D'Ogofwar
Circle of Huskarl
Minmatar Republic
7
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Posted - 2012.12.09 09:42:00 -
[1] - Quote
The HMG/Heavy seems pretty balanced right now. It can still die very quickly to a levelled-up AR in competent hands, on the other hand a heavy can take down 3-4 opponents in a single encounter and survive if the circumstances are right.
Maybe the best indicator is that most peeps now find cover when they see a heavy coming.This is what a heavy should be.
Looking at it from the other side, if a heavy encounters two Assault/ARs who are aware of him, he better have some cover ready to fall behind if he wants to survive the fight.
In the end, a heavy's advantage isn't dps, it's clip size + tank. The dps advantage lies with the levelled-up ARs because they can deliver all their dps to the target at almost all ranges.
Some other points:
1) Peeps are already using the highest DPS HMG in the game: the the 'Broadside'. Officer weapons excluded, ofc. So even with maxed skills and unlimited ISK/AUR, heavies are not going to be doing much more damage that they are right now.
2) HMG range may increase a bit over where it is atm, peeps prolly trained damage before training range. Even so, realistically, what we'll see is maybe another 10% range with the same bullet spread. That increase in range is partially neutralized by the RBS, so any improvements to range will not be dramatic.
3) Most heavies are using the Type II suit atm because it's the only thing that makes financial sense. At a tremendous investment in skillpoints and a tremendous outlay of ISK, they can pick up a couple of extra slots and more CPU/Grid. This means heavies may get a little bit tougher, but not by much, and when you kill that heavy it's really gonna hurt them, financially speaking.
CCP needs to sort out what to do with heavies and higher tier dropsuits/HMGs. Right now if you removed these things from the game most heavies wouldn't even notice they were gone.
My feeling is that heavies only need 2 'soft' buffs to make them what CCP implied they would be:
1) Resistance to splash damage. This would allow them to fulfill their AV role but leave them unchanged to infantry.
2) The 'aim knocking' effect should be much smaller for heavies then assaults, and less for assaults than logis, and less for logis than scouts. Personally I think this is broken right now, CCP didn't intend for heavies to get slapped around by AR fire like they do. Basically, a levelled-up heavy should not get knocked around until they're taking medium turret fire, or larger. |