The correct way to balance/nerf the Heavy Assualt Sheild

The bolt driver does 650 damage, so x2 = 1300 damage.
Heavy assault has 500 shields, 500 HP, and 650 overshields so 1650 effective HP.
Activating shields cost 43 points, then the overshield drains at 43 points per second.
So to drop your effective HP under 1300, you would need your overshield to be at less than half full.
To put it the other way, turning on NMG overshield grants you 8 secs of immunity to OHK sniper headshots.

Unless infantry have some negative resistance to sniper rounds, an overshield HA should not die from a sniper headshot.

Assuming they activate it in time and the first shot doesn't straight-up kill them. If the shield is already up, why are you shooting at them anyway? Again, you know what you're doing. Brute force is not always the solution.

When I'm sniping I'll often shoot at them anyway just to get them to stop firing at allies. Taking a big hit like that makes a lot of people stop what they are doing and retreat, allowing teammates to gain ground.

Sometimes the HA even lets me take the next one or two follow-up shots required to kill them.

Personally I was a huge fan of the delay mechanic, it would make the heavy turn on his shield before going around corners, not after. The heavy would be just as deadly, but would have to use a more strategic approach. Heavy's are kind of like coyotes in my opinion. A bit too much like easymode which is exactly why I don't use coyotes and rarely use heavies.

LMGs are among the best weapons, second only to assault rifles and even then only in some situations. While they may not have super awesome hipfire accuracy, they have some of the best dps and best recoil / bloom out of any weapons in the game, giving them excellent midrange options. The DPS on the CARV / orion is still so high as to be viable in CQC.

Citation needed.

Also, they'd still be the best class against vehicles, the best class against MAX units, the best class for taking out multiple enemies in a short time frame (Hello conc grenade + huge magazines), and would still be the best class for pushing, they'd just have to actually think about using their shields instead of using them as a crutch. In short, every point of your argument is completely wrong.

There is already a shield for that, resist shield. The other shields are reactive shields.

The movement penalties and lighting you up like a Christmas tree (hands glowing in your vision) are bad enough reasons to not use the shield. I avoid using the shield as much as possible when I play HA. I'd much rather fight someone with a shield on than someone who can ADAD strafe like crazy. (which isn't supposed to be possible anymore, but I still see some players do it faster than I ever could.)

In order to fight MAXs, you often need the shield, because even with it they will rip you up in nano seconds. I'm sure anyone who wants to nerf the shield also wants to remove MAXs, so you pretty much want to completely change the game into something else that could probably be called GenericShooter 2.

^So much this

HA is nothing compared to MAX which is an essential part of PS2 itself

I honestly think this is a big part of it.

I remember, when I first started out, campaigning to get the Heavy Assault shield nerfed lol. That was when I played nothing but Medic.

Now, hundreds of hours later, I can see just why it should never be nerfed. If the support classes are running around getting XP/Certs for support actions AND being able to own a lot more Heavies, then the support classes are simply no longer support classes; they will be the backbone of the game and nobody will play Heavy.

Shield is fine... mostly

Only problem I have with it is with the poor ht reg the game sometimes suffers from it really penalizes you when against HA if you get the hit reg issue more so than against other classes simply because the extra bullets required.

If the hit reg was 100% working then it would be simply a case of losing because you got out gunned or positioned yourself bad.

It is however rage inducing when you come from behind, start pumping bullets into a HA the reg is already off and on top of that they press F. I know I am bad but jezz

If for arguments sake it were to be nerfed a 0.1 delay in the shield activating would be enough as that is about 20 - 25% of the TTK of most infantry weapons

It works both ways though, sometimes heavies shield themselves on their screen and still die, because in yours screen they weren't fast enough.

That's essentially the problem.

If you make another class the default class (although in reality HAs aren't played that much, Engis are played more, Medic around the same and LAs just a bit less - it is Infs and MAXs that are really played less) you just have the same issue with a different class.

Really speaking the only class with a genuinely legitimate complaint there is the LA, not in power so much, but in the very narrowness of their role.

The problem with the engineer is that you can't tell how many ours are spend as an infantry engineer and how many as a vehicle operator.

Also, in terms of fighting power, an engineer is basically a light assault who can't fly.

That's one of the benefits of a heavy assault.
Hit them with a sticky bomb and see what happens.
They probably won't have their shield up if they stumble onto a well placed proximity mine - needless to say a C-4 charge.

They do not seem to have any over-powering advantage over any other class.

If they seem to be so over-powering to you, then perhaps that is the class that you should play and take advantage of "what you think" is the over-powered mechanic.
I have the feeling that you will find out why it isn't so overpowering after all.

The problem is people who play this afterthought class come on here to nerf-campaign classes that do have roles. Light Assaults are fun, but they are pretty much just a trolling annoy-the-enemy class, they generally don't scale well with larger fights. We have 2 recon classes between LA and inf fighting over the role.

I personally think a classes toughness should be built in - but that toughness comes at a price - speed/agility.

The more armour you carry - the slower you should be. It's silly to have all classes in the game (with the exception of Max units) equal in terms of walking/running speed and agility. Personally I would do the following to give greater uniqueness to the classes

• Infiltrators have little armour and so have less health - but as a result should be nimble and quicker than they are now. I suggest a 15% speed buff and also a slight buff to the inclines they can climb up (meaning they can get better vantage points - or escape using alternative routes unavailable to other classes).

• LAs/medics etc have a medium amount of armour so speed/climbing ability should stay the same.
• 
  
• HA carry heavy armour - so their base health should be buffed by say 25%, but their speed reduced by 15%. The overshield should then be changed to be an emergency recharge of their base shield.

Well I think Infs are ok, it is just one of those things that you can't get equally played classes all the time, when some classes are more specialised.

LAs are pretty good as well absolute power-wise, but they perhaps lack in speed (default run speed), close range DPS (if they ever get in dual SMG might be sorted), but they need some more breadth, likely through some of the utility suggestions.

That would probably work.

I've also thought an armor system might be nice, where each class (including MAX) has a different armor value that mitigates damage. Then certain weapons/ammo deal more damage to different armor values. Classes with heavier armor take less damage from soft point ammo and shotguns but are damaged by armor piercing rounds. Armor piercing weapons fire slower so have generally lower DPS.

This in addition to lighter armored infantry being able to move faster and probably jump higher too.

You might be able to balance the faction weapons around the armor system too, but that could also lead to problems. For example, NCs hard hitting weapons might have higher armor penetration while TR weapons are better agains soft targets. Weapons like the battle rifles might become better because they have high AP value. The NC MAX on the other hand would be better at killing softer targets because of the shotguns, but would be less effective against other MAX or HAs.

This is so not the case, my outfit has ran this in test scrims and the medics almost always won. Bad play and lucky grenades were the HA only hope. (A dead ha never gets back up, dead medics pop back up constantly adding more firepower)
Where a lot of outfits are HA heavy, we tend to be medic heavy any more and have to tell people to go HA to fight off maxs on drops. In a squad of 12, most run 2 medics, we typically have 4. As the number of platoon squads in area goes up the number of medics per squad usually decreases. Depending on the number of areas of defense.

But as another said 10heavy/2medic > 12medics but even then it wasn't always clear cut, if the HA squad lost a medic early they lost.

We are not talking 1700s style open field stand in a line here (in that case the HA win) But with rooms, corridors etc **** happens. Majority of fights are not 1v1 and there is always a medic in cover to rez when not double teaming.

The all medic drop is a complete nightmare in a low pop small base skirmish with an enclosed cap point, it is not that they cannot be beaten, but rather than they just keep going and going and rezzing and rezzing.

Certainly if they were specifically out-organised they'd lose, but given what seems to be mostly complained about in HAs is not really outfit vs outfit play, but rather casual play, the all medic drop doesn't even have to be at all organised to hold off many times their numbers of more casual opposition.