I’ve been playing on Kyber for a while now, and my preferred class is heavy, with because I like the playstyle it’s meant to cater towards, yet I feel like it’s just not up to par with the other classes, both with weapons and Star Cards. Therefore, I wanted to submit my feedback on the class, with suggested changes for anything I thought I could confidently talk about. If I don’t mention a specific weapon or Star Card or weapon in my feedback, it is because I deemed it something I do not have enough information on to form a confident opinion.
General Suggestions
Increase the base health of the Heavy class. Having the same amount of health as every other class just doesn’t make sense. Especially when two other classes have ways to one-shot you, who is supposed to be the tank of the classes. I think a base health of 200 is good, because it means that you won’t just get one shot by snipers or Vanguard ability users who you can’t really defend against as a Heavy, even though they’re two of the most common things in the game.
Boost Cards:
Defender: Honestly not bad for players who want to grind score points rather quickly. Personally I don’t use it because if I wanted score points I would use Officer, but it gives people the option to play Heavy while aiming towards heroes or other score based options. I don’t think anything needs to be changed here.
Brawler: This is a pretty useless card all things considered. It’s reliant on a very specific action that is both rare and unpredictable enough that there’s no real reason to use it as there are simply better options. If you want this to be a viable card, you need to cater it towards each class. For Heavy, I think a health boost when you’re within a certain distance of an enemy would be a good addition alongside what it already does, giving you more survivability in melee and also just in close quarters in general.
Bodyguard: In theory this card is good, but in practice it doesn’t help much. The damage reduction comes in too late more often than not, and all that changes is perhaps someone needs to shoot you two more times rather than once, which with how many weapons in the game shoot decently fast, doesn’t give you much opportunity. Once again this would be class dependent, but for Heavy I think the card either needs to have an increased damage reduction or have it take effect earlier, at perhaps half health or the like.
Marksmen: This card just isn’t all that helpful for the Heavy class. Almost none of our weapons are reliably able to hit headshots, not like those of the Specialist class, so it’s once again a bit of a waste of a card for what we get as a result of using it. My suggestion for a Heavy version of this card is that if we get a headshot kill we automatically get the gold cooling bar. Another option is that it just becomes a passive card that just makes heat build up slower or makes the cooldown of our blaster faster.
Resourceful: A solid card that passively helps with a multitude of different Heavy abilities. Nothing to change here.
Bounty Hunter: Same as the Defender card, I don’t use it, but it can be good if someone wants more score. Nothing to change here.
Expert Weapons Handling: This one is weird. It relies on you getting the gold cooling bar which is not a thing you can reliably do most of the time. It’s good if you can more reliably get that cooling bar though, so my suggestion for this one is to either have this card also make it easier to get the gold cooling, or follow through with my one Marksmen card suggestion which gives the player two potential ways to get the gold cooling themselves. (I’m not sure if this card works when you get the gold cooling as a result of an Officer, but even then that isn’t something reliable to make the card worthwhile either).
Survivalist: Not a bad card, it does it’s job and has helped me more than once. There’s nothing about this card that I think needs to be changed.
Tough Fighter: This card is frustrating. The damage reduction is nice, especially for a class that is meant to be a tank of sorts, but the fact that you loose the damage reduction pretty quickly, and can only get it back by through kills ruins things. I propose you get rid of the duration so it lasts until the player dies, and just reduce the amount they gain per kill. This rewards both the players ability to survive and their ability to get kills. Right now it’s just too unreliable.
Withstanding: A decent card. I don’t think the card itself needs any changes.
Ability Cards
Improved Impact Grenade: First of all, the description of the cards says it has a greater radius and a shorter cooldown, but we don’t actually know how much shorter, so could we get that information added to the card. Second of all, could we increase the radius a little more and also maybe a bit more damage? It’s really annoying that the class who’s role it is to deal with the heavy firepower has a crappier grenade than the Assault class. On that note, please nerf the Thermal Detonator for the Assault class because it is stupidly strong.
Improved Combat Shield: Once again, please give us actual numbers for how much faster it recharges. Also, please increase the added health of the shield by 100 because even with the current added health the thing melts against most weapons and abilities of other classes. Finally, would it be possible to have the shield give the player an explosive damage resistance effect, because the shield is meant for close quarters fighting and yet it makes us much slower and an easy target for grenades and other explosives which we can’t avoid because dropping the shield and getting away from grenades takes too long.
Ion Torpedo: Pretty solid for being one of the only dedicated anti-vehicle ability in the game. The only possible change I would request is for it to recharge a bit faster after use, though it’s not strictly necessary.
Detonite Charge: This is a solid ability, with only two possible changes, though neither is necessary and only one or the other would be needed. The first option is to make the deployment of the Charge faster, because while it can be handy for traps, it’s hard to use in an active engagement because it takes so long to get out. The other option is to make it go further when thrown out, because I find right now it doesn’t go far enough to not be a risk for the player using it which means you once again can’t use it right away without killing yourself.
Mobile Sentry: A good ability, better at handling infantry than heroes, but still good. Only thing I’d like to request is that we get the information about how much faster we are, how much less damage we deal and how the health regen works all added to the cards information.
Barrage: A solid option, the only thing that might be nice is an increase in the rate of fire of the ability, but it’s not strictly necessary. The biggest issue is that it can be hard to get all the grenades out without being killed before you can use the full thing.
Ion Turret: This ability isn’t terrible, but it’s pretty limited right now. While it is pretty good against walkers and speeders, it doesn’t do much of anything against air vehicles or the heavier tanks. I think the Ion Torpedo is a good option for fighting those vehicles that the Ion Turret isn’t as good against, but in turn the Ion Turret should have a bit more of a wide net it terms of use. Give the turret the ability to target users with personal shields and also the ability to shoot at missiles. This turret would then be more helpful as a defensive tool rather than being an average offensive tool, especially since it’s static.
Supercharged Sentry: A solid ability for the most part, only suggestion is to give it some more damage against Saber Heroes.
Explosive Sentry: Not terrible but rarely used for a couple of reasons. First is that it has pretty bad bullet drop, so please make it shoot more further without dropping. Second issue is that you can’t move while holding down the trigger, which I think should change to just a slow walk, even slower than the Supercharged Sentry, but at least something.
Rocket Launcher: Does what you expect, though sometimes it’s annoying when it swerves towards a vehicle after firing, so maybe just remove the vehicle tracking so it’s a direct fire weapon.
Gonk Droid: Pretty good ability and complements the Officers Medical Droid ability. Just a note that there seems to be some missing text in its description. There also seems to be some extra score being given for Bacta when the droid is placed, even though it doesn’t actually heal people. Only use change would maybe be to increase its effect radius a little bit.
Flamethrower: It’s good, not much to say.
Radio: What is the point of this ability? Like I get it could be a funny thing, but it’s kinda just a waste beyond some extra score, which you could get through better ways. I don’t think the ability needs to be removed, just make it useful to the team. Maybe it gives teamates a general buff while they can hear the music, I’m not sure, just something helpful.
Fireworks: Really annoying that we have this joke card while the Assault class gets a literal Smart Mortar, which really should be something the Heavy gets as the explosives class, but whatever. To make this actually useful, give it the ability to blind players who are using scopes within a radius of it. It would be handy for dealing with snipers who are a pain to deal with as a class built around more static abilities like Sentry.
Weapons
I want to start this part by saying that I look at Heavy weapons with three parts in mind: Rate of Fire, Damage and Heat Capacity. These are my main issues, alongside some weapon specific characteristics.
DC-12U: It’s got low damage, medium fire rate and low heat capacity. The fire rate is fine, but please increase either the damage or the heat capacity to make this blaster more to par. The Flashlight attachment is useless, please change it to something else.
DC-15: Good damage, low fire rate, low heat capacity. In this case I think what needs to be improved is its accuracy. For a slow firing weapon focused on single shots it should be more accurate. Also please make the Elite Blaster attachment push up less when firing, it’s hard to hit anything at medium or further distance due to the kick, which makes no sense for a medium range blaster.
DC-15LE: Lower damage, higher fire rate, better heat capacity. Overall not a terrible blaster, but it needs a little bit more damage because you too often get killed by other classes who get you before you can even deal enough damage, even with the fire rate.
DF-95: Good damage, ok fire rate, low heat capacity. This weapon has really strong potential, but the different firing modes depending on zoom is really annoying. Change the fire mode swap from a part of the weapon to an attachment, and having the tri-shot replace the sidearm.
DLT-19: Low damage, good fire rate, ok heat capacity. This weapons description says it’s meant to be good against large groups of enemies, but its damage is too low and you just get blasted by everyone instead. Increase the damage to make this a better suppression and large group weapon.
E-5C: Low damage, good fire rate, great heat capacity. This is a prime example of theory and practice missing each other. This weapon has good fire rate and great heat capacity, but that doesn’t matter when you can’t reliably do enough damage to kill someone before they kill you. This is a prime example of a suppression weapon, but suppression isn’t really a thing in this game because it’s too easy to just charge someone using this weapon and killing them without fear of taking a bit of damage. Every weapon for the Heavy needs to be able to deal enough damage to make the suppression part of things something players actually consider. Increase the damage of this blaster.
E-22: This is a weird one because it’s more a semi auto weapon unlike most of the rapid fire weapons of this class. Out of the semi auto weapons available to the Heavy, this is the only one I liked. It’s got great damage and the rate of fire and heat capacity aren’t terrible for a semi auto. I think the only thing this weapon needs is a bit more rate of fire, but that’s about it.
FWMB-10K: Good damage, ok fire rate, ok heat capacity. This is a pretty average weapon, but I think a bit more fire rate would make it a better choice.
M-45: Ok damage, ok fire rate, good heat capacity. This weapon wouldn’t be too bad if it was more accurate. Increase the accuracy and also remove the weird thing it does where the more you fire the more accurate it gets. That’s really annoying, especially at the start of a fight.
RT-97C: Good Damage, good fire rate, ok heat capacity. This is another case of improved accuracy making things better. All the damage and fire rate and capacity in the world don’t matter if you can’t trust the blaster to actually hit stuff.
T-21: Great damage, low fire rate, low heat capacity. The only thing this blaster needs is a bit more fire rate. The heat capacity is a good balance but I think it could do with a bit better fire rate, especially if you don’t use the Burst Mode attachment which is pretty much required to make the gun viable right now.
TL-40: Good damage, ok fire rate, good heat capacity. In theory this weapon should be pretty solid, but its accuracy is terrible. It says moderate accuracy, but this feel closer to low to me. Make it a bit more accurate and you have a solid blaster.
TL-50: Good damage, good fire rate, ok heat capacity. A bit more heat capacity and a smidge more damage is all this blaster needs in my opinion.
This is everything I can think of at the moment. I’m not a master at balancing stuff, so I didn’t give any exact values for most things. I focused on what I felt made stuff unviable, the rest is up to the devs. If you have any questions about my feedback, let me know and I’ll try and answer.
