You managed to nerf some useful perks instead of fixing the useless ones. Congratulations.
Bombardier
Reduced bonus damage from 20% to 10%.
“10% damage is not worth mentioning for a specialization. Just delete it. 10% damage makes no
difference and is too little to make your abilities stand up to the others. 20% should be enough to call
it an improvement.”
Close Quarter Specialist
Removed bonus damage for Shotguns.
“Just for that reason, now useless”
Added 20% bonus Accuracy for Shotguns.
“useless”
Healer
Reduced bonus healing from 50% to 30%.
“Makes no difference”
Quarterback
Reduced bonus grenade range from 50% to 25%.
"Halving the damage is immense. "
Reckless
Reduced bonus damage from 20% to 10%.
“10% is useless”.
Reduced accuracy penalty from 20% to 10%.
“10% is useless”
Self Defense Specialist
Reduced damage and accuracy bonuses from 20% to 10%.
I will take just one as example, but the same principles apply to all.
20% damage buff to shotguns made them OP because as a very long burst weapon (8-10 pellets) against, say 20 armor, it was an increase of much more than 20%. Take the Iconoclast: 10(35-20)=150, with the old perk, 10(42-20)=220, an increase in damage over 40%. And if combined with old Reckless, 10(49-20) =290, a nearly 100% increase in damage. It’s absurd, it changes the nature of the weapon from one that that can do high damage but is weak against armor to one that has no weakness at all.
The 20% to Accuracy, on the other hand, is far from useless, because it means that you can put all the pellets in the same body part, hopefully one that has lowest armor. Also, there is a new single-pellet high-damage shotgun with an effective range close to that of an AR.
EDIT: also, you need to look at these in a larger context:
new weapons have been added, Hel II Cannon has been buffed (though its appearance delayed) You have a new starting mid range heavy weapon (the Autocannon), a new grenade launcher that shots for 1AP, a sniper rifle that shoots for 2AP, the shotgun I mentioned above, a deployable shield that can stop any frontal direct fire attack and a blast vest that reduces damage from explosives by 50%
armors have been modified to modify speed and accuracy much less (both the bonus and the malus), which means that heavier armors are more useful and that the bonus to accuracy from perks is also more important. Strongman now is something you want for your heavy in heavy armor (since it’s penalty to acc has been cut by half and to speed from - 3 to - 2), for example wielding the new autocannon.
All enemies, except the Lota Sirens and the Scyllas have body parts protected with 20 armor or less.
I almost use these personal perks primary to get proficiency for a weapon that a soldier normally not has and then only secondary as a minor buff to make them not completely obsolete for soldiers that already have the proficiency (i.e. Trooper for Assault).
That’s what we still have now, even with the decreased buffs:
A Heavy with Trooper is all around better with ARs than an Assault without Trooper.
A Berserker with Strongman is all around better with heavy weapons than a Heavy without Strongman.
And so on …
In my eyes bad balancing overall and to much fokus on the personal perks.
That said, I’m more on the side to delete all of the damage and accuracy buffs of these personal perks and buff the weapons and class skills accordingly. I would really like to have better weapons for all of my soldiers than only for the few with these randomly generated perks.
Overall imo I think this is a change for much better, together with the changes to armor buffs.
But I do wish for damage buffs to be removed completely and for the proficiencies to give only accuracy buffs (except for melee weapons) and that you could train in them.
My idea is that each operative should have 3 third row skills, each of a different type.
So one would be “origin” or “faction” perk (which would be fixed, depending on starting faction), one would be a personal trait (like thief, quarterback, etc. - this would be completely random) and a proficiency slot, where the player could decide what weapon the operative will master.
accuracy buffs would be my way to go, as to state that the trooper with these random skills has an uncanny talent to know how to operate these weapons effectively…and it somewhat counteracts the problem that occurs when you have no real random perks, that all soldiers would become functionally the same.
in the end though I mainly dislike damage stacks because it throws the difficulty curve out of wack, lowering the amount of damage skills or lowering the magnitude means that the difference between a trooper with and without is less, and it is more important in how you use the weapon rather then on how many +dmg skills you managed to stack. accuracy buffs have nowhere near that level of impact on the game relative to damage buffs, but they can still help out in a very noticable way.
I have so many possibilities to mix my soldiers alone with dual classing, different equipment, augmentations and so on that I never have the feeling my soldiers become functionally the same.
Edit:
In fact, the personal perks driving me almost to somewhat limited choices, they basically limit my freedom to form them as I want them.
the game has a huge amount of options, and I really applaud people like you for trying them out. but take a look at the OP. do you think the OP would go for any option that doesn’t add “moar damage”? and I fear he’s not alone in that particular opinion.
the problem with the pick-and-choose case is that it becomes a scenario where you would have option X and option Y, where Y deals more damage. now if someone just focused on damage would have the option to pick a bonus for one of the 2 options. He would inevitably go for Y on each and every character he would build. because boosting X would be boosting the “suboptimal choice”, the X choice buff would never get the chance to prove itself…no matter what utility functions it might have had.
random means that in some cases, people will try something new because it just happens to be on a character that already had other good traits. if it becomes a choice…that aspect will almost inevitably disappear.
Yes, that’s true, I try a lot and others maybe not so much.
I understand that, but it remains that a possible choice is being denied to me here, basically I am limited in my options.
Edit:
One of the most used mods for FXCOM2 is “I’m the Commander here” for exactly this reason, take away the ugly randomness when it comes to ‘design’ your own soldiers.
Well, this is also the reason for this thread. Either we have “personal” strengths or not. With the Perks you can combine both “strengths and weaknesses”. Which is also the sense of the whole thing. Weapons don’t play a role here, once again it’s up to you whether I have a “Rambo” in the team who can shred everything or a Mr. Been. It looks like the Perks were neutered in favor of weapons. If they don’t play a role in the personality anymore, get rid of them.
Well, I can only partially agree.
You cannot say that weapons don’t play a role here and on the other side mainly complain about the decrease of damage buffs for exactly these weapons. When they don’t play a role here, then the buffs should also not play a role in the personality, at least in my opinion.
My look on these personal weapon proficiency perks is, that they are there to mainly provide weapon proficiency for soldiers that normally don’t have them, to make them more unique, provide more personality.
But because they also provide damage and accuracy buffs they are mainly reduced as exactly that, buff the weapon usage. Their actual purpose is only secondary, if at all.
Edit:
Just to give an ingame example how I see these weapon proficiency perks like Trooper, Strongman, Sniperist etc.:
When I get an Assault with the Strongman personal perk I don’t go to dualclass with a Heavy, because for me this would be a waste of this perk. Instead I think about to dual class with something different like a Sniper and now this perk is insane just because I have basically 3 classes combined. The damage or accuracy buff is secondary, even when there were no buff at all, this combination is still a very valid and reliable choice.
On the other side I’m almost not happy when I get weapon proficiency perks that the base class already has, for instance Trooper for an Assault. This combination is for me mostly a waste of possibilities, any other weapon proficiency would be much more powerful and this not because of the buffs that they provide, but because of the diversity that they provide, the buffs are only secondary, not really important.
I find myself on the fence on this one. On the one hand, I agree with you that the random nature of these perks is what drives innovative builds: you try to maximize the utility of a personal perk and come up with something new. Personally, I like that.
On the other hand, many players are upset at the RNG, the apparent absurdities it leads to (Cautious and Reckless, a sniper with bombardier, etc.). @MadSkunky feelings on this are widely shared, tbh.
On the gripping hand, if I could choose personal perks, I know I wouldn’t always be going for the same ones. And if it was the case that telemetry data show some perks as being overwhelmingly chosen over other ones, then they would have to be rebalanced.
I would refer to @MadSkunky post. The main role of the proficiency perks is to give a proficiency. It’s what allows any class other than heavy to use heavy weapons without a 50% penalty to accuracy, so it’s a huge factor in determining the role of the operative. An assault with Strongman is a high mobility medium range heavy weapons specialist, a sniper with the same perk is a dedicated hw shooter, etc.
The reason you have an additional bonus +20% to accuracy at all is to give some utility to the perk if a heavy rolls it.
Very simple, fewer possibilities less fun. I’m sure if it was up to you we would fight with fists because everything is OP. Everyone to their own.
If perks are designed to carry additional weapons, buffs are unnecessary. This has already been mentioned several times. Either or. 10% DMG is not worth mentioning, get rid of it. Quite simple
All would be fine as long as you don’t state this permanently out here. There is no reason to get rid of something only because some players think they are useless in their current form.
True, I’m sometimes a bit to far into teaching others to do something this or that way. But I’m far of simply get rid of something in the game only because I don’t like it. Something like this drives me crazy sometimes
No, on the contrary: I want to have as many options as possible and for that it’s important that they be balanced, because an optimal (or OP) solution makes all other options meaningless to a player who is playing the game as a strategy game.
They would be unnecessary if perks were not random, or if you couldn’t roll a perk that gave you a proficiency you already have. If the perk just gave the proficiency without any buffs to damage/accuracy, an assault that rolled the trooper perk would derive no benefit from it.
10% is a lot because of how armor works in the game. Consider Ares AR-1 against 20 armor. Damage without buff: 30 - 20 + 30 - 19 + 30 - 18 + 30 - 17 + 30 - 16 + 30 - 15 = 75. With +10% damage per projectile it’s 75 + 3 * 6 = 93, or a 24% increase in damage.
