The Cal logi suit is expected and not uncalled for. The Amarr suit buffs are very nearly what I've been suggesting personally so no complaints there
the overall trend towards removing
even more eHP from Logi suits in "upcoming updates" rather than fixing the weak Assault suit bonuses concerns me more than a little. Non-'slayer' logi already have trouble surviving while
actively doing their job and no amount of equipment buff is going to change that (longer range on the repair too may be a mild exception to that statement but nothing to write home about. A
substantial buff to injector range could help greatly and if that's coming then the race which gets it will be more protected.
Two more fundamental flaws with equipment based skills for logi [list=1]
Equipment WP scaling is still broken (until this is fixed most buffs to equipment will actually nerf earnings for support logi by lowering their overall potential. If the new WP system is rolled out with these updates then this won't be a problem, until then it is.
Constrains player choice - I'm not talking about trying to play "slayer" here, I'm talking about how many types of equipment there are to support with and how if you bind each race to one type you artificially force players into builds with those specific types. In addition to making innovation more difficult by constraining equipment loadouts, a problem that will only get worse as more equipment is added to the game, you also make fittings more transparent on the battlefield weakening tactical options. Logi being yellow is one thing, logi being yellow and everyone knowing that X race equals Y equipment is something else again. Don't like footholds? Target the "uplink" logi, in a protracted firefight or trying to take out an entrenched position? Target the repair and revive logi. Want to be a 'slayer' in a logi suit? Proto the nanohive logi and run a core flaylock Further there has been no counter balance the Logi suits gain to compensate for the nerf. Prior to these changes the two suits base stats were balanced when fittings were included. I spent a lot of time on the forums asking anyone to construct a Logi suit that was more powerful than an Assault suit of the same race after bringing the logi up match the on board values of the assault. The net result of the few fittings I ever saw (mostly constructed by myself or some of the folks in the shields vs armor balance thread) is that logi suits prior to the change would cost more in SP and ISK than an assault suit doing the same thing and would pay extra on top of that in the cases where they might be able to exceed the assault.
The
racial skill buffs were a problem, mostly the Cal suit bonus and the buffs for the assault suits generally but those require skill reworks not role wide suit nerfs. So, what has been added role wide to compensate for the nerfs that are now creating an imbalance within the medium frames (or is the plan to never fix the racial skills and use the suit changes to counter that?
).
Ok I'm leaving this here because it's already long, but in short the current changes seem generally called for/positive but the described/intended balance presented in the Dev Blog seems to be ignoring the feedback forums and several key longstanding balance aspects. CCP needs to seriously reconsider this course and I hope there is someone on the
CPM who understands playing
support logi well enough to keep this problem at the forefront of discussion regarding suit balance.
My 0.02 ISK,
Sincerely,
Been playing support Logi since closed beta