When are bursters getting nerfed?

You must be a troll.

Here's another more recent post with the complete opposite

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/340159344186368001

Bursters are OK atm.

Skyguards should have less CoF and maybe a max detonation range buff.

I've noticed that I don't really fear dedicated AA missiles while Scything, so those should probably have their lock on time reduced, perhaps with a corresponding buff to Stealth levels beyond the 1st.

Strikers are already annoying in their ubiquitousness just how they are, which is probably a good place for them to be (along with the Annihilator).

What would be really nice is a different lock-on warning tone for A2A v G2A locks.

The part where you talked about 2 bursters killing 6 esf's. Unless you meant that they were on the ground afk or something. Troll.

I'm reading your post and one thing is glaringly obvious. You suck as a pilot. Now don't get mad because I suck too. I've spent a lot of time in VR and haven't even mastered reverse thrust yet. When you tell me a burster has a 50/50 chance of beating you... big red flag that you suck.

If you are running anything other than scout radar and vehicle stealth... this is a big clue you suck as a pilot. If your running flares ... you suck. When I see a pilot pop flares, or hovering on my map... I'm no longer concerned... When a pilot does a fly by at 200mph and doesn't show up on my radar, and I hear him but don't see him.... I know I'm in for it and he has become squad priority #1.

The problem your having is that you simply need practice. Good pilots can still rack up kills at a good pace and several of them working together are devastating. If we start nerfing AA, good pilots will be basically unstoppable. Watch some videos if you don't believe me. Good pilots rack up 50+kill streaks.

Scenario goes like this... esf equipped with stealth and scout radar maxed out. First he does a flyby just to see where everybody's at. Now your on his radar and he's gotten a good look at your setup and you can't see him unless he was spotted which everybody including me forgets to do. Next he's roaring in blasting you and then gone with afterburner before you can even figure out what direction he hit you from ... much less get a lock with a launcher...(stealth gives him another second with no lock... which is huge since he can be there and gone within 3 or 4 sec if he's good.) He keeps doing this hitting you from different directions timed perfectly until your dead or you get him and its frustrating as hell if he's good and if he's got friends as good as him hitting you from multiple directions... You can see the issue.

That's it in a nutshell ... if that's not the way your playing or you don't have the ability yet... like me... then there's no help for you because if we nerf AA too much good pilots become gods.

Practice practice practice and be smart.

I was talking about their respective powers noob. I don't know how long you've played the game, but if you played more than 2 days, you would know that 2 burster maxes are capable of clearing out 6 ESFs from the sky. They will create a zone of denial for those ESFs and if those 6 ESFs try to fight the bursters they will die.

It takes 6 seconds to kill an ESF with a 2x Burster:


4 seconds with Lockdown:


Thus 2 dual Bursters need 2 seconds of shooting to destroy a fighter, taking lag into account, as well as reaction time, the pilot will be doing something to avoid fire after getting down to half health...
Reload, kill the next one.
I wouldn't be surprised if killing 6 is done in 30 seconds.

It's like the lolpodder killing the tank in the old days.

You do realize in those vids you are shooting at a non moving esf at short range....

I would've taken you seriously until the part where you said... he keeps doing this, coming back from different directions and killing you? Seriously dude? So once you see him and know that there is an ESF in the air, regardless of the fact you forgot to spot him, you don't keep on the lookout for him? Do you just stand in one place and stare at only one direction? or do you like any smart burster max keep scannign the skies 360 degree to look for that ESF and see if he's returning?

I'm level 66. I'm a pretty good pilot. I play on NC. I have pilot friends that are in the Prey outfit, the best pilot outfit on Waterson. These guys don't dare go anywhere near burster maxes. If you watch thundahawke play [thundahawke is probably the best reaver pilot in this game], you would realize he doesn't go anywhere near burster maxes. Talented pilots might once in a while go against one single burster, but if there 2 bursters and you try to go kill them, you are dead.

No, they're not. Unless those pilots co-operate with the bursters with the intent of dying. 2 burster maxes literally do not have enough time to fire+reload even if every single shot lands to take out 6 esf's before those esf's kill them if they're going at each other specifically. Even if the pilots don't even try to dodge.

glass houses ect.

Maybe don't use hyperbole's if you're going to throw a tantrum about people discussing them. If that's what you were doing. And I hope that is what you were doing.

You do realize an ESF coming in to kill a burster is really easy to hit right? or an ESF rocketpodding a bunch of infantry is really easy to hit. The only ESF that's hard to hit is one that's running for his life after he realizes someone just pulled out a burster.

The problem with balancing anything versus aircraft is the amount of exposure that aircraft have to fire. It would be somewhat akin to trying to balance a tank versus AV weapons if fighting the tank on a flat plane with nothing to hide behind. It's a difficult challenge to balance a weapon that needs to be effective with 1 while still being balanced with many. Bear in mind that AA is more balanced when there are many fighters / liberators / aircraft that attack in unison because there are fewer rounds per aircraft.

So either you can make AA weapons very weak and then make A2G weapons very weak, so that you rarely get kills with them but are rewarded A2G XP, then massed AA won't quickly annihilate aircraft.
or
You can make A2G supremely damaging, AA weapons very deadly, and then give aircraft better mechanisms for target acquisition like laser-designation by ground troops or long range spotting (but not tied to firing) so aircraft can find their targets and do high-speed, high damage attack runs.

Alternately, you can limit burster max range compared to skyguards, making them more point defense, but also allow their flak to detonate rockets to prevent area long-range bombardment, or limit rocket range itself to similar distances.

All respect... watch the videos. Timing is key. I've seen this done... in addition if you think I'm talking about 1 esf taking out a nest of bursters with engie support... no. You are correct, you are not going to overcome that without a lot of friends... and you won't no matter what nerf you want and the game would be broken if you could.

Also in a big battle, you can't just stand their scanning the skys... you will die. Shooting bursters looking up is fun.

You stated in your post a single burster has a 50/50 chance of taking out an esf.... A single burster with no support is toast to a decent pilot case closed. All your good pilot buddies will tell you this. You seem to think your esf should be able to take out multiple bursters... which is stretching the limit.

Also if your engaging good enemy pilots over their ground support .... your going to lose. You have to draw them away from there support then engage. No nerf is going to help bad strategy and tactics.

Last point... do you have vehicle stealth and scout radar maxed out....?

Assuming to your logic i'm on the top of your noob list since i neither run with radar nor with stealth.

Here is my setup:
Flares
Nanite Repair System
Racer Frame
Vortek Rotary
Breaker Pods

Assuming to your logic i'm on the top of your noob list since i neither run with radar nor with stealth.
Point here is, i fly with ground troops under me that i can support with keeping other air away, destroying tanks they can't reach with the pods and marking enemy positions with my fire. Or i fly alone and very high to hunt other air.

Apart from dogfights i never had problems with locating stealth using ESF, simply due to directional sound localication, you can simply hear from where an ESf comes long before it would pop up on the radar, if you are dependant on your minimap to locate ESf, i call you the scrub.

As an addendum, not flying with Flares pretty much begs to get devastated by lockon launchers, especially when you are not playing TR, which you do, so you obviously have no idea how senseless it is to fly anywhere near TR airspace without flares since you get instapopped by 20 Heavies with Strikers, which you can't even see since 500m lockon range > 300 meter render range.

Another thing for you to swallow:
Stealth gives no lockon time increase, it's bugged, for months now, every pilot who's worth his nosegun knows that.

I started flying a few days after Bursters became that strong, and "grew up" with the overabundance of AA weapons infantry could field, plus the pilots that already had more time to practice as me, you know how it ended? Me giving up on trying and playing infantry till i could afford to upgrade my Reaver till he was more then a flying Taxi or roaring coffin. I'm not good, people like Thundahawk, Naterain, or MattiAce will decimate my Reaver in a few seconds, but im also no scrub who can't even pull a banking turn or reverse maneveur, and currently the learning curve for ESF is the highest in the game, with a lot of space till the Libs and Gals catch up, being AA is so far down the scale i can't even think of it requiring any skill at all apart from point at thing an hold button, leading excluded.

Please play some VS or NC without flares on Miller, you wont get a single kill outside from single enemies, when you try to contribute to something that actually matters.

Edit to your last post:
You are right, single single-Burster MAx won't shred an ESF, and he is an easy target if he is out in the open, most MAX though operate in groups or from the safety of their spawn rooms. And a single MAx with dual Burster and Flak Armor will shred any ESF apart from the best ones.
The ones that can manage to get close enough for a kill with the rotary, that aren't that much since most people outright don't take that gamble that is in favour of the MAX.

Okay I'm really sorry to say this but I checked the stats and you have all of 4 hours an ESF... yet you talk as if you know everything about it. I'm not talking about your skill in a plane (you say that you suck at flying) but actual knowledge.

Anyway, bursters themselves aren't the problem... the problem is that currently if you see an ESF or lib, you just pull one of the 10 or so options to kill it, kill it and then go back to fighting against infantry. Once your first pass is done, there's a burster max getting spawned and your next pass is gonna kill you. And the first pass will rarely get you any kills since you don't know where everything is yet and if you do catch a tank by surprise, he just turns a bit and you can't kill him, and if you catch a max by surprise, you still can't kill him without slowing down to speeds where you can get easily hit with dumbfires. Pods are useless against infantry so I won't even talk about them.

Essentially, you HAVE to hunt for noobs.

As for libs, if you can render infantry, infantry can shoot you down in under 5 seconds, or under 10 if you have flares.

And you do realize that good pilots don't hover there and wait for you to shoot them. Also good pilots are never easy to shoot down.

Good pilots DO hover because the current air to air game is lower speed hover/circlefights. They're incredibly fun, but in most major battles end when one side pulls a burster and takes the kill. Case in point, last night we had an amazing airfight going on over splitpeak pass while troops fought on the ground. The sky was a mess of mosquitoes, liberators, and galaxies dropping in. It was the most fun I had had all night.

It ended after about 5 minutes when someone pulled a burster max and camped with it from the spawn room. The air combat in this game can be amazing and fun, but it can also be ruined by one person with a very low skillcapped weapon. They don't have to kill aircraft; because of their ability to hit at range they can deny the air game over an entire battle. If you reduce the effectiveness of bursters , you can allow a whole new dimension of the game to develop that allows all aircraft --not just ESF's-- to play a role.

I think bursters should have slower bullet velocity, it would make them effective only when EFS come too close to ground.

*gasp* you mean like Liberator being able to stay in a combat zone for more then one short bombardment?
Or Galaxies providing ground support?
Unthinkable, you need to get your mind readjusted for these heresies.

Yes, i am nuts.

Never claimed I was a good pilot. I have watched a lot of videos on the subject though and I know it will take a lot of hours to get to that skill level.

What I can tell you though if you are picking flares over scout radar... there's no help for you, and if your picking nanite repair over stealth.... and you call yourself a good pilot? You also give your enemy way to much credit. And maybe its bugged I dunno but it takes me forever to lockon to a esf with stealth in my experience and I play heavy most of the time.

When you do your flyby with stealth over a battle, most of the time you will not even be noticed unless there's air support. We are to busy fighting on the ground and not looking in the air for something that might fly over. Most of the time you will not be noticed until you start firing. If we do have air support then you have to draw them away from their support... which is usually not too hard from what I've seen in battles.

But please, please, please... on second thought... just keep doing what your doing ... your right vehicle stealth sucks, showing up on your enemys map is manly, and scout radar with 200m of range for you and your buddies is a waste.... just keep popping flares... and nanite repairing and you'll be a terran players best friend. Have fun and happy hunting.