I said 10k because at a certain point you just start gaining certs like a madman and don't spend it on anything, what better to put it into than a massive cert dump that makes your favorite class play even closer to your preferred playstyle, currently I've unlocked just about all I want and have roughly 6k certs saved up with nothing to spend it on. The specializations were designed as an end-game goal, something I probably should have wrote in the post. Something that also should be mentioned is that it's not a MASSIVE upgrade over the standard class. The standard class still functions perfectly fine without the upgrades and has it's own upsides, with the variants having downsides and upside of their own. Sure, 10k is probably WAY too much, but what is a good cost? That being said I really want them to add more costly certable items, not just 1k CP, it's not much if you know how to manage your certs and not impulse buy.
All that would be fine, if we had on our hands finished game with proper meta, the only problem of which being that you got nothing to spend certs on. This is not the case. PS2 is still deep in beta, and LA at the bottom of it. Giving LA ARs we should have by default only after 10k cert farm is plain unfair. You make it sound like you don't want those upgrades to be gamechanging, but they are, and very much so. With 3+ C4 one LA can reliably solo a sunderer, and I imagine a lot of players who would say that unless you can do that, C4 is useless. Like they're saying now that one C4 is useless, because with two C4 LA can solo a tank. So for these players game will not start until they got this ability. And what are the best ways to farm certs? Lib gunning, rocket pod spamming, AI harasser gunning... exactly the thing this game needs more of. NOT.
Why do I say only ARs after the 10k CP grind? It's because the other non-LA players will be pissy about it, we have seen it before and it'll happen again. Do I want them? Yes. Is it worth upsetting about 80%+ of the game's population, probably not. As to what you were saying with the 2 C4 vs 4 C4 cert grind allowing you to reliably solo sundies, I said in my first post that I wanted them to add 3 extra levels to C4 on every class, variant or not. With a couple slight rewordings it can work with the Variants I suggested LVL 1 - 100CP 1 C4 (Can solo MAXes, pretty much it.) LVL 2 - 200CP 2 C4 (What we're used to.) *Also makes it cheaper to play LA to it's normal capacity.* LVL 3 - 500CP 3 C4 (Allows you to solo sundies/libs at full HP.) LVL 4 - 1000CP 4 C4 (Allows you to solo blockade sundies.) LVL 5 - 10k CP Resuppliable at ammo packs for free in tool slot. (The 2nd LA variant gets this for free.) Heck, I see why the cert grind is a problem, but why not a "Class XP" system, used only for cosmetics and variants. 1,000,000 Score/XP would allow you to buy a variant/archetype with another milestone at 5,000,000 XP. There, now the cert problem is solved, so how do we solve the AR predicament without upsetting the tankers/MAXes/medics/heavies/infs/everything? I'm trying to be at least semi open-minded here. As far as the meta goes, that's something SOE needs to work on, cause it's completely non-existant.
Was merely stating the other side. I don't care for the whole C4 spam or any kind of explosives spam and wouldn't miss it. The difference being is that the jetpack fuel is not static like tank armor and doesn't completely negate any fall damage reduction. In fact, it'd go hand in hand if it allowed light assaults to fall from greater distances safely. That'd allow for people to figure in how far they can safely fall and use their fuel accordingly. It frees up a lot of fuel and time that'd be used to allow us to fall safely. It's an ability that's a slight quality of life tweak that doesn't potentially break the class. It's not about solving any huge problems. It's about giving some modicum of versatility of the heavy assault or engineer to the Light assault. Again, something that isn't overly powerful and wouldn't potentially break the class. But it would be neat to have. Especially considering how often a battle can switch from building to building, to mid range trench warfare. Hell, if LA got assault rifles the main weapon could be an AR and the secondary could be a carbine, SMG, or shotgun. I really can't argue against this since I agree wholeheartedly. I just wasn't in the mood to argue for it. Heavy assault should have access to every infantry weapon in the game, excluding snipers, and Light assault should have access to everything but LMG's and snipers. Edit: **Except for snipers Engineer and medic are support classes, so carbines, SMG's, and shotguns make sense anyway.
@OP: Every single update on the roadmap is vague like that. It's for the reason of allowing player input to drive the topic, not SOE's ideas. Mini update would be awesome. I have thought about this for a while. It's exciting to have a huge update (what is proposed in roadmap) to look forward to, but it is much less feasible and when things get delayed like this, then it wouldn't leave players as distraught. As others have said, I think Adrenaline pump buff would be one of the best numbers changes for the class. I really don't like giving LA assault rifles, it takes away class diversity. Which is something that SMG's and shotguns already do a terrible enough job at. Also, proper kit with decent aim and trigger control can make mid-range carbines effective enough for most encounters. As far as utilities, giving us anything recon/disruption related could be treading on infiltrators toes. So it needs to be implemented uniquely.
