IMPORTANT:

This post is mainly directed at the Caldari Scout. Minmatar and Amarr are fine (could use a buff?)
Just because I use the term "Scouts" doesn't mean I think all scouts need such drastic changes.

As for the Gallente scout...well, it doesn't have a 50 hp/s regen rate, or a super fast shield delay, and if you tank a lot of armor you become really slow. The dampening bonus it gets benefits the scout, not the squad like precision does.
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Before I begin, here's a post I made the other week about the difference between the Caldari Scout and the Caldari Assault:
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=167580

To summarize, here's what I concluded:



While yes the Assaults need a buff, the Caldari Scout is being abused just like every other FOTM that has ever come into existence.

At the beginning of Uprising, a corp named Nyain San was notorious for running the same suit in every match. This suit at the time was the Logistics ck.0. Here's an example of what that fit might have looked like:
http://imgur.com/4tn6aJV
Link to full video of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPjAIg1NJUA

For comparison, here's what a Caldari Scout fitting might look like: http://imgur.com/foa00JO
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OKAY, ON TO THE ACTUAL POST

Again before I say anything, please know that I like to look at things from a neutral standpoint. I always look at the pros and cons, both sides of an issue, and the FACTS.

So here's the first question we need to ask:

1. Why did no one use the Scout role in the first place? Why were all the other roles a better choice?

To quickly answer that, cloaks never existed for a long time. This made it easy to pick off scouts from a long distance away. They also had less HP than every other role and could be quickly eliminated. This was mainly due to their slot layout. It was almost impossible to tank a scout suit, making it very hard for a scout to survive head to head against any role.

As for the other roles, speed and dampening was just a few modules on an assault or logi suit, and scanners could provide all the e-war info that medium frames needed with even bigger ranges than scouts.
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2. Why are scouts now fulfilling a slayer class? What changed that made scouts go from a barely used "specialist" class to a "best suit in the game, you have to use one to be competitive" class?

Well, three things happened

Buff to Scouts (slot count, fitting space, skill bonuses)

Introduction of Caldari Scout with the best skill bonuses and base stats

Nerf to Active Scanners (But letting scouts still have 360 24/7 passive scans)

The buff to scouts was a good thing. It made the class playable after so long and we immediately saw more players using scouts. It also diversified the fittings of a scout. Before, the slot layouts really limited the Minmatar and Gallente scouts as to what they could do. When the cloak was introduced and when scouts were given the second equipment slot, we saw all sort of things from logi-scouts to tanky scouts to full e-war and AV scouts.

Scouts no longer needed to fear the wide-open maps because cloaks helped them hide better. Except that cloaks also became an issue because of their additional 25% bonus to dampening and long duration times. A scout could easily appear from nowhere and kill you even while tanking their suit to extreme levels. Passive scans let the scout know your every move and passive skills let them basically have free e-war modules, allowing them to further tank their suit.

The Caldari Scout was introduced with huge advantages in its base stats. All other suits in the game need to use modules to get to these sorts of stats, whereas the Caldari Scout was essentially given free modules BUILT INTO the suit.

Here's a list of modules that the Caldari Scout doesn't need to use:
-Shield Rechargers/Energizers (already has a 50/s base shield recharge)
-Shield Regulators (Shield delay values are low enough that even the penalty from stacking shield extenders doesn't do anything. Shield delay is 3 seconds, depleted is 4 seconds....best values in the game aside from Caldari Sentinel)
-Precision Enhancers (Why use them when your skill bonus will allow you to scan 99% of suits out there aside from PC)
-Range Amplifiers (Again with the skill bonus amplifying your gigantic 20-30 meter scan radius even further, who needs modules?)
-Sprint Mods (Debatable, but the only reason you need to be faster than your base stats is to compete with enemy scouts, or if you're running a shotgun fit. Caldari isn't penalized in speed for tanking their suit like gallente are)
reading it. [/u]
Thank you.