Heavy shield nerf suggestion

Okay, so there is one massive thing that is overlooked while everyone join the nerf bandwagon and cry about everything.

I totally agree that NMG/Adrenaline shield can be used as the I-Win button no matter when it was activated, because effectively, once its active you get additional health and your regular shields or health are currently irrelevant.
There is whole different story with the resist shield. While it is most versatile and best shield for people with high KPH, it is certainly not the I-Win button that NMG/Adrenaline is. Basically, if you someone have a jump on you, turning on resist shield will do not do much, because unlike the NMG it is only effective if your HP and shields are full, but more often than not you will be damaged.
Now here is the example:
Someone sneaked on you from behind, aimed and started firing:
NMG: At the the point of time when your regular shields depleted you reacted and turned on the NMG, while turning around. You have a good chance to kill your ambusher.
Resist: At the the point of time when your regular shields depleted you reacted and turned on the Resist shield, but most times as soon as you turn around you will be dead. There is also one more thing that limits Resist shields usefulness, the latency. The bigger the delay the later your shield will be activated on your ambusher's screen and the less effective HP you will get out of it, whereas for NMG latency doesnt mean anything except when its almost too late.

Now, here is another point. Anyone who excessively played HA would've noticed increased number of consumed med kits in resist shield loadout, because more often than not people will deplete your shields and scratch or severely damage your health while resist shield is ON, hence increase in the med kit consumption.
However, if you play with the NMG/Adrenaline, your medkits are rarely used, because most enemies will only deplete your overshield and regular shield leaving health untouched.
This is one of the not so obvious downsides of resist shield.

All said, I suggest that resist shield will not be changed in any way, otherwise with the ramp up time it will be completely useless.

The problem is any significant delay on the NMG/Ad shields (as the are mooting) largely makes them pointless compared to the resist shield, because neither works that well if you HAVE to pre-activate them.

Conversely if they redesign them to work more along the lines of pre-activated shields it then becomes difficult to see the place of the resist shield.

To be honest SOE seems to be painting themselves into a corner with this issue.

I don't think you understand the difference between Resit and NMG...

NMG blocks damage completely, and still will after the delay.
This shield is better if there are no medics around and you want to carry c4.
This is your lone wolf shield of choice.

Resist you take damage, you only block a % of the damage, so your HP bar is usually missing some.
This shield is better if there are medics around or if you are carrying resto kits.
Medics with heal nades can make a Resit HA godlike.. it just takes teamwork.

They will still be their own playstyle.

All they want to do is make it so you can't use the hit markers from behind you as the beginning of your situational awareness..

I understand perfectly.

It depends on the delay on activation (which is what the Devs are talking about adding to NMG and AD shields).

If you're already dead by the time the shield activates then the shield becomes pointless; conversely if the activation delay isn't long enough for someone to kill you then the change becomes pointless.

You don't have to "preactivate" them.

If you go face to face with someone, just activate the NMG as soon as you shoot.
Your shields will take half the damage and NMG will take the following bullets.


It's to make sure heavies can't just activate the shield when caught off guard, which happens A LOT.
Where it should take 7 bullets to kill a HA, anyone with decent reaction times will start running in circles, activate the shield and keep running. Sure you'll still kill the guy, but your mag is now empty and you've wasted time shooting a single dude.


Moreover, it's not a "delay".
It's a "ramp up", which means that your shield will instantly start absorbing damage, but is less efficient at "tanking" bullets when already under fire. In other words, if you activate the shield early in the firefight, nothing changes, if you activate your shield late, there's a chance you'll die.

NMG still gives you an additional lifebar.
Activating resist shield with low health is much less efficient as it roughly doubles your total HP when activated



Though I wouldn't mind if they added a new shield called "Panic Mesh Generator" with no delay but a low shield value.

I do not see how this change will not make some of the shield choices useless.

If they add a delay to all, then all except resist will be useless, because they consume the shield without taking damage.This is even more true, if resist does not get the delay.

In any case, this is a fundamental change to the gameplay after more than a year! This is something that should not be done.

In any case I am saving up certs to quickly switch to another playstyle / shield / class, whatever.

At work atm, but they are not gone nertf resist shield hu?

I think resist shield is perfectly fine atm, i really hope they dont touch it.

Obviously if that gets nerfed, the NC MAX shield needs to be nerfed as well, because.. well.. NC.

stop abusing the term I-win button.

An "I-win button" is right clicking the map, and instantly killing everything within a 100 foot radius. The heavy shield gives you something like 20% more hitpoints, so instead of dying in 1.0 seconds you die in 1.2 seconds. And you sacrifice doubling rockets, or quadrouping how many grenades you can carry. So big whoop, it isn't an I-win button.

Not to mention you G L O W!!!! Geez, talk about anti-stealth mentality at SOE.

how about a "less Micromanagement" shield, automatically comes on when you're hit.

Then your using it as an instant win button, and that is what they are trying to fix with the ramp up.
They don't want you to be able to be like oh, I'm being shot, press the button.

You do realize that resist shield just drains away when you turn it on too right?
You have a limited time to make use of it, 6-10sec depending on rank...

NMG has 650HP when full and lasts 15secs, so it bleeds 43HP per seconds it is on..
If they put a 1 sec ramp up on NMG, and you will still have 600more HP than any other class!

The number of times a HA was able to use the shield as an I win button against me when I got the jump on them (and I wasn't playing HA, of course), amounts to the grand total of ZERO. It's not the fault of the HA if you can't aim.

Heavy Assault is fine, and the shield doesn't need changing.

I would be okay with delay activation if they removed the drain over time (except for the resist shield). If they want to encourage activating it before combat, they shouldn't punish the player for doing so at the same time.
Plus it already has a downside when active: movement speed. It usually doesn't come into play since people just flick the shield as soon as the damage starts coming in and then return fire, but if it has to be activated beforehand then the slower heavies will have to be more cautious because they can't easily get out of a sticky situation by running.

Again though, THAT IS THE POINT; if the delay is long enough that you will die before the shield comes up, then the NMG/Ad shield becomes pointless (as the resist shield is still much better for pre-activation)......... unless they change the NMG/Ad shields to make them better for pre-activation, in which case then the resist shield likely becomes pointless.

If they don't put a delay on NMG/Ad shields long enough to kill the HA then they have changed nothing.





To me SOE course here can only end with either the NMG/Ad shields being useless (and everyone just using the resist shield) or the resist sheild being the worst of the 3 and therefore no one using it.

Which doesn't seem like progress from the current situation.

What they orginally mentioned was a "delay", what you are talking about here is different.

Although it sounds more like making the NMG/Ad shield a resist hybrid shield.

Can you please link to where they have further explained their intentions with the HA shields?

I can't understand why they don't just decrease the values of the shields and be done with it (if they consider them to be overpowered, something I don't agree with, especially when you're nerfing the class that has the best fighting chance against the overpowered BS that are the MAXes)

Yeah that would seem to be a solution that leaves the shields as is (against each other), but lowers the overall power of them (assuming that is their intention).

That could cause all kinds of problems, especially if you are trying to run away and are getting pinged by stray gunfire; your shield would pop and you'd go from sprint to slug.

Maybe they could just do what they did to ZOE, make is so once you hit it your stuck with it for the duration.