Right now charge reigns almost supreme for most situations. It is a huge speed boost to get in or out of the fight. It makes you essentially bail from your team in order to breach a corridor or run like a chicken. Not the most creative in my opinion albeit effective. Give aegis shield to all maxes; Reasoning is people keep asking for cover and it is already in the game except it is only available to nc. I suggest that aegis be spread to the other factions. I also suggest allowing the shield bearer to either shield bash in close quarters or fire from the hand not wearing a shield. The weapons fired on your off hand should the game calculate that your cone of fire hit the shield would take away from your energy. Only problem with this suggestion is it removes aegis as being unique. The thing about that issue is that unique is asking for weapon imbalances and op of the month. The most balanced games usually have everything available to everyone. I would even suggest that zoe and lockdown be allowed to be spread to other factions. I'd suggest the faction heavy tanks get the same treatment but it would be more difficult due to the models naturally not having the same animations as the parent tank. That should be discussed at a latter time. Faction abilities won't exist forever in war. Enemies will eventually replicate it in real life so why not in the war simulator?
I personally don't think the Aegis should be given to all factions, it would remove uniqueness and allow other factions to more easily countering it by putting theirs up too. But the ability to shoot your off-hand or shield bash, I do love that idea.
Well what I see for the concept behind maxes is they are intended to be infantry based vehicle hybrids meant to breach areas too small for tanks and too much Lock-on/Flak damage around for air. They are supposed to be team reliant front liners when setup to be anti infantry. I was thinking develop a dps upgrade for their ability and one defensive. Aegis was a good basis for candidate because the codes and bugs of it are already being tweaked out. I'm trying to be considerate of the Dev's budget aswell. In the beta for Blizzard's upcoming game Overwatch Hp based shields work fantastic for that role. If not aegis how would a tank that is meant to smash into the breach protect his allies? Two option make him a bigger threat then his allies ( which he technically is.) or a defensive pain in the butt. The defensive portion is kind of taken up by the medic who tanks so to speak by re spawning everyone around them and giving minor durability buffs. Max's are supposed to be offensive tanks but heavies can totally do better because of concussion grenades in addition to raw versatility and sustain in one load out.Heavies can accelerate themselves at longer ranges then a max while being self sufficient. Due to this mass producible front liner that is the heavy the max is pretty niche. Once it specializes it can not go back and by gearing itself for a specialty it significantly gives up at its roles against other types of enemies. (anti-air anti-armor) I come to this question is the max deserving of team based utility. I vote yes. Change it from a "god suit" to walking armory in terms of protecting its allies. It should be part of the game. I suggest make the max short ranged in anti infantry that either forces enemies to walk into a phalanx type defence (aka the maxe's support units) or a successful shock trooper. I feel like their also needs to be risk vs reward when a max uses offense. Honestly though a max in its current state isn't difficult to play. Run at people and spray at their head. I wish their was dynamic play for it. Desiring that dynamic play I felt closest to when protecting my allies with the buggy aegis shield. I felt like Zoe was great for breaching as a concept. Finally lock-down is amazing for support roles. Its DPS increase being sustained is quite nice versus large hp targets when defending locations in its current state. I will restate this; In war and shooter games not having equal tools makes imbalance.
no, each faction has something great that the other factions don't. lets take long range AV for example: you could be on VS and say "well my tank isn't as good at range AV as the other 2, true. but your faction also has the best EPIC ranged rocket launcher in the game. you could be on TR and say "sniper rocket launcher? mine can't do that!", also true. but your faction also has the best long ranged tank in the game, nothing dares stay in the open against an anchor AP prowler! you could be on NC and say "sniper tanks and sniper rocket launchers! nerf!" but your faction has the best long range max AV. so while it might seem imbalanced that one of your factions long range AV options sucks, ALL factions have a long ranged AV option that is better than the other factions equivalents. we can't just compare one unit, we have to compare the whole arsenal. Aegis Shield seems better than the other 2 max abilities in CQC? cool, now watch me lockdown and pound this sunderer to pieces in several seconds! zoe admitedly needs a lot of work though, i'd hesitantly say to undo the nerf, for a test.
To be honest all that would happen is: 1) a lot more people would complain about Aegis Shields flaws 2) a lot of people would suddenly want Lock-Down back 3) most people would still use Charge most of the time
Good, 1) they actually fix aegis. 2) Old soe used to distribute faction based guns to increase the amount of moneys flowing over the same damage model weapon. Some were essentially cut and paste with recolors. If they want to replicate without effort my suggestion is perfect. I am just following the trend and essentially asking for consistency. 3) Agreed, which proves charge is functional. The abilities distributed among the factions nonetheless could be used by the factions without. Especially aegis because of it is a format for cover that is requested by the players for engineers. I believe it more fitting on a front line assault class, either the heavy assault or MAX. For the devs it would be nearly copy and paste.Bugs would already be known and in process of being troubleshooted. just to throw kindling to the fire, in your opinion what is wrong with copy pasting damage models or faction abilities to remainder factions. WoW did it for the shaman and paladin around cata and they did better for it. Faction based systems are in poor taste many times for the player and the dev. The faction based system creates the flavor of the month meta which few of us enjoy due to its nigh impossible ability to be permanently balanced. Why not remove the headache and allow everyone to enjoy excellent game play?
Ageis Shield definately isn't "fixed" (it cannot be fixed as several of its flaws are inherent), it is just a lot better than it has been for most of its existance. My point with Lock-down it many will now say that it is "useless", but then change it and many will appear wanting it back, just like they did with the Lynx 1.0 and other weapons - you literally couldn't find anyone (except me) with a good word to say about the Lynx 1.0, but once the Lynx 2.0 came along loads of people were complaining about wanting the Lynx 1.0 back! As for factional difference, indeed the only way to have 100% balance is for all three factions to be absolutely identical. The question is do people want that or do they want 90-99% balance with factional differences. Personally I'd suspect it was the latter. (WoW's problem was the Arena however - in more general PvP it wasn't a huge issue, but Arena matches turned on the tiniest difference and so everything had to be balanced 100% - this is why Blizzard said long ago they wish they'd never added the Arena)
