You said "With the shield on, you're not trying to improve your aim?". What does it matter if you're trying or not trying? What matters is that for the purpose of comparing a shielded class to one without it, we have to assume the same skill level with each class. In a straight up firefight, 1v1, no skill difference, no significant positional advantage, element of surprise, etc. - you know, a balanced, fair situation for both classes - HA will tend to win against LA thanks to having much more HP but similar TTK weaponry.
The improvement idea came from Iridar's definition of skill. Turning the shield on doesn't mean you're not trying to improve. Your "fair, balanced situation" is unrealistic. A LA is not built for that, so you are intentionally gimping it to show that the HA is superior. Again, it's a drastic oversimplification. The skill of using a LA is in not being in that situation in the first place.
The only thing regular shield needs (and adrenaline) is faster drain over time, to make improper use more punishing to the heavy and proper use of disengagement more rewarding to classes facing the heavy. maybe give it more explosive damage resistance in compensation The resist shield needs a straight up nerf tho, it gives more effective HP than NMG or adrenaline about 2/3 of the time, while having 10x the availiability...
Iridar's definition of skill was "A combination of: sharp mind and knowledge of the game mechanics to predict and outmaneuver the opponent trained mechanical skills, like target recognition and target acquisition, recoil control, dodging fire by moving erratically constant seeking of improvement in categories above" Just having (3) doesn't count. The first two are to be thought as prerequisites to have skill in the first place, the last one just displays a competitive mindset rather than actual skill. In that sense I disagree with Iridar's definition, but I also don't think he meant that having (3) while lacking (1) and (2) would count as skill. LA and HA meet face to face all the time, if you think this is unrealistic, you're sorely mistaken. Correct, there is a skill requirement for using LA - you have be good at avoiding unfavourable situations, and forcing favourable ones against your opponents. That's kinda the whole point... as Heavy Assault, you don't have to worry about that stuff, you can take "almost any fight" and make it a victory by tanking damage during your reaction time against the opponent who caught you off guard, and still having more overall HP left when you start firing. However, the point of looking at a pure 1v1 scenario is to simplify it enough to show how good the shield actually is. As it gives you nearly double the hit points, it's pretty straight forward to conclude that if you're a Heavy Assault with skill to avoid unfavourable situations, pretty much every fight will be favourable to you, except equal or better skill Heavy Assaults. It just so happens that good Light Assaults tend to attack the enemis that are a bad at avoiding bad positions which Light Assaults can take advantage of. The skill of good Light Assaults manifests versus worse skill players, not versus equal skill Heavy Assaults.
He never said, nor did I, that HA's automatically have (3) without (1) and (2). That is again an oversimplification. LA's and HA's do meet face to face all the time, the mistake in your mindset is that in that situation they should be on equal footing. A lot has happened leading up to that encounter, which you cannot disregard. You guys are obsessed with a "pure 1v1 scenario" without seeing the bigger picture. You can simplify it as much as you want, but you will not get accurate or representative data, no matter how hard you try. If we were always standing 10 paces away, with the same weapons, already aiming at each other, not firing until a referee blew a horn, then yes the HA would be superior. But that doesn't happen. The real situation in game is entirely fluid which blows any experiment you conduct out of the water. Are you always going to be able to avoid unfavorable conditions? No. Are you always going to be attacking or be attacked by people of equal "skill"? No. Are you always going to have full HP, shields, and overshield? No. Is your attacker going to be at full health all the time? No. You will have explosions knocking off your aim, flashbangs and other distractions going off, other people in the area to take into consideration, a time limit (captures, alert timers, etc.) that affects what you do, ammo limitations, specs of the weapon you are using vs. the weapon your opponent (if you're lucky enough to only have one) is using, etc etc etc. A "pure 1v1 scenario" is entirely unrealistic.
The difference here is availability. If I use my jetpack to gain a position of advantage on you, and you use your shield to negate that damage from the element of surprise, we have a fair fight where both of our abilities are exhausted, and we both have a pretty good chance of winning. Mine is admittedly better, as with the overshield negated I do tote a slightly faster killing weapon, and possibly have cover. Hopefully I have a weapon appropriate to the range of engagement, I don't get a tool that warps players closer/further nor do available places to take a position change when I get there, towers and trees don't move for me etc. That's half the time Amazingly, in a game like this, where battles number in the hundreds of participants, no class gets to always get the drop. I'm not invisible, I'm not even cloaked, I'm not off the radar, unspottable, or even able to crouch walk through the fields of motion spotters, proximity radars, scout radars, recon darts, radar bolts, and whatever else while using my ability. Are there passive overshield negation arrays that make heavy a useless class for the fight? Your shield is always there, so what happens when we both turn a corner and bump into each other? what happens when you happen to catch me on the edge of your field of view flying up onto a roof? is there ever a time when your "F" key is unavailable? Getting an even fight sometimes and a straight up advantage in all others doesn't seem like balance to me. That's the difference here, I have an ability that can potentially help me get positional advantage if I use it right, but I still have to put effort into that and there is no guarantee that I will make the journey there nor is there a guarantee that the position will be as good as anticipated, nor is there a guarantee that there wont be someone watching it, nor is there a guarantee that there wont be someone already there. An infiltrator has an ability that if they use it right can potentially conceal their position, but there is no guarantee on that since they are still visible, and the use of it does alert players in the area to be on heightened alert. The engineer get's an ability to become fortified against enemies to their front if they position with care, and there is no guarantee that becoming a stationary target won't be more detrimental than the fortification is beneficial. The medic gets something similar to the heavy, additional health to protect from 1 bullet, and no protection from things which would kill them outright, ok so a vastly inferior version of what a heavy gets, but equally mindless in it's use (press F before mouse 1) The key here is that overshield is guaranteed to activate when you press "F" and doesn't need any thought in how to use it in order to get effect. as long as you can hit 1 in 8 shots with your T-9 then you are pretty safe in face to face battles, your domain, while also having a cushion against the domain of others which they do not have against you.
The HA shield doesn't need nerfed, but the very high DPS QCQ weapons should be removed from HA (SMG's & PA/Auto Shotgun's)
I can see where you're coming from, but there's a few problems. The heavy shield isn't infinite - there is a time limit, a recharge time, and a limit to how much damage it will absorb. Turn it on at the wrong time and it won't help you at all. Turning it on also lights you up like a Christmas tree, drawing a lot of attention (and fire) to yourself. It makes you move slower - not a good thing if you're trying to reset the engagement. So in a lot of situations, yes, it does need some thought, and there are plenty of situations where you wouldn't want to turn it on at all. None of you guys are really seeing the bigger picture here. Take your example: turning a corner and bumping into a heavy. The conditions that led to that encounter were set before you even rounded the corner. Should you go around that corner without knowing what's there? If you have to go around the corner, how do you go about it - sprinting, or pieing it while ADSing? In that instance you have sacrificed your ability, but he hasn't, because that's his domain. You shouldn't expect to be on equal footing.
That would suck for pump action. I found the only class i was doing well with it was the HA, precisely because you get the time for a second shot against other HAs, which you won't get easily with other classes. Since the shield would still be there, which class could use that properly? If you nerf according to DPS, that would also imply Orion/Carv/MSW-R which have similar theoretical short range dps.
The hipfire accuracy difference between the LMG's and the SMG's is significant, that's the difference.
I didn't say anything about automatically. You assumed it was implicit in Iridar's argument about skill that HA tend not to have (3) while LA do, I showed you this is not relevant to the argument about skill because (3) is not really skill at all, it's just a competitive mindset. Iridar's argument was - and this is not an oversimplification (Iridar correct me if I'm wrong) - that lower skill HA use the shield to win against higher skill LA. Not that HA are overall lower skill players than LA, not that HA try less than LA... but that lower skill HA can win fights against higher skill LA purely due to having much more HP. Let me rephrase that then. LA and HA do meet face to face on equal footing all the time - if you think this is unrealistic, you are sorely mistaken. I guess you disagree with that. You're the one obsessed with it. I told you what I thought was the point of restricting it to a "pure 1v1". Let me quote myself: It's not to show what would happen in a realistic scenario, although those scenarios are still fairly common. The point was to show what would happen in a scenario where the shield is the only variable (or by far the most important one). When you know what happens in that scenario, it becomes easier to make judgments on more complicated scenarios. If you start from complicated scenarios, you run the risk of analyzing things wrong and making wrong judgments due to not getting all the variables right. I gave you an example of a more complicated scenario that is realistic with respect to LA vs HA engagements: heavy assault is caught off guard. In my example, knowing how strong the shield is in pure 1v1, the heavy assault compensates for the disadvantage by activating the shield ASAP and retains his health advantage versus the opponent. In skilled LA vs skilled HA engagements I believe it to be fairly common that the HA wins even when being caught off guard, assuming the LA sticks around for the whole fight rather than escaping behind cover. This is because skilled heavy assaults tend to have (1) fast reaction time to unexpected attacks (2) a decent idea of where light assaults might attack (3) fast target acquisition to further reduce delay in response (4) good movement skill to throw off the aim of the LA who thinks he has an easy target All of these skill based factors reduce the potential of Light Assault's class ability. On the other hand, there's no skill LA can draw upon, apart from simply being really good at aiming (which we assume to be equal with the HA player), to reduce the potential of the Heavy Assault shield. Does this make it more clear to you, or do you still think I'm "obsessed with pure 1v1 scenarios"?
I understand that, yet they're much popular CQC options than SMGs/Shotgun usually. When "nerf X" topics pop up, it's mostly because something powerful is getting overused. It's the "overused" part that's determinant in that aspect, more than the "powerful". Shotguns are virtually inexistent outside of biolabs, and i can't remember the last time my character died to a HA wielding an SMG. I'm not even sure that ever happened. I don't recall dying much to SMGs outside of infiltrators(LA/eng sometimes, medic/HA never). I don't know if that's being practiced much on Emerald, but on Cobalt it certainly isn't. Which makes me doubt it would stop the "nerf HA" bandwagon at all.
