1. Not just scouts, also logis, sentinels, commandos, and all size basic frames.
2. You're misrepresenting the amount of options. Non-assaults would be able to use mass driver, laser rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, plasma cannon, swarm launcher.

Anyway, I disagree with the OP on this, its way too harsh. The source of the scout problem is the inadequacies of the medium frames, scouts and other suits having access to the 4 main assault rifles is not the problem. The problem is that scouts can tank nearly as much HP as the medium frames, while still being faster, stealthier, better at scanning, having a 2nd equipment, and cloaking bonus.

I think scouts should be able to bricktank if they want to, but the HP gap between scouts and medium frames should remain significant. Right now the HP gap isn't, and an Amarr scout actually has more module slots than an Amarr assault at STD-ADV for example and allows the scout to out-tank the assault, while still being faster, stealthier, better at scanning, have a 2nd equipment etc. The issue is less pronounced with the other assaults, but the gap is too small.

The problem is the medium frame slots, and slot progression. Like every other frame size, mediums should gain only 1 module slot from one tier to the next, and the upper limit should be 8 (like most current logis). So it should be 6 module slots STD, 7 ADV, 8 PRO. I say let scouts tank if they want to, as long as they don't start usurping the role of assaults.

My thread on the subject: [Request] Medium frame (basic/assault/logi) slot changes/incease

And make it certain death Any where we go against 1000 HP assaults from any range outside 20/30 m, sounds totally fair, how did you think of such a idea?

I was wondering tho, in the armed forces when everyone loads out do you really think they kick the scouts out the truck and say" HERE'S A SHOTGUN AND A PISTOL SOLDIER, GO GET EM!"

Asssaults- The king of light weapons and medium ranges. The killers. Should be the best with rifle type weapons and be self sufficient enough to hold the front lines and push objectives with minimal help from other roles. The "Jack of all trades" of the fps. But a master of none. Simply where most of dust should be. This is where everyone should start in Dust, but still be strong enough as a slayer to be viable in PC and 20 MIL SP on up. Descent hack, descent speed, descent health, descent size, but an above average kill ability to round it out. (SHOULD be the class with the 10%-15% damage bonus with rifles, plus another survivability bonus such as 5%-10% shield extender efficiency per level, of shield extenders for Caldari, giving you a max health bonus of 66-132 shields if using all complex shield extenders on proto or a 1-2 hp/s armor rep per level for gallente repping 5-10 HP/s passively on armor . As "jack of all trades" SHOULD NOT have race specific attack bonuses such as I love Caldari for its shields, but I don't not use the rail rifle thus I do not get a bonus to anything. If general bonuses were given to all rifles, I could use my assault combat rifle, CR, AND duvolle with my caldari and still get bonuses. Maybe give an extra 1% bonus per level if you use the weapon for your race. Now some slayers and normal players return here to kill things at medium range. Would still be viable with a VIZIAM scrambler rifle Nerf of about 8-15% and a combats rifle Nerf of about 3-5%, AND and AR BUFF of 5-10%. NOW all rifles are pretty viable and balanced for all classes that can use them. Now everybody is getting close to even in killing power, pew pew)

Scouts-The kings of deception. Hacking/sabotaging, cloaking, fast shield regen, stamina, and passively scouting out enemies are just a few perks that come with a quick suit and a small hotbox. Add in your main rifles and you got yourself an OVERPOWERED suit CCP. Take out your main rifles but leave shotguns, lasers, Mass driver and sniper rifles, plus all your sidearms and you got yourself a specialized role here. By keeping your scout limited to short range weapons and specialized medium-long range weapons, and keep them able to sneak under the radar and semi invisible, you keep scouts out of the main firefight, but when they come back in they play a pivotal tipping role. Imagine a 5 vs 6 firefight in an Ambush, when suddenly a scout uncloaks above the 6 man squad with a laser rifle or mass driver, raining hell from above. Or uncloaks next to the ever pushing 6 man squad with a shotgun knova knife combo, 1 shot knova knifing the ever persistent healer logi and going to town on the overbearing sentinel with the shotgun. And with being the stealthy bugger he is, silently walking up to an objective high invisible to quick hack is very valuable in PC and skirmishes. ( Scouts have received a HUGE buff this build, and for ALL those scouts that have been QQing since Chromosome and have weathered the storm this much just to be OP for just one build isn't fair for them to be nerfed in 1.9. By keeping the scout stats the same but taking out mainstream rifle usage aka AR, CR, scrambler, etc, you limit the "slayer" ability but increase the role specific intentions of the scout, and honestly, by even JUST using the sidearms, the scout can be very proficient. During the week of the sidearm challenge, I did a weeks worth of JUST sidearm killing with an ADV magsec/Toxin SMG combo for the week. At the end of the week, after pubbing all game modes and even doing PCs, after over 1,200 kills, my KDR was at around 5.87 and my win/loss ratio was about 4.26. Which was an even better kdr than I normally receive with my CR or AR/SMG combo. By simply picking out my targets at more close range and better maneuvering, I was able to compensate for my weakness at mid-long ranges. Results may vary, but I'm stating its very possible JUST to use sidearms as a scout and be very successful still if you want to be a sort of slayer. By keeping the stats the same, you keep the scout still a viable class for all situations. But I believe base scout hacking multipliers should be increased to 1.25 instead of 1.1 across the board, and All racial scout bonuses to be redone to be more even. The main reason scouts were good recon before 1.8 was because with stacking mods like precision enhancers and dampeners, they were able to pick up others or stay hidden on others scans which limited their HP. With giving scouts a cloak which is a natural proto dampener, AND giving racial bonuses that used to take up scout low/high slots, a scout can now effectively HP tank in those slots, AND have increased slots to do so in. Taking away the racial bonuses make specialized role scouts, such as scouts that need to see others on passive scans need to fill their high/low slots with those corresponding modules now, lessening the amount of HP one can stack. But still allowing a scout to HP tank if he/she so wishes to, but are now vulnerable to being seen by scanners when not cloaked, thus bringing back the welcome use of scanners.)

Honestly its like CCP did not even attempt to try out a single scout suit after these buffs were applied.

This is curious, I have to ask:

When most of the complaints regarding Scouts are focused around their ability to combine brick tanking, stealth-ing, and equip an weapon with high alpha AND high DPS, all in one suit why would you think a balance suggestion which limits them to that weapon would beGǪwell received?

-1

If they increased the fitting requirements of the weapons then they would need to increase the fitting bonus on the assault suits as they are now they can now fit a full proto set up with good fitting skills.

here is my 2 cents;

how about adding the benefits of complex shield and armor modules without the penalties to the assault suits over the scout suits.

+66 shield hit points better recharge rate and a shorter delay in shield recharge time and +135 armor hit points and then give the Assaults 1 more module slot then their scout counter parts (the same amount on all of them 7).

and to one of the above posters the SCR does not need another nerf the rail rifle is still op and is in need of the reduction you suggested for the SCR, now for the weapon specialization they should of done the opposite in my opinion.

wrong way to do it, since assaults get the reduction to cpu/pg of light weapon
just increase the pg/cpu of weapons

Yep, turns out scouts CAN use HMGs!!!


I'd say commando would need two medium slots, then, instead of its two lights.

Um. A logi is a medium suit. The only difference is more health vs equipment slots. Restricting weapons further is just stupid. I'm sure most heavies would rather have more heavy weapons to choose from. And I'm skilled into Assault. I'm sure most assault players would like a little more health to not be one-shotted by Lights and Heavies.

Scouts, you have to admit something is wrong when you have 500+ armor and around 100shield and can move faster then a medium suit, you can dissappear from sight, you have better defenses against radar and being spotted and you have a smaller hit box. Right now scouts are better in every single way then a assault suit is, even the proto assault suits are not equal to the proto scout suits. This is an obvious inbalance in the game, especially when you have things like the CR which can easily do the highest dps in the game, even higher the HMGs I believe when you have the auto controller.

This always goes back to the fact, that the rifles in this game RR, CR, and AR are the ones that are the most unbalanced, such as when people would go up on the mushroom with the Duoville and literally mow people down from 135 meters or more away. We've had other issues like this before, with even side arms, I'm sure you all can remember getting ohk by a side arm and going WTF! The mass driver even had its day in the sun, when scouts used to curse its exsistance because of the splash damage.

Now the problem with the scout is not just that the cloaking mechanic doesn't always work as intended, such as it can make players literally invisible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBICx2yyZo Watch this and you will see exactly the issue at times. The problem is, you now have a unit that is broken in multiple different ways, and it has no way of being backed down without fundamentally changing the game as a whole. Specialization needs to occur in this game, yes you should be allowed to put whatever you want on a basic frame, but on a Sentinel or a Scout, as the two main examples these need to be more limited in the available options you can have on them. I do not claim to know what those limitations might be, but a limiting of weapons would be one of them as long as a respec to just weapons occured. Though I am unsure if this is the final answer, maybe we need to have better stacking penalties so that the scouts do not put so much armor on and become tank built slayers.

For those of you that want more about how the cloak is not working properly, which is you decloak first then able to fire, or least should be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj8vXTqgw1M shows many excellent examples of it failing. If even more proof of how bad it can be at times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJwVo_tFHY8

Though after looking for a while, this is my favorite of all with the nova knife bug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NdqS2xeO7g

A much better way to make scouts viable again would be to take the commando suits +dmg bonuses and give them to the assault suits and give +reload speed/+range bonuses to the commandos. That would make the assaults, y'know, assault-y and the commandos fire support...

Then what is this magical number of HP we should all be capped at?