It's the most inconsistent weapon when locking on. Some times it beeps for 3 seconds, other times for 8. You fire it and every once in awhile it'll show a missile come out, but you lose no ammo as if it never shot. Then if the pilot has half a brain they can dodge it easily, not to mention they have an unlimited amount of flares.

Even if you do manage to hit a helicopter, they fly away and have auto repair or just have 2-3 guys repairing while they're being hit. No one when else in this game seems to even try to shoot them down with. I just bought the game on PC hoping with more people we could accomplish more. Nope, just another 15 snipers out in a field setting down a beacon spawn 500 feet away from a flag lol.

I seriously can't see a reason to use this weapon. We'd have a helicopter over our spawn getting killed. 3 people would shoot at it and it just absorbed all of our stingers until we had none left since it was constantly being repaired. Shouldn't you have to land the thing to fix it?

The answer is often teamwork. One man with a launcher won't do much. Multiple engineers however can drop a fully loaded scout heli in no time. They can't repair fast enough. Of course the better answer is Laser Designation and Javelin; one hit can often be enough.

They are changing it to a one hit disable, but are severely nerfing the range in the next patch. The state that the stinger is in right now sucks though, I agree.

Check the patch notes: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/news/view/2832654779195992365/

If your playing on console I don't know how delayed the patch will be from the PC release.

@piropeople13 said:

They are changing it to a one hit disable, but are severely nerfing the range in the next patch. The state that the stinger is in right now sucks though, I agree.

Check the patch notes: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/news/view/2832654779195992365/

If your playing on console I don't know how delayed the patch will be from the PC release.

The reason the patch isn't out is because it will launch on all 3 platforms at once, according to rumors.

I sold it for console and just play on PC, I don't really have a reason to go back lol. I like the 1 hit disable, but shorter range thing so far.

Excited for the patch!

@Intro: In my experience: jets are the only viable anti-jet option in the game - especially in a crowded sky. If you are looking to take out helicopters, the tank CITV-guided rocket is superbly effective.

The stingers suck, but I don't believe that DICE ever intended for them to be too effective against jets; there seems to be a design priority for keeping the sky and ground elements moderately separated.

After the patch they're still just as bad. You can't fire from a far distance like before, giving you less chances of hitting it. It's completely irrelevant that it's now a 1 hit disable, considering pilots just hit the smoke button and can't be shot again, it recharges in about 10 seconds too. That's enough time to get out of flying range.

It seems to me that it doesn't matter if there's 1 guy with a stinger or 6, a good pilot can easily avoid getting by one.

IMO, if you can keep aircraft busy trying to dodge potential missiles, you've won. Every moment a pilot is busy in the air trying to break missile lock is a moment they aren't raining death on ground troops and armor. I don't mind not being able to kill aircraft, as long as they stay the hell away from the objective I'm trying to capture.

In the first week or so they were VERY useful, cuz no one knew how the hell to fly a jet.

Locked on. BEEP.BEEP.BEEP.BEEP. "Whats that no--" Boom.

But now that people actually know what their doing, yeah their pretty useless.

I can never ever hit a Jet with one, and most of the time when I hit a heli, the fucking thing never goes down. Every now and then I'll be able to disable one or destroy one completely.

Stingers might look useless from the ground, but they don't seem than way when I'm piloting. Yeah, I know that in my jet I can get away from any missile that's launched at me, but doing so means I have to break off from whatever tank/jet/heli I was attacking. Stingers are are for air defense, not air superiority, and they work in that role.

I have died twice from Stingers since the patch thats after getting about 300 kills with Helicopters, I am a low flyer, so the patch benefits me a lot.

@Intro:RPG 7 is how you take down choppers now, it takes skill, this makes me happy.