I agree almost entirely.Apl_J wrote...
I'm not saying Infiltrators are the sole problem with this game. Remember, back during the demo/early release days, where cooperation, loadout, and skill were crucial? Where a Phantom sprinting at you was 'OH SH**!' and a Gold solo was praise-worthy? Well, the metagame has moved past that. Now, DPS and a bit a of survivability completely overshadows every other component. Well, the game still thinks its in that early phase, and that's a huge problem. We don't need Volus' to Shield Boost in order to survive. We don't need a Tactical Scan or a Geth to tell us where the spawns are. We know the game inside and out, to where tactics like shield-stripping, scouting, and flanking aren't necessary anymore.
Once we passed that benchmark where we can do all this amazeballs solo'ing, EVERYONE and their mother went for that build immediately. Now, its the only thing that matters once your manifest gets a few gems. The kits that can't do those things are now useless. In order to make them relevant again, BioWare ought to revise the entire game. Of course, that's out of the question, so we rely on hotfixes. But like I said to someone else in this thread: What is easier? Nerfing one thing, or buffing dozens, while maintaining difficulty? Our lower/mid-tier'd kits already create a solid baseline of relative effectiveness, while a tiny few kits are grossly overpowered outliers? Why move everything up and risk breaking the game? Why not just bump those few kits down a small notch?
The thing is, I really really don't think Infiltrators are alone at the top, or even alone in being responsible for the problem. Slowing down the game enough to make things like Shield Boost, Biotic Sphere and Decoy more useful at their current level would mean you'd have to nerf a huge huge list of things, or buff the enemies like crazy.
If you slowed down the Infiltrators, then the Soldiers, Vanguards, and just about any kit with a decent grenade would need to be next on the chopping block. That's not a small list of outliers. You'd also need to nerf a huge variety of weapons that let players one-shot, or quickly dispose of Trooper and Lieutennant level enemies. You'd need to nerf Warp and AP ammo too.
I don't think it's really feasible to buff all the CC and support powers to compete, and I don't think it's really feasible to dial back the damage enough to be in line with the "support". You'd have to rebalance every enemy faction, too. But I do think there are fewer classes that are truly underpowered than classes that are are already solid in the current metagame.
I hope, I really hope, BioWare's learning some lessons from this. It's clear they over-corrected on crowd control after it made a joke of ME1. With the small numbers of enemies seen on screen at a time, the speed we can kill them at, and just how slow most 'support' effects are... There's a lot you'd have to change about the game.
ETA: One of the problems is that, when the game launched most of these problems already existed. The gulf between the middle of the road damage dealers and the best DPS kits is smaller now, but nothing ever really happened to make CC more effective.
Oh also forgot to say... only the high end players and speedrunners have completely negated the need for flanking and revealing enemy positions. For the average player, those effects still seeme pretty handy. (I've sure noticed PUGs do better when I light up targets with Tactical Scan or Recon Mine. And live longer when I spam Shield Boost).
ETA2: I really think we need to acknowledge the relatively small list of powers that hold kits back: Carnage, Stasis, Biotic Sphere, Combat Drone, Decoy, Submission Net, Sabotage and Sentry Turret. The other "weak" powers are only slightly so. Pull and Lash are fairly weak, as well, but aren't really holding any kits back, since every kit with them can either make them work, or has other powers that more than compensate. Incinerate and Concussive Shot, if they aren't already solid, are just a few small tweaks away.
Modifié par EvanKester, 19 février 2013 - 09:18 .
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that makes 
and 
novelties rather than viable alternatives. Even if some classes are a bit weaker than others, there isn't anything that just makes it absolutely, completely pointless to use anything else.
