Enlightened gaming

So I should set the scene. PTMC under my leadership had Max crashed our way to victory re-taking Allatum bio-lab.

My guys were bored and chomping at the bit for a fight. The North was out as there were no Terran forces West of J908, except for TI Alloys which was already a mess as it always is. Which left the smurfs, who as luck would have it were pushing into Crossroads watchtower with multiple platoons.

SO I issued the orders and my platoon mounted up, grabbing magriders and a couple of sunderers, our journey to Crossroads across the Indar planes was uneventful apart from a lone harasser being melted by our tank column.

The battle was swift, the NC weren't expecting us. What little armour they had left over from their original attack was swiftly melted by FPC's.

Crossroads saved we pushed on Broken arch, only to find where some of the smurfs were hiding. Magriders exploded as the NC's infamous phoenix spam launched from behind cover. We barely got into the broken arch before the sheer numbers of NC forced us back. Despite eliminating their hidden sundys we fell back as a fresh tank column pushed out of Tarwich

Forced out we began to defend the facility in earnest, the sheer number of vanguards forced us to stay in the tower until a few bombing runs with libs and lancer squads cleared the ground so we could push back to C.

After a hard fight we pushed the NC out and pushed back to Broken arch.

At this point we began experiencing severe lag.

The fighting continued often at unplayable levels of lag.

And at that point my client crashes

Now by this point, I had the three man liberator kill, which came to 1200, the sundy that was fueling the ground attack 900, the mosquito and it's pilot for 700, an unmanned prowler 600 and a couple of helpless footsoldiers. So I was an extreme menace kill by then.

As I watch the lib explode with glee, I hear the whine of engines and hear the clatter of needler rounds against my hull, I see him fly past and I line my run up with the charging mossy. We trade fire, our primaries cease firing as our clips burn dry, I angle up ready to empty my photons into him as he blurrs past me for another pass.

Except he doesn't, instead of adjusting his angle he activates his afterburners straight at me. As I begin to unload photon pods into him, I realise too late he's on a collision course with me. Boom

Boom, dude just go himself a cheap extreme menace kill.

I'm not complaining, I should be a better pilot but I'm not. it just seems cheap how, if you can't take a guy down in a straight fight, you just ram him out of the sky.

Planetside 2 is my main game nowadays simply because it's fun and free, so go download it now. I play VS on the Cobalt server and am a high ranked officer in one of the best outfits on the server.

The fact is, if somehting is OP it'll get bitched about. Strafing magriders (nerfed, so now I struggle to go 1 vs 1 with He prowlers) Prowler HE spam (nerfed notice the lack of TR tank spam) Sctmax (beign nerfed today)

My bitch today though is about the ESRL's and as much as I love my lancer I agree with one of my Squad leaders these things have to be removed.

Now before any NC start bitching about being hit with the nerf bat on their phoenix (read: OPnix) You have not, you got a buff against vehicles and a nerf against n00btubing infantry with it.

So the OPnix first. Simply put OW. Firstly the nerf failed, I still get n00btubed by the guided missile, it happens a little less but it still happens (NB this is as a heavy assault  attacking a base, not a stationery infiltrator or an engineer on a turret as a mobile trooper) Second. It encourages spawn camping,  the amount of times I've been attacking a NC controled base and I've seen the blue rockets of the Phoenix flying out of the spawn, hunting for sunderes in an attempt to score a cheap unblockable kill.Third; my biggest peeve they ruin defensive lines. Forcing you to come out and fight the NC force head on, which more than often outnumbers you due to their massive pop advantage on most servers. I can set up a perfect defense at a tower or amp station that would take multiple platoons to dislodge my platoon and it all gets undone as phoenix spam destroys half my defenses.

Now I'm sure a lot of NC that will say. Hold on Sam the counter to the Phoenix is to shoot the rocket down. Really, have you ever seen anyone shoot one down. I'll answer that NO. To take down a phoenix rocket you need concentrated fire on a projectile flying at 100KPh (roughly) which is ok with one but loads, even burster maxes and skyguards struggle to take them down. Plus half the time the damn thing doesn't even render.

Now to the striker, while not as bad as the "OPnix" is still a royal pain in the ass. I'm quite an experienced pilot I have 32 hours in my scythe and a further 13 hours in my Liberator. And I hate the striker it's the ultimate cheap noobish weapon, yes all 5 shots have to hit for it to do more damage than an annihilator, but we all remember how annoying annihilator squads are. Now imagine striker squads, so much more damage. over clear skies I took a lib up and we kept having to retreat even with flares as there were so many strikers locking onto us. Because of the nature of the striker finding it is impossible even with a zephyr and Thermals as you'll be dead long before then.

Yes it has no dumb fire and each projectile does little damage but a few guys hiding with them can effectively lock down a whole area preventing air from getting in

As for the Lancer. I love my lancer, it's great for gettign cheap EXP with a few spammed level one charges, which is how people do it, due to the higher DPS. It needs a larger damage buff at the higher charges 250-600-1700 instead of 250-500-1500