Heavy m3 Armor, is it in a good place, can we add or change something about it to make it "better"?

General Discussion
1

Speed is king, and no marine is really tanky enough to just shrug off most slashes, so an armor designed around trying to shrug off slashes will be inheriently at a disadvantage. I think other than certain niche situations like mounted gunner or breacher, heavy is just never a better option than taking light and doging, or medium and keeping distance with enough speed to reposition.

I’d like to hear your thoughts though, because I love heavy’s sprite and I want it to become more viable without it course correcting too hard in the other direction.

2

Make it 1-2 free slot armor, but add more brute protection. Add more slow. Make it so that acid hurt you more.
Currently, heavy armor just sucks. Unless you are roleplayers theres 0 incentive to take it.

1 Like
3

Heavy armour is for not dying to marines

Light armour is for not dying to xenos

Medium armour exists

5 Likes
4

heavy and medium armor are useful if you know how to position yourself and play with it, there are plenty of good players who used to and still do use it - obviously it’s not ‘as’ good as light armor because movement speed is king and not getting hit is always better than tanking a hit, but it has its niche

heavy also has the same slowdown as medium armor if you aren’t slowed by something else, effectively - you could easily substitute your medium armor for heavy armor and be pretty much just as effective

people will also say that aiming hand/foot makes heavy non-viable but they don’t understand how armor works, heavy would be more viable if people aimed for the groin or chest more because light armor is LESS effective at protecting you than your glove armor is (glove and boot armor is equivalent to medium armor, and hand and foot cannot get IB - damage transfer also takes into account the armor of the limb it is transferred on too)

this also isn’t counting how prevalent armored gloves and polished shoes are on some maps which are equivalent to heavy armor

4 Likes
5

might as well take SL armor. That shit actually protects you

1 Like
6

Make it better for HvX, Heavy armor was updated for HvH but now that HvH uses it’s own set of armor values we should change it to better fit HvX

1 Like
7

Heavy armor is for frontline, where stray bullets and grenades constantly land under your feet. Light armor is for support, marksmen and hyperaggressive playstyles

I think people underestimate FF. No amount of skill will ever save you from random PVT Baldo mcBald, who decided to magdump you for funsies; or throw grenade up your ass. Heavy armor helps from frontline backshots FF, which leads to better survivability and more consistent hellpushes

Plus heavy got a niche buff recently, allowing you to strap an extra ammo/engi/whatever belt to your armor slot. Who needs two belts? No idea

It has the same stats as heavy armor, though… Plus one extra storage slot and a bit less bullet protection, lol

2 Likes
8

A rogue grenade will inflict multiple fractures on a marine in light armour, whereas in heavy armour the marine will likely walk away with only bleeding wounds.

From a meta perspective, you could argue heavy armour is sub optimal as it instills a more “passive” ideology on its user, all it takes is a few fractures and the slowdown penalty for heavy armour is overly crippling. But, from the perspective of wanting to minimise damage from other people’s mistakes, heavy armour excels.

I could see an argument to make the fracture slowdown less punishing for heavy armour users. Right now its unbearable, but if it wasn’t too horrible I could see more people willing to use the armour.

9

There isnt, and shouldnt be, an armor that is so effective that you can shrug off xenos slashes, xenos are a melee only faction and even in extremely close range marines are still at 100% effectiveness in terms of damage, shotties and full auto mk2 for example will hit like a truck even when standing ontop of you.

The main benefit from heavy is that you have a lower statistical chance of not getting fracced, internals to a degree as well but mainly its there to limit the attrition aspect of how xenos break down the marine force. You also get a very relevant increase in protection against FF, saving you a few broken bones here and there.

Currently IMO heavy is in a decent place, the main issue in my eyes is that meds like oxy completely negate damage taken in terms of slow down, its not rare you slash a marine until they literally fall over flatlined, still shooting till the last hit.

The advantage you get from light is just comparatively overwhelming, you get the full speed you want, can give less then a fuck about damage taken with meds, and you die quicker so capping you is more difficult. Any actual attrition damage you take, ie broken bones and possible internals can be mended by the FOB doc, presuming there is one which is usually true for highpop games, IMO anywho.

Realistically if you want the heavy armor to be better, there has to be systematic changes to the combat system, among other things, in order to have it provide actual reliable protection.
Personally id suggest making the mk2 and rifle type guns less effective in the 1-2 tile range, so a close up full auto wont be very effective, blame it on weapon handling or something idk, then you can actually reliably increase the heavy armors slash protection without fear of marines just walking into close ranges and nuking a rav.

Also lessening the effectiveness of oxy, either indirectly by something like adding a few seconds to the checking yourself for wounds thing and removing medhuds from common availability to being back on only docs, or it not reading yourself. You could also hard nerf it with a change to long term useage leading to toxin build up, or having minor hallucinations when taking it, or making you tired etc. but thats just my two cents on minor combat changes that would make armor choices more interesting

2 Likes
10

I never understood why harmor doesn’t have the extra storage slot tbh. It just seems like i wouldnt ever take it over medium or upgrading to a point-cost armor

I’d be okay with it being inferior to the point armors in speed and stats for cheapos to use

1 Like
11

Oxy is so fucking good that I gave my character the trait that makes it give less pain reduction than tramadol just to make sure the playing field was even. Premedchads have no idea how hard zero painkillers ever and screaming in agony at a very disgruntled field doctor goes

12

The main problem, is that heavy armor is just made redundent, when xenos always slash hands/feet unless they are new, a big reason why armored gloves and polished shoes are such good things to have. It doesn’t matter how good your chest/groin armor is if you get your arm torn off/fraced and suddenly can’t use anything more than a pistol, or you get your foot broken, and now you’re even slower! Polished shoes are also a lot rarer than armored gloves, I believe only sec survs can (it’s not guranteed even on every type of sec surv) spawn with them, a few nested NPC’s (deputies) might have them, and LV has them spawn on the crashed shuttle north of the beach occasionally. That’s most of the spawns for polished shoes.

And again, being able to outrun slashes (light/b12) can be far more useful, especially when paired with an M4RA/M39.

Plus, AP still cuts right through it (40 AP vs 35 bullet armor protection), so most guns that actually hurt when being FF’d against, while B12/M3 medium/M4 still protect well enough against regular ammo, that I don’t ever wish “Man I wish I had heavy” when being FF’d. Also if you get hit by a grenade in heavy, great! You took less damage, but you still got stunned, and now all the marines shooting you with regular ammo weren’t able to drop you before that runner dragged you off into the dark.

Oh and B12 is just better outside HVH.

I only ever use it when using static guns (M56D and HPR) or HVH.

I think it needs a slight melee protection buff to make it more viable, or making it’s slowdown lighter

13

I still feel the same way about it that I always have - you die as a marine because you get stunned, not because your armor didn’t tank enough hits. Heavy armor doesn’t help with stuns, so it doesn’t help prevent you from dying, either. Light armor DOES help with stuns, (and with kills) hence why people like it.

Whatever marginal benefit you gain from taking another few slashes is at least offset likewise by being slower and getting stunned/tackled/pounced/grabbed more often.

And while heavy armor provides some fracture resistance, it’s not nearly enough to matter. you only need 1 fracture to be effectively crippled, especially in your slow heavy armor, and being slow = more stunnable = easier to kill. Nobody cares if it takes 5 more slashes to actually kill you when you’re horizontal the entire time on the ground doing nothing but dying anyway and God forbid you get dragged off onto weeds or something and try to waddle back to safety.

Playtest heavy armor where its benefit is a 20% reduction in how long you’re stunned for and you will see people using it constantly.

1 Like
14

If only someone make a pr linking limbs to armor protection to stop the cheese of targeting limbs to bypass the armor.

15

Losing chase potential by having armor to protect from ff is mainly only useful on frontline. But its still useable.
It just needs a certain playstyle, b12 is best with it, and teamwork is absolutely necessary to succeed (unless you hit a sick m37 combo) unlike with light armor (especially since you still want the counterplay of a strong position).

Since you can’t reposition constantly to make up for mistakes and your enemy will almost always be way faster then you, you need to be very good at positioning to make up for the drawback of lower speed. So it is a pretty big downgrade from light armor in output, but you can output for longer because less fracs on average.

I think a good buff for heavy armor would genuinely just making splinted fracs slow you less. In heavy armor it feels like a splinted frac gives you twice or three times the slowdown of a splinted frac in light armor (because slowdown threshholds get more and more impactful the less speed you have).

Xenos target slow targets more (because its very visible and just feels better to attack someone slower then you) so you’ll tend to attract more attacks in groups, even if the enemy isn’t really realizing you have heavy armor, so not only can you not push and destroy weeds easily without heavy support (since your positions will be less safer), you are forced to play defensive because its easy to punish heavy users for taking heavy. Which funnily enough, means new players should not take heavy or b12, light armor is just better for everyone.

Heavy does protect from dmg that RNG dumps into any bodypart that isnt hands and feet. So you do take less dmg. How much less? I don’t know, but you won’t ever get fracced arm or leg, and you can stay standing longer (usually a good few extra seconds depending on how well you can get beno off you) on average.

Going on weeds with b12 and EOD has less proportional impact on your speed then going on weeds with light armor. But its significantly easier to space an enemy out and knife weeds as light.

16

Light armour is the glass cannon build and actually lets you kill xenos with relative ease simply because speed is the singular most important stat for offence and defence in XvH

While heavy mitigates damage by quite a bit (until you get magdumped with AP or flech), you’re going to have to work extra hard to kill bugs, and frankly speaking it makes you easier to cap and kill by xenos, so it’s a double edged sword.

Does being protected but slow end up making me take MORE damage because I can’t outrun or evade my enemy? Is having a higher likelihood of being capped worth having on average 1-2 less fracs a round?

It probably depends on your playstyle, but overall light armour is generally the superior choice.

17

I don’t think there were any changes to marine armor values, so it should still be viable.

In the past I have heard that damage transfer doesn’t take into account armor of transferred body part. How would it even work? Xeno slashes hand which takes glove armor into account, but there is too much damage there already, so it goes to the arm and takes uniform and actual armor + glove armor, or just actual armor and uniform armor of arm?

Also I see you are not counting uniform armor, which should be about 5 for slash adding on top of actual armor. So if gloves have medium armor values, then uniform armor plus marine armor equals medium armor value. Which means it is incorrect to assume that slashing groin, or chest on light armor is more effective than slashing hand.

Light armor
Light armor1222×453 16 KB

Marine Uniform
Marine Uniform1375×541 19.8 KB

marine glove
marine glove1054×601 15.5 KB

Marine boot
Marine boot1128×522 17.2 KB

Marine uniform + light armor has better internal and slash protection than just glove.
Unless I am somehow wrong in here, please, refrain from spreading misinformation.

Devs stated multiple times that it is not a “cheese” anymore. Even if it could be considered that in the past, staff decided that slashing hands/feet is the default state of CM xeno combat and those kill times are considered as “good”.

There could be multiple ways to make Heavy better. For once, make it actually good not against xenos, but against marines. Give it special property of deflecting projectiles with AP equal, or lower to 10. Which means basically all of the standard ammunition for Pulse Rifle and such.

In the current state against xenos it would be an OK if it only had some better boons in other fields. No, don’t make it a balancing nightmare by making it better against xenos. Make it better against marines.

Right now there is no point in taking it over SL armor for 30 PFC points.

1 Like
18

Whatever we do to the armour can we also make it so you cant climb walls in it? I understand we are here think about making it better and all, but with the current multi-z obsession it might be a fair trade off for whatever is modified. (I also get an excuse to not climb and thats nice)