Heavy assault needs a serious rebalancing

This is probably the last thread anyone wants to hear but **** it.

Heres a few usage statistics.

90% of the top twenty players on the leaderboards either main heavy or have more than 20 days in it. https://www.planetside2.com/players/#!/leaderboards

LMGs are some of the best weapons in the game, theyre essentially assault rifles with double mags, effective at all ranges, and are coupled with the most broken class skill in the game.

Rocket launchers enable them to be effective at everything, with also no downsides

The overshield ability has no downsides at all that ever play a difference in anything. The only time it actually matters is when youre running and outdoors under fire. thats it. Being slightly slowed for 700 more hp (theoretically infinite with adrenaline) for only a 0.25 movement reduction, on an ability that you can turn off and on at will, doesnt change anything at all.

They are the only class in game that can reliably survive an ambush when caught pants completely down. Hell, nothing in game can as reliably survive ambushes or whats supposed to counter it. Tanks cannot survive an LA c4ing it with an ambush (assuming c4 doesnt bug, and i still think this is a bit ridiculous), libs cant survive a ninja ESF or AA ganking, no infantry class can reliably survive an ambush aside from ha, even maxes cant survive an ambush of C4 or a smart enough infiltrator with a CQCSASR and mines. There are three ambushes that will work every time on a heavy. C4, rocket primary, OHK things like shotties or grenades, even then are dependant on him not running nanoweave or flak armor. Reliably surviving situations where youre caught completely off guard by anything less than two people or something that will instagib you without them completely ******* up and only losing shields and maybe a bit of health is a completely broken mechanic.

They can surpass every single class in everything, with minimal downsides.

"But ballto, they should win and be used the most! grunt soldiers!" What about light assaults? Theyre supposed to be basic soldiers according to the lore, heavies are said to be specialized AV.

"But ballto, they should win against technicians and medics" Sure, in a head on engagement where youre either both at the same disadvantages or otherwise odds would be in your favor, but reliably surviving an ambush or a situation where their weapon outclasses yours through overshield+medkit tanking?

"But ballto i have to be able to do everything because mlg stats" (Yes, this is an argument ive heard before, obviously worded differently) This is a very poor attitude towards this particular topic. Your stat padding or wanting to be a rambo do everything in a combined arms game does not justify it being so.

"Aim for the head" Alright. VS and TR guns arent overpowered NC, aim for the head. (obviously this particular argument only applies to the nc, just thought id add it for the inevitable nc guy who will complain about nc lmgs or something. VS and TR, just use 167 damage weapons and aim for the head.)

"LOL 70% INFILTRATOR 5 AURAXED SMGS GET GUD SCRUB PLAY A REAL CLASS INFILTARD" Go away.


BR 100 KPH and KPU with starter LMGs is significantly higher than BR100 KPH and KPU with t1 smgs, stock assault rifles, carbines, and battle rifles. almost twice as much in some cases.http://ps2oraclestats.com/?stat=br100kph&weapon1=80&weapon2=78&weapon3=79

Usage stats alone should attest to how overpowered they actually are, theres a reason for 2/3 of every player playing heavy, and ill tell you that its not that theyre the biggest challenge.

I guarantee you most of the people opposing a change to heavies main heavy.

Not to put it rudely but what would be the solution? (if you posted something in there for a solution sorry i didnt read it all lol)

OR.... it could say that Heavy has the only truly acceptable TTD (time to die) for the majority of the player base..

and before you go telling me that I've played heavy more than any other class... yes... and i'm glad my personal goal of directive LMG completion was achieved. And I'm glad to break free of the class. It has, however, reminded me that the TTK in this game is borderline appalling to any new players and can be extremely frustrating to veterans.

ill admit right now any solutions i have are drastic nerfs, thats mostly class bias no matter how hard i try to be objective. Best onw i can personally think of with as little bias as possible is lowering the shield from 700 hp to 400, removing rocketlaunchers except lockons, give the dumfires to engies as a utility slot item, limit ammo able to be picked up from packs with them to a similar amount as an underbarrel, make lockons unable to dumbfire. This gives heavies very valid AI, AV, and AA while also limiting it to not be as godmode.

If I had below 15% headshot rate, I'd have problems killing people in the game as well. L2P.

Ill admit that my post is a bit ragey, never was good at wording opinions properly. Honestly, i barely care about fighting heavy assaults myself unless they survive my ambush with full green HP bar, then i get a bit ********.

My huge issue with it is the fact it is a giant crutch to 90% of the playerbase, theres nothing wrong with playing it, its a game do whatever the hell you want, good on you for your lmg goal and congrats on it, but you in that time must have learned exactly how little room to improve there actually is other than upping your HSR

I blame that on being primarily a hipfire player, when i ADS my HSR is decent enough (about 23-26% according to recurion)

also my HSR is 24%

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/Ballto#realstats

I'm not sure if you're just a new player with the idiot/bad player mentality that everything that kills you is overpowered or if you legitimately don't really understand the game.

I don't even have to see you play to know exactly what kind of player you are. You run around with an smg it seems most times, hipfiring or ADSing extremely poorly. I'm guessing you put yourself into situations where, with your poor TTK/situational awareness, you end up dying. Instead of trying to figure out how to improve, you decided to make yet another useless dick shooter cry thread about a class that has remained the same since almost the launch of the game.

Your whole rant about "aiming for the head" just shows that you are a ******* idiot, as if you can only chain headshots with 167 damage weapons. lolwut? HURRR DURRR HEADSHOTTING IN A GAME WITH A 2X HEADSHOT MULTIPLIER ON DAMAGE DRASTICALLY REDUCES TTK (INCLUDING ON HEAVY ASSAULT).

FFS, you now have a grenade that completely removes what you're complaining about but you still want to be a lazy ****ter and make another ******** thread.

TLDR: OP lazy dick shooter infiltrator main crybaby

Your IVI HSR is 13.765%. All of your SMGs are below 15%. So no, your HSR in the fights that you're whining about is not "24%". Your bolt action is skewing the overall number.

It really does you no good to link your dastats page if you have no idea how to read and comprehend it.

Did you also consider that so many people play heavy because every other person on the ground is in a chain pulled max suit with no timer and there are a million vehicle ****ters driving around looking for free 1/2 hit kills at all times?

Not exactly sure if youre serious or not.

Ive been playing since december 2013 on EU servers, came to NA when i moved.

I have been known to use an smg at times, and my accuracy is actually above average, if only by a bit, on almost all of my guns that i actually have used for more than a gold medal http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/Ballto http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/grades.php

I have learned how to improve significantly over this time, and if you read this reply

youll notice i admit my poor wording of the OP, and state my main issue with HAs stems from the inability to majorly improve, with it being the biggest crutch class in the game. A MAX Lite, if you would.

The headshot thing, youll see, was mostly a jab at NC players who ***** about their weapons being **** and then using the argument to aim for the head. The 167 model weapons on VS and TR are the closest things to NC weapons we have for play styles like that, and i was jabbing them at the same time.

Yes, EMPs now do that, as they should have, however you need to be preemptive, when you throw it youve alerted all nearby people to your presence, you have a finite amount, and youre completely vulnerable for the animation. Dont get me wrong, EMPs are a very valid and powerful tool, and i love them, but they arent without drawbacks and pretty situational. If you are going to make this argument, i will make the argument of darklights, being a weapon attachment for every class for all weapons that you can just have on indefinitely and make cloak worthless

TLDR, guy im responding to is another ****** heavy assault main who if he switched to anything but a max or tank hed probably die in ten seconds flat.

Keep telling yourself whatever you need to to make sure that you stick to your ****ter frame of mind and strive to never get better.

i say remove the shield and throw in a x10 damage multiplier so HA can ohk tanks with an lmg. (lets face it thats what their next "nerf" is going to be)

Fair enough, forgot the fact BASRs exist ***** with numbers.

If your argument is people only pull heavy to combat maxes and vehicles

http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Tank_Mines
http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/C-4
http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-Personnel_Explosives
http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-Vehicle_MANA_Turret
http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Supernova_FPC http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Titan-150_AP http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/P2-120_AP


http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Phantom_VA23 http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/KSR-35 http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Impetus (actually very effective against maxes if you can run around a lot at mid range and cover and such)

If it was exclusively anti max and anti vehicle, there are plenty of other options to do such jobs.

60k kills with a heavy

4k kills as max

2k kills at most with any other class


18 hours as any class other than heavy or max

seems to me like you dont much care for switching classes and just squat in an overshield all day.


my personal individual stats mean nothing

the stats of every player in the game showing HA has almost double the KPH and KPU of any other class in the game as well as being used significantly more does

The thing I would change is put a "shield generator" in their tool slot. Without the generator, the shield just isn't there. This would at least force them to choose between being good at AI or having some AV, rather than not at all.

I play combat engineer 95% of the time and I feel Heavies are ok. Annoying? yes sometimes when they spam med kits at longer ranges and such but still ok.

People seem to miss the big picture of heavy shield. Unless the guy is farming machine using Adrenaline shield, the shield only lasts for one encounter and regenerates for quite a long time. After that it is just a guy with a machine gun.

How to beat heavies? Be smarter than them. Use cover, flank. ( I know the argument against heavy shield is that they don't need to do stuff like this but the heavies that farm you do exactly this).

Besides, if heavy shield got nerfed, ground vehicles would be indirectly buffed. Then Ballto would QQ about tanks farming him more.

Ok, let me stop you right there.

I had a quick look at the top 10 Top Score players, whom I would say represent people playing the objective, and I could only find 1 person which had the majority of his/her playtime as a heavy. Most other were engineers, Light assaults and one medic, with around 58% playtime on their main class. The avrage playtime for heavys was actually below 15%

So I guessed you looked at the Top Kills list to make your point about Heavys being killy. Same thing there, in the top 10 I only see a single player which has the most playtime as a heavy.


So my conclusion is that they probably use the class that would perform the best in any given situation. Frontal assault - Heavy, Flanking or any fight in Hossin - Light, Vehicle battles - Engineer, Squad support - Medic, Solo or front support - infiltrator.

Why they then rack up more kills per weapon as a heavy rather than a medic is because the Medic has other tasks to perform while fighting, reviving, healing, staying out of harms way. Same thing goes for the engineer an the infiltrator is very specialized in the way they engage.
The only comparison to the heavy in killyness would be the light, which I say performs quite well in it's role as flanker/harasser, especially with its extra gadgets that can really turn a fight, Smoke grenades, a well placed C4 or Beacon.

Making a comparison in a 1v1 fight is pointless as the game is not designed for this, and in most cases it's a matter of who get the drop on who.

So in all I can't say I see anything that make the Heavy far superior to anything else in the game, it's just niched, like everything else in the game.

Put a 1-1.5 second delay on the shield, problem solved.

Originally the developers intended to add a ramp up timer before the shield would activate. I am assuming this change was lost when the company was sold.

This shows that in the past, The devs DID acknowledge that the heavies had too great of an advantage over other classes, And were looking for ways to reduce some of that advantage without removing it.

Nah, that doesn't make sense. Clearly the next nerf is to take away all guns, people can only use bubblegum, and a big bubble OHKO's everything in a 100m radius.