Cross Atu
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
2518
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Posted - 2014.07.01 15:43:00 -
[61] - Quote
Varoth Drac wrote:The things is, I fundamentally disagree with increasing assault suit damage. The TTK benchmark should be set by assaults. I agree with this stance generally speaking and have outlined above both why I agree and what this is an important motive to give Assaults a "gank" bonus as part of their role, and do so prior to making other changes to the line.
Varoth Drac wrote:That is what is so clever about the current assault suit bonuses, they increase the effectiveness of the rifles without directly increasing damage. Giving assault suits a base damage increase seems to me a very ugly and messy way of improving them. Too many bonuses feel like a patchwork of fixes rather than a coherent set of suit perks.
Things like the racially valuable Amarr Assault bonus are great for flavor and honestly if the other suits could be a little more deeply in that vein I'd really support that.
The above having been said it seems unlikely that the current bonuses, even with a touch up, are enough on their own.
If they were we'd see the Assault line performing much more effectively on the field and we'd see far more Amarr Assaults deployed (due to their more specific bonus).
Seemingly the facts point to there being a need for further Assault love beyond where we are at present, hence this thread
I conceptually disagree with the notion that giving the Assault Dropsuit a role defined by optimized damage potential is either ugly or messy. Their niche is assaulting, and clearly their role is not tank based as that's covered by the Heavy frames (both Sent and Manndo). They are also clearly Light Weapon specialists, and CCP has stated they won't be getting the 2x LW the Commando has. This leaves us with bringing up their potential optimum dps with (at least their racial) LWs. How we go about doing this can be discussed further of course (and whether or not the medium frame line as a whole needs a more confirmed survivability base line, which it likely does), but I honestly see little room in the current inter-frame balance of Dust to define the assault role niche without use of damage optimizing skill buffs. (After all even the current buffs are there to optimize damage, regardless of how well they're doing that).
Varoth Drac wrote:The key to buffing assaults is in their base stats, there isn't room to change things with bonuses or slots without opening a can of worms and making a mess.
Simply alter the base stats on the assault suits directly opens a can of worms and makes quite a mess, especially when it comes to altering their eHP in the present state of the game.
A few highlights of that, Scouts need internal balance polish, roughly half of them aren't really viable for high level play.
Support logistics need major love, when looking at ISK and risk vs reward scaling their rarely viable outside the hands of a few seasoned vets and they certainly offer a vanishingly small window for new players to enter the role, main the role, and do so while not running at a loss (esp for long enough to grind the millions of SP needed to run effective gear, or the proto suits required to make some gear worth running in a competitive context).
To make matters worse, at present the "slayer logi" can still run a better slayer build than the assault most of the time, but the support logi is currently in fittings which will usually perish vs an equivalent assault.
Buffing the assault base stats such as regen, prior to addressing other issues, creates a bigger mess to clean up with regards to medium frame balance, as well as racial scout balance.
Something not derived from the base stats needs to be looked into as a method of closing the power gap prior to altering base stats (and any alteration of base stats cannot happen to the Assault alone, the entire medium frame line needs to be looked at because the entire line is weak at it's role right now).
Varoth Drac wrote:Surely it would be wise to buff assault regen to near scout levels first (maybe with a minor scout regen nerf as well ), to address the clear problem with regen mods (i.e. why fit them on assaults when they are free with scouts?) and see how it goes before jumping straight in with massive overhauls and potentially throwing things way out of balance again.
As I have outlined above, it is specifically conceptually unwise to buff assault regen in the current state of things.
As was highlighted in my conversation with gustavo acosta it is an idea which could do with a look once other steps are taken but for many reasons isn't optimal as a first wave solution to the current situation.
Using eHP as the vanguard method for bringing the assault role into it's proper place creates a deeper imbalance within the medium frame line, forces the assault and commando roles to overlap even more than they already do, muddies the waters of the already imperfect internal balance of scouts and even (albeit slightly) brings the assault closer to playing the type of breaching and defense roles as the Sent (and in a somewhat similar manner with the assault dropping back from the fight to regen, while the heavy would be dropping back to reload).
As I've been detailing above and in my prior posts there are specific reasons why altering assault eHP balance at this stage, prior to addressing other aspects in need of a rework, would have the potential to feed imbalance. It's worth looking at again later, but it's the wrong solution currently, there's simply too much indirect harm it could do.
Varoth Drac wrote:Hasn't everyone been saying over and over again, to achieve balance, small steps at a time are best?
Yes, small steps are the best method, however that being said not all steps are equal and not all easy changes are conceptually small steps when it comes to balance.
0.02 ISK
Cross
Cross Atu for CPM1- An emergent candidate
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wiseguy12
Ancient Legion
32
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Posted - 2014.07.03 18:48:00 -
[63] - Quote
Simply take away the scouts ability to stack armor and shield modules. The problem is that scouts can stack good guns, armor modules, and shield at the same time. I my scout has all scout modules, (profile dampener, precision enhancer, and complex shield extender), a cheap magsec and uplinks and a cloak. Reduce CPU and PG to prevent strong guns on strong suits force the player to pick between those. Good equipment or Good modules or Good guns.
W.I.D.O.S. when in doubt orbital strike
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