VS: The Forgotten Faction

Oh I can use the lasher. But in most cases besides night shows I would rather be killing things .

Lasher is an indoor version of AA, meant to suppress rather than kill.

Impressive stats for a BR21, Badname! Are you the best player in Planetside? 37+ k/d in a dozen hours as Infantry without using a vehicle. Do you stream or have a youtube? Your game play would be interesting to watch.

VS - Best AI tank weapon (PPA is technically over powered)
Best LMG's
Best ESF with best Defauly noes gun.
Light PPA with hover = simulator 2014
Best AI Max Blueshifts are just too good. Also smallest hitbox.
Best ESL Lancer is awesome with 1-2 buddys firing at the same targets.

Too much love in my eyes.

Couldn't be bothered to read all of this.

All I wanted to say is when it comes to the Vanu, the Lasher is actually an extremely potent weapon and is my preferred weapon for my HA. It just requires trigger discipline and knowing when its safe to fire if your teammates are around. If you use it right it can turn the tide of battles, especially in stalemate situations when theres a lot of troops at choke points and no one is making progress, you can deny the enemy the ability to push forward and the use of some cover, while allowing your team to get into better positions.

TBH, I would play Vanu as my main faction if its MBT was more traditional like the vanguard or prowler.

You funny m8. NC:
Best ES heavy weapon jackhammer
Best ES AV Secondary
Best Max ability aegis shield
Best tank ability I-win shield
Best carbines
Best MBT for tank vs tank.
Now are you really going to call out VS I can go on?

lololol this is priceless

Jackhammer is the best? Only by comparison. I'd still choose a pump action over the jackhammer.

Best TankvTank MBT? At the expense of everthing else. iWin shield? It only lasts for 2k HP or 6 seconds. 6 seconds goes by pretty quick. That's about 1 shot and a reload. Or a pop back behind cover and get back out. Best AV secondary? At the expense of our AI secondary. Plus the Saron is just as good as the Enforcer.

Best carbines? It's really only a marginal difference. Better selection, maybe. But it's not like we autowin every carbine engagement. Any differences are negligible when compared to the TTKs and individual player skill.

But keep trying to paint the NC as an op faction. It's hilarious. I may need an ambulance for my sides.

As someone who has recently started playing VS after taking my NC well past BR 100, I say that the VS are fine. More than fine. They are actually slightly overpowered but underpopped, compared to the NC who are slightly underpowered but overpopped.

This corresponds precisely with the Smedley MMO game balance philosophy going back to the early days of EQ1, balance against populations first, achieve real balance second. In Smedley's view, games cannot afford to have a class or faction being too overpopped. It doesn't matter if the reason why is real or aesthetic. In EQ1, everyone wanted to be Legolas and rolled a Ranger class. Therefore Ranger was quickly made into the worst class in the game, and still was overpopped. It took four expansions of being underpowered before rangers finally were brought up to every other class in the game.

Its the same for NC. As a whole, PS2 players gravitate to "Freedom" and away from "Spandex". As long as this is the reason why people play NC, instead of for in-game reasons (you like their tanks better, you like their recoil better, etc), NC will be (and currently are) underpowered in the game. If something happened that increased the popularity of NC even more (like a movie coming out with a popular character that sounds JUST like the NC marine voice, or whatever), NC will be nerfed harder and given worse new stuff. This is the Smedley way.

VS has the benefit of being aesthetically displeasing. Therefore they get slightly better in-game stuff to compensate, to convince players to roll VS instead of NC. This is born out in the actual statistics, where VS weapons consistently outperform the NC and TR equivalents. For example:



The VS have seven weapons with a score per minute over 120. The NC has two, the TR one, and one is NS.

Yet despite this, the VS is underpopped. Note that the VS had the most population when the ZOE max was completely OP. Its no surprise that it got nerfed hard.

Its my view that the NC "freedom" hoopla will never wear off. The equilibrium steady state of this game will always be an underpowered but popular NC, with occasional bouts of overpowered and extremely popular TR or VS, before the inevitable nerf. The SoE devs know that an overpowered NC will draw so many people to their camp as to completely break the game, and that's why it will never happen. But if you think VS is underpowered compared to NC, you're deluding yourself.

Its funny, I played the vast majority of my time as NC with both 50% XP boost and a year long membership (another 50%). Yet as soon as I move to VS, despite having hardly anything certed, I immediately improved by K/D by 25% and my score per hour is just a little lower, despite having no boosts and no membership. The VS have real tangible advantages that I can feel and measure versus my NC character.

Have you ever thought that the other VS LMGs are just crap besides those two?

You're funny. It's priceless that's the jackhammer out performs the MCG and the lasher by such a huge margin and NC still say it's crap. It's sad that a MAgrider has no chance against a competent vanguard driver even if the magrider attacks from behind. It's priceless that people say VS have the best LMGs when only 2 of then are usable. People say the PPA is OP because it outperforms the canister. But heaven forbid SOE buffs the lasher into jackhammer levels the forums would explode.

Like I said, by comparison. It isn't our fault that the JH is a lot better then the mcg or lasher. And hey, I'm all for a lasher buff. The problem with it is that what people want it to do would make it OP as ****. All it needs is a little more splash damage OR a small ROF boost. At which point, it would be able to do the job that it is supposed to do now.

No one says that the VS has all the best LMG's. You have the 2 best lmg's and you don't really need more than that. One of which is the Orion. And I'd say it is the best all around LMG. It's the best for noobies coming into the game. It works great for experienced players. It doesn't suck. At least it isn't a hard to use piece of junk that requires a pretty heft cert investment to become viable. Seriously, the "godsaw" should not be a starting LMG. That was a bad choice.

And for your magrider "example", I'm going to ignore it. Hypothetical 1v1 situations are pointless and bad for large scale balance. For the record, I don't think a magrider would actually lose that engagement if it got the alpha strike to the rear of the vanguard and caught it completely by surprise.

And no, I don't want the PPA nerfed to C85 standards (although a mag cap nerf for the PPA would actually be justified). That would be lame. I just want our POS to be buffed up to the level of the PPA. Same for the lasher. As long as the lasher can be buffed without breaking balance.

Anyway, I would have given you a 2/10 trolling score, but seeing as I bothered to address all of your BS, I'll bump it up to a 4/10.

But I'm not trolling I'm serious. And I would say the carv is the best LMG for noobs. The noobs don't even know how to use the orions advantage on people. And since the carv has less recoil and a bigger MAG it would be better. For a experienced player yes the Orion would be good no doubt but for a BR1-10 they wouldn't even notice the speed increase.

The Jackhammer is a joke, because each faction has a better shotgun. The Bruiser > The Jackhammer. The Piston > Jackhammer. The Claw > The Jackhammer. Every faction has identical weapons to the Bruiser, Piston, and Claw. My VS character just finished Auraxiuming the Pandora, which is the Piston equivalent for VS, and I would use the Pandora over the Jackhammer in a heartbeat, just as my NC used the Piston over the Jackhammer, and the Bruiser over the Jackhammer, and the Claw over the Jackhammer.

On the other hand, the TR Chaingun and the VS Lasher are unique weapons. They do stuff other weapons don't do. There is no NC equivalent or better of them. If you want an empire-specific weapon good in all situations for your heavy assault, the TR chaingun is probably the closest thing, but I don't think that's what SoE had in mind when they made Empire Specific weapons. They are situation specific, and when the situation calls for it, the Lasher is the best ESHA weapon in the game. When the situation doesn't call for a Lasher, you already have access to weapons better than the Jackhammer on your HA.

If anything, its the NC that need a ESHA weapon buff, because the Jackhammer is just another shotgun, that isn't even best in its class. I'd put it in fourth place (although I haven't used the NS shotgun yet, so it might be 5th).

If you honestly think the Jackhammer needs a buff when it currently has more kills and better average kdr than Lasher and the MCG then I'm happy you don't work for SOE. It doesn't matter if a gun is unique. If it can't kill its crap. Look at the Phaseshift its unique right? But its still crap and always will be crap. I would take usefulness over uniqueness anyday.

How is this thread still alive?

And yet you think it's remotely ok to compare kill stats of the lasher to it? The lasher isn't designed to be a staight up killing LMG. It's meant to make use of splash damage to suppress enemies at a foot hold and discourage them from advancing by wittling them down even while behind cover. That is it's purpose. And yes, it needs a bit of a buff to fill that roll better. Let's stop beating that dead horse, shall we?

As for the Phaseshift, all it needs is a 2x scope. It's a very interesting idea. I love the concept. When I used it, it was alright. If it got a 2x sight, I'd actually play my VS toon more. All 3 factions got shafted with the ES sniper rifles.

I don't even look at equip percentage, just score per minute. VS has 7 weapons over 120, how many do the other factions have?

Helloooooo!?
You are on forumside and this is a "QQ my faction is worse than the others" thread. 20 pages guaranteed.

No wonder devs don't bother looking over here or taking the suggestions seriously.

It's my job and my duty.. And so far I am successful.