If you look into the barrels of an HMG, you're supposed to die... It will finally be as it's supposed.

If you want to get that heavie on the node, engage from a distance if possible, and for those CQC situations, grenades will still help, you just need some hives. Massdrivers will see a comeback for those situations. But mostly, CQC is heavy and sneaky scout territory.

But there are enough places on the maps where mediums will still be the suits to use.

well considering before the 10% dmg buff to the HMG, the HMG was just a giant BB gun that tickles the enemies armor.

so technically the HMG is fine where it is now.

unless of course everyone just wants a broken HMG so they can kill the heavies more easier. then you'll just see a surge of RR/CR/SCR heavies once the HMG is dead.

AR is not a counter for the hmg that would be ********, HMG is supposed to counter medium suits at close range. shotgun on a fast suit is a great counter for a heavy. the idea that you are supposed to counter a heavy by going toe to toe is ********, I cant take a heavy suit and go toe to toe face to face with a veh now can i? ARs are supposed to be meant at countering other light weapons in its optimum range as well as having a much larger jack of all trades use. really they should keep the ar dmg where it is and up its effective ranges by about 25%

The Gallente assault is supposed to die as well, if it looks into an HMG wielded by a Gallente heavy.

Medium frames are not the masterrace, that can anihilate everything else on the battlefield. The Gallente assault should be the frame that moves betwheen nodes in city maps to reinforce others. The suit for digging in is the heavy.
Assault should be the conquerors, moving fast in packs to overwhelm enemy forces by sheer numbers. As is in real life, standard infantry is the expendeble cannonfodder. Infantry in all wars has been shoved into meatgrinders all over the world.
BTW, I think Assault suits should be cheaper than all other suits, by at least 20%.

If the shotgun isn't good enough to give a sneaky scout the chance to kill that heavy, it needs to be buffed. Sneaky scouts should be able to take down a heavy, but only if undetected... and it still needs to be close (strafing involved and every shot connects).

Direct hits with the MD still do full damage! So you need to aim, and not only spam the floor.
In the end, the heavy will need teamwork to take down or a sneaky scout to prepare him...

In CQC the heavy needs to be absolutely undisputed. He moves slow and has no other application whatsoever. Not "in a good place". The absolute best and always winning.

Other CQC options should be inferior to the heavy's, because they come with the benefit of increased mobility, the ability to cloak and set up kills, and better scan precision for situational awareness. The heavy is a gigantic flashing "Here I am, *******" beacon with a giant gun attached to it. He has to be absolutely dominant in direct combat.

The heavy will be fine in 1.8, leave him alone.

The smart money is usually on Aeon's analysis of things, but I'd have to agree that if even a gallente assault with a properly balanced AR (which is not what we will have in 1.8) meets up with a sentinel with an HMG within 20-30 meters, skill and meta level being equal, the sentinel should win. Pretty much every time. Double the range, the assault should win.

Is that what we will have in 1.8? No, of course not. But it is nonetheless a fairly well balanced scenario.

If point defense is all Sentinels could do...fine, but lets face the facts people have been using LAVs and other means to get around the heavy role forever and make it basically the most powerful infantry suit off an on since closed beta. Thus we have the cycle of heavy nerfs and buffs.

hey do me a favor go to an army base or to someone who owns a ( gatling,vulcan,chaingun,ect) and tell me what ttk has to do with it. i mean you cant nerf the death machine bruh, and im a scout. it might suck but there is always a way around it.

If scouts are unable to keep heavies in check the first adjustment should be nerfing their turn speeds. The HMG should be a beast up close, but be countered by range. The other big concern is the heavy in the LAV. This could be addressed by making AV 'nades a viable counter.

Because we suck in every other situation.

long ass wall of white text

but us heavies all know that the reason people want our HMG nerfed is so that they can beat us 1vs1, they don't like the fact that our HMG can win in CQC and so wants the dmg nerfed. pretty much the usual pattern, medium frame users keep getting killed by X weapon and so they all band up together wanting the nerf hammer on X weapon.

just saying what im seeing at the moment, and it seems like this is the trend. but hey we all have our differences, you're for the nerf and us heavies are against the nerf. only CCP can decide whether they want to nerf it or not.

Christ you medium frames are stupid, whiny poofters. HMG is not OP in 1.7, it will not be OP in 1.8. Sentinels are not going to be OP in 1.8. This is not Zerg 514. Learn2tactics.

Amadi I'm going to kick you so hard you get a fatal error again for posting a **** thread like this.

Im a heavy to. I just love being called fat and then eating everything with hmg. If we cant jump over the 20cm ledges how are we going to climb into a lav.

15% resistance is for someone who has put millions of SP into one suit. You know what counters that? If you put millions of SP into the one gun they have 15% resistance to, id est: proficiency skill. You know what that's called? Balance. Further most of the resistances combat a weapon's strengths anyway, mostly just lowering it (Cal Sentinel - 15% shield resistance to blaster weapons, which do +20% to shields anyway, 10% to lasers which to +20% to shields, etc) and not negating it. Exceptions being Amarr and Gallente with projectile weapons, but again, prof V eliminates sentinel V resistance. Balanced.

Why is HMG not getting a nerf? Because that DPS everyone likes to pretend can be applied in the real world can only be applied at shotgun range. At 20m, HMG cannot possibly apply 100% of paper DPS - barely more than half. At 30m, it's under half. People seem to like to ignore this part of HMG, probably because they don't use it and assume it's like their laser accurate ____ rifle which can hit with every shot with decent aim (or aim assist, something that is weaker on HMG than on rifles anyway - not that I give a single solitary ****, it needs removed, but I digress...) but it isn't. That cone of fire that makes it so deadly at CQC also severely hampers its effectiveness at anything but CQC, even inside its own optimal it cannot apply 100% of its theoretical DPS. Tiny effective range, absurd falloff of damage between optimal and effective, massive dispersion - it's not doing the DPS people think except in close ranges, and if you're that close to the business end of an HMG, you're supposed to die. Learn2Flank.

It takes 273,600sp to get heavy frame to lvl 3 to unlock sentinels, and a further 2,487,360sp to get proto sentinel. It takes 621,840sp to get (Light/Heavy/Sidearm) Weapon Operation V, 621,840sp to get (Specific Weapon) Operation V and a further 1,554,600sp to get Proficiency V. Now, no light/heavy/sidearm weapon requires ____ Operation V, but even if they did, that means it would take a grand total of 2,798,280sp to counter a sentinel's resistance, which costs 2,760,960sp to obtain. I'd say that's pretty fair, especially since light/heavy/sidearm weapon operation affect multiple weapons whereas heavy dropsuits skills only affect sentinels and commandos, and most people only run one or the other. Plus the L/H/S weapon op skill gives a bonus (3% CPU use reduction per level to weapon type), whereas basic heavy dropsuit skill gives none.

As for the flanking part, if a shotgunner catches me from behind I'm toast 99 out of 100 times, by the time I turn around the second slug is in me and I'm nearly dead, unless I get lucky or the shotgunner is very bad it ends poorly for me. Same deal for rifles hitting me from outside my range before I see them, unless I'm standing next to cover, I'm toast. Heavies have enormous head hitboxes, people need to use that to their advantage.

For the map issue, come on, there's only really 3 or 4 points that heavies truly shine on, and even then they're still very beatable. If there's heavies on both sides (as there should be), you use your own heavies to lead the charge in. Now that's not to say the only counter to heavies should be heavies, but you can't expect 4-5 heavies in a tight area like that to go down easily. Spam fluxes in, fire in MD, sneak in with cloaked shotgunners, send in your own heavies, etc. Sometimes it just takes a different approach for a situation than what we're used to doing. On skirmish maps, if there's 5 heavies camped on one point, switch your tactics up - stop going for that point, go and hack all the other points, force them into a situation you want to fight them in rather than the situation they want to fight you in. For dom, most of them are wide open, just kill them from range... for the one new dom map that isn't, get a DS and put uplinks on top of the cylinder where the point is and drop grenades/MD rounds down on their heads while you push in from both sides on the ground. And you can in fact drop an OB into that point, btw. And heavies suck at ambush, so there's that.

VERY good point. People complain about heavies using RRs and CRs, but what do you think will happen when the HMG gets the nerf you're talking about? Heavies that used the HMG will slowly gravitate to the better weapons, which people QQ about because "HEAVIES NOT SUPPOSE TO BE ABLE TO USE ARs!!!! QQ"

So heavies will dominate CQC... isn't that its job? Aren't you suppose to die if you turn a corner and bump into a heavy? No? Then yea, nerf the HMG, and make heavies as useless as they were a few updates ago... just that now they have a whole arsenal of light weapons to use

To be fair, it might need a nerf considering the nerfs everything got, but knowing CCP... lol... heavies will be right back to Uprising 1.0

That nerf bat is my biggest fear, too, Lance.

The HMG needs a ~9% ROF nerf to stay as powerful as it is in 1.7, no more and no less. As it is now, it's getting an effective buff compared to it's most frequent competition.

I think if you listen carefully, people aren't saying "Nerf HMG because it's overpowered right now!" It isn't. It's pretty damn balanced right now. But if everything else is getting nerfed and HMG is left alone, that's effectively a buff, and HMG does NOT need a buff.