Weekly Class Debrief - Engineer

You have no balance. Some launchers are on and the others are hot garbage especially those that rely upon lock on. All the heli and jets do is drop below the line. The perks really don't seem to have much of an impact. 

I noticed you said you be jumping with you own thoughts. Is this true? I've not seen it once. 

Well, the engineer is one of the most balanced classes.

In my opinion, players are looking forward to:

1. Smoke grenades for everyone (as a countermeasure against casual sniping, and a more convenient rush for positions, avoiding fire from multiple enemies during unbalanced gunfights)

2. Removing the spot-sweeping mechanic, and generally increasing the TTK (again, it will be easier for the engineer if gunfights are fairer and console players won't wipe him for 0.2 seconds)

3. It would be cool if mines worked on light vehicles again. (I don't quite understand why jeeps were given immunity; it's super cool if they want to crush you, and you, as an engineer, throw a mine under yourself and jump to the side, blowing up the jeep.)

4. You wrote that you'll increase the minimap scale for aircraft, and that's good. But what about the ability to increase the minimap size on the screen even more?

+ Often, when playing as an engineer and throwing a mine, you see it on the minimap. But if you move far away, it should still be visible on the minimap, but it simply disappears until you approach (at a large minimap scale). It's as if objects simply have a limit on how far they can be drawn on the minimap; it would be cool if there was no limit.

PS: A couple more things regarding usability.

a) The ability to assign separate keys to ping and common rose. Often, when trying to ping, a rose appears and you get killed.

b) When driving a vehicle, PC players are forced to fight the camera. You turn sideways and the camera follows you, you drive over bumps and it bounces up and down. There needs to be an option to disable camera aiming assistance in vehicles while moving. This feature is enabled by default for console players; PC players don't need camera assist; we have a mouse. Right now, it seriously interferes with visibility.

I wish the Combat Engineer had more stuff to do with fortifications, building reinforcement, terrain assistance (like how Assault can place a ladder for the team as a bridge or to smooth over rough terrain). There is a tiny bit of this in how the engineer can repair deployable shields, and that could use a health bar HUD on the shield while repairing. There could be a toolbox gadget that helps you reinforce positions, like you could barricade windows, reinforce walls against explosive damage, fill up some sandbags, dig a shallow foxhole.

Other gameplay wishes.

Any ground gadget should be destroyed in one hit with a melee weapon. Even a support shield. And be destroyed by a melee weapon from a greater distance

The sniper's throwing knife should one-shot a player lying on the ground.

Variable grenade throw strength (LMB, RMB, and both keys to activate)

And everyone's waiting for the ADS FOV setting.

Good Morning team! 

Thanks again for doing these weekly discussions. My opinion on the Engineer's balance is... Well... colorful. 

First, the Engineer went from one of the most viable and versitle classes, to an absolute necessity now. Due to the fact that the vehicles are now nearly invincible, teams are overwhelmingly flooded with engineers to counter them. This creates an uneven flow on the battlefield, because why should a player play any other class, if they're being forced to counter the one tank or helicopter that is now impossible to kill? 

I do like the vehicles healing to full health, but I did feel that the segmented system that was in place prior was a more balanced system. As a compromise, I suggest that vehicles that cannot be repaired while in operation should not have this ability. Helicopters should not be able to hide behind a mountain for 15 seconds, regain their flares and health, and come back to the fight re-armed and ready. It is unbalanced, and unfair. I watched a pilot go 158-0 yesterday, because he was exploiting these exact mechanics. It's no longer an example of "get gud scrub", its now learning how to fight against players who are exploiting the system of "balance" you have created. A fair compromise would be to return the air vehicles to the segmented health system, making each hit from a launcher decrease the amount of health available for repair, forcing them to play a more reserved play style. 

Removing the compounding repairs from multiple engineers feels wrong and unbalanced. It feels as though the Engineer's repair tool is no longer needed to repair vehicles, because they can just run away and heal to full health. A group of engineers no longer focus on healing friendly vehicles, because they are too busy firing off their severely underpowered launchers at enemy vehicles. 

Removing the launchers ability to **bleep** tanks with critical hits also allows for unfair exploitation. I agree with the idea that rockets should not stop a tank dead in its tracks, but it should severely hinder its movement. The launchers lockon times overall are too long, and do not allow for fair vehicle play. The launchers are no longer able to lock on to any laser designated targets, which defeats the purpose of laser designation. The only advantage to laser designating targets is allowing the AA weapons to fire well below radar and still get kills on air vehicles. 

The SMGs still out class most of their counterparts at range. While they are less utilized now with the recoil balance update, they are still overutilized. "Balance" in a video game means that all weapons should be viable options, removing a "meta" and encouraging player freedom to run what they want. 

I've already discussed my opinion and suggestions regarding vehicle balance in another post, but please guys. Please fix the launchers, and re-balance the engineer. 

Thanks for the hard work and I hope someone from the team sees this! 

Engineer needs more firepower-

When ever you hit a tank the same spot, it should have less armor that spot and do more dmg..

Unless I'm in a mode/map with no vehicles, it's pretty much mandatory to play Engineer/Anti-Tank. That's okay for me, I've been an Anti-Tank/Engineer main since BF1942.

And yet it's incredibly bad now after the launcher nerfs. Ever weapon it has is so weak that you end up having to respawn just to get more rockets.

The team with the worse (or non-existent) engineers will lose if the enemy team has a decent vehicle user.

Stinger and IGLA have been nerfed into uselessness. The nerfs to the RPG are really bad making it much harder to use with the stupid zeroing and random drift. Javelin takes too long to lock on (leaving you exposed to vehicle return fire or snipers) giving it only minor usefulness on certain maps/sectors where you have a very long line of sight. AT4 also leaves you exposed and is weak (in order to appease air mains) and the MBT-LAW is weak because it's fire & forget but I always find it buggy.

The sad thing is that the patch before this season is the best balance (IMO) that a Battlefield game has had in decades. With no little bird the air vs anti-air meta was quite balanced even though the mobile AA is trash, and dominating from the air was 1) rare, and 2) something a team could counter. Unlike now with unkillable little birds flown by twitch sweats, just like what happened in 2042. Now every anti-air weapon that was useful has been nerfed (at4, tow, tank guided, ifv guided, rpg, stinger/igla, mobile aa, mobile aa missile, even the recon painter tool got nerfed even though hardly anyone ever used it).

The ground vs infantry situation was okay and only imo, needed some adjustments to avoid static warfare caused when you had vehicles on both sides with engineer swarms pumping each other until they run out of ammo because damage was being out repaired by engineers.

Shouldn't there be anti personnel landmine as well that would explode if infantry stepped on it aside from anti tank mine?  It should also explode whoever steps on it, Friend and Foe. It would kill infantry but it would do minimal damage compared to anti tank mines if vehicles are the ones that run over it.

----and these landmines shouldn't glow

Very good idea!

Add the Carbine to Specialist Weapons.

Add an anti-personnel warhead option for the RPG (the current anti-tank warhead is garbage).