance is significantly off right now but if a better player on one side performs only as good as an average Joe on the other it's usually an indication of disbalance.

That's because the average Prowler/Magrider driver tend to know what they're doing.

The average NC driver, absolutely not.

I find that when I fight against and play VS; VS drivers and gunners collaborate more than any other faction, the TR sometimes, but not always, and the NC... good luck finding a capable driver, let alone gunner.

Sometimes, it does come down to the people playing the vehicles and not the vehicles themselves.

I just compared your character to mine...

You got 77 hours and 31 minutes in the Vanguard. You got 957 vehicle kills and 1872 kills in that time, with 66133 shots fired and 21% accuracy
I got 56 hours and 1 minutes in the Vanguard (you got 28% more time than me). I got 810 vehicle kills (you got 16% more) and 1657 kills in that time (you got 12% more than me). I also got 34373 shots fired (you got 49% more shots) with 30% accuracy
So all in all, I would be better in the Vanguard than you, as in less time I got more kills and vehicle kills. I also shoot much less while hitting more.

So I have to apologize, I thought the stats you were naming were completely over the top.

About the accuracy thing. I have better accuracy and less shots needed for a very close statistic to yours. So I would be better at finding a targets range than you... Yet I find that Prowlers specifically find my range much faster than I do their range. So I have to call ******** on this one.

I've done a quick back-of-the-envelop calculations. And you specifically are worse in the Prowler than the Vanguard. Despite more than double the time in it you do not have double the kills or vehicle kills. Even though for some strange reason you have almost the same amount of shots in your Vanguard as in the Prowler (10% more shots with the Prowler with double the time played?), it makes me wonder what the hell you are doing in your Vanguard...
Back to your performance stats in the Prowler. You might perform less in the Prowler than you do in the Vanguard, but in general the Vanguard performs much less than the Prowler. Your personal stats do not matter in this, the overall stats matter. You can claim that no-one in NC learned how to play the Vanguard, but that's not true is it? With a thousand players doing faction-switching whenever a team is losing they should be bringing their experience to the NC as well.

So the general gist is: The Vanguard is underperforming compared the the other two, balanced tanks.

Edit:

This is completely unfair. All you are saying is "the tank isn't underpowered, there's just 1000+ players that just don't know how to play it".
As said by Bananenweizen, even your great stats do not even come close to the Magrider and Prowler. So despite all your anti-flanking tactics, your flanking the flankers and whatever else you are doing, you are underperforming compared to the general Prowler/Magrider populace.

To be fair, you really can't count my accuracy in tank vs tank...

My lower accuracy comes from the following:

First, I'm strictly AP (I never use HEAT or HE), and I'm firing at distant infantry with AP rounds as well, particularly if I see a heavy with a rocket launcher or a engi-turret, so I likely miss my targets a bit more than you do because of that, as you have a lot more splash damage for infantry; when I'm firing at moving infantry about 300-500m away, at that distance, I miss every 2nd or 3rd shot. With the AP round, if you don't dead on nail the infantry you're aiming for, it's pretty much counted as a miss, since there's little to no splash damage.

Second, I fire at aircraft a lot... I probably miss 2-3 shots for every hit I make against air targets, especially against fast moving ESFs, but the number of ESFs and Liberators I've taken down with a Vanguard is probably well above the average for tank drivers.

On the ground, in tank vs tank, I might miss a scatter shot, but I can hit any ground vehicle at maximum distant almost every time the first time; even Harassers have a hard time escaping my shots because I can still peg them even when they are boosting (or jumping over hills in mid air), even if I decide to chase them while shooting on the move.

My stats are significantly worse on my TR character because that's the character I learned to play on (and Planetside 2 is my first FPS); so, the first half of my TR enlistment my gameplay was beyond horrible (as are the first 30 levels of my NC, where I stopped playing NC and played TR until 100). Stats can be very, very, very misleading that way. If you encountered Meekalew or SteelPrincess in a battle and then looked at my stats page, you wouldn't think it's the same person; because the stats don't match the gameplay; and they never will because of the extra large learning curve I had to make.

I bet if I rolled new characters for the TR or NC, my over all KDR would be closer to 3 (instead of 1.5 TR and 2 NC) and my accuracy in tanks would be closer to 60% or 70%; as I'm much, much better at hitting fast targets such as ESFs and running infantry now than I was in the beginning.

Give me HEAT or HE rounds for infantry, and my accuracy would probably climb to 80%; when I miss infantry with an AP round, it's never by more than the skin of their pants, and they can probably feel the wind from the shell as it blows by.

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But, I would concede, if people can't play the Vanguard, then maybe it does need a buff.

I wouldn't complain, but I'd feel like I would have an unfair advantage.

I see that you at least see my point of view. But I have a habit of correcting everyone... even the people that agree with me.

Infantry does not render beyond 300 meters, tanks do. I understand that you mean "infantry far away" and that you just hazarded a guess (or at least I hope that's what this is).
At max render distance it usually doesn't matter (for me) if I'm using HEAT or AP rounds. You either hit them fairly and squarly, or the shell flies off into the distance and explodes harmlessly. I haven't bought HE rounds yet.

That would still come out to 25% per aircraft assuming 3 misses and 1 hit. So only infantry would account for the real loss in accuracy.

I thought AV infantry turrets rendered at the 500m max range of the turret? I know I've nailed them a hell of a distance away; on mountain tops much further than I'd see normal infantry.

Infantry turrets render further away (not sure how far). But you said "moving infantry", moving infantry doesn't render beyond 300 meters, less when there's several hundred of them closeby.

What's funny is the very meaning of the name "Vanguard" is something this tank doesn't and can't really do because of its weakness to infantry. It is more of a defensive line tank not a spearhead.

Wikipedia - "The vanguard (also called the advance guard) is the leading part of an advancing military formation. It has a number of functions, including seeking out the enemy and securing ground in advance of the main force."

The Harasser and perhaps lightning would be much better suited for that kind of role... scouting out the enemy, avoiding fire while returning good damage.

Vanguard revamps?

I would trade in that 150mm cannon for a single 120mm cannon, give the thing 3.5s reload, down from that 4s. Have the cannons dealing little less damage then the current 150mm versions, maybe 300dmg less. Increase the velocity on all Vanguard cannons by like 25m/s. Change the shield to be pretty much a copy paste of HA Resist shield onto the Vanguard. Then, decrease it's durability by like 1 shell and increase it's speed by like 5kph in both directions and increase accel by like 10%.

So, in the end we end up with a tank that is still toughest, but it is weaker then our current vanguard, trades in it's impervious shield we can only use every 60s for a at will shield that doesnt stop as much damage, but is always available. Our cannon is still the deadliest per shot, and I would still make it the slowest reload, but its faster then the current 150mm, allowing the Vanguard to fire back more and rely on that shield less.

I find when im rolling the Vanguard that reload is what gets it killed, its as if the Shield is almost an IWIN button because without it hte Vanguard gets out DPSd against other MBTs....and ive got 3 ranks of reload on my AP cannon. The shield buys the Vanguard the few extra seconds to catch up in DPS. But, if we got a faster firing, less damage gun, we could better keep up in the DPS race and the shield would more be an aid rather then necessary tool to even win. Plus, the higher velocity would let it be the ranged tank it's supposed to be.


And all tanks would get a shiny new Coaxial LMG for the driver to use.

The problem with the Vanguard right now is that the NC faction flavor traits applied to the Vanguard don’t particularly pan-out in this game.

The slow high damage gun:
High direct damage - is overkill when fighting infantry
Slow firing – heavily punishes misses, which are going to happen more often against small targets such as infantry
*a coaxial machinegun like the Kobalt could help the Vanguard significantly
*giving the vanguard larger splash damage would help compensate for its slower firing rate, it is a larger gun after all.

The slower (maneuverability) chassis with more armor
Slowness – exacerbates the Vanguards weakness at dealing with infantry, the Vanguard can’t easily escape C4 or being pelted by infantry AV.
Armor – seems insufficient to compensate for the maneuverability issues
*Chassis could use better turning and acceleration particularly in reverse.

Now on paper, the Vanguard is setup to be the best AV tank but the weakest AI tank, but in-game it is not performing in that strength. Versatility to deal with both infantry and vehicles seems to win-out. It’s very possible that the Vanguard’s weakness to infantry (in this Infantryside age of PS2) is hindering it from performing at AV, although it has always performed worse since day one.

Adding coaxial machine guns for all MBTs would help make them more defendable against infantry without making them worse for spawn camping. I think that alone would be an interesting first (and fair) change to make, then observe the performance changes in the tanks and see where we are to determine what else might need changed.