Stability stance sounds fair. You would still trade mobility for the higher accuracy but that allows the heavy to be effective with heavy weapons without him having to be excessivly close to the enemy.
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In my opinion the Heavy works really well and there is lots of synergies with other classes. The “brute” image might seem strange to some but who cares, the game is its own entity and how the word heavy is used in other games really don’t matter… not to me anyway.
I see the heavy as something that is tough and can survive quite a few blows, sometimes allot of punishment and give it as well. The heavy is a front fighter and not a support tool. I always prioritize strength first , willpower second and speed third on heavies. Their most important trait is taking and dealing punishment at close range, war cry is also a really great ability. My heavies usually are one of the fastest advancing in terms of XP in the beginning of the game.
I do avoid the most OP type of strategies which force me to use more tactical options and be more dynamic. Unfortunately there still are a few too many broken skill combinations that need to be fixed.
In my opinion there is nothing in particular wrong with the heavy class. I have been using the heavy to rather good effect in my games.
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Except that they give him high powered ranged weapons, like rocket launchers and cannons, which gives the apparently false idea that it’s supposed to be a fire support or tank/bunker buster soldiers.
Give them a real melee weapon, instead of a breakable ranged weapon. But we already have Berserkers…
I dont know about that.
Taking damage isent really working for me xD the Pandorans just ignore him if they see any other target other then the Heavy. So he isent tanking anything. Also if he has to take more then 1 hit from say a melee Arhtron chances are he wont be walking away from that either. His armor is higher then other classes but not so high that hes immume to damage completly.
Also to do damage you actually need to hit something and that is very difficult at ranges above 10 tiles. Heck even within 10 tiles it can be a challenge with full heavy armor when firing at humanoid targets.
When they do hit (specially with the Hel II) they do hit like a freight train. But its such a chore to get them to work that I personally wonder why the Heavy has these mechanics… Are they just to OP if they are alot more accurate?
This is true. The Heavy tends to survive because the AI ignores the most protected targets.
Again, I believe that Heavies should be walking weapon emplacements.
I can’t agree enough with the idea of heavy armor cutting or eliminating accuracy penalties from using heavy weapons – inbuilt shock stabilizers in the armor should help with that a lot, plus any strength enhancers, because we can all assume by the bulkiness of it that it’s powered.
But as far as Hel II Cannon’s usefulness, you will NEVER scoff at it again the day you get an Assault-class soldier with the Strongman perk. Then it becomes very reasonably accurate at lower-middle range. For now, a baseline Heavy with all their armor has too much trouble hitting anything with it. BUT, swap their leg armor for Assault-class leg armor (preferably Anu Acolyte, it’s +3 speed to Odin’s +1), and maybe get them a different helmet, and suddenly you see those accuracy maluses begin to vanish. Heaven help anyone if your Heavy actually rolled Strongman.
Typically, the best practice with heavies is to multi them into Assault to get the Dash ability. You can take a bound for 1 AP to get them into position with that to fire a cannon shot. Plus, Return Fire will help a lot if your Heavy takes fire, especially up close, which they certainly will if you’re using them aggressively. A Return Fire against a claw Arthron with the Hel II at point blank will leave nothing but bloody stumps where their legs used to be, and prevent getting hit by more 1 AP melee attacks.
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I made heavy with body and leg adv. Parts and head sniper one. I give him mibigun and secondary class sniper. Now he can run and hit. The biggest problem is still the active range. He should go near the enemy at least 10 range to able to hit enough bullets.
But he is not a heavy anymore. He is something mixed just to use minigun more effectively. He is very powerful with rage burst, much more then hel 2. But as I said he is a heavy which got assault gear, uses sniper skills… Frankenstein…
I have a strongman assault. Its amazing! The weapon is still abit inaccurate but with that combo its at the very least workable. Dash+Hel II shot is very powerfull, but also costs that assaults AP’s so imho thats fair.
I still feel though that this combo isent perfect. What perks your soldiers get is random so you cant really rely on getting it. That said using a turn to jumpjet in, War cry and setup to engage the enemy in the next turn works somewhat but its very hard with full heavy gear. And imho thats what most people have a problem with.
Pure heavy gear makes the weapons far to inaccurate and hard to use. Currently the reason to go full heavy simply isent there and imho thats a design flaw. Each set should have their pro’s and cons. Armor alone isent worth the heavy penalties that come with it.
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LOL - too true - putting heavy gear on a heavy unit with heavy weapons makes that unit useless. The only way to make a heavy remotely useful is to not equip them with heavy gear or train them with heavy skills. (or just jump, wc , repeat) Who is the dufus who came up with that???
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Voland makes good arguments but after reading all this thread and using my own experience (I actually don’t have that much of a hard time in the beginning but after getting the grenade launcher that’s almost the only thing my heavies in full get to be able to use, even though I take a Hel and a MG with them)… I have to agree that full HA + Hel or MG is mostly useless. It’s great when you get them to work, but it’s just so far and between that it’s not fun.
I love the idea of stability stance but as even Voland said there are also minor adjustments to be made even with this - and for me, those are what the other “team” here is asking, a bit more armor in heavy armor, and a bit less accuracy debuffs. Specially the accuracy, of course.
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I agree, Hell 2 and Deceptor should be more useful with heavy armor but on the other side Boom Blast should be nerfed.
This is probably the easiest case to make and the easiest thing to get from the devs. The question is, how much more armor do you want and how less of a penalty to accuracy, bearing in mind that the smaller they are the more likely they are to be implemented.
Also, when it comes to increasing armor consider Electric Reinforcement, and that you want to avoid a situation where the 20 armor from ER + HA = virtual invulnerability.
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This exists with bionics already
Actually, yes, also have to think about bionics, and that HA can’t be better than that.
Which is a bit of an issue to raise armor value of HA, because heavy torso and leg bionics is a +5 armor improvement over HA. No margin there unless that is also raised.
So another question is, how much more armor do you want on those first Pure? 
They have better armour and can withstand much more fire then other grunts 
There are granade and rocket launchers that are indeed mighty weapons!
And I like them
OK, I’m making an assumption here. I’m assuming there’s a cap already in place for bonuses. No matter how much you get, it doesn’t ever increase past X%
We want it for that value. Heavy guys are meant to be Heavy Weapons specialists. I would like a Heavy to be able to hit with their weapons as accurately, or slightly less than an Assault, but only when in Heavy Armour. Any other armour, they lose that ability (As I assume that lighter gear gives them bonuses, which they shouldn’t benefit from, in my opinion. I’m sorry, but a Heavy in a Sniper hat should NOT get Sniper bonuses with a Machine Gun or Cannon.)
Personally, as I stated above and will repeat, I like the idea that if a Heavy does NOT move that turn (Which includes the Jetpack so they use it, they lose it) they get no penalty for using a Heavy Weapon.
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This could maybe be solved in a form of armour proficiency so that the downsides didn’t count if you use the right armour for this class and the upsides also not, but for sure only when you use it in the wrong class. This way a heavy has no usage for sniper or assault armour but also no debuffs by using his heavy armour.
Still we can cross class …
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Cross Classing should remove the penalties for the cross class weapons, not buff the weapons the main class already uses. It’s not like Dash makes weapons more accurate, it just adds Mobility options.
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That isn’t a real solution because it goes both ways. Then I’m still able to cross class a base Sniper with a Heavy and can use the heavy gun with high accuracy sniper armour.
Fun fact, with more mobility one can easily compensate accuracy disadvantages. Accuracy is nothing more than your hit chance on a given distance and explicity Dash gives you an easy way to greatly reduce the distance (= better accuracy).
Maybe it wouldnt hurt if all armors were also class specific where proficiency would guarantee added bonuses. Then Heavy armor should not have any Accuracy penalties, so Heavy in heavy armor would be more accurate than Assault wearing heavy armor (no bonuses applied because no proficiency)…
This way, Infintrators would be only ones benefiting from Stealth bonuses added by their armor, Snipers would be the only one benefiting from accuracy bonuses on Sniper armor and Assaults would be the only ones who benefit from speed bonuses added by Assault armor…
But of course this would give more importance to Level 4, which is already a skill that changes everything… so maybe multiclassing could be changed into Level 7 skill instead? this way, player needs to first develop original class through normal XP, and only improve second class from SP gained…
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