I have heard a lot of couched language around the heavy perks on the public test server (they were datamined a while back and seem to have about the same theme now as they did then), some people say they are "interesting" or "weird" but let's be frank, they are bad.

The class fantasy of the heavy is to diminish enemy numbers through the use of ordnance, there are 5 other classes that incorporate melee as a primary or 50/50 build path, heavy is the one place that I can play the game, the way that I want to play it. The heavy perks that I would be interested in would be things like increasing my ammo capacity on my PRIMARY weapon, regain ammo for my PRIMARY weapon (and without any of those weird conditionals like "when your primary ammo is depleted" let's make it functional so I can get back to the thing that I am interested in, more shooting) or some small way to regain HP (hell a 1% regain per action rate even would be nice) to mitigate the chip damage from playing against chaos (this is a pipe dream but I am talking about my fantasy here, so I will include it).

To put it simply, the amount of fun that I have in a match is directly inversely proportional to the number of times that I melee an enemy, so any perk that increases the Heavy's capacity to melee is, by definition, anti-fun for me. I do not care how powerful you make the melee attacks of the Heavy, it is not a feature that I enjoy using. I get that enemies are going to get in my face and I will need to parry and dodge my way to safety, but my goal is to survive the close encounters, make space and mow down the bug or heretic that made the mistake of thinking that I would be an easy target.

Please let my shooty-boy stick to what he is good at and yes, let him be a little bad at what he is bad at, that is a design choice and it is a good one.

P.S. Did I mention that I want access to more ammo?

They're also nerfing contested health regen and heavy bolter via removal of heavy precision (While in Heavy Stance, Maximum Spread decrease by 10%) so they clearly seem to have a problem with how the class is performing for some reason 

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Barricade133 wrote:

I will say they are def odd. But, should I take the HBR. Then doing 100% more melee damage on a stomp will kill many if not most Gaunts/Tzaangors/Cultists that could possibly surround me. Effectively giving me a bump up in kills for perks that require X amount for X effect. And each weapon could trigger this effect, so switching to the best weapon, like say, one that gives back health on X number of kills then swapping back could be a play. Is it meta? Probably not (def not), but it's a different way to play. Some I agree should be changed or looked at. But, I do think this, while not meta, is interesting.

My point is not that the perks don't add up numbers wise (that will require testing and time to figure out) I am saying that they are not good for the class identity of the heavy, as I stated above, there are 5 other classes (even the sniper has a melee build option built into its main perk selection tree) to go and play if you want to melee the enemies of the Emperor. The Heavy should be for players who want to lean hard into shooting mechanics, and the prestige perks should reflect that, not contradict it.

The Codex does not approve this action and it also makes not much sense to push the melee capabilities of a class which can only use the butt-stock of their range weapon to poke the enemies.

With the latest weapon perk buffs, the damage will be increased and therefore a broader spectrum of users will benefit from those, which is awesome.

I understand it might be a challenge to create a "melee build" for the heavy, but I imagine it is not something that will be widely used by the community. and is very niche and more a joke/meme aspect.

I would define myself as a "main heavy" and enjoy the destructive potential that all the unique ranged weapons are providing and melee is only an absolute last resort option for me.

IMO there should be more alternatives to buff the range or support potential of this class.

The heavy class has a very unique class feature with the Iron Halo, I would suggest to exchange melee oriented perks with those which would elevate the Iron Halo for the heavy or the whole team itself.

Out of 7 perks, 5 are melee focused, one is for the Iron Halo and one is generic.

I would "never" (only if a have no ammo left - which happens rarely) try to kill a Extremis+ in melee, just to get a magazine for the pistol 😅.

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VlkaFenryka wrote:

The Codex does not approve this action and it also makes not much sense to push the melee capabilities of a class which can only use the butt-stock of their range weapon to poke the enemies.

With the latest weapon perk buffs, the damage will be increased and therefore a broader spectrum of users will benefit from those, which is awesome.

I understand it might be a challenge to create a "melee build" for the heavy, but I imagine it is not something that will be widely used by the community. and is very niche and more a joke/meme aspect.

I would define myself as a "main heavy" and enjoy the destructive potential that all the unique ranged weapons are providing and melee is only an absolute last resort option for me.

IMO there should be more alternatives to buff the range or support potential of this class.

The heavy class has a very unique class feature with the Iron Halo, I would suggest to exchange melee oriented perks with those which would elevate the Iron Halo for the heavy or the whole team itself.

Out of 7 perks, 5 are melee focused, one is for the Iron Halo and one is generic.

I would "never" (only if a have no ammo left - which happens rarely) try to kill a Extremis+ in melee, just to get a magazine for the pistol 😅.

Mhmm, I think this is where I stand on it. It's not that I reject the melee perks. But, it is how there are so many.

at most he should have 1 melee oriented prestige perk, if someone really wants to force this meme. 

the playstyle of melee heavy is not fun or engaging in any way, you just go stomp stomp stomp and there is no interaction with his ranged weapons. there is no flow to it, it feels mushy. 

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CobC11 wrote:

They're also nerfing contested health regen and heavy bolter via removal of heavy precision (While in Heavy Stance, Maximum Spread decrease by 10%) so they clearly seem to have a problem with how the class is performing for some reason 

Yeah I really feel the loss of my accuracy with the heavy bolter and I hate it. I have always used as many perks for accuracy in heavy stance combined with the accurate heavy bolter to basically snipe majoris from distance and now I have to do much shorter bursts to pull it off. Oh and the 50% accuracy while not aiming? Yeah it doesn't seem to have any effect on the heavy bolter the shots still go everywhere. (which is fine without the perk but they should be much closer to point of aim with a perk you have to go out of your way to pick)

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Mosch wrote:

at most he should have 1 melee oriented prestige perk, if someone really wants to force this meme. 

the playstyle of melee heavy is not fun or engaging in any way, you just go stomp stomp stomp and there is no interaction with his ranged weapons. there is no flow to it, it feels mushy. 

I agree, the double melee damage perk is actually a decent idea for players that often find themselves out of ammo, that said if it were 100% melee and an additional 200% when out of primary ammo with the meme perk name "it is also a hammer" would be peak meme perk pick turning the heavy into an okay-ish melee character if he runs out of ammo. Heavy does not a lot of base melee so increasing that by 300% puts his melee to about mastercrafted chainsword level of damage, so not really game-breaking.

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Shining_Darkness wrote:

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Mosch wrote:

at most he should have 1 melee oriented prestige perk, if someone really wants to force this meme. 

the playstyle of melee heavy is not fun or engaging in any way, you just go stomp stomp stomp and there is no interaction with his ranged weapons. there is no flow to it, it feels mushy. 

I agree, the double melee damage perk is actually a decent idea for players that often find themselves out of ammo, that said if it were 100% melee and an additional 200% when out of primary ammo with the meme perk name "it is also a hammer" would be peak meme perk pick turning the heavy into an okay-ish melee character if he runs out of ammo. Heavy does not a lot of base melee so increasing that by 300% puts his melee to about mastercrafted chainsword level of damage, so not really game-breaking.

I think the point that people keep missing is that the game is chock full of melee centric builds, adding a meme build to Heavy does not provide anything meaningfully new and in fact can only serve to reduce the power of what Heavy actually does uniquely: Ranged Damage Uptime.

How about instead of a perk that compensates for the Heavy being out of ammo, we get a perk that prevents the Heavy from running out of ammo in the first place? The class feels best when it has ammo in reserve and worst when its capacity has run dry. Let's not think about ways to make that bad experience less bad by making melee feel better and instead bend our collective wills to find interesting ways to avoid it with engaging mechanics to regenerate or conserve ammo (don't tie it to melee BS like the sidearm ammo perk)

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Liiff wrote:

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Shining_Darkness wrote:

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Mosch wrote:

at most he should have 1 melee oriented prestige perk, if someone really wants to force this meme. 

the playstyle of melee heavy is not fun or engaging in any way, you just go stomp stomp stomp and there is no interaction with his ranged weapons. there is no flow to it, it feels mushy. 

I agree, the double melee damage perk is actually a decent idea for players that often find themselves out of ammo, that said if it were 100% melee and an additional 200% when out of primary ammo with the meme perk name "it is also a hammer" would be peak meme perk pick turning the heavy into an okay-ish melee character if he runs out of ammo. Heavy does not a lot of base melee so increasing that by 300% puts his melee to about mastercrafted chainsword level of damage, so not really game-breaking.

I think the point that people keep missing is that the game is chock full of melee centric builds, adding a meme build to Heavy does not provide anything meaningfully new and in fact can only serve to reduce the power of what Heavy actually does uniquely: Ranged Damage Uptime.

How about instead of a perk that compensates for the Heavy being out of ammo, we get a perk that prevents the Heavy from running out of ammo in the first place? The class feels best when it has ammo in reserve and worst when its capacity has run dry. Let's not think about ways to make that bad experience less bad by making melee feel better and instead bend our collective wills to find interesting ways to avoid it with engaging mechanics to regenerate or conserve ammo (don't tie it to melee BS like the sidearm ammo perk)

maybe one that mirrors the ammo refill on the multimelta? killing majoris or higher (killing, not executing) every 30seconds gives back some small % of ammo

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Liiff wrote:

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Shining_Darkness wrote:

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Mosch wrote:

at most he should have 1 melee oriented prestige perk, if someone really wants to force this meme. 

the playstyle of melee heavy is not fun or engaging in any way, you just go stomp stomp stomp and there is no interaction with his ranged weapons. there is no flow to it, it feels mushy. 

I agree, the double melee damage perk is actually a decent idea for players that often find themselves out of ammo, that said if it were 100% melee and an additional 200% when out of primary ammo with the meme perk name "it is also a hammer" would be peak meme perk pick turning the heavy into an okay-ish melee character if he runs out of ammo. Heavy does not a lot of base melee so increasing that by 300% puts his melee to about mastercrafted chainsword level of damage, so not really game-breaking.

I think the point that people keep missing is that the game is chock full of melee centric builds, adding a meme build to Heavy does not provide anything meaningfully new and in fact can only serve to reduce the power of what Heavy actually does uniquely: Ranged Damage Uptime.

How about instead of a perk that compensates for the Heavy being out of ammo, we get a perk that prevents the Heavy from running out of ammo in the first place? The class feels best when it has ammo in reserve and worst when its capacity has run dry. Let's not think about ways to make that bad experience less bad by making melee feel better and instead bend our collective wills to find interesting ways to avoid it with engaging mechanics to regenerate or conserve ammo (don't tie it to melee BS like the sidearm ammo perk)

Because memes are fun?

Every time the topic have been brought up I had the same response :

The class is about shooting big gun.
Making its Prestige perks about playing tap dance is clearly no in line with that class function, fantasy or flavor.

So what should these perks do instead?

Just allow them to continue to do their thing. Don't boost the damage, just give them an easier ammo economy.
The most obvious perk for them in my mind would be:

+100% ammo gained from Ammo Pick ups.

+X Ammo on main and/or side weapon per gunstrike

They literally just needed to make one of the options to gain the tactical 1 mag or 20% ammo on majoris kill every 30 seconds. Boom, all heavy ammo problems solved forever.