That would leave me at almost 600m EM range
Short range burst damage eh?

Hmm.. maybe a 2 or 3 percent cycle time reduction per level bonus instead of falloff for the Kain/Mesmer, 5 would be a bit to fast i think, and i can't think of another bonus right now that would work that wouldn't be unbalanced.

Mesmers effectively only have 2 of 3 functional bonuses.  Many only have 1 functional bonus as they never fit a repper.  So I would say the gropho has a leg up on the blue heavies.

Fix the Mesmer (and Kain and Arbalast) before fixing the gropho.

Where kains nerfed because of the metagame (everyone and their dog was piloting one) or because they were actually imbalanced?

I agree with the T4 em gun weight increase, not with the last decrease overall decrease. I don't know how I feel about the EM gun dispersion increase.

I don't drive a Kain or Mesmer, so I'm not qualified to say whether they're OK as is or not (unlike many of you who have no problem commenting on a Gropho even though you've never been in one).

What does a Gropho's bonuses have to do with a Kain's or Mesmer's anyways?  It's not like "ZOMG if they fix the Gropho's bonuses, they'll never fix the others."  They didn't not remove the shield bonus from the Gropho at the same time as they did remove it from the Kain because they didn't have the resources. They didn't remove the Gropho shield bonus because they didn't think it was necessary, and people who have never fought in one telling them it was a good decision doesn't help them realize that putting a defensive bonus that interferes with offense on a pure combat bot is piss-poor design. 

Shield bonuses belong on ewars and industrials. Not on pure combat bots.  It's as simple as that.

I  respect your opinion because you actually use a Gropho, but I disagree with it.  I never said the Gropho is weak. I said the shield bonus is not an appropriate bonus for a combat bot and such a PITA to use that next to nobody does.  And, in answer to your EP question, I've been playing for ~10 months. You can do the EP math.

The fact that you've been able to use it successfully (and if you don't use a shield on your Gropho, why the hell are you saying it's good?) does not change that. Like I said before, I can turn a screw with a coin. That doesn't make a coin a good screw driver.

I'm willing to bet that if the devs scan the game's data base they won't 5 players in the entire game (including you, they'll only need to find 4 others) that have a shield equipped on their Grophos.  That says a lot about what the player base as a whole (not the 10 people who are regulars on the forums) thinks about the shield bonus.

As for making them all the same:

1) It's the combination of bonuses that makes a bot unique. not the individual bonuses.

2) There are plenty of potential bonuses that haven't been given out yet that would be infinitely more useful to everyone but the <5 players who actually use shields on their Grophos. Such as:

     ECCM strength bonus
     Demob resistence bonus
     Signal detection bonus
     Explosion size bonus (maybe OP)

I don't know if any of these are practical in terms of balance and I'm not advocating for any one of these. My point is that there are unique and useful potential bonuses they can give the Gropho that wouldn't make it OP in 1v1 and still be useful in some capacity to the large majority of people actually using a Gropho.

By the way all 4 of those ideas are terrible.

Bonus is fine where it is now

Just Sayin
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I have no porblem with your view at all! In fact, I think it's the best solution there is. Make missles able to fire through shields. The rationale can be the same principle as existed in the "Dune" universe, where a knife could penetrate a shield  while a projectile couldn't. Speed. Missles fly relatively slowly in comparison to beams and slugs and this slower speed allows them to pass through shields.  The really interesting implication for pvp would be: If they can fly through shields on the way out, can they also penetrate on the way in?

Anni, how would you suggest fixing shield mechanics?

Omg are you suggesting the ability to shoot missiles while shield is on?
Do you understand how OP this would be?

this has been talked about long long long ago back in the beta. Because a purely pvp bonus mixed in with cycle time mismatching because of extensions/tunings means shield is stupid/impractical in most setups on it was ignored.

This is because as a gropho is basically a larger waspish its natural bonus should be a range bonus. This is seen as OP on the gropho and any other bonus would equally be pretty much useless so it was just left alone.

Still i feel its a uttter waste of bonus space and would prefer a nerfed 2-3% to missile range on it instead of the 5%/ext.lvl

Either way i dont think anything is going to be done about it, atleast anytime soon ALF has his spreadsheets of numbers that he won't adjust unless he has to and thats what we have to accept.