A very “conceptually appropriate” ability for Heavy was in Gears Tactics.
“one of the heavy’s most important abilities is Anchor , the default starting ability. Each time a heavy unit shoots from cover, it gains a stack of 10% accuracy and 15% damage. If the unit moves even one section over, it will lose that stack and have to start over.”
Similar reasoning
This is how I am removing accuracy penalties with heavy soldiers (and obtaining great passive rewards):
http://phoenix.server317.com/Bionics
jet packs + 2 augmentations, resulting in accuracy +0 instead of -30
In the early stages of the game my heavy is the most mobile unit of my team thanks to the jump jet. And with the Bash skill many early enemies are a one…bash(?). I jump in where they are, casting war cry and bash if I can land close by one of them. The heavy armor protects at least for 1-2 strikes of the melee guys. My other soldiers mostly get one of their limbs disabled with the first melee strike, but not the heavy. In the next turn I almost bash around or use the gun, but mostly bashing because for 1 AP it is way more efficient.
Bash and War Cry are in my opinion pretty strong low level skills especially in the early game.
Later I switch more to explosives with rockets and grenade launcher plus Boom Blast and sometimes also boost the accuracy with sniper helmet and leg armor. But even then I use the tactic described above, it works also in the later stages, especially War Cry against Chirons makes them absolutely helpless. And every point in strength increases your damage with bashes plus a higher chance to daze the bashed enemy.
Oh … and accuracy doesn’t matter if you’re bashing or close on 
We have to nerf War Cry, and I use it a lot
In other words if you’re too far, you’ll miss because of poor accuracy. If you’re up close you can finaly hit enemy…but hold on. You’re better of hitting him with a stock of a gun rather than shooting him 
And best part of it is, this is not a joke. Your 18 strenght heavy bashes with heavy equipment (5 weight) for 90 damage. If you spend 10 points on brawler he’ll bash for 135 damage. 3 AP worth of bashing = 405 damage. 3 AP worth of Hel canon shot = 180 damage.
So if you thought your heavy weapons were made for shooting, you were WRONG 
yep, but:
So don’t you dare downplaying it 
. It’s a viable pro-level strategy early game. Even mid-game, with an onslaught aid, one could bash an overly adventurous siren to death. And we’re not done yet.
Even in the late game it’s acctually the best option to deal with melee oponent that has attacked you. Don’t shoot him, just bash that looser, who thought he could bring his puny claw against the wrath of a weapon’s stock 
Lastly, thing that’s interesting from mechanical perspective that in time that’s needed to fire heavy weapon once, you can make 3 heavy swings with it.
I restart another game and concentrated to make a heavy class with cannon/minigun.
I got lvl 6 heavy, mixed with assault, given sniper head/pants and jetpack heavy torso and got heavy weapon perk. As result, you need to be at least in 10 square range to able to get the enemy inside the target circle. Still you can’t pinpoint any part with minigun and cannon got a miss chance.
Minigun fires 12 bullet and about 8 of them hit. Weapon is slow, inacc and not good against any armored part. Cannon is way better, at least if you hit, you hit and get a stun.
Same lvl 6 assault with same armor and laser rifle can fire faster and hit with 6 bullet mostly on point from very far distances. Assault can hit and run way faster too.
So when you compare each other, a heavy without bombardier purposes is totally useless and only used because you just want to have it. Sorry guys but math is here and any other class assault or sniper is way better, usefull and tactical then any heavy class with minigun/cannon.
How can we save this?
Heavy class should be revised totally. Including this, melee should do that too as again when you got shotgun style weapons and going melee range is suicidal compared to long range battles, It’s very hard to implement this to the Xcom genre. Melee weapons should have great damage and melee classes should have very mobile, especially after engaged enemy.
Yes, you’re right. Until you get better equipment (like shoulder launcher / grenade launcher) and boom blast, heavy does not perform outside of his shoolyard bully role (he screams with warcray and he bashes). At the very begining he’s slow and short range class…but who would have thought this combination will suck?
His only strength is taking hits (well at least until he dies), though usually he won’t get hit because he’s lagging behind assaults (unless you’re aggressive with jetpack).
It’s all because heavy’s armor is terrible and until aim penalties are removed (if ever) you should swap head/legs out as soon as possible.
And yes, the way heavy weapons operate (maybe except those like GL or Flamethrower) should be changed because now they’re in a very strange place. For example Deceptor minigun is not really meant for heavy. It’s actually the best sniper rifle in game (give it to Infiltrator/Sniper with heavy weapons perk and you’ll see what I mean)
A heavy is pretty strong, if you mix him with another class. Usually i use Heavy/assault as melee and CC and Heavy/Sniper as sniper that jetpacks to a roof of a house or something.
If you play Heavy in heavy armor, you are way too slow to do something usefull, in addition you need 3 AP to attack with the weapons.
Early game, heavy is fine with jetpack + bash. In mid game you have a secondary class to boost him in different roles.
But you can pay 5 bucks to win 
Then you get even better armor, more accuracy, more speed and even additional abilities!
And heavy class nerfed with the 1.7 patch…
Abilities
Yeah snapshot hates heavy… Only hope is modders now. I will do it for sure when the time comes.
It was an absolutely right decision to add 1AP cost to war cry and strongman is not a exclusive heavy class skill
Heavies are awesome, both as a single class and multiclassed with any other class.
Their single biggest advantage is their ability to jetpack. Now, you can give up on this advantage to do something completely different, but for me the jetpack is the way to move the Heavy around if you are going to stick to heavy armor and you want mobility. Then I completely neglect their speed and concentrate on buffing their strength.
I think their skillset doesn’t need any selling - it sells itself. They are the single most well rounded class able to deal with mobs (War Cry, Boom Blast) as well as with big baddies (Rage Burst) and everything in between (Brawler for bashing), plus they have a side support role with Inspire.
As to their main weapons - Hel 2 Cannon and Deceptor, it’s true that through hocus-pocus buff magic they can be made into very effective long range weapons in the hands of other classes. However, that doesn’t mean they are useless for the pure Heavy clad in heavy armor - they have to be used differently, as medium - short range weapons, depending on the target. Eventually the Heavies get access to very high precision weaponry of their own (Archangel, Destiny III), which are actually the most accurate weapons in the game.
In the times before Danforth, when the game was much harder if played with self-restrictions, Heavy was the single class to play with (and no, I don’t mean for using SRs with Rage Burst or anything like that…)
Ok, you hate heavy class too. Yes, +1 Ap was good. Strongman could be nerfed but why the penalty so deadly?
Why does Snapshot designers think that heavy class, weapons and armors should get all the penalties they can get? They should be slow, heavy, low acc with get penalty with everything possible…
As you say so as experienced players, I will give another try with different builds but I am still against to have acc penalty with heavy armor and heavy weapon together. And -20 perception is ridiculous with strongman.
Strongman is not a Heavy skill and as most of the personal traits that give a weapon profiency it creates all sorts of problems, while at the same time creating opportunities for more varied builds.
The way to use Strongman is with a character who is not a Heavy, one of the more popular choices being an Assault/Sniper. The problem then is that the +30% accuracy (which was always there until someone spotted it one day) combined with Sniper armor and Marksman made the Hel 2 Cannon into the best SR in the game. I have my doubts as to whether the 20/20/-20 approach will work… Personally I’m leaning towards taking out the damage buffs from the personal traits entirely…
I wrote a guide a while back about classes. It was before Danforth, so things have changed, but you can take a look if you are interested:
I can tell you for sure that I would pick both skills instantly, because they are even after the nerf powerful and useful
Thx Voland. I read most of them and gave me some different ideas and some facts I know wrong earlier. I will wait new DLC and restart again.
Just one note. As you put your praise for the class in two ways:
First point is valid for heavy. Second is valid for any class which will happen to have perk with mounted weapons.
I find it amusing that they way players are telling you that you are doing your heavy ‘wrong’ requires you to not use them as a heavy…
LOOL.
Small minded people are contrary just for the sake of it.
