Let me preface by saying - absolutely wonderful patch, and I love the content that was introduced! Getting right to the point though - heavy prestige perks seem a bit odd, or not fully thought through on a surface level.

If the idea is to 'improve' Heavy's performance in its' weakest area (melee and melee damage), a heavy focus on melee prestige perks kinda makes sense. But it still doesn't feel correct. For the other class prestige perks, it seems obvious that they complement their respective classes strengths. Vs the prestige perks for Heavy seem to more be akin to boosting his weaknesses, but in a way that sort of changes his core gameplay loop (are we supposed to be more melee-focused?).

Maybe I'd also like some dev feedback as to why these perks were introduced to Heavy, it might connect the dots for the community, and provide more explanation for why these perk choices were introduced for Heavy class.

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Skylarkin wrote:

Having played Heavy on the PTS and swapping a few perks into melee damage bonus (don't know the names but 100% from Prestige, 50% from Heavy Bolter / Heavy Plasma and 30% from class Perk) this actually makes melee a good addition to the Heavy's toolkit. I don't think you want to be running around pretending to be a melee class but it give you options for conserving ammo during certain stretches of the game or situations such as if you have a team mate that gobbles all the ammo boxes or you got a terminus spawn that you emptied almost every round of ammo into. Basically it makes it so that you feel like you can still smack down a majoris with melee which I actually really like.

The issue is that many Heavy mains (like myself) play the class BECAUSE it minimizes melee interactions with enemies, issues with ammo should be fixed by giving us perks that weave more ammo retention/generation into our gameplay, not forcing us into melee with the 5 others classes that already have that gameplay loop. These perks making melee more viable for the Heavy actually has me more concerned than anything, because it gives Saber an excuse to not lean harder into the shooting aspect of the class because, "Basically it makes it so that you feel like you can still smack down a majoris with melee".

TL;DR The class identity of the Heavy is that it is a meat grinding ranged terror, adding in melee that is strong will only take away from power that could otherwise be directed at making the the class stronger in ranged capabilities for balance reasons.