The assault class should get the ROF bonus for all assault suits.

Amarr - bonus to laser heat buildup

Caldari - increase to shield regen per level. (let the bonus be one that makes sense for the suit and is useful).

Gallente - increase to armor repair rate per level

Minmatar - increase to number of bullets (same bonus it has now)

This actually started in a Logi discussion thread, but it involves Assaults as well.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18i0Z93RGQbZD-_OMwXmYDJk4ORDBml5Xq_2k_4sF8UY/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts? Its a very rough, preliminary proposal but its a starting point to getting the ball rolling.

Commandos have a damage bonus and that's not considered to be a problematic game mechanic.

EDIT: But to be fair I would prefer to see a move to make all suit bonuses affect a module rather than a base attribute. Again this is preliminary.

Commandos also move and strafe much slower than assaults, as well as sharing the largest hitbox in the game with the other heavy suits.

Do you feel that the requirement to use damage mods for all races would make some suits less suited for the role, given a lack of high slots? Or Would that make them better because it doesn't cut into their main tanking rack?

Do you feel that the requirement to use damage mods for all races would make some suits less suited for the role, given a lack of high slots? Or Would that make them better because it doesn't cut into their main tanking rack?

Plus I'd prefer to encourage the use of racial weapons to get the bonuses, so in a way you are sacrificing flexibility to gain damage on a specific race's weapon. Damage mods apply to all weapons and kinda screw certain suits out of proper fitting.

Since stacking more than 2 damage mods makes no sense, it's really not a bad deal for any of the suits compared to the others. Minmatar and Caldari lose primary tank in return for more damage, but they are meant to be more mobile suits and can recover their health more quickly unassisted. Also, by equipping a damage mod, they are also reducing their depleted recharge delay by replacing a shield extender. And since there is no primary tank loss for Amarr and Gallente it simply gives them another viable option other than additional eHP.

No major losses on either side, and putting on more than one is pretty much gimping yourself anyway due to the stacking penalty.

Also, that number is obviously up in the air. It could be increased to 20% (100% @ max putting it to 10%) so assaults could use the old bonus, making stacking 2 mods viable again.

I like promoting racial suits using their weapons, but every time I think of RoF or damage increases all I can picture is a shithead on a roof with a RR firing on everyone below with impunity. Like I said before, it makes me nervous. I wouldn't veto the entire sheet due to this one issue because it makes up for a lot, it's just a personal issue I have with directly adding damage output.

i consider it a loss. i run caldari assault and my current experimental fit looks like this:

2 complex extenders

2 complex energizers

2 complex regulators

1 complex cpu mod

---

the problem i find with shield tanking is that you simply cant fight head to head. you must invest in the recharge. simply stacking extenders isnt as viable as people think. you wont have the hp of armor tanked scout let alone an assault suit. so you cant fight them that way.

we dont have shield reps. so theres no way to recover fight to fight as fast as a repped armor tanker can. we need our regen. that fit is about 87 shield hp/s and 377 shield hp. its enough to take a hit and get to cover. then return fire when your shields come back.

losing either the extenders or the recharge would break the fit as you would have enough hp to take a hit from anything really, or not enough regen to engage multiple targets rapidly.

shield tanking is tricky

i agree with you. directly buffing damage output should be avoided. a final solution at best, and only to be visited when all other options have failed.

we can be a bit more creative than that.

For me in my Minassault, I run 3 pro shields, a basic energizer and a basic recharger (avoids the stacking penalty), and if I'm going for up-close fights I toss on a complex reactive and ferroscale. If I'm using my burst, I run a shield regulator and a kinkat.

I have less tank, less regen and more delays to my shields unfortunately....

Also, I still think regen needs to be looked into closer. Shield regen/delays getting directly buffed makes a lot of sense for the shield side of assault buffs.

As for the Amarr/Gallente parallel? .....Give them a flat bonus to the reps and eHP from plates and repping mods?

Well at the same time the Assault is rather lacking in anything that makes it unique, so damage output should be a priority. Im not dead set on either, I understand the concern completely though.

So if we have say 10% bonus
1st damage mod increases damage to 15%
2nd is like 19%-ish

If we say doubled damage mods (Which is probably excessive)
1st 10%
2nd 18%-ish

So basically stacking mods is about the same either way at least for the first 2, but I really do worry this favors armor tanks too much, especially since a bonus to mods would make stacking more a lot more beneficial, plus it doesnt encourage racial matching as much.

I dunno man, I'm on the fence on this one but I'm leaning more towards flat bonus at this rate.

a general purpose reduction to weapon fitting costs, and a increase to light weapon fitting costs (its been mentioned elsewhere)

then an offensive assault bonus:

+1 grenade capacity for all suits. 5% per level to clip size, max ammo, reduced recoil, reload speed.

amarr and minmatar keep their current bonuses

gallente and caldari need something better though. honestly i think a damage bonus for the gallente would be fine, and a charge up time reduction for the caldari would be great.

and a racial defensive bonus

amarr: 5% per level to armor plate efficiency

gallente: 5% per level to armor repair efficiency

caldari: 5% per level to shield module efficiency

minmatar; 3% per level armor and shield efficiency.


someone else had posted about gallente getting a bonus to both armor reps, and reactive plates. and some feel that caldari should focus on shield extenders while minmatar should focus on shield regulators. i dont how i feel about that though. i feel shield tanking purely a caldari thing and they should get a bonus to all shield modules. thats just me though

Fair enough. I'll pen it in as an alternative for now.

That being said, what do you feel would be an appropriate Lvl 5 bonus to the damage mod, while avoiding the issues we had before with TTK being waaay too short?

Flat bonus to reps, as in a +HP/second built into the suit?

Also I specifically avoided boosting the eHP of the Amarr on purpose, as a I feel it would quickly become too strong against the others. Its true that their theme is brick tanking, but I really wanted to keep away from boosting the eHP of one racial variant but not the others.

a general purpose reduction to weapon fitting costs, and a increase to light weapon fitting costs (its been mentioned elsewhere)

then an offensive assault bonus:

+1 grenade capacity for all suits. 5% per level to clip size, max ammo, reduced recoil, reload speed.

amarr and minmatar keep their current bonuses

gallente and caldari need something better though. honestly i think a damage bonus for the gallente would be fine, and a charge up time reduction for the caldari would be great.

and a racial defensive bonus

amarr: 5% per level to armor plate efficiency

gallente: 5% per level to armor repair efficiency

caldari: 5% per level to shield module efficiency

minmatar; 3% per level armor and shield efficiency.


someone else had posted about gallente getting a bonus to both armor reps, and reactive plates. and some feel that caldari should focus on shield extenders while minmatar should focus on shield regulators. i dont how i feel about that though. i feel shield tanking purely a caldari thing and they should get a bonus to all shield modules. thats just me though

As long as CR's and RR's remain the most popular rifles, I don't think that's TOO likely... but it is a possibility....

Flat bonus to repair modules, not to the suits themselves. Though I'm not opposed to it. In fact, all assaults having a base armor repair rate is a nice idea. It was spectacular just having 1hp/sec on the Minmatar assault.

Possibly give the armor races a x% speed penalty reduction for plates instead of an HP bump.

I apologize if my writing is hard to follow, not feeling so hot today.

I actually think the layouts need to be swapped for the Minmatar and Caldari suits so the Caldari can properly shield tank and the Minmatar can run proper lows (kincats, regs, whathaveyou) It's hard to be the versatile race with only 2 slots available to use for the modules that mean the most to versatility.

Well the concept I was going for was mostly to give each frame its own general form of tanking.

Heavies get Buffer
Medium get Active (regeneration)
Lights get Speed

Amarr Assaults/Logi's of course don't really fit this mold, however I wanted to shy away from giving them straight up more eHP. The reason being that the Amarr typically have the highest base eHP, with an emphasis on low lots but also high slots to work with. The natural choice is to stick a ton of plates in the low to take advantage of the armor plate bonus, then stack damage mods in the high to take advantage of the damage mod bonus.

So now you have a suit with more eHP than any other Assault by a long shot, and able to stack damage without any sacrifice to tank. Amarr Assault would instantly be the preferred Assault suit for superior defenses and damage output. That's basically why I avoided both of those bonuses.

So lets assume we wont directly buff damage, what sort of things would you think would give the Assault that sense of uniqueness that it currently lacks? It needs to be something that is difficult or impossible for other suits to replicate. The Cloak on a scout would be a good example.

You'll notice in my spreadsheet that I mention a bonus to grenades. This opens up a lot of flexibility for Assaults as it would make AV grenades terrifying, but also allow them to make use of anti-infantry possibilities. This would parralel a bonus Logistics would get to Remotes and Proxies, an idea that is being well received over in the Logistic's camp. Take a look and give me your thoughts.

These things will help assaults kill better, but it doesn't really put your slaying ability beyond an invisible scout with a shotty and a hitbox half your size and almost twice the strafe speed. I'm going to keep an eye on this thread though, I'm excited to see the ideas coalesce.