Lasher!!!!!!!

[Rbstr]

Its fine by me it has a bug like the JH had, the devs probably didn't intend it but they have given the VS an unfair advantage. Also right after a patch its IMPOSSIBLE to gage game ballence because everyone is switching around to see how the new weapons are, some will go back other will stay. Alot of the empire pop increases can be contriubuted to letting people have to chars per server, alot of people are probaby making Alts to test out the new stuff.

the world maps are tiping out of ballence to the VS side more often after the patch but time will tell if it realy its that bad.

Alot of it is the bandwagon, if somebody complains and say it some people subcontiously belive it. Then they make it into a problem that isn't that big of a deal, like mad cow that can only hurt you if you don't cook it well, and SARS that killed a smaller percentage and number of people than the FLU does in america alone.

Its a tendancy of people to exagerate to make a point, but it starts to build with every retelling

[SilverLord]

Thank you. it's weird, the TR is the most balanced empire, never have to be buffed or nerfed.

[Duffman]

cept our maxs which are just plain terrible and everyone knows it

[Gigabein]

I dare somebody to compare the "lash behind" bug to the jackhammer quad-shot bug. Go ahead. Do it. Just make sure you're wearing protective headgear.

[WritheNC]

I still vote to throw all HA out the door. SA wouldn't make this problem because its common pool.

The only way I've seen the lasher being beaten indoors is by thumpers. I've seen 6 NC with plasma bouncing nades down heavily populated VS tower stairwells while others move up the other side to hack the console, and bunches of NC at the backdoor just hurling nade after nade out of it.

If the VS get close or do a rush however, the whole thing is broken. That's the entire problem with the lasher: the only way to give the VS the same treatment is with the thumper, which isn't as good for the combat situation an attacking lasher player puts you through. You can't use the thumper when they get close or you will kill yourself, and you can't use it in close quarters with teammates because it will kill them and cause untold amounts of grief. Unlike the lasher, which you can spam near, far, and near teammates cuz there's very little danger it will make such a problem.

You know what's funny? Since the patch there are still players that made "Nerf the xxx" threads on the OF about:

Gauss
Vanguard
Sparrow
Scattercannon
Jackhammer
MCG
Striker

BTW, the Jackhammer is STILL more powerful than the Lasher.

Yes. The JH gets a .5 second better TTK, and gives up:

A 25 round clip.
A 3 second reload time as opposed to 4.
A 4 second ammo switch from soft to AP.
Inability to damage targets behind cover.
Inability to kill efficiently past 25meters.

Yes, it has other strengths, but the lasher has gone above and beyond in terms of firepower, versatility(this is a VS strength so I don't sweat this one much), and efficiency.

It doesn't really matter. The lasher is going to get nerfed. There's too much bad blood.

10 months of people bitching about the JH on the OF has made many people not forget about it, even after it was nerfed 3 times; that just means they will get revenge by bitching about the Lasher so much until the Devs cave.

[Krinsath]

I agree that they should consider ditching HA or redoing the entire concept of it...just to shut the whiners up. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!

Ok, moving on...so the problem with the NC thumper barrage is that once the VS get in close, the lasher starts to take over. If ONLY the NC had a weapon with close range lethality! Where is the flaw in this statement?

4 guys with thumpers, 4 guys with JHs, 1 adv hack, 1 eng/medic

Wait...you mean this game is about TEAM tactics? WTF?! Wherever would one get this idea??

The lasher with the bugs may be a bit more powerful than it should be (bugs get fixed people, calm down...breathe deep...), but it's STILL not the killer people make it out to be. I was just playing around with it thinking "damn...I'm being really effective with this"...logged off after a bit over 2 hours of playing to discover I had 28 kills. I've logged off after the same amount of time as a sniper and had closer to 50...logged off as a tanker and had closer to 90...OMG! NERF THE BOLT DRIVER!! IT'S A SUPER LEET KILLING MACHINE!

28 kills is a so-so outing for me...and considering that the majority of the kills were in defense of a tower (i.e. - short trip to repair/heal), not such a surprise. That and the TR I was playing against were horrendous for the most part...when I can jammer a Prowler, not once...not twice...but THREE times...walk around 1/4 of the base when this Prowler KNOWS WHERE I AM...hack the back door without any certs...get into the base and then kill the Prowler crew as they dismount and try to attack me in the hallway....as if I'd never think to turn around and fight them...and then...THEN...walk BACK TO THE VS TOWER AND REARM....w....t....f....that has to be a record for stupidity...

If these are the people complaining about the lasher it makes a lot of sense...no concept of how to use the weapons at their disposal.

Want to complain about a bug? Fine, go right ahead. If you remember being a part of stories like the one above...wait for them to put in the live training (Squad vs. Squad on the same side)...and have someone teach you tactics. I'm still baffled why the Prowler driver did not once attempt to run over the guy carrying a lasher and a pulsar.

[Unknown]

Hehe, that little story reminded me of something that happened a (long) whle back. I'd guess...4 months ago, maybe 3 and 1/2. Anyways, I had HA, SA, and Rexo. It was during the day, and the TR were making a small push for Amerish (just about everything during the day is small). There was more fighting to the west, but I was at Azeban because someone had ghost hacked it and I resecured it single handedly (there was only one guy at the time). So then I'm getting ready to go and a couple more guys show up. I dispatch of them with my Lasher, then 3 or 4 more guys show up (some of the same guys respawning). So I decided to stay and defend from this squad, I'd say total there were maybe...8 guys, but not coming in a group. The facility had an Interlink Facility benifit (I think this was not long after Lattice Link Benifits went in) so I was seeing on the radar where people were coming in and surging to meet them. For example, I'd see a couple people coming in the front door, run to the main room and burst through the door while one stopped to hack, dispatch them quickly, then wait till I saw more incoming and run to greet them, sometimes running into a MAX and hitting him with my deci. I kept this up for a good 20-30 minutes before I finally succumbed to them. All said and done, I probably died 3 times, but got around 35 kills, single handedly, thanks to the radar benifit, the lasher, and the Decimator.

The moral of the story? I dunno, it's late, I just thought it was cool... I suppose HA is a tad over powered in situations like that, but it's honeslty not that bad. Those guys were horribly coordinated, at most coming at me in groups of 3, and half of them were probably newbies (I don't pretend to be an 'uber l33t' player, so if I was able to take care of them that easily then they probably weren't exaclty seasoned veterans). I think that it has enough downsides, and enough counters, to make it at least moderately balanced. It costs 4 cert points, useful only at short ranges, and takes up alot of space (not that big of a deal since for most people it doesn't leave the holster, but when you need to quickly hotswap it for something it can be annoying). All those reasons, and the fact that I never used anything else (and thus it got a tad boring for me) is why I gave it up. Now instead I use mainly the Punisher, the Rocklet, occasionally the Pulsar and the Thumper, and rarely the sweeper (was never much good with it, but I'm fairly leathal with the Punisher *shrug*).

As for the Lasher, it badly needed the clip increase, and the <5m lash does not seem overpowered, it actually makes sense to me (I can't count the times I've had surge monkeys charge in my face and circle-strafe me to death without me being able to do a thing about it cause they're still managing to dogde my orbs, largely thanks to warping). Is lashing behind them really a huge problem? I mean c'mon, you gotta get within 5m of them, if you've got a jackhammer that's what we call "Insta-gib Range". The reload time decrease was probably not nessessary, and nobody was really asking for both the clip increase *and* reload timer shortening, most people just wanted either/or. If there's some sort of bug that's causing a damage increase then they should fix it by all means, but if not, then I really don't see what all the whining is about...

[GreyFox]

The lasher only needs to be bugfixed, and then wait a week or two for the population to balance out, and the lasher users decrease a bit.

Because a big part of the problem is that many more people play VS now, and alot of them have HA now. I know I am one of the people who switched to HA to try it out.

[PhoenixTypeX]

IMO i think you whiners should stfu especially NC now you know what the jackhammer is like for the TR and NC. For people who are studpidly minded the Lasher does not need to be nerfed it is a balanced weapon bar the bug of a person behind when firing being lashed. The own reason people are getting owned is because a vast amount of people are using the weapon at this point in time. For god sake and wait a few weeks before slating the weapon as over time people will use it less and it will go back to normal. FFS for the first time in planetside it is becomming more balanced and noobs sorry to generalise but mainly the NC do not like this as they are having to rely less on supperior firepower and point & click methods and employ tactics and a bit of skill. You NC are getting owned as the TR and VS have always had to be smart to beat you NC I think it's time your evolved your playing style got some skill and worked out how to beat the VS lasher like the rest of us had to try beat the jackhammer!

P.S im pissed off

[Dyentious]

The only thing that i've noticed that really pisses me off about hte lasher is how the lashes go through walls.

I can deal with a ton of lashers spamming a hallway, but it really ticks me off when i'm nowhere near being in sight of the spammers at all, yet i'm dying because every lash orb that hits the door or wall is going through the wall and hitting me on the other side.

I have been in battles where i die multiple times without even getting in line of sight of the enemy because any time i get anywhere near the entrance i'm getting hit by random lashes. I feel like anytime i'm fighting vs and actually somwhere near the enemy i basically have a timer on my life cause it just keeps ticking away.

Thats really lame. It's one thing if they actually hit me with a lash orb or a guy next to me, but just to be able to shoot a wall or door and have the lashes hit everybody on the other side is lame as hell.

[Krinsath]

Originally Posted by Dyentious

The only thing that i've noticed that really pisses me off about hte lasher is how the lashes go through walls.

Yes, as do many other area affect weapons, such as the Burster and the Falcon. Hell, I've been damaged by PAIN FIELDS walking through the hallway that happens to be overtop the generator. Lots of collision detection bugs.

I can deal with a ton of lashers spamming a hallway, but it really ticks me off when i'm nowhere near being in sight of the spammers at all, yet i'm dying because every lash orb that hits the door or wall is going through the wall and hitting me on the other side.

The wall thing, as mentioned above, is most likely one of the bugs. The door thing could also very well be a bug where the door APPEARS closed, but really isn't. It's becoming far too common. The Lasher is an area affect weapon, so LOS is not strictly required. There are positions at the backdoor for instance where Lasher orbs can be sent out into the exterior of the base without exposing the user to any appreciable amounts of fire. This is why we have the thumper...

I have been in battles where i die multiple times without even getting in line of sight of the enemy because any time i get anywhere near the entrance i'm getting hit by random lashes. I feel like anytime i'm fighting vs and actually somwhere near the enemy i basically have a timer on my life cause it just keeps ticking away.

Same way I feel when being attacked by a MCG Range on that thing is quite nice. Also the same way I felt going into a base full of NC surgemonkeys...you never actually SAW the guy, b/c he was a the top of the stairs using 3rd person cam and surge, but damned if you didn't get killed. Sucks to be TR as we don't get a fun instagib bug like that to play with.

Thats really lame. It's one thing if they actually hit me with a lash orb or a guy next to me, but just to be able to shoot a wall or door and have the lashes hit everybody on the other side is lame as hell.

As I said, that may have been lag or a bug in that isolated circumstance. I've been at many a backdoor defense over the past week with a Lasher and anyone who's been killed has been in direct LOS. Not saying it doesn't happen because PS does all sorts of wondrous (read: stupid) things, but I don't know that it's a *common* condition. Certainly something to keep an eye on though. Did you /bug it?

[Veteran]

Visualize No Heavy Assault

[Madcow]

Originally Posted by Gigabein

Let's play with some numbers. HA across all three servers according to Thott...

BR 1+
VS +5.8%
NC -2.1
TR +0.7

BR 5+
VS +6.3
NC -2.3
TR +0.8

BR 10+
VS +7.5
NC -2.8
TR -0.1

BR 15+
VS +7.5
NC -3.8
TR -0.3

BR 20
VS +7.2
NC -5.0
TR +1.2

A 6% increase overall in Lashers coupled with a 2% drop in Jackhammers. TR HA got a small increase following the MCG's small buff; makes sense. Let's look at population.

All Servers
TR 8770
NC 7834
VS 9458

Emerald
TR 3847
NC 3804
VS 4253

Markov
TR 3352
NC 2298
VS 3121

Werner
TR 1571
NC 1732
VS 2084

Vanu wins in population now. People switching loyalties? Possibly.

6% of 9,458 is 567 additional Lasher-users
-2% of 7,835 is 157 fewer Jackhammer-users

With an already lower population, you gotta wonder.... is the NC's once over-powered weapon not enough to overcome the bandwagon hoppers and the mass of players fed up with their dominance?

Keep in mind, Thottbot only pulls stats for players in outfits. NC had the smallest population on Thottbot even when they had the largest population on a daily basis across the servers. The HA change is to be expected, the only HA which was buffed at all was the Lasher and everybody and their Mom is trying it out. Jackhammer users, used to ridiculously easy kills are now trying other tactics out to see if they can become more efficient with other weapons. Most of them will come back to the Jack before too long.

[GreyFox]

How many non-outfit players are there per server then?

[Madcow]

Originally Posted by GreyFox

How many non-outfit players are there per server then?

As far as I know, they don't release that info. Since the population drops a couple of months after release they've shown a tendency to hide any possible information which would let us know how many subscribers there are.