I've noticed a few people complaining about these suits as of late, the consensus seems to be that they're horrible in every way and completely outdone by the Caldari and Gallente scouts, and for the most part, I'd be inclined to agree. Now, don't get me wrong, I love these guys, and I love speed tanking, but there are a few things that really hold them back on the battlefield.

The powergrid seems to be the main culprit, being lower than all the other scout suits, but with 81PG and a load of CPU, this shouldn't necessarily be a problem; and yet, it is. What makes this an issue is the Minmatar specialization. The Caldari and scanning and shield tanking, the Gallente have armor and regen tanking, and the Amarr... um... something, something... brick tanked light assaults, I don't know... The Minmatar however are designed for speed. You can fit them differently, you can even brick tank them, but by doing so, you're forfeiting now one, but all three of the suit's greatest strengths, whereas brick tanking a Caldari or Gallente suit has no real negative consequences, doing so with a Minmatar effectively ruins the suit. Playing the suit to its' greatest strengths however, is difficult due to the intensely high PG cost of their greatest asset; Kinetic Catalyzers. These little gifts to the Minmatar are absolutely wonderful, but they're currently one of the most PG intensive modules on the market.

If you choose to speed tank a Minmatar suit (And I'm talking balls to the wall speed tanking, three complex kincats) That's 45 PG, more than half your powergrid gone in an instant. You get the maximum speed for your efforts, but you've completely given up your ability to be dampened from the average Caldari scout, you've given up all armor possibilities, and you've given up your scanning range for this ability. Now, you just have your high slots remaining, three of them at advanced and proto. You could try to use those for precision enhancers, or even damage modules, but what's the point in running precision enhancers on a suit with no range amplifiers? Damage modules are completely outdone by shield extenders, and shield rechargers, quite frankly, are useless on a suit that already has 40hp/s on its' recharge rate. So that just leaves extenders. You can fit three complex extenders, giving you (with a few max core skills) around 343hp. But wait, that's 33 PG on top of 45PG already being used for your Kincats. You're now at 78PG, and low and behold, you haven't even fitted a weapon or equipment. Let's not forget that one of your bonuses are for Nova Knives, the lowest of which that can still be effective costs 6PG at advanced and 8PG at proto.

Alright, so we take an extender off, or lower it to a basic module or even a precision enhancer, thus allowing for the placement of a basic or advanced combat rifle, or perhaps a basic assault rifle or something of the sort, as well as our Nova Knives. We've now got a fitted suit... albeit one with very low health and no equipment whatsoever, but at least we can fit it to its' strengths. To do this, however, we're giving up a massive amount of possibilities including armor, armor repair, profile dampening and shield regulators.



The solution that seems to be the most mentioned is increasing the suit's PG and nothing more. While I don't think this is a bad idea, I think it would take away the uniqueness of the suit, as well as encourage people to do what is already done with the Gallente scouts; Brick tanking. And so, with this in mind, I suggest giving the Minmatar not a buff to PG to bring them in line with the other suits, but a buff specifically to the modules that they use most, kinetic catalyzers... (Or perhaps a change to all biotics for the Minmatar scout, or even all suits) A bonus that reduces the PG costs on kinetic catalyzers or all biotics would increase the suit's usefulness in its' intended roles while helping to avoid the issue of brick tanked cloaked scouts, and while it would leave them still being one of the lesser desired of the three scout suits, it would at least allow them to perform in the field that they were designed for without making them "OP"

Perhaps 5% to 8% per level on PG reduction added in, without taking away their current bonuses. The suits have more than enough CPU to work with, so there's certainly no need to touch that area.

Or simply reduce pg use on shield extenders, which needs to happen anyway.

I'm not all that familiar with the troubles of the Caldari, though I've never had a problem fitting plenty of shield extenders myself, or seen any of the scout suits or others who had any issues. If anything, I'd say reduce the fitting costs on the recharge and regulation modules, make it so they're desirable, instead of just stacking all the extenders possible. That's an issue for another day though, and one I won't try to debate without more experience towards the race's suit selection.

So you want to pigeon hole a Minja into speed tanking...

Does the galscout's bonus FORCE it to fit dampeners? No, actually it allows it to fit less.

Does the Calscout's bonus FORCE it to stack scan mods? Well it's recomended, but not stacking them lets it still use the bonus.

So what if i want 280 armor and a rep of 6.25 on my Minja? So what if i want to STACK SCAN MODS to be a higher ranged Calscout?

We should give it the +5 pg, along with Pg reductions in Shield mods.

Besides, which bonus would you swap out for the Kincat bonus... The Hack bonus? It's the only suit designed to hack, and ruinsthe entire reason many people specced it. Making it replace the Nk bonus is well... Moronic at best. It's LITERALLY the entire reason the Minja exists, even from Day 1.

Just leave the bonuses.

I heard that cardiacs aren't even useful on Minmatar, which I think is sad, because it sounds like it's merely just a fitting problem.

I think the Scout should be just like the Logi. It's given more slots than any other race because of its HP sacrifice for speed. Why not just give it another low slot like Amarr?

Personally I don't follow the whole brick tanked scout thing. I rarely have a problem killing them, even with an Assault Rifle.

I don't see why the fastest suit in the game shouldn't be able to "tank" ferroscale armor because it's more like "glass cannon" tanking.

Half of the reason that although I want to skill into the suit very badly, I'm skeptical, is because you can't even fit what the suit is designed for without leaving yourself vulnerable to easy mode Calamari scans.

Why NOT give Minmatar more PG and an extra low slot? I don't understand why you are a Minja and being so humble that you don't even want your UP suit buffed.

I really look forward to studying the suits properly, because I believe we can fix many of these wih simple PG/CPU tweaks. Lower on modules, higher on suits that need buffing.

Our main priority in Alpha and Bravo was to fix broken gameplay so the next two can be about fixing some key pain points on particular playstyles.

I really look forward to studying the suits properly, because I believe we can fix many of these wih simple PG/CPU tweaks. Lower on modules, higher on suits that need buffing.

Our main priority in Alpha and Bravo was to fix broken gameplay so the next two can be about fixing some key pain points on particular playstyles.

Yep. I'm pretty sure people just want to be able to dual tank their min scouts after a PG buff.

Yep. I'm pretty sure people just want to be able to dual tank their min scouts after a PG buff.

what? you mean like how scouts are supposed to be stealth units, but theyre faster, have better regen, twice as much equipment, and field the same firepower as assaults? while able to be cloaked, and see enemy positions? (including the direction theyre facing)

what playstyle is assault then? cannon fodder?

no stealth unit should be as combat effective as what we have today.

I think it would be interesting just to reduce PG on the lesser used modules and equipment like kincats and hacking modules, see if players can fit a little more in non-stealth, non-tank playstyles.

What then for the Amarr scout in a similar vein

I think it would be interesting just to reduce PG on the lesser used modules and equipment like kincats and hacking modules, see if players can fit a little more in non-stealth, non-tank playstyles.

What then for the Amarr scout in a similar vein

What then for the Amarr scout in a similar vein

I really like some sort of bonus to cloaks for the amarr like 5% per level duration and 3% per level dampening this would make that amarr very attractive!

so 25% better duration at level 5 (STD +3.75s PRO +10s)

The dampening bonus would have to be either an absolute percentage increase rather than a modifier, or just a bigger modifier. +15% of 10% isn't much.

Please remember the Amarr scout has 4 lows - Cloak duration fine but no more dampening.

As Shotty said, bonus to reactive / ferroscale plates would be great. The recent changes with an additional efficacy multiplier would make them superb on an Amarr.

We could also do a range increase (per level) on the ScP (if possible)