I certainly find that there are plenty blind spots for Heavy Bolters caused by pillars and arches right in front of a brace point, in some cases right where it would be ideal to line up a choke point. I suspect some of this is intentional. There is a great shooting range to the side of Black Bolt C, with unbraceable LOS blocking terrain right at the defenders end. That has to be a deliberate balancing choice.
Concur, the HB community is divided on suppression. However, we have as close to "natural" suppression as we have ever had, and the community is on fire asking for nerfs. That indicates "natural suppression" in its true form wouldn't be implemented long before nerfing. With the bland advancement tree (as I assess it) the devs missed an opportunity to give players an option to play with suppression (in terms of more/less suppression traded with more/less damage), but I still see it as a vital skill for the HB. Both for defending itself from direct fire, as well as providing support against other HB type weapons. If you find yourself being suppressed too much, that means your friendly HBs aren't supporting you enough. I'd say yell at them rather than looking to remove it. Also, dismissively callling the regular posters here "fanboys" doesn't advance the arguments and isn't quite fair. Being knowledgeable about the weapon, advocating for correcting shortfalls as well as toning down certain aspects, and sharing experiences is, to me, not quite the same as a "fanboy". But that's just me.
Fanboys are everywhere and kill games. Just look at Overwatch. Its the most dumbed down shooter in the history of mankind. Its catered directly to blizzard and cosplay fanboys and girls. Warhammer fanboys trigger me hard cuz they go on and on about lore and stuff from tabletop but don't know what makes a video game "fun" or why people like the games they do or why this game is getting mixed reviews. They also take over the forums in a lot of other games and push other community members out leaving them with a niche game that nobody is welcome in (hint: Warhammer Online MMO). Moving on, ya you are 100% right the devs could have had it beautifully with the advancement tree. I was anticipating they would do something like they did with TF2 in that you get a bolter similar to "Nitasha" the 2nd mini gun you get in TF2. It traded off damage for a slow effect similar to suppression in this game. They do have the "master crafted" gear in this game which has much better stats but way larger LP cost. Still, I would like to see not all Heavy Bolter type guns start off with massive suppression. Its kinda silly. Again, as people have posted, why are we scared of heavy bolter bullets and not regular bolters for 2-3 other players? You're still taking fire. :| The other option would be to take inspiration from games like Insurgency and Battlefield and and suppression to every gun to a degree. That way you can balance every gun a bit better with damage trade-offs and not make the heavy bolter add such a large suppression feeling. As well we could get wargear that could help prevent screen effects and suppression (Planetside 2 had this with implants and there was one that reduced flashbang effects). This would open up the game more to specialise each character.
Another thing I wanted to bring up was this whole "bracing" thing with the heavy bolter class type weapons. Not only does it look bad animation/model-wise but it also takes away from that feel of the heavy weapons being more mobile (like they are in table top). I guess they "could" be mounted sure, but Dawn of War really started that. It would be nice just to simply be able to shoot over cover easier in this game but that core system is still not working well. What you don't see right now is Devastator type units going in to back up their squad... kinda like they are supposed to. Even after they clear out everyone from their sniper nest... cuz lets be honest, that's exactly what they are right now. They just continue to sit there. They don't go help cap, they have no motivation to move from their perch, so they just sit there all game and redeploy to get ammo. We really need to encourage Heavy Bolters to have the option to get closer in the fights not just sit back all game. People are going to say "but they're supposed to be weak and sit back"... No, they're not. They travel with their squad as the tabletop shows. Their squad assists them and they help mow things down on the way to the objective. Bracing should be an option, not a forced thing that is meta. Currently going in mobile is awful and you have no way to defend yourself as the spin-up time for the gun is ridiculous. They really should have copied Space Marine on this one so all you do is brace yourself and then they wouldn't need that dumb "bracing" mechanic that looks awful and breaks the gun completely (as in being too OP). :|
Eldar dark reapers now have slow but purposeful in TT which means you can move and fire but you roll d6 to move instead of moving 6 but are still fairly mobile keeping in eldars theme, I don't know why all heavy weapon squads don't get this rule though.
I should elaborate on what I meant more: I don't mean they should be running and firing. No. They move real slow in the game right now while hip firing and its not even worth it save for a last ditch effort to defend yourself or a team mate. That's fine. What i meant is more like how Space Marine had it where you move with your squad, stop, brace yourself in a planted stance, and fire. Unbrace your stance, continue moving up. This worked great in that as it was also objective points so Heavy Bolters had to be both base defence and point pushers. They were really great back-up as the team fought over a point and the heavy was in the back just behind his guys helping out near the point. It made the heavy bolter altogether more mobile. In this game I feel its rarely worth it to move up as you have nothing to defend yourself with, melee basically means instant death as you can't spin up fast enough to shoot someone you D Bashed and you can't get away. So that's one reason people sit back on a balcony. The other being your gun is a laser beam with heavy suppression and damage and you get to shoot across the entire map. All of which is kinda ridiculous. So I'd rather have the gameplay shifted to reflect that "squads taking and defending points" and there being 1-5 heavy bolters on a team rather than 20 all of which are mounted on a wall somewhere shooting into spawns... More stopping and shooting, move up a bit, stop and shoot, rinse repeat would be good for gameplay. Encourages more people to hop on the point too rather than just sit back and camp all game.
So, I think the lethality of a HB is somewhat fine. Like Forj suggested earlier a reduction in accuracy and damage past 100m, and a reduction in vehicle damage would be enough. At least lethality wise. That being said, and I hate to say this but...I really think the Devastator needs a longer "brace up" time, at least from a run. Not by much mind you, but by a little bit. Currently, you can take a HB, a Tactical can catch you in mid movement, and you can brace and slaughter him before he can kill you, even if he fires first. I'm a firm believer that a Devastator should be the shootiest, and that a set up Devastator should slaughter anyone in his firing line...but....if a Devastator is in mid run then can brace up and kill an enemy who started shooting before him, I feel that is a problem.
It was the Space Marine Heavy Bolter that made me choose to specialise in HB from the start of playing EC. However, the design intent of the EC Heavy Bolter is clearly different, and with much longer ranges and larger maps in mind. I think we're better off giving feedback on the model we have than suggesting we change the model entirely. As for tabletop usage, my use of Heavy Bolters is quite similar to what we see in EC right now: I had a Devastator squad with three of them, I set them up, and they dominated a portion of the battlefield. This is the opposite of my experience. Tacticals and their like outshoot me from "unready" all the time. I agree with your sentiment, I just never experience it myself, so for me things are just fine.
To be fair, it could just be the recent horrible netcode/hitreg mixed with the ever pleasant lag/latency and the like, especially combined with the suppression effect. As I'm using a Standard Bolter, I start firing, it takes quite a few shots to kill with that thing, and the suppression from his weapon makes my accuracy go horrible, he braces up after I start firing and usually ends up getting me. So, again, to be fair it's likely just that mixture of all the technical issues compounding with the suppression effect erring my aim as a player. I don't know, the brace up time has always felt a little off to me anyway, it's reasonably quick like they want the Dev to be somewhat mobile, but the whole weapon is more designed like they want a gun emplacement/turret. Always felt odd to me.
