Funkmaster Whale
0uter.Heaven
1576
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Posted - 2014.03.29 07:56:00 -
[1] - Quote
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 the meta of the Assault. 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/a 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 arm all you sacrifice is a handful of EHP and a low slot for a plethora of way more meaningful bonuses.
TL;DR : Assault suits are whack and outclassed by Scouts in almost every way. Don't nerf Scouts, buff Assaults.
Let me play you the song of my people!
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Funkmaster Whale
0uter.Heaven
1584
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Posted - 2014.03.29 09:22:00 -
[2] - Quote
Joseph Ridgeson wrote:The thing is that Assaults don't have a role, niche, basically something that says "I am better at this than anyone else." People like to say "Assaults are good at assaulting" but that is like saying "dropships are good at dropshipping."; merely stating the name without giving a definition of what 'assaulting' is to them. Don't fall into that trap: give a definition and purpose by which you mean "give them bonus for assaulting."
If you look at any other suit, you can immediately see what they are meant to do and their bonuses help them with that:
Scout: Sneaky, fast dude. Bonuses help espionage, using cloaks.
Sentinel: Tanky, heavy weapons guy. Bonuses help them resist damage making their high HP go even farther.
Commando: High damage, good defense, high versatility with light weapons. Bonuses help them do damage with racial light weapons.
Logistics: Support via equipment. Bonuses make it easier to fit equipment and make racial equipment better.
Assaults: Medium suit. Bonus saves some CPU/PG for fitting weapons (Assaults still have the second lowest CPU/PG of all other suits) and help in non-focused ways with racial weapons. Amarr and Minmatar help prolong fire, Gallente helps hip-fire, and Caldari gives reload speed.
To use a stupid analogy, there was a dance between Dropsuits and Bonuses. Logistics starts cleaning up with Support, Scout and Stealth snuck out into ally to be alone, Sentinel and Defense are at a table eating pie, Commando and Damage are trying to break into the liquor closet with a stool, and poor little ol' Assault is sitting in the corner waiting for Prince Charming. It was pretty much bound to happen that way to either Commando or Assault. If Assault got the damage bonus, Commando would be the one standing in the corner and we would be asking "what is the point of Commando suits?"
Bonuses are one thing. Suit stats are another.
Assaults being good at assaulting to me means this: effective at advancing the line of battle. That means they should have the least downtime of all the suits as they are the ones constantly engaging in and out of battle in the frontlines.
This comes down to having the ability to sustain a decent amount of fire as evident in their HP but more importantly being effective at recovering from the skirmish to continue the push. An Assault is hardly useful if he/she has to sit 20 seconds behind cover getting his bearings back just so they can re-engage in battle.
Why is it then that Assaults have lower recharge and higher delays than Scouts and Logis? Start by buffing recharge/rep on Assault suits as well as delays on suits that need it. Scouts have the ability to escape via cloaks and speed. It doesn't make sense that their recharge delays on Caldari are massively better than the Assault. Gallente Assaults in turn should have good enough armor rep to recover effectively and timely. Minmatarr and Amarr are tricky but something similar should apply to them in terms of striking tht balance between speed/health/recovery.
Scouts have speed/visibility. Sentinels have HP. Commandos have damage. Logistics have versatility. Give Assaults recovery. We should have the least delay in effectively recovering between one confrontation and another.
Let me play you the song of my people!
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Funkmaster Whale
0uter.Heaven
1598
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Posted - 2014.03.29 15:30:00 -
[3] - Quote
Bethhy wrote:Put two equally skilled players, one in a Caldari scout and one in a Caldari Assault for a 1vs1 On an open field spawning normally on either end.... And the Caldari Assault should win almost every time... Bethhy wrote:Assaults just need the ability to fit full proto modules... Like all the other suits.
It's better for CCP and the economy aswell... When someone can fit more proto modules on a ADV and Proto suit... they often will and loose more isk... Which is what we need..
The Assault suits struggle to fit almost any combination you would goto... It's always a struggle... and the NUMBER ONE annoying and limiting factor of them.
That's about the dumbest logic I've ever seen.
Explain why and how the Caldari Assault wins every time. Why would suit success in an open field matter? How often do you find yourself in an open field going against a Scout? What weapons would they use?
Are they just standing their not moving like idiots and firing at each other like some Civil War era battle? Your logic makes no sense. And besides, winning such a battle would prove almost nothing. You just completely made up a scenario with completely made up results and used that to justify your reasoning. Nice logic bro.
Let me play you the song of my people!
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