Are there reasonable ways to revamp Heavy Assaults that everyone would be happy with?

Yeah, let it blink when hit. Otherwise it should be off.

Right now only a stupid HA will turn on his shield in large mid-range fights. It's an I-Lose button that just invites 20 people to shoot at you at once.

I would support that.

Would this be acceptable?
-Add 1 second delay to overshield activation
-Overshield no longer glows unless taking damage
-Overshield movement penalty is removed, allowing the overshield to serve it's purpose for charging full speed and breaching defended rooms

Personally am fine with heavy assault at it's current state, and only thing I would be fine with is a delay to their activation. That said I think 1 second is a bit to much and would be better at a very micro delay such as .5-.2 seconds (at least as a starting point or varies via which shield). Can't exactly say why, but I just feel the 1second delay would really bog down breaching and with the latency of the game already being spotty it'll make things more frustrating than fun/strategical.

As for the overshield, I believe it should always be glowing and slow you down. Haha that part of HA should not be buffed in the slightest if you ask me. The cons of the shield is what helps players that aren't HA react/counter their ability.

If you see a shining HA you can at least know to run away or aim at the head. If there was no shine you'd go in and die in the 1v1 (given skill is the same) since you didn't know he had his shield up. Also Movement penalty helps you run away from a HA that caught you, so now the HA has to decided between catching up to the other person risking not having his shield or taking the safer route of approaching with his shield just in case the other player reengages.

That said this is all based on more of my personal thoughts on how HA should be haha. Others I'm sure may agree with you.

Well I was thinking the specifics would be a little better. Also leaves room for some "specialty" weapons like the Archer and the scout rifles.

I suppose I'd be happy with two suit slots as opposed to free Flak and one slot. However, that might allow for a bit too much versatility, in my opinion. With two separate slots, one could choose to have nanoweave and a grenade bandolier, but with only a single slot they would have to choose between nanoweave and more grenades, while having a passive explosive resistance (which helps HAs be the AV class properly).

Differences are just significant enough to have a real impact, I think.

1 second delay gives a flanker the edge to drop an HA if he catches him off guard.

The idea behind removing the movement penalty, is that makes the shield better for what it's needed for, breaching defended rooms and breaking stagnated fights. The extra HP doesn't help if you can't get into the room before the shield is broken.

Regarding the overshield glow, the problem is, tanks see the glowing overshield too. What if it just had a limited render range?

I would say that no, the HA can't be revamped in a way that won't hurt the game more than it brings.

But I would say that you can change the rest of the game to balance it out.

You have to know why the HA is picked the most. Be it noob or veteran, the HA's arsenal is strong and more forgiving than the short-magazine'd other weapons, and the rocketlauncher gives you a better fighting chance against vehicles and MAX's other than breaking out the C4. Then there's the secondary metagame that has evolved over the years: KD. Ofcourse KD is farmable as all hell and only truly useful to the player himself because of how playstyle decides your KD more than your actual skill. And the simple truth is that if you want to keep playing the fun PS2 combat with a higher KD without having to sit around at X hundred meters with a sniper rifle or tank, then you have to get a Heavy.

So instead of taking away 1/3rd of what makes a Heavy a Heavy, we could just give the other classes better reasons to exist. For example: Add a CTF-type mechanic to capturing bases, this could be to capture the entire base or to defeat parts of a base defense. These type of mechanics would be better suited for the LA and Infiltrator than for the HA, who is in turn better suited for point-defense or attack combat.
Then there's for example powering base defenses by either the attackers or defenders. Imagine if the Engineer and Medic were the only one's who are capable of buying a mini-generator at the Spawnbunker/Sunderer and deploying it in various places across a base to power turrets (or block them from being hacked), shields that block infantry on some doorways, create lightbridges, create temporary poison-gass or something in specific rooms to flush out enemies etc. This would bump up their usefulness. But they would also need more direct-combat capabilities that support the Medic/Engineer the most and allies second. For example adding deployable shields (For the MEDIC) and damage reduction fields to improve the Medics usefulness in any field condition before and after combat and enhance it's role of protecting himself and supporting allies with cover and revives from said cover. And giving the Engineer better turret options so it's less of a "shoot me through this slit right here" sign and a truly useful point-defense platform, for example by allowing the Engineer to disengage the Turret from the ground and reposition it on the fly if need be.

And lastly, remove all "death" statistics. Keep kills, no problem, but PS2 is about death not mattering. At it's core PS2 can hardly even have balanced matches as there's almost always a team with more players or vehicles. Players should want to throw themselves into combat to break a chokepoint, never caring about how many lives it takes as long as the job gets done. So other statistics need to be brought forwards in the TAB screen to reduce the amount of care players have for it and increase the care players have for farming alternative statistics.

Changes like that, new capture mechanics and new abilities/utilities/tools for other classes should make the HA less the omniversally useful and give other classes a chance to get the spotlight.

Hm, it seems we differ quite a bit in how HA play, but that's alright haha I'm sure we can find a understanding.

From my standpoint I don't want HA getting any kind of buff as I think they are great as they are. Making them any better would cause more of a detriment to the fun of the other classes then positive. We shouldn't be thinking of what makes the HA more fun/viable/better but how it may effect all units and make all classes more fun to play.

1 second would certainly be giving a upper hand to the flanker, but now at that I feel 1 second+latency he would almost always die before even getting have his shield activate which would be real fustrating for the HA players. Reason why I think a much lower delay would be more viable as atleast then he can make use of his ability if hes quick/skilled enough. That said, I actually see the 1 second (for the sake of this example) delay working well with Nanoweave as it is a + to health essentially, and for resist shields a lower delay would work more since it just helps mitigates the damage.

Also honestly don't think think HA have much problem breaching with the slow down of the shield. I mean all you need to do is go from one side of the door to the other haha. That said though I don't see HA as a breaching class, and think that role should be more focused on MAX's (and even LA via maneuverability). To me HA aren't for breaching, but the opposite which makes sense with their design. That being built for suppressing, defending against vehicles/air/breaching MAX's&infantry. That also seems what the devs designed HA for as the way they work seems to support it (slow overshield, LMG T2K, slower ADS, slow reload, larger character model). They are meant to be anything but for breaching to me haha (from the dev design standpoint).

As for tanks being able to see overshield that seems fine to me, and really don't see that as a issue that. At least for when I play theres plenty of times when a tank is shooting me and the overshield saves me from the damage of the flak enough that I can scurry away far enough to turn it off even with the slow down. Also from a vehicle/air standpoint I think it is fun to choose who to shoot and one of the main things is not targeting HA shielded targets primarily - or looking for them if there are no others/your looking for the spawn. Would be mad frustrating when you spam a target and he just wont go down - and not being able to see HA shields would increase that.

I think making the tough decision to choose between higher life/defense or mobility is a important one that should always be a factor when using the HA shield personally. Makes the game more fun having to crunch the risk in each situation.

Not going to go into how I feel about your other points, but I approve of this one very much haha!

The HA isn't the problem. You nerf the HA and the new target becomes Medic with Carapace/Nanoweave. Whiners are going to whine about something until it's their class that is on top. then other whiners take their place.

Someone needs to be the most effective AI in the game. no amount of nerfs are going to change that, they're just going to change what class it is.

I'm thinking of bases like Aurora Materials Lab, crossing the platform from the shell shaped building to the point room building. Biolabs, pushing up the stairs defended from above, and the same similar shell shaped building walkways, hallways that turn into bullet/rocket spam places like that.

Yes, LAs can flank in from other doors and do some damage, but they can't always be followed by the rest of your forces. And they don't have the durability to push and dig-in.

MAXs can breach too, but they are also very slow, generally fewer in number, and get focus fired as a priority target. I see them as more supplemental to HAs for breaching.

Engineers with turrets are more of a stationary defense than HAs in my eyes, though they are also complementary.

I think of HAs as the spear tip (vanguard small V) of your forces, push in and hold ground as the rest of your support troops move up and revive fallen, engineers repair/ammo and dig in with turrets etc, then HAs push up and hold ground again, all while infiltrators and LAs flank and look for weak points on the enemy position. Obviously that's oversimplification because it's more chaotic than that, but as the general concept.

Unless your a max, rushing into a room/stairwell/walkway is never a good decision and is going to get you insta killed, so I really don't see how removing the speed cap of the shield effecting that. Also, noone runs around with shield to get from point A to B so I have never experienced or seen a time when HA can't keep up with the other troops (excluding LA). Most just don't run with a shield until they actually need to enter the occupied room (with all characters there doing the same thing but without the benefit of a shield).

All the locations you list are better approached cautiously (actually just like how you explained in your last paragraph) then thinking your overshield movement speed keeps you from digging in. Please correct me if you don't agree though as I just don't see the speed being all that much of a factor for breaching/digging in/ pushing up/spear tipping.

Think were on the same pages with their relationship with Max/engie and how they work in general in your last paragraph haha.

This.

The HA ain't broke guys. It's just not your class.

It's frustrating when someone uses something class specific to kill you. It just is. I mean who doesn't hate snipers right? It seems unfair. But if I try to do the same, I realize what considerable effort and playskill it took for that player to pull it off. So I gotta stomach it and move on. Same thing with the HA. Sure you're mad that the I-win button was used and you died. Know how many times the I-win button *didn't* work for that player previously? Know how many times they died *because* of the shield making them stand out like a beacon in the darkness of Hossin?

My advice: Walk a mile in the other guys shoes. Find that thing that kills you and try it. Could be an HA or that !#$ Infiltrator.... or maybe that NC max that you think is so OP. Behold the floundering of having a 10m ranged gun. It sure seems tough when you're staring at it from the death screen. Not so much when you gotta actually kill something with it.

i'm one of the few people who actually thinks heavies are doing what they're supposed to.
imho they are supposed to be the bruiser soldier class.

give assaultrifles and carbines to the HA? what would ever be the point in using lmg's then? other then having more ammo per mag they perform the worst out of all automatic weaponclasses ..
the HA is about surviveability primarily with AI, AV and AA secondarily and at the later 3 it is rather just decent compared to the more specialised classes (Infill for AI and LA for AV burstermax for AA)

take that surviveabilty away then the HA becomes just a gunner with which people would be too scared to enter rooms with capturepoints .. ok cool people may choose other classes such as medics or LA those will still lack the surviveabilty the current HA has .. and you still see people exchange fire between entrypoints and not advancing .. take the HA's surviveabilty away and this might get worse .. because people would be to scared to enter buildings at all ...

Rushing into a fortified area is dumb if you're alone yeah, but if you are fighting a group of enemies and are on the offensive I am presuming you have a team too.

No one runs with the overshield for breaching rooms because it currently doesn't work, HAs don't ninja scale walls either because they can't.

I think we are talking about different scenarios, I am talking about the giant battles this game was designed around, you can't cautiously enter a room of 20+ defenders ever, you have to storm in quick with a large group using conc/flash/emp nades etc

That wasn't the point of the thread, to take HA survivability away, it was to discuss how can you make the HA survivable in other ways.

The title of the thread is this "Are there reasonable ways to revamp Heavy Assaults that everyone would be happy with?"

So no... you can't. If you mess with anybodies KDR that crutches HA they will *****. It is that simple.

Everybody wants this to be a 1v1 game AND a team game at the same time. It CANNOT BE BOTH.

People have to get over the fact that KDR means anything.

100% you are not supposed to beat an HA in a 1v1 scenario. You might get lucky with headshots, etc... but more often than not, you should lose if you are also not an HA. That is the game.

This is not Counter Strike, that is now you make everybody happy... get he dumba**es to understand that.

My problem with the HA class is that it's a better time/skill investment than mastering other classes and that with enough skill, ADAD and crouch-spam they can usually beat their most likely counters, in other words you have to out-play them, but they don't have to out-play you and can even **** on your well-planned flank with F and a medkit. My issue isn't 1v1s, my issue is that they can deny skillful counters.

I don't mind the shield, I don't mind their anything, hell, even go as far as to revert all the HA nerfs! But all I ask for is that they should, as any other class, have something out to watch for and make it a requirement to play smart.


Infils have to constantly watch their backs, put themselves in the best case scenario and make sure they land their shots as well as they can. They are very deadly in right hands, but one miss, one poor reaction and it's GG.

LAs rely on situational awareness all the time in order to ambush. If they get surprised, it's often GG as well. The only thing separating you from a bad LA is your situational awareness and aim. Same goes with Engi and Medic with their tools out, get exposed and you're dead.


With HA, it depends on skill level. If you're a potato, then yeah, HA doesn't help at all. But if you can react fast enough, you can usually dodge/tank an entire magazine from a non-HA and fight back no problem. This is what gets on my nerves and there's literally nothing you can do about except die or restart the engagement again.


I have absolutely no problem with buffing HA, but only if HA became less reliant on twitch reflexes and ADAD+crouch+medkit spam and more on thorough planning and tactics and if they're made more vulnerable against flanks. I don't mind them being frontline troopers and better in some scenarios as long as they aren't impervious to skill and tactics.

And before anyone spoon-feeds me the "play HA lel" stuff, here's my account where I main HA and some other classes (totalling ~210 hours on HA). It's not nearly as hard to master compared to LA and infil.

Well yeah, that's a big part of the problem, KDR inclines players to not think of the game as team based, as fighting for your faction. Makes it all about my kills, my deaths, my stats, my directives etc.

Most of the complaints on these forums come down to a concept of fairness, when the games not about that. Getting killed by a vehicle can seem unfair, I got a death while the vehicle guy got a kill, and his vehicle is more powerful than my infantry. Without KDR, stuff like that wouldn't be an issue (you just respawn and keep fighting), nor would spawn room heroes, and a lot of the farming going on (except directive farming would still exist)

Still, you want every class to feel effective and worth playing