Just some feedback on what I find problematic with the class, and thoughts how can it be fixed.
The “support” variant of the class (built around Stimm Supply ability) has issues with resilience. They sacrifice a lot of punch so are not that good at getting toughness through combat as the other two branches. Solution: Stimm Supply needs to get new feature that regenerates toughness for HS itself (so it’s not shared with the team)
Bone saw weapon is just unpleasant to use. Its moveset needs some refinement, there are too many strange delays with executing its wide swings, changing coating takes too much time as well. Also I think it would be a nice touch to add a new mechanic which would allow to turn any light attack into heavy “sawing” move if you press and hold button the moment your light attack hits some foe (so it would feel like you stroke the foe, and then slowly dragged the saw, tearing apart the wound)
The whole “support” gameplay of HS is boring as heck, it’s just “press F to drop the kit”, nothing more. No tactical thinking involved, nothing. Even psyker’s bubble require much more than that. It should be reworked into something that would require operative to manipulate their Stimm Supply on the go, to adapt to the changing situation during the mission. Like, while building their skillset, the Cartel’s Special would allow them to use all 4 branches of the current tree at once, just with more variance per each branch. And during the mission they would have to quickly change propoprtions of the Stimm to activate specific branches’ combos they need. So they would be able to set upper left to 2 gauges, upper right to 1, lower left to 3, lower right to 2 (all numbers are arbitrary). That would allow for a lot of tactical flexibility and creativity
So use toughness regen and DR on stimm supply and take more damage reduction talents.
Take more stamina curios and the talent that gives attack speed per stamina, and put attack speed on stimm. Clears that issue right up.
There’s a lot of decisions that go into what you put on your stimm, the viscosity, placement and timing, and who to prioritise if your team isn’t playing bubble bunker, not to mention using it as a toxin bomb completely changing its use as a buff.
I think all of these are solved by a bit more playtime on the class.
You lose so much dmg and DR compared to rampage, you’ll be relegated to needlespam duty most of the time.
Pickpocket giving you a free pass to spam the ranged DS4 into everything masks many issues scum has in general, and will hold its balancing hostage as a result of.
So your “solutions” seems to be centered around loosing even more damage and/or toughness than I’m loosing already. Neither of which seems like a good idea, taking into account you are already losing a lot. And its “support” part is nowhere close to what would justify those sacrifices.
Take more stamina curios and the talent that gives attack speed per stamina, and put attack speed on stimm. Clears that issue right up.
Already doing the first, and I tried the second too at some point - no it didn’t fix that. Also, that weapon is nowhere that good you would start to center your build around it like that, that’s the problem. It doesn’t belong anywhere at all, it’s not particularly good at killing chaff (due to those awkward wide swings which are so easy to interrupt for chaff even, and too narrow light attacks), nor it’s good at killing armor too (takes too much time comparing even to combat axe). And If you play support build, you make it centered around your team, not yourself, first of all, that’s a flaw in judgment; so choosing buffs in it that make some weapon work for you is.. shortsighted.
There’s a lot of decisions that go into what you put on your stimm, the viscosity, placement and timing, and who to prioritise if your team isn’t playing bubble bunker
I very much doubt 95% of players ever doing those complex considerations, neither that those are really required in 95% of the game, besides may be a tiny percentage of people going into Havoc 40 missions in static groups. So, let me correct what I said before: for everybody else who would play that build, its gameplay as support kind of player would be rather shallow and they would just press F off CD all the time. None of properties you mentioned has any meaning for them after they’ve completed their build, all interesting stuff that comes with Cartel Special ends on station, you do it once and then just press F all the time, it’s a huge loss of potential, that part could be much more interesting and allow you a lot of tactical edge, would it had ability to change the composition of your Stimm on the run, adapting to the team you got in that particular PUG, or to the situation you end up in at some point during the mission.