We still take the same huge survivability penalty. No more faster sprinting, so it cannot be used as an escape ability. And worst of all it cannot be turned off for 15 seconds, so you're no faster than you were before when you need to get away or chase someone, and you need to be in their face to do any extra damage. Does ZOE have a use now other than getting yourself killed or should most VS MAX go back to charge? At the very least we should be able to disable it prematurely putting it on cooldown in its current state. NC now have by far the superior ability, making themselves C4/tank/grenade proof on demand if they see if coming.
ZOE in its current state is pretty much useless. Wait a month or two, then they will probably do a fix to make it useful again. Mean while run with charge, it not so bad.
Love the new ZOE Max because nobody use it and now i can repair the maxes again but now they have to learn not to charge away from me lite a headless chicken
Yeah, I pretty much figured that it would be a suicide ability after this... Someone tossed up a video with Charge to show that we never really needed ZOE to begin with, and if you ran ZOE constantly on...you've probably developed a hyper awareness of your health bars and will do better with Charge anyway.
I think the changes on paper so far seem fair, but we haven't played long enough to judge the actual impact on actual game play. As for the changes, The NC and TR max abilities are situational at best and requires some degree of skill or teamwork to actually work proper - the activatable ZOE has been turned into such an ability rather than an all-time on gameplay crutch. The changes bring the three ES specific abilities to a relatively equal level (which admittedly all kinda' suck slightly), which in turn levels out the field of MAX play a bit. This was sorely needed in my opinion but we have still to see whether the changes were too radical or they hit the sweet spot.
I don't think you understand how much it was nerfed: Cool down introduced Forced uptime Decreased movement speed Lower damage bonus More damage taken on average (more rank 1 than rank 5 ZOEs) They of course over nerfed it on purpose, because if the ZOE had still been OP after this round the rage would never end. When the statistics shows that ZOE under performs they can then undo one or two of these things. Your only choice till then is running charge, which is not that bad really.
You represent one sided opinion here, one sided in meaning of vanu easy mode player. Those changes bring things only a bit closer to balance stance and are more than well justified.
I think I agree with the need to be able to turn it off, but you should still have to wait the remainder of the time as a penalty for doing so before being able to re-activate. So, if you turn it on but then turn it off 5 seconds in you have to wait 25 seconds before you can turn it back on (10 second activation remainder + 15 second cooldown). I've re-certed ZOE just for the hell of it. I still think it can be a decent ability used correctly.
Most of the VS wanted the Jetpack back before SOE even developed ZOE, but the development team said that no matter what they did...it was overpowered, or so I read elsewhere. Kind of ironic no? With that said, I think the real reason they didn't give the VS MAX the jump jets is because it would have impeded upon the LA's core ability. That's why I proposed my own ability in the signature link, which is kind of similar...but different enough to not tread upon the LA's jump jets.
Its not that bad, its just now you have to fully cert it and it turns off after 15 seconds, gotta wait around 5 seconds to turn it back on, my shield charges slower then that..
Bah! Now charge is fully certed, and thanks to the refund I can now buy more stuff for my tank... Wait it got nerfed too! So maybe I should get a good lmg? naaah, they suck now. Hum. Ok, I have 1700 certs now, who wants them? And I want a refund on all the laser sights / adv laser sight I bought for my lmgs too. Maybe I could get up to 700 certs with that, but I don't know what i'l be doing with it. Seriously, everything I cared about (vehicles and big guns) have been nerfed to match expectations of people that don't know how war works. My god, i swore to myself never saying that, but this game's making me sick. Instead of redesigning the bases once and for all, they keep on thinking that vehicles are OP, as if there's no brain problem in a guy running in the middle of a field complaining of how it is easy for planes to kill him, and vehicles to crush him. At first I thought the vulcan OP, then I told myself that having read the description of what it was, the damages were pretty normal. Prowlers had always been a strength to fear, with it even more, ok, I dealt with that. No problems. So now we make them crappy weapons, to satisfy people who don't have the brain to duck when they hear an enormous machine gun starting its deadly music. I loved the game really more when the only tactic hearing a tank coming was to hide and pray, now as long as you have ammo, it's only a matter of time, if the tank doesn't leave the fight. Where's the logic in that? What kind of tank has to flee before infantry? According to planetside 2, every kind of tank. Just read, if you want a big laugh, the descriptions of the vehicles's weapons, it's really fun. They should remove them, so it would not look so stupid. They should remove the weapons on the vehicles too, when they're at it. And make C4 some kind of heat seeking missile that you can fire from cover, cost nothing, and destroy anything in one hit. But I'm sure then they would remove ability for vehicles to trample people, as some would complain that it is unfair. So they would make it that a knife would pierce armor, and tanks would die in 2 hits. Annnd when a tank would roll over a stupid peasant, the tank would blow up. And the peasant walk away, unsratched. Just give the whiners time to explain why it would be balanced, and they'll have it. Did I really wrote all this? I must be really upset. I AM REALLY UPSET! Leave the game alone, stop repairing what works and breaking what's already broken. Stop the nerfs, for god's sake.
Now imagine if they nerfed it so that when you put up the shield you could not put it down for 15 seconds. It might not be a suicide button but its a big gamble button, are you going to be lucky or not the next 15 seconds?
Could be worse, imagine not being able to use your special ability at all whilst trying to offensively take a base. Just think of it as a HA shield for Max and move on.
Well there you go, its called a 'Risk vs Reward' in the case of NC MAX's, they cant shoot, TR MAX's can't move, such is how a mechanic works. The VS MAX lacked this, as the risk was over shadowed by the reward. Here it was still given the speed, and the damage boost, just now the resist penalty is higher in lower levels, which lowers down in higher levels, and you cant turn it off when active, but it charges back up as soon as you activate it, so given the situation you have a 'fight or flight' choice once you activate the ability. Either choice would be just as rewarding but more meaningful and calculated due to the fact you only have 15 seconds of the ability.
There is a huge difference to be forced into a 15 seconds risk vs reward no matter what happens. TR can anytime they want disable theirs, it has a what? 2-3 second animation before they can move? NC can lower their shield almost instantly should they want to. Whats the risk vs reward for NC then? They cant fire, but that risk can be removed whenever they want, thats what I meant by imagine if once you raise the shield you had to wait 15 seconds before it went down? That would be very similar to how the new ZOE works, ZOE can fire but takes more damage while Aegis takes no damage from the front but cant fire. Shouldnt be that hard to see that they are actually very alike only that Aegis has the "Defense" slider put to max leaving nothing to offense. An example would be how an Aegis MAX can tank damage with the shield but spots a LA coming flying for him, there is nothing stopping the NC MAX to "abort" his risk vs reward choice he did just a few seconds ago when he put up the shield when it was in his advantage to do so. There is nothing stopping a TR MAX from anchoring down and killing a few people only to realise that there are not enough people to defend him and he just "abort" his risk vs reward choice he did. ZOE, you activated it now you have to live with it? what kind of bs is that?
Actually this 'abort' can be done with the ZoE ability, primarily with the ability you can actually move fast so you can escape threats more easily than the other two factions, When a TR MAX deploys, yes it can undeploy but it takes time to do so, that and it cant turn behind itself, NC MAX's can raise their shields to fire but then comes their short range weapon effectiveness. With the ZoE you take more damage for more speed, but you can still shoot and kill stuff at medium ranges. Despite it not being able to turn off, to me, well that doesn't really sound like a bad thing. I'm in a VS MAX fighting in a biolab, I activate my ZoE ability, run into the battle, take out a few targets, only to find an enemy MAX set up for Anti MAX, with my ability still active I can simply run away from the confrontation because I'm at a disadvantage in a position to fight him (This is because I didn't spot it before, I am unsure on how much damage it took in the fight as well as taking note that my ability weakens me in a straight up fight), but I can run from him.
