squad skills

what are your favorite squad powers?
the most i use are engineer revive/heal and scout recon hbu

Skills:
Scout:
Mass hide: All squad members are hidden for thirty seconds regardless of their class. Shooting a weapon or taking damage cancels that squad mate's hiding, but it re-activates in a few seconds. Costs 5 squad points.
Recon: Show all near enemies on the minimap for all squad members. Costs 2 squad points.
Rifleman:
Charge!: Squad members have no stamina drain for thirty seconds. Costs 3 squad points.
Armor: Damage is reduced by 20% for thirty seconds. Costs 4 squad points.
Grenadier:
Damage: All squad members receive a 20% weapon damage increase. Costs 4 squad points.
Artillery strike: An instant artillery strike to the selected location; four shells rain down from the sky dealing 100 damage each. Costs 5 squad points.
Engineer:
Mass revive: All dead squad members are revived near the squad leader. Costs 6 squad points.
Mass Heal: All injured squad members are instantly healed. Costs 3 squad points.

conversely, what skills do you NOT use?
i never use armor and i seldom use damage. pretty useless for the amount of points i could use for heals and stuff.

what skills do you see being replaced?
what skills should they be replaced with?

 

Mass hide is very situational and pretty much conquest exlusive. I have no idea if it gives you radar immunity in vehciles, but if it does than awesome. If not, do it.

Arty is good, but I feel its really bad overall. Its really really map dependant, as it can range from being an instakill for any vehicle on UC (which is somewhat retarded) to being limited to building snipes on slaughtered. It really should be able to kill single turrets no matter its placement.

Mass revive is king. Disregarding tickets, spawning in someones main, many possible shenanningans. Awesome. Its also somewhat bugged and won't work when you want it but shit happens.

Mass heal is great for giving your squad that little edge they need in fight.

you'd think damage would be at least somewhat good, but I've never seen anyone really bother. Too expensinve.

Armor and charge are only used for joke matches and the like. Little gain for points used. COuld be made mre usefull if made 1-2 point worth. Also a crap combo as one cancels the other, screwing you of the points.

Recon. Ditto as above, I can see it as a viable skill for constant use, for situations where ou dont have cameras for whatever reason, but it should be better than it is now.

I'd really like to see riflemen's skills buffed like that, R sl's are lynched now, and for a good reason.

 

Voted for the most used rev/heal/arty/hide.
Recon, although the cheapest skill, can be had with an engy camera.
Armor, Charge and Damage require squad coordination or close combat maps to be fully effective.

They are also nearly irrelevant in tank combat - a half-baked idea to make them more attractive would be to have different effects when driving a tank:
recon: armor detection, charge: cooling, armor: tank armor, damag: tank damage...

 

from a first glance it looks like nobody uses grenadier DAMAGE skill

is it useless? should it be replaced? if so, what would you replace it with?

 

filler

and a typo at that, fml.

 

i think it'd be super duper cool if they replaced it with an INSTANT AMMO REPLENISH skill that's kind of like instant heal for engineers

 

My favorite is charge, never use it though. My most used is probably revive.

 

Yeah I think charge is actually quite useful

 

Yup, there's a reason those are the most popular. I think recon is basically a camera while damage, armor and charge are passive buffs. In general, passive buffs are almost never worth it because the line between useful and OP is thin as hell, so designers go with unuseful rather than risk OP.

Replenish is definitely a good idea. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to toss armor into charge so squad members aren't afraid to actually use charge. But that's just a band-aid that makes rifleman occasionally relevant.

I just feel like an engy squad lead is overwhelmingly the best in infantry combat. When a good squad puts me in lead and we have a lot of points, I'll drop ammo and then we'll just charge. Dumping points into constant squad heals and occasional revives creates an effectively invincible squad. It costs a shitload and you run out of ammo quickly, but it's amazing as long as the squad lead stays alive.

So if you really want to compete with the engy, you need a squad power that gives temporary invincibility. Perhaps it could be balanced by giving it to everyone but the squad lead? And maybe it could be an aura effect to require the vulnerable squad lead to stay in combat? It seems like a tall order to balance an invincibility squad power, but I feel like anything less won't truly get the job done.

 

make armor ubercharge the soldiers, and damage buff do sort of a kritzkrieg effect where every shot does a good 100% more damage, but, both only last a short 5 seconds (because those skills could possibly change the entire game if they were that powerful). Damage should at least allow grens to destroy mediums in only a couple of shots and smgs/rifles to 2 hit kill people when aiming at the chest.

I've used charge a lot before but it is really situational.

 

Five seconds is way too long in a heated firefight. A rifleman squad lead with like 20 points could just ubercharge himself whenever he knows he needs to storm some infantry, and suddenly you'll have invincibility for him for a good 25 seconds. I already use squad heals as a de facto ubercharge for my squad mates, and if they're good enough and I can spam f s d fast enough, they become nigh invincible. Imagine how bad things would be if they actually were invincible.

The kritzkreig idea doesn't sound too bad actually, considering it only lasts for 5 seconds.

 

Double damage on demand? Are you seriosu brutos? infantry bs aside, this would turn grens into rapetrains.
Just no.

 

Respawn and teleport across the map on demand? That would turn squads into rapetrains. If you're losing, you could drive the CV to the enemy CV and revive a squad or two to take down the enemy CV. Wait, we do that now...

 

And how exactly does the greatness of mass rev makes it right to have another super powerfull skill? If anything adding that would make the very situation you described even worse, as suddenly having double damage grens around ones cv is a guaranteeed death.

Also, brutos, I dont know what you mean with that. It was indeed said to be a r skill.
What i absolutely ahte about that idea, is that would turn a galery of weapons into super gay instakills. As of now, and thankfully, only several weapons can do that. I for one cannot see a several meter radius instadeath mortar or one hit one kill bear2 to be a good thing.

 

If there's grens in the squad, they would benefit from double damage, right? I think that's what he meant when he said grens would be "rape trains".

Yeah, it's powerful, but it requires some teamwork to pull it off. And if you want to promote a rifleman and start some double damage destruction, then that requires even more coordination. I thought we were all for teamwork around here.

 

who knows, make it worth more? currently grens do dick all against heavies, with damage a squad would be able to take down a couple. There's probably someway to negate the damage effect on CVs, they do use a unique armor (titanium I believe) so maybe the devs could just make rpg, mowtar, and stickies do the same damage as always. Another problem is what if a squad has the gren as leader and 4 engineers, imagine the sesmic rapetrain there, maybe limit to non grenades or something.