Celus Ivara wrote:CCP Rattati wrote:Yeah, there are three areas I would want to focus on, which are min and am scouts, light dropsuits and ga/ca assault. To me they are the weakest from a design perspective.
1) we can increase fitting on min scout and buff amplifiers for am scouts
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1. I haven't been staring at metrics like you have, but the Min Scout seems like a very good suit as is to me. Given that it's both the best ninja-hacking suit
and nova-knifing suit, a buff seems odd.
2. I will say though that the Am Scout
super needs some love.
3. The idea that was tossed around a while back of trying to make it the ideal Scout Hunter suit still seems viable to me.
4. No suit easily fills this role right now.
5. How about giving it a
massive bonus to Scan Precision and Range, but limit it's ability to share it's TACNET with the Squad.
6. So it can see and hunt very well, but it's not the hyper broken "sit in a corner and AFK scan for the team" we had before.
1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.
3. The idea wasn't just tossed around; it was implemented with HF Charlie. CalScouts specialized in long-range, low-intensity scans. AM Scouts specialized in short-range, high-intensity scans. This was before the falloff mechanics were introduced last December; today, passive scans at range are weaker, and these specializations are less competitive. All suits now have similarly intense inner rings. Outer rings (even when enhanced by EWAR modules) are easily outperformed by active scanners. The only area where an AM Scout might theoretically compete scan-wise would be in middle ring scans; even then, AM Scout passives wouldn't stand out when compared against similarly fit Logi or CalScout. In my estimation, falloff mechanics would have to be overhauled for any recon scout to again function in a meaningful, competitive manner.
4. If you go by kill/spawn efficiency, all suits appear to be scout hunters :-). If you need to scan heavily dampened Scouts, at 15dB a GalLogi + multiple Focused Scanners is your best bet.
5. The passive scans of every unit are shared squad-wide. Last we heard from Rattati, disabling shared squad sight isn't presently tenable. As for a massive buff to precision and range to return a competitive passive recon unit, the buff would indeed have to be massive. We'd effectively be throwing very large percentage bonuses at mechanical limitations (one might argue that'd it'd make more sense to address the mechanical limitations). We should also keep in mind role parity and the potential for overlap; the CalScout's "role" is still theoretically set to long-range, low-intensity scans.
6. An uncloaked and undampened 300HP unit which shares 18dB / 80m scans with squad while trying not to die -- that unit is "hyper broken". But a combat-worthy, 600+HP GalLogi which rapid-fires literally always-on 200m, 90 degree, 21dB scans shared
teamwide is not broken -- that unit actually needs a buff.
PS on 6: Only pointing out here what I perceive to be a ridiculous double standard. I'm actually in favor of the proposed GalLogi movement buff as well as adding WP for team-shared scans to bring its earning capacity into line with the other units in his class. That said, if Recon Scout passive scans were truly overpowered prior to Falloff, then today's low-risk GalLogi scans are in need of serious reevaluation.