Link?

You really ought to provide a link when making claims such as these...

Edit: Ah. There it is.

Soooooo Caldari is just back to its original uprising 1.0 bonus? A bonus so useless I hope CCP are trolling. What happened to our shield extender bonus? You know the only one making the suit even remotely viable?

I disagree. These bonuses seem good to me. Those Minmatar and Amarr bonuses ARE mouthwatering (I'm looking forward to my 8 round flaylock , but the Gallente Bonus and Caldari bonus will both be strong in their own rights.

Lets start with the Caldari bonus:

You reload 25% faster. Since Rail weapons typically have the longest reload times, this is actually a great buff to them. Never underplay the ability to put more rounds downrange. This could turn the Caldari into a suppression machine. Have a Cal Assault sit on top of a Proto Hive from about 80m back and just let loose. Peg anybody who DARES to step out of cover.

Reload speeds without putting points into them (just the class bonus)?

Proto Rail Rifle: 2.4s. You now reload faster than a Combat Rifle. Reload V = 1.92s
Magsec: 2.4s. Again, faster than the SMG. By a wide margin. Reload V = 1.92s
Sniper Rifle: 3s. If the Reload speeds have no penalty, then you can get this down to 2.4s reload on a sniper rifle. DAMN.

In short, the Caldari will be an amazing long range suppression unit, capable of holding objectives from a distance, and being an excellent roadblock for advancing troops. You will be in his optimal first, remember that.

Gallente:

Dispersion and Kick 5% per level.

Okay, if the weapon skills stay the same, this would mean that a Fully Specced out Gal Assault will have a 50% reduction to kick and Dispersion. So what will this do? It will turn every Gallente Assault rifle into a hipfire MONSTER.

Think about it, you could go through an entire clip of AR from the hip with AMAZING accuracy. This thing will CHEW through a squad of targets if you damage mod the sucker. I have a feeling that this class (when combined with it's regen tanking) will become the go to class for CQC combat, able to quickly engage targets, drop them with a firestorm of plasma, and regen fast enough to take on multiple waves of targets or to quickly and relentlessly assault a command post.

Minmatar:

My baby. Minmatar 4 Life. This is what I will spec into on the side (I main a Minmatar Scout, but I'm a really aggressive scout)

Anyways. 25% extra clip size for the SMG and CR (ACR as well). Mass Drivers will get 11 shots (Assault will get 13, prepare for area denial champs). My beloved Flaylock will get an 8 round clip (this will patch it's notorious problem of being unable to kill in a clip, but it really needs a damage buff anyways. Separate discussion though.)

So, what does this mean? It eliminates a major drawback of the Projectile weapons. The CR will get 68 round clip (22 Bursts and a 2 round burst). The ACR will get an amazing 85 round clip (4.25s to empty the clip. DPC goes up to 1972 unmodified).

Explosive weapons will be a major force for a Minmatar. Expect to see some Area Denial Specialists in 1.8, as they will be able to shut down areas for an extended period of time. I love it, more tactics. So long as they don't buff the damage on MD's, this should be fine, as it won't kill you before you can react, but it will for SURE make you move (lest you become a statistic).

Amarr

Yeah. Same as usual. SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM.

You have nothing to hold you back. Probably the strongest bonus of them all (in conjunction with the CPU/PG reduction they get, Amarr's will be tough cookies to crack in 1.8. Expect them to be armor tanked to heck with damage mods as usual.)

I imagine Aero is jumping for joy somewhere. Anyways, scramblers aren't my area of expertise, so I'll let someone else go on about the buffs here.



So yeah, that's my take on this. I don't think the bonuses will be useless, it will just change the role of the assault that we know.

Not better or worse. Just Different.

Its viable now because it has a shield extender bonus, if we lose that our tank is reduced even more then it already is. If we stack more extenders on it to compensate we lose damage output due to not being able to use damage mods and the shield recharge delay is increase due to the stacking penalty of extenders. We shouldn't be forced to armor tank our suits even more then we already are forced to.

The Gallente Assault is probably getting +3hp/s, not quite 5, but still respectable. +50% efficacy for a module, any module, is a bit much.

While true, if you look at the individual racials though, you'd notice that it is very similar to what was just put out now

The Amarr Logi bonus is good though. I use Armor Repairers all the time because of it. An enhanced repper almost becomes a complex repper because of it.

I understand, CCP follows about 3/4s of what the community threads ask for, same with the scouts and the logi threads that happened way back.

edit:

though at one point it was just a reload bonus, it has updated since then, multiple times

You forgot the Armor Repair Skill.
It ends up being 4.6875hp/s, add the +2 it will probably get (for some reason I thought it would be +3, because I thought the scout got +5. I'm dumb sometimes too!), and you get a total of 6.6875hp/s, that's good. A complex repper will put the rep rate up to 9.81hp/s, a rep rate any assault would envy.

11.375hp/s actually.

2 passive.
+
(5GÇó1.25GÇó1.5)= 9.375
=
11.375hp/s

With 2 complex armor repairers, that bonus would give a massive repair rate of 20.75hp/s

17.625. Jeez man, get yo' math right.

What are we arguing about? I don't think we're on the same page here.
I'm advocating a +5% Armor Repair Module Efficacy per level, and I believe you are advoacing a +10% per level bonus.
I'm putting out numbers that the +5% bonus would give...

But with 10% you get +6.25 Armor Reps with two. That a whole extra complex module just for having two reppers. 10% is too high, 7% might be the right number if you think 5 is too low.

I don't know..

I don't use the RR (so ignore if you feel this makes my opinion invalid) but from what I've seen one of the main ways I've countered a RR user is forcing them to expend their ammo and taking them out on the reload. Also bear in mind the rifle is getting a reduction so you will likely be reloading more often.

As for the dispersion. To me that will make all the Gal tech incredible hipfire weapons - perfect for their playstyle to cover distance and then gun down enemies at close range. Without the need to ADS they can strafe faster and be more deadly up close and perhaps even mid range.