The support class is insanely overpowered

The only nerf warranted by the support rush strategy is making it so that hacked turrets can't knock out a Moneyball's shields. That way the support has to wait for bots to arrive and can win in <3 minutes like every other class combination.

Modern Warfare is a bad game and is balanced poorly. It's a terrible example of how the metagame evolves throughout a game's lifetime.

A better example of metagame evolution would be a game like Street Fighter, Starcraft, Team Fortress, or any other good and strategic game. Strategies and tactics that worked at the beginning of each of those games no longer work. People learned to expect them, and learned how to counter them, and the game deepened.

Again, if the Support must be nerfed the only nerf deserved is to make those hacked turrets unable to take down shields.

Actually, yeah, i'm very fond of support, and i support it in the forum against this bunch of crybabies and newbies who doesn't know how to move 3 steps forward to avoid the friggin airstrike (WICH IS BTW VERY NOTICEABLE IF YOU AIN'T COMPLETELY BLIND -w-. If you didn't see that and rushed in it in the middle of a firefight than it's fair, that's how i put them, i predict the way a guy run while fighting and put an airstrike accordingly so he will rush in it)....but yeah i find hacking the enemies turret VERY cheap. I've won like 3-4 matches at the speed of light like that. Please remove that or make it longer to do or timed. It's the only thing i would change of the support.

I know that Modern Warfare (2 in particular!) is a bad game and badly balanced - I was someone, probably one of the most prominent people who railed against this on their official forums. One of the threads I created fostered over 1000 replies - and I went through precisely the same arguments here too - almost identical arguments.

Starcraft, for all its brilliance, is a game which has had a large, large number of patches to address multiple issues including balance. It is rare for a game without an enormous amount of testing to come out of the gate being perfectly balanced and I'm afraid that the support is one of those things.

If a game is balanced, then you will get a metagame evolution as you say - though I have less confidence in the X360 community to provide it than I do with the communities who played each of the games you named. Unfortunately, the tendency is with games on the 360, to exploit what they can.

Certainly hacked turrets should not break the shields, that would be a good start
Increasing the amount of money, by $5 or even $10 for a level 3 for killing firebases would be nice too
and decreasing the gap shots range would definitely be a good idea, or raising their cost

I'd start off with that, and see where it gets us. I don't want to neuter the support class - I just think it's a little too much and frankly the sheer number of people starting to play as it is.. alarming. As it's probably the least attractive classtype naturally, seeing 7 people in a game playing as it is ludicrous.

I typically get obscene scores and k/d ratios when playing Support, so I will throw my two cents in.

I don't know about you guys, but I see some strange things when I play Support.

Support isn't overpowered, what I have seen is that people to very, VERY stupid things when fighting them. I put my Firebase in nonessential places (they can just run by it without batting an eye) where I can harass the turrets in their base and the bots running by me. They choose to charge me and get mowed down by my Firebase. Then they do it again, and again, and again. There have been some games where it is two or three people's missions to kill me, they ignore the objective, they just want to kill that annoying support and that irritating little Firebase.

It varies by class, but here is the general strategy for them:

Assault: Try to knock me the map by charging straight into the Firebase's line of fire

Assassin: Charge me while I am facing them so they can not get an instant kill and be vulnerable to the Firebase for long periods of time

Gunner: Charge and slam in an attempt to knock me off the map, dies soon after

Sniper: Put away Sniper Rifle and try to either kill me with his SMG or do a suicide rush and throw his flak, completely disregarding how weak of a class they are playing

Support: Peek my Firebase and try to drain its health with the Heal/Hurt gun, does barely anything except keep him in an easy place to kill him

Tank: Try to peek my Firebase, unaware that I can just kill him with my shotgun way faster than he can kill my Firebase

I mean seriously guys, Support isn't overpowered, in fact they are easy to kill if you use your heads and stop charging them. Sometimes I see smart Supports that try to air strike my Firebase successfully, or a smart gunner that will just deploy and drain its health from afar, but they are very rare. Most of the time I just get the hurr durr charge and die people.

tl;dr: STOP CHARGING THE SMALL MACHINE OF DEATH AND A GUY WITH A SHOTGUN! TAKE THEM OUT FROM A DISTANCE!

@ stealthyshAdo

That post is so full of win. Seriously people, stop doing these things and Support will stop being OP. We can finally get back to controlling the flow of bots and using your own turrets against you like we should be doing.

Agreed, take out the firebase first and keep your distance from the support player and he's actually quite harmless, even with the airstrikes, which are easily avoidable.

I agree with you stealthyshAdo, if people stopped doing stupid things then they wouldn't die as often to a Support and Support wouldn't seem so overpowered.

However it seems that the focus of the discussion for whatever reason has turned to the Support Rush instead of just the Support on it's own being overpowered.

A lone Support generally isn't much of a problem. Even I, a huge hater of the Support, can see how only really, really stupid people get killed by 1 Support.

The real problem is when they start class-spamming Supports and make each other invincible. That's when the trouble starts.

and in that regard I completely agree with you Time Glitch. Even though I enjoy playing Support I refuse to do so if there's already 2 or more on the team.

I'm pretty much fine with the support. I've always been able to drop a bomb on the firebase, do massive damage and knock the support away, burning like a candle (i swear, that **** is brilliant). But they shouldn't get juice just for healing/overhealing their team. At least not overhealing, makes grinding juice too easy.

Not really sure if anyone will read this post since it has 130ish replies. But I find the Support to be just that, support. People keep complaining about the supports Firebase. Just run in as a tank, have your product grenades at level 2. A level 2 product grenade will blind a Firebase, letting you kill IT and the support. Sure the Air Strike is a tad strong, but you KNOW he will use it, don't deploy in front of him, or don't go running in thinking he WON'T use it. Just keep moving make him waste it. Once you kill his Firebase he will run more likely then fighting, but he may use the Air Strike as a cover to run, so don't follow unless you're sure.

On another note, as I proved today when fighting slinky, a decent gunner can get right on top of a fire base using bots as cover and destroy it even while the support is healing it.

In all honesty I play the support class offensively, i'll build a turret in a corner and run around w/ the shotgun basically killing people. Yes, i will admit after getting Airstrike 3 I basically run around tagging anything that moves with it. But you also have to understand somethings Support is missing, which I find some balance in.

Supports do not have a ring out grab (unlike assaults and well everyone but assassins) and if they do i have yet to see it.

Yes, they're OP if used correctly, but one could argue that an Assault Charge/Ringout is amazing OP on any map that lacks a large amount of walls. Everything is OP in one way or another, just get past it and find a way to undermind the strategy. IE: look out for the giant airstrike Logo on the screen, or run out of it. It's OP, yes, but theres a good 4-5 second period of time before it hits, and in all honesty if you get hit by it after seeing a bomb logo for that long of a period of time you deserve to die, not only from the explosion but from anything else that can be avoided while playing crossfire.

TLDR: If you can't move out of an airstrike after 4-5 seconds of a logo on the screen, your dumb and deserve to die.

^I kind of play Support like that when soloing. I put my Firebase in any location near me, then run around killing people. If thinks get hairy, I run back to my turret and let it heal/kill whoever it was. I almost never use Air Strikes unless I see a lockdown gunner/tank or some turrets I need taken care of.

I tend to use them on Turrets, Tanks, Gunners, Jackbots and Assaults anything else is just a waste of a airstrike.

Exactly how I use them. Who cares if you can kill with Air Strikes if you lose. If you actually stop Jackbots or kill turrets so your Bots can get in, good! You're, IMO, playing the class the way it should be. Just like Assassins going for bots/turrets. I basically go for turrets with EVERY class. Tank anyone?

I mainly use the tank, and I know for a fact that he is way to slow to get out of the blast radius even with the jet charge (Makes me go D=), kind of ridiculous imo, but I kill firebases easily enough with the tactic you mentioned so I don't feel completely helpless against supports.

^Make a custom class with a gold or silver speed, it helps a lot.

I always run with silver speed, and I charge away from the node the second I hear the subtle little beep. It doesn't work, either due to lag (doubt it) or because the tank is too god damn slow.

Also something I just figured out, if you use the B button, your jet boost, you can hit Left Trigger and spin while you're boosting. Great for damaging people while boost to someone.