1.8 (subject to change) bonuses for those who have not seen


This is what I think assault bnuses should be like:

Role bonus: 5% reduction of PG/CPU for handheld weapons per level.

You said you liked this idea, and I think its a good one. PG/CPU reductions help you fit better weapons, or helps you save PG/CPU to fit other good stuff.

The rate of fire as a role bonus you guys are considering definitely needs to go. I would love a bonus that directly improves weapon performance to enforce the role of assaults as offense, but this idea would basically screw over weapons like the scrambler rifle whose fire rate would remain unaffected (semi-auto is based on your own trigger speed), and would disincintevize their use since the bonus would be wasted on them; assault bonuses should never disincentivize the use of one of the 4 main "assault rifles" (scrambler rifle).

I have suggested a role bonus to damage, and then nerfing the 4 racial rifles, this way a maxed out assault suit would keep the current strength of the rifles, but as you explained, there would be unintended consequences. I still think those consequences could be dealt with though some balancing though.

That damage mod bonus you guys are considering for the Minmatar assault would make a nice role bonus.
Anyway, I support the PG/CPU reduction thing if you decide to go with that.
This is excellent! It fits with the fitting bonus that Logistics suits get to equipment and better enables them to be "slayers".

For racial bonuses, I strongly disagree with bonuses to HP and repair because I feel that it does not enforce the assault's role as being about offense (HP stuff belongs on sentinels in my opinion). It could be argued that the PG/CPU and assault would save with a weapon fitting role bonus would be enough to make the assault a superior offensive force by letting them fit better stuff, but that also applies to logis and their equipment PG/CPU bonus; assaults still would not be special. While I do want assaults to have the fitting bonus, but the racial bonuses need to be about enhancing weapons to keep the assault better at assaulting than a logi or some other specialization. Just like logis will be the best with their respective equipment (like Cadari logi being best with nanohive), assaults should be the best with their respective race's weapons.

Amarr: 5% reduction of laser weaponry heat buildup per level.

Helps you keep shooting longer before overheating, basically the equivalent of a bigger magazine in a way. If you think this bonus create balance problems, I would be fine with 4% per level.

Caldari: 10% reload speed of hybrid-railgun weapons per level.

The Caldari light weapons we have so far (rail rifle, sniper rifle) tend to have small magazine sizes. This bonus would help with that. The exact percent is up to you guys, but I think 5% per level would be to load. A reload bonus allows you to spend less time reloading and more time shooting, and thus increase your damage per second.

Gallente: 2% increase of rate of fire of hybrid-blaster weapons per level.

The AR pales in comparison to the new rifles, this ROF bonus would help fix that. Furthermore it would be good for the shotgun, which has also felt neglected.

Minmatar: 5% magazine size increase of projectile and explosive weapons per level.

MOAR DAKKA! , keeps you shooting longer. Kind of equivalent to the Amarr bonus.


Interesting alternatives could be to have new weapon mods besides damage, like for magazine size, heat (my thread on the module), reload speed, accuracy, and more (Cat Merc's thread) could be added, and assaults could have a role bonus to weapon mods (including damage mods). Whether assaults get bonuses to weapon mods, I still want more weapon mods, just damage is boring.

Anyway, back on topic. If you don't think assaults should be about increasing offensive capabilities, and you go with these defense bonuses, PLEASE change the Amarr one to something else. As many have stated before, the repair bonus fits better on a Gallente assault, and the plate bonus fits better on an Amarr assault. More importantly, the bonus sucks; while other suits would be getting huge chunks of HP from their HP modules, a repair module bonus would only give tiny bits more of repair rate, and severely pale in comparison. Whichever suit gets an armor repairer bonus needs to have it with at least 10% efficacy per level, not 5%, or better yet make the skill give and increase base repair rates like the current 1.7 logis have right now.

EDIT: I do feel the scrambler rifle overheats a bit too fast without the assault bonus (just my personal opinion), but others have claimed that it becomes OP with a 25% heat reduction bonus. If you remove the Amarr assault heat bonus, I would suggest making the scrambler rifle's operation bonus 3% heat reduction per level so they will be at a good middle ground between 0% and full 25% heat bonus, or just edit the base stats for heat buildup. I think this would be pretty fair.