Too many heavies?

Honestly planetside is a love hate relationship for me, I really enjoy playing it with friends, and it's got great replay value, but it's recently been leaving a bad taste on my mouth because of the sheer amount of heavy assaults I see on the opposing teams. Sometimes I just feel like they get too much. I mean some of the best weapons, a rocket launcher, and a god-shield that basically guarantees winning any one on one... like I see where the idea came from, but that class is such a meta, there's basically no reason to use any other class if you just want to get points (which is how the majority of players are). I really don't get how the devs could just leave something so unbalanced like that in the game for such a long time, but it really grinds my gears and honestly for that reason alone, I find myself starting to hate playing anymore

It would be nice to see a greater variety of classes and player type, in my opinion.

I can only speak for myself but I make far, far more points playing engie or medic. The occasional attraction of playing HA is the firepower and the additional shield (though I have to say, I prefer LA to HA when I just want to beat up on someone)

Redeploy and spam HA is the way to defend.

You are clueless.

There are barely any more Heavy Assaults than Light Assaults. HAs are the most used class, followed closely by LAs, followed by Engies, followed by Medics and Infiltrators. Two combat-primary classes get the most usage, with the frontliner getting slightly more than the flanker, what is the problem?

Lol

HAs have the worst automatic weapons in the game. Their only upside over Carbines/ARs is magsize. Gun for gun, if the damage/RoF model matches, an LMG is going to have much worse hipfire, worse ADS accuracy, worse recoil, way worse reload, with the only upside being larger magsize. Plus HAs don't have access to 800+ RoF/143 damage weapons, which are by far the strongest ones in this game. Oh and their only .75 ADS movement speed weapon that's not an all-class SMG is NS-15M which has **** DPS.

It is a tool. LAs get their own rocket rifle, Infiltrators have portable maphacks, Medics get the revive/heal gun and Engineers get their turrets.

No, it doesn't guarantee anything. Adrenaline/NMG give 450 health, Resist gives ~600 when at full health. This is worth maybe ~0.2-0.3 seconds of getting shot at(that's without headshots). Comparatively LA jetpacks and Infiltrator cloak have easy positional advantage which can give upwards of a second or more ofbeing able to freely shoot the enemy without getting shot at. Not to mention the shields give you 50% slowdown, making it incredibly easy to headshot heavies even if you have potato aim, negating their health advantage.

Look, if HA is soooo good, then you would perform muuuch better with HA than any other class. What's your character, let us see your statistics.

Actually, you don't need to show us. Yours are as bad with HA as with any other class.

Infiltrator and LA have much better toolsets for killing a lot of players in a short amount of time, due to positional advantage and better weapons. Medic and Engi have better weapons and grind certs through repairs/heals/ammo/revives very quickly. Plus Medic is a pseudo HA due to his healing aura. HA has two advantages over other classes: he can survive longer in the thick of things and he can deal with MAXes and vehicles without wasting nanites. Both of these can be leveraged by good, skilled players to become a killing machine, through good aim and positioning alleviating HAs advantages. But their same skills can often be put to better use on a different class. For newbies(like you), ALL HA means is that the newbie will survive half a second longer before dying.

Get good or get out.

not again!
this topic pops up every few months XD
my answer is always the same, heavies are the soldier class, they should naturally make up the main bulk of the attack force.
yes, they are better in general combat situations than other infantry, and that is good, because it is their purpose!
if you want to be a soldier focused on combat, play heavy! enlist today!

i also like to point out that heavies used to be far far tougher, other than maxes no class has been nerfed quite as much as heavies,
the shields used to be tougher, nanoweave used to be better and they both STACKED.

I win plenty of one on ones with HA when I'm playing other classes. I lose plenty of one on ones to non HA when I'm playing HA.

The 'I win' shield argument is so boring now. If you're dying too much to HA, it's L2P issue.

... i don´t have problems with heavies .... i have a problem with fudging snipers ...
like realy can we have something like thermals for scopes (but as rail attachment, that way you trade forwardgrip or laser accuracy)
or a heartbeatsensor?

I think the situation as it stands right now is pretty good.
Heavies make up the core of a fighting force with Infiltrators and Light Assaults being situational and Medics and Engies support everyone.

Though, I do want them to watch how being rewarded XP for ground vehicle damage alters things when that goes in. That could shift the class balance.

Personally I think the ground-vehicle XP thingy is a) way overdue, in that air vehicles have been doing it for ages; and b) still largely pointless, because the whole rest of the system (directives, aurax's etc.) is all based around kills rather than any form of contribution. When they change THAT, I'll agree that it'll make a difference.

PersonallyI find I get better results and more points as Engineer.
The versatility of the Engineer is priceless: AI turret, AV turret, Spitfire, Deployable Cover, Claymores, AV mines, Archer, shotgun, battle rifle, smg, carbine, can drop ammo and repair.... Why the hell should I play HA?

In PS1 there were no classes just light and heavy armor and you carried whatever you certed and cloakers could only carry pistols

TLDR version: "They used to be more OP so it's okay that they are only somewhat OP now"

I get your point, but it would be better to rather buff the other classes on par than nerf HA down by removing it's current functionality.

Biggest reason that I think HA is spammed so much is base design. Most bases are tight shooting gauntlets and don't simply have enough space for an infiltrator or relevant vantage points for light assaults. It always boils down to the small objective room(or sometimes more like a boxing ring) where you want to bring as much HP and firepower as possible.

Another good reason for HA spam is the rapid spawn-objective cycle undermining any clever plots and routes, making them less efficient than straight up bursting on objective as a HA since you'll be back up and on the objective shortly after you die

I don't have answers to what exactly HA's rivaling combat classes need, but it could be just small things at a time until they'll some day feel like they can give HA a run for it's money

It's that ******* shield. I'd be completely fine if heavies made up 90% of infantry, if it weren't for that stupid shield. Give them more health, better guns, a better shield, better armor... I don't really care, but an "I win" button in a competitive shooter just isn't right. Hit that button when you enter the fight and the heavy wins, get shot in the back, hit the button, and equal skill, the heavy wins, after a goddamn bullet to the back of the cranium! That whole mechanic should go.

This one always gets me. "get good or get out" normally followed by "Daybreak, do something about high ping players" who's servers were closed because too many people left the game.

As much as the heavy shield is annoying, it's sorta that class's PITA (pain in the ***) saving grace.
Given without it, the number of weapons that can one-shot the heavy, or simply head-shot faster, or just simply kill faster than an LMG generally starts to rack up a heavy toll on them actually being useful as front-line infantry beyond Cannon Fodder.

Fight smarter not harder.

Just my opinion really. Obviously.

- As for why there's so many;
Easiest class to play, wide range of options so you have some manner of handling a rapidly evolving situation, and plenty of bullets.
Also starts with max rank nanoweave, making it easier for New players, to survive an encounter.

People can only have fun as I define it.

There are quite a few ways to deal with snipers, like counter-sniping (most snipers I see stand still and tend to stay in one spot), pulling vehicles (they can do nothing about it), ambushing them in CQC, flanking from unexpected angles with LA, SMG infils can destroy them very quickly and easily... they are an annoyance and can frustrate you, but if you put some effort into it, they can be fairly easy to counter.

The only difficult sniper to counter is a frequently cloaking mobile sniper, but as a guy who does it himself it does take a good amount of skill and practice to do well with, it's pretty hard to move non-stop and shoot accurately.



As for the topic, I don't find HAs to be the be-all end-all class, my only problem with them is that there's no reason to ever use something other than Resist shield since NMG/Adrenaline shield got nerfed because even at half health, resist gives you roughly the same health as NMG/Adren at the same time, is much better at blocking headshot damage and is much better when you're at full health. Also, MSW-R, Orion/Betelgeuse and Anchor feel like they're much more used and seem to be the only LMGs people use if they aren't grinding for the LMG directive or just playing around with a different gun.

There's an air deterrence directive which includes RL hits. I hope they add one for damaging ground vehicles too.............

you can´t get vehicles or tanks into every base and even then you risk to attract every AV infantry there is (aswell as other vehicles) ... not realy a good choice
countersniping with what? battlerifles? every other weapon gets outclassed because of a snipers superior bulletvelocitiy, less drop off and higher alphadmg .. also for me running infill just to counter infill is simply boring ..
LA´s is realy the current best option because of mobility ..
but Medic, Engineer and HA? Medics and engineers aside from maybe crossbowdarts have no means to spot infils from range and as said their weapons are outclassed
HA´s using shields does nothing but is even more a deathsenctence when you get HS´ed because you slow yourself down limiting your chance to avoid being hit ..
even with (or rather especialy) pumpaction slugshotguns you won´t reliably hit infills for a onehitkill HS on range ...
and you know what? that´s ok that is not my problem .. to me it´s a problem of too often being just unable to aproach them as a non infil/non LA class when it comes to infantrycombat ..
even if you roughly know the infils position chances are he knows you are comming for him and he still will outrange you without you haveing a chance to get any shots on him ..
currently the only "counter"opion for these classes are darklights which are useless at range and worse a "pls shoot me" sign