CCP does not know how to balance stuff. They went overboard with scouts as they usually do with balancing in general. I am a committed scout, have always been since early 2013 and imo scouts are ridiculous now. They used to be near useless and very 'real' skill intensive. Now they are just OP. there is never middle ground with CCP - too bad.

1.8 is very fun for scouts but again it's at the expense of everyone else. Much like 1.7 was a bone toss to tankers but screwed other players and the game itself along with it - if there is no balance there is no game.

Specifically now scouts have too many up sides: excellent suit bonuses, an extra hi/low slot, an extra equip slot, and cloaking modules that have OP mechanics.

If scouts just got their bonuses and an extra equip slot for cloak they woulda still been OP simply because cloaks are just too powerful - 30 sec duration with minimum cooldown is just insane.

There is nothing wrong with mediums, it's just that scouts and heavies got buffed too hard.

I find the assault bonuses very useful. I had so much extra fitting space on my assaults after the update and I'm loving the 85 round assault combat rifle clips. Most of my suits get 800 ehp and I still maintain decent speed. The Gallente and Caldari are the only suits that need a better bonus. the current ones don't really seem to make sense they're just extra sharpshooter and reload skills.

But as the OP said, there's still very little reason to use them over other suits. Use a commando and you get more damage and two light weapons, use two assault CR's and you're onto a winner.

The assault suit should get an extra equipment slot at bare minimum to keep up with logi suits and to offer a higher eHP than scouts.

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?"

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?"

GOOD IDEA.

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.

Amarr should get passive resistances.
Gallente are the repper suits but reps are so underpowered.
You can do 70-140 a second standing on a nanohive but you can't get your suit past 30 armor rep with any tank capabilities.

The way they handled assaults is a joke really.
Scouts and logis are just better assaults.
Dont use an assault unless your an amarr or standard frame at all.

Unless your a beast player and you want to handicap yourself.

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.

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.

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...