MAX - surprisingly effective

[almalino]

I played mostly Infiltrator for 4 months and decided to try to play MAX today out of curiosity. Put 2 shotguns on it and charged into the serious battle.

My fist thought after 2 hours of game play:
1. Will I ever die? Really, I decided to log off the game for today as soon as I died. And it took like 30 minutes till I finally died.

2. Those enemies have no chance against me. I just rip through them like the knife through the butter. Though I played not in biolab, I played on the open spaces in Indar.

May be I was lucky but it was great experience. Will use AI NC MAX more often now.

[Ice]

If you play smart, and have a good group of engineers around, you can go on for quite a long time in a max. And with the new class revamp the max is even better than before. Although I would only pull one, especially a scatmax in close quarters situations as outside of say 5-10m they are not as effective.

[Chewy]

Mattocks are a beast when used by a MAX that knows how to do things. Although Id trade them for Mercys, dual Mattocks can deal damage at ranges other shotguns can't.

Reason Id trade them for a HMG type weapon is because without certing heavily into dual AI weapons in a NC MAX there's so little you can deal with. If I didn't have extended mags on my 2 Mattocks then I couldn't do my job as a MAX thanks to both the randomness, shot range, and limited mag/ammo pool of shotguns. With the 1,000 certs into extended mags Im able to do damage at 40m if Im sitting on an ammo pack, can't kill for shit unless already dead but damage will be done.

Shotguns may have the damage to kill tens of people but not the ammo. I have 60 shells total for each weapon and extended mags give me 10 shells per mag. So I have just 6 times I can engage the enemy before running out of ammo. HMGs can engage targets all day and not run out of ammo.

One of the main reasons NC MAXes are so feared is that we are forced to go for cover or hang around ammo stations with support. If we don't, we have no ammo or get caught reloading. TR and VS MAXes often forget to fall back until it's to late from either the raw damage taken overwhelms them or chipping damage adds up enough for the quick kill. Any supported MAX can and WILL kick ass, they just need to have that support and know how to use it.

A few MAX user tips are
-Stay near a repair man
So often I try to repair a MAX and it runs off. I sit my ass in the dirt when getting repaired or need it.

-Know where ammo is
No ammo = dead MAX. Should not say this, but I do this often and lost a fare bit of MAXes because of it.

-Never run, just walk
It takes time to get out of sprint. Walk if indoors and/or if you think an enemy is near. You may be slow, but you're a damn MAX! Bullets feed you.

-Save you charge
It wont save you often but it helps to have a charge when needed.

-Know you weapons!
Like ANY FPS, know your weapons! If you don't know what the gun in your hand can do, you can't know what you can do with that weapon. Get in the VR and test them out to get the ranges at least.

-Be a bullet sponge
I like to taunt the enemy by mooning them if they are staying behind a shield door or if Im just waiting for a cap. Not only does it make me a target and gives my team freedom to do what they need to do but I give the repairmen working on me TONS of XP.

[Rolfski]

Welcome to the world of unbalanced Maxes..

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Welcome to the world of unbalanced Maxes..

I dont see anything wrong with Maxes. I think they are suitably powerful. Strong enough to give you an o shit moment when you bump into one.

[almalino]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

I dont see anything wrong with Maxes. I think they are suitably powerful. Strong enough to give you an o shit moment when you bump into one.

Agreed, enemies should be aware not to come to close to NC MAX with shotguns. If they come too close it is they fault. On a long distance they can rip my max apart really quick. That is why I always hide or rush away really quick.

It is not MAX who is overpowered, it is enemy infantry who rush to close to the my MAX. I'm not sure what they hope for against NC MAX with 2 shotguns in close combat.

[ChipMHazard]

Originally Posted by almalino

Agreed, enemies should be aware not to come to close to NC MAX with shotguns. If they come too close it is they fault. On a long distance they can rip my max apart really quick. That is why I always hide or rush away really quick.

It is not MAX who is overpowered, it is enemy infantry who rush to close to the my MAX. I'm not sure what they hope for against NC MAX with 2 shotguns in close combat.

Except.... That in far too many cases you can not choose to do anything but get into close quarters with a Scattermax. Well you can, but then you wouldn't be able to play the objective.

I don't like scatterguns, which isn't a secret. They aren't versatile and if it wasn't for the current game design blatantly favoring close quarters combat when fighting over objectives, in most cases, the Scattermax would be terrible. It wouldn't have the effectiveness at range to handle more open area combat. Then again the NC now has the Raven.

Couple this with the effectiveness of MAX AI weapons against other MAXs... Well... It's not surprising how effective it is, it's more surprising that not everyone is aware of it.

To put it in another way. The game has some design flaws that make the Scattermax far too effective when compared to other MAXs. And if it was up to me I would drive the scattergun design out into the desert and make it dig its own grave.

[almalino]

Originally Posted by ChipMHazard

Except.... That in far too many cases you can not choose to do anything but get into close quarters with a Scattermax. Well you can, but then you wouldn't be able to play the objective.

But somehow VS always manage to win alerts on Miller Apparently NC MAX doesn't stop them from being always better.

Anyway, I didn't play other faction maxes and cannot comment how powerful those are in close combat.

BTW, NC MAX Scatter guns are not one shot kill. I need to shoot 2-3 times before enemy is dead. And then I have painfully long reload - 4 seconds. so, 3-4 enemies can easily drop me down. But they run away the second they see me

[AThreatToYou]

I'm very much scared of TR MAX with dual MCG, at any distance I'm chewed to pieces before I can react unless I happen to see them before they get a chance to shoot. I would be in favor of changing the ScatMAX to be more like the Jackhammer: Low damage, but tight spread.

[ChipMHazard]

Originally Posted by almalino

But somehow VS always manage to win alerts on Miller Apparently NC MAX doesn't stop them from being always better.

Anyway, I didn't play other faction maxes and cannot comment how powerful those are in close combat.

BTW, NC MAX Scatter guns are not one shot kill. I need to shoot 2-3 times before enemy is dead. And then I have painfully long reload - 4 seconds. so, 3-4 enemies can easily drop me down. But they run away the second they see me

No MAX can win a war. It's also entirely possible to ignore certain hexes and still win an alert.
I have seen Scattermaxes grind an attack to a complete halt time and time again in Bio Labs and the outposts where the sole capture point is located inside a building.

Non of them measure up to a Scattermax. They are all still very effective though, just cannot kill infantry as fast.

A single shot from any of the scatterguns will not kill an infantry, true. That however becomes completely irrelevant when you can put one on each arm, and since it takes two shots to kill infantry you can one volley anyone who comes into close range.

If you force enemy players to come into close quarters with you and if you play defensively, i.e. retreat when you can't outright win, you will have people hating your name soon enough.

[Sifer2]

NC MAX's are feared for the same reason pump shotguns are. Because when you encounter one it's already too late. Your already dead. There is nothing you can do against one because the TTK is instant. You can only kill one by either having a squad all spam grenades round the corner at it, or by sneaking up on it with C4. They are the easiest class to play in the game by far so long as you only use them at towers/biolabs. Which is the only place to use MAX's in general anyway. Though the new AV weapons are amusingly good at killing Infantry at mid range.

[AThreatToYou]

The new AV MAXs and still the old AA MAXs generally have made MAX units useful outdoors. Granted the Raven's projectile velocity is bastardly slow, plus MAX units have no optics.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

I dont see anything wrong with Maxes. I think they are suitably powerful. Strong enough to give you an o shit moment when you bump into one.

This is what's wrong with Max balancing: AI VS/TR maxes don't have upclose insta-kill ability while NC maxes lack decent ranged AI capabilities. This wouldn't be such a problem btw if it wasn't for most strategic points in this game being at CQB locations, therefore making NC AI maxes generally far more useful vs their VS/TR counterparts.

[Rothnang]

Well supported MAX Units are at this point the definitive alpha strategy in this game. Pretty much every top end outfit builds their strategy around MAX squads at this point because they are just that damn good.

The reason why MAX Units are superior to vehicles in pretty much every way is because you cannot get rid of them without killing all their friends as well. They will just keep getting revived over and over. Unless you can push the enemy so hard that they have to abandon the dead MAXes and can't get them raised the MAX will not stay dead.

That fact renders any kind of long range, aerial or suicide attack completely pointless against MAX Units, which are all things that can easily kill a Vehicle.

[bpostal]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the scatmax weakness. I'll let this poorly recorded clip of military genius Zapp Brannigan explain:



Motherfucker's gotta reload sometime. That's when you pounce.