u/ObamaTookMyCat

I dont know how they could mess a map up so bad, but the devs managed to do just that with Wake Island on Conquest. Let me explain.

PAX spawns closer to flags which spawn move important vehicles. D and E flag both spawn MBTs, while the NATO side, only B flag spawns an MBT. Additionally, PAX is CLOSER to the spawns of both the Tomcat and the attack helicopter at C. In most of my games playing NATO, more often than not, the chopper and jet have both been stolen by PAX more than if PAX owned the airfield and NATO steals them. If you spawn on D flag, you have a chance to spawn less than 100 meters away from the runway.

Wake Island is a linear map by design, so with decent teams, it is not as easy to back capture flags on the respective sides of the map as it is on say, Tsuru Reef. Given the scenario that NATO controls C flag, but PAX controls D flag, PAX SPAWNS CLOSER TO THE VEHICLES THAT ACTUALLY MATTER ON THAT FLAG than NATO does. Every time I have spawned C to try and grab the Tomcat as NATO, I have spawned at the hangar and have had to run ALLL THE WAY DOWN THE RUNWAY to get to the aircraft spawns.

The carriers CWIS are not functioning properly. So added with the issues above, I just ended a game where the NATO F18 got FARMED ON THE CARRIER DECK ALL GAME by the enemy F18, while from the first 100 tickets, we had zero tanks because PAX immediately gained the advantage by capturing D and E, while also getting the chopper up and getting the Tomcat. Bonus points they stole the tank at B. Game over at that point.

Boats. Boats are still pretty weak and die easily. However, when the map SPAWNS TEN OF THEM, it just becomes a spawn trap fest by water. I joined a late Wake Island game earlier and discovered that FOUR enemy boats were annihilating any boat that tried to spawn and leave the carrier.

Fixes:

Get rid of D flag, or combine it with E. Move tanks to spawn at A, F and C flags so that BOTH sides get equal chances to grab armor, with C being the tank to fight over. This also prevents PAX easy avenues to grab the aircraft that spawn at C because now that D flag is gone, they have to run further from E.

Remove the abundance of boats. Keep a boat spawn at the carrier, add a boat to B and E flag, and G flag. There for both teams only have TWO boats, with a third to fight over at G.

Replace the Attack heli spawn at C with a littlebird. Allows more value to fight over the flag, and the map does not become a double attack heli farm fest.

This map is basically a reincarnation of Gulf of Oman, but on Wake Island instead.

Resume: Have been maining armored vehicles since late BC2 which became "full time" in BF3 and beyond. I am currently at rank 345 with mastery 250 in MBTs and mastery 90ish in IFVs. Currently, I find MBTs to be MUCH more enjoyable to play.

With the recent twitter post about armored vehicles being reworked coming out gives me good hope for the state of ground vehicle play, HOWEVER, I still have my reservations. I am deeply saddened that yet again, aircraft, most specifically jets have been completely disregarded besides the "ability to better read where missiles originated/were launched from".

Anyway, my top deep dive "shower thoughts"

1: IFVs need to be reworked for survivability on maps like Iberian offensive. This map specifically shows all of the apparent weaknesses of the design of how the IFVs perform. Example, you can only equip HE shells or AP shells. AP shells are great against the opposing IFV, but you need to be pin-point accurate to do well against infantry. On the flip side, HE shells are great against bedded down infantry players, but do dog water damage to the IFV. Im hoping they give us the ability to dump the TOW missile entirely for a secondary shell, similar to what we can do with the MBTs. We were able to do this in BF3, and we were able to do it again in 2042 when the Bradley and BMP came back. The IFV shows its weaknesses on maps like Iberian and Cairo because of how tightly designed the streets are on those maps, as opposed to Grand Bazar and Seine Crossing, which were much more vehicle traversal-friendly.

2. While I am HAPPY that DICE is reworking the health bracket system with vehicles and reworking their acceleration and turret rotations for the better, I do hope that they will eventually remove the boost speed cooldown that is still present, AND STILL BROKEN. Since Beta/Day 1, if you boost in a vehicle, even for a micro second and release, this boost cooldown ALWAYS restarts from ZERO. W H Y?

3. I have serious reservations about the removal of Improved armor. Yea, vehicle health will regenerate faster and no longer be capped to certain max values before unlocking specific engineer training path traits or being manually repaired, but removing improved armor will continue to make tanks vulnerable because they cannot take that one extra shell or RPG, or AT mine hit. I have been begging for its return since its removal in BF4, It is my HUMBLE opinion that a LOT of the survivability issues with tanks in this game would be irrelevant if they brought back the functional reactive armor system that we had in BF3. It gave a visual feedback queue when it was hit and that side was now vulnerable. Why cant they bring it back to this game?

4. IR smoke needs a cooldown time decrease. It has gotten rather annoying how immediately after leaving the center of your very short lasting smoke cloud that you can get locked on and fired on by heli gunners from afar, and javelin teams.

5. I am in the boat that APS should NOT intercept APFSDS shells, as it cannot do so in real life (according to open sources, it has not been reliably successful in doing so yet). But I personally do not use APS, but I see how the APS users are desperately insisting on a buff. Get rid of the activation delay, extend its up time, OR reduce its cooldown timer.

6. TOW shells need to be removed from MBTs. That is all.

7. I am HAPPY that they are re-working the damage numbers to angled hits, since a lot of times, even when dumping APFSDS shell after shell into a tank, its taking 5+ shells just to get them on fire... with NO REPS and NO emergency repairs. It should take 5 tank shells to the front to kill a tank with no help. Period. In addition to this, I hope that they look at increasing the shell pool of each shell type to be more in line to the standard MPAT shell. EXCEPT TOW SHELLS. 10 APFSDS shells are NOT enough, especially on maps like Firestorm, Mirak and Blackwell. My humble opinion, increase the shell pool of the specialty shells (EXCEPT TOW SHELLS) from 10 to 15 and see where that goes.

8. Finally, the RPG debate. I think a LOT of attempts by DICE to rebalance RPGs has been unsuccessful. First they added bloom and the aimed-firing delay. That felt terrible. Then they reduced the velocity a tad. Still felt terrible. Finally, they adjusted the 100 meter zero, and guess what, it STILL feels terrible and remains overly oppressive at range against vehicles due to the velocities. They need to buckle down and do 3 things. Remove the optic, slow the projectile down SIGNIFICANTLY, and make the projectile drop like a ROCK at range. Basically like how it was in BF4. The RPG is supposed to be that close range devastatingly powerful but SLOW launcher. If not for the M136 buff, the RPG would still be the one and ONLY launcher to use.

Thoughts? See you on the battlefield!