The EMP will be completely useless

In the last PTS patch the EMP will no more take away the Ability...also in the statements of Wrel he claims that he plans to buff the Infantry Health to 700 but take away 200 Shield.

That means that the EMP will just take away 300 Shield in the future...nothing more.

So it'll basically remove HUD & a small buffer of regenerative health... less than say the bloody frag grenade, at higher cost than it.

Allowing medics to regenerate themselves & allies without issue.
Allowing Heavies to negate the shield loss with overshield.
Allowing Light assaults to keep flying without a damn.
Allowing Infils like stalkers to remain cloaked inside rooms without manual checking with dark-lights.

All that right?
Well, now that is a useless EMP.
A damn frag grenade achieves more.

Has any information about if Infils will be excluded or included in the buffs at least?
As EMP no longer countering abilities for a short period, let alone with less reliance on shields, makes them near useless.

It doesn't even remove HUD anymore, just gives you that static effect.

................................................................................. That's just a mockery of any Electromagnetic pulse if it literally does nothing more than damage shields with significantly less effect than a hand grenade... My gods.

As dear lord, it even costs more than a frag, and apparently is perfect for only scratching the least important part of the target: The regenerative shielding.
A frag just kills the bloody target.

Someone must be getting EMP'd and killed a lot, to want them to be more expensive failure of a grenade.

Or just want expensive deployable removal. All fairness, deployment removal sounds nice but on a much ******* smaller resource cost. 75 is way too much to remove an indefinite supply of motion spotters.

What I suggested from the beginning was to nerf the disabling of the HUD and making your vision static-y and leave the rest alone.

If anything Flashbangs should be the ones that disable your HUD as it would make being partially hit by them actually useful.

I won't be missing it, no one ever takes a hint to charge or throw their frags when the enemy gets EMP'd.
Like dayum I haven't had people even figure that an EMP throw suggests there's an enemy Stalker in that area.

Well comically, frag-combo would be the only thing still working after EMP gets this ******.

But yeah, people can be incredibly stupid - All the enemy is scrambled? Lets stare at the doorway.

Removing things that game devs find frustrating is the new way of improving gameplay for everyone.

Get with the program, or wait for a game that offers the same experience as PS2.

I used them all the time, but mostly just for clearing out hidden explosives and beacons that are out of my reach.

i assumer it'll still trigger mines? that still makes it insanely strong,
so many times i've hurled an EMP at the side of a building were the enemies are and recieved a long string of kills,

also with the stupid "forward stations" being added, EMP will have extra value.

also lets face it, right now EMP does waaay too much, takes off 500 "health" (the shield) of everyone in the room, disables their hud, fuzzes their screen, removes their ability energy, blows up mines, destroys deployables, disables spitfires...

I could argue that EMPs should remove only 50% of shields or something, but the ability draining function should not be touched. HA meta is a bit too strong already and it's only being made stronger with every update, as if to simply cater to majority of playerbase

EMPs are too strong. Its disruptive power was pretty extreme. It was nice while it lasted. It might not have affected randoms in the area but outfits who are even slightly organised it is a tool which nearly guarantees a successful push/clear of a point.

I say this as someone who "mains" infiltrator.

Nice. They finally got around to balancing the EMP.

Yeah, I don't understand such a massive nerf, but we should be used to it by now given the game's history. It's been a valuable tool this entire time, not heard a peep about it being overpowered, never heard people complain about it, but what the hell, let's make it next to useless for kicks and giggles. Basically all it does is remove deployables/mines now. As someone who plays a majority of their time as a Stalker, my effectiveness and ability to contribute on the field has been reduced even further, sweet. Frag grenades it is, but those are 'too effective' (which basically means they kill Heavies and makes the kids cry) so I'll be expecting a nerf on those any day now too.

i see the opposite all i see for HA are nerfs nerfs nerfs, but agreed EMP nolonger draining shield is a big buff

EMP grenades to have too much, they worked perfectly fine in the past before they were given the ability to drain other player's ability energy.

they drops shield, destory deployables(and let you kill people with their own mines) and mess up people' UI. that in itself is pretty advantagous.

the only real part of loosing the ability to drain people's ability energy i'll miss is using it to kill enemy light assaults trying to scale a building/terrain via fall damage.

Fine for me.... if they normalize the price to the standard of a grenade.

I clearly see the intent to make the EMP more a tactical tool and less an unconventional weapon.
Because right now the EMP is simply the best grenade of the game, and it's a death sentence if you get hit.

Don't forget the EMP:
- Destroys any deployable in radius (beacons, ammo, shield generators).
- Jams Engineer turrets.
- Causes immediate explosion of all landmines (AV or AP).
- Destroys C4.
- Effect passes through walls (many players do not even know).

I always, always pointed to how OP it was.
Seriously, 50% off all health of all enemies in the region? Of the health they are most definitely to have in most situation? On an on-impact grenade? Without any reduction in effectiveness regardless of where you are in the AOE? Even if it didn't go through walls this grenade would still be OP. The only reason I've not chained threads about it is because people completely lack the stragetic insight to use it. Used even with a little insight you can break an entire chokepoint, make them either easy targets to kill or force them behind cover until the effect wears off. With a grenade bandolier and more insight you can crush just about anything.

And unless the health really is upped to 700 health, "only" the shields gone regardless of where you are in the AOE and the explode-on-impact make EMP's still more powerful than normal grenades. the 3 second fuse on grenades and their tapering off AOE makes them far weaker in most cases. There's a reason frag grenades have a hit % of 43%, and that's just hitting a target, not killing it. Better use an EMP and clear many more people, either yourself or by proxy. In the meantime EMP's have a 70% accuracy rating and 100% effect with each hit on every target in it...

The whole argument of "it triggers mines and destroys deployables" is invalid, because Normal grenades can do that too and are even cheaper.