Light Assault- Most self-entitled group of players ever?

Light Assault's my favourite class. I don't think there's owt wrong with it.

Then again, the only class I think's flawed is Engineer, and that's because it's the defacto pilot class.

Imo there should be an actual Pilot class; and you can't pilot a vehicle without it. Then to repair your vehicle you should have to find an Engineer, just like with a MAX.

Once upon a time I'd have said give Heavy Assault ARs, but then the devs essentially created heavy ARs, like the NS-15S. Don't know why; would've been easier just to give them access to ARs, but whatever.

I have almost no experience with LA (Pretty sure I've played the class for less than 2 hours combined, and most of that is because you default to LA after you die in a MAX), so I won't pretend to know how effective or not effective they are from a gameplay standpoint.

What I WILL say is that I'm almost certain that I've died more to LA players than to any other class in the game. I'm generally very good at predicting where the ground-pounding enemies will be coming from and where they're likely to be hiding out, but a creative LA will get the drop on me every time. From an outside perspective, they seem like a perfectly viable combat class.

I DO think that, as a class, they're far too dependent on consumables though. If anything, this is what hurts them most. Give them one more decent advantage that doesn't require infantry resources and I think they'll be in good shape.

The main part of this game is taking capture points. In a coordinated squad, without sunderer nearby, LA can´t play his magic card: mobility. If you die outside of the structures, you can´t be rezzed. You can use: squad deploy and if it´s still up, the spawn beacon. Both will get you out of the game for 20 seconds (until you are full operational). Heavies, Maxes, Engies, infis and especially medics benefit all from playing close to each other.

Our squad that has some really good LA´s, simply cannot afford a LA. 1 Infi for darts to see incomes (since the flashnerf), 1-2 engies, rest heavies and medics is our standard loadout if we need to capture something without respawn possibilities.

LA for defending or for harassing behind enemy lines while in a large battle with sunderers to spawn from, is great and fun. But for coordinated squadbased captures and holding points they are simply not viable because their strength is not playing within the range of a group. Still they have their use on the battlefield, but a squadbased utility really would be appriciated (maybe give them also a recon dart or as someone said: a onetime rope?).

QFT

I don't like that they INSIST on being good at everything at once. During the whole C4 debate they reminded me of ESF pilots when rocketpods got nerfed. They didn't seem to get that one class with one loadout isn't supposed to be the best at everything.

This is what I'm saying, and I play LA a good bit. I can't imagine how someone who doesn't play the class feels about them

To hear them tell it, C4 is the only useful thing the Light Assault has. Because the ability to fly around with an automatic shotgun just isn't "good enough" for some people. Never underestimate the power of mobility. When you can jetpack up to be behind enemy lines, that's power.

I don't even look at their class forums anymore because it consists of threads about guns (which don't interest me), threads about how to use C4 (which are full of people that don't like players like me), and threads about how UP the class is.

The idea that the class isn't good for anything if it's not carrying C4 is dumb.

What a LA does a SMG infiltrator can always do better.
Spotting? Shoot an arrow in a wall instead of being sniperbait on a roof
Trapping? Set mines instead of having to manually detonate the load and be without weapon
Flanking? Invisible -> Silent weapon -> Invisible. Compared to JJ sounds -> radar blip from shotgun -> slow bail

LA is incredibly fun to play (hurr hurr, now I'm in a window!) but it's by no means a great class. It's like using an AV heavy instead of an AV turret. Fast and fun, but you're essentially doing everyone a disfavor by not picking the slower and more boring alternative.

I think it's an awesome class. That said, I always felt the combination of supreme mobility and C4 was what made C4 so overpowered. I saw far too many tower battles (Indar Dig Site comes to mind) where sieges would come to a rumbling halt simply because it was pretty easy for LA's to jump from above, fly onto invading sunderers and blow them up. Don't get me wrong, I did the whole C4 from above thing too, but if anything that only proved to me how ridiculously easy it was.

LA aren't good at everything at once. That HA with the best AI/AV/AA out of all ground classes. C4 is probably 1/3 of the overall effectiveness of LA. Mobility is great and a major boon in smaller fights for sure. However to use it to it's fullest you have to put yourself in very risky situations. On top of this you lack the firepower to compete head-on with the most prevalent class in the game and once spotted die pretty easily.

It's hard to flank when spotting is so easy/spammable and there are people everywhere and to be honest, you aren't going to have a major impact against any organize squad. With 100% accuracy on the targets body. A VS Serpent LA can't kill 2 NW5 Resist heavies in 1 clip. It takes 16 rounds to get through their 2272 EHP. If they die? Easily rezzed in a second.

I can see how you may feel that way. However, you yourself point out that you (1) have not played LA until only recently and (2) have not put that many hours into LA.

Take a look at the numbers. Maybe they have changed since I last looked at them (admittedly I have lost some interest in PS2 the last several months) but from Beta through May the LA was the second least played class and second least scoring class- only behind the infiltrator. If what you are saying is true then one would expect more people to play LA and those people to do a bit better- when I last looked at the numbers the majority of playtime (over 50%) was spent as either HA or Engineer and it was easy to see why as these two classes outscored LA on average by 25-35%. Now, I'm not saying that these numbers say anything definitive but they do suggest that LA (at least for the majority of the game) have neither been favored by the players nor dominating the battle field.

That said, I do have to agree that LA is, at least for me, by far the most fun class to play in PS2. In part, I think this is because it cuts down significantly on the downtime you spend moving from place to place (for good measure I always run with Adrenaline Pump).

However, you also have to remember that LA is the only class without a tool. LA has an ability, the jetpack, but no ability. Now, when we look at the other classes what do we see? We see the HA has a rocket launcher (a selection of launchers actually) and the power of these cannot be underestimated, Medic has the revive gun and again you cannot underestimate the effect of this on the game (let alone cert gain), Engineers have a whole bag of tricks (infinite ammo and infinite infinite ammo turrets) along with the repair gun making them the de facto vehicle jockeys, then you have Infiltrator who admittedly was at the bottom of the barrel with the recon dart as a tool but since they changed how radar on a vehicle works these are becoming much more valuable (oh, also alongside the cloak they can also hack). LA has a jetpack and is restricted from many of the best automatics in the game.

Now, to be clear, I am not saying that LA is a worthless class to play by any means (why would I spend the vast majority of my time as LA if I did?) but I do think that your critique is missing something. Also, you do not remember when they initially changed the jump jet sound- before being tamed back down a little this literally would give me a headache after playing for an hour or so and is a big part of why I started to gravitate away from the game.

Some specifics. Lets talk about COF and how poorly this is implemented in the case of flying. Let me begin by saying that I 100% agree that fighting back while airborn should place you at a significant disadvantage. That being said, if you look at how you are put at a disadvantage it is laughable. Instead of a recoil modifier (that would both (a) make sense realistically and (b) still provide a significant disadvantage to fighting while flying) they use a COF modifier. What this means is that your bullets will leave the barrel at relatively extreme and random angles, thus meaning that not only is your ability to fight back while flying seriously diminished but it is diminished in such a way that no matter how much you would like to get better or practice it is pointless because the modifier removes all skill. Let alone that the effect simply looks ridiculous and breaks immersion (how exactly does being airborn affect the properties of the weapon itself and not the person's ability to control the weapon?).

No offense but reading your post made it sound as though there are all these amazing places where only a LA can get to in battle and frankly that is not very accurate. Yes, you can get in the trees, yes you can get on buildings and yes you can fly over that rock- it's just that doing so really is not some kind of game changer. Even before towers we redesigned and LAs were able to get into places other classes could only get to with a drop pod it was pretty easy to counter a LA (or even a group of them) on the top of the tower- mostly because many of the great places for a LA also mean that you cannot really move without being in a terrible position. Please describe some of 90% of places you describe as being great places for LAs that no other class can get to because maybe I have just become complacent and no longer have my eyes peeled for these.

I agree that many of the players (LA included of course) either are or can come off as self-entitled but honestly I feel like you are not providing for a very balanced discussion here. For me, it sounds like you are saying that the ability to fly for brief periods of time (and thus neuter your ability to fight back while you are airborn) is way better than (1) the combo of LMGs, overshields, concussion grenades and rocket launchers, (2) the combo of infinite ammo, infinite infinite ammo turrets (both AI and AV), mines, vehicle repair cert sponge, (3) the combo of revive/heal tool cert sponge, AOE revive, self-revive and assault rifles, and (4) the combo of OHK sniper rifles, invisibility, portable radar (also a bit of a cert sponge in certain conditions), proximity mines and invisible flashes. I think I would have to disagree and I would imagine that many of the metrics collected by SOE would probably agree with me. Remember, everyone except infiltrators can equip C4- it is true that flying+C4 increases the utility of C4 but not only does it seem like a stretch to say this is what makes LA so great but if that is true then LA is just a gimmick one trick poney. Do not forget that anytime you are in position that some other class can get to then you are hands down the weakest player on the field.

IMO, LA is the best class but not from a performance perspective only an enjoyment perspective and we pay for this enjoyment quite dearly. That is not to say that LA is broken by any means but if you look at the LA class discussion on nerfs then you will realize many of these, while perhaps miniscule, do add up and either only negatively affect the LA class or affect them to a greater extent than other classes. For example, completely or partially closing the windows to reduce explosive spam also meant that LAs could no longer get into those windows- no other class could care about getting in those windows and therefore mostly rejoiced at the changes. You are right, however, that some of these so-called nerfs are a little overblown but still there is usually something there if you have played LA enough to care about the class. Now, on Esamir they have added all these walls and so you will see a lot more people playing LA- except that playing LA just to get over a silly big wall (usually getting killed in the process since there is exactly 0 cover there) does not a class make. I am about as dedicated to LA as one can get but yesterday I played infiltrator almost exclusively while we were at the Octagon. Why? Because packing up to or over the wall when there is any sizeable force is a worthless and utterly suicidal act compared to being invisible, shooting recon darts at the wall (thus both displaying the inner defenses and soaking up cheap XP) and sniping the LAs too green to realize it is usually pointless trying use your ability in that kind of a situation.

Carbines actually deal more DPS than comparable LMGs, usually. I rarely lose a head-on fight with a Heavy Assault because I aim for the head (and I use the VX6-7, so reloading isn't an issue for me).

Nailed it.

I know they do more dps and I definitely kill my fair share of HA. Good HA however are a very nasty force to reckon with. More dps is great and so is headshots but they can get headshots too and if they have resist shield up, their ttk is lower than yours and they don't need to worry about running out of ammo if there's more than one enemy. I will have to get the VX6-7 next and see if it's an improvement over the ammo eating serpent.

Hahahahaha

Boy, am I glad your three days of experience are here to set me straight.

The VX6-7's magazine is the same (I think) but its reload is worlds better. It takes some getting used to, but you can actually reload in combat and not face certain doom.

ah so many fools who just don't understand what LA brings to the table support wise,

We are killers, skirmishers & disrupters. We don't just solo play we appear where the enemy least suspect and ambush groups wiping them out or killing that all important medic or engineer so ground forces can move up, we hit them in the back so they are caught in crossfires, we cause panic.

Last night just as a for instance, TR were trying to take an outpost from the NC, they had us locked down on the outside of the base and our advance was being thrown back every time, in steps lil old me with my LA, I skirt the base and attack the point by myself, kill the 5 guards and capture the point, the NC panic and pull off 20 defenders (I counted) to retake the point not knowing it's just 1 badly hurt LA with limited ammo. Suddenly the TR outside the base find themselves able to advance on weakened defense line and swarm in taking the advantage and initiative.

1 LA right place, right time, right tactic = victory for that faction,

So don't even try to tell me LA ain't worth their weight in Auraxium.

LA is my least played class and there was a period when I played it almost exclusively on one of my NC toons then I went back to medic after a while, drfter JJ was great between GU11 and GU13. The class is missing something but can't think of what it is.

LA HAS FRIGGIN JETPACKS!! JETPACKS!!!!!
How about we all agree to disagree?

Hate to say this, but... If you don't want to get noticed, the shotgun should not be your choice of weapon. You can't compare a shotgun LA to an SMG Infiltrator. What you should really be comparing is a silenced CQC Carbine LA to a silenced SMG Infiltrator, and the LA is arguably better at everything except radar. C4 is WAY better at killing things than mines are.

By the way if you're complaining about the LA after playing the LA....you don't know how to play LA....period....Whenever I play with my outfit the "LA shock trooper super awesome ninja assassin squad commandos" literally tear apart the enemy rear. Flank, BOOM!!, disappear. They don't even know what hit them.

Oh and this is coming from a guy who plays HA and Medic. When I see those jetpacks it makes me wanna play LA. But I've invested so much in my other two classes I can't do it.