...What unit in a game of skirmish ISN'T pushing a point or defending a point? And what bearing does the description have on pragmatic balancing?

Splash is the PRIMARY mode of damage for the mass driver, direct hits are very hard to land against even a slow moving target (if the MD were easy to use, everyone would be using it). It's ridiculous to empty a whole clip of MD rounds onto a heavy and he only ends up halfway through armor.

What other weapon has this disadvantage against heavies?

This is the core of my issue.

How many other light weapon users have to outright RUN when confronted with a particular class of suits?

Since sentinels cannot avoid the rail rifle, they simply soak up the damage.

Since sentinels cannot avoid the assault rifle, they simply soak up the damage.

Since sentinels cannot avoid the shotgun, they simply soak up the damage.

Since sentinels cannot avoid the combat rifle, they simply soak up the damage.

What's that? those higher DPS weapons are only resisted by CERTAIN RACES of sentinel? And resisted by much less than the 25% against the LOW DPS mass driver?

Craziness.

That's cute that you think a sentinel can actually survive against a rifle user when out in the open. If this is a "CQB" related thing, then I'd argue there's more issue with the HMG being (stupidly) designed as a CQB dominance weapon than rifle effectiveness against heavies of any stripe.



........You're either delusional or stupid if you really believe that.



You generally picked bad examples, and moreover ignored the fact that the MD, much like the LR, is not a "slayer" weapon, but a "support" weapon. That's not to say that MD/LR user can't rack up the kills in rapid order and to great heights of murder-death-kill-ness, but rather that the intended role that the weapon is supposed to fulfill is much more complex than simply "kill stuff".

Do keep in mind that MDs are pretty nearly instadeath for scouts (which is nice) and very deadly against medframes of all stripes (also nice)... so the fact that you lose "DPS" against heavies is pretty much working as intended. Due to the idiotic decision to chain heavies to CQB conditions, if you try to wander into that with a MD and duel a heavy... then you pretty much deserve to die.

If, OTOH, you find a heavy in the open... you can outrun them, and you can outrange them, and the "ring around the rock" trick that can be used to try to get some amount of cover between yourself and your enemy no longer works, since you can pretty much punt the shells around and over said object that is being used as cover. If you can't kill a heavy in this case, then I'd say that the heavy is just hugging cover... in which case you basically have killed him, since he's stuck there and can be of no use to his team.

Finally, DPS is a poor measure of performance to use with the MD, given that it has a high(-ish) alpha and also has a generally large-to-obscene amount of splash area.

There's also the issue that back before heavies had a splash damage resist, it was quite common for somebody to run up, flux and then proceed to bunny hop around a heavy while killing them with MD splash. As someone who had to endure that... it was frustrating in the extreme because it was nearly impossible to fight back against and almost always resulted in my death. Even after the HP buff that heavies got (way back when the Amarr heavy was the only heavy), this is exactly the sort of thing that would happen... over, and over, and over again.

Of course, that's without going into the very long period of time when locus grenades were instablap murderballs to heavies, given that a heavy is too slow to try and run away from a grenade... or run away at all really.

There's also the slight issue that the bonus/tagging system simply wouldn't support the kind of granularity you seem to think it would. In layman's terms, this means that no, we cannot give a bonus that provides resists to only REs/grenades instead of the current splash damage bonus.

Of course, given the history of MDs and heavies, right now I think I am going to just sit back and drink your tears as the fine vintage that they are.

/sips wineglass of KA24DERT's tears

Refreshing... very refreshing.

So a "support weapon" deserves a 25% resistance to shield and armor for ALL SENTINELS because "support weapon".

But the Combat Rifle deserves 15% resistance to ARMOR ONLY on AMARR SENTINELS ONLY, because it has "more DPS anyways" and is "designed to kill targets quickly".

I think I understand now: the worse a weapon is at slaying, the more it should get nerfed.

It couldn't be more obvious, thanks guys!