Guys, if NK kills were remotely a problem, or a potential problem, with slightly lower backpedal, I wouldn't be advocating for them. With Scanning changes, they became less effective, but I want all styles, even niche, to be able to flourish if they want to. It's not my personal style, but I appreciate it and get killed by novas every 10 battles, maybe. Stats say the same. We should be proud of our NKers if anything. I tend to think "good kill", versus "**** you" for most other kills.

o_O

The Min Scout is over-performing. And becoming FoTm

Gotta say, I strongly disagree.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Min scout, and I'm really glad it's finally good enough to play with the big boys. But its not the strongest scout.

The fact is, shotguns are superior cqc weapons to nova knives, even with the Min scout damage bonus. The only reasons I use knives over the shotgun are:
1. You can use a light weapon as well. This gives you a slightly better ranged option. This allows more tactical options, even though you are weaker than a shotgun scout up close. Though pairing an smg or bolt pistol with a shotgun is nearly as good. If you stick to cqc, an smg is all you need outside of shotgun range.
2. Those rare occasions where you get a stealthy knife kill and it's helpful to prevent you from drawing attention to yourself. This makes me feel badass, rather than being reliably useful.
3. Kudos. Most people would agree that a knife kill takes more skill than a shotgun, so kills feel better. Maybe I just suck, but I still find getting kills with knives more challenging than most weapons.

EWAR may have been nerfed on scouts. Gallente logi active scans are now the king of scans. They may not be all that common, but they are common enough to give Gal and Cal scouts an advantage by allowing them to avoid detection using one less slot that a Min or Am scout.

Hack speed is good, but is isn't any more useful than dampening. A slightly faster hack speed will not help in most situations. Being able to fit an extra mod as you don't need as many damps is useful. Also, scout passive scans may have been toned down, but they are still a factor, and the fact remains that Min scouts are the worst at this.

Fitting capability. The low pg still punishes Min scouts compared to other scouts. Kinetic catalysers, codebreakers, cloaks and uplinks are all very pg intensive. It's much easier to fit a Gal, Am or Cal scout than a Min.

Not trying to moan, I think Min scouts are great. Its just that I have to disagree with the idea they are superior to Caldari and Gallente scouts. Amarr maybe, but not the others. Even if Min scouts were the best, it's definitely would't be by a wide enough margin to be an issue.

I agree with you on the ewar but not the rest. Why? Well for one, everyone a while back(4ish months ago) wanted knock knives this good, and they haven't been better. The min scout owns that bonus. It's an assassin for crying out loud. I guess you could say people are abusing them by stacking damage mods and Kincats but hey, you hav the option to do so. So leave knives alone. Secondly, MINMATAR as a whole have hacking benefits. The min scout also serves as the main hacker suit because of this. It's in the descriptions anyways. I feel they are good the way they are as they give up ewar and go for hacking and killing. So I disagr with you.

Min Scout is the most versatile

You are right that the Amarr scout is left behind, but I don't see why we need to nerf a suit that is not over performing according to the overall usage numbers I am hearing.

I would rather think of ways to bring it up to snuff rather than to bring the Minjas down.

w
- Am Scout = ehhmmm, I like the suit, but has nothing the Gal can't do better (18db scans is not low enough)

This statement is especially incorrect. The GalScout is the most versatile Scout. The moment your enemy fields a GA Logi + 28dB scanner, the MinScout's universe of feasible builds is pigeon-holed into only a handful of options. Of all Scouts, the Minmatar is the easiest to counter and the least versatile.

FoTM tends to hang out in the Top 3:
http://dust.thang.dk/market_tryhardinator.php

It also tends to pack more than 400 HP.

The scout doesn't need a nerf, but the min scout isn't a terrible suit anymore either

^ This much is true.

And if we agree on the bottom line, it'd be a futile exercise to nitpick at one another's opinions. The MN Scout is performing on par with the GA and GA Scout. The AM Scout is behind these three. There is no sound reason to nerf the MN Scout.

- NK range buff (2m is too much, they are daggers you swipe with)
A 2m lunge is not how they are used, when knifing you look like a damn T-Rex, how can that be 2m?

I totally agree that 2m for a knife is way too much. Specially one that can 1 hit kill most suits in the game.

This ^^

IMO was fully acceptable with shorter range, as it is damn risky getting in CQC with Knives
There are several stats CCP could edit - Charge time - Range - Angle - Aim-Adhesion
That would leave Knife Scouts in a much more balanced form. The knives need to be deadly

But deadly, and the range of a sword? don't get me wrong it's fun
But I am a fan of Risk V Reward, they have killed some of the Risk via NK buff

My amar scout disagrees with you

^ This much is true.

And if we agree on the bottom line, it'd be a futile exercise to nitpick at one another's opinions. The MN Scout is performing on par with the GA and GA Scout. The AM Scout is behind these three. There is no sound reason to nerf the MN Scout.

What I'm seeing here is that people are looking at the wrong issue. What is the point in making all of the scouts on the same weak playing field, when you can just bring the rest up to par with the best?

The Min Scout is over-performing. And becoming FoTm

Reasons:
- CCP killed Scout EWAR (The Minja has worse EWAR, but that hardly matters anymore)
With EWAR being left near useless, that downside to the MinScout means little

This is why when CCP gave out the free respec I got out of scouting and stopped communicating or having anything to do with other scouts. Scouts are the whiniest crybabies in this game and I do not wish to be lumped in with you. Now that cloaks have been fixed and the suits tuned down to appropriate levels I do rock my cal scout again.

I use 1 complex range, damp, and precision. I see everything but heavily damped scouts before they can close the ground on me. I use the cloak to get away or to travel across open ground only.

I use the suit and tools as intended, but majority of scouts believe they should be special forces capable of taking out full squads easily and undetected like some COD rock star. And that whining about the gal scanner, its scan only last 7 seconds. Can you all not hide for that long really?

tl;dr scouts are no longer easy mode FOTM, and takes skill like all suits should be.

@gustavo acosta- Thank you for proving my point. All I saw was a brick wall of tears that scouts should see everything at all distances, and be completely unseen. Ewar is viable and it does not need to fill up all of your slots. You should have to choose between the type of ewar to be best at, or be well above the average in all. Demanding or expecting to have all three is just unrealistic and has been proven to be too powerful.

I personally decided to be above average, and the only people that can scan me are other scouts or heavily ewared logistics (you know the ones that fill there whole suit with ewar thus sacrificing alot). The only people that can sneek up on me are other scouts.

Regarding the Amarr scout, I saw a thread on hp vs movement speed and sprint speed which made me thinking that the hp difference between Scout suits does not exactly line up with the penalty (or increase) on movement speed. Perhaps that would be a good place to start looking for a buff to the Amarr scout?

It's a sad day on the forums when there's talk of nerfing the nova knives.

Did anyone suggesting a range decrease even USE the knives prior to the range buff? It was incredibly frustrating. That buff is what made the nova knives. The idea that range, or damage, or anything about them should be dialed back is ludicrous, especially given what Rattati has said about their performance. Go back to your holes cretins, and leave my hard mode sidearm alone.

If you are all going to get so defensive over something clearly over-performing ...

Guys, if NK kills were remotely a problem, or a potential problem, with slightly lower backpedal, I wouldn't be advocating for them. With Scanning changes, they became less effective, but I want all styles, even niche, to be able to flourish if they want to. It's not my personal style, but I appreciate it and get killed by novas every 10 battles, maybe. Stats say the same. We should be proud of our NKers if anything. I tend to think "good kill", versus "**** you" for most other kills.

I've used them since I began playing, and ran Min Scout for well over a year
Your hard mode sidearm is no longer that at all. And this is from a dedicated Min Scout

I don't care if it's your suit/my suit, your weapon/my weapon I want to see balance in-game
If you are all going to get so defensive over something clearly over-performing, fair enough

I'll keep on knifing

The Min Scout is over-performing. And becoming FoTm

Reasons:
- CCP killed Scout EWAR (The Minja has worse EWAR, but that hardly matters anymore)
With EWAR being left near useless, that downside to the MinScout means little

- NK range buff (2m is too much, they are daggers you swipe with)
A 2m lunge is not how they are used, when knifing you look like a damn T-Rex, how can that be 2m?

- Hack Speed (used to be great when other Scouts were good, now it hands a major advantage)

Killing off EWAR use on Scouts screws 3 race types, leaving Minmatar ahead of the pack
Where before the Min Bonuses made up for what it lacked compared to Cal/Gal...
Now EWAR means little, so those Scouts lost their main bonuses..

Have CCP noticed this??
I love the MinScout, but when the FoTm bandwagon are all wearing it, you know there's a problem

Fixes:
- Define the role of Scouts,
should they be intel slaves and WP candy for Slayers?? OR
should they be the assassins waiting for you to drop your guard?
- EWAR, have the bonus come from modules not suits.

16v16 boxed in objectives, leaves little room for an intel role ...
But murder packs, or 1500hp fattys on point defence, leaves room for an assassin

So should Scout EWAR/Bonuses be re-looked at??

It's been awhile since I ran the numbers, but it "used to be" the case that the hp bonus of the suits was inferior across the board relative to the speed differences of the races. That is, if you compared the relative hp-gain of a basic armor plate vs. the relative hp bonus of the races, the penalty/bonus didn't make sense.

Arguably, an intrinsic racial trait should probably be "better" proportionally than a module to differentiate the races better. That is, the armor on an Amarr suit is better than the plates anyone else can add (more efficient with respect to hp/speed-hit), and so on with the Caldari shield advantage, etc.

It looks like now, the Amarr Assault sits at 460ehp and 4.8 m/s speed vs. 430ehp and 5 m/s speed for the Gallente (for example). This is comparable to the old numbers in that you're getting about 30hp for a 4% speed hit. A basic plate gives you 85hp with a 3% speed hit, the enhanced give 110 at 4%. So, taken as a straight module comparison, the Amarr suit sacrifices proportionally more speed for the amount of hp advantage they have. This comparison also holds true for the Amarr scout (30hp for about a 4% speed hit). So, not that much has changed really (even with the plate and hp changes), and having passives doesn't really change the math here much.

The way they bracket the speeds also resulted in the Minnie Assault being marginally faster than the Amarr Scout (5.3 vs. 5.25).

It got brought up more when the scouts were first being talked about, but it seemed like any adjustment of the base speeds was off the table (I believe I argued that the Amarr would be a better "scout" if it lost the 30hp and was 4% faster instead). The racial hp bonuses vs. speed differences have come up before too, with various opinions on the subject.

I guess it depends on if you feel like the Amarr hp advantage needs to be noticeably "worse" than a module to account for the fact they're not using a slot to get it. This seems silly to me in light of the fact that the other racial bonuses (like Gallente Armor reps, or the relative shield stats of Caldari) don't carry such drawbacks. Of course, I'd also prefer the Amarr Scout were faster than the fastest assault (with scout speed bonuses raised correspondingly).

In a way, the Amarr Scouts' speed/hp issues are a relic of the identical mold they tried to apply to all racial suits to establish certain fixed differences, regardless of the purpose of the suit (Amarr are always slower with a little more hp, etc.). I don't generally like to make lots of EVE comparisons, but I like that EVE is somewhat less slavish in applying the racial mold (Amarr have the faster ships in some scenarios, etc.). The racial advantages vary a bit more.

/shrug

Perhaps not so clearly over-performing.

You're in a PC corp, right? How many NK kills do you see in PC killfeed for every 20 HMG kills?

The minmitar scout is not fetish of the month.

I see a fellow minmitar scout every 3-4 battles. Most battles are filled with gallante shotgun scouts, minmitar assaults and sentinels

It takes skill to use nova knives. Let me explain;

1. ISK-wise if you want to suceed with nova knives, proto is the only option. I don't play PC so i am not super-rich Really? Wow, I do decently well with STD, and pretty well with ADV.
2. Nova knife range. 2m isn't a lot. The fact that you let somebody get that close to you bothers me, not that you do. Agreed
3. Ammo. I am constantly running out of ammo using knives, and have to resupply at a depot. ??? Have you found a way to throw your knives or something!
4. I don't have a gun on my minmitar scout (ADV). The only suit i have problems with are shotgun scouts, which 90% of the time i lose 1v1. Why don't you have a gun?

Feedback in bold.