Recon skills are very lackluster

[Larry]

Gotta say, Recon is not as fun as it should be... I don't feel like it's a viable class to do what it's supposed to do which is scout ahead and scavenge equipment to give to team mates and give information on mission objectives.

Decoy feels a bit flimsy in how it works(Plus a complete lack of feedback and sound effects).

The Dropship is totally not worth using when it takes 60/55/50/45/40 seconds to get to the pick up point and then has an excruciatingly slow pan speed when you try to pick the drop point(Plus only 15 seconds to choose the drop point and there is NO physical map to view or interact with to know where you should be choosing where the drop point should be) which means if you travelled on foot you'd have traversed the same distance in ten seconds. It's a completely pointless skill as is.

Communications is bugged and pointless. It slows down two enemies at rank 1 that are near the recon, makes it so the recon CAN'T MOVE at all until it's deactivated(Which is bugged, you sometimes can't turn it off at all even on death). It can show you everyone's vision but this is a moot point as you can pretty much see all enemies on the map as red dots for hundreds of meters around each character and you can always see every player's location all the time on the mini map(Plus you can see the exact character outline no matter where they are with a 1m vision around them) which makes Communications pretty useless. It would be okay if it wasn't bugged and the recon could actually move while it was active(Why not have it as a passive ability? Too meta? Why not let the recon move but have a movement speed debuff of around 15% while active this way recons could spec around the ability so they gain back that 15% run speed in buildings which would make the ability pretty damn useful and not on 24/7 plus really help the recon out when inside buildings.

The drone, while useful, bugs out far too often. It'll just not retrieve stuff for you, it will stop for a few seconds then disappear.

I can understand the Dropship being underpowered because it could too easily be abused to teleport players from a main objective straight to the extraction point with little to no risk but there must be something that can be done to make it seem viable -- I dunno, have a very large radius around an evac point that the dropship can't enter because there's not enough "airspace" as the evac ship is looping around that area? But the skill is not good right now unless there's some work around for the panning speed while in the drop point view. Plus the animations suck for it. By "animations" what I mean is: There are none. You don't see a dropship land down and pick everyone up, you don't see one swoop down and drop everyone off it's just a rope your characters grab onto to. What I don't get is why communications flat out stops the recon from moving altogether. I see only one scenario where this would be useful(Defence objectives) but even at that BY DEFAULT YOU CAN SEE ENEMIES ON THE MAP REGARDLESS OF CLASS plus most classes have a vision range that matches the entire screen anyway which makes communications utterly pointless except in doors.

It just feels like the recon had a lot of cool gadgets but later on in development it became apparent the recon abilities were overpowered and instead of reballancing them to retain some element of "fun" the devs nerfed the abilities into the ground. As is the recon can't even do it's job very well(Scout ahead, pick up stuff and give supplies to the team). The recon is quite slow by default, has one ability to "stealth" which lasts around 10-12 seconds fully upgraded and only has one extra inventory slot by default...

Please tell me some fixes are coming soon because right now I'm struggling to find a reason to play Recon, I feel like I'm a liability to the team when playing as Recon. The only good thing about recon is lobbing down orbital strikes in which case the meta for recon may as well be full combat suit energy and all the abilities being orbital strike abilities.

[Little Strawberry]

I feel the opposite way. I personally think the dropship is way too strong if the rest of the team knows how to use it. Being able to pop it before clearing an objective, then instantly riding to the next on every second mission saves a lot of time. It can also be used in scenarios to speedrun them, like the escort one, where you can effectively skip 80% of the mission by just flying behind the gate. You can also open the map and fly to locations using that, so I don't really get that complaint. It's really good, but you're right that it lacks in feedback, like animations or sounds. The way dropship control is handled is something that needs to change too, but I've already made that thread before. Yeah, you're not contributing with kills, but triggering missions significantly faster gives everyone else a break on the wave timer and cuts down mission time if you just want to complete objectives. It also avoids meaningless travel time, i.e missions that instantly activate a marker on the opposite end of the map again.

Communications is absurdly strong. Yes, it has a target limit and locks you into position, but if your team kills the trash then it will cascade onto the strongest enemy, like a hunter. From what I can tell they don't have a debuff resistance and -25% movement speed is crazy good, especially given how hit&run boss AI works where the effectiveness is almost doubled. There are also harder maps where the other benefits really start to shine.

On the other hand I personally think running orbital strikes are boring and counter productive, because you're more than likely to find similar items that already provide that sort of functionality, since you're going to mapscan and loot anyway or fixing the radar/power/HASTAC/etc. I also don't like the drones, because chances are whatever I want to grab I can reach in time just fine too, especially considering that you probably have a ton of items grabbed on the way already, so it's like a wasted slot.

I think the criticism is fine from a solo player perspective where you don't have any immediate impact ie kills, but I feel like recon is already too strong in unorganized games and it's probably even more ridiculous when you're organized and could be running two Recons. Recon doesn't have a lot of front loaded abilities, true, but I really enjoy it this way but I'll never say no to even more abilities.

[Mavor]

Decoy and the gunship strafe have saved our bacon MANY times - I think those two, at least, are amazing. Targeted artillery is pretty nice too - cept not always feasible to stand still to use it. Door hacking = just awesome. Haven't unlocked Dropship yet, but it sounds nice.

[CptGeorges]

Heyy how do you target with your dropship through the map? the only way I can do it is by painfully scrolling for 15 seconds

[Khalani]

I can sort of agree with you that the recon doesn't excel at looting stuff, but he has a lot of other gadgets to help your team.

I'm running and decoy+flare build where I can distract tons of enemies in sticky situations and even stack them up for your destructive skills.
You won't have as much direct kills as the heavy or demo but boy is it fun to see the enemies gather around your flare and bomb them to hell with your orbital.

[Urmanin]

Not to meantion you have the finger of god - Elpida complately evaporates anything it hits.