DUST Search - Heavy vs Assault vs Scout -- Himi's view on kill interaction

Fox Gaden wrote:

Varoth Drac wrote:

Fox Gaden wrote:

It would be nice if any person or vehicle we targeted so that their health bar displays, would show on our team's TacNet. Then Scout's speed and stealth would allow them to effectively scout in an active way (by targeting Snipers, Tanks, and defenders), which I think would be much better than back when Scout Passive Scans made a Caldari Scout hiding in a corner an effective role. It would also make the Overwatch Sniper more effective as Overwatch, even in PUB matches where no one is on coms.

It's a nice idea, so long as it's not extended to what we had upon release of uprising, where just sight of anyone broadcasted their location to your whole team.

Don't confuse the term "scout" with "recon" however. It's not necessary to show enemy positions to your team in order to scout. The term is referring to operating ahead of your main force. This can be rapid deployment/response, set up for your main force, and operation behind enemy lines, including target assassination, flanking and disruption. Relaying information can certainly be included in that, but unlike what I hear sometimes here on the forums, relaying information is not necessary for a unit to be a scout, regardless of how the role may exist in real life military.

To confirm, I meant that you would have to put them in your sights to flag them for the TacNet. It is something the Sniper Community thought was in the game two years ago, but it turned out to be just a rumor (like the old rummer that sprinting increased your scan profile).

You make a good point about Scouts vs Recon, but Recon is still one of the Roles that Scouts are well suited to perform.


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Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.01 11:13:00 - [1] - Quote Himiko Kuronaga wrote: In a proper competitive match scouts don't need their own radar because they have dedicated active scanners helping them as it is. Damps are where they find their strength. Due to this, gal scouts are the most viable. Cal scouts are viable up until focused scanners on gal logis come out, or if the opposing team brings out a logibros which can passively scan up to 50 meters at 17db. Min scouts are suicide fast hackers and they do this role well. In short, the "scout" doesn't have issues if you refer to the scout simply as the gal scout. The other ones, yes, have problems. I would disagree about the assault thing. In terms of purely selfish rockstar play, there is nothing better. In the end the goal is to kill the other team and no other suit does it better. Regarding Sentinels I'm inclined to agree. They aren't terrible, but seem a bit weak in situations they should excel at. I would rather see improvements to resistances or HMG damage/heat buildup than to raw hp. The power of a sentinel should be it's synergy with support. Resistance fits with that better, and the current resistance bonuses are kind of weak. Plus shield sentinels would have even more trouble regaining hp if the raw hp was increased. I also agree about scouts, except that the Gal scout is the best hacker due to the profile bonus. It was decided by the community that scout passive scanning was too powerful when combined with everything else, which is why it was nerfed. I think it's ok now with some minor tweaks. Scanning support helps scouts, but also consider that scouts are often designed to operate away from support, or with limited support. A scout's strength is in speed and stealth. An unscanned Gal or Cal scout is a valuable unit in PC, though an assault is generally better at killing. This means that the scouts without profile bonuses are inherently inferior. Here is a suggestion to fix that problem: Normalising scout profiles
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.01 15:39:00 - [2] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Himiko Kuronaga wrote: In a proper competitive match scouts don't need their own radar because they have dedicated active scanners helping them as it is. Damps are where they find their strength. Due to this, gal scouts are the most viable. Cal scouts are viable up until focused scanners on gal logis come out, or if the opposing team brings out a logibros which can passively scan up to 50 meters at 17db. Min scouts are suicide fast hackers and they do this role well. In short, the "scout" doesn't have issues if you refer to the scout simply as the gal scout. The other ones, yes, have problems. I would disagree about the assault thing. In terms of purely selfish rockstar play, there is nothing better. In the end the goal is to kill the other team and no other suit does it better. So ... Scout EWAR is fine because GalLogi scans are OP. FAscinating logic you've got there. Passive and active scans are difficult to directly compare. I'd rather all scouts were capable of effective stealth before worrying too much about scanning. Supporting a team with scanning is a role more suited to logis. Scouts need scanning to help evasion and combat. They aren't in a bad place in this regard. They don't need to easily see everyone's positions over a large area. The Gal scout's 2% per level precision bonus is pretty worthless, as there are so few situations where it makes any difference. A small buff here would be nice. 4% per level for example would be effective. Range amps were over-nerfed. Other than these issues I see no problem with scout passive scanning. So long as they can have speed and stealth. Speed + stealth + powerful passive scanning all together was considered OP. Speed + stealth + moderate passive scanning would be fine.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.01 17:18:00 - [3] - Quote Milita Mable wrote: I agree that they are slow. I've always seen heavies in PC has a noob suit. You skill into them if your not a versatile player or if you wanted to get into PC quicker in the start of PC. (Meta was Slayer Logi + Heavies) Now the meta has shifted. Tell me why I would use a heavy suit if I have over 100m+ SP? There is no reason when player tactics will always rule if your smart. Uplinks, Stealth, Support, Intel. All of them a heavy can't do. Allow Heavy's some bandwidth. 4 Perhaps? I believe a sentinel benefits a lot from player skill. I've fought sentinels that are extremely difficult to take down as their positioning and general awareness is such that you can't get behind them and you will die extremely quickly if in their line of sight. I'd never say good sentinels aren't good players.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.03 18:55:00 - [4] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Breakin Stuff wrote: "... feedback that people present constructively ..." * Dial back slightly the buff to GA Assault RoF * Dial back slightly the buffs to Assault base shield stats * Add mobility penalties to Ferroscale Plates * Increase mobility penalties to Reactive Plates * Increase mobility penalties to Armor Plates when equipped by non-heavy frames ^ Puts the brakes on power creep. Fixes Himiko's balance problem without creating new balance problems. * Sentinel Buffs ^ Moar power creep rolls the snowball downhill. Fixes Himiko's balance problem, but in doing so creates new balance problems. Free constructive feedback. Take it or leave it, but don't say I'm not helpful :-) As for assuming things, what else are we to do? We don't hear from Rattati these days, and you CPM guys don't give us much to work with. We're in the dark. Speculation is our only option. I think the problem with sentinels is more a result of the HMG nerfs than the assault shield buffs, or the Gal assault bonus. Yes the shield buff will have made a small difference to sentinel v assault combat, but very little. Most sentinel combat is vs shotgun assaults, sometimes shotgun scouts. The assaults are generally fitted for high mobility and shield tanked. Shield assault regen is in a pretty good place. I may not have agreed 100% with all the changes here, but dialing back some of this is probably not the best solution. It would have little effect on sentinel vs assault combat. I do feel the Gal assault bonus is over the top, but I think Breakin would be right to view the stats before fine-tuning this. It may be shotguns that sentinels struggle with, but ARs are also encroaching on the HMG's domain I feel, and are capable of much better ranged combat. Power creep is a problem, but it's too late for this cycle, we are half way through. Commandos and logis were buffed to be equal to assaults. Sentinels were nerfed, so long as careful and minor adjustments are considered we can avoid another cycle of power creep. It's too late to avoid the creep that's happened in the past. Hp mod nerfs would be a nice solution if people weren't against a reduction to TTK. So this probably isn't a good idea without universal weapon damage reductions. Maybe not the best solution. An argument could be made for shotgun changes, like swapping some alpha for range. But it's a risk to mess with the identity of a weapon so integral to Dust's identity. Not to mention scouts' reliance on it for it's high alpha. A point highlighted in Rattati's recent PC data, showing almost 0 rifle kills with scout suits.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.04 14:38:00 - [5] - Quote Fox Gaden wrote: It would be nice if any person or vehicle we targeted so that their health bar displays, would show on our team's TacNet. Then Scout's speed and stealth would allow them to effectively scout in an active way (by targeting Snipers, Tanks, and defenders), which I think would be much better than back when Scout Passive Scans made a Caldari Scout hiding in a corner an effective role. It would also make the Overwatch Sniper more effective as Overwatch, even in PUB matches where no one is on coms. It's a nice idea, so long as it's not extended to what we had upon release of uprising, where just sight of anyone broadcasted their location to your whole team. Don't confuse the term "scout" with "recon" however. It's not necessary to show enemy positions to your team in order to scout. The term is referring to operating ahead of your main force. This can be rapid deployment/response, set up for your main force, and operation behind enemy lines, including target assassination, flanking and disruption. Relaying information can certainly be included in that, but unlike what I hear sometimes here on the forums, relaying information is not necessary for a unit to be a scout, regardless of how the role may exist in real life military.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.04 15:07:00 - [6] - Quote Fox Gaden wrote: Varoth Drac wrote: Fox Gaden wrote: It would be nice if any person or vehicle we targeted so that their health bar displays, would show on our team's TacNet. Then Scout's speed and stealth would allow them to effectively scout in an active way (by targeting Snipers, Tanks, and defenders), which I think would be much better than back when Scout Passive Scans made a Caldari Scout hiding in a corner an effective role. It would also make the Overwatch Sniper more effective as Overwatch, even in PUB matches where no one is on coms. It's a nice idea, so long as it's not extended to what we had upon release of uprising, where just sight of anyone broadcasted their location to your whole team. Don't confuse the term "scout" with "recon" however. It's not necessary to show enemy positions to your team in order to scout. The term is referring to operating ahead of your main force. This can be rapid deployment/response, set up for your main force, and operation behind enemy lines, including target assassination, flanking and disruption. Relaying information can certainly be included in that, but unlike what I hear sometimes here on the forums, relaying information is not necessary for a unit to be a scout, regardless of how the role may exist in real life military. To confirm, I meant that you would have to put them in your sights to flag them for the TacNet. It is something the Sniper Community thought was in the game two years ago, but it turned out to be just a rumor (like the old rummer that sprinting increased your scan profile). You make a good point about Scouts vs Recon, but Recon is still one of the Roles that Scouts are well suited to perform. It's potentially a nice idea. And I agree with you about scouts. I just felt I should comment because I sometimes here people say "let scouts actually scout, they don't need to kill, just relay information". Which is a gross misunderstanding of the role. But I see that's not where you were going with this.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.04 22:44:00 - [7] - Quote Comandos just got quite a lot of buffs. I don't think the usage rates will have properly reflected this yet. Also, commandos have quite a niche role, they are unlikely to be be balanced and have high usage rates. That just leaves scouts and sentinels. Concerns about alpha weapons is partly why I recommend resistance over hp. Nova knives shouldn't be affected as they technically aren't one of the standard damage types Also, I disagree about the rock - paper - scissors idea when it comes to scouts and sentinels. In my opinion scout vs sentinel is reasonably balanced.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.07 14:20:00 - [8] - Quote To be fair, most well fitted suits use ferroscale and reactive over armour plates. It's the double strafe penalty that makes them bad. I understand it was needed to combat the efficiency that plates provided for scouts, but it is a bad design and makes the extra hp not really worth it. Hp mods should always have been percentage based, then we wouldn't have this problem.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.07 17:22:00 - [9] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: IIRC, Rattati implemented a scout-specific strafe penalty to plates somewhere around HF Delta. If plate movement penalties can be applied on a frame-by-frame basis, it stands to reason that movement penalties could be lessened when plates are equipped by Sentinels (or all heavy frames, for that matter). If such a thing is possible, and heavy/sentinel/commando performance is down, I can't think of any good reason why not to try it. As for most people preferring ferro, that would make sense. What other module in the game can you stack without diminishing returns or a single drawback/penalty? Edit: I'd even get behind a no penalty, low penalty, high penalty scale when equipping vanilla plates on heavy, medium or light frames (respectively). In hindsight, HP Modules penalties would've probably been a better fix for Assault Lite than kneecapping Scout EWAR. I thought Rattati wanted a scout-only penalty but couldn't do it so implemented the strafe penalty for all plated suits. It was just hoped that scouts would suffer more from a strafe penalty than other suits. As it turns out this is wrong. Strafe is useful on all suits and the strafe penalty just makes plates a poor option on anything. Balance-wise this was good for scout balance. Plates on scouts was OP, so nerfing them effectively nerfed scout's ability to fit like an assault, as intended. But served to make the modules poor on other suits too. Unless I'm wrong and it is a scout-only penalty. I'll try to find out. This uncertainty just highlights a reason why it was a bad idea though, as there is no in-game description of extra strafing penalties. So no way for players to know about it other than finding old forum posts. I don't want to heavily armour scout suits. I just don't like a rather strange and obscure mechanic like double plate strafe penalties.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.07 17:34:00 - [10] - Quote Echo 1991 wrote: Varoth Drac wrote: To be fair, most well fitted suits use ferroscale and reactive over armour plates. It's the double strafe penalty that makes them bad. I understand it was needed to combat the efficiency that plates provided for scouts, but it is a bad design and makes the extra hp not really worth it. Hp mods should always have been percentage based, then we wouldn't have this problem. Hp mods being % based is never a good idea. Heavies would gain such a huge advantage it would be impossible to kill them if they had logis strapped to them. Not necessarily. I'm not saying it would be balanced if that was all you changed. But you could look at tweaking some base hp values and other things and come up with a balanced solution. Plenty of posts in this thread as asking for more survivability for sentinels. Also, imagine if scouts could be balanced in a way where they didn't need any hp mods. At the moment they need the relatively large percentage increase that hp mods provide, after the essential speed and stealth. Alternatively scout could have slightly higher base hp? For reference, say complex shield extenders gave +15% sheild hp. Assuming base hp remained the same, this would be: +98 shields on a sentinel +52 shields on an assault +24 shields on a scout

Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.07 17:55:00 - [11] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Adipem Nothi wrote: I'll try to help find the Dev post. https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2469069#post2469069 Not 100% certain what ultimately came of this, but the intent to fix uparmored scouts without hurting heavies was made clear. Point remains, if Rattati was successful in applying a frame-specific penalty, he could do the "inverse" and lessen plate penalties for heavies. If tinkering with plates is on the table, adding some form of drawback to stacking ferroscale would be nice. Haven't found the information about what was implemented. I still think the strafe penalty was for all suits in the end, but I'll keep searching. I did discover this gem from Rattati though: "With team based scans, we need to react immediately, there is too much scanning going on without effort. Further buffs and nerfs to scanning will follow with EWAR shake-up initiative FocusedActive Scanner: Only squad sharenerf [Base range100m75mnerf] - removed [Base visibility from 5 to 35 seconds3 secondsnerf] - removed" It's hard to see from my quote, but reading the thread shows that Rattati's original intention was to nerf focussed scanners to 75m and 3 second duration. However, he swapped this nerf for making the results only squad-share, pending further evaluation at a later date. As the squad-share function has now been unintentionally removed as a result in the implementation of platoons, this is strong evidence that the nerf to range to 75m should be implemented as Rattati originally envisaged.
Varoth Drac Dead Man's Game 2	Posted - 2015.12.07 18:16:00 - [12] - Quote Adipem Nothi wrote: Adipem Nothi wrote: I'll try to help find the Dev post. https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2469069#post2469069 Not 100% certain what ultimately came of this, but the intent to fix uparmored scouts without hurting heavies was made clear. Point remains, if Rattati was successful in applying a frame-specific penalty, he could do the "inverse" and lessen plate penalties for heavies. If tinkering with plates is on the table, adding some form of drawback to stacking ferroscale would be nice. Hotfix echo I've found it. You will see that where it says strafe penalty on plate is doubled, the bit that says "on scouts" is crossed out. Implying the strafe penalty is on all suits.