hear me out letting marines buy a riot shields for something like 20 points could open up lot of loadouts.
They block damage and pounces but requires activating it. What’s more it doesn’t stun xenos like GL armor. Add in the fact that it very clear that a marine has it, makes it useful while also not being overpowered.
It could be great for building hall clearing loadouts.
EDIT:
I just want to point out i am a runner main( if i am playing xenos) and have had experience dealing with the Riot shields on Hybrisa. Other then the time that i first encountered the riot shield and died do to confusion at what was happening… i am pretty sure i never once died again due to the riot shield. It really is not OP as some make it out to be. i say this from experience, It at best drives backliners off but has piss poor effect at improving the marines ability to kill runners.
It at best slows the whole affair down at ether killing or capping.
that being said it could just because the sweat lords are simply sleeping on the riot shield but its really not that crazy as lads are making it out to be from my experience dealing with it.
EDIT 2:
Know what i realized that i arguing about a Ideaguys post… why am i even doing this… still think it would be nice but still.
key thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t stun the xeno and requires the shield to be activated. Its a lot less harsh then you would think. you just have to be smart about it and with how clear it is that the marine are useing it, means that you are not going to get caught unaware unless you are blind.
not really its again it only works on the front face you have to activated it every time its used/procs and its cumbersome.
you have to give up your back slot if want to be able to carry it with out issue. also lads tend to forget how much trouble it is to only fire one handed. and the few guns you wouldn’t have spread and recoil issue like the handguns have very little ammo per mag and trying to reload gun while also keeping your shield up is damn near impossible.
basically you can’t chase effectively using the riot shield and will have to store or discard it to do so. whats more every time you drop it you have to reactivated it.
The only thing that really makes it hard for the backlines get shottyed PB but backlines shouldn’t even be jumping marines from the front in the first place, for to that exact reason irregardless of the riot shield.
Not i am not saying it can’t be used to great effect but for open ground it not as effective as lads are making it out to be and would require a high skill level to be used effectively. After all in open ground its the pounce from the dark that’s the issue and out in the open the xenos have space to position correctly,
To think of it, there could be some kind of buff for marines when they get pounced from the front, but nerf when they got pounced from the back and the same as it is now from the sides.
Let me be shield + 1 handed shotgun marine again…now we must only port combat robots…It can be kind of gross but I like loadout variety idk…
Pistol + shield would go hard though, lurkers would just die instantly to burst m4a3 HV
Cabal’s got it, if you get pounced from an unprotected side you should writhe around on the ground like one of those fat summer beetles stuck on their back
Honestly, if it was a shield reskin to be more Marines-y then it’d be cool / maybe interesting. It’d definitely de-volve into IOs begging riflemen for the shield at OP start but could lead to some soulful moments in the field with Marines
this is moot when you realise this basically negates the main threat of both backliner castes even in the absence of a stun to a pounce that hits the shield, it will STILL be a meta-pick for backline marines who have literally zero downside to just having it raised all the time and only lowering it when they absolutely need to, like to pick something up, which is a nothingburger downside compared to the relative security of holding a shield
Unfortunately, this would become meta pretty quick and since it essentially makes you invincible to lurkers and runners, would make for a lot of “IF I SEE YOU BACKLINING I BANISH” which would absolutely suck donkey balls. The soul is not worth fucking up a core gameplay loop for two of the most popular castes.
all it takes is blocking a single pounce to get value out of it, because the best time to kill a runner/lurker is after they failed their pounce and cant use it to retreat
I am not saying the riot shield doesn’t have value at dealing with backlines it clearly does, but its not so powerful as to make it not something to have more availability at sufficient cost.
As i have pointed out your ability to chase is severely hampered if you use the shield so ether you got to discard your shield to chase or sacrifice a backslot to store it. Meaning it costs ether time to get your shield back or costs your carrying capacity.
i just want to highlight that i am a runner main when it comes to the xeno castes i play and i have had to deal with the riot shield quite a few times now on Hybrisa. one of the few maps to spawn a good number of them on.
the only times i have every died because of the shield was because i didn’t understand the hell was happening when my jumps didn’t seem to work. simply put i was stun locked out of confusion. but once i learned that what the shield does… i never had a single issue with getting killed because of the shield.
not because i wouldn’t fight lads with shield but because they could never follow up on me if i flub it.
I also wish to point out that do to how the shield works you are able to counter it even face on by using your bone chips to first proc it then you can jump yes it would take some skill but even if the marine get their shield back up in time they likely will have not had the time to swap back to their other hand holding their gun.
The best you are really going to get out of the common player when it come to the shield is driveing off the backliners not reliably kill them.
The down side is the cost to buy it as well as the issue of limiting storage capacity if you save the backslot for it. You say they just need to drop it… but fail to understand that dropping it means you not longer can make use of it which means you no longer have the security that it gives you.
Add in the fact that cool down on runner jumps aren’t that long as well as the fact you can’t really do any level of effective chase damage… dropping isn’t some done deal non issue.
But yes holding the shield will give you good deal of security if used it right but its not going to be a sure fire protection and its going to kill your killing power. frankly this doesn’t sound like bad trade to me nor a unfair one at that.
you misunderstand, I mean you get value if you block a single pounce, so you can immediately drop it and focus on chasing down the runner/lurker who cant pounce away
Use it with an MD and a shotgun and not only can you always position yourself in the desired direction, but you can ready yourself to PB the unfortunate soul that tries to pounce you since you make yourself pounce proof.
And as for loadout, what exactly are you missing by purchasing it? You’re not gonna use it for the front so AP is meaningless, and everything else cept the medic hud can be gotten from REQ. So now you just gave someone who didn’t know what to spend their points on something to make their loadout that much better.
And as for value on the shield. What is the risk of dropping it in the back line again? That you somehow run into a drone in the weedless back line that waits two minutes on your shield to remove it?
It honestly just sounds like a feature that will be installed metapicks with no real downside.