Call me biased, call me a troll, call me whatever you want. This is still my honest perspective and I want to see if anybody feels this idea has any merit to it. I propose that the Light Assault class be removed from the game and replaced with a single-use jetpack that any class can equip in their grenade slot. I understand the desire to have a class in this game that uses a jetpack, but as it stands right now, I think a lot of players see the Light Assault as nothing more than a jetpack. It's like having a medic that could only heal and not revive, or a heavy that only had an LMG and no shield or concussion grenades. I'm happy to hear any feedback on this idea.
I hate that Light Assault seems the least useful, but I'd say it needs an update, not removed. My biggest beef with the class is they don't have anything that aids other players directly besides maybe C4ing a target or surprising a few guys. Medic heals/revives/restores shields, Engineer can lay ammo, Infiltrator can hack and use motion sensors to everyone's benefit, but LA doesn't really have anything like this to help other teammates. HA I guess doesn't either, but at least he can lead a room rush with his shield, and deter or destroy air and vehicles to an extent with his RL. To me, LA is the solo guy who maybe thins the enemy a little but not much else. Granted you could do something pretty heroic with the C4, but that's mostly all that comes to mind for me. Maybe I'm biased since it is my least played class by far. LA is honestly my least favorite icon to see next to a squadmate's name because I know they can't contribute much to the squad's staying power.
As someone who has over 700 hours played as light assault and is involved in the competive scene I can tell you that when people say that light assaults "aren't valuable to team play" and "don't contribute anything" couldn't be more wrong.
I have an idea. How about a grenade packed with hundreds of miniature light assaults? Seems like a pretty good alternative. You would just toss it into a crowd, and then it just suddenly explodes into a swarm of light assaults.
Seems revelant. That's OPMOD Tactical Beverage Deployment Unit with tactical handle, red dot reflex sights and tactical flashlight.
LA is the best thing to happen to Planetside 2, period, lack of tools and wonky special greandes notwithstanding.
Unless you want to turn PS2 into Tribes Ascend by giving everyone LA jetpacks, then the single use jetpack won't really effect the game too much unless they give you about 2x the power than the LA jetpacks do, as you wouldn't be able to get anywhere before having to resupply, negating the whole purpose.
There is a purpose to LA's, to make infantry afraid of going under trees. And they're decently advantaged inside of biolabs and on towers. Hell I'd say most buildings with more than 1 floor LA's can be very fun and viable killing machines. Of course killing doesn't seal the deal, since you can only kill your enemies back to their sunderer, but unless you have a crossbow with explosive darts you're not going to have enough ordinance to kill the sunderer unless you have teammates around. A good squad should probably have 1 LA (leading for beacon placement), 1 Infiltrator (for dart spam or sensor placement), 3 heavies, 3 medics, 2 engineers and 2 maxes. The LA would go to a high place, drop a beacon, find a perch in a tree or atop some other structure (or tower stomp), and spend a lot of time in out of reach places looking at the map as he squad leads. This isn't to say a stalker cloak infiltrator can't also fulfill this role, it's just the LA will probably do it much better because they can get places that other classes either cannot, or will not be able to quickly reach. On flat parts of the map and on hillsides LA can be replaced by heavy or infiltrator though, so we're basically banned from Esamir and parts of indar for this reason. There's no point in being out in the open with jump jets. Also they do no good in a room with a low ceiling or at the tops of stairs, which is where most of the control consoles are located. The main disadvantage of the LA is the fact that we rely on our terrain, and the terrain just doesn't provide what we need at times. This results in the class under-performing at killing infantry. Certainly there are some circumstances where we can do an equal amount or more damage because of positioning, but this doesn't make up for the times when circumstances are not in our favor.
