[Suggestion] Upgrade the LA and why

A problem with C4 deaths is how they'll usually get you when you don't realise, just bang dead, often with no warning or chance of escape or indeed mitigation (at least with mines you can run Flak or mineguard for AV).

This happens in vehicles, base turrets and just running about the place and being dropped on from above, and the reality is on a LA is is much, much, much easier to get the placement for these sort of kills than on say a HA.

Whats more on a LA even active C4 attacks against an aware target are viable (on a HA that would be suicide), it bemuses me how many LAs will jet waaaay off from base walls to try and C4 me in a Lighting (I'd never try it as a LA myself, falsely assuming everyone I meet would be like myself), they almost never get me (I run scout radar, am pretty situationally aware and a decent shot against jetting LAs), but they do get plenty of others and the fact they even try it shows how well it works (and there's the stats, of course).


I honestly believe it is this synergy of LA and C4 this has stopped any further development of the LA. Being able to carry 4x C4 would likely stop it forever, or more likely just end up with nerfs resulting in the LA not even being able to carry 2x C4 (or C4 being massively nerfed so it would hit for much, much less).

Some good ideas in here..... some other terrible ones

a quick buff to the LA's equipment choice or lack there of beyond jetpack, how about a personal shield diffuser to allow him access to places he isn't supposed to be regular, amp stations main room and other special outposts, of course Spawns/Tele/Gen room shields are off limits.

Rereading the post, I stumbled on this gem. The epitome of bias!
I have situation A and situation B.
A and B have exactly the same prerequisites, a long time of playing the LA. In the end, A says the C4 is OP, B says it is fine. Which one is right? Without bias or extra information, you cannot determine who is right.
You say that people have their own favourites against anything they don't like, which is exactly what you show here. You dislike the C4, you are biased against it. I'm biased for it, so we would be in a locked discussion.

I can however give some more insight.
A LA needs to cover a lot of ground before his goal, a short ranged explosive attack. Being spotted nearly always means fail, which means a death. The moment of flying is one of the most vulnerable places you will ever be, as you are highly visible and don't have a lot of manoeuvring or cover options.
Our targets thus are people who aren't paying attention and have few friendlies to cover them.
Although you also said that you cannot use the next argument, I think it is valid. When you make certain mistakes, you deserve to be killed. Ger flanked? You deserve the high change to get killed. Are you in a small corner in cover? You deserve a grenade to smoke you out. Are you standing still in a tank with nearly no friendlies, no radar and no gunner? Death to high explosives is your chosen way to go, if a tank or HA does not do it first.
And again, buffing the LA might reduce the C4 fairies, as they will finally have more viable alternatives to the C4.

Is radar jamming on the table? Because I think with the amount of motion tracking stuff in the game we could use some of that.

It could just cause the enemy blips on your minimap to vanish. Or maybe disable the players' minimap entirely? There is also the option of it spamming fake radar signatures like HAWKEN or Supreme Commander does it.

Eh, there is nothing SOE can do, that would make LA a better assault class, and not anger the public.

Speaking as someone that plays Light Assault almost exclusively; I'd love to see the class get something more interesting than C-4. However even with C-4 we're the least useful and versatile class. Simply put we need an option beyond those ******* bricks. I'd like to see battle rifles as an option but that might not be the best idea. Beyond that some kind of unique tool would be awesome, like radar jamming or the ability to EMP vehicles and knock out their guns for a little while.

The only problem with that is it would have to have some incredible drawbacks/limitations to basically completely negate a whole raft certed abilities. Especially if it basically made things like Infs abilities totally defeatable.... as then what would be the point of them?

Maybe very, very localised (small as or smaller than medic shield) or a very small area around the LA (but having to give up C4 or something) might work.

Decoying probably has more scope, although I don't think they've ever got decoy grenades to work properly have they?

I feel like the easiest thing to do is just to give the LA a speed boost. I mean, he carries less weight, so there for, should be able to run faster.

About C4 argument. LA should absolutely get more than 2 bricks. This is just plain obvious to me and i cant really see any good argument against it even though i play a lot of tanks.

In fact, its just my opinion but i even think heavy/medics only should be able to carry 1 brick (for personal MAX-defense).

So Light Assault and engineers -> 4 bricks
Heavy/Medic - 1 brick
Infil - unsure.....maaaaaybe 1 brick? probably not :}



Random other idea:
Just a gimmick maybe - but what if LA could instakill ppl with a crushing meele-attack if they land on top of other players from some height? Like....not if they slowly jetpack down on top of you, but if they literally jump and FALL right down from a rooftop and manage to land on your head. Could be pretty cool

Can there be more to the LA? Not just "Oh he has jumpjets and an improved adrenalin shot". Maybe goggles to improve the LA's sight at difficult visual situations, like night or in a smoke cloud. Or an EMP pistol, with 2 pellets in the mag and 6 in reserve that EMP the guy you are shooting. Switching to another weapon will take time, so it is more effective at team situations. A short time radar jamming darts with half the size of the respective recon darts. Smoke screens for the jetpack, to augment it's distraction combined with his movement, and to give him something to do when in no flight situations. A one time deployable spawn pad, that is destroyed when shot or when spawned at, but also leaving your utility slot empty this time you spawn. This to augment it's ability to come back close to the fight without medics, which they severely lack. A weak AV and AI grenade launcher with maybe some effects to increase chaos. Improved spotting, that outlines q spotted targets even behind smoke or obstacles, to be more individual and present than the infiltrator with spotting. Make people not able to q spot in smoke, unless they have appropriate scopes. EMP anti tank/anti infantry mines, that stop the vehicles momentarily/knock down HUD and shields. Gel grenades that slow everything down that walks onto the effected area, until they reach an unaffected area, lasts a couple of seconds to improve mobility of the LA. Possibly make LA immune to the effect (spider leg oil or something on the boots). Small speedboosts, temporary reload boost, quicker knife skills, special LA sidearms that have higher DPS and better short range reliablity than normal sidearms.
Thats about 20 idea's, but lets only look at boosting their speed XD.
Edit: Yeah I included the speed boosts in my rant to get more diversity than speed boosts. I wrote this really quickly ok?

I'm serious. There are lots of things we can add the the LA that is distinct, augments the LA strenghts, fits in the LA description and is not overpowered. Going for only one game mechanic change might be nice, but lots of this other stuff will give less trouble (no warping issues, possibly less complaints in general) and are much more appreciated in their roles, giving more diversity to the LA, and possibly less C4 fairies. One of the things that is complained most about is the C4, and while I think that is just some people who are over-sensitive complaining, I would like to see good alternatives that would immediately tone down the complaints.

I like some of the ideas, and others, not so much. I tend to play LA exclusively and, for me, I'd much rather carry Medkits than C-4. I still think that it should have been Infiltrators that got access to C-4....but that's only because of my days in PS1 running around cloaked and racking up kills with Boomers.

I like the increased base speed / maneuverability of both the LA and Infiltrator. I like the akimbo idea, but only for pistols. Dual wielding SMGs would be insanely overpowered. I'd also like to see something akin to radar jamming....maybe something we could cert in to (replacing Adrenaline Boost) that gives off a "radar jamming" EMP pulse every 10 seconds or something.

As an LA, I don't think we need any boosts that are going to make us overpowered.....but I do think we could use some utility to make it a bit more interesting.

I say this in every Light Assault thread but I think that if they buff anything about the class, they need to address a couple of things.

LAs need empire-specific jetpack sounds a la cloaking, and C4 needs to be seriously looked at. I've seen plenty of people saying that C4 should be a LA-specific utility, and I'm in the opposite camp. It synergizes too well with the ability to fly.

Beyond that the class needs nothing but utility buffs. Give them an alternate ability for use in indoor combat, give them a utility slot for specialized grenades, or goggles, or some sort of spotting device, or my personal favorite, a radar jammer. There's a lot of viable ideas that could work, but I think jetpacks are too powerful to let them go without noise level/C4 being addressed.

Light Assault doesn't need any buffs, maybe just fix the special grenades to where they actually work. Carbines are amazing and jump jets are good for almost every situation. When I play as a light assault I don't have issues killing any other class or even multiple dudes at once. Head up fights aren't a problem and when you use flanking, it's even easier.

Just make sure you have an escape route and play close to your exits. Mobility is very important in this game and LA is king of mobility. Use the vertical axis to your advantage. Jump jet to up to scout areas and jet to keep the enemy guessing where you are while constantly poking at their forces from every angle. Just don't think of it as if you have to sit on a roof top and snipe at people or you're too weak to fight because no class in this game is weak once you learn to use your abilities properly. HP doesn't matter as much as people's inability to stop making excuses, and to work around class weaknesses by learning to utilize their strengths.

Edit: As far as teamwork goes, there will always be a demand for flanking in this game. Shoot every medic you see and if you can't kill a HA at range them make sure you weaken them enough that they can't re-peak choke points and doorways so that your forces can close in and finish them off. Spotting is also pretty pro, since knowing really is 1/2 the battle.

A cool idea I'd like to see is a new jetpack, one that works a lot like the Thruster pack from Halo 4. It would trade almost all vertical thrust for a short 1-3 meter burst in whichever direction key is being held down. It would trade the flanking capabilities of the LA for some pretty intense 1v1 power!

I think the LA in particular doesn't exactly need buffs, but it does need attention and some love from the devs. Currently the LA is simply an empty class, you've got carbines/SMGs and Shotguns, C4, and two reasonably similar jetpack abilities, and some lackluster grenades. The class is also rife with a large variety of bugs and animation problems, and to top it off we don't even have a tool.

Definitely agree that LA could use some more attention. The best abilities would be those that amp up their support capabilities, since it gives the class more of a role.

It's become clear over time that it would've worked better for Light Assault to be the recon class, and Infiltrators the stealth class:

• Light Assault (recon)
  • has access to recon darts and sensors.
  • spotting lasts twice as long.
  • base movement speed increased.
• Infiltrator (concealment)
  • has access to jammer darts and jammers. These create black holes in enemy radar coverage. (Infils would no longer have recon darts or sensors.)
  • EMP grenade functionality improved significantly.
    • prevents use of tools (medkit/repair)
    • prevents use of MAX abilities
    • disables vehicles (25% move speed and can't fire.)
    • if MAXes ever get balanced, concussion grenades should no longer concuss MAXes (because they're a suit of damn power armor) and EMP grenades should (because they're a suit of damn power armor.)
  • EMP should also disable shields for the entire duration, not allow them to immediately recharge (it's possible this bug has been fixed for enemies, but certainly when I'm hit with a friendly EMP my shields immediately begin recharging after being knocked to 0.)

I don't think the LA should become another support class. It's called the Light Assault after all. I'd like to see it become the mobile but less powerful version of the LA that it's name suggests. If the LA gets some more combat ability (I'd trade C4 for that!) through a grenade launcher or something, then I think it would be used in squads the same way Heavy Assaults are, instead of being the class platoon leaders abuse for their C4 and otherwise quietly tolerating them.

In the same vein, I'd love to see jammers for Infiltrators along with their recon tools, since that would definitely help their own combat ability and 'infiltration'.

That's an awful bad trade for infiltrators.

Well the fundamental problem with that is it doesn't really provide value to the squad that way. Personally I'd rather see a reason to take every single class for indoor point-hold scenarios, and right now when you're an organized squad you want to run almost no light assaults at all because they do very little that other classes can't do better -- and those other classes will stick with the team.

True, the LA isn't very effective indoors (though I do think a sweet 'strafe pack' ability could change this; the pack could have a short 1-3 meter burst in whichever direction key is being held down), but it has the potential to root out entrenched enemies, engie nests, vehicles, etc. If we gave it the tools to capitalize further on it's flanking power, I think that squads would use it for that, as it's supposed to. Just like squads use HA for brutish battling, as per the class, engies for fortification and repairs, medics for healing, the LA would be used for the class's value, instead of a particular tool.

This is why I think the infiltrator also needs attention, because squads only use that for it's tool, instead of it's stealth, I don't want to see the update for the LA have all of it's use put into a tool, I'd like to see it's use come from it's flanking.