Okay fine you two I probably over did it with the theatrics but really, what exactly do you expect from an ability like this? I'll grant that the activation time could be better but you're basically invincible against a single target and this thing is now so resilient that it could survive a room full of people head on before they start to flank. You now have a gap closer or a shield to back away down a hallway or something of the sorts. Our abilities aren't supposed to do everything but they're supposed to fill a play style. If you lone wolf it then fine you're likely to get flanked but this shield is so powerful that people HAVE to run around you and try to take you out and that gives your friends plenty of time to react as well.
Does it has a break animation? If not it needs one, with a breaking glass sound and the arm moving wild upwards as if it got punched. Also if broke you should take more time to wield again your weapons.
That's all fine and dandy but you have yet to give it a single purpose that Charge isn't doing better. -It's not a close gap tool. Charge is several time better. -It's not a retreat tool. Charge is again several time better -It's not for CQC. We have scatters. I don't need to say more. -It's not for AA MAX. -It's not for AV MAX. So, this Riot shield is a medium distance "breaching tool" at walking speed while you're unable to fire in the hope that everybody is exactly in front of you without c4. Aka, a impossible scenario. OR... A very very strict Bio Lab scenario. Wait... Isn't where every AI NC MAX remain anyway? Talk about filling different playstyle... My ***.
It's basically invincibility from the front so it'll do great in base combat. It forces the enemy to either charge you (giving you scatter cannon usage) or friendly cover so your forces can advance with you without you just lone wolf charging into a room for a kill or two before you potentially die. I wouldn't use it out in the open for sure but considering the new size of it you can easily swing it around and tank the enemy until your forces arrive. Honestly you could fill a hallway with this thing and it'll force people to either back out of the room or attack you in which case you win. Here, take a look at the video, I know it's just 'a test' but you can't tell me you don't see ANY usefulness for something like this.
I already saw it. I also already test it on the PTS. Maybe you should as well? I can also tell you that a LA at that range would have instantly die at the beginning of the Video making the idea of "tanking" that kind of damage pointless. It also amused me how that LA missed his C4. It's pretty neat that it resist Tank shell but seriously, what's the point? I never get close to any tank while in a MAX and I won't have any reason either with the Sparrows... As for the shield, it isn't that big. It barely fit the MAX size if you are directly in front and that's it. In other words, it is extremly easy to flank if there is several person in the area. This also mean that the lol "friendly cover" is ****** since any MAX actually give the same cover. I doubt the easiness of killing people behind MAX comes from my talent. They just don't offer a large enough cover. Explosive from the side also don't care about your shield as cover. Now, you got close, emptied your scatters and make 3-4 people rage. Now what? What are you going to do when you empty your scatter? Stay there like an idiot while you are unable to reload? Can't you see the problem? You can't really move out and reload while safe. You are stuck there backpedaling like a boss. May as well learn to use charge in good moment, tank the damage if they target you, reload your guns and **** the few soldier remaining with other friendlies. Inbefore Teamplay mass Riot shield wall... Haven't you seen a MAX Scatter crash all charging from the same portal in a bio lab? (you know, what made people mad about scatters) That's way more scarry consideing it leave almost no reaction time for anyone being crash on. That won't be the case of slow moving maxe that can't fire until they remove their shield. An even Easier prey to C4. I would also point out that Riot shield doesn't change in any way the playstyle of NC MAX. It is nothing more but a Biolab and inside tower outpost tool for our Scatter MAX. Something that we are already very effective at.
NC shield needs to have its damage resistance buffed quite a bit still. 2 NC MAX units can take the shield down quickly. Not even using Lockdown/Zeal against it.
*sigh* fine I give up, I don't know what to say. Allowing reload would probably be fine, as is I just want all abilities to be fun and different and do stuff. I know people are jumping over 'yay ZOE' but I can't stand an ability that 'rewards me' for doing what I already do... I honestly saw potential in the shield but I don't play NC so I suppose it can't compete with charge. Good luck in getting SOE to do something more with the shield then, at this point I'm just flat out disappointed all around. Buggy will be fun to drive though!
I said what practical purpose does it serve? Hint: Getting shot isn't an answer. I already know how to not get shot. I shoot the enemy and he dies, ending his shooting ability. This shield has almost no tactical value.
If people aren't salivating about this then I don't know what is wrong with them. Put two grenade launchers* on the arms and you have a one man breaching kit. Fill the room with nades and enter while people are scrambling to get out of the way. Use your shield to provide some cover to the guys behind so they can get through that door that is camped by a lockeddown TR MAX or two. Sure it isn't as nice SPH-wise lockdown or ZOE. It won't be the pwningest solo tool ever. But movable cover is pretty great for teamwork. *If they make it into the game. Otherwise flash/conc/normal grenade spam and shotgun arms should be fine as well.
Testing was done today in order to discover the damage absorption capabilities of the NC MAX Riot Shield. Results can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ali3Rvw78Bu0dGF0dmVhdjBTUXJZOHNOcVVWLW9pWnc&usp=sharing What I cannot find out, due to the nature of the test server: Whether or not the face hole allows enemy fire to pass through it.
i believe the current implementation of aegis shield(20k health @ rank 5) is an exaggeratedly large health pool to get us to actually use it on the PTS. I seriously doubt they're going to let the NC MAX be twice as survivable as a vanguard and regenerate 20k health in 7 seconds on live. edit: think about it like this: new kinetic 5 max on PTS: 16k eff. health vs. small arms aegis 5: 20k health that's 36k assuming you didn't pull the shield up again after it broke, which you could easily do unless there is an entire squad shooting at just you. you could tank a non-engineer's entire ammo supply.
Kind of off-topic, but...can we get something similar to the Aegis shield design (which looks awesome btw artist designers) on our Engi MANA AI turrets? VS/TR have incredible frontal coverage on theirs including great head protection... NC one is such trash that my gameplay with it consists of: 1. Deploy Mana Turret 2. Point Mana turret straight up into the sky so I have equal head protection as the other two factions. 3. When enemy shows up point MANA turret down so I can fire (at which point they can easily shoot my head with small arms fire ). 4. Repeat Its so stupid.
And so the TR and VS whiners have arrived. The shield is good against single or maybe 2 troops. Any more and the shield can be drop by the time you've covered 10m. A room full of say 12 enemy and the shield is rinsed within a couple of metres leave that max a dead duck. This shield is a niche defense product nothing more. I struggle to see many taking it over the charge which is pretty much a requirement for the nc max due to the CQB nature of the engagements it has uses in. Give me lockdown and burster any day.
Well I still seem to have the bug where after I drop my shield I cannot fire my guns (am I doing something wrong?) so its hard to test in a practical sense as I'm forced into having to melee enemies only. But, I will say when I went out and found some enemies I found the whole shield to be rather disorienting. Its pretty much a 75% opaque blue shield so your view is already limited... the square eye hole helps a little I guess... but when the shield was under LMG fire from multiple sources the shield does like this pulsating jello effect across my screen that it makes it hard to track targets or tell where the fire is coming from. When the enemy is constantly strafing and jumping around I was completely lost. I guess I could see some use for this shield in its post buff state. Maybe if I'm outside with my AV or AA arms and I haven't found a target yet and some enemy infantry spot me and attempt to LMG me from 50m+ out or there is a sniper I could pop it up and they'd surely give up or end up wasting their ammo (or maybe I'd just use Charge and run to cover instead?? Not sure.) In any CQC I'd probably still prefer Charge though. Allowing yourself to be flanked, caught in between reloads, or a giant stationary blue hit me sign for C4 LA just doesn't feel like an option. Our specialty is CQC... doesn't seem to be much point in shielding giving the enemy a fair warning you are coming when we can just melt face. One engi following us into a room and we are pretty much good to go. He'd keep us up while we clear it out offsetting the need for a defensive shield in 95%+ of the situations. I'd still unlock it though if it went live. Its a cool unique ability. Just not sure how practical it is in actual combat scenarios that NC MAXes routinely face.
So you call the TR and VS whiners then you proceed to whine yourself. Pro-tip. If these shields are strong enough they can be used as a way of drawing enemy fire. Just grab 2 NC shield maxes and they can tag team any tank since he can only shoot at one of you at once He aims at max1 he pops his shield while max2 rockets the tank and vice versa.. The more maxes you have doing this the more tanks you can take on.
----------------------------------- I repeat myself, if these shields doesn't already have a break animation and sound they need those INMEDIATLY. Why? Because the enemy has to know whether if such powerful ability is still available or you already broke the shield. ----------------------------------- Also if broken it should't regenerate until you have been out of combat (not recieving damage) for 8 seconds. Implement this please.
I really think that NC Max Aegis Shield should increase speed + give a shield, because it allows us to close the distance so we can fire our shotguns and deal loads of damage. VS have the speed buff so how do we balance this? NC Max Aegis Shield's effectiveness gets cut in half of the way it is currently, in return the speed buff from ZOE is removed from VS's ZOE and instead added onto the NC's ability (Aegis Shield) the way it currently is on the VS Max. The effect on making weapons do more damage to the VS Max while ZOE is active is removed from VS's ZOE and added to NC Max. I.E. NC Max takes more damage from the sides and back when ability (Aegis Shield) is active, the VS Max no longer suffers from this while their ability (ZOE) is active. When Aegis Shield is active on the NC Max its Melee Attack (Max Punch) is replaced by a shield bash that deals the same amount of damage, but also pushes the target back 2 meters and has a slower refire time than the normal Max Punch. VS's ZOE reduces COF by 10% for each level. So level 1 reduces COF by 10%, level 2 reduces COF by 20%, level 3 reduces COF by 30%, level 4 reduces COF by 40%, level 5 reduces COF by 50%. ZOE causes the VS Max to have 10% lower projectile velocity for all weapons while it is active. Over all this makes the abilities work more in conjunction to the faction's max's strengths and covers certain weakness's. So VS gains more DPS and is more accurate while the ability is active, with the only drawback being that they have to lead their targets more if they are moving. NC Max can take more damage from the front and move faster to close the distance so it may use shotguns effectively, but cannot fire while the shield is up so they still have to de-activate the shield if they wish to actually engage a target unless they are going to melee that target. This is my personal taste on the abilities and I feel like the NC Max would benefit more from speed than the VS Max, while the VS Max would benefit much more from accuracy. Also this means that at level 5, the Aegis Shield can only take 10k damage before dropping and takes about 14 seconds from start to finish to recharge completely. To take a level 5 Aegis Shield down it would be 5 Decimator Rockets, 6 Magrider AP Shells, 6 Dalton Shells. At level 1 it would take 5k damage and take about 28 seconds from start to finish to recharge completely. To take a level 1 Aegis Shield down it would take 3 Decimator Rockets, 3 Magrider AP Shells, or 3 Dalton Shells. This is my 2 cents on how to make the abilities better without any of the 2 mentioned being OP as far as I can tell.
i tried using it to fight a few people at the crown earlier. the infantry all just ran away and ignored me, pretty much like usual except they didn't run back 30 seconds later spewing c4 and rockets all over the place. the saron harassers could reload faster than i could drop shield -> shoot falcon -> pull shield up, so i just had to leave shield up until he shot and then drop it and pull it back up immediately to regen 1 bubble during his reload. in the end my weapons got locked because of the shield and he just kept trying to run me over because he couldn't kill me with the saron because the shield regenerates so fast when down. certainly works well with new flak armor, which raises the splash damage resist to...what, 70%? splash explosion spam is probably the only thing that stands a chance at killing an NC MAX in the current implementation of aegis shield, so using flak would make you pretty much the ultimate slowly moving rock that will never kill anyone but never die.
Lockdown - Sacrifice mobility to kill things faster. ZOE - Sacrifice survivability to kill things faster. Aegis Shield - Sacrifice ability to kill things to not get killed. If you can't sprint with it up its useless because you can't close distance on something that can move faster than you. If you can't reload then you're in a no better situation after taking the shield down as opposed to before the shield was up.
The duration on the NC Shield is too long. Needs to be shorter. That is my only complaint. I think the size of the shield is "Ok". The mobility speed while activated is "ok". Not being able to fire "good". I just think it lasts too long.
