Let's talk RIGs and why Heal is categorically the worst rig in game ( in my opinion)

[Dundo]

Let me preface this by saying that I am a stern believer that all rigs COULD have a place in this game with clever balancing. I'll list off all of the rigs in a sort of tier list and then explain my stance.

1. STUN
Obviously stun is the best. It's far too versatile and makes you forget that battery recharges are a thing. Clearly there's no downsides to this rig, and before you bring up the cooldown on Psychosurgery, it doesn't really matter. The one use you get every 280 seconds ( assuming you don't by some chance find any rechargers) is ultimately far more useful than what other rigs can provide.

Changes: STUN offers far too much with little to no investment. I would remove the instant battery recharge and move it to the X-Ray rig but more on that later. In addition to this, the AOE should be reduced or, make it single target but increase the stun duration.

2. BLIND
Blind is a fantastic rig just because it makes any objective that locks you into a place a breeze. Any tight room is immediately safe and you don't really have to worry about enemies since ( and many people don't know this) you won't be hit when you're in the mist and you get a neat buff on top of all of it.

Changes: Remove the adrenaline buff from the Blind rig and attach it to the Heal rig.

3. Barricade
Barricade is a good rig - in theory. It has a few fringe uses with ex-pops who have longer door breaking animations ( Gooseberry), but the extra seconds you get aren't worth it in any sense of the word.

Changes: I would propose two types of buffs to this rig; either the Barricade will slow down the enemies once it's broken or the barricades get more health, making it more effective in room/corridor lockdown situations.

4. X-Ray
Yes, I put X-Ray above Heal and for a good reason but more on that later. X-Ray is by far the most useless rig in game, as is it serves no purpose other than to look for Documents and Posters. The foresight you get from this rig is limited because the range is awful.

Changes: I would personally like to see the range extended to at least 20 maybe even 30 meters, otherwise this rig will remain the least used and least liked rig in game. Having the range extended would make it useful in speeding up seek and set objectives.

5. Heal
This is going to be an unpopular take, but Heal is categorically the worst rig ( even though for some players it's not). Let me explain. Heal as a rig is essentially a bundle of items, it's a creature comfort rig but it's exlusively reactive, meaning for this rig to be useful you actually need to make mistakes. While this is fine for most part, after a couple hours in game and some attention paying Heal becomes much like X-Ray, useless, difference between the two in my case being that with the X-Ray I can at least get some proactive use out of it. If you're at a point where you know this game's ins and outs, you won't find this rig useful and you might be running it in PUGs to help out newer players but that's just about it.

Changes: Assign the blind adrenaline buff to the Heal Rig making it the true 'jack of all trades rig' and let Heal disable traps, even if temporarily, removing the need to jump over trip wires/explosions even if temporarily.

Argument here being that by adding more utility to the rig, it would be useful not just for covering up shoddy gameplay but also as a proactive rig, which all of the other rigs are. By giving these two utilities to the rig, it would have a 'selfish' aspect to it to which I believe it lacks, this would make it a true "i don't care about nunna that ♥♥♥♥ rig".

[Similistorm]

I think heal isn't the worst but it's only useful with detox and for players unsure about their survival. Once you're past the fear stage of the game experience,you probably only use it to carry others or for escalation.
I used healing up till lv30 when I first played the game,now not so much anymore.

Stun is very versatile ofc,sadly I stopped using it as it makes the game very stale for me. But it does a lot of things,noise,disarming traps,stun obviously. I think as fun as it is for solo play,it ruins the cooperation side of the game cuz 90% of stun users turned into sppedrunners.

My beef with blind is more the users than the rig itself,people only ever use it for objectives and shuttle,I rarely see a blind in hallways,which could save at some point,or in front of a window while another player barricaded the doors.

Xray is semi useful,for posters,keys,and maybe if you look for items during tasks. Nothing much to say about it tbh.

Barricade is actually my new favourite,it's not an offensive rig,and seeing it as one only makes it weaker. Sure it's a barricade obviously,it can block doors,any doors,even when there's no enemies,I often find myself deploying one or two so an enemy can be marked and slowed down. I also close doors fully broken.

[Dundo]

Originally posted by Simili:

I think heal isn't the worst but it's only useful with detox and for players unsure about their survival. Once you're past the fear stage of the game experience,you probably only use it to carry others or for escalation.
I used healing up till lv30 when I first played the game,now not so much anymore.

This is exactly what I'm getting at. Having the heal rig have additional utility that is applicable regardless of the damage you've taken would elevate it to a rig that's useful to everyone not just as a fallback.

There's no reason for Blind to have the adrenaline buff, it's rather redundant, Heal Rig on the other hand would benefit greatly from such an application.

[Similistorm]

I wish they added an effect against bleeding to the heal rig and replaced the adrenaline of blind by the slow of healing. Like after they're blinded,they'll be slowed for a while.

[mynx]

Imo heal rig is pretty good for new players. I started with that too. But later when everyone knows what to do and knows the maps/behaviour of enemies its pretty bad.
I mean the other rigs are good to avoid dmg. Heal is only good after you got dmg.

[Kenny]

Originally posted by Simili:

I think heal isn't the worst but it's only useful with detox and for players unsure about their survival. Once you're past the fear stage of the game experience,you probably only use it to carry others or for escalation.
I used healing up till lv30 when I first played the game,now not so much anymore.

Stun is very versatile ofc,sadly I stopped using it as it makes the game very stale for me. But it does a lot of things,noise,disarming traps,stun obviously. I think as fun as it is for solo play,it ruins the cooperation side of the game cuz 90% of stun users turned into sppedrunners.

My beef with blind is more the users than the rig itself,people only ever use it for objectives and shuttle,I rarely see a blind in hallways,which could save at some point,or in front of a window while another player barricaded the doors.

Xray is semi useful,for posters,keys,and maybe if you look for items during tasks. Nothing much to say about it tbh.

Barricade is actually my new favourite,it's not an offensive rig,and seeing it as one only makes it weaker. Sure it's a barricade obviously,it can block doors,any doors,even when there's no enemies,I often find myself deploying one or two so an enemy can be marked and slowed down. I also close doors fully broken.

No he is right, it is the worst RIG, worse than x-ray, simply because the whole point of the game is to do A+, which means you should not get it at all or 2 times if you play solo. Which makes the heal RIG useless, because you already lost A+ for getting hit. It is however useful in escalation, because A+ is no longer the main goal there.

[Maya-Neko]

My ranking is:

1. Stun - Doesn't need explanation

2. Barricade - Very low cooldown and quite useful on most situations, since there are doors and windows everywhere anyway

3. Heal - relatively strong on escalation, but if you're good enough, then it can be useless half the time, especially outside escalation.

4. Blind - Everytime i use it for the weekly objectives it's like the worst experience out of all possible mission types, because it's useless while defending from immediate threats, it doesn't help in being aggressive and the only situations where it might help is on stationary situations, but honestly there are currently only 3 situations i can think of, where it's actually giving a good enough advantage to accept the setup time. I honestly don't see, why that should be any higher currently, if Stun and Barricade are an option to pick from. Obviously there's also the option to put it in places, where you might run towards when fleeing from enemies, but when you manage to make it to a pre-placed mine, then the mine probably wouldn't be needed anyway.

5. XRay - Despite Blind being way more annoying, XRay somehow still manages to be even more useless. The only advantage of it i can see is helping beginners to find specific items, until they've learned enough to automatically see them anyway. They help a bit to find posters, but that's not really necessary most of the time, since i often find like 3-4 posters easily while doing missions anyway.

That's obviously just my opinion.

Originally posted by Kenny:

No he is right, it is the worst RIG, worse than x-ray, simply because the whole point of the game is to do A+, which means you should not get it at all or 2 times if you play solo. Which makes the heal RIG useless, because you already lost A+ for getting hit. It is however useful in escalation, because A+ is no longer the main goal there.

If the only thing you care about is A+, then at least take a look into how the rating works to begin with. You can easily get hit 4-5 times and still get A+ without any problems as of now.

[76561199641450686]

I would argue that Heal is useful for groups during escalation because when you get to the trial with no medical items because you can heal the whole group without worry about dying except the trial where you can't use the rig. Heal in solo is pointless when you're at the high level, but with groups is more effective.

[Zem]

I'm a big fan of the Xray, but yea... This rig could need some love about it.

I sent a "feedback" about it with a idea to the devs :

When you use the X-ray: You make spawn like 1-2 objects (1 Antidote and 1 bottle) that only you can see, and you can pick up before your X-ray is over!

With that, we could use these "extra-items" to help us, or share it with the others.

Maybe in the next patch, we ll see a "balance rig".
But even if you "nerf" the Stun, i think people will keep it.

Like you said : It's to versatile.
And for me, the nerf is not really the anwser, you need to "buff" the others rigg with something spécial like the idea i just share.

[Zealous Heart 💜]

it's crazy how overtuned stun is. Literally no reason (besides fun) to use anything else

[Similistorm]

Originally posted by Zealous Heart ♥:

it's crazy how overtuned stun is. Literally no reason (besides fun) to use anything else

It wasn't always like that,back in the ea,the blind was op as hell,would take like ~3sec to deploy,would stun enemies that enter after,etc. Stun was so underused that the devs had to buff it,too much imo. Heal came second because the poison was actually stunning and people (including me) were overusing it as a semi support-stun rather than healing.
Xray used to be bad because of it's long cooldown before they shortened it.

[VeronaKate]

To me Heal is almost useless since you cannot just walk into players to heal them when it goes off . Players have to be within range or else its wasted . Also dislike that right after i use it the prime assets always tend to grab me even though their slowed as if the stun effect on it is not working .

Another nerf they did was long as it was active it used to act more so as a radius aoe thing and anytime enemies got within range of you they were slowed . I honestly think they should remove the stun effect from it and just leave the slow aoe affect on it and heal players long as their within range long as its active .

I do not see the point in using slow as a sneak attack rig when players are running around not regrouping or listing to you to get healed and npcs can hit you pretty much before you can even pop it off if your being chased . I mean This is not about balance at this point its just utterly useless now that you can pretty much carry 2 bandages and have 4 heals on demand . I think the Rig needs a slight rework . Just bring back that aoe constant slow and heal effect while its active and remove the stun from it . To me this is not op its just making useful again .

I understand some players will disagree with me and call this a skill issue but lets be blunt here . There no skill in using blind rig all it is a place and remember and Stun is just throw and run . So players might wish to consider that before calling it a skill issue .

Perfect balance to me is this .

Replace- Aoe heal and stun on demand long as players and assets are within range for Aoe Healing and slow effect constantly long as its active .

Remove stun effect from the healing rig and replace it with revive allies . Balance here would be no self revive with the rig .

To me that is not overpowered and seems very well balanced .

[JeanneOskoure]

Despite being necroed by the guy above me, OP is still 100% right. X-ray is a better support/heal rig for decent players than Heal is.
Also, despite being fun, Jammer is a 10x worse version of stun, and it's really noticeable on psycho.
Would probably rank it either directly above or below X-ray.

[Phoenix‎ Rose]

i use the heal rig while my friend uses x-ray. we have 14h in the game which is a bit more than a couple, and even though we are careful and pay attention, there are still a lot of times when enemies will hit you.

heck I've even seen pros die in trials and it's like, if they had a heal rig they would have survived. but instead they just die and restart which makes beating the trial take even longer.

yes i know the heal rig is a "safe use" but it's still very useful in higher diffs. I've seen a group of 4 players, one has heal rig, one has x-ray, and maybe the other 2 have "stun" rig. the heal rig guy came in clutch when they were playing because the enemy ai decided to be insane and they ended up using up a lot of their healing items, so the heal rig helped a lot

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by JeanneOskoure:

Despite being necroed by the guy above me, OP is still 100% right. X-ray is a better support/heal rig for decent players than Heal is.
Also, despite being fun, Jammer is a 10x worse version of stun, and it's really noticeable on psycho.
Would probably rank it either directly above or below X-ray.

The Jammer-stun is pretty much worthless, however the unlocking part can feed a stun-user with rig rechargers, basically making a stun-user have the cooldown of a Jammer-user. So i would rather place it on 2nd place for that alone. It's most effective on escalation, where cooldown- or lock-variators can get a problem, but even on single trials i simply don't see where any of the other rigs can compete with a Jammer making a stun-user even more efficient than they're already to begin with.

Obviously i'm playing Duo to make it work that way, so you definitely need good team work for that, otherwise it's rather one of the more useless items, but i would still rank it above blind and xray, as well as above heal on lower difficulties.