It's a system of diminishing returns.

Also, that faster medium suit takes a way larger hit to move speed than the heavy.

Im not garbage

1. Forge Guns... I play it smart, ive taken out the best in the game with these things, past and presant. AND NOT tower sniping i might add. Forge gun shotgun for the win

2. Boundless, double complex dmg, and the best logi's you ever did see.

3. 3 Boundless, double complex dmg heavies, with the best logi's you ever did see, coming round the corner with weapons alread spinning

PC is where heavies can shine if you let them.

Hevies still need some love tho

You are good, yeah.
But how many times does the Duvolle AR user kill you?

No longer worth running a heavy in most cases since doing cost benefit its way too expensive versus a medium frame.

Ha no more than the Duvolle kills anyone else

And i have the added bonuses of being able to pwn tanks, splash, and longer range

Your fit to run a HMG costs over 200k and thats too expensive.
Your fit to run good forge gun costs 200k and if the AR user surprises you then you die since these days everyone is running scanners then back to my original point that running a good heavy fit is no longer viable in most situations.

A medium frame with either a GEK or a Duvolle is more efficient.

Im not garbage

1. Forge Guns... I play it smart, ive taken out the best in the game with these things, past and presant. AND NOT tower sniping i might add. Forge gun shotgun for the win

2. Boundless, double complex dmg, and the best logi's you ever did see.

3. 3 Boundless, double complex dmg heavies, with the best logi's you ever did see, coming round the corner with weapons alread spinning

PC is where heavies can shine if you let them.

Hevies still need some love tho

I have an alt where I started using a heavy suit and I love it. I only have advanced HMG but I do run the complex damage mods and it it amazing. If you use it tactically then it's ridiculously good. I think that a lot of heavies expect the suit/HMG to be used and balanced in situations where it shouldn't win gun fights (i.e. medium range to long range). If you keep it tight then it's hard to beat.

Because we all like numbers, don't we? I'm pretty sure I got the numbers right, mostly.

I decided that if we were to compare Heavies directly to any other combat suit, it should be the Gallente assault. They are, after all, the closest thing to a sentinel in terms of slot allocation. Except for those extra high slots, giving them even more DPS for some ridiculous reason.

So for this comparison, we will load both suits up with 4 complex plates. True, you probably want a repper of some sort on there normally, but if one suit is gonna ditch a plate for a repper the other one will too, so that's not really a valid argument. Let's just look at how much benefit a Heavy actually gets from any of the modules he puts on, shall we?

This will assume all HP related skills are fully trained.

For the Sentinel

1012 hp base + 596 maximum armor plate benefit = 1608 HP (58.8% increase)

For the G. Assault

412 hp base + 596 maximum armor plate benefit = 1008 HP (144.6% increase)



Seems a little ridiculous, right? Why is a smaller, faster, more agile suit being given so much more benefit from these modules than a heavy is? If tanking is supposed to be what the heavy does best, why is it that he receives almost no game-changing benefit from his low slots in comparison to the assault? Especially when he already sacrifices an equipment slot?

He goes from having more than twice as much HP from the base values, to having roughly a 60% HP lead over the Assault IF he devotes himself to pure buffer with a logi stuck up his rear end the whole match. To compound this issue, the G. Assault is also cranking out three damage mods while the Heavy can only crank out one with that suit.


Why is this all such a massive problem?

When a suit is given an intended function such as pure defense, it is understood that when it scales the game mechanics will be designed so that it scales in favor of that suit. That is what makes skill progression meaningful and worthwhile. Here the exact opposite has happened.


Also HMG sucks, etc etc.

Discuss!

2. Boundless, double complex dmg, and the best logi's you ever did see.

3. 3 Boundless, double complex dmg heavies, with the best logi's you ever did see, coming round the corner with weapons alread spinning

You are good, yeah.
But how many times does the Duvolle AR user kill you?

No longer worth running a heavy in most cases since doing cost benefit its way too expensive versus a medium frame.

HMG in pubs is fun, because most of the people in pubs use suits of a low enough meta level that it chews through them. And the few who do have proto are usually running solo and stupid.

Bring a Heavy into PC and its a whole different story. They cannot hold their own at all. The HMG just scratches at the amount of health people have, and everybody else just focus fires you down instantly.

This cost issue has been the primary drawback for heavies through basically all the builds.

I think Chrome's answer - running with good logi's - was always CCP's intended answer to the 'too expensive' argument.

Not trying to start a kitennpoop storm, but i'm pretty sure that was their original take on Tanks also: with expensive(and powerfull) equipment like that you don't put it on the field without competent dedicated support in place.

I'm still open on these questions, but one of the question the playerbase is going to have to answer for itself is: 'should all content be soloable in pubs, in FW, in PC?'

I think a lot of our differences come down to that question.

Fair enough, I concede that. I don't ever run PC so the closest I have is being proto stomped. I'll take your word for it that it puts it over the top.

So are you interested in changes to the suits or the weapons or both? I did notice that I didn't really care about what modules were on the suit since it didn't have much room for them to begin with. Maybe adding a module or two?

The suit is the bigger problem. Assault suits gain more benefit for every meta level than the Heavy suit does. The scaling is broken.

If the suit had more HP potential from modules, it could deal with the issues the weapon itself has.

Logi's are not the answer. It doesn't matter how good the logi is, he will not keep you alive while a duvolle is spraying you down.

Maybe two could, but why on earth should it take three people to do the job of one?

Someone suggested a couple weeks ago in regards to differentiating roles between logi and assault, that the suit passive be a 5% stacking dmg resist as you spec into heavies. I thought this was interesting. Keep the modules the same, but allow a heavy to potentially have 25% dmg reduction. Haven't crunched numbers, but seems viable, no?

There are a lot of ways it can be solved, but as big of a problem as the HMG is, the suit itself is a bigger problem. Both should be addressed.

One way to fix the suit is to add substantial resistance to the heavy suit.

Another is to give a suit bonus to armor plates.

Another would be to add XL Plates, which would essentially be like standard plates except give an insane amount of HP with an insane amount of movement penalty attached. Very expensive, only Heavies could equip these, and it would make it impossible to ride in anything other than a dropship. But it would essentially let you sit in the middle of a corridor like a slow moving terminator out of warhammer.