Heavy Assault, defend thyselves

Actually there was one game that didn't do it that way. Battlefield: Vietnam. The almighty M60+LAW combo. You can google search "M60 LAW" and still read about what a disaster it was. And this was like a decade ago.

It was quickly changed in a patch because that's all anyone used.

Heavy Assault rocket launchers should be moved to the primary slot. You get either an LMG or a rocket launcher, not both.

A 'charge up' timer on the shield as well. The shield shouldn't be an instant flip-on-I-win button. If I get the jump on you, I should be able to kill you 100% of the time before you can flip that shield on. If the Heavy Assault is for ASSAULT then they can turn the shield on before they run into a room to kill everyone. They aren't Heavy Defense.

SOE was going to nerf it but changed their minds for some reason, probably because of all the whining they'd have to deal with.

We had some issues like this when Stalker Cloak first came long. I gave up thinking SOE would ever consider the shields affect on ambushes or flanking in general and just learned to work around it. I wont deny its annoying though.

There are two responses to my post saying that where people are in fact defending it and saying it's designed to be overpowered.

I'll bet I can guess what your most-played class is.

Link your character or it didnt happen

TBH unless you're an ultra bad, ones sidearm is more effective against infantry than ones rocket launcher.

"Launcher kills" is the only thing stopping me from glowing in the dark, they're painfully bad.

I've posted this more than a few times, but hey why not.

The heavy assault has three things that set it apart from normal infantry.

The "I win" shield that is popular to wine about, a rocket launcher, and high mag size LMG's.

First the I win shield - Every 45 seconds the heavy assault gets to soak up an extra 600 ish points of damage. This equates to 3-6 bullets usually, depending on the damage tier.

The Combat Medic has an AoE heal or shield device that can restore HP to an entire squad at a much faster rate than 600 HP every 45 seconds. They can also switch to their med tool to provide an infinite amount of healing and revives to any and all infantry targets.

The Engineer carries an infinite number of ammo packs and turrets that they can deploy one at a time. They also have an infinite amount of repair potential with the repair too that is only affected by overheat. The ammo pack can essentially provide infinite ammo to an entire platoon if they keep moving around.

The infiltrator between darts and the senor stick can provide map knowledge of the enemies' movements to the entire empire within their effective range.

Now, beings of lesser intelligence will look at the heavy shield and say "BUT HE BEAT ME IN THE 1V1 SO OP" but those with common sense will see the massive potential the other classes bring on a much wider scale than a simple extra HP boost to themselves for a limited amount of time to a limited amount of damage. From said potential, they will realize that squad composition bears some consideration and that one might only need a few medics, an engineer and maybe 1 infil, filling the rest of the spots with heavies and MAXes. (Basically that more people should be playing heavy)

As far as the LMG goes, you have larger magazines at the cost of less accuracy through inferior hipfire and larger recoil values. Additionally the highest damage tier of LMG's is only a middle tier carbines and AR's are concerned. Combine all of that with a mag size to reload speed balancing act, and you have plenty of trade offs for that larger magazine size.

Rocket Launchers are the tool for HA's, they are generally slow moving projectiles that can 1 shot infantry on direct hit, 2 shot maxes, and plink away at tanks unless they can get behind them. The OHKO on infantry is pretty lame, but with a very slow reload, slow projectile, and slow equip time it is made slightly less lame. I don't think anyone will complain about the RL's damage to anything else.

*Presses F to deploy overshield*

*unloads entire magazine, dies. Comes to forums to complain about it*

Its great when people play a ton of HA because it means they aren't spending their time being a useful class

FLAG!
Shame on you! What happened to being the MBT-loving Forumsider here?

P.S. But you have a point

*Gets rejected by the devs, as they don't care about what's (Quote 'n' quote) broken.*

Whoever said I liked it?
It was stated more as a fact, really.

HA: "Sir?"
Engy: "Yes, Private F*ckoff, what's your question."
HA: "Sir, what if I round a corner with my rocket launcher out, and there's, like, a MAX and two Light Assault in that room. I shoot the MAX, right?"
Engy: "What?"
HA: "The MAX. With my rocket launcher. Because it's the higher priority target."
Engy: "I don't...wha..are you ********, Private?"
HA: "But, sir, the MAX..."
Engy: "Don't 'but' me, Private. Do you think I made it all the way to BR 100 to not know how to play this game?"
HA: "I'm not insinuating..."
Engy: "I rolled VS before it was cool. Shut up and shoot the closest LA!"
HA: "With my rocket launcher?"
Engy: "No, Private, with your Fuzzy Cannon of Candy."
HA: "But I don't have--"
Engy: "That was sarcasm! Shoot the closest LA! Damn the MAX!"
HA: "But, priorities..."
Engy: "Private, don't you want to have a K/D so high all the women characters will instantly want to have sex with you over?"
HA: "You mean those aren't just men fondling their own characters, sir?"
Engy: "Beside the point, Private. Do you or do you not want one-hit kills?"
HA: "Yes, sir! I love one-hit kills!"
Engy: "Then shoot the nearest LA with your rocket launcher."
Some time later...
HA: "Sir, I one-hit killed the nearest LA, but the MAX killed me and he's still in the room and we don't have the point. Should I go back and shoot the MAX this time?"
Engy: "Did you get the kill?"
HA: "Uh, yeah, I killed the LA, like you said."
Engy: "Then go back and shoot the next closest LA with your rocket launcher again!"
HA: "Won't he just respawn in 8 seconds and rejoin the point?"
Engy: "Irrelevant. The K/D is the only thing that matters, Private."
Some more time later...
HA: "Sir, I've killed three LA, a medic and a Infiltrator with my rocket launcher, but the MAX is still in the room!"
Engy: "Look around the corner again."
HA: "I'm looking, sir."
Engy: "What do you see?"
HA: "Uh, another LA, a medic, oh!, and the MAX still! Do I shoot the MAX this time?"
Engy: "Is he closest?"
HA: "No..."
Engy: "Is he the easiest target?"
HA: "No..."
Engy: "Will you one-shot him and feel good about yourself afterwards?"
HA: "Well, yeah, if I kill the MAX and take the point, sure--"
Engy: "Have you learned nothing, Private F*ckoff!"
HA: "But--"
Engy: "Do you love your absorption shield, Private?"
HA: "Hell yes, sir!"
Engy: "Do you love Vanu?"
HA: "As a quasi-existential being whose existence may or may not be provable by the basis of science and/or logic, yes, sir!"
Engy: "Do you love your rocket launcher, Private?"
HA: "Sir, I fornicate with it nightly!"
Engy: "Good, soldier...now shoot the easiest, closest target and point capture be damned!"

The fact being that you like MBTs, or that Sunderers wreck MBTs?

Using that logic the logic of some of the people here, let's take the very first line from SOE's Infiltrator write up.

"Even though Rebirthing technology has nearly eliminated the concept of fear on Auraxis, the Infiltrator remains one of the few things soldiers still dread"

And yet no one fears an infiltrator at all because well "IWINOVERSHIELD"

That was the best story ever...
I'm in tears.

it says they dred it, and yeah people ***** about them flanking people all the time. so.....

One of those "please nerf the class I dont play much and die a lot to" threads.

The "I win" shield is no use against a sniper, another rocket, C4, Frags, anyone with a decent shotgun and ofc if you die before you get a chance to even press the activation key. ie A lot.

The I Win shield is a big glow in the dark "please shoot me" sign and also make you move slower which is a death sentence in PS2. Also the lockon range of launchers is about as far as I can actually throw it and when you do get a lock after eleventy billion seconds the rocket just flies straight into terrain. Also its great knowing you are the "anti-vehicle/max guy" when an LA can one shot both with C4 as can an engineer with AT mines. I guess the RL kind of annoys vehicles a bit which is about it.

Stop using hyperbole and nonsense to justify nerfing a class - just play an HA - they arent locked you know. My current main is mainly an infiltrator - I OHK Heavy Assaults just fine thanks.

The only thing my Lancer one-shots are Flashes, after a three second charge-up. The other launchers, well I have a distaste for the launcher primary crowd, but they're usually taking a big risk in reload/weapon swap times should they err in aim.

The Orion? I'd hardly call its magazine endless (although the Polaris felt like it was, and my Extended Magazine Lasher was built for spammage). My Betelgeuse's "magazine", yeah I can see an argument for calling it endless.

The shield? It's only a couple of bullets' worth of damage, even in the best case scenario (And with most automatic weapons' fire rates, equates to milliseconds. Certainly far less than combined latency and reaction times). And frankly a good portion of the time I die with a full shield capacitor, although that may be more of a personal failing than an equipment failing.

Say that again next time you're running across a field and suddenly drop dead.