I think black ops and cod4 have the best perk balance.
So what red perks were you using besides juggernaut (which reduced damage on bullets AND explosives), stopping power, and maybe UAV jammer? And did anyone find any real reason to use the blue perk for anything other than claymores, triple frag, bandolier, and maybe RPG? Not to mention the ridiculously amount of Final Stand and Martyrdom.
Black Ops was mostly balanced with perks, but ghost pro should have been a different tier perk, marathon pro should have had faster vaulting, and tactical mask should've had flash, and concussion resistance without the pro perk. Also, second chance should have been swapped out for something else (preferably something akin to blind eye)
It also says a lot about how balanced MW3's perks are that the only complaints I hear are that Assassin is OP and that Blast Shield and Overkill are useless. And all they would need to do to balance that would be moving the CUAV and EMP resistance to Blast Shield Pro and nerfing secondaries enough so that there is incentive to use Overkill. Hardline Pro is great (especially if you have recon pro), and Quickdraw is very useful for snipers and LMGs.
David Vonderhaar, the lead mp designer at 3arc, is asking on his twitter what would make LMGs truly viable in COD, this will obviously be reflected in Iron Wolf so it might be worth getting some suggestions in. I think this is a tough one to solve without turning them into ARs. The slow movement speed and ADS just destroys them completely. I know this is not strictly MW3 related but since every COD has faced this problem I thought it was worth posting.
CoD4 LMGs worked because they had the following advantages:
- More damage per second at range. M249 did 30 damage at 925 RPM, RPD did 40 damage at 700 RPM, and M60 did did 50-40 damage (drop-off was somewhere between SMG and AR range) at 600 RPM.
- No Sway (all full auto ARs had sway)
- More Ammo
Those perks made LMGs very viable for situations where you are shooting multiple people and/or at long range as well as taking out Helicopters (which was pretty much hopeless in CoD4 unless you had an RPG or LMG.
In comparison the LMGs in Black-Ops had:
- no damage advantage except for the M60 and Stoner
- no ammo advantage unless you were either using the M60 or using extended mags
- smaller hipfire spread (compared to ARs) for the HK21 and RPK
- no sway, but didn't matter because in black ops the only guns that had sway were snipers and pistols.
In MW3, the LMGs have:
- Less range reduction for silencers
- Faster damage (slightly more so normally, significantly more so with Rapid Fire)
- significant sway and recoil reduction if you are prone and some reduction if you are crouching (prone has pretty much no recoil even with rapid fire)
- more ammo
- not as much ironsight zoom as ARs (just ironsights though, because ARs get 1.35 ironsight zoom whereas everything else gets 1.2 ironsight zoom)
- a lot more visual recoil than in previous games (which goes away if you use a thermal sight)
The ammo part works great with Blind eye pro because it lets you easily take out UAVs and helicopters more easily (and possibly in the same clip).
edit: as a side note, he's also said they are thinking of ways of nerfing ghost/assassin other than putting it in the same tier as a blindeye style perk. Suggestions include making ghost players invisible only on alternate sweeps of UAV, thus making campers easier to identify.
The solution isn't nerfing Ghost (other than putting the air-support resistance somewhere else), but buffing all the other perks in the same class.
removing that class next time I play.
