Great contest! I really enjoyed participating, and look forward to doing so again next year.

I use real money to buy stuff but I’m still a F2P player too ?

You can connect visa gift cards to paypal then pay through that

I remember that. Unfortunately, back then I was pretty low ranked and didn’t have to crystals to buy ones that I really liked. If they brought this feature back, it would certainly help older players who remember the classic holiday paints. ?

You use hopper?

Facts man. :/

Yeah, unlike Thunder, Rico, and Vulcan, Striker wasn't blessed with an insane vertical auto aim angle. Personally I'm fine with it because it's more realistic, but it can be annoying when someone is at a higher elevation and you can't return fire. :/

Yeah that seems to be the overall consensus. After all, what the point of having a turret if it can’t hit anything? In regards to the grace period and issue of locking on, I would also like to mention the mechanical difference of locking on between Gauss and Striker. One of the many things that makes Gauss OP is the fact that it has no tracking laser. If one gets behind you, you’ll never see the salvo coming, where as with Striker, or a noob Shaft player, the laser moves onto your tank for at least a moment before you take any damage. In this situation, Striker is still at a disadvantage, because a lot can happen between completing the lock on sequence and the rockets hitting their target. Nothing is more frustrating than finally getting a lock on, then having a teammate get in the way, or the enemy getting behind cover before taking significant damage.

Yeah that’s something we can all agree with. I also like your points about the issues with gauss outclassing the more traditional turrets. I’m not sure if you were trying to elude to this, but I think most people would agree that nerfing gauss would be better than boosting all of the turrets it performs better than. This may limit, as you mentioned, the subtle nerf to short range turrets.

Yeah in the end it balances out to an extent. I certainly would not complain if Striker received some more improvements. My personal preference would be if they extended the lock on time recovery, so that it would at least be even with gauss. Also, further adjustments to the projectile speed might be nice. Maybe if they increased the overall velocity of all rockets shot after locking on, and then leave the regular shot speed the same? I'm not sure.

I can’t really speak for the AP augment, because I haven’t used it; however, if you time it correctly, it it easy to lock onto players under titan domes with uranium, cyclone, and other augments that have more powerful salvos. Oftentimes, I find that the players under the domes are much less threatened by the striker lock on laser, and will ignore it. When my timing is accurate, I’m rewarded with multiple kills as the dome disappears just in time for its occupants to get hammered with 8 rockets. Does this mean striker is well balanced? No. A gauss player could easily do the same thing with much less risk on their part. While this may seem like a disadvantage, it also benefits striker users, because it means less people will take protection against striker compared to gauss, magnum, thunder, etc. This is where striker’s true strength resides.

I like the idea of moving away from augments that are strictly status effect based, and focus on something more players can benefit from. In a way, this could potentially be a type of AP resistance because the only other defense, (if you don’t have immunity) is counter healing/absorbing the damage.

Ever since I started this account (2013 I think), railgun has been my favorite turret. At first it was really awkward, I missed most of my shots, and was only rewarded with the occasional one hit kill on a light hull. Over time, as I moved up through the ranks, I really began to develop my skill and come to appreciate the art that is using railgun. I still remember Christmas of 2017 when I bought M2 railgun and M2 hornet. I was so excited to finally have purple shots and play in XP BP format battles. Four years later, playing with railgun is a lot different. Most players have protection against it, and hornet’s overdrive has been nerfed pretty bad. I mostly use railgun with viking and booster drone, with high caliber ammo for sniping or electromagnetic scout for quick kill steals and flipping players going up ramps. Occasionally I’ll use death herald in death matches or battles against lower ranked players. Recently with HTML 5, I’ve been trying to get used to mouse controls for XP BP battles. I’ve found it to be a lot smoother for lateral turret movement and pixel perfect shots that barely hit enemy’s hit boxes. However, I’ve found it makes swinging my hull more difficult, resulting in more missed shots when trying to hit an enemy tank at a different elevation. (Hit me up if you have any techniques to correct this.) Anyway, from rags to ribbons, this turret will forever be the stuff true legends are made of. =)

I'd help Det87. You're kind of missing the point. ?