the shield is fine as it is. infiltrators have cloak for evasion, light assaults have jets, medics have the self heal, engies have the turret as cover, max has better armor. the heavy needs a shield, even if it has a rocket launcher: heavy assault =/= glass cannon; it needs some form of protection, provided with the shield, which has it's strengths AND weaknesses (bleeding energy even if not hit when it's on, and slower movement - which pretty much means once you activate it, you're all in with no good option to retreat). don't whine because you come face to face with a heavy and lose, use your brain if you have one and make him fight in the conditions that favor you
there shield is the only thing that makes taking rooms full of people something possible. i play HA with the shield. sub machine gun LA's and infiltrators with sub machine guns kill heavys that pop there shield every time. its near impossible to beat a infiltrator that has a sub machine gun. its possible but 95% of the time they get the kill if they strafe with a sub machine gun. i only won a handful of times where i poped my shield and shot them in the face. but they were not strafing. if a nerf is added there speed needs to be increased. they are like a giant light everybody can shoot a heavy with his shield up. when they are teamed by 2 people they lose. i can get as many kills with LA as i do with heavy. the LA's shotgun jump from roof and knife is op. a experienced one that knows what he is doing with knife the heavy before he knows what hit him.
Your arguments are well thought through, but you lose me when you say other class abilities don't help in FPS. You know full well that a good LA will use his abilities to attack from unconventional angles and take people out before they realise what is going on. And that is fully part of the game. This is not a 'who is best at head shots' game. It's trying to be a full combat simulator. I've had these arguments before with people who think everything appart from head shot skill should be removed. No HA, no MAX, no shotguns, no AP mine etc. I use all those things. I like em. I'm nearly 40 and have **** all eye hand co-ordination compared to when a was 18. I play this game and love it. You may say this justifies your argument. I say I think we want different games. Don't get me wrong I agree with your view that you should look to improve and not just look for some sort of iWin button. I'm always looking to improve. I play against two of the top 10 players on Cobalt, on the test server, doing server smash training. I get owned a lot, but here and there I am able to stop playing their game, and start playing mine. but I want to work out how to beat something that seemed OP. Not just call for its removal so I can win... Appart from Harrasholes. neft those (!&@.,:€#$*
I don't have a bone to pick with HA shields, they don't last forever, just like Vanguard shields on a MBT. Time the fire, get a good position and they die like any other class. Last night I was picking off heavy's with a bolt gun on my infiltrator with no issue.
Video or it didn't happen. Especially if you have infiltrator with smg or sniper rifle. (don't tell me you don't have EMP)
Happened many many times to me as SMG infiltrator, scout rifle infiltrator, Light Assault. No video evidence is needed really, all you need to do is compare real world TTK to human reaction time.
you mean HA is easy mode..everyone says its the most used class of infantry used largest mass goes for the easiest path. and i think your capslock is stuck...
I'm amazed this is even being disscused l - I've played as every class since the tech test and have never had an issue with Heavy Assault in terms of balance. Remember the shield is not without drawbacks - as soon as it is activated, their movement speed is heavily reduced. Also, at night, activating the shield makes you glow up like a Christmas tree - a sure fire way to send you back to the spawn room.
As a player of whatever class the squad/situation calls for I don't find the HA to be some kind of unstoppable tank. Now, I'm not a great toe-to-toe fighter so I would have thought that, if the shield truly is an IWIN button, it would significantly improve my chances in such engagements compared to when I am playing another class (barring MAX) On the one hand I do feel that when under concentrated fire (breaching a room) then the shields let me survive long enough to kill maybe one or two people and if I am very lucky get off a CONC grenade to help the guys following me push into the room. (Then again I tend to run more 'utility' suit slots on my other classes. Grenade bando typically. So my HA loadouts tend to be 'tougher' by nature.) On the other hand when I'm up against one or two enemies in other circumstances I often feel that my Shield doesnt' do diddly squat. Even when I've pre-popped my shield I seem to get taken down just as quickly as without. Parrtly this could be my own incompetence but lag or detection issues could also be to blame could they not? Other classes get their particular abilites while HA are the general infantrymen that should make up the majority of a fighting force. I think abilites like the Jetpack, for example, are just as strong as the shield as they give much more mobility in the Z-axis than other classes can hope for. In a support role a Medic or Engineer can be force multiplier. As an aside I find that an AR is pretty good at killing most other classes.
Yeah personally this whole discussion makes no sense. The reason why HA is so effective is not the shiled. Not just the shield, at least. It's a combination of good weapons, rocket launchers, shield, concussion grenades. But hey, they are called HEAVY assault. The problem is some players pretend to engage a HA 1vs1, face to face like in the old cowboys duels, and get a kill. That's not how it works.
I've been playing a lot of LA lately and I noticed that the HA is one of the things to keep the class (LA) in check. What I mean by that is the extra TTK from the shield gives buys enough time for the enemy team to deal with me as opposed to me entirely wiping out a small group of players. A nerf to the HA shield would mean medics would start to become the new HA in zergs, MAXs would run rampant with the decrease in the class that can primarily deal with them, and in smaller fights LAs would ruin peoples day by flanking and wiping out small squads before they can react. It is actually amazing how balanced SOE has the game in that regard.
Every class but the infil has access to C4, which is a great way to deal with MAXs. LAs won't "wipe out small squads" if the small squad bothers to use infil or, I don't know, look around a little bit instead of bolting straight from one thing to the other. If you have 4-5 people so focused on what they are doing that 1 person can kill them all at once then you have 4-5 really bad people, especially since the LA would have to reload in that time frame.
I lose more MAXs to AV grenades and RLs than C4 (probably because I use flak)... both of those are for the HA. For the LA, the amount of extra health on a HA to chew through can mean the difference between a dead LA or him blasting an extra medic (or the engineer repairing a MAX).
HA's shield is fine as it is. Sometimes it can be annoying (can't 2-shot them with knife), but remember HA are the frontline soldier : they should have an advantage face to face against every other class except the MAX. If you want to kill heavy, surprise them or play a fighter class (HA, LA, MAX).
