For me, new vindicator quirks are like a joke. But i'm not blaming you, to know how every mech works, and how it looks in comparison to another chassis, you would need to spend some time playing your own game. There is a huge difference between comparing mechs on paper and looking how it works in practic. What I'm going to do is giving you a constructive opinion of someone, who is familiar with those problems and see this mech's flaws every day (yeah, i'm a tryhard and I'm trying to make any use out of Vindicator)
Contradiction between role and construction of Vindicator is the only problem of this mech.
Vindicator is supposed to use PPC, which is a moreless a sniper gun, yet energy hardpoints of Vindicators are really really low. To simply shoot to the enemy, Vindicator pilot needs to leave it's terrain cover, and expose more than half of his mech's body to enemy fire. Unless you want to shoot at the ground, you need to shoot at your enemy from above exposing your whole body. If you want to shoot at your enemy standing at the higher ground, that means you are not utilizing your PPC range. As a mech with arms closely clutched to it's torso, you are not able to shoot exposing only your armed hand.
All those factors lead to the conclusion that Vindicator have no good way of defending itself when firing at the enemy. PPC is a heavy weapon, forcing Vindicator to use XL engines, so running with STD engine and having whole one side of your mech serving you just as a shield is not an option. Regardless, if you would like to do that, your mech would be too slow and clunky to hide from enemy fire fast enough. Another reason, why you are not able to do that is the size of vindicator's hand without any weapon, it's too slim and small to cover it's vital parts, when Vindicator try to use it as a shield.
The only niche of Vindicators then is poptarting, jumping high with your jetpacks, and shooting the enemy when falling down, hoping you were not exposed long enough to be hit by them. It works on paper, in practice you can do this only once, before you get gangbanged by the spam of enemy weaponry. Yeah, by the spam, because when you jump high, you reveal your position not to one enemy, but to whole enemy team.
This isn't a thing you can fix easily, Vindicator's flaws are in it's design. Giving Vindicator 1AA higher velocity of PPC is a good move, while for a number of reasons taking energy cooldown makes no sense. Vindicator-1AA have only 2 weapons (2xPPC), therefore it needs a better cooldown to be able to make his only trick a few times, before he will be forced to move away from his current position, and find another place to pop. Without a lower cooldown, it can not protect itself from light mechs, due to PPC minimal range of fire. Notice, that lower cooldown equals more heat generation, so Vindicator need to make a break after a few shoots anyway, and time to cool the heat is a great time for relocating your position.
Also, Vindicator doesn't need buffs for it's arms and legs, it needs more armor for it's side and central torso, due to the fact those parts are exposed most of the time (when you jump). It have higher priority than making it's legs more durable, so you could also transfer leg buffs into torso structure, Vindicator would only gain out of it. In real game, you won't hurt your legs unless you will be jumping to high and jumping too high means leaving the cover for Vindicator, while leaving the cover for too long equals death for this mech.
What could make Vindicator able to compete with other mechs of it's weight is the ability to fly up faster using it's jetpacks, and to fall down faster, to prevent being hit by enemy team. Since you haven't touched that aspect of the game, using current quirks, All Vindicators need a HUGE deceleration boost. Yes, I'm talking only about deceleration boost, because it needs to be able to move back to it's cover, not the higher mobility overall.
Vindicator lacks slots to become a brawler mech (which would match his low hardpoints), Enforcer's bodytype and hardpoint placement is pretty much the same, however due to the lower number of hardpoints, the only niche Vindicator can fill is being a popping, jetpack sniper. And to be effective in that role, it needs following changes:
- - Giving Vindicator back his energy cooldown quirks
- - Making Vindicator central torso and side torsos more durable, (if thats the case, quirks of arm and leg armor can be as well removed, those do not give Vindicator any real profits)
- - Giving Vindicator more Deceleration, like for example VND-1X have
Edited by KruczekIIV, 16 November 2015 - 05:33 PM.