Zardas

Effective infantry camouflage seems to have received a massive nerf since the latest patch. Stats appear the same, but now even snipers get spotted rather easily.

Nothing has changed for me, still getting the same occasional "rewinding" and unresponsiveness, with ping times jumping to 4-500 ms from 45.

In PvE, I mostly use it to clear walls and other obstacles that block line of sight. Otherwise your slow main gun may get lolblocked by some random piece of debris with a misaligned hitbox.

In PvP, it can hit some very light vehicles for additional damage while your cannon is reloading (mostly the 4-wheelers like the Kornet), destroy UAVs, pillboxes and helicopters, and of course infantry.

It can also interrupt base capture in a pinch. Not very reliable because of the very low penetration values, but you may get lucky. A trick is to slowly sweep the base with the MG, then fire your main gun in the same direction right when you see a successful interrupt. Of course this is a very last ditch attempt, normally you should know and expect when and where new objectives pop, so you can be ready for them.

What made crates so plentiful in the Obsidian era was that they gave them out for every single match as a performance reward, and the bar was set pretty low, or more precisely, depended more on which map you were playing. I didn't play any PvP back then, but missions like Perseus, Albatross, Stormy Winter all but guaranteed a platinum crate if you played at least decently:

I've only ever gotten a single permanent vehicle from the hundreds of platinums I've opened back then, the VFM Mk. 5. Only rentals ever since.

In special crates, I got the best rewards from the 25 Armata 152 crates received from Operation Gathering Storm, a T-80U Shark and a WWO Wilk.

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the Stalker also carried 12 anti-tank mines to lay down ambushes

Hmm, minelaying would be an interesting new mechanic.

Honestly double-tap guns and missiles need to be nerfed as well. They were balanced via lower damage per shot at first, but now they got their own form of power creep, hitting for 1k per shot. Getting instantly hit for 2-3k HEAT is enough to delete non-MBT vehicles and is most assuredly not fun. The worst offender is again the CATTB. Insane armor + speed + sight + 2-3k instant burst in one package? Ugh.

Too bad Meltdown doesn't seem to appear in Hardcore rotation anymore. I remember last playing it a year or two ago, then it just disappeared.

The new AS21 can indeed carry troops, but what's really interesting is that it can deploy one extra soldier. That means 5 AT guys, 2 Mortars, but still just 1 Sniper. Not sure if this is intended, seems a bit inconsistent.

Mostly terrible missions for shitty rewards, a waste of time and an exercise in frustration. Of the first batch, the 2, 6, 8 and 10 o'clock missions are even exactly the same with different vehicles, surely a whole lot of creativity went into these.