You have to stand next to your enemy before a heavy can be useful. The change they mis is about 95% or so… not funny
This is why I don’t use the cannons as weapons unless I’m fighting larger targets, like the mist-spewing towers, or Chirons. For arthrons, tritons and other little buggers, I use grenade launchers manufactured at the base. Much more reliable, and they always hit where you point (currently).
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Aiming with hell cannon is terrible, agreed. yet give him a grenade launcher and he is Your live savior.
As mentioned in many other threads before, if you still like and enjoy the hel cannon, give your heavy a sniper helmet (+15% accuracy and not -10%, you can also switch the heavy legs for additional accuracy). This seems the best way at the moment.
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kill a couple of targets with your heavy, then train it’s second ability as sniper and develop their accuracy… he/she will almost never miss a shot… it feels almost overpowered
Use explosives and with rage burst you can send 8 hell canon shots in an enemy, not much survives that
“The heavies are totally useless”
You won’t be saying that when you meet a queen that needs a ton of armor shredded with rage burst!!
Also this has already been suggested but to just add a little bit extra; using the snipers head gear & perk tree really helps with their aim. And gives them a bit more mobility with the “quick aim” perk dropping their weapon AP’s down to 2!! Huge difference. Also being proficient with pistols is always a nice bonus.
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I’ve had pretty good luck using Sniper helmet and Assault legs with the Heavy chest so I can still get mount weapons and jumpjets but also have decent aim and mobility.
Something I’ve yet to try… Does biggest booms stack with quick aim to make Hel cannon shots only 1 AP?
Big boom don’t reduce hel cannon AP, maybe a bug or intended?
description says it does so I’m assuming it’s a bug. I haven’t been able to play/test it since yesterday’s update so was hoping maybe it had been fixed.
And I think it is mispelled and there should be only explosive weapons.
Is the AP reduction working with grenades, grenade launchers, and mounted weapons?
I have yet to find a legitimate reason to keep heavies around. Normally I swap my heavy out with a sniper as soon as I can, and later a technician.
I completely swap out their gear. Sniper helm, Assault chest and pants. dump all points in Speed. Sub Assault for dash to make up for the loss of the jet pack (which I feel REALLY should just be an equippable item, not part of the heavy’s armor) and then they start to feel worth a damn.
Yes, giving them a grenade launcher is useful, but it’s usually just faster to have another sniper that can do about as much damage as the cannon can, but is far more accurate. So instead of just wounding a few targets with the grenade launcher, you actually just kill one off.
Yes, later one when you’re facing absolute swarms of enemies on a map, grenade launchers tend to shine. Too much, in fact. Equip your entire squad with grenade launchers, proceed to blow off everyone’s arms/weapons, then switch to secondary weapons and finish everything off. I’m not sure if Grenade Launchers are bugged, but I have never fumbled using them on any other class before. Maybe they aren’t considered ‘heavy’.
If you REALLY want to play with a Hel Cannon, pray you find an Assault that has the secondary perk to give it the proficiency for it. Otherwise, sit the Heavy at the base, let it soak up XP in the training room, and get something else, ANYTHING else, that will do you far more good.
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The 180 damage and 10 shred of the Hel Cannon is not really comparable to the 130 of the Firebird. Really early Arthrons do tend to be one shottable by the Firebird but it usually isn’t long before you encounter enemies just ever too tough to be one shot by even the NJ sniper but just soft enough to take a single Hel Cannon round. The Hel Cannon can also shoot straight through certain environmental objects while still retaining damage and even kill multiple targets with single shots.
But why a Heavy if you can just slap that on an assault with the right proficiency? Jump Jets. Easily the most mobility until really high rank soldiers and one of the easiest ways to claim extra willpower for the whole squad (mandatory for some of the bugged ones that sit just too high to walk into). Bull Rush (or whatever the proper name of the charge ability is) is entirely not worth it unless it is given impact so it stuns most standard targets and War Cry is extremely situational at best but Boom Blast is pretty nuts for explosives, Inspire can be a big boon to the team, and Rage Burst will simply kill your target dead.
Heavies are so far from totally useless: they’re just not the universal powerhouse that Assaults are and lack the raw unbalanced power of a Shotgun Assault/Sniper to clear a map completely alone.
All that said: Heavies do need more generally useful skills in the earlier part of their tree. There isn’t a single skill in the Assault or Sniper trees that you skip because they don’t complement your loadout or intended use of a soldier: you only skip them to preserve SP for more valuable general skills (Expert Gunlordery) or important numerical stat boosts.
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Agree, wanted to write something similar. 
Sorry but I could not agree less with you on this point. If you have 2 or more enemies stood near each other and hit them all with a grenade launcher blast, 9/10 times the blast will completely wreck the enemies weapons or limbs they are using to fire those weapons (sometimes both) leaving them with multiple bleed procs. This effectively disables those enemies outright in the sense that they can’t fight back. You have effectively made multiple enemies useless rather than just killing one. Grenades can be fired over cover at enemies which cannot be directly hit by any other squad member (currently with 100% accuracy). Plus the cover will then often be destroyed, opening them up to further direct fire from your other squad members.
Yes the sniper rifle is very useful for long range accurate kills but the grenade launcher is still an absolute beast, as it always has been.
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@Nikajo And that’s the exact problem. As I mentioned, Grenade launchers are usable by all classes (unless I just got reeeeeeaalllly lucky! Never had any ‘fumbled’ situations), and having just one Heavy with a grenade launcher doesn’t really do much during a mission. Sure, later one when there are so many enemies on a map that they HAVE to stand closely together, a grenade launcher is useful. But Heavies are in an ‘all or none’ situation: Having an entire group of Heavies using Cannons and Grenade Launchers will devastate a map very easily. But only having one Heavy in a group of Assaults and Snipers is useless.
Until they ‘fix’ it so that an assault with a shotgun can’t Dash all around the map and kill half the enemies in one turn, there is absolutely no use for just ONE heavy in a mission. Snipers can get to high places and pick things off at long distances. Assaults can move around the map like they have infinite AP. Heavies…just kinda sit there. They can’t move far, Cannon Aim, even at max stats, is fucking terrible, and while Grenade Launchers are useful, once you’ve blown off a few arms and weapons, the heavy is just sort of useless. Even at close range, cannons seems to be useless. They need to be tweaked.
Just read the forums here. Everybody is complaining about Heavies being useless. Youtube streamers are complaining about it. I’m not sure why they felt the need to punish them into the ground like that, but think about it. Heavies can’t move far. Their armor has both - to speed AND - to aim. Their aiming reticle fills up almost the entire screen at the start, and doesn’t really shrink much as they level. Sure, they have a jet pack, which is all well and good, but it takes an entire turn to use it meaning you’re open to fire once you land, and once that area has been cleared it takes you ages to move onto another area.
Like I said, I strip my heavies of their bulky armor and give them sniper helm, and assault chest and pants. This lowers their armor, but that really doesn’t do a whole lot anyway. They now have increased mobility and slightly better aim, making them ALMOST not completely useless. Once your assaults get Dash + Quick Aim + that last ability that refunds AP that I can’t recall the name of atm, Heavies are completely obsolete. They aren’t even worth using as a sub class. You basically just need Sniper + Assault and Assault + Sniper, everything else is pointless. Granted, Berserkers are OP on their own too, but I was never a fan of melee.
I read the forums almost daily and have done for well over a year.
I didn’t make any comments about the heavy class so not sure why you’re referencing them in your reply to me…? I happen to agree that they need a rework to be viable. Or better yet, the assault needs a rework to bring it more in line with the rest so we don’t end up with every class in the game being cross-classed with assault and, in turn, a bunch of super soldiers. At the very least, dash needs a cool-down period. I would imagine every class being able to use the grenade launcher without fail is probably not working as intended as even pistols suffer from fumble mechanics in non-proficient hands.
I was just making the point that grenade launchers are far from useless, they just have a different utility than sniper rifles or hel cannon. Comparing them is a little pointless as their intended use and effects are not the same, at all. So far the best use I’ve found for the hel cannon is that it makes a joke of shielded crabs, but only at close enough range so the heavy’s aim is less of a factor. Definitely some balancing that needs to be addressed.
thats exactly a point. Each class got their pros and cons, but if you plan to abuse current build of assault, everything is pointless as it can 1st round - solo kill everything except queen, right now
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After 3 days of gametime I have my goliath . And my heavy is finaly getting useful. Still, a heavy with a hellcanon… shaking my head