IMO, armor lock is only good against complete noobies. It's so easy to just stand back and wait for them to come out of it and then shoot them a couple times.
It just seems like a lot of your arguments come from a standpoint of someone who hasn't had a lot of experience with the game in slayer. Like your argument on banshees. To me, they are exactly the same as they were in 3. Extremely stupid. They're always easy to kill with even the slightest coordination, and as far as i've seen, they do exactly the same damage as they did in 3. I've never had issues with them, except when I miss my first rocket launcher shot and have to take another to kill it.
IMO, you don't seem to be able to read my posts.
When some BK enters Armor Lock, they have six seconds to call in their teammates to save their sorry ass.
So let's say two fairly even teams go into battle. A Red and a Blue are in a DMR duel, and both combatants end up one-shot. Right as Blue is about to fire the deciding bullet, the Red goes into Armor Lock, and calls in his teammates to carry his retarded ass. Now, Blue calls in
his teammates as well. This was a team game to begin with, so odds are, the reinforcements aren't that far away for either player, and hence they arrive while the Red Locker is, well, Locking. So now we have three Reds and one invulnerable one-shot Red, versus three Blues and one vulnerable one-shot Blue.
Well, simple fact is, the moment the Reds arrive, that one-shot Blue is
dead. By the time the Red Locker exits Armor Lock, he'll be in the middle of a three-on-four battle, with his enemies having already been weakened. The best-case scenario is that the more skilled player -- the one-shot Blue -- is denied a kill that he rightfully earned, and the player that he should've beaten is allowed to live longer. The worst-case scenario is that not only is a Blue cheated out of a kill and not only is a less-skilled Red's life prolonged, but that less-skilled Red is then able to get kills off of Blue's reinforcements, who, I say again, will be weakened by the time the less-skilled Red comes out of Armor Lock. Either way, a skilled player is cheated out of a kill and balance is thrown off. An engagement between two teams of relatively equal skill becomes one-sided thanks to the effortless and unskillful invocation of Armor Lock.
I don't have a problem with the concept of Armor Lock. I think that it was a wonderful way to give players a chance to prevent deaths that aren't the result of them lacking skill. If the enemy is splattering at your spawns with a Ghost, that's not your fault, so Lock. If a Scorpion appears out of thin air and fires on you, that's not your fault, so Lock. If, on the other hand, I out-DMR you, then that
is your fault; you should die, rather than Locking. If I stick you, that
is your fault, so you should die from it. However, Armor Lock allows players to avoid deaths that directly result from their own failures.
The ideal fix would be to limit Armor Lock to one full (or one half) second, disallow early deactivation, remove un-sticking, remove EMP, remove frosting (which is probably a result of a EMP-related workaround), remove plasma deflection, and make it so that time spent in Armor Lock doesn't contribute to shield recharging. Armor Lock would still have invincibility, immobility (preventing users from being shoved off of cliffs), and anti-vehicle power, so even if nerfed it could prevent deaths that aren't the player's fault; the nerfs would prevent n00bs from using it to avoid deaths that
are their fault.
And as for Banshees being easy to kill? That depends heavily on the driver. The secret to Banshee-whoring is to use a specific evasive maneuver (trick) -- a backflip, I think -- that basically allows you to dodge shots without losing your aim. Banshees are already highly mobile; their evasive maneuvers, in addition to breaking weapon lock-ons and aim assist, make them even faster. It takes two full DMR clips -- thirty shots -- to down a Banshee. Every single one of those shots has to
hit. If a Banshee is hit by shots from one person, it can turn around and Banshee Bomb that person before they do any more damage. If a Banshee is hit by shots from several people, it can simply boost away and hide out of sight. Either way: Banshee lives, other team dies. This isn't even considering the fact that while the one team is occupied with the Banshee, the Banshee's teammates are free to do whatever they want. The fact that nearly every Banshee map has most spawns out in the open -- Paradiso and, from what I hear, Breakpoint -- also helps a 'Shee spawnkill. Uncounterably.
When people are using a vehicle's "secondary" weapon more than its primary, you know something's wrong.
None.