Officer v Standard, What Tank? You mean that smouldering wreck?

I am currently running proto swarm as a dedicated AV guy, I believe swarm is very ineffective against shields, and if a tank stack a lot of shield, trust me, no swarm is going to penetrate it (unless many shots from a well coordinated team of swarms) If you buff shields and leave swarms as it is, tanks will become way OP. If you die fast from Swarm fire, your tank is simply built like a plank; plain and simple. Stop whining.

With regards to the HAVs not having good enough anti-infantry I thought the Large Blaster Turret had been the solution. It was tearing grunts up. This last month they haven't been as "killey". Did something happen to them? The Large Missiles were great anti-infantry two builds ago. Some kind of buff or return to their former glory would be nice.

What you're saying is rock AV doesn't work against paper HAV?

Ever considered trying scissor AV...

DS pilot here: dedicated

Drop ships are a mess. CCP are silent on this. I think this is because they have changes in the works so I am prepared to wait and comment when it comes. In the mean time if I'm not being OHK by a standard forge or homing super AV grenades I ride shot gun in a tank.

The big problem is AV carried by infantry specialists. Currently you can carry as a ground player :

The best AR in the game
The strongest armour and shield combo
Some spare ammo with a hive

You are the perfect infantry man. A specialist at killing other troops. BUT.. You can also carry 3 mega strong, fast deploy anti vehicle grenades that rip tanks and dropships to bits. Why? Why should a player be able to do it all? AV should be a class of player, maybe even a suit

Assault
Logistics
AV
Pilot

I think AV should be restricted to one suit. This game needs all classes to make your team win. No AV guy and there is a tank... Silly you, you should have brought one. Currently as a tank, lav, or DS you face maybe 16 people are rocking a potential 5600 AV damage each with no penalty to their ability to play their role. flux, even works on infantry too so no loss there should a tank not turn up.

And getting AV nades from nanohives so you can sit on it and chuck like 15 AV nades is just stupid

Im actually satisfied with the AV currently exept for the forge guns

There needs to be a time charge or a damage buff to the forge gun. A prototype forge can take out my shield tank in about 5 seconds. Which isn't fair. He spent ~500k SP to get it, and my tank cost ~4mill SP for my worst gunnlogi. Someone can just go "Oh hey lets spend a million skill points for this officer forge gun of death with 3 damage mods on my heavy suit" and go camp it up on a roof where you can't hit him.

And getting AV nades from nanohives so you can sit on it and chuck like 15 AV nades is just stupid

Im actually satisfied with the AV currently exept for the forge guns

There needs to be a time charge or a damage buff to the forge gun. A prototype forge can take out my shield tank in about 5 seconds. Which isn't fair. He spent ~500k SP to get it, and my tank cost ~4mill SP for my worst gunnlogi. Someone can just go "Oh hey lets spend a million skill points for this officer forge gun of death with 3 damage mods on my heavy suit" and go camp it up on a roof where you can't hit him.

And getting AV nades from nanohives so you can sit on it and chuck like 15 AV nades is just stupid

Tell that to the guy in Eve that lost his Carrier (2-4Billion ISK) to a lone Stealth Bomber worth 60-80m ISK, sure he derped up bigtime, but if you Derp up, you are supposed to go down.

Letting me get close to your tank = you derping it up.

Tell that to the guy in Eve that lost his Carrier (2-4Billion ISK) to a lone Stealth Bomber worth 60-80m ISK, sure he derped up bigtime, but if you Derp up, you are supposed to go down.

Letting me get close to your tank = you derping it up.

Nerfing AV weapons is not the answer to balancing vehicles vs AV. As stated by others we only have Militia and Standard levels for most vehicles while we have all the way to officer level for AV. What they should do is temporarily take off the market all AV that is above Advanced Level until they introduce all of the Advanced and Prototype vehicles.

There is not way to tell if a Proto Forge is balanced until we can use it against a proto tank/dropship. If you nerf AV now without those vehicles you run the risk of making AV useless against the new vehicles and then you have to go back and rebalance everything again. This will not only take longer, but will be a waste of dev time and money. By doing what I have suggested you would only need one round of balancing and we it would probably take less time and resources for CCP to do it.

Just my .02 ISK

Logi LAV's are AT LEAST adv level. Even proto AV doesn't give them to much trouble.

Would really like to hear from CCP honestly, someone who works on Vehicles in particular.

It's gotten to the point where we've begun considering if vehicles will ever be worth it. Are we more useful as Infantry or will vehicles ever be able to stand on their feet against a proto forge (3 shots, 5 seconds, dead.)

Yeah Gastun is totally a d!ck.

Proto tanks would be neat to see. My guess CCP is a bit gun-shy on how to balance them (Adv HAVs as well since they are perpetually swinging back and between OP and UP). One defense when they are on the OP side is that dedicated AV teamwork should be needed against them. Maybe Tonka Tuff proto HAVs could be released but limited to Planetary Conquest to avoid the pubstomp issues.

With regards to the HAVs not having good enough anti-infantry I thought the Large Blaster Turret had been the solution. It was tearing grunts up. This last month they haven't been as "killey". Did something happen to them? The Large Missiles were great anti-infantry two builds ago. Some kind of buff or return to their former glory would be nice.


To answer the thread author's questions I'm a dedicated assault Forge Gunner (used to tote an HMG until SP inflation hit this game build, even 9 mil sp isn't enough) who does not participate in Planetary Conquest (which needs more bacon).

Dedicated AV gunner here. Some of you have probably lost **** to me, so hopefully this give me some weight.

Swarms - 70% Shield, 130% Armor
Forge Gun - 110% Shield, 90% Armor

See any problem there? I do. We need a better spread of AV weapons. Where's my 130% Shield 70% armor gun?(Hint: CCP has no plans to make one).

On the one hand, Swarms are absolutely AMAZING at wrecking armor tankers, but completely bite balls killing a well-kitted and skilled Gunlogi/Falchion tank. Seriously. I've dumped my entire swarm load(6 Proto Swarms) w/ 3 Complex mods and Proficiency III into a Gunlogi(*Cough* Sir Meade *Cough*), only to have it just shrug off the damage and run away. So I'm not sure about the whole "When do I get to go toe to toe with an AVer" argument. A well kitted Shield tank with a Driver that has invested a large number of SP into Vehicle Upgrades CAN stand toe to toe.

Then again, I've ripped apart proto-fit Mardrugars (Spelling?) in sometimes as little as 3 shots.

On the other hand, I've got my Forge Gunner alt. Proto Assault FG's, Complex Damage mods, etc.

From his perspective, things are simply too fast. A well kitted tank had to completely go absent of his situational awareness to die to me(I.e. drive out into the open and come to a full stop, or stay out in the open if I have the high ground). While I do a sizeable chunk of damage, even with an Assault forge I have to be quite on the ball to kill someone. And forget standing toe to toe - I'm way too large of a target, and way too slow(especially charging a Forge) to be dodging and weaving like I do on my medium Swarm fit character.


Not sure what I was getting at there.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the real issue arises from tankers expecting their large vehicles which cost large amounts of money to be able to shrug off huge damage and keep going, with minimal skill investments. Militia tanks are cannon fodder, and Standard tanks require a very keen mind to fit, and ALOT of skill points to get to the hardened, rolling brick stage. If I play my cards right, with proto AV gear, I can potentially kill a well piloted, high SP tank. Frankly, I fear what's going to happen when they bring in ADV and Proto tanks with higher base EHP and better fitting capacity than the current STD tanks. At that point, we're going to have to have coordinated, dedicated, proto fit AV tank hunting groups in order to kill them. In a PC match - yea - that makes perfect sense. 0 complaints as far as having them in PC goes. But just like now - with corps like UPS, WTF, Seraphim, and so many others stacking 6-12 man Proto/Officer fit teams in pub matches - the moment someone brings in one of these EHP monster ADV/Proto tanks in to a Pub game(Because this game does not revolve around PC!) we're going to be right back where we were closing Chromosome, with the public screaming 'tanks are OP, tanks are OP', and CCP (probably) beating them with a nerf bat.

Though the whole.. Pub match imbalance thing.. Really is a whole other matter entirely.

Edit: Tl;dr - If you are running in any other tank but Shield fit Gunlogi right now, you're doing it wrong.

Would really like to hear from CCP honestly, someone who works on Vehicles in particular.

It's gotten to the point where we've begun considering if vehicles will ever be worth it. Are we more useful as Infantry or will vehicles ever be able to stand on their feet against a proto forge (3 shots, 5 seconds, dead.)

Not letting this thread die. The way to true balance with vehicles and anti vehicle weaponry is by having the correct gear to match up with each other. We need Advanced and Prototype tanks, specialized variants are not Advanced nor Proto vehicles despite their little tag, and need to be treated as such (Like the Logistics Vehicles, when you aim at them, they should say ENFORCER not PRO).

Standard Tanks don't need a buff, nor do we need extra PG, if anything, give us our 25% PG skill back, and then reduce the current PG on Standard and Enforcer HAVs by 25%, thus creating even more of a reason to spec into higher tier vehicles.

As a stop gap they could always remove advanced and proto AV

Sure the tears would flow when ppl cannot 2 shot that HAV with proto AV but it will balance the field a bit