...several fully kitted out Madrugars and Gunnlogis on the enemy side of every other battle I join. I found tanking before to often be frustrating, but at least I could drop the tank and put my boots on the ground when things got frustrating. Now, you need to run HAVs 24/7 if you can just to halt the enemy HAVs, at least at the time of day I play.

HAVs popping HAVs doesn't even work when there's 5 enemy HAVs on the enemy side of every other match. When you saw 6 names from one big corp or a qynch in the feed before, you knew things would be tough. Now, when you see that, you know they'll be deploying their whole quota in HAVs against your one HAV, one squaddies HAV and 14 assorted berries.

Every match depends almost solely on how many HAVs, with what guns and what modules, are deployed at the start, and if you're willing to throw ISK at the screen replacing them. HAVs are the main attraction and infantry are a sideshow, except when in installations that usually get 3HKO'd by a rail tank or forge gun anyway. Once one side wins the tank wars at the beginning of the match, they keep it that way. Good luck deploying one HAV without it getting popped on deployment by a 2-3HKO amped particle accelerator 350m away, let alone 5 to match the enemy's force.

This is Tank 514 and it is far worse than AR 514 ever was. I used to like tanking, now I see several HAVs on every battlefield all soaking up AV like sponges, running in packs, cheap as dirt and I want to puke. I don't want a GêP.0 K/D against infantry. I want a balanced game that is more complex than deploying more/better HAVs than the opponent. When you know the outcome of the battle with 95% accuracy 60 seconds in by the map, there's a problem.

I swear, playing pubs not in a tank squad is like pulling teeth most of the time.

I didn't like protostomping.

Also, there's a difference between a 69k iron wall that takes 0 SP and is impossible to go ISK negative in and a suit that gives you some extra HP and damage with a large SP and ISK investment. It's protostomping on a much more deadly, gamebreaking scale. I run mostly STD and ADV gear and, guess what, I actually kill protos! Wow, amazing, I actually had a 2.0+ K/D 90% of matches in standard gear before 1.7! Tankstomping is protostomping times a thousand. You can kill a proto in seconds with a militia assault rifle and multiple protos with a grenade. A full squad of prototypes is problematic, but they are far more killable than a full squad of tanks.

I guess you could've taken, "I didn't like protostomping" as, "I didn't enjoy doing it but did it anyway." No, I meant that I didn't do it and it felt unfair that there was no defense for newbs. I have tanked on and off for months, seriously in 1.6. The shoe can't be on the other foot when the roles are reversed.

Also, using poor gear to defeat high gear takes some skill and tactics. It's about HOW it gets the job done. Meanwhile, you can drop in endless militia tanks and get a much higher K/D than any protobear I've EVER known and still easily break even. Lower tier tanks can die to good AV, while higher tier tanks simply shred everything apart and only die to other tanks. Essentially, it's like having:

STD Gear < ADV Gear < PRO Gear < Even better PRO gear anyone can use < Even better better PRO gear that dedicated tankers can use.

I have a 6.5 weekly K/D. Taking out ground deaths it's probably closer to a 10.0. In matches where my team has tank superiority, I usually go something like 20/0 or 20/1. I run solo or in small squads a fair bit and do better, obviously, with good help. That's not the problem. I'm not complaining because my poor little K/D is suffering and I'm getting stomped. I'm complaining because tank "balance" is broken as all hell, making matches even more predictable than before and pointless without better tank support than the opponent. Either they have good tank support and I'm on my own against the hoarde, or the shoe is on the other foot and I'm part of the hoarde. I don't want a hoarde on either side. Save that **** for FW, maybe, but keep it out of pubs along with 2 q-synched full proto squads against 16 guys fresh from the academy.

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My Gunnlogi can pop 2 Somas in a 2 v 1 with hardeners up, sponging all of the damage. Missiles to unwary HAVs work and amped Railguns work until the enemy brings out better Railguns. I can run at 3 protos and drop one of them. I cannot do that with a tank because the TTKs are escalated.

Matchmaking is, indeed, the source of the most frustration. However, it's not like matchmaking could tell who's actively tanking or not, even looking at SP distributions. The problem with tanks is that tanks > infantry, so you usually need to dominate tanks to win many maps.

They do more than help. If the enemy does not bring HAVs to stop me, I can clone whole Ambush squads, set up uplinks on every point in Skirmish and completely prevent the enemy from capturing the point in Domination, provided I can cover it depending on the map. They could always change games in good hands, especially in pubs. Confined spaces aren't even infantry turd with a shield hardener or two up.

The fact that players need to pack bombs into LAVs and OHKO HAVs because there's so many presents a problem. Also, 2 guys on my squad did this today and popped 2 of 4 enemy tanks. 20 seconds later, there's 4 tanks again.

when i run ground as assult, i just aavoid all the enemy tanks, its works better then you think if your used to using your own team as bait :P

if a tank kills me, that guy holding an AR would of as well. i dont really mind dieing to it because they are huge and loud and i should of saw the damn thing coming

Aw, that's cute. Too bad a good Gunnlogi can cycle hardeners and be "shiny" for 60 seconds straight, leave for 15 seconds, and then do it again. Split it into 7 second cooldowns and you can cycle indefinitely. I don't even have that great a tank and I think I've lost a hanful of HAVs to Swarms since 1.7, usually because I was being bombarded by other HAVs, which would've killed me anyway. Infantry can be taken out in many different ways and are much easier to disable. Also, why shouldn't I win, you ask? Because I'm fighting 2 at once. Also, it's not that I shouldn't pop militia tanks, it's that if they're going to be so useless (aside from double amped Railgun Sicas, or Missiles if you only need to disable one armor tank) they need something else. You know, such as AV that kills things without 4 guys trying to take down one tank.

I've fought full squads of proto players that couldn't take me down using AV. Also, the problem is not 8 people taking down one tank. I can pull out a tank and blap one myself. It's 5 people trying to take down 5 tanks while the remaining 11 infantry wrestle for the terminals with the other 11 infantry. There's only 1 guy in each HAV usually. If you sacrifice any more than 1 guy to take one out, you're screwed, because your infantry are outnumbered. If you have 10 guys blapping 5 tanks, the infantry are outnumbered 11 to 6.