Funkmaster Whale wrote:CCP you really need to address the Assault suits sometime soon. What you did to medium suits was just sad. You got rid of somewhat useful bonuses and replaced them with utterly pathetic ones.
Not only that, the stat differences between Assaults and Scouts now effectively trades a meager amount of EHP to a host of scan, speed, hack, recharge and recharge delay bonuses and arguably versatility with the added equipment slot and cloak fitting potential.
Let's do some maths. Let's assume max core skills and such. Take for example Caldari ck.0 Assault and Scout suits:
With 4x Complex Shield Extenders in the High Slots the difference between Assault and Scout is 553 Shield / 150 Armor vs 453 Shield / 88 Armor, respectively. Ok so that comes down to 100 Shield / 62 Armor difference. OK great! So about 162 EHP difference between Assault and Scout, sounds fair at first, but what do we gain as a Scout to trade for the loss of HP?
Let's start with Shield Recharge. The Assault gets 30 and the Scout gets 50. A difference of 20 that ultimately comes down to 18.4s to recharge empty -> full as Assault vs 9.0s as a Scout. If both were fluxed, for example, post-delay the Scout will be ready to fight ~9.4 seconds faster than the Assault, or ~50% faster. The difference itself would be like having a 66% Complex Shield Energizer (which is what it provides with the skill bonus) equipped on an Assault suit. Ironically, if you did that on Assault suit you not only waste 96 CPU to get up to 50 Shield Recharge, your Shield HP drops to 465 which is just barely above what a Scout had.
What about shield recharge delays? The Assault has 5s / 6s delay/depleted versus 3s / 4s on the Scout, but assuming you had 4x Complex Extenders your depleted delays would be 7.9s on an Assault vs 5.2s on a Scout, or the equivalent of having a -40% / -34% Shield Regulator.
How about Scan related stats? Not factoring in bonuses, the Profile / Precision / Radius of an Assault is 50 dB / 50 dB / 10m. The Scout is 35 dB / 40 dB / 20m. A difference of -30% / -20% / -100% between Assault and Scout. Effectively that comes down to a better than Complex Profile Dampener, Complex Precision Enhancer, and about 2x Complex Range Amplifiers.
Wow. That's already quite a bit huh? Anything else? Of course! Let's keep going.
Movement speed? Assault is 5.0 / 7.35 m/s vs Scout 5.45 / 8.01 m/s, a difference of about -8% / -9%, almost a complex Kin Cat with better base movement.
Stamina? 175 / 20/s on Assault vs 200 / 30/s on Scout. About a basic Cardiac Regulator or more worth of bonuses.
Not only that, the Scout gets an innate 5% hacking speed bonus, an extra equipment slot, and the ability to fit cloaks at the loss of a single low slot. That low slot is hardly even accounted for considering most of the bonuses gained are mostly low slot modules.
Now what about suit bonuses? Again, I'm only looking at Caldari here but I'm sure other Assault suits face this problem. The Assault suit gets 25% fitting reduction to Light Weapons / Sidearms and a 25% reload bonus to Rail weaponry (Rail Rifle, Magsec, Sniper). That ultimately comes down to about -21 CPU / -4 PG at best on something as fit costly as the Kaalakiota Rail Rifle. The reload bonus gives -0.75s reload to the RR. So we are looking at a handful of fitting bonus and less than a second to reload on a single class of weaponry. Essentially CCP has given a big middle finger to suit customization and decided to pinhole each Assault suit by giving them meager bonuses on select weaponry.
Scouts? The ck.0 for example gets 25% to scan range / precision, the equivalent of two modules (again) worth of bonuses. Now, consider for a second that these bonuses will apply and aid you no matter how you choose to fit the suit. The Cloak bonus to Scouts gives them unique access to a an extremely versatile and effective tool while still allowing them room to play with other equipment. Both of these bonuses are very useful in the meta sense of how a Scout should function. Visibility is the key to Scouts and both these bonuses are flawless in providing that. You can then go and STILL use anything you want and make use of that bonus.
The Assault gets none of that. Not only is the bonus weak and borderline useless, it forces you to use something you may not want to to make use of it. There's no sense of a bonus that aids the meta sense of what an Assault stands for. They are frontline warriors but don't get anything that provides any sort of meaningful bonus to that aspect. Anything, anything would be better than what we have now.
On Caldari, -10% to shield delays per level, or +10% to shield recharge rate would make way more sense.
On Gallente, +1 Armor/s per level or -10% to armor speed penalty pet level.
On Minmatarr, +2% to movement speed
Amarr is tough to say. They need their laser bonus but I think heat buildup should just be lowered across the board and give them a meaningful armor bonus, possibly the +1 armor/s if Gallente were to get speed reduction.
Of course, these are all just examples but they definitively provide an Assault-orienting bonus without forcing the suit user to use particular modules or weapons to make use of them.
Please CCP, you really gotta address this. There's very little reason to go Assault ATM because all you sacrifice is a handful of EHP and a low slot for a plethora of way more meaningful bonuses and access to nifty Cloaks as a Scout.
TL;DR : Assault suits are whack and outclassed by Scouts in almost every way. Don't nerf Scouts, buff Assaults.