Why are fixers so quiet?

[Neuromotor]

With the release of LE, fixers were pulled in pretty much every direction possible, needing maxed nanoskills as well as dumping considerable ip into full auto. I was hoping this rebalancing would change that somewhat and give us some focus, as well as making what we offer count a bit more - what's the point of ncu buffs when everyone has craploads of ncu space, runbuffs when everyone has capped rs, or meep nanos but ridiculously few places to use them? Fixers are one of those professions that has a ton of potential...and we're going nowhere. At least after the rebalancing we can go there really really fast.

Sums it up quite well, and it was even acknowledged at one point:

FWM July 10th 09
Fixers

Next week will not see the +500 Full Auto issue fixed unfortunately. It has proven to be a larger change than originally thought to get this band-aid type temporary measure in place. We have been having discussions regardling the larger changes required to return fixers to what makes them special and hope to include the fixer community in these discussions in the very near future. We all want to see the fast moving hacker/slicer type class working the way it should and standing apart from the other choices....what makes fixers special seems to have been lost along the way...we need to find it again and bring it back.

Then nothing much at all actually happend, and now we end up with things like this (and lets not even talk about the RE tossed our way):

And to be fair they did reduce the nano requirements of some nanos, mainly the out of combat buff ones (such as summon sws 11) just wish they'd extended this to the short(ish) hots.

Feel backwards? business as usual!

So yeah, being quite jaded by now the usual reaction doesnt amount to much more than a 'meh'

[Obtena]

Not sure why fixers are so bitter about RE. No one even knows how it's going to be adjusted for anyone, much less fixers. It's a dumb idea? How would you even know? Just because fixers should use RE?

[Kain97]

Not sure why fixers are so bitter about RE. No one even knows how it's going to be adjusted for anyone, much less fixers. It's a dumb idea? How would you even know? Just because fixers should use RE?

It's dumb because fixers have a poor ip template for it, thus making it a subpar alternative short of a sizeable effort to increase it for us. Bow, pistol, shotgun, rifle and 1he are all roughly 200 skillpoints ahead of RE with ip alone, why not pick one of those, if FC feels we need an alternate setup.

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=584523 very quickly turns into a thread about the pros and cons of RE for fixers.
tl;dr: basically is that you'd need to be trox with MR to make decent use of it in pvp, assuming FC lets us use both smg perks and PU perks, and short of fancy new RE weapons, would be at best equal with dual smg in pvm.

[Obtena]

I don't think IP is a valid reason to dismiss RE for fixers ... lot of profs has poor IP templates for the weapons they typically use. They still use them and others, depending on what they want to do.

You misunderstand me ... you can't really say it's a bad option yet because there is so much left to balance. FC has done nanos and not even completely looked at perks. Items, research, etc... lots of stuff left that all has significant impact on whether or not RE could be good for Fixers.

[Xenotric]

A lot of profs that use weapons that have bad IP templates dont have any GOOD templates.

Example people like MP's dont really have any decent weapon template so no matter what they choose its generally going to be the same (some are still better I know but not so much)

Fixers DO have a current weapon skill thats really well supported IP template wise, add to that that with that current skill there is already IP issues due to specials we don't really have the template for being tacked on to our weapons and a core component of our profession (combat casting) not only relies 5 dark blue skills but has requirements at the level where even caster professions would be raising an eyebrow.

And when we say its not very good IP template wise, its in total 50% more expensive to raise RE than it is to raise SMG and THEN you can't raise it as high, that's 50% more IP spendage for 300 less stats... that's ridiculous, specially as the only remotely viable way going on the currently released documents to get in even remotely on par with SMG in just one situation (pvm) would be to raise both, and even then its subpar due to current lack of weapons and the fact that the proposed changed to the perk line suck for that situation (they'd be slightly better in PVP if there was a hope to land em for us, maybe soldiers will get use out of em but fixers based on current documents, wont.)

To make RE a viable option for fixers they need to give us more support for it then our true weapon (which im against, its silly being able to buff an alternative option more than your core option research or nano wise), a deluge of extra equipment, stronger than average guns (wont happen due to soldiers access to them), and a revamp to the RE perk line (which wont happen due to soldiers and others access to them)

So its either going to stay far subpar to SMG fixers, be so much more supported that people will start thinking that what fixers always had and what their core skill was (hey they can buff it by 3x the amount in total they can SMG, clearly that's what that professions good at!) or become so over powered that everyone will start using it until it gets nerfed ala caterwaul.

Add onto that that many fixers, my self included, have been constantly requesting more focus given to the hacking side of the fixer, which could have easily been made the "alternate" build.

We even had a poll up to find out what fixers would like to see done with the rebalance here: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=568115 in the end we got a nerf to all 4 parts of it (roots/snares nerfed in general, hots removed from usability, "hacking debuff" nerfed to almost unusable and rather then addressing our current issues with fighting they give us a new line for weapons we'll not be able to use even to the level of our current weapon and loss of twinking capabilities, granted we did get about 20 more +damage in buffs), so yeah, were bitter and jaded.

[Obtena]

To make RE a viable option for fixers they need to give us more support for it then our true weapon (which im against, its silly being able to buff an alternative option more than your core option research or nano wise), a deluge of extra equipment, stronger than average guns (wont happen due to soldiers access to them), and a revamp to the RE perk line (which wont happen due to soldiers and others access to them)

That's a crystal ball working overtime there. Bump the thread when the re-balance is over if it's still true, but don't cry about things that haven't even happened yet. You can convince yourself of anything, even if it's not true.

[Xenotric]

Im going purely by the documents they currently have released, we currently know the values of the buff nano and the values of the perks.

These are released to us in an effort to garner feedback on them, my feedback is that they are terrible for the profession, in the states they are shown in the documents fixers will gain no use from them.

We know from past and current comments about certain things such as not giving certain people access to lines they've asked for due to the overpowered nature they'd bring when combined to the professions own toolset (soldiers not getting all the ranged perk lines for instance) and why certain equipment at times looks a bit inferior.

Working on those lines its fairly straight forward to extrapolate a range of options that would be NEEDED to get the option to level where they'd be remotely usable and then come up with general reasons why these probably wont or shouldn't happen.

[Deninan]

We even had a poll up to find out what fixers would like to see done with the rebalance here: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=568115 in the end we got a nerf to all 4 parts of it (roots/snares nerfed in general, hots removed from usability, "hacking debuff" nerfed to almost unusable and rather then addressing our current issues with fighting they give us a new line for weapons we'll not be able to use even to the level of our current weapon and loss of twinking capabilities, granted we did get about 20 more +damage in buffs), so yeah, were bitter and jaded.

This is the sole reason I began this thread. From what we have seen in the rebalance so far, things are going the exact opposite way from all the input we have given.

Obtena, I think you are focusing on the wrong point: While fixers would like an alternate weapon choice, there are much larger things we would like to see changed first. RE is just an easy example of how they are going in a different direction than we would like and expect.

[Kain97]

I don't think IP is a valid reason to dismiss RE for fixers ... lot of profs has poor IP templates for the weapons they typically use. They still use them and others, depending on what they want to do.

You misunderstand me ... you can't really say it's a bad option yet because there is so much left to balance. FC has done nanos and not even completely looked at perks. Items, research, etc... lots of stuff left that all has significant impact on whether or not RE could be good for Fixers.

No, it may not be a 'bad' option as of yet. Maybe the better way to phrase it is that it's a poor choice. There's 4-5 other weapon skills that don't suffer from that particular issue, why not pick one of those?

Or, why bother with an alternate weapon skill when you could do what fixers have been asking for, and come up with a build that makes better use of our B&E? Say, weaker weapon skills, somewhat higher nano skills (we're still talking about fixers here after all), and some stronger roots/snares/ncu 'hacking'/etc... that have the added benefit of using B&E as an added attack skill? It's not like that idea hasn't been tossed around a few hundred times already.

[Kinkstaah]

Maybe RE is going to be a sort of generic booster skill, like melee energy.

I.E you have normal SMG, and normal ENERGY SMG, with the energy SMG doing more damage due to needing more IP use. (maybe less accurate, etc)

Would put use into having the skills in the game, at all..

[Qhite]

My biggest issue with the rebalance is the time increase on ticks for hots. I am mainly a pvm player and this change will make survivability even harder. Then take into account the nerf to evades and .... well... dead fixer!

Means said something along the lines of making the fixers into what they were supposed to be, did he then mean them to be deleted to free up space to roll another profession?
If he did he might just get what he wants.

I see nothing that would make a fixer a viable profession to team up with, medium/low damage, crappy heals, nothing that makes the other team members better.....

This whole thing makes me a sad fixer...

[Larafina]

ncu needs are increasing there is our roll in teams *cough

i could imagine something like a dam queue:

incoming dam is redirected to the grid and comes back to the fixer with some delay (~5 sec maybe or scaling with b+e), so we dont get less dam but we can delay the incoming dam a bit. The whole thing as an emergency nano with 2-5 min lockout and short duration.

as an alternative we could just get faster ticking hots

[Artyomis]

That's a crystal ball working overtime there. Bump the thread when the re-balance is over if it's still true, but don't cry about things that haven't even happened yet. You can convince yourself of anything, even if it's not true.

I won't keep saying that RE idea is extremely bad as a whole for fixers, due to multiple reasons and aspects, but, answering my quote........

Your mother got problems with heart, which can stop due to anything that can make her worry for real.. And you got 2 news for her, one good one bad.
Good one - you won 10mil USD in a lottery.
Bad one - you kicked someone's face and court forced ya to pay 1mil USD to him in excuse.

Thing is - I am SURE you'll start with a good one, no?

Hope you got my point