so glad this post is here, good work Darky. HMG is broken no doubt, i quite like the increased accuracy with heat up idea mentioned earlier as I feel the over-heating is a fair nerf although a little too quick. It's not just the gun that has me tearing my hair out though, how is it that my 1100 HP's are taken down in 1-2 seconds by a gun (AR) that starts at around 30 HP a hit? We are slow and cumbersome, to kill us should take teamwork and attrition not half a clip! If you see me coming, run away and get your mates, I should not be easy meat one on one and if you run away, I cant kill you! Granted when we can fight with our corp mates (please implement that soon ccp!) we can adopt our more specific roles with support from squad which will help but i do hope we are suitably unnerfed before then.......oh and sort the flippin' AR's out! lol

This is the 4th thread I've seen on this same subject. Yes, it is underpowered or needs to remove the easy overheating. I'd go into a longer explanation but already did so in two other threads.

Explain to me why 60.000 years in the future, people need to have a problem with "screen shake" ? "The reduced splash doesn't even matter because I can hit someone 300m away directly in the" ..from the roof at least 20m above him.
I tried and I could not find you on K/D ratio & Kill list, so you need to have less then 950 kills and 3.12 ratio so whatever you do all day is not a killing.

My take on things:

]I extensively played the Heavy and the Scout suit last build (Over 10 million SP just for Heavy Dropsuit and HMG usage, not counting other skills for other things), this build however...

• The nerf to the militia suit is needed, as the Heavy is too much of a critical item to allow it to be that powerful for free.
• The new map naturally is anti-heavy due to the open feel of it, and how powerful ARs are now which will decimate any heavy due to how slow they are (Communication and Biomass had natural hunting ground for heavies that they could stick to).
• The HMG is one of the worst weapons now, if not the worst.

Why the heavy will naturally be at a disadvantage with this build, all of the following is acceptable:

• The open map causes the Heavy to be constantly in the "crossing in the open" syndrome, which means it is an easy target due to the large profile and slow speed.
• The HMG is garbage in an open map, and rightfully so.

My issues with the HMG that need to be addressed:

• The HMG can only be used on the suit with a X8 skill and with a high natural base ISK cost. It also has a 50% higher SP cost for related skills compared to standard weapons. It also has a higher base ISK cost. This means it should be inherently more powerful on a weapon per weapon basis due to requiring a higher investment.
• An HMG is supposed to be able to be used for suppression fire or fully automatic fire, historically and in literally every war and literally every video game, and HMG is not an Assault Rifle nor an SMG.... Period. The current HMG does not act like it should.
• The current HMG needs to be firing for extended periods of time for the reticule to close. Currently however this is not feasible as by the time the aiming reticule closes you are about to overheat and must stop firing. Before it was balanced by you using an excessive amount of ammo to "tighten" your aim in the past build, this current build though you are forced to burst fire with an HMG (which... Is beyond painfully stupid, I'm sorry that I can't word this last point in a polite fashion).
• Your Breach Assault Rifle can fire longer then your Heavy Machine Gun in an extended period of fire... Something is wrong with this. No assault rifle should ever, under any circumstances, be able to sustain automatic fire longer then a heavy machine gun as conceptually this defeats the very purpose of a Machine Gun. This is a major issue.
• It is more viable to use an Assault Rifle with a heavy then it is to use an HMG for anti-personnel purposes and even anti-vehicular due to increased Damage per minute (HMG's superior DPS is not important when you consider how fast it overheats as well as the 8 second reload, mainly the super fast overheat), accuracy and range (Why does the HMG have horrible range?).
• If the HMG is meant to be super-inaccurate then why is the range on it so bad? It should be able to fire just as far as an assault rifle if the reticule is massive as that means either A.) the majority of your shots will miss due to a big reticule or B.) you have to waste an insane amount of ammo (and time which is critical in a firefight which means free shots for the enemy) to tighten your reticule to where you can hit the enemy a decent portion of the time. The old HMG could do medium range combat if it wasted a lot of ammo tightening up, the new HMG can't do this anymore (mainly due to overheating so fast). Regardless range seems a bit short. This is a very minor issue in my opinion, but I figure I should mention everything major and minor.
• Having twice the rate of fire on an assault rifle is worthless when you literally have half of the damage... this means that the HMG will do exactly the same damage as an assault rifle... Why? Also a reminder that it has an 8 second reload and costs more ISK and costs 50% more SP and overheats causing it to do LESS PRACTICAL DPS then an assault rifle, and when counting in the horrible default reticule (even the tight reticule is crap compared) means there is literally no situation that an HMG performs better. Ever. This is a major issue.

I am extremely disappointed that the only point of using a heavy is to use a forge gun now, and that the HMG is useless (literally outperformed in every situation by SMGs and ARs). Heavies should be king in short range and die at long range. Last build the issue was the Militia spam of heavy suits (which your nerf to militia heavies fixed, good job), the HMG was not a real issue as they usually died rather well in the open to ARs or in super close range to Scouts.

I personally suggest an increase in DPS for the HMG to where it outperforms every other weapon in close range while remaining very bad at long range (due to the reticule having to close) and lackluster at medium. Unless the HMG is king at close range, it does not have a purpose in your game. For clarification, the shotgun will still have a purpose as it is better in super-close range due to being able to be mounted on fast, maneuverable suits and costing less SP to use.

I know you're probably new here, but Nova Knife probably has near the most hours of any beta tester in the game, and the most dedicated to testing everything, not just one or two classes.