I was actually inspired by Maken Tosch's journey from a novice ninja to the shinobi (I guess?) he is now. Which is rare. I'm not easily moved by words, and even less so from someone who I know so little about. But Tosch's posted hit a DUST nerve and convinced me to do a little refocusing of my own.

Just for the record - I'm *really* not trying to steal any of Maken Tosch's thunder or be some kind of wannabe groupie. I just though the idea was very elegant and personable. It reminded me that there are still regular people out there in the forums outside of the trolls who like to make a mess of things. I respected that, and wanted to give it a shot myself.

After watching Noc Tempre and his squad go 121 - 0 in a match and the resulting thread leading to "Skill more heavily into AV", I figured it was time to Put up or Shut up. Maybe Noc was right. Maybe it is really possible to fight vehicles on even terms with some focused skills. I might even owe him an apology. At any rate, I created two new fittings - Piercing Blast for my forge gun and Piercing Gaze for the sniper fit that *might* see some action.

Day 1:

So I just got signed in and got through all of the pop up screens (there should be an option in the neocom to skip the tutorials) and started spending some skill points. I'm only interested in the forge gun because it's the counter I've heard so much about, so I got weaponry to level 5 and forge gun operation to level 2. I'm starting out with a basic forge gun and a sub-machine gun fitting.

This is SO different from the assault rifle I use with Serenity. The range and splash is nice. It feels good to one shot people milling about instead of fighting to make every bullet count with my AR. This forge has so little ammo though. I don't know how you guys make it without any equipment.

I took out my first LAV today. i think it was militia grade, so no big ups yet. Still, it felt good to see that explode. Dropships are coming up next.

I'm planning on sticking to the basic forge for a while. I'm hoping it will force me to get really good to squeeze in he kills, and it will save me a lot of money. I'm only making 100,000 or so a game, so I need everything I can get. I also don't know how heavies fill up their CPU and PG. Even in this militia fitting with mostly militia gear, i still have about 40% of my total space left.

That's it for now. I'm about to sign on and do some for work with this. Wish me luck

PSN: PiercingSereniy
Country: U.S
Class: Assault, Heavy
Corp: Shattered Ascension {SH4T]

From an advanced forge gunner to a fledgeling, dont waste your points. Invest your points in a Rail Tank, they are much more effective at taking out vehicles and surviving. A suped up tank will one shot you, regardless how many points you put into defense. At least will be able to one shot the tank, if you are driving one yourself.

From one forger to another, good luck, I'll post my best tips here.

Personally I prefer the regular (Charge holding) Forge guns, reason being I can charge up behind cover, pop out and fire and hide again before he can (generally) kill me, lower damage, yes but it does the trick on most (not all) tanks and dropships, be wary of Mavado (Tank) Noc (Dropship) and a few others who will eat your shots like it's the first good meal in a long time, you will learn real fast who's decent, and who's the best.

Tanks: High ground is necessary on these bad boys, get below/at and you light up like a christmas tree in the dead of night, plus he can usually run away before the final shot gets him down, keep on him, don't let him recharge shields/armor and keep pushing him till he breaks, mountainous area (Peaks, Near A, where all the tanks like to hide) is your best route, flank and you can either (Depending on who it is) kill them 80% of the time, or make them fly out of there with just enough armor to not burn if they don't have good infantry behind them.

Bad fitted tank - 2 shots
Decent fitted tank - 4-5 shots
Amazing tanker - 6-10 shots (I think I have put about 12 rounds total into a tank before, no harden

Dropships: Aim ahead, remember you have a range limit, while he does not (Missiles) it will take you a while to get the feel down, you need to be QUICK on this, thus why the breach is NOT recommended you need to pump 2-3 shots into him and you can't miss a single one, this is why dropships are hard/nigh impossible to take down without practice (And thus why most people will disown forge guns as a viable AV weapon) the other downside to dropship killing is most of them will take 5-6 shots to take out, you have time for maximum of 3, thus why 2 forge gunners is needed to **KILL** a dropship in just about any pubgame (Bar the crap fits) note that I said KILL

Now on to the most reliable way to stop a dropship, pump rounds into him anytime he even thinks about coming close.

Reason for pumping rounds into him (but not killing him) is this, if he's only getting 5-6 kills for the ENTIRE game, you have done your job well, he isn't going 50-0 or 100-0, you yourself are stopping the war machine from doing a pure **** on your team, look at it this way if you think "Well, I only went 2-4 and was nigh last on the scoreboard" yes, you may have only gotten 2 kills, but you stopped that dropship pilot effectively owning you, and everyone else, making you go, maybe 5-15, which is much worse imho.

Bad fitted dropship - 2 shots
Decent fitted - 3 shots
Amazing - 5-7 shots

Running as a lone forge gunner, you will have problems, specifically not enough DPS on target, thus why a friend would really help you out.

Another tip on taking on missile tanks, and it's not always easy to do, is to find that just right spot where when the missiles are flying at you, they either hit the hill/cover far enough in front of you that you're out of splash damage and, if they do go over cover, there's nothing behind/around you for the missiles to hit to splash you. These spots are usually make you a good target for snipers.

Also, Damage Amplifiers are a good idea for a forge gunner as well. Well I think they are though others might think differently.

And don't forget that you don't have to see the whole tank to hit it.

I get so upset with forge guns sometimes. It's either hit or miss with those things there is no in-between. One game I'll do great with it and get tons of kills with it, take out a bunch of vehicles all is well. But then there are times when I'll be aimed dead on with 100% efficiency and I can't hit them to save my life.

All the main points have been said already. Once you get into the higher tier forge guns, it'll be a lot more forgiving on trying to take people out (both infantry and tanks). Damage mods are awesome too. Don't forget those complimentary skills (like sharpshooter, reload, etc.), they help out A TON once you start investing in them.

It's good that you're starting to peel back the aggressiveness of your play style. Heavy suits and forge guns are WAY too expensive to be being super aggressive with them.

Assault vs Standard:

I personally enjoy the Standard better because of being able to hold the charge. This especially works for dropships. When it comes to forge guns, getting every shot on target is absolutely necessary.

Spec into sharpshooter first. Then damage.

Trust me on that. The range is more important. Especially when you start shooting at dropships.

Forge does plenty of damage as is.

I had ignored sharpshooter until recently. Got it to 2 now, and that extra range makess a significant difference when shooting dropships.

Day 3 (Continued):

Just played in my first real squad. Man did that work wonders. I'm in debt to the logibro who not only revived me, but ran remote repairers. That's one selfless player.

I killed (practically) another tank. I drained all of its shield and half of it's armor, but some swarm launcher finished him off. That's okay though. The more tanks down the merrier. The guy rage quit after his tank blew up, which made me chuckle a bit. I then faced off with a much heavier fitting tank. If my forge does ~1500 damage then I would say that this guy either had somewhere around 7-8000 shield or i just so happened to hit him when his shield hardeners were on. And just to add my two cents to the matter; I think that vehicles should have a similar reticule as forge guns as well as share the same splash damage. If CCP decides to reduce the percentage of damage that radiates from the explosion, that would be fine by me. But the effort I put in to just line up a shot feels much higher than whatever it takes to line up a tank shot. The difference is that the tank's accuracy will be flawless. It'll take me a few shots.

Speaking of which, I'm getting better and better at hitting people with this forge gun. Snipers hiding against walls make the perfect targets, but draws a lot of aggro towards me. I might have to tone that down a bit. I'll get out sniped by a decent shooter any day. Still, that "+50" feels so much better when it comes from that speck of dust running across my screen or snipers who think: "There's no way he'll hit me with that".

Skill point gain has been rough on me. I'm only 1/5 into the skill cap but I've already slowed down dramatically. I'm gonna see what I can do until Tuesday, switch back to Serenity and clean up for the week, then get back to work on Blast. I think I'm also gonna skill into forge damage before I work on sharpshooting.

Quick question by the way: How does scrambler pistol operation work? It tells me that I'll get an extra round added to the clip. Does that mean that the chamber will hold one more shot? Will I be able to fire 8 rounds instead of 7 before reloading? You're continued help and support would be much appreciated. Thanks again for all of your input!

Cheers,

PSN: Piercingserenity
Country: U.S
Class: Assault, Heavy
Corp: Shattered Ascension [SH4T]