[Brainstorm] Making MAX Emergency Repair good

Ahahahaha. It is terrible Isn't it.

That's why it is up for debate and a suggestion, feel free to make edits or dismiss it. Though I'd disagree. There needs to be a drawback of some sort if you want a really useful emergency repair ability.

That could work. It was just a first iteration and I didn't want to make it too OP. How about we scratch the extra damage taken part?

Emergency Repair Ver. 2
Puts the MAX in a self-repair cycle. The MAX cannot move or fire while in this state and is more susceptible to damage (Takes 20% more damage? Purpose is to prevent using it mid combat.) as it draws energy from the armor systems The MAX moves more slowly during this effect as it draws energy from the movement systems.

The MAX repairs X% (based on rank) damage per second while in this state up to Y% (based on rank) health for 10 seconds. Has a cooldown of Z (based on rank) seconds after activation.

Numbers suggestion, up to debate.
X - 1%/2%/3%/5%/7%
(Effective repair per rank 10%/20%/30%/50%/70% - Adjusted to compensate for less drawbacks, I felt a 100% heal every 40 seconds was too much. 70% is still a good chunk of repair over 10 seconds every 40 seconds. We need to keep game balance in mind here.)
Y - 60%/70%/80%/90%/100%
Z - 60/55/50/45/40 second cooldown
Certs - 30/50/100/500/1000

Would play a sort of "powered down" animation and the MAX would pulse a dim version of the repair flashing every few seconds. The MAX could still look around, but would be unable to fire and their arms and body wouldn't move while looking they would be completely motionless during the process.

The ability would end when the maximum repair for the ability is reached (depends on the rank), or it could be ended early if the player tried to fire their weapon or clicked the ability again but this wouldn't reset the cooldown and the player would need to wait the full duration to use it again.

A drawback maybe. Not two or three, let alone all the incredibly crippling ones from "EVERY" Faction, for one single benefit (Yes I forgot to mention the inability to shoot in my previous post)
We're talking about buffing Emergency Repair, not increasing its uselessness

You're spreading the benefits too thin by bloating the amount of ranks it has.
Edit: Oh yeah. I'm a scatterbrain and I forgot to say: Nice improvement on the idea though

But emergency repair already exists - it's when a MAX runs off in search of a friendly Engineer. I don't need a module to do this.

I guess I just don't understand how my suggestions are make it more useless. In its current state it is useless. It's a flat 20% repair and all upgrading it does is drop 3 seconds from it's 60 second cooldown. I am increasing the repair and decreasing the cooldown even more. You need to put ranks in it so people get a benefit for upgrading it just simply giving the full benefit with one rank defeats the purpose of progression.

^^ This. Everybody just come to me for the repairs and ammo so I can get a ton of certs out of you. ;p

What version 1 did what gives those "buffs" by turning the MAX into a literal piñata (taking more dmg, inability to move, inability to even fight back). This part of my post focused on the v1 input.

You're hurting the fresh out of the box experience, even at Version 2, by making it worse than it already is at earlier ranks

And you need to keep game progression in mind. We can't simply give a max ranked thing for 1 cert. There needs to be steps and investment. It's part of Planetside 2.

The second rank of it is literally the same thing as its current iteration, minus the speed reduction. However, the current version of the one I proposed is substantially better at rank 3 (which is only 100 certs). It offers better repair and cooldown over the current version. If you want ER to be a lot better then we need to have some sort of drawback to it. We can't simply give a MAX a 100% self repair every 40 seconds with no drawback because it is too powerful, you have to keep game balance in mind. Which is why there is a speed reduction.

Is the ZOE an unpopular choice among VS players? I don't know, I play VS but I never play max on any faction really.

Right now, the only use I found for ER is when I have been running around and even jumping up and down in front of a spawn tube constantly spamming V3 until I eventually gave up and took ER and slowly healed myself at which point I just wished this game wasn't basically heavyside. I once even had a sole engineer repairing in a biolab fight. One. We were like 28-48 people there. One Engy. Let that sink in.

it's good that the removal of charge led to more ES ability uses, but it's sad that Daybreak still doesn't know what to do with Maxes at all. Charge was implemented because the ES abilities were lackluster. Then they removed it again and didn't hand out a viable alternative. I agree that charge was a boring ability, but at least it was useful.

The only way I see ER being useful is if it were to keep repairing until full health. Let the cooldown be huge but at least it would provide a bit of help in form of a small bit of durability.

The only good point of ZOE is the bonus in movespeed, as the increase dmg taken renders it useless against heavies who will rekt the MAX in the blink of an eye, playing peek-a-boo with their RL.

Charge was there before the ES abilities were implemented.

Oh, really? My bad, then. I must have gotten my fact wrong somehow.

Other than maybe the MAX Punch (if you feel like playing around with this). The VS max doesn't have anything that hits as hard (and with the same range) as a decimator or a C4 brick so the attack gain/defense loss hurts the MAX more than it benefits from.
Not to mention the cert lines increase the "time you can have it activated" before you go on cooldown, but by the very way this thing works, you don't really want to have it on for long (let alone all the time). So I see little to no reason for investing into it.
Perhaps someone can tell me any benefits it still has (if it ever did).

Not saying it should maxed out from the get-go. Only that it shouldn't be nerfed from a new player perspective simply because it doesn't need to. It's bad enough as it is.

How about: (Source; Your V2 post)
From this:
Numbers suggestion, up to debate.
X - 1%/2%/3%/5%/7%
(Effective repair per rank 10%/20%/30%/50%/70% - Adjusted to compensate for less drawbacks, I felt a 100% heal every 40 seconds was too much. 70% is still a good chunk of repair over 10 seconds every 40 seconds. We need to keep game balance in mind here.)
Y - 60%/70%/80%/90%/100%
Z - 60/55/50/45/40 second cooldown
Certs - 30/50/100/500/1000

To this:
Numbers suggestion, up to debate.
X - 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%
(Effective repair per rank 10%/20%/30%/40%/50%)
Z - 60/55/50/45/40 second cooldown
Certs - 30/Default/150/400/1000

Disclaimer: Not saying these values are what they should be. If anything I'd be happy to see you find any flaws in them

I'd put it at a flat up to 70% health for all ranks, the ranking up only reducing the cool down time; giving players with few certs as much of a heal with those who put in 1000, just less often. I'd also make it stop immediately upon taking damage from any source (or being repaired perhaps too, its 'emergency repair' after all, no longer an emergency if an engie is next to you repairing you).

If viewed from this perspective I'm inclined to say around 50% (subject to discussion) flat for all ranks is a bit more moderate. The reason is while the change would favor the MAX philosophy of being bullet sponges, 70% might give off the feeling that they are, instead, immortal in most cases.

The exact % is open for discussion as I absolutely don't mind further input. But so far, the idea remains that ER should be healing more, faster or either.

When I said "up to 70%" I meant "it will heal you from any level health below 70%, up to 70%", so if you're at 10%, you get a big heal, if at 65% much less so, and at 70% or over it simply won't activate. My thought being again, that if you are at 70% or over, there's not really any 'emergency' warranting a repair. 70% being about the point at which you can only be insta killed by very few sources of damage (C4, AT mine, maybe others, but not that many).

Not sure if that was really clear, so just clarifying.

Again opinion, but the general consensus is that it's current incarnation sucks, a lot.