Yeah seriously, almost everybody got a more decent firepower than Hawks. Even with my JPA I managed to just shoot him with my bolt pistol and he has gone down faster than I did. They are more here to be blinding annoying bird and that's all. They even need at least 3 grenades to down you as well.
No, their flight is good as it is. As stated, there DPS is absolutly horrible they are more here to catch your attention and annoy you than kill you. What kills you most are Banshee, dire avenger... It doesn't matter in the end that if a point get attacked the hawk can here in less than 3 second, in the end he can do nothing on his own, except if the attacker is lonely, and that he can surprise him, but in direct confrontation where he get spotted any attacker with a distance weapon will just deep fry the Hawk.
@Khornatian They had a Smart Zip Slugga at one point, but it was only in the preset Storm Boy loadout. I wonder why they didn't add it into a chest.
Well here are the comments I have on this. 1. They stay well beyond smart pistol range so they don't work on the decent hawks. 2. People nonstop talk about the low damage but I don't see it. with decent accuracy I see them drop health just fine even on those with heightened durability. 3. I only see that work again on bad hawks, if another flyer tries on decent Hawks I see the Hawks use their vastly better flight to stay far out of range and then pick them off so at best the other fliers just flush em out. 4. Kills do kinda matter when hawks swoop and use snipe spots to give heavy map control and camp where people spawn preventing half the team from reaching objectives. 5. I kinda see it that yes they need to fly in teams but most just to lay down better fire and awareness of enemy positions. 6. what lack of staying power? could you elaborate on that? if you are talking about health they have little to worry when half the enemy team can't fire accurately with their guns at the same range, do you mean ammunition? Overall I will say yeah the issues I see people bring up with Hawks making them easy to fight can be true. but only in very new hawks I think. In a lot of games I see what is in effect a small roaming squad of Hawks and they dominate completely. I have yet to see one single team of any faction be able to deal with it. often it is around 3-5 Hawks and if they are decent shots, move as a flock, and know the map they have all the stopping power they need, can avoid any class that tries to get rid of them. the only thing I find they fail at is they have no power to deal with vehicles. but that means little when they can stay out of sight of one then pick off the spawning players before they can go anywhere.
It had the same problem as the current smart slab slugga: The recoil rapidly drove the reticle sky-high, after 10 shots at most (a fourth of the magazine) bullets would just harmlessly soar over anyone's heads
1. pick JPA, use smart pistol 2. jump and hold lock as a hawk nears you, drop two bullets into its graceful ass and watch it drop from the sky like aforementioned lame pigeon 3. ??? 4. profit If the hawk isn't coming to you, fine, just go inside and and help your team cap the point. Either it will sit their with its thumb in its ass and get yelled at by the team, come to you and get perforated with smart pistols inside where it can't even utilize evasion tools, or redeploy as an avenger, a class with no fancy pants mobility, a less accurate gun and slightly tougher wet paper bag armor. Hawk's Talon can down 4.375 marines with red armor with body shots and absolutely zero movement or return fire in one magazine, with one marine going down roughly every 11 shots, taking 7.5 seconds to mag dump 50 round magazine completely ignoring bloom/spread that forces every shooter to burst fire except at extreme close range. TTK for a marine is almost 1.7 seconds, much higher than bolters kill everything else since bolter DPS is 211ish while the Hawk's Talon is sitting at 186, but does have 120 pen. Factor out misses by adding headshots, add moving spread modifier to the hawk to prevent death, add armor gear, add cover, add an apothecary and at least one dude suppressing with a heavy bolter and that number of guys being downed by a camping Hawk should go down to about zero. Even if they go down, just pick em back up with zombie nade. The numbers are even lower with either of the other hawk weapons. Hawk weapons are not meant for camping. They're built for ambushing. They don't carry that much kill capacity (except against target dummies) but can spit out damage at close range fairly quickly. Most hawks will actually try to get in close, to nullify the disadvantage of trying to duel with most any other ranged weapon in the game, and once behind the target will blend melee and ranged, using the knife to get in some backstabs (and panic the opponent into d-bashing) and then back pedaling and opening up with the rifle to net one down. Having teammates on either side can only change the formula in the not-Hawks' favor. More Hawks = faster downs, but having someone watch your back negates the backstab+rifle combo, and covering more angles of attack means a Hawk gets put down before it can even land to begin an attack. And a hovering hawk is dead meat. Hawksear grenades are fun but usually don't work against moving targets because of flight mechanics (no accurate speed gauge or velocity control whatsoever) and grenade button press to dispense delay + travel time. Hawks usually fly over the target before hitting them with more than one nade, while being unable to slow to a reasonable pace for carpet bombing (mechanical and tactical reasons) or speed up in reasonable increments to keep pace with a sprinting target after slowing to a crawl. Adding speed also drops altitude and you might just blow yourself up on an intercepting scenery piece. I hope this was slightly educational(?) on how to play against swooping hawks.
Hawks can come to a dead stop in the air at any speed to accurately throw grenades for bombing runs, and then carry on flying at decent speed, you just need to know the trick to it. Holding S shouldn't be used for attempting it, it should only be used to gain height after a slight dive to increase your speed, because as you said it ruins momentum for when you're trying to bomb and escape. It also doesn't allow you to bomb accurately.
Except somehow magically all momentum returns as soon as you let go of Ctrl/ads. And you can't throw grenades while aiming down sights. So it's either ADS+hold s to slow to a crawl or hold s in flight to try to adjust velocity and either not slow down fast enough or reverse directions and still be at a crawl. You can say git gud all you want but that doesn't change how poor Hawk flight control mechanics are.
