[VIDEO]Liberator Update: Is It Any Good

Good video, too bad what you have to say is accurate.

Hard things got harder, easy things get easier, and the Liberator update wasn't much of an update at all sans Comp Armor and Tail Gun angle increase.

Yep... Only changes that really shook things up could have been made at any point by tweaking a few numbers.

Quite disappointing really. Whether you like them or not ESF's at least got some cool new weapons, Infiltrators got some cool new weapons. Liberators got 2 useless weapons and another one that's only useful when compared to how useless the other two are.

It kinda feels like they just gave up working on the update half-way through. Didn't help that for the short duration it was on PTR many people couldnt even connect.

ESF are simply too slow... galaxy with race airframe can compete with my esf with hover... and obviously I get rammed every time

"Guys we should put some new interesting, fun, and balanced mechanics/weapons in for this update
actually nah I"m feeling lazy today"
-SOE

Yeah, that was exactly my impression. They had a lot of pretty neat ideas. And then I just slowly watched them scrap them one by one because it would have required more work. Seriously, none of these weapons are anything new or unique. They're just recycled weapons.
Spur- Recycled Vektor with freelook.
Duster- Recycled Zephyr with 100% more worthless
Hyena- Recycled Coyote with 100% more... coyote?

YOUR FANCY CROSSHAIRS WON'T FOOL ME SOE!!!

I think the increased firing angle of tail gun was a great thing but that's just a quality of like change that should had been in since launch. Same for shared XP which isn't liberator specific features.

They reverted some of the buffs for vektor and zepher from the first version on PTS. Vektor had a small increase in ROF and magazine changed from 50 to 75. Those changes were reverted, only some new meaningless change was applied. ROF was the main thing the vektor needed. Previous vektor took 14 seconds to destroy a sunderer and now it takes 16. Even though there were no notes about damage or armor change.

Zepher was supposed to get increased direct damage but that was reverted as well. In the first version it's damage was raised from 1200 to 1800 and it destroyed a sunderer with 13 shots (burning after 12). Then it got reverted to it's old and current stated where it has 1200 direct damage and it takes 16 shots to destroy a sunderer.

No change to the crazy 40% damage falloff at 175m for shredder. Get real SOE.

Yeah, pretty much. One of the biggest problems with ALL liberator weaponry that isn't explosives is the highlarious damage dropoff. None of that was addressed. And, no one really had time to make their thoughts on it public.

Moin

Was liberating a bit yesteday. Although it may seem like some small change, the Dalton got hit by the nerfhammer pretty hard. AB+NAR+Dalton vs. FS+CA+Shredder isn't a fight anymore, it's pure rock-paper-scissor, no skill involved. Some people will argue that this a a good thing as it gives you more loadout options, but in the end people will choose the loadout most effective against the biggest threat. New FOTM will be Shredder+FS as far as I can see it. Mediocre ESF pilots rejoice! You won't get OHK as often now. But you'll lose even more fights against liberators.

The new tailgun angles are great though, it's actually fun to be 2nd gunner in a liberator now.
The changes to CA are nothing more than stupid.

That's basically how I see it.

The Vektor should have gotten the Spur free-look as a utility slot. We don't need a gun that's worse than the already underperforming Vektor.

As far as the Duster is concerned, I'm convinced it's broken. It seems the CoF bloom goes to full after the first shot, and the only way I've had any success is firing single shots, waiting for the CoF to reset. This is a problem for two reasons. First, it completely negates the higher potential burst of the Duster. Second, it directly encourages the "hover-spam" playstyle that everyone is against. (Edit: I say everyone because the only people who love the 'hover-spam' playstyle are the other Lib and ESF pilots who giggle as they are collecting the certs of people that can't be bothered to move, lol.)

The Hyenas, like you said, only seem good because the other two are so bad. I like the mechanics, they are only effective with perfect lead or at point-blank ranges, and the damage per round is relatively low. They also function well as a Bulldog substitute for ground-work.

The other changes, in a nutshell, are poorly conceived. I like stealth breaking engagement radar, dunno if that's new or a new tool-tip update, as well as the increased lock timer for Libs and Gals. I like that Racer has a purpose now, and isn't outclassed by the utility of High-G to the extent it was previously. The AB changes seem positive to me, but people are claiming nerf. I want to see the math, because I personally like having it up more often to use in short bursts, compared to one, long-cooldown speed bump.

The CompArmor is just dumb. I've said this so many times: way to learn nothing from the Harasser Composite Armor fiasco. If you give all sorts of resistance bonuses to one defense, who's going to chose anything else? Frankly, I think no one used Composite previously because Flak has two basic states in this game: Annoying, and Lethal. CompArmor barely changes that, unless your enemy has brought exclusively Flak, and left their lock-ons, friendly air, ground turrets, Walkers, etc. at home. The Tank and Dalton resistance has to go, or at least be reduced, as stated in the video, to only allowing one more hit. Props to OP and some of the other big names I've seen around, there are a surprising number of stealth Libs up now, and they seem to be doing quite well, so I think all hope is not lost.

With that said, I'm actually for the changes that nerfed the Dalton AA. I've experienced it plenty, giving and receiving, and I can explain my stance as follows. Personally, I don't think anything discourages new(er) players from Liberating like taking one out for the first (or later, roll with me here), and getting **** on by a Dalton in two shots, without being able to return fire or engage.

I can see the storm clouds on the horizon. I can hear the mouse-clicks as people dig up quotes where I profess my love for the Shredder, talk about how I can't TankBust anymore, etc. To be blunt, this isn't about me, my playstyle preferences or anything of the sort. This is about everyone else who gets denied the fun the 'experienced' crews see, simply because they don't have the skillset or the certs. The change isn't massive: It's still two Daltons and a little bit of anything else, save for Libs with CompArmor, which I already covered as being horribly conceived.

The general consensus on this forum, from everyone who perceives themselves as outside the 'circle', is that pilots are elitist jerks. If we don't protect our own fledgling pilots, I can only surmise that they are correct.

TL|DR: Good vid, bad update.

The nerfs to the dalton were BS. The buff to Afterburner was the best. The nerf to xp makes no sense, the buff to angles/3rd seat is nice, but not a game changer.

Yep, I agree with you. I actually forgot to mention the Racer change which is shame on me .

Really Racer, Afterburners(People seriously think they're OP now!?!) and the stealth changes are the only good(and not getting nerfed) changes to come out of this patch. And yeah... it's number changing that could have been done anytime.

I also agree about trying to get new pilots into the game. When I'm playing a treat everyone the same and assume they're good which means there's a lot of low BR players who get ruthlessly tankbusted out of nowhere. If they send me whining tells I'll admit I have no patience for that. But, people that want to learn and are interested in improving I'm always willing to help and I know a lot of other pilots that are too.

I wish there was some way to put some community thing together to try and help new pilots learn how to fly and get into the air game.

I still don't know what the XP nerfs were about. I don't remember seeing any mention of them anywhere but if it was a mistake why hasn't it been fixed? But yeah. I got 83XP for a Galaxy kill assist. I get more than that for an INFANTRY kill assist. It's definitely some crap.

This doesn't make me look forward to the MBT as much and the level of detail they'll put into it based on this and the ESF update. On the bright side if the Liberator weapons suck to bad for to long maybe they'll make them more interesting to increase sales. It must be quite a let down to have an update be a minor change and some new weapons that you don't like that much. Personally I don't like the update because it throws the tank Vs Liberator Balance out of whack with the composite armor changes.

Right in the feels...

I'm just noting a trend. First ESF's, now Liberators, and it's to the point I'd rather not even get my hopes up for MBT's which the revamp for is currently not even scheduled. I'm not sure what SOE's deal is with these "updates" but they seem very lack luster. Either they just don't give a crap or they are being rushed because they didn't even take the time to balance anything in the Liberator update very much on the test server and basically just flung it out onto the live servers. Personally I'm a happy go lucky type of guy, but after 2 sub groups (ESF and Liberator pilots) being let down I don't want to get my hopes smashed as well. I'd prefer if everyone got cool new stuff that was awesome and effective. Well at least the TR didn't get stuck with a less accurate Zypher Cannon for an ES Liberator weapon.

On a side note would you say it's finally worth it for the rear gunner to be there and role around as a 3/3 Liberator now?

Unless your tailgunner is a good enough pilot to fly their own ESF/Lib, the answer is absolutely yes. Between speeding up kills with overlap on the bellygun, increasing the paltry assist gain looking at other targets, and spotting forward+down, it's a boon having a tail now. My only real gripe is a good Hyena gunner can see far enough forward to assist medium range nosegun kills. It isn't game-breaking, but it's still kinda lame.

Well that's good, Liberators have finally managed to become 3/3 air vehicles then. How much easier is it to fight back against what you would consider good/ace ESF pilots? I saw someone mention what was hard got harder and what was easy got easier. However I thought good ESF pilots represented a significant threat to a liberator crew and I would think the 3rd seat being good would help even the odds. Ya, no?

What? Hyenas are good?
Me and a friend trialed them on our Libs and we felt they are very lacking. Velocity is very slow so you have to lead target like with Dalton. But why don't hop into Dalton seat and have chance to OHK then?

We run AB+NAR+Dalton+Walker/Bulldog (situational) and Lib v Lib duels are pretty much gamble with this setup.
Tankbuster became the most reliable way to fight them.