Agents
Equipment -
--Armour: Agent Armour is fairly decent. As with any profession there is generic choices. Predator, (Omni/Clan) Carbonum, and if you're rich, Combined Sharpshooters. (Or Combined Commandos as I hear some Agents use.) Agent specific armour? Well like everyone we get our Shadowlands armour, First Tier, Second Tier and Chosen/Faithful. It's not a bad bad choice, a lot cheaper with the drop in price of the parts, but it's far more time consuming then some would like for what it returns. At lower levels, from ToTW, there is the Shadowfade armour which is practically useless in my opinion but I guess it has it's charm at that level. It's IS equivalent, Gloomfall, is by far a better armour adding real buffs to Agents. From there we have Ofab. Nothing says skilled assassin hiding in the shadows like wearing a wrinkled bag on your head... Be sure to cut some eye holes or you'll be hitting more walls then targets.
The only issue I have with Agent armour is the lack of alternative back armour. The Pelisse of the Elysian Nymph is a nice item but because it only levels to quality 150 it grows old fairly fast and with few alternatives some Agents keep using it till they can get their Ofab counterpart. There are a few other back items out there that can be used, yes, but none that support Agents specifically. There are none that give Rifle or Aimed Shot buffs besides Pelisse. I would really like to see a new Agent specific (and thus supporting) back armour or if nothing else, the Pelisse levelling to quality level 200.
All in all, Agent armour is fairly decent. If you can't afford CSS/CC then you have decent alternatives that won't leave you looking like a gimp.
--Weapons: Agent Weapons are a totally different story. With the Shadowlands expansion Agent's are silently forced to use Perennium Snipers which are nice, but grow old fast. As well, unlike Fixers or Soldiers, (who also use Perenniums) Agents don't have the variety that other professions get with weapons. While a Fixer or Soldier can use the Mortiig weapons and in some cases Kyr'Ozch, Agents are mostly stuck with the Perennium because, beyond lacking a Mortiig weapon, the Kyr'Ozch alternative is to slow, with lower damage then equivalent quality level Perennium, but requiring higher stats to wield. This leaves Agents stuck with the (Superior) Perennium Sniper for most of their levels. It is nearing level 200, if not above it, that an Agent can consider replacing the Superior Perennium Sniper that they have used for the past (assuming the Agent is level 200) 110 levels. That is a massive stale point with every alternative becoming a crippling slow down of attack speed and special recharge times. Anyone wanting to still compete in a team, or survive soloing, is again, silently forced to use the Perennium.
In my opinion there needs to be more diversity, some other weapon that Agents can go for that may be a bit harder to get on, or a bit harder to get a hold of, but that can at least compare to a Perennium of equal quality level.
—Symbiants: Agents only have one line of Symbiants available to them. Artillery. While being a borderline support profession (more and more all the time with the diminishing support for our damage) the Artillery Symbiants do a poor job of supplying us with the stat boosts that would keep us on par with everyone else. Beyond the lack of usefulness in some of them (Left Arm anyone?) they don't support nanos as much as Agents have use for them. In truth we are an Artillery profession and our damage, and thus Symbiant support, should come from our weapon damage. But beyond the lacking diversity of our weapons we also lack damage as other professions defence goes up and our weapon toolset stays static.
Being given access to the Support Symbiants would solve a lot of our nano use issues and wouldn't be against what the Agent profession is about, as we are borderline support profession. If a team doesn't have a Doctor, there we are in our Mimic to fill the needed support slot.
Toolset -
—Nanos: A big topic for Agents, made bigger if you look at Agents from an Artillery profession perspective. Compared to the other pure Artillery profession, Soldiers, Agents cast a lot of nanos. Traders, Adventurers and Fixer all get access to the Support line and are thus hardly comparable as 'pure' Artillery. An Agents nano toolset is wider then any single profession, as with the False Profession line we have use of our own nanos and then a portion of every other professions. This leaves us with a wanting for nano support, as talked about in the above section.
Focusing on Agent only nanos we are quite limited. From Escape nanos with too short a duration, Procs with insanely high requirements, and DoTs that drain the average nano pool in one cast. The Agent nanos are apt for an Artillery profession. But as has been said before, we are hardly purely Artillery. With the job of being the backup support we can't sacrifice the nano, or the IP to cast our nanos (/constantly)
Our strength, if you can believe it, lays in our False Profession line and the use of other people's toolset. You don't see Agents out there soloing as Agents, you see them Mimic Doctor. With the state of our Agent nanos we rely on Mimic to survive. This I don't have an issue with. When I made an Agent I knew I'd be living off the power of other professions; I just didn't realize that Funcom had denied all support to Mimic for the past six years.
What needs to be done to Agents nanos? They need to be fixed. Not just Mimic, though that is the largest part, but the rest of them need some work. We need Shadowland roots and snares, we need an expansion to the Ruse, Rifle, Aimed Shot and Executioner lines. Something that adds more then another bit of a single stat. A new ruse should give us more conceal yes, but perhaps it should have some perception buff on it too? Or +damage.
Our Mimic? It needs the most work. I was disturbed to hear that Funcom had decided to not continue Mimic (if this is true or not I do not know) and I certainly hope it is not true. Agents, by their nature, should have the Mimic. It is such a unique function, not only to the profession, but to the entire game. Expanding it could very well save the Agent profession and prevent us from becoming the gank and hide profession we are forced to play. You can see my suggested fix in my signature.
—Perks: The only real issue I see with Agent perks is every action takes an eternity to fire. More often then not either you or your target is dead before the perk actions are done. This is really the only thing wrong with them, beyond the multi-profession chain perks that failed horrible and has never been fixed.
A shortening in the perk action execution time would solve a lot of issues people have with perks and allow Agents to deal more damage.
—Specials: Here's another big topic, Agent, specials, and you. A common, and sometimes deliberately instigated, misconception about Agent specials is the power of the Aimed Shot. Not only is Aimed Shot not as powerful as some like to think, but it's not only Agents using it. Everyone and their Shade uses Aimed Shot these days and it's widely used power is used to suppress any attempts an Agent may make to ask for more specials. As an Agent you can't ask for anything more then a weak Fling Shot or you get bashed back down for being greedy, because after all you have Aimed Shot, and it never misses.
A few things need to be brought to peoples attention, both to Funcom and the player community. Aimed Shot caps at 11 seconds and 13 000 damage. True, it cannot miss, but in PvM you only get one AS and then you're stuck using normal shots, or if you have a gun with Fling Shot you get to use that. Our damage in PvM lacks greatly because we don't get to use our AS every time it's ready. In PvP it is a bit of a different story. We get our capped hit once every 11 seconds; and people say that's enough. They complain that the melee equivalent, Sneak Attack, caps at 40 seconds and ranged shouldn't get any more specials. The problem is, this disposition was created because the rest of the community uses Aimed Shot and then their own specials (burst, fling, full auto) and lays waste to everyone; so when an Agent asks for something other then Aimed Shot support they get bashed. The issue I have arrives when, even with 40 second SA, a melee profession comes up and can cap SA, Brawl, Fast Attack and misc. fast acting perks (see above section) and kill people faster then an 11 second AS can recharge. Then melee professions can also (and some frequently do) swap to an AS weapon and get one more special off. This, coupled with the complaints of melee professions that their SA is capped at 40 seconds, adds up to (imo) an unfair conclusion.
Agents are being held back because AS is so powerful and SA is 40 seconds recharge compared to ASs 11 seconds. When in truth; with only AS at our disposal, we are worse off, generally dying before our 'omg uber 11 sec AS' is ready again.
What I'd like to see? At the very least Fling Shot continue to be made a larger part of our specials and perhaps a slow recharging burst. (If you don't think sniper rifles can burst you best look up on modern weapons
) I'd also like to see less people whining about how their SA is so slow at 40 sec cap while neglecting all the other specials they use and a stop to the Agent suppression just because Funcom thinks giving everyone Aimed Shot is a PvP bandaid. It ain't our fault, stop holding us back because of it.
This post is based off of my observations and the input of some of my friends. This post in no way attempts to reflect the Agent community as a whole (though I think some will agree with me) nor is it guaranteed to be 100% accurate in all aspects. With that in mind, please keep violent criticism to a minimum.
