1: I made comprehensive discussion over the very fundamentals of a class and why it is fine the way it is, so yeah; is going to be a long post. Anything else is just a waste of time and nothing but hearsay and false claims without substantial evidence and numbers to back said claim up, what is so difficult about reading? I mean if I had not made the post long and filled with my own reasoning then people would have ignored it for just being an opinionated piece with no real merit. 2: Then what would be the point of the heavy assault, if his simple job is to kill things why would we decrease his ability to do so? I went over my entire reasoning and explanation as to why the heavy assault needs to be more effective in a fire fight in the first post, he is made to be the frontline soldier, the guy who clears out the enemy opposition. First to go in, first to take the hits, first to die and that is why he needs the shield, if we buffed all other infantry classes health then why would you even need a heavy assault in an infantry fight? Well in this game pretty much any weapon is capable of suppression seeing as how easy it is to die, if there are ten guys on a wall, and each guy somehow only manages to hit you once, you are still dead. So waiting for the opportune moments to rush out of cover is indeed a prevalent part of gameplay and medium range combat is pretty much anything -30m, so I would say we function pretty well in that regard. Long range though? Forget it xD I don't think we should get grenade launchers, we already have rockets and grenades which are more than good enough and really....I mean the light assault just need to have a thing. I mean if they aren't good for flanking the enemy and launching some grenades or smokes into a clumped enemy force, what are they good for?
Of all the time I played I took heavy assault ONLY to blast tanks and aircraft. For anything else they are useless. Even medics are better at killing. HA are just walking turrets,nothing more.
I can agree that medics are pretty much the universal best class for pushing. Assault rifles function similarly to lmgs but often have higher dps than their lmg counterparts. A full push of medics is a terrifying force simply because it is an army of dudes with self healing, self shield-regening and can revive the dead o.o Kind of a big deal in comparison to being slightly harder to kill.
I've read most of it and I can tell you that at least a third of it is waffle, if you want people to read it make it succinct and to the point. There is no nerf in what I'm suggesting, HA will be the same just everyone else won't be. The thing people hate about HA which you don't seem to understand is the inequality fighting them. There is nothing more depressing than getting the jump on a HA to find that they've popped their shield turned around and obliterated you in .2 of a second. It's more depressing still when on your death screen and you see you've only just worn them down to their HP.
As discussed before with the ttk models presented in the first post the heavy shield barely adds much time to react when getting ambushed, even if you were to spin around instantly firing at the enemy you would have to land nothing but pure headshots on the person who ambushed you to kill them in .2 of a second. I understand perfectly that there is inequality when fighting a heavy assault, but that is because the is what the role of the class is, they are meant to take more hits than others because their only purpose is having the ability to kill enemies well, if they weren't better at doing that than we would just replace them with medics completely (which, as mentioned before is already by far more effective) until vehicles showed up. Inequality when fighting a foe is something that is to be expected in a class based system, but it is not an issue that is so insurmountable that you cannot deal with it. If you compare the inequality of a firefight vs a heavy assault vs say that of a max, then it becomes readily obvious just how little of a deal the heavies shield can be. Do they have a certain advantage in a firefight? Yes of course they do, when pushing an objective where they can just push forward towards targets they certainly have a certain advantage because they can take a few more hits but the advantage given to them isn't so insurmountable they are broken, this is because even in a 1v1 scenario, they can still lose, very easily I might add to players who know what they are doing or are more skilled. Now don't get my tone wrong here, I am not bashing your proposal before for increasing the health of other infantry classes, it isn't like it was a dumb suggestion as you made it under the impression that the heavy assault effective health is overbearing, which I am countering that it is not because that is what sets them apart from others in an infantry engagement, they are obviously meant to be more durable, so wouldn't increasing the durability of other classes besides them just further take away from that role? I mean wouldn't this seem kind of weird to you? Light assault: Shields: 600 Health: 600 Heavy Assault Shield: 500 Health 500
The "they can't heal" or "they can't drop ammo" arguments seem like very desparate examples of HA being balanced considering they can use 4 medkits and get 400 rounds of SAW ammo, as an example. The "just because" argument for HA dominance is also very thin, and old. Rocket spamming a doorway is not enjoyable gameplay. Even 1v1 it's a bad joke. They're primary gun selection is also a bit disappointing, I'd rather use a carbine or assault rifle and not be saddled to a medic/LA/engy class. I'd rather see better class synergy that what we have atm. Or maybe rework more teamwork abilities into HA instead of "I have 50% more TTK, medkits, and buckets of ammo." I doubt any one aspect of the HA is completely broken, but the class as a whole needs to be looked at. Maybe the current state of infantry play just isn't for me.
The "Heavy shield ramp up time" will surely work fine in larger fights where desync and latency jumps might occur. I MEAN WHAT COULD GO WRONG, RIGHT!? PS.: The answer is drama and crying followed by 2 years until it's fixed again.
No one seems to think the shield is an issue but devs apparently I play Infiltrator with Scout Rifle 90% of time and it seems logical to me that fighting face to face with HA is taking a risk: they have powerful weapons and extra shield. The only thing I would change honestly is rocket launchers: they should take more to be equipped (more weight) and should only fire in ADS mode. Everyone behind the HA firing with a rocket launcher should be damaged by the rocket propulsion cone.
They are not desperate attempts at coming up with points because what you fail to see here is the aspect of team play, the heavy assault brings absolutely no power to his team whatsoever outside of being able to kill well. If you look at the question that list is filed under it is listed as "why should I play anything else?"; dropping ammo and healing refer to giving those things to your teammates and is addressing the fact that they cannot do so as a reason to play engineer and medic instead. Can they use a self healing medkit? Sure, so can everyone else, but that gives no benefit to your teams and is limited by resources and the amount you can bring. Rocket spamming down a doorway rarely happens outside of massive battles because you have the amount of infantry necessary to do so, and even then both sides are guilty of it. Given the reload and weapon switch speed of rocket launcher if you are killed by a heavy in a 1v1 because he launched rockets down a doorway, then you are doing something wrong. There is plenty of downtime for you to pop out and kill him. I don't really understand this one, heavies are balanced more because they don't have access to the faster TTK weapons such as carbines and assault rifles, giving them access to those would just be a huge buff for no apparent reason and only further make the classes that use those items less unique. Care to elaborate as to how they have 50% more TTK and medikits? They can carry the same amount of med kits as everyone else and take longer to kill than other weapon classes.[/quote] I don't think it is, honestly I can't see what point your making when you mentioned medkits and c4, and I don't know why you would want to give them access to faster TTK weapons if you think they are already too much.
My mention of TTK was referring to their ~50% HP overshield. Indeed, why should anyone play a different class if this one gets a larger health pool, can heal themselves, and gets 400 rounds of ammo? There isn't much need for support classes if your enemy is dead.
very interesting, as a player who plays alot of heavy assault, i get more points with my engineer, with almost 6 days less play time. so that just goes to show that heavy assault might be good at killing but its hard to get dat farm.
Ah, it sounded as if you meant they kill faster than anyone else, my mistake Because as mentioned before a heavy assault is not the best choice when it comes to everything. I mean why don''t we just always play maxes as well? They can self heal, take a lot more damage and deal a lot more than a heavy assault. Pretty much just an over all upgrade, we can earn infantry resources fast enough and decrease a maxes cooldown tremendously, so if all that matters is your capability to kill the enemy than why do we both with anything but maxes and vehicles? Because same as a heavy assault killing potential isn't everything. I would much rather have a hundred medics in a push than a hundred heavies, because they provide so much more for their team while being slightly weaker that it becomes worth it. If heavies had the same potential as say, a MAX suit I would agree with you that they need to be toned down for being a free soldier, but they don't. They are simply a slightly more durable infantry unit, and once that shield pops they are no more special than anyone else and in fact have weapons with even lower ttk to make up for it. Meanwhile a medic or an engineer are always useful, there are always people who need ammo (even heavies run out of ammo, especially with rocket launchers), always places we could place turrets or vehicles in need of repair, there are always dead bodies to revive and soldiers to heal and having a bunch of soldiers who are always useful rather than those who are good only in the start of a fight is more than enough reason to play those other classes.[/quote]
What many people fail to realize or notice is just how beneficial having heavy assaults around ( in current state) is to them. They only focus on what they believe is a negative aspect of it. Nerf a heavies shields and they lose much their ability to hold a line well. Think your sunderer's are already taking a pounding from tanks and c4 light assaults? Just wait until the day heavy assaults lose the ability to take those few extra bullets for you. Make the rocket launcher ammo cost resources and they lose their ability to keep vehicles and aircraft at bay for longer then a few seconds. Think tank zerging or ESF bombing is an issue now? Just wait until those rockets are so precious that your heavy assault buddy does not want to spend resources to do his job. Just like all the other classes heavy has some important roles to fill. None of them are more important or less important then the others. They are just different roles. That is the entire point of classes. To have differing roles.
Firstly you can't compare what is essentially a man based vehicle which costs resources to a HA, even though a HA can kill it a number of ways. Secondly it's wholly wrong to not mention the extra 450-500hp you gain from the extra shield or the fact that most classes with the exception of the light assault have 400hp not 500.
Everyone with the exception of the infiltrator has 1000 effective health, 500 shield and 500 health points. I am not sure where you got 900 from, and the point of the bringing up MAXES wasn't to act like it was a fair comparison, the fact that it wasn't but even with all that effective power, health and resistances that it brings to the table (which is essentially better than an heavy in every way) even a MAX unit is capable of being solo'd by an enemy infantry unit despite all that. The difference is so huge it is astounding really, but when it comes down to things as simple as ttk and infantry fighting, a heavy assault really does not bring an overbearing advantage to the field, and is in fact a lot worse to bring in most situations where infantry fighting is happening. In a 1v1 a heavy assault might seem too strong, but really after that first fight that is it. He blew every advantage he had on that one single unit and now he has got nothing left but a lower ttk to show for it. In comparison to that we could have a group of medics instead who have faster ttk weaponry, the ability to heal their teammates and themselves and even revive the dead. There is no arguing the amount of support a group of medics or engineers can bring to a fight, but when it comes a group of heavies, all you really have is a bunch of guys with rocket launchers once their ability gets blown.
The way i look at things is this: If my squad, 1 Infiltrator, 3 medics, 2 Engineers and 6 Heavy came against your squad of 12 Heavy which squad would win? I can tell you now 100% it wont be the 12 heavys. If heavy is as OP as everyone says the 12 heavy squad would wipe the floor with the balanced squad. Heavy is fine, this game is balanced around TEAM PLAY and should remain that way!!
Honestly, I'd put my money on the 12 HAs. Especially if any of them had the crossbow with sensor darts. That's the only reason you have the infiltrator, anyway.
Infiltrators' motion spotter easily surpasses the utility of the recon darts for any squad vs squad engagement in a facility. And yeah you'd almost certainly lose that bet. With good teamplay, the 3 medics essentially make it a 2:1 fight.
