What you should do is leave the regular heavy and commando suit the way they are now, and turn the sentinels into something of a small tank (lot more armor and shield, resistance etc.). Give them a special armor glass "Sentinel armor plates and repairers" and give these armor plates and rep their own skill tree in the armors branch.
Also, because the regular heavy suits would use HMG and Forge guns, give them a special weapon (maybe a stronger HMG of something along the lines) and remove their side arm slot. They would be the ultimate anti-infantry unit.
I might sound like i want an unkillabe suit for myself, but in order to balance it out i came up with this. Make them so the sentinels move at less then half the speed they do now and make them unable to use vehicles and cant spawn at dropuplinks or CRU and are force to walk from mcc.
And give them a bigger frame (not too big so they can still run inside buildings) and give them a large hit box so that they are hard to miss and cant strafe because they are slow.
And weapons shouls still work on them but to a lesser ability, so you would have to use an antivehicle weapon. Giving swarm launchers the ability to lock and fire at these sentinels would be great, and maybe add a new weapon or two to fight them.
In aditions these heavy should be strong enough to destroy an lav and stand against a tank or hav. By stand against i mean be able to do some damage to them and take a few shot from them, but i do not mean they should be able to take out a tank on their own. With 2 more of these sentinels yes but not alone.
It would be a team effort to take down a sentinel, and you shouls give extra warpoints for killing a sentinel. And when buying a sentinel they would cost a great amount of money. The proto sentinel would cost the same as a hav, if not even more.
I dont know how others would think about this, so ill gladly read your feedbacks on this.

After reading this thread, and going back and forth on the numbers, I am not so sure any more that armor is overall more viable than shield tanking. I do know that high speed high tanked roles suffer from hit detection issues/high strafe speeds. I may tackle that instead of a HP nerf of plates or a smaller HP nerf. I want players to use reactives and ferros so they will not be touched.

The remote mods need to be area of effect. The old system was too clunky and took too long. It's fine for infantry to look at another player to rep them. Not so with a LAV, where the view defaults forward.

Like seriously, do you honestly expect someone to just stand in front of you and let them unload on you? I just don't get it.

One parameter that we can look at is making shields passive but slightly faster than armor repair, and making armor repair slightly slower but higher in bigger cycles, for example an armor rep would do 8 hp in 3 seconds while a shield rep would do 3 hp in one.

Then, like in EVE, we could have modules that lower the intervals for armor, we then move rechargers, death to regulators, to the low slot which would also end up increasing overall shield hp and now everybody is happy!

You might also like this instead of nerfing hp stacking, https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2514287#post2514287 it is a lot more work to implement than just a raw hp stacking nerf but the end result of this would make the game so much fun!

14 minutes and 43 seconds, good sir:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2SlbYkzAGo

Not one second of "stand still so I can shoot you".
Not one second of "here's how to wiggle while standing in place".

Another video, for your viewing pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYXffQMXXxM

Here, one of the best players in the game discusses strafe techniques. Notice how the characters move deliberately and free of spasm or gyration. Notice the date of the video; this tutorial predates the introduction of the mindless wiggle-wiggle. Notice how Regnum never once says, "but what we really need from Wolfman is the ability to rapidly wiggle while standing in place; this way we can 'strafe' free from the burden of thought or deliberate effort."

After reading this thread, and going back and forth on the numbers, I am not so sure any more that armor is overall more viable than shield tanking. I do know that high speed high tanked roles suffer from hit detection issues/high strafe speeds. I may tackle that instead of a HP nerf of plates or a smaller HP nerf. I want players to use reactives and ferros so they will not be touched.

Why is this a problem?

Okay, you have your 591 armour Galassault with two armour repairers.
Let's compare an equal tier Calassault.

Stick 4 shield extenders and a recharger on there and you have a 631 shield Calassault.
HP is a win for the Calassault, let's look at regen.

20 HP/s vs 45 HP/s with 5s delay (which can be reduced using regulators).
Even with the 5s delay, the Calassault will comfortably out-regenerate the Galassault if it drops back to recover for a moment.

If you regulate the shields, the regeneration gap becomes even more pronounced.


Why are ferroscales a problem, then?

May I suggest reducing the rate at which HMG's lose heat?
Not the heat per shot (Though that needs to be increased), but rather how quickly the HMG losses the heat it gained?

What in the hell are you even talking about?

I asked you to demonstrate the exact thing your complaining about and you link me a video to a completely different game. Then you link me Reg's video from Chromosome that was taken before we had strafe speed reductions in like 1.3 or 1.4 or whatever. I play with Regnyum regularly and I can tell you he would likely spit at the thought of nerfing strafe speeds because scrubs are crying about not being able to track their target. You've done absolutely nothing to prove a point.

Oh and here's a link for you to the Halo forums in case you've forgotten what game you're playing.

Again, show me a video of this supposed "wiggle" strafing that people are crying about and want nerfed. From DUST 514 this time.

Seems balanced since gal assault will deal extra damage with damage mods, if the cal assault adds a damage mod, it will have 562 shield. The gal assault's shield buffer is also better than the cal assaults armour buffer.

I'd fit my gal assault with a complex armour plate and a kincat, this would mimmic the current situation with cal and gal vehicles where gal has greater linear speed and the cal with greater left and right speed (or acceleration).

And the Calassault can use any of the following in its utility slots:
Kinetic Catalysers
Shield Regulators
Cardiac Regulators
Codebreakers
Range Amplifiers
PG Upgrade
CPU Upgrade
Profile Dampener


The Galassault can fit damage mods. The Calassault gets a huge number of beneficial items to pick from. This is not in favour of the Galassault.

The Galassault shield buffer is not stronger than the Calassault armour buffer. They are equivalent. What are you talking about?



A shield tank can fit kincats without compromising their tank. They can fit a full shield tank and use kincats as well. An armour tank does not outpace them.

PC data, not word of mouth, is excellent to gauge whether a gun is too good, normal or useless. Weapons that are not used at all in PC, are the last category, based on the actions of top tier players.

Three weapons are not used, 1% or less of kills, the TAR, the ASCR and the Burst AR. I want at least someone in PC to think, well here is a hidden gem of a weapon. They need to be competitive. If the Combat Rifle is used, then the Burst AR should be used, if the Scrambler is used, the TAR should be used. And as always, I simply don't know why the ASCR isn't used, except for armor meta. Public Contracts usually mirror PC, PC is just quicker to find the OP meta. Currently, the rest of kills in PC are split fairly equally between the rest of all the rifles, which is a huge win for the balancing effort that's been going on since Hotfix Alpha.

HOLY COW!!!

It's been how long and STILL no one has pointed out the unbalanced parity issue with the ARMOR SPEED NERF YET? I even pointed it out a few pages back and no one commented on it?

WTF?! Has the world gone blind?

I like the armor nerf that is proposed, but there is NO NERF BEING INSTITUTED FOR SHIELDS!!! How does that fix the problem? Yeah, that's right, it only fixes HALF THE PROBLEM!!!

And it's these half-assed fixed that end up unbalancing the game and making even more problems!!!!

Come on already! Use your brains and not your assess. If you created a penalty to the armor plates for game balance then you need to do a a different yet equivalent penalty for the shield extenders!!! Or else the meta will shift to sheilds and you will get an imbalance!!!!

Come on! This is simple game-theory 101.

HOLY COW!!!

It's been how long and STILL no one has pointed out the unbalanced parity issue with the ARMOR SPEED NERF YET? I even pointed it out a few pages back and no one commented on it?

WTF?! Has the world gone blind?

I like the armor nerf that is proposed, but there is NO NERF BEING INSTITUTED FOR SHIELDS!!! How does that fix the problem? Yeah, that's right, it only fixes HALF THE PROBLEM!!!

And it's these half-assed fixed that end up unbalancing the game and making even more problems!!!!

Come on already! Use your brains and not your assess. If you created a penalty to the armor plates for game balance then you need to do a a different yet equivalent penalty for the shield extenders!!! Or else the meta will shift to sheilds and you will get an imbalance!!!!

Come on! This is simple game-theory 101.

I have mentioned this before.
If this were our universe, armor makes you slower, more heavy (done) and shields make you more electronically visible or more power consuming. The duality of the most opposing forces, Gallente and Caldari should always be seen with caution.
So for now, armor plates make you have more hp but more heavy, more slower, and once suggested worse profile.

Balance is about leveling things up, not changing only one. Balance armor versus shields, per suit, per tier, per race all combined to achieve balance.
I made a sheet once when the armor reps where given to all suits. It showed many factors combined per suit per race.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByLpG42z7QGHWlhGdVh1T3NCVE0/view
This is not updated but you can get the general idea of desired balance at the time. Factor in armor plates and shields and work out the balance. I don-¦t have the time at the moment.
Note, the sheet does not contemplate the speed penalty for armor that does not exist for shields...

Carte blanche i want my small railgun turret buffed, and a few more tweaks to the large blaster.

Infantry weapons that do need a bit more love:

- Ion Pistol

- Normal AR

- Lazer Rifle

- Scrambler Pistol


Bolt pistol still needs to be looked at.

- Kalikiota Bolt Pistol does 251 damage per shot

- Kalikiota Sniper Rifle does 221 damage per shot

- Ishikune Sniper rifle does 250 damage per shot

If hipfire / noscope sniping is game breaking then why is the bolt pistol an mini hipfiring sniper rifle?

It ought to have More bullets, less damage per bullet., a better ROF, and keep the same damage per clip.

And the Calassault can use any of the following in its utility slots:
Kinetic Catalysers
Shield Regulators
Cardiac Regulators
Codebreakers
Range Amplifiers
PG Upgrade
CPU Upgrade
Profile Dampener


The Galassault can fit damage mods. The Calassault gets a huge number of beneficial items to pick from. This is not in favour of the Galassault.

The Galassault shield buffer is not stronger than the Calassault armour buffer. They are equivalent. What are you talking about?

A damage mod is x times more useful in gunfights than any of those kincat, codebreaker, range amp, pg/cpu upgrade mods.

What can any of those do for a cal assault engaged with an amarr assault that has damage mods stacked and most of their health tied up in armor?

Thx bro, u just announced FOTM TAC AR 514, I believe that u don't know, but TAC AR allows u to shoot triple shot on a moded controller, with 18 bullets (2-3 seconds) heavy is always going down... with 30 - we have new Gal tactical shootgun. Anyway, thx - I know what I'll spec into

Welcome back to old days of TAR 514.

when is this update dropping

And also in gunfights:
Zero delay - unstoppable regen at 23-30hp/s >>> Two-five seconds of delay--50hp/s regen that stops with any taken damage

One parameter that we can look at is making shields passive but slightly faster than armor repair, and making armor repair slightly slower but higher in bigger cycles, for example an armor rep would do 8 hp in 3 seconds while a shield rep would do 3 hp in one.

Then, like in EVE, we could have modules that lower the intervals for armor, we then move rechargers, death to regulators, to the low slot which would also end up increasing overall shield hp and now everybody is happy!

You might also like this instead of nerfing hp stacking, https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2514287#post2514287 it is a lot more work to implement than just a raw hp stacking nerf but the end result of this would make the game so much fun!

This needs more attention.

Passive shield regen and better armour regen would help the imbalances immensely.