100 shields is a minor drawback and I feel it's balanced. LA get a minor drawback in the way they can't use ARs.
LA can use shotguns. I don't see any drawback if they can't use ARs. Infi can use 3 types of weapons. LA can use 3 types of weapons.
Infil is a harder and harder class as you get closer to the enemy... and its because of the 100 less health and because the nature of the good infiltrator is infiltrating thus being surrounded by enemies slightly away from main battle and allies. People who say that infil is easy mode they either snipe or not infiltrating.
Infiltrator is almost 3 different class: - Sniper - Hunter - Stalker It's stupid to generalize the case of sniper on Hunters and Stalkers: they are a whole different kind of character.
I personally think infiltrators are fine as is. The HP is fine and the cloak is fine. When I am advancing toward a group I cannot be seen. When I am near the group I am slightly visible even more so if the enemy is actively looking for me. This is how it should be. Any more lack of visibility and I would completely wreck people and that wouldn't be a challenge. The key is to be unexpected. Smart players know an infiltrator is likely to appear and look for them. Be unexpected. I think this is where most people fail with the class. The cloak is not a crutch. It is a tool to use to temporarily skew the enemy's vision. There are several indicators which identify an infiltrator in the area. 1. Your motion spotter. 2. Enemy motion detection 3. Cloak sound 4. People dying mysteriously. 5. AI mines 6. Hacked terminals 7. Objectives triggering in sequence. Capping points and moving to cap the next point. Recapping points immediately. 8. EMP grenades. 9. You are stupid enough to use a decoy grenade. So don't fool yourself into thinking people are too stupid to know you are there. You need to evade. I play infiltrator 70% of the time. SMG infiltrator about 50% of that time. When I die it's because I did something stupid like blindly sprint around corners or toward the action. Or I choose the wrong target and someone is on my flank while I am killing that person. The thing about the infiltrator class as CQC or midrange infantry is you cannot play aggressively without some sort of game planning and positioning. You don't get to open fire in front of people. Once your position is known you are dead unless you have an escape plan. The game becomes slower and you need to be more meticulous when planning an attack. You can't just pop a shield or fly away or limitlessly heal yourself. You have to cloak and reposition which is very difficult if you are engaging face to face with no avenue of escape. 100 kills an hour is probably not going to happen. If that's what you want then pick HA or MAX. What is more practical is a 5-6 kill streak every few minutes if you are lucky and plan accordingly. Then you escape, resupply, and come back for more. You cannot easily CQC a group solo. You have to take advantage of your teammates then use the element of surprise while they are engaging. While the enemy is shooting at your teammates you are behind them assassinating. Even if you are spotted and engaged you are still helping the team as a distraction by taking the attention off the team. This allows them to advance and finish what you started. It's very satisfying. Your job is to kill but at the same time psychologically disrupt the flow of battle. The one thing a lot of people don't realize is the subconscious threat priority is MAX>Infiltrator>everyone else (from my experience). You are going to get targeted first in most cases. You really need to be aware of this. The one tip I have that a lot of people will disagree with is to max the grenade bandolier and carry emp grenades. Forget all of that nanoweave BS. It's not going to help you. EMPing someone's shield essentially takes away half of their health before you engage. Now you can talk about squishy. Doing this to 1 or more enemies makes you extremely powerful. If you don't get the kill(s), your teammates will. Not to mention you set off AI mines, uncloak enemy infils, and destroy motion spotters/regen shields in the process. I have been getting far more kills and dying far less since I have been carrying a bunch of emp nades. Try it out. Just don't hit your teammates My infantry K/D (yeah yeah it doesn't matter) has been around 3 since I started implementing some of this logic. I started out just like anyone else dying a lot more than killing. Especially since I can't aim for isht. Still can't but now I feel much better about the class and why it is in its current state. On a side note: There is nothing more OP in this game than wraith flash anyway. It's almost unfair haha. As long as the devs don't screw with that I will never complain.
Hey midi, thank you for your post.You are completely right about the playstyle as an infiltrator. BUT for now, let us compare the playstyles from the different characters with each other. E.g. the Heavy Assault. You run around a corner, kill most of the enemies with a few shots with your LMG and if you magically have some problems with that, you just push one button and the job is done Compared with your above written post, the heavy assault seems to be just the easy mode killing machine. Also with the Medic (but not as drastically). So either the infiltrator is ok and the other characters are easier to play with, or the other characters are ok and the infiltrator is more difficult to play with. Even if I have no problems with playing as an infiltrator, or sniper, or stalker, because I like these playstyles and I managed to master them as good as possible, I still think that playing with other characters in the game is even easier. Thats just my 2 cents, but jeah....
pre-patch infiltrators on low-graphics / potato settings were just really really dumb to fight in low-pop fights without darts / dildoes everywhere. If they ever decide to make the cloak actually work, you'll understand why it's OK to have 100 less health when you have the ability to magically appear in front of someone point-blank with an smg already pointed to his head.
Exactly. 100 less health essentially extends the effective ranges of everyone else's weapons. The question is, it that necessary and, if so, what do we get in return? All of the classes trade one ability for another so that line of discussion is making no sense. Agreed. As I said elsewhere: "Design decisions: 1) All standard (non-MAX) classes have the same stats 2) Classes have varied stats 3) Make infiltrator worse, without compensation, because we're worried the cloak class will be OP (was this ever actually tested and proven?) 100 health doesn't make a massive difference, but it's also an illogical limit that doesn't really change gameplay. If they're going to bother, I'd much rather a more dynamic approach: Light classes, Infil and LA, +5% sprint speed, 900 health. Adrenaline pump remains as an additional option. Medium classes, Medic and Engineer, 1000 health, adrenaline pump is an option. HA, no change. SOE's decision to give Medic the adrenaline pump makes no sense as long as it can compete with the fastest LA or Infil build. Nor is it fair to single out the Medic over the Engineer as support classes. So this would resolve the lack of speed advantage for flanking classes and the health imbalance."
I believe it happened in the same patch that removed Infiltrator shotguns, but I could be wrong—that was before I started playing.
From what I heard it was true, they had shotguns (remember shotguns were a lot stronger back then) and destroyed everyone. Then they reduced the health and then removed their ability to use shotguns.... and then many months later gave them SMGs.
I don't get what's so amazing about SMGs. If they were that good other classes would use them a lot too, but they don't. Aparently their toys are simply better. SMGs are nothing to write home about. Uh oh, theoretical DPS something something... yeah, too bad you literally need to shove the barrel up the enemy *** to make any use of it, which is easier said than done against semi-competent people who have ears, stick together and know how to drop darts/spotters. When that happens you become food. If you get noticed in the midrange you get outgunned by everything, I-win-shields laugh in your face and in the cqc your SMG is trivially overriden by any LA with a shotgun (eg towers are full of them).
The 100 less HP is fine. But I think we should get a faster base sprint/walk/move speed. Base walk/move speed can be a bit more subtle, but the base sprint speed should be more than 10%. The adrenaline pump gives 10% and it's so subtle, it's useless. If you think you're moving that much faster, it's just in your head.
they didn't, they made it optional with the sprint boost suit slot thing. it's just too much of a sacrifice to take over other suit slots thought... they should let the sprint boost, ASC, and ammo belt suit slots be worth half a slot so you can take 2 out of those 3 slots together at the same time....
Because I can go anywhere with stalker cloak, sit in the middle of the enemy backfield with a pistol, and proceed to get 15+ kill streaks before redeploying. Bonus points for sending the lone enemy engineer a tell to drop ammo, wait for him to comply, and then kill him and take said ammo to go back out and do it again.
implying that bullets fired from close range are the only thing that does damage in this game..... -_-
For every other class, the 100 extra shields lets you live through 1 more bullet, which won't make a difference at all, being people don't stop firing immediately after the 5-8th bullet that is supposed to kill you. I want to know if Infiltrators can survive a direct hit from a rocket with max rank Flak Armor.
given that i roll with flak 95% of the time and happen to die to rocket primaries from time to time, my guess would be no.
I feel that Infils are partly paying the price for people who were running PCs that could not run this game with high graphics. If SOE was able to correct this issue that existed since early beta, the Infil's health would not have needed the nerf. SOE overreacted to the fact that Infils were very visible on low settings and changed it to the mess that it is today. I see the Infils so clearly on my high and ultra settings, I cannot imagine what it is like to play for people who can't see us at all.
