Might be a bit of a long post so here's what I intended to do from:

• Assessment of existing Prestige Perks
• What is the intention of the Prestige system?
• Personal thoughts/preferences on the whole system

Disclaimer: 

• Only been 1 real day so haven't really played around with all of them (i.e. most of this is spitballing but also most of these are quite simple in nature so spitballing should be fine)- Playstyle is typically more aggressive
• main played classes/styles are assault, vanguard and melee sniper while least played are bullwark and heavy (opinions might be skewed here)
• Of course, this is just my opinion and skewed by how i view and play the game
• [apparently this matters to some people or some people say it skews views] Am a player who solos Absolute with a success rate between 30%-70% depending on map and build/class. Testing on the PTS was done on lethal mostly to figure out what some of the interactions are and there are no health/damage differences between lethal and absolute

Prestige Perk assessment

I'm going to group them in 4.5-general categories and talk about categories as a whole.

Stat improvement perks

description: any perk that just gives +X% to damage/health/ammo/damage resistance

feedback: All good but all very bland, damage ones are slightly exciting for theorycrafters to see if they can hit any additional breakpoints. Balance is a bit hit and miss for conditional ones as some provide a bit too low value compared to condition (e.g. Exigency Charge seems weak for a "clutch" perk - it only equates to like 9 seconds on a base ability) whereas perks like Conviction have been proven to be very strong and act more like flat value rather than conditional value

Loot goblin perks

description: any perk that grants ability charge by picking up X (also including Resilience by proxy as it's related to picking up stims)

feedback: while these are probably better than what most people think, I don't like these at all for 2 main reasons: 1) promoting loot goblin behaviour (e.g. tac stealing ammo boxes from low ammo snipers and justifying it with some high and mighty thing about their auspex or getting more value) and 2) these perks scale negatively with difficulty which feels counterintuitive to me.

Quality of life/"forgiveness" perks

description: any perk that makes the game mechanics easier or forgives the player to a degree for making mistakes. e.g: Second Look, Indomitable Spirit, Duellist, Adrenaline boost

feedback: Positive wording: these are decent perks that allow you to be more aggressive by leveraging the additional windows they give you. Negative wording: these are just perks that mean you don't have to pay as much attention (if you just miss your auspex - you get it back; you can basically just gunstrike whenever you want without repercussion since contested health gain will just trade back any damage taken; parries get easier so you don't have to time them as much etc.)

"Potentially" play defining perks:

description: perks that potentially change how you play the game. e.g. Acuity (though debatably this falls under just stat improvements since i don't know who wouldn't just aim for headshots if your gun can headshot), Battlefield Awareness, Launch Restoration, Masterful defence, Standard Bearer, Emperor's grace, "all the melee perks for heavy"

feedback: without going into the balance (pretty sure everybody agrees heavy melee isn't really viable other than having some fun stomping minoris here and there) or whether they should be there in the first place (as gamers have time and time again shown that they can make viable meme builds in all games), I will simply sum up that I like these as they basically impact how you might play and provide some additional variety compared to other loadouts. I would wager that these are the perks that the community actually find interesting (along with some of the generic damage perks). 

"Other"

• Restoration: good perk but bland
• Auxiliary Reload: fine/good perk but bland
• Rally Point: sure? this seems incredibly niche and doesn't seem to warrant a perk

What is the point of the Prestige System?

Before I can really go into personal thoughts, I guess we need to address the intention behind the Prestige system (beyond just another avenue to facilitate grinding and gold usage) as I don't believe Saber have clearly indicated their goals with these beyond some generic statements (please correct me if I'm wrong). 

• Are these Prestige perks supposed to be generic buffs that are there to round up all possible builds? Or
• Are these supposed to provide build defining options for different playstyles to each class? Or
• Are they just supposed to provide "POWER"?

Personal thoughts/feedback on the system as a whole

So if the intention was for Prestige Perks to provide build defining/playstyle defining options or "POWER" then I think they're just mostly missing the mark beyond a couple of exceptions:

• damage perks allowing for certain breakpoints
• some of the perks are almost getting there (e.g. anything I listed under the "Potentially" play defining perks section)

but in general nothing feels super exciting (e.g. compared to some of the passive reworks in 6.0 or some of the current weapon perks on the PTS). However, if they just wanted some perks to generically round out basically all builds then fair enough but I think the perception that comes with the word "prestige" makes ppl look for more exciting things.

I would rather that the prestige system provides fundamental playstyle changing options and be too radical rather than too tame and just let the community break the game before re-balancing the numbers (sure that would also induce a bunch of complaints - but at least there would be a period of novelty and excitement). Some ideas like this:

• Headshot "bounce" to 1 additional target
• you no longer have armour but have x% health regen a second
• every execute grants you an adrenaline charge
• (for multi charge perks) ability charge reduced by 1 but base duration halved (crucially not 50% increased recovery as otherwise would stack additively with the tree perks)
• X% to ranged/melee damage but -X/2% to the opposite
• dash attacks provide movement speed boost for x seconds
• 75% reduced damage taken on next hit if you haven't been hit by melee attacks in the last 10 secs (resetting)
• Attacking enemies taunts them
• ideas from this post would also be more exciting than the current set up

However, I can also see that balancing could be very difficult and if prestige perks are tied to playstyles then it would be somewhat annoying to have to spend gold every time you want to switch out to a different set for a different playstyle.

"Potentially" play defining perks:

description: perks that potentially change how you play the game. e.g. Acuity (though debatably this falls under just stat improvements since i don't know who wouldn't just aim for headshots if your gun can headshot), Battlefield Awareness, Launch Restoration, Masterful defence, Standard Bearer, Emperor's grace, "all the melee perks for heavy"

feedback: without going into the balance (pretty sure everybody agrees heavy melee isn't really viable other than having some fun stomping minoris here and there) or whether they should be there in the first place (as gamers have time and time again shown that they can make viable meme builds in all games), I will simply sum up that I like these as they basically impact how you might play and provide some additional variety compared to other loadouts. I would wager that these are the perks that the community actually find interesting (along with some of the generic damage perks). 

I emphatically disagree with this take, just because a perk can change the way a class plays does not make the change 'good' making perks that force Heavy players into melee combat to maximize their effect is bad design, plain and simple.

Heavy is the one class that leans into shooting gameplay (nearly) exclusively which is a feature and not a bug, gameplay changing perks that enhance this class identity might be interesting, but perks that defy it are not a good fit. I have said this in many other posts, if players want to play like every other class in the game (weaving melee and ranged capabilities together in their combat flow) they should play....every other class in the game. The perk design should not force the Heavy into the same mold, that would be boring and reduce the over-all variety in the game.

Every melee centric perk the Heavy gets is a perk that actually leans into the Heavy's kit/class identity that is did not get.

Overall I agree with your thoughts, although I think the heavy melee perks are fine. With those perks melee is a viable option for heavy, but it's an odd design choice for sure (like the melee sniper which is an oxymoron in and of itself).

That said,  I suspect Saber's point with this prestige system is player retention. Your class progress starts at level one at each prestige level until you reach the max level (i.e. prestige 4). Meaning, you have to re-level all your classes four times to 25 if you wish to max out your prestige. Not a fan of this system at all because re-leveling the core class perks will be a pain for some classes like assault and bulwark. I'm fairly confident this will cause an uproar once the system goes live. I also suspect absolute and lethal will be swamped with clueless players who just want to fast track their progress because this current system is not rewarding at all.

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Liiff wrote:

"Potentially" play defining perks:

description: perks that potentially change how you play the game. e.g. Acuity (though debatably this falls under just stat improvements since i don't know who wouldn't just aim for headshots if your gun can headshot), Battlefield Awareness, Launch Restoration, Masterful defence, Standard Bearer, Emperor's grace, "all the melee perks for heavy"

feedback: without going into the balance (pretty sure everybody agrees heavy melee isn't really viable other than having some fun stomping minoris here and there) or whether they should be there in the first place (as gamers have time and time again shown that they can make viable meme builds in all games), I will simply sum up that I like these as they basically impact how you might play and provide some additional variety compared to other loadouts. I would wager that these are the perks that the community actually find interesting (along with some of the generic damage perks). 

I emphatically disagree with this take, just because a perk can change the way a class plays does not make the change 'good' making perks that force Heavy players into melee combat to maximize their effect is bad design, plain and simple.

Heavy is the one class that leans into shooting gameplay (nearly) exclusively which is a feature and not a bug, gameplay changing perks that enhance this class identity might be interesting, but perks that defy it are not a good fit. I have said this in many other posts, if players want to play like every other class in the game (weaving melee and ranged capabilities together in their combat flow) they should play....every other class in the game. The perk design should not force the Heavy into the same mold, that would be boring and reduce the over-all variety in the game.

Every melee centric perk the Heavy gets is a perk that actually leans into the Heavy's kit/class identity that is did not get.

I agree with specialisation but 1) read the sentence where i said i think everybody agrees melee heavy doesn't really work and 2) you're also missing the main summary of my feedback: what if there were both options? a set that makes melee heavy somehow work (and then you can be the equivalent of a sumo wrestler which i think we can all agree is a different flavour of melee) and a couple of sets of options that just accentuate different types of ranged output?

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Scarbeus wrote:

The better argument to be making here is how does the Heavy (note my knowledge on WH40k is at least 20 years old) work in the tabletop game or the lore? If it's possible the get them a melee weapon or some ability to fight in close quarters then it makes sense. If that's not something you can do in the tabletop game or the lore then it doesn't make sense. It's as simple as that, those are the rules Saber are forced to go by with licencing so that's how the game is made.

completely fair take though lore is rather inconsistent as people constantly tell me

aside: added a couple more perk ideas to the list (although i guess from the FAQ, this might go against the point of the feedback threads? idk)