Official Sep. 4 patch notes

[RazY70]

Yay lets nerf air more! =D
Honestly kind of annoyed at this. I cant believe they buffed the AA instead of nerfing it, that thing is the most broken vehicle in the game right now. The one thing they did right by showing friendlies on air radar, they only had to do because they were dumb enough to take them off it before.
Meh, bf3 making me less and less interested, hoping AK will reinspire me.

I'm not much of a jet pilot to say the least so can you please elaborate? Isn't shooting down flying objects supposed to be the exact role of the AA gun? I haven't seen many jets going down in flames even when a mobile AA was around so why nerf it?

My only concern with the AA buff is that it's now going to be used mainly as an infantry mowing/tank busting super weapon instead of its intended anti air role.

[dan1mall]

Yay lets nerf air more! =D
Honestly kind of annoyed at this. I cant believe they buffed the AA instead of nerfing it, that thing is the most broken vehicle in the game right now. The one thing they did right by showing friendlies on air radar, they only had to do because they were dumb enough to take them off it before.
Meh, bf3 making me less and less interested, hoping AK will reinspire me.

I'm not much of a jet pilot to say the least so can you please elaborate? Isn't shooting down flying objects supposed to be the exact role of the AA gun? I haven't seen many jets going down in flames even when a mobile AA was around so why nerf it?

My only concern with the AA buff is that it's now going to be used mainly as an infantry mowing/tank busting super weapon instead of its intended anti air role.

Because it has insane range, on firestorm for example it can sit behind alpha and shoot down jets over charlie, if the driver is any good. Now considering any person that mans the mobile AA at gc is always gonna be good, it becomes horribly overpowered. Its even worse if youre in a chopper, you literally cannot go past your mountain untill someone else kills the AA.

Its rather silly tbh

[StarfisherEcho]

I'm hoping the stinger range buff will make them more than worthless, but we'll see.

The AA thing is a result of pub play. If you end up on a pub server versus a really good pilot, it's stupid unfun. So, to balance pubs, they make the AA ezmode. Then in competitive play, it becomes OP.

[RazY70]

Because it has insane range, on firestorm for example it can sit behind alpha and shoot down jets over charlie, if the driver is any good. Now considering any person that mans the mobile AA at gc is always gonna be good, it becomes horribly overpowered. Its even worse if youre in a chopper, you literally cannot go past your mountain untill someone else kills the AA.

Its rather silly tbh

Understood.

A range nerf does seem like a sensible and easy enough change. However, the other point StarFisher and you brought up is also important. Quality of the AA gunner as well as quality of the pilot need to be considered. In competitive matches if a weapon turns out to be OP it can be discarded (although I doubt the AA could be), but in pub matches the turf does seem to be a little imbalanced in favor of air at the moment.

The bad news for us bottom dwellers are that by the looks of things the changes at this point are confined to the ground capabilities the AA gun, and they haven't mentioned anything regarding the air.

[MotherFo™]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srRWJzRhuzo[/youtube]

[Bock]

I like most of what they did for gunplay.
Looks like they still don't know how to make the knife more consistent.
I like that stingers get a greater effective range.
Sucks to be a chopper guy. I used to like flying them in pubs... They already get murdered by jets, and AA (and a good tank or jeep can be really effective as well), and now they get no gunner flares to help keep off heat-seekers.

When will they realize that the AA (including stationary: there's no point in flying the Russian chopper on Noshar conq. large or Damavand rush defense) is incredibly OP?

[Calloutman]

I'm pretty sure they haven't increased the damage of the AA against air, just infantry and armour.

It appears I'm going to have to dust off the old M416

[TCZapper]

No nerf to IFV's APFSDS (80% damage from 6 to the side of an MBT is ridiculous), yet now I have to deal with whatever fraking reload change they've made. Wish they were more clear on what they did It seems that they haven't really touched the switching time, which would have been the better fix (in further reflection, I may be wrong, hopefully, but the patch notes say they changed "reload behaviour", which I take to imply no change to switching time). Linking reload times will kill canister shell (tank shell+hmg will be better than one canister 99% of the time) and guided shells will never, ever be used again. This probably was made to make Tank Destroyers less powerful, but why the frak do IFVs which already out damage Tanks not have to deal with reload/switching time nerfs.

As for air: ECM+Below radar is still going to work so it's not the end of the world, but agreed that no AA nerf is a big wtf. I mentioned this earlier: limit perks for the AA in GC. For example, we could say no reactive armor for the AA.

[Róka]

"• Mortar strike explosions are now shown on the HUD for the shooter."
Wow, now the mortar is so easy to use. It was better before, where people had to be careful about how much they moved their mouse and where to aim.

• AA: Slightly increased the damage of the AA against infantry, the AA was simply over nerfed in a previous update. The AA guns now also properly do damage to MBTs again.

overnerfed? really?

dice why you so stupid

"• Removed flares from gunner position in helicopters. With the right combination of unlocks, an attack helicopter could be effectively invulnerable to lock on missiles. Removing the flares from the gunner balances the attack helicopter against ground fire."

No, you're doing it wrong. The heli can be easily taken down, you don't even need a whole squad dedicated to taking it down. Not to mention with jets and enemy helos and SOFLAMs constantly locking on to us. The only reason helis were "invulnerable" which they weren't really, was because the pilot and gunner would actually communicate and be skillful compared to the AA infantry. YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO PUNISH PEOPLE WHO ARE SKILLFUL AND MAKE THE GAME EASIER FOR 8-YEAR-OLDS. It's not OUR fault that SOME people actually COMMUNICATE and use TEAMWORK while others DON'T when DICE's entire MARKETING AD. was how much TEAMWORK and COMMUNICATION and SKILL you need in BATTLEFIELD 3.
WHAT THE frak AND NO HELI GUNNER FLARES frak frak frak frak frak frak frak frak frak USELESS frak frak DICE frak frak frak WHAT THE frak frak frak frak

And to those saying it's still fine, NOPE. Even with below radar, for attack choppers it's as easy as fly a bit higher and you are constantly being locked onto and sprayed down by jets. Fly a bit low and there are 100s of RPGs and Tanks shooting at you. I mean we already have an infinite-ranged-AA shooting at us with his main gun, now we have its AA missiles and RPGs and Iglas constantly locking on and now always hitting unless we sit back towards the base.
For scout choppers/transport choppers... I Don't Even.

[StarfisherEcho]

Their goal is to make it jets versus AA, with everyone else camping the spawn waiting for a jet or the AA. They realize they made a horrible mistake putting anything else in the game, and are doing their best to patch out bugs like helicopters and infantry. Just trust in the devs, guys.

[Chefcook]

I like the changes!

[puts on Flamesuit]

[a432]

Looks like the return of my stinger squad to me! MUAHAHAHA!

[Mrhattu]

G3A3 gets buffed.
I cry of joy!

[AlbinoKalle69]

Downloaded in less than 10 min (with my old internet connection it would have lasted years)

I like most of the changes...apart from the chopper-flare-thingy

[A Docile Sloth]

They missed the part where they said they were going to delete your battlelog friends list.