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DICE just put up some information about changes that are coming to the Specialists of Irish and Dozer in Season 5 of Battlefield 2042. These changes seem largely focused on their unique abilities: Dozer's SOB-8 Ballistic Shield and Irish's APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel.
DICE says that these two Specialists "need some improvements to ensure they provide similar gameplay experience as others within their class." They note that both of these Specialists are underutilized and they hope that the improvements they are making to each Specialist will see players pick them a bit more often.
- Dozer was always meant to be played as the up-close and personal breacher, but we’ve noticed his gameplay can be improved to emphasize this further isn’t as satisfying to play as we would like.
- For Irish we wanted to focus primarily on the APS-36 Shootdown Sentinel, not only its interceptive functionality but also the communicative and defensive capabilities of the gadget.​
Dozer
Dozer will now be able to strafe, rotate, and pitch the Ballistic Shield more quickly than he previously could.DICE is also improving the animations for bashing enemies and increasing the speed in which you deploy and undeploy the shield.
Dozer is now going to be able to use his shield while using ziplines.
Those fighting against Dozer will see some changes as well. Previously, when shooting at Dozer's deployed shield, the ricocheted bullets would bounce back at you with little deviation. Now, there is more bullet deviation which should lessen the amount of harm you inflict on yourself when shooting at his shield.
There will now also be some additional XP events related to Dozer that will reward the player accordingly. First, Dozer will now get a Damage Assist if an enemy shoots his shield, gets hit by a deflected bullet, and then dies within 5 seconds. Secondly, a Distraction Assist will pop when an enemy shoots the shield and is killed by another teammate within 5 seconds.
Irish
Irish is getting a balancing pass on his Shootdown Sentinel. First up, the Sentinel will now have a 5-second window from its first intercept to take down any additional projectiles that get near it. After the initial intercept time has finished, the Sentinel enters a recharge state and will no longer be able to intercept any projectiles for 7.5 seconds.This new recharge feature is coming alongside the ability to take out Sentinels with "a suitably placed EMP Grenade" or with C5.
DICE says they have done an audio pass on each state of the Sentinel that will offer more readability as to what state it's in at any given time. They're also making it so that you can assign a color of the lights on the Sentinel via the Team, Squad, and Enemy team color customization options.
There will be additional quality of life updates coming in Season 5. DICE will probably reveal more of those in the days ahead given that Season 5 is rapidly approaching. We already know there will be some sort of a squad management system coming. We also know that DICE is adding All-Out Warfare attachments to the Vault weapons.
