Recon subclass balance
Current training path abilities for reference taken from https://www.ea.com/games/battlefield/battlefield-6/news/recon-class
Sniper
- Passive Ability - Enhanced Perception: Improved Auto-Spotting range with an increased distance and wider angle of detection from weapon crosshairs. Spotting is quicker and lasts longer.
- Level 1 - Target Acquired: Inflicting damage on enemies spots them, marking their position in-world and on the minimap.
- Level 2 - Confirmed Kill: Enemies you headshot with Sniper Rifles cannot be revived by their teammates.
Spec Ops
- Passive Ability - Stealth Tactics: Reduces sounds you make when crouched or prone. Also applies when performing takedowns on an enemy.
- Level 1 - Gadget Awareness: Spot nearby enemy gadgets, marking their positions in-world and on the minimap. Ability inactive when sprinting.
- Level 2 - Low Profile: Going prone clears your in-game combat state faster and reduces your spotted status duration.
Feedback
Sniper
- Enhanced Perception is useful regardless of weapon used and really helps with the visibility issues in the game if you aren't using a thermal scope. It might be the most useful ability of both training paths.
- Target Acquired is more useful for the Spec Ops playstyle, since it counts damage from any source (explosives including claymores, a tap from an SMG at range, etc.) whereas if you have it on the Sniper path, there is a good chance the person you hit is dead in one shot and the perk doesn't take effect.
- Confirmed Kill fits the Sniper path. It is useless as a non-sniper, but the Sniper path is my choice when playing a Spec Ops playstyle because of the powerful spotting abilities above. To make this a more versatile perk that is less sudden and annoying for the receiving end, maybe change the ability so that with this perk you can shoot players who are down and confirm the kill. This would give medics a chance to revive a player who was headshot near cover, like a low wall, but leave people caught in the open to perish completely. It would also help the Spec Ops player who can prevent the downed player from continuing to signal his position with map pings behind the lines.
Spec Ops
- Stealth Tactics has some problems. At the start of the round, it seems to be ineffective until you die once. Hardly anyone can hear you crouch running anyway. It has been brought into line with crouch running regardless, after two patches (one specifically raising the volume on Stealth Tactics, and another raising footstep audio generally). Now it is loud enough to not use in a quiet environment (still have to crouch walk), and not substantially different from the regular crouch running. Any vault, ladder climb, or small fall off a pebble will create a noise at regular volume. In addition, crouch running everywhere looks silly. There are a lot of options that can be chosen to improve the stealth of a character in BF6. Lowered footstep volume generally, no direction indicator when damage is given, no tracer effects, conditions that reduce or avoid spotted status, spotted status indicator frame on the minimap, and so on for options. At the moment this is an underwhelming perk, especially compared to the Sniper passive.
- Gadget Awareness. It is kind of helpful to see where enemy nests are, even though they are probably making a lot of noise anyway. It is helpful in finding the spawn beacon and claymores. I also used it for helping vehicles to avoid mines, but now the Combat Engineer has the ability to spot them (replacing vehicle regeneration, I think). There's not much to do about the gadgets you spot since the Hardware Suppressor gadget was nerfed. The Suppressor gadget can actually fulfil the role of spotting gadgets better (and sometimes destroying them), and this entire ability could be replaced with a Spec Ops version of Confirmed Kill (or add 'cleaning up' as part of Stealth Tactics).
- Low Profile is part Assault class regen and respawn availability and part useless. It only takes one flash of a red marker above your head or on the minimap to be exposed; reducing the time of the spot marker is useless, and only when prone. I hardly ever go prone as Spec Ops because I am on the move. There's no crawling through the bushes to secretly reach your destination in this game. In the time it takes to go prone for this level 3 perk to lower the time of your spotted status, I could have moved away and be somewhere else. I still treat getting spotted as my last known location regardless of this perk. For the clearing of combat status, it doesn't seem that useful if I have to prone for a few seconds on the location I was last spotted at, burning away my escape time. Again, compared to the Sniper ability at this level, this one is very underwhelming. However, it might be useful on the Sniper path.
tl;dr suggestions
Swap Low Profile to Sniper and Target Acquired to Spec Ops, buff the idea of Stealth Tactics and not necessarily its implementation, and consider changing Confirmed Kill to be able to damage downed players instead of being an instant headshot kill from a sniper rifle.