for the life of me i cant understand why any changes would need to be made to this weapon. IMHO, if a player can snipe you with this gun, then they are a superior player and deserve the kill. Just remember this:
1) there is no ADS with this weapon, so sniping MUST be done from hip-fire (which is definitely not easy with the size of the crosshairs)
2) you have to be a Heavy to wield the weapon, hence forcing the user to deal with permanent, unavoidable shortcomings of the suit (slow speed, large hit box, no equipment, etc)
3) the weapon take at least 5 seconds to charge up. not so much a problem when you are fighting at a distance, but in CQC that is 5 seconds you cant afford to waste, thus forcing the player to try and get a direct hit with the first shot or suffer the consequences (usually a volley of AR fire which depending on the weapon, can kill you before you get off the second shot)

i'm sure there are other compelling reasons, but i just chose the 3 that came to me off the top. if i want to kill a Forge gunner, i don't run up to his face and say 'Hi', i attack him from the side/back and make sure he doesn't get the time to shoot me first.i know a lot of guys that use the forums are good players, hence i dont understand why a simple tactic cant be applied to overcome any advantage that this play style has over your fitting builds.

I agree with the OP, Advance/Proto forge should be able to easily take out a standard Hav/dropship, but I don't agree that the weapon is strictly AV, it is 'anti material' as stated in the weapon description (the same description that stated it can be used against infantry) the fact that is is being used so effectively by a small percentage of the already small percentage of players that play Heavy should not lead to a 're balancing' of the weapon. it should lead other players to be cautious if you see one, and have a game plan for how to take it out.

Splash damage should only be reduced on the assault variant. It has a low charge up time, so it's pretty OP compared to the other FGs IMO.

I'm for damage reduction and longer charge times, but what I really want is some crazy recoil. Like looking up 20 degrees and being pushed back +5m. I mean, come one, this weapon is the equilivent of a rail tank turret and can be handled like a leafblower.

why should it have splash at all? do you need splash to kill a vehical? its an AV weapon

FG's are not solely AV or A-HAV they are ment to be a powerful anti infantry as well and if a user is skilled enough to hold down abjective then kudos to him and dont cry ... improvise / adapt/ overcome and the FG's dificulty to aim is the only balance needed and if you were going to decrease the power i ask that we gain a small zoom capability with it ...cus curently there is no zoom period and that would copensate for the damage increase

Sorry for my brash reply and late response.. I'm at work and haven't really had time to type anything up.

Dropships currently have the health of an LAV (although not an LLAV) and the mobility, however they lack the cover. If dropships are intended to be a medium vehicle, they need the shields or armor of a medium vehicle. As stands, they are the LAVs of the sky. As mentioned a second ago, the sky provides no cover, leaving dropships hanging out free to be shot at by forge guns and railguns (I fly a Python, so swarm launchers aren't really a problem for me).

What would be most useful is larger maps, allowing dropships to avoid a hot portion (a railgun can cover over half the map), but that takes a lot more than simple rebalancing. For a simple numbers tweak, allowing dropships to take an extra shot would be a great start. Well geared dropships are two shotted when hit by well geared opponents. I'd love to see that increase to 3, as this would increase the time I have to get away, as that's about my only defense.

So, I'd like either a resistance boost with skills that is effective or I'd like health to increase from 1075 to 1700, which would then call for the Eryx to be boosted up as well to compensate.

Lastly, I'd like to note that I find myself having ZERO powergrid issues with the Python. PG does not need a buff, it does not need a nerf. Leave it be.

Well reasoned commentary. I say, remove the splash entirely- it's just a big railgun, basically a huge sniper rifle, with no real reason to have splash damage. This would make it much harder to use vs infantry, while not gimping the gun for AV use. Additionally, I would be in favor of making all FGs have the assault's drawback- no stored charge, but instead requiring sufficiently excellent aim to time the charged shot. While we're at it, add a high-magnification ADS, because not having it makes working at the high end of the FG's optimal range (300M) impossible. Now you've got a proper long-range heavy AV weapon, devastating against tanks, but very hard to use against infantry. No stored shot will make life easier for dropships (as unpredictable flying will become much more valuable) and generally make the current FG's absurd accuracy/range less easy to abuse.

because it really doesent require much skill to use.

There's that sentence again.

it... does i geuss. But not really, i used it before. It does require a tad of skill but not much. Its just an easy and effecitve weapon, it is a very simple weapon

Most of the weapons are simple. Hell, really all of the weapons are pretty simple.

You point, you shoot. This one shoots fast, this one shoots slow. Oh, real skill weapon! Watch that over heat bar. SO MUCH SKILL.

That one just uses the "point and click" mechanic of a first person shooter in a different way. I don't disagree that its a little too good at all things (and I absolutely hate 1 hit kill anything ever, but that's just me), but its not a matter of "if you use it, you have no skill." If its that easy to use, then you use it.

Slower projectile, that much power from a infantry weapon should not be near instant hits.

As opposed to even faster hits by the Large Rails vehicle counterparts.


Personally I'm fine with nerfing all long range weapons. Let's slash the optimal on FGs, Large Rails, Sniper Rifles, and pre-nerf those godless Rail Rifles while we're at it. If vehicle rails are taking a hit then blasters will need a range nerf to balance them out.

Isn't nerfing fun?

Forge gun should be a close range weapon with a big powerful blast that can take a tank down in one shot at point blank. The trade off will be that you still have to charge it up so you are vulnerable. Make it so that it only targets vehicles. We have anti infantry weapons already.

For what the forge gun can do it is too versatile as is and is becoming a FOTM. Make it a one trick pony and make it damn good for that one trick.

Excellent post maple, I would agree with you 100%. I could easily live without the splash damage, as most of my kills are direct hits. Iv recently started tanking myself and can now see the huge disadvantage of going up against proto AV in my advanced tank.

I could also live without the proto AV cause its too easy to blow up stuff anymore, where's the challenge gone? In the older build's it used to take some effort to take out a tank or dropship. It required a team effort and was more fun.

This topic just needs to die. There is nothing wrong with the forge gun. It hardly changed since Codex and now all of you are complaining about it. Before someone brings up forge sniping calm down it's no big deal. Someone found a good way to kill/ protect a point with a gun that was used for mainly AV, how is that op? It has its drawbacks (can't do solo, no ads, heavy suit) It has its counters ( snipers, dropship full of heavies, railgun, counter forge gunner, orbitals). I think for something to be OP it needs to have little to no counters and forge guns DO have counters. For a well coordinated team I don't see how a forge gunner is a problem, if you or your team can't kill him then you deserve to be killed by it.

Forge guns v.s tanks can seem a bit unbalanced IF someone does something wrong. If your tank sucks yeah it's going to die to a proto forge, if the tank gets stuck he will die, If there is multiple AV player targeting you odds are you will die. On the forge gun side of things you are this big ass heavy with a big ass gun, you can be seen and hit from a mile away. You have to be accurate, conserve your little amount of ammo, watch out for infantry support, watch out for that tank you are tying to kill and allot of other things I don't feel like listing. The forge gun is not the one in need of a nerf, the tanks/dropships need a buff. I do have an alt who is speced into nothing but vehicles and I can say that they are too weak and not worth the isk. Tanks need to come back to where they where, not the POS glass cannons we have now. If you nerf the forge gun now later on down the line when tanks are good again forges will be under powerd.

As we should all know by now, AV and vehicals are going to be changed in 1.5 and most likely 1.6 and will be changed completly. as evident in this post:



So, im going to go through the whole list of AV weapons in different threads and try to collect a non biased collection of feedback the Devs can use to change vehicals and AV. So remember, what we post here is what they may listen to. Ive started a discussion on Plasma Cannons in this thread: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1145262#post1145262
Also, this link is the AV nade discussion: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&find=unread&t=99452
and finally, the swarm launcher discussion https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=101971 Feel free to throw in your thoughtful and reasonable ideas in ethire.

What are your ideas for Forge Gun rebalance?
Remember to ALWAYS give reasons on your ideas, we dont want to give the DEVs crap to read. Put up a convincing argument!!

Personally, i think the Forgegun is mostly balanced considering we only have standard HAVs vs proto AV. With my experience with the end Chromosome Sagaris (ADV level tank) the Forge has not changed by much and is fairly balanced, the damage output is almost fair, tho it does most likely do a tad too much damage, only by maby 300 points, very minor. However, we do not have anything past standard tanks, tho the weapon in scale is not OP, it is currently OP to standard tanks, standard tanks do not stand up well to proto forge guns, they eat them up within a single clip. This is exactly what should happen, it shouldent take much more than a single clip for a proto forge to kill a standard tank. Sadly we are most deffenetly not getting the additional tanks needed to fix the balance issiue, the proto forge will annihilate our standard level tanks for many months to come untill additional, more powerful vehicals are released. Unless the tanks are getting a monsterious buff, we should temporarily remove the proto forge unitll tanks are strong enough to require proto forge monsters.

However, there is an aspect were the Forge Gun is absurd and too multi purposed. The splash on the forge is okay, it has a balanced strength and blast radius but this splash is abused for holding down objective hacking panels, especially PC. When there is a FG above an objective you simply can not capture the objective, as the splash on the assualt FG kills all hackers. This makes this AV weapon an anti everything weapon, if you are able to kill infaintry it should be a direct hit because it is an anti vehical weapon, it does not need splash to kill vehicals and the idea that it ever did is laughable. This weapon is currently to versatile for an AV weapon, an extreemly effective AV weapon at that. The splash should be removed to define its battlefeild role, it is almost the ultimate tactical weapon when placed above ground, like the flaylock was as a sidearm