im not the biggest fan of the assault cannon, but my friend and i both made troopers and we both dont like the cannon. He and i bot wanted to become vanguards but it will be better if one of us can heal. My question is can the commando use a rifle and all his ablities. i know he loses some damage but i just want to know if he loses abilities as well

Yes he loses SOME abilities, Check out the commando list there are a few that state requires autocannon to use.

If you are healing, I think you can use all of the heals while using a Rifle. You will lose out on a bit of healing performance tho compared to using an Assault Cannon

im not the biggest fan of the assault cannon, but my friend and i both made troopers and we both dont like the cannon. He and i bot wanted to become vanguards but it will be better if one of us can heal. My question is can the commando use a rifle and all his ablities. i know he loses some damage but i just want to know if he loses abilities as well

 

you lose on damage with all weapon attacks:

 

charged bolts, hail of bolts (which require an assault cannon to use anyway), also hammershot, high impact bolt, full auto

 

your healing will be just the same as it's based on your tech power

 

for healing, the main difference is that most of the few dps skills you use when/if you contribute to dps will do less damage or are simply unusable at all (charged bolts / hail of bolts)

 

 

 

that said, i'm not sure why everyone is so against carrying around the big assault cannon, but they're fine running about squatting the whole time with a blaster rifle.