Really, everyone agrees Maxes are a tad to weak. No we are not looking to be one man armies or offset the balance, but I think removing the extra damage from headshots would be just enough to change the class for the better. The Max is a suit of armor and the head is armored far better than the infantry's. Removing the modifier would be enough of a buff to the Max unit to make it more viable, and its equal across the factions.
So long as they have A weakness... give em a headshot sized hitbox "power gen" or something on the back. This would make them more threatening face to face and encourage teamwork and flanking.
Yeah that is a great idea replace the headshot with maybe just a rear small area weakness, I would go for that.
Yes Max is fine with an engineer, but when facing skilled groups they drop like flies even with engineers. The front headshot damage to a Max is un-necessary and would be just the "buff" to balance them out.
Actually, I can already do that if I have a pocket engineer or 2. Probably because I don't stand in the open and I don't stand still when I see someone with a detonator running toward me. Kill a few, reload repair. Rince repeat using cover. Lol at KDR that MAX provide when engineer are nearby. Does it die fast against a good group? Yes and it should. Play better or get more people.
Well you must play NC or TR Max, because as VS I may be biased. I do not think people are really looking for op one man army suits or major buffs, its the general consensus that Maxes drop to quickly even with engineers, and this minor suggestion would be just enough to give the Max units a more plausable Time to Live, versus quick TTK vs most everything when headshots are involved.
The majority of people, not just max user, are bad. The way higher ttk of the MAX grant him the possibility to do what no other class can do against numbers... Escape and live. Sure alone, a MAX can escape but it doesn't have much reason to do so. While not really weak, it's not the greatest thing ever. But with engineers nearby, it scale disgustingly well. It can barely take 2-3 second to remove all damage that was done to the MAX and it goes back to the fight, weakening your "skilled group" every single appearance. The only effective way to kill them at those moment is high burst damage aka c4 and 2 direct hit rockets at the same time and those 2 have nothing to do with bullet damage.
Weak my ***. Today I found an NC max that was AFK. Nobody was around. So what do I do? I empty my Serpent in his face. One time. Two times. Three times. I repeat: it takes more or less 3 full Serpent magazines, the highest dps carabine the VS has, to kill an NC max when shooting him in the head with every single bullet.
Lots of AFK NC MAXs that seem to have insane amount of bullet resistance and no idea where a spawn room is versus someone who can't aim at the head point blank. Go figure. 1 rocket brings my NC MAX down to around 1/3rd. Only need that and a follow up with 1 or 2 concentrated small arms for the MAX to be dead before it knew what happened. I'd trade a weak spot in the back for no head shot bonus. I tend to find Engineer healing pretty thin unless it's a Bio Lab. Takes a lot more than 2-3 seconds to heal a MAX below 50% though.
just cause you're a max doesnt mean you should charge out into the open all the time. strategic placing, specially as a scatmax usually gives your pocket engi more than enough time to repair the bullet holes in between waves of hostiles.
You really cant win with the armor, many classes carry C-4, and engineer has mines, HA has a powerful rifle, shield and rocket. So you equip Kinetic to avoid a lot of small arms fire and normally fall to the rocket, they can swap weapons and often do whereas you are stuck with armor resistance for one or the other. A skilled HA can drop a Max with no issues. The only place an AI Max is really strong is standing behind a corner with an Engineer in cover. I am good at not letting the C-4 carriers get near or engineers trying to sneak up and drop a mine on you, but HA Rockets get you most times. This is early on, soon even those not in the know will all use rocket and C-4 vs maxes or go for the engineer first. A minor change to the front headshot damage would not change the ease of explosives dropping the Max and give it just a sliver more of survivability. Or they could add a suit slot and let us use BOTH armors.
Or they can just shrink the head hitbox further, that you have to hit within the front visor to get the headshot bonus or something.
Yeah even that would be good. Really I think the Max is a good class as it is, but the fact people do NOT care about death when a nearby Sunderer will pop them back into the fight quickly means they will just kamikaze you, playing vs players that actually care about dying is fine. But since even getting the points for a kamikaze Max kill seems worth it to many people I find it an issue.
^ This, I HATE players who just kamikaze me, it's bad enough that small arms fire does such tremendous damage to us, but the fact that people just bum-rush the first MAX they see makes it even worse.
Kamikaze Heavy Assualts are the bane of my existence. Any HA with the decimator can just whip out the launcher and hit me point blank and either outright kill me or bring me down to 1/4 health so his friends can finish me off. A good start to fix this would be to add an arming mechanism to rockets. They should have to travel a certain distance before they can explode. I'm fine with mines and C4 since they take some thought and time to use but since every HA comes with a launcher this type of tactic will only become more and more popular. Regarding the original topic, replacing the headshot vulnerability with a weak point on the back seems to be the perfect solution. It makes MAX's more formidable on the front-lines while promoting the use of flanking.
