Am I missing something or is the only not-really advantage of having spent 1000 CP for the Annihilator that it can deliver its payload in one instant instead of within a still very brief amount of time? The Swarm has more bang per magazine, twice the effective ammo capacity and two projectile velocity modes, and during a brief test it seemed to me like its lock-on time is shorter, too.
i think the main advantage of the Swarm is that its missile leaves the muzzle in a straight path when launched, so it wont hit nearby cover or teammates unlike other lock-on launchers
The Swarm also rearms from ammo packs one missile at a time. At normal launcher speed. It apparently takes quite some time to refill your ammo without a nearby terminal. Having all your damage in one missile is pretty signifcant against fast moving targets that will likely bug out as soon as they get a lock notification. A few times earlier today I had a few Swarm users try to hit my Harasser... I prep to evade as soon as I get locked, by the time one missile hits im pretty much gone, couldn't care less about the others. A higher damage missile would have a better chance to pick me off if I'm not fully topped off on repairs.
Thing is also that the old missiles, like from the Annihilator, are damage-dosed so that two missiles will only make a target burn, and while I didn't do extensive tests, the higher damage of the Swarm might actually kill a target off in two salvos. I don't see enough advantage of the insant high-damage hit to justify all its drawbacks compared to the Swarm. With the Annihilator, it annoyed the hell out of me that even if I landed several hits (which takes an eternity), the target could escape, just barely alive, and then I was quickly out of ammo. I also today noticed that the Annihilator (not the Swarm) took a LOT longer to resupply. It was like 1 rocket every five seconds or so. I thought I could do a teammate a favor by triggering the ammo pack, but doing a few steps to the next terminal was the better idea. I wish I had saved my precious certs on my heavy char, because the Swarm seems a lot more fun to me. Rare that I notice weapon alternatives where I don't have to think twice about which one to get. I feel that for balancing, they should give the Annililator and such one advantage. Either let them fully kill targets instead of leaving escape-reserve hitpoints or double the ammo capacity. It's kinda crazy to have a weapon that takes so long to shoot, require multiple shots and then runs out of ammo so quickly. BTW was the lock-on distance reduced recently or did it just seem that way to me? (I might never have tried to lock on very distant targets before.)
Well, I've played for two days on both EU servers with a double xp going on and I've yet to see anyone use a Swarm. Seen plenty of harassers and MBTs with the new secondaries (crewed one myself - the VS version - awesome)
It's the same arguement with the Striker. The Swarm is better in Groups, the Striker is just god awesome at shooting anything, even in groups, it's only good for dealing with Libs and ESFs camping over the spawn room, but doesn't have any use at close range nor long range. The Annihilator does a direct 1000 damage in one shot, and since it fires one shot you can reload and fire another one while the Striker and Swarm are still reloading..
I think that's how lock-ons used to work, so they nerfed the rest specifically so they could release this?
And to not make that a relevant disadvantage, the Swarm reloads quicker than the Annihilator. I think they intend the Swarm to be a cert sink, to make people buy twice. Would not be the first time they do that. Also, the Swarm kinda harms the Striker's uniqueness. But the Swarm can be set to high rocket speed, compensating for that to a degree. (I didn't test how well fast rockets maneuver though, but if they lead the target, that wouldn't be a problem either.) So my point is that the Swarm seems like they couldn't really decide for it to have an actually significant disadvantage, so they greatly defused any it could have.
Splitting its damage into multiple rockets is the disadvantage. Try pulling a Harasser against some swarm users and see for yourself. Using regular lockon avoidance techniques its pretty darn rare for more than one rocket to actually connect except in incredibly huge open spaces like between Indar Ex - Quartz Ridge. Also are you familiar with the term alpha strike? High frontloaded damage is almost always better than sustained DPS because you don't have to be firing on the target as long to get the same results.
