Here are some weapon balance changes between EDF 5 and 6.

[Honorable_D]

RANGER---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Assault Rifles—Ain't no secret these generally sucked in compared to Shotguns in EDF 5, but now in 6 they have gotten large buffs pretty much across the board. More damage, more range, more projectile speed and some have gained Penetration. The only real nerf is that almost all Assault Rifles have taken a minor accuracy loss.

Shotguns—Many have gained a new reload mechanic where you only reload the missing shells, so if you only shot once you'll only need to reload 1 shell and it way faster. They also have all seen a buff to projectile speed. Slight range nerfs to some Slaughters and even worse spread on the Breachers. Slug Shot been reworked to have dramatically more range but much steeper damage fall off.

Snipers—Big buffs across the board to range, yes, the long range Snipers have gotten even longer ranged. A lot of Snipers also have seen major damage buffs. If you enjoyed Ranger's Snipers in 5 then rejoice cause they've only gotten better.

Rocket Launchers—the red headed stepchilds of Ranger's arsenal have seen massive damage buffs and bigger blast radius going from EDF 5 to 6. Sadly it ain't all good news as quite a few have seen increased reload times. Goliaths and Grants in particular have been improved.

Missile Launchers—Generally buffed with more damage. Air Tortoise have had their damage doubled for instance while others have seen more minor buffs. Except FORKS...FORKS were destroyed for some reason with a massive damage reduction—your guess is as good as mine on that.

WING DIVER----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rapiers—Now deal as much damage as Phalanx which is a big deal but have had their EN cost increased pretty majorly.

Phalanx—High end models DO EVEN MORE DAMAGE while low end models have lower EN costs. Yes, one of Wing Diver's strongest weapon types just got stronger.

Power/Double/Triple Lances—Pretty major nerf of about 30% damage loss to most models. This hurts me personally as I loved this weapon type. Sadness. ;_;

Dragoon Lance—One of Wing Diver's best weapons has seen massive increase to EN consumption. Most models now cost 50% to 100% more EN to fire. Does it hurt? Yes. Are they still really good weapons? Yes.

Blaster Types—Magblasters and their types now feature partial reloading. where you only pay for the missing ammo in the clip. This is a pretty massive buff to EN economy for these weapons especially when you consider they did a lot less damage the more the ammo was drained. They are much more viable now.

Lightning Bows—The ones that shoot a lightning stream. They got around 11% damage buff. Hey, better than a kick to the nuts.

Pulse Machine Gun/Stardust Cannons—Their projectile AoE now longer hurts allies. Stardust Cannon low-end models deal less damage.

Long Range—A lot like Ranger Snipers these have seen increased damage, range and projectile speed. Pretty much buffs all around.

Homing—Geists, one of my most hated weapons, has been nerfed with increased EN costs, huzzah! Never use this weapon again. The Mirage 15 Ways deal double damage but now cost double the energy...which may not be what you want cause they were used for stunlocking and not really for damage.

FENCER---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CC Strikers—Pretty much all have seen damage increases. Will this finally make them viable compared to CC Piercers? I'll leave that up to those who have played Japanese version to tell us.

CC Piercers—Faster reload on Flashing Spears and 50% damage boost on Spine Drivers are the big changes. Minor tweaks to some other stuff.

Autocannons—Gatlings now start firing right away and spool up overtime, increasing fire rate. All the Gatlings and Galleons fire faster and have more ammo but deal less damage per shot, coming out to the same DPS as before. Flame Revolvers, like Gatlings, fire right away but shoot faster over time and have less damage fall off over range. Disruptors have 50% more ammo.

Cannons—Almost all of these have seen minor accuracy reductions but faster bullet speed and better range. Light Mortars see better fire rate, AoE and slight damage buff and Heavy Mortars see boosted AoE. In another nerf that is personally painful to me, Dispersal Mortars have been gutted with a 50!% damage reduction. God, why?

Missiles—Arm Hounds have 50% more ammo but deal 50% less damage. Nerf overall. Arcanes have been buffed with faster missile speed, faster reload, faster lock on speed and longer lock on range.Some Bloodstorms have boosted lock on range.

AIR RAIDER------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All I'm gonna say is Air Raider changes are probably the most extreme example of "GIVETH AND TAKETH" I have ever seen. Air Raider gets a bunch of attack drones now that are like mini Gunships and Bombers that can be used underground too. That is great, but sadly much was lost to obtain this power.

All Gunships now take TWICE as long to reload. Yes, every single one. All your Vulcans and Lapis, yep, they all reload twice as slow.

All Bombers have seen increase to credit cost. Some of the Phobos Heavy Bombers now cost THREE times as much credits with things like KM6 costing TWICE the credits.

Spritefalls now cost TWICE as much credits and while Bulge Laser does 50% more damage, its reload time has been doubled.

The Nix cost more credits the more powerful they are...with the highest end Nix costing around 4,000 more credits to call in. Brutal.

Let's pour one out for Air Raiders—the inclusion of the Drones in no way was worth the gigantic nerfs to most everything else.

[retsa2b]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Snipers—Big buffs across the board to range, yes, the long range Snipers have gotten even longer ranged.

Makes sense. Watching a sniper bullet vanish into thin air, even in a game not trying particularly hard to be realistic, can only inspire confusion.

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

FORKS were destroyed for some reason with a massive damage reduction—your guess is as good as mine on that.

I thought of these as more of a situational crowd control to be honest.

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Rapiers—[...]have had their EN cost increased pretty majorly.

Yuck. Without question the weapon type I used the most in the entire franchise.

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

All Gunships now take TWICE as long to reload. Yes, every single one. All your Vulcans and Lapis, yep, they all reload twice as slow.

Air Raider definitely gonna be my most neglected class. The one I only play when I'm either at 70% already, or fate has decided I'm replaying this damn level/difficulty four times before completing the important medals.

I also hear the comically giant missiles can only be used on this or that mission. That was probably the only Air Raider thing I was actually looking forward to.

I feel like maybe they were trying to balance not against the sudden ability to not be a 5th wheel underground, but the unlikely scenario that all four players are Air Raiders and credits are flowing nonstop all around. Either way, heck of a thing, making the least popular class less popular.

[Honorable_D]

All the info I got was pulled from the Japanese wiki here: https://w.atwiki.jp/edf6/

You'll of course need to translate it to English and then navigate to the class sections. I glossed over a lot of minor changes and didn't even mention all the new weapons so defs hit it up if you want the details.

[Charlie Prince]

wow if those air raider nerfs are accurate my whole day is ruined lmao

[Purple Sauce]

They nerfed air raiders? For what? Air raider wasn't even that good. If you weren't playing fencer or wing you were basically gimping yourself. . .

[Honorable_D]

All the Air Raider nerfs were intended to balance out the inclusion of the new attack drones and the dedicated support slot item. However the drones, while handy, just aren't good enough to warrant such massive nerfs.

The dedicated support slot also has some downsides in that it is no longer possible to bring multiple support items. For example, you can no longer bring a shield bunker and a life vendor. You can no longer bring a power zone and defense zone. Now, you can only bring ONE support item type at a time.

TLDR: Devs added drones which are cool and handy but then turned around and massively nerfed the other parts of the Air Raiders kit, thinking it was needed for balance.

[Gaata]

Keep in mind that enemy strength was supposedly increased across the board in EDF6, so if your weapon type wasn't buffed or made more useable it was nerfed in terms of relative performance.

[Gaata]

Also, Ranger Missile launchers may have gotten some buffs but I think they're actually in a somewhat poor spot overall. Emeralds lack an inferno or dlc option, and are hit more by the enemy stat increases than other weapon types. The final model was the only model to get any damage boosts to match the new stat increases but lts ultimately a hardest weapon, not INF or DLC. The new high altitude dlc launcher also is nothing special, getting outclassed by the previously mentioned final emerald despite being so much higher level. Tortoise damage may have been doubled, but that doesn't help it's atrocious options, the level 7(EASY) Tortoise is only barely behind the strongest tortoise in dps because the reload for the upgrade is so horrendous. The MLRAs got a few more models buffed than the emerald and is overall in a decent spot, but its also lacking in Inferno or dlc options. The Prominence recieved only minor useability upgrades and is thus behind the power curve relative to the stronger enemies, although it suffers from that a bit less comparative to other launcher types and has an INF option.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

How is the Fencer against Flying-type units in EDF 6? The Fencer in EDF 5 was weak against swarms of wasp enemies on the higher difficulty levels. There is one mission in EDF 5 as Fencer I just did on Easy since I didn't want to bother with the cheese-tactics to beat it (which took over 20 minutes to accomplish, on the mission with the power transformer site).

[Zulban]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Air Raider nerfed

My disappointment is immeasurable... and my day is ruined...

[Honorable_D]

Originally posted by Zulban:

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Air Raider nerfed

My disappointment is immeasurable... and my day is ruined...

Nerfed overall? Yes, I'd say so. However there are some situations that he is better off in EDF 6, such as underground missions.

Originally posted by GrenadeMagnet6:

How is the Fencer against Flying-type units in EDF 6? The Fencer in EDF 5 was weak against swarms of wasp enemies on the higher difficulty levels. There is one mission in EDF 5 as Fencer I just did on Easy since I didn't want to bother with the cheese-tactics to beat it (which took over 20 minutes to accomplish, on the mission with the power transformer site).

I always dealt with bee heavy missions by bring dual HAIL missiles and then another set for mobility such as Spine Driver and Dexter Shotgun. The Spine Driver generally had enough range and damage to 1-shot a bee and you could use that set to dashboost around if you started to get swarmed. Keep dumping missiles into them while staying mobile with the other set and you'd make it. I agree though, I always hated seeing bees as Fencer.

[Felix]

Air raider is my favorite class, its depressing to hear it was nerfed.

[Gaata]

Wing diver and Fencer also took a decent stat hit. Fencer lost a disproportionate amount of armor% compared to the other classes, reducing their survivability and wing divers had large nerfs to flight capability and their excellent short range weapons. Rangers seemed to get the most benefits this time around, but they were always a bit worse off than the other 3 so it's probably fine. I wouldn't worry too much about the air raider nerfs.

[Ocerkin]

sounds like both fencer and air raider were nerfed, my 2 favorite classes... welp there goes my purchase, i was debating pre ordering but if they nerfed my favorite classes what is the point?

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by Ocerkin:

sounds like both fencer and air raider were nerfed, my 2 favorite classes... welp there goes my purchase, i was debating pre ordering but if they nerfed my favorite classes what is the point?

Maybe as Fencer/Air Raider we can adjust our playstyles. In EDF 5 I got more aggressive with Fencer and didn't need as much armor to beat the missions on Hardest and Inferno as I had in EDF 4.1. I had heard there are also some buffs in EDF 6 for Fencers and Air Raiders so perhaps we can lean more heavily into those attributes.

[Divineluke]

Originally posted by Ocerkin:

sounds like both fencer and air raider were nerfed, my 2 favorite classes... welp there goes my purchase, i was debating pre ordering but if they nerfed my favorite classes what is the point?

Fencer has not been nerfed, just readjusted. Fencer lost armor but made up for it with mobility increases. Without Support equipment your mobility is doubled at 2-2 for dashes and boost jumps. At item level 1 and item level 2 you find the 4 dash and 4 boost jump support equipments, allowing you to have end of hard mode mobility from the start.
There is also the introduction of new types of support equipment for the class allowing you to swap the mobility modules of a weapon. (Such as a shotgun with a dash or a spine driver with a boost jump) If you use both of the module replacers of dash and boost jump you can actually have both while wielding a shield or a weapon with a zoom module in the other hand. (if the jp wiki is to be believed).
Let's be honest, fencer after a certain point needs the boatload of armor he gets the LEAST out of the four classes. And since EDF 6 is giving us solid mobility from the start, fencers will dominate like always. We're still the overpowered class through and through.
Plus our CC piercers got buffed, our strongest category.