No, the Support is NOT fine

Out of the classes i play(assassin, assault, and sniper) the only one with true difficulty taking the firebases out is the assault. It seems like the grenade launcher just SLIGHTLY does enough damage to deal with a support healing it from the back which just leaves you open to attack for what seems like a lifetime. I sometimes get juice because im sitting there pounding on the thing for so long. The shurikens do pretty well vs a firebase being healed and the sniper has absolutely no problem taking it out, especially with explosive rounds and flak.

I also feel like the assassin's dagger/sword should do more to firebases/turrets than the shurikens overall, especially since you have to be within range of the firebase. It would certainly give incentive to putting points into smoke bomb earlier on. For now its much more efficient to just sit back and destroy them from a range.

Hacked firebases are the real issue. The range and fire speed are really difficult to overcome. Sure, classes have explosive weapons that can blow them up, but trying to toss something on that firebase without getting into range is almost impossible.

I thought the suggestion about limiting the firebase's range was the best I've seen yet. Permitting the firebase to fire in 180*, for instance, at least exposes the thing to a weak point.

I don't really like to jump on the "class x is overpowered!" bandwagon. However, I've tallied over 100 wins while grouping with my Support friend. Once we get his firebase set up under a bridge outside the other team's base and hacked, they are rarely able to take it out. It's great for me, but the game would be more fun if that strategy weren't so invincible.

I'll throw in my two cents because I play support mostly at this point. I need to stress that any -- any -- any class will appear to be overpowered and in need of changes if the class is built correctly.

My Support class has Gold: Skill regen Silver: Armor Bronze: Health

First thing I do is upgrade Hack and Firebase. At this point, if I can get somewhere and setup my Firebase I can do very well. Then upgrade firebase to 3, then airstrike...voila. I'm a bomb-raining, turret healing damage machine that has increased health TWO-fold.

I didn't want to post this, but in defense of my favorite class I needed to post this. Granted, I don't know how to play many of the other classes yet, but I assume they all have a situation where you can make them an amazing class.

Any good player with a good setup will do well. If you have problem with firebases, be a gunner and use mortars or an assault with a grenade launcher and his C4.

Setting up firebases and hacking them takes longer (and costs more in upgrades) than deploying in spawn as a gunner. Without airstrikes the support would have no ranged ability at all. Firebases are static and only shoot one target and don't change until the target is dead or out of range. If you know what you're doing and have half decent teamwork, a support cant run you. Unless you don't know what you're doing and don't have teamwork. Ib which case you can expect nothing less.

Omg i quote every single word of your post.

I have some simple suggestions for the Support class that you seemed to cover, and other people in this thread, so i'll just put them in easy-to-read format and add some.

-Airstrikes need a damage reduction. They should not 1 shot every Pro unless they stick to them. 1 shotting a juiced Pro with full HP is ridiculous.

-Firebases should have a 180 degree rotation limit.

-Firebases should die when their support class dies.

-When I run in with a juiced assassin and go turret killing, it seems like Firebases that are up take more swings from my sword than even level 3 RockIt turrets. I don't know if this is intentional, but it doesn't make sense. Maybe reduce the HP on the firebase a bit?

Those are the 4 changes that i think would fix the Support Pro and make him more defense-oriented, and less on the offense.

First and foremost I hope they arent nerfed, but:

Point #1 - I could live with that.
Point #2 - If they die when I die, it should be deployed active and not have a "charge up" timer when it gets ready.
Point #3 - Most Support (good ones anyway) will overheal their firebase to full. This is probably why it takes longer to kill it.

I agree on not oneshotting a juiced Pro. They should still kill anybody else. And yeah well, i don't even read the rest, you prolly are an assassin that feels bad everytime a firebase turns a shots you while you try to kill the support lol

These are PERFECT solutions, except either #2 or #3 need to be implemented, not both.

The easiest way I've discovered is to use the assault's grenade launcher and bounce it off walls to hit the firebase. They go down super fast when they can't shoot back, and if the support is there to heal it you can usually take him out with splash damage (or at least do enough that he leaves the turret to figure out what's going on).

Another thing to keep in mind if you're playing as support is to toss your airstrikes right in front of a bridge with a firebase. None of the bridges are super wide, and especially when upgraded your splash damage should take it out.

Every class has something that is overpowered. The only reason that the support seems to be the most OP, is because of the fire bases.
I play support and get pissed at other support players. Firebases should only be allowed on your side on the map. You shouldn't be able to rush and put them in the enemies base.

I play a mixture of assassin and support. I have no problems with assassins on my support and I have no problem with support on my assassin. I'm not trying to be mean, but it really is user error on this one. Some people like to run out of the base and hold the right trigger down on the bad guys until either you or him dies then wonder why it's usually you. There's more to the game than that.

If you'd like to know how I handle support as an assassin I'll tell you. I'll assume he's standing right next to his firebase, which is the worst case scenario. Run behind support and grapple. Not hard to do, you're invisible and run really fast. While grapple animation is going, restealth, yes you can do that. After the grapple animation is done run to the firebase, smoke bomb, and start spamming melee. You should get the firebase to around half health before it even starts shooting at you. Get out of the firebase's line of sight while you wait for your smoke bomb cooldown. The cooldown is VERY fast, you shouldn't have to wait for more than 3-4 seconds. After it's back up, stealth up and run back to the firebase. Smoke bomb again and finish it off. There you go, overpowered support dead and firebase destroyed and you never even broke a sweat. There's ususally a minimum of 4 assassins in every game and if half of them knew how easy it was to do this you'd be asking for support buffs instead of nerfs.

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Er, I'm pretty sure smoke bomb doesn't stop firebases firing at you like it does for turrets. That does indeed need to be fixed. However, I agree that most of this 'imbalance' is to do with the wrong approach by players.

It does stop firebases from firing, I do it all the time.

ALL THE CLASSES ARE FINE!!!!!!!! JUST THINK OF THE CLASSES LIKE ROCK PAPER SCISSORS.....EVERY CLASS CAN BEAT EVER CLASS...YU JUST HAVE TO USE UR HEAD AND FIGURE OUT HOW TO BEAT THE OTHER CLASS.....SO STOP WHINING B1TCH3S

Nothing is perfect. You think technology and science would have progessed as far as it is if some doctor said, "MEDICAL SCIENCE IS FINE, STOP RESEARCHING NAAOOO!!"

Stop being a naive fanboy. The game is great but it needs tweaks.

This. Thank you, it's ridiculous to assume that everything is fine, multiplayer games with any amount of asymmetry (in this case a class system) ALWAYS need tweaks, it would be too much of a miracle for them to get everything right before an army of online players has had a chance to play it for a long time - there's only so much that will come out of testing.

Obviously they've done a pretty good job with balance, but there's work to be done and on the face of it supports DO seem a little overpowered. Not WAY overpowered, just a bit; a couple of things could use pruning. Longer term play might not actually bear that out quite so much which is why Uber need to look at this, carefully examine the data and make decisions on what could be done to improve the experience for the most people.

It can only help the game in the long term to give this sort of feedback, what doesn't help is someone saying 'everything is fine!' just because they personally haven't experienced the problem or are particularly skilled in getting around it.

On that last point, here's a bit of theory if you like: just because there is a rock paper scissors structure doesn't mean that it's balanced. For example imagine a 3 class shooter game, and the classes were called Rock, Paper and Scissors. Rock is very effective against Scissors, Scissors against Paper and Paper against Rock. On the face of it, that looks balanced, but what if if the way the game was set up it took, on average, Paper 1.5 times as long to kill Rock as it takes rock to kill Scissors and Scissors to kill paper. Suddenly the whole balance is thrown off: more Rocks survive because it takes Paper too long to kill them, and in the mean time they're getting killed by Scissors. Meanwhile because there are more Rocks are around for longer, that has an obvious knock on effect on the Scissor population. That, in turn might be advantageous to the Paper, but at this point it's getting hard to predict exactly how.

That's just a very simple example, but when you extrapolate out to a game with many classes and lots of abilities it gets increasingly hard to predict what the knock-on effect is of any one thing being a little out of whack. This is why it's important that Uber keep an eye on this stuff as the game gets played.

And here I thought we were going for a "mature" discussion.

Honestly I think this whole "support is overpowered" thing is mostly just people who haven't put much thought into dealing with a support.

Hack takes a good amount of time to cast, and it leaves the Support completely vulnerable during that time. It also seems to have (at least for me), a pretty decent length of cooldown. In addition, it's only for turrets. This means that it benefits something that can't really move. Most, if not all, pros have a way of attacking turrets at range, and destroying them without much in the way of danger. Hacking simply slows you down, it doesn't stop you. Most people aren't having a problem with hack, and it's

The Firebase seems strong but you simply need to know how to deal with it. First off, pay attention to the Pro Tips during the loading screens. Two good ones are along the lines of "firebase is very vulnerable when it's placed but before it unfolds" and "getting the support pro away from his firebase makes it (him?) more vulnerable". According to what other people say, the Sniper has no problem taking out a firebase at range, so it's countered there. Additionally, people say Tanks have little problem with the firebase, between his jet gun and the product bomb, countered again. The assassin can mitigate a firebase somewhat by use of cloak/dash/escape. While this will not remove the turret for the assassin, it certainly makes it less effective in stopping you. This leaves the assault and gunner, which both have decent range on their weapons, enough to out-range the firebase. Another support can simply use air strike to take out the firebase. "But wait!" I hear you exclaim, "What if the support is healing his turret?" Well, firstly see the above Pro Tips. Secondly, your first mistake is always going to be the fact that you let him set up in that position. Finally, if the support is sitting there healing his turret, then he's not pushing bots or healing pros or any of the other stuff he could be doing, which limits his effectiveness. If he wants to hold that point, push hard on the point he's not holding. The support is often only as effective as you let him be. So far, we see that the firebase can be countered either easily by specific classes, or by limiting your exposure to it. In addition, what about when a support hacks his firebase? People say it's too good then, but it still suffers from most of the same problems as before. Also you have to realize that now the support has spent TWO skills on this one position. Using both skills should be able to do something significant, even if it is still able to be countered.

Now I see people calling for the firebase to be nerfed to only target 180 degrees. This is a terrible idea imo, simply because it would make the firebase way too weak. As seen above, it can already be countered if you understand what you're dealing with. If it could only fire in 180 deg. then it would be easy to mitigate by any class. Support can still air strike, assassin can still cloak, sniper can still pick it off, but now your assault and your tank (who can already mitigate the firebase if they're smart) can now simply charge past it. With the hit of one button the firebase would become a non-issue. This would make the firebase practically worthless to use, let alone level. The only person who would have an issue with it at that point would be the Gunner, whose range is still a good deal farther than the firebase.

I see people complaining about the airstrike as well, but I think you just have to be smart about it. If it's stuck to you, get under a bridge/etc, and it's completely negated. If it doesn't get stuck to you, then a big bubble shows and all you have to do is leave the bubble. I know it's not easy to get away from it every time, but if it were, then the skill would be next to useless. If the damage was reduced, it would take away from pretty much the support's only decently ranged attack. You would have to run from basically any fight with a long range opponent, or any jackbots. I think complaining about the 1-hit aspect of it is also a bad argument. You get a warning and have a couple seconds to prepare for it if you can. Nobody complains when a sniper headshots or an assassin gets a 1-hit grapple kill, and those generally come without a warning.

The reality of it is that the Support is strong in some areas, weak in others. He has very good positional defense, that's one of his strengths. If you take that away from him, you might as well take away the assassin's cloak. It really is just about being smart about how to deal with him. I think we can all agree that each class needs to have some strengths, that's what makes the class fun to play. The problem is people are trying to fight the support directly into one of his strengths. To nerf support for that would be basically saying that you want your class to steamroll all the others.

In the end, I believe the argument against support generally falls into two camps; people that don't know how to deal with a support, or people who want their class to steamroll support in every aspect. The former camp simply needs to practice, keep aware of their situation and surroundings, and be smart about how they engage the support. It's not hard, and enemy support players never give me a problem unless I mess up (no matter which class I am). The latter camp simply need to realize that every class needs it's strengths and weaknesses, and calling for nerfs because you can't steamroll everyone just leads to bad balance.

After reading this whole thread I have to say I agree with this post (and I'm glad someone else took the time to post it). One of the things about MNC that I have noticed is that all of the arenas have multiple routes (both high and low) that can be taken to get to the other base. Using these is the best way to counter a support/firebase combo as they can only hold one point.