If a single av specialist can't kill a single tanker....
Then why would the av specialist ever exist.
The tanker is superior in every way, having better av than the av'er while having the best anti infantry in the game as well compared to the pathetic anti infantry of the av'er.

You could say that cost would be a good reason to use an av fit over a tank.
This is untrue for 2 reasons- 1. Obviously a proto av weapon, the only ones worth a single damn, are more expensive than tanks...
2. And more importantly since 1. Is likely to change, cost does not matter for us. Even if everyone had 10 mil isk we still wouldn't care about cost if we wanted to kill something. We'd just use the best option avaiable like always.

THIS. Is the reason av is completely broken.
Because every AVer is sitting in a tank.
Because you can't be selfish and say"well it should take 3 people to take me out! Because I spent 500k isk on this!"
Because when you do that, there's no reason those 3 people won't do the exact same thing you're doing.
If you can't deal with the fact that there is role SPECIFICALLY MADE to beat ONLY your role, and think it should take 3 or more of these guys WHOSE ONLY ROLE is to kill YOU, then perhaps you shouldn't be playing online games.
You're probably better off playing a single player game, where entire campaigns of enemies can't kill you.

Now then, since av is broken, back to sitting in my tank. Exploiting the idiocy of the forums influence on CCP 1 unlucky merc in front of a blaster at a time.

What I've gotten from reading most of these posts/threads is that AV don't want to be "good at everything", but rather they expect to be effective at what they've chosen to specialize in.

Well despite the fact that this entire statement is anecdotal and because of such is not credible, I'm going to bite down anyways.

First, who are the "best tankers in the game" that are being killed by you? I seriously want names, because if your killing "some of the best tankers in the game" that would technically make me the best tanker in the game... which would be hilariously ironic to say the least.

My sarcasm aside, do you honestly expect me to believe that anyone in a vehicle worth half their salt would die to a Remote Explosive trap? A good tanker doesn't need to use 1st Person view, so they can always see the person arming the REs. Arming a RE takes about 1-2 seconds, so multiply that by 3 (the amount required to kill an HAV without it's base shields) and that's about 3-5 seconds.

The average Human reaction time is .215ms, meaning you have to be about 15x dumber than the average human being to be killed by Remote Explosives. That's pretty much mental retardation right there. (then again, this is the pilot community were talking about).

There are crappy AVers in the game, just as there are crappy players who are Pilots, Heavies, Scouts, Logis, etc. This is a fact. However, the line between being underpowered and being terrible is easy to see. In fact, here's some math and actual evidence proving that the whole V/AV concept is still broken.

Though for the sake of my own sanity and profit, I have a proposition to make. Your Starter Fit with REs against my HAV. The winner, gets 50m ISK and has to admit that they were wrong in a public thread. How about it?

It would seem to me that there should be several different options available for a dedicated AV. REs might work well for some people, but they shouldn't be the only effective way to deal with a tank.

Also, if a player choses to dump millions of SP into Swarm Launcher Skills (for example), and ISK into Proto Swarm Launchers, to the exclusion of all other skills (potentially sacrificing a degree of survivability against infantry in the process), I don't think it is unreasonable for them to expect to be able to... oh, I don't know... maybe actually be able to kill a tank by themselves, and not just help someone else kill a tank, or require the help of others to kill a tank.

The player needs to feel that there is a suitable reward for their investment, and for the grind that they've spent to get there. Otherwise, they'll just get discouraged and quit because, well, what was the point?

Right now it just seems like "Great, I've spent hundreds of hours and all my ISK specializing in AV, now if I only had a couple of like-minded teammates, who just happen to be specialized in different, yet complimentary AV, we might be able to get together and scare a tank away!"

So, why bother specializing in AV at all, when a player could be more effective at just about anything else, with far less effort and investment, and for far greater rewards at the end of the battle?

/my $0.02

Fellow AVers, we can take a high ground here. We shouldn't ask for too much more by way of buffing AV or nerfing tanks. Balance is really close. The only things I would like to see is a RoF nerf on the blaster coupled with a damage buff to keep the same DPS vs tanks but less effective vs infantry, third AV grenade back, or a buff to it's damage, swarm velocity increse, and fix the skill bonus bug to get forge back to where it's suppose to be.

Tanks ARE soloable now. Proof is in this video. If you want to hunt tanks alone, you need to use a combination of AV weapons to do it, you don't have to lay traps and wait, you can use an LAV to position yourselves. The fitting I used in that video cost 71k. All of that footage was shot in one night.

We don't need tanks back to where they were prior to 1.6. Back then I could neutralize damn near any tank alone with only AV nades for MLT and Av Nades and Swarms for anything larger. See this video if you forgot how easy it was for a single dedicated AV guy to shut a tank down before the rebalance.

If we demand too much than we are no different than the pilots who brought us 1.7.