Does anyone else feel that resist heavy is the best heavy?

Imo it just feels like the other two shields are just sub par.

Depends entirely on the situation. resist is infinitely more sustainable, especially with advanced shield capacitor - and in a defensive situation where you can pull back in safety as needed for a few seconds to reset you can be very active and in peak condition most of the time. Other shields have way more downtime after taking significant damage.

That said - resist shields will never work as well as panic-buttons - so for roaming agressive heavies that are at much higher risk of being suddenly and unexpectedly shot from an unguarded angle it will always have an edge on the resist shield.

resist is really good though, and probably underappreciated for it's potential. I chalk that up mostly to the fact that you it requires more from the player to use resist well. Nanite and adrenaline are easy - hit the button as soon as you take damage. resist requires much more awareness and gamesense, so even if it can often be more powerful a lot of people probably don't get as good results from it. Also - new players get trained to use the nanite shield from the start and probably don't feel like re-learning a new way to play once they have already got the hang of it.

-Stigma

While Resist is definitely the most versatile, sustainable and overall effective of the three, it does not make the other two entirely obsolete.
For example, Resist shield works great with Advanced Shield Capacitor to minimize your downtime between firefights, but has virtually no benefit when matched with Nanoweave or Flak armor, whereas NMG and Adrenaline Shield both add up with Nanoweave and Flak to produce a larger 'effective health pool' against that specific type of damage than Resist can.

For example ( if my math is right ) a full health Resist shield heavy has 1666 effective health.
A NMG + Nanoweave heavy, however, has a total of 1812 effective health versus small arms.
A NMG + Flak heavy has a total of 2900 effective health versus Area effect damage, just in case you want to laugh at lolpodders.

An additional benefit of NMG and Adrenaline shields over Resist is that they can be activated at any time to gain their full benefit, as you'll get the +450 HP no matter what ( unless the energy is drained ) whereas Resist shield, if it's activated after you've already taken damage, you lose out on its effectiveness because the damage resistance applies to less health.

So, to sum it up, Resist is the most versatile and sustainable for the situationally aware Heavy, but NMG and Adrenaline shield offer more effectiveness versus specific damage types and are also more forgiving to use.

Resist shield also benefits from trickery with medkits or even restoration kits when used beforehand

Resist + Adv shield caps + health needle junky. That's the only way to play HA these days. The other two shields are not useless, they're still a straight up buff to your survivability but they are still inferior to the resist shield.

The main problem with resist vs NMG is the headshot factor.

Even though you might have 1800 HP with NW+NMG, that doesn't matter when your opponent can chain headshots like breathing.

Another unintentional benefit of Resist is that headshots don't deal enough damage to trigger the hard damage marker, making aiming for the head more difficult.

Beyond that, it's mostly the medkit cheese.

Resist is pretty good for general purpose use if you are situationally aware and have the initiative.

But there is nothing quite as awesome as going on a roll with Adrenaline Shield. Mowing down a group of enemies with an Ex-Mag MCG and Adrenaline Shield is amazing. Ive never quite got that sort of rush out of Resist.

This, thats why I use Resist with nanoweave still. It may not stack, but holy ****, using medkits correctly with that combo makes you able to stay alive and sustain alot of damage in situations with more enemies focused on you, much longer than the other two. Run out of shield? ow health with enemies drawing near? 25% nanoweave still works lol, fire back and alow a few seconds of charge to build up for your shield, supplement with medkits,

Then again my play style(and has been since beta) is mostly a front line slayer role pushing front lines with allies, not roaming, so I like to run both to be able to stay on the front line and have little downtime.

When I use the Adrenaline + Nanoweave combo, I usually do it with an SMG, so I can hipfire strafe and make it very hard to aim for my head. It's limited in effective range but can still be quite fun. I imagine it works well with shotguns too.

Resist + Nano can also help you take a little more damage if you get ambushed and get shot before you can get the Shield up, since Nano is always in effect.


Another benefit of Resist in general is that it's now the only HA shield that lets you tank one BASR round to the head as long as you're near full health. So no getting OHK'd by enemy snipers. The other two Shields drop below 1400 EHP for the head almost as soon as you active them (I think the activation cost is still 50).

No, the activation cost was removed and drain speed was reduced immensely, so you start at 1450 and probably stay above 1400 for a couple seconds.

Some heavies have even used it to deplete me out of my clip as stalker cloaker by jumping around and spamming. It's super annoying, but I've been able to counter it in close quarters by using knife for extra DPS. I don't see medkit spamming as a catastrophic issue in PS2, but I wouldn't see any harm in adding a cooldown either.
Most usual argument against it is "just learn to headshoot", but I don't think it's good tactic against targets who can use all planetside's wonky movement mechanics for evasion(including sprint zig-zagging and just jumping around)

Are you sure about that? The patch notes that list the changes mention nothing about removing the activation cost, and the cost was still there on PTS a couple of days before the changes went live.

Now I'm curious. I'll have to test it out when I get home tonight.

My PTS testing revealed that there was no activation cost. If that has changed, let me know.

The resist might be the most sustainable but it's the least versatile.

The standard and adrenalin are versatile: They can be used defensively when you get ambushed, they can be used when you start an attack.
Resist can't be used as effectively when you are ambushed or when you are already damaged, it is only similarly as effective as the standard and adrenalin when you know the attack is coming and you are still at full health. So it has a far more narrow amount of scenario's where you can use it, thus it's less versatile.

Nice to see a civil discussion for a change!
I'm a fan of adrenaline shield personally. Mainly because it suits my aggressive playstyle, but I feel that the shields are pretty well balanced. Each caters to a different playstyle without completely changing the core playstyle of the heavy class itself.

You mean you play a Heavy? I never would've guessed!

sadly I am that guy, Ever heard of serpentine? Move in a zig zag pattern at a random tempo? Do that every time you're about to die and medkit medkit medkit, and be surprised how it works with just about any class.

It's also why I use the immortal title with my name, Heavy, so it's Immortal Heavy lol. I can just imagine the times when I have like 20 people shooting at me and all they see is a HA zig zagging jumping and spinning around and spamming medkits and still somehow living named "Immortal Heavy" lmao.

Well, yes. but I play alot of MAX, infiltrator, and engineer too. Fun fact, I am excused from any accusations of cheese while playing heavy actually as well. The serpentine spinny jump medkit spam defense is something I have always done lol

This is another thing that I hate a lot, they should make it impossible to keep the momentum while making so drastic turns. I can't miss a single shot with mag-scatter, so I sometimes have to use multiple seconds just to fix my aim on the target if they goof around like this

Just tested it out on Live. The activation cost is still there.

wait resist shield no longer stacks with nanoweave? hasnt nanoweave been nerfed enough that was basically its only use...