2 replies to this topic

[Entail]

Hello,

I'm wondering what are the competitive stalker builds?
I'm talking about competitive as in 12-man's
or X VS THE WORLD TOURNAMENT top 20 place builds,
where X can be light, medium, heavy, assault.

Are stalkers competitive with only lasers? Or do you need a ballistic in there?
As in with the misery?

[Adiuvo]

Stalkers aren't taken in competitive play much anymore, and if they are the only one really seen is the Misery. For that, a common build is 2x PPC 1x AC20.

Also, the X vs. the world tourneys aren't exactly competitive

Your major leagues as of now include Run Hot or Die, Marik Civil War, and MRBC. Out of those Run Hot or Die (RHoD) is the one specifically designed to determine the best unit in the game. Rankings for it can be found here, though that hasn't been updated for around a month. Overall team rankings can be found here, which incorporates matches from all major leagues in a custom Elo system to rank the teams. It also includes a record of all matches played. For the most part it's accurate.

Edited by Adiuvo, 19 April 2014 - 11:44 AM.

[unFearing]

Stalkers competitive in 12 mans and in tournaments.. two very differing environments and Adi is right that they are not often fielded. If you want to get high damage for those solo tournaments, then either you play a brawler with missiles and lasers, run in and kill everything or die first; or play a long range harasser with lrms and lasers or just lasers. 12 man competitive play tends to showcase the Misery (if any Stalker at all) because the Ballistic adds more versatility in terms of firepower and pinpoint potential without the excessive heat of the other Stalker variants.

Are they competitive with only lasers? In almost all cases, no. Playing ER-LL or PPC-only stalkers is nice until it's a 4v12 situation or something since your team was steamrolled while you sat back. Or load up a bunch of medium or pulse lasers and brawl.. yeah no. In either case, the heat differential of using lasers only as compared to lasers + missiles/ballistic is way too high to effectively hold your own in the front or second line, your friendly fire support notwithstanding. Even then, lasers+missiles can easily run hot, too.

Misery is the ideal for solo play (pinpoint damage matters most when fighting alone / on front line and targeting enemy components), hence why an AC20 + PPC tears apart mechs in that ideal range. While the STK-3F is more maneuverable (more torso twist) and fairly versatile as well, able to be an LRM boat and a good brawler with SRMs and medium lasers do note that overheating will occur fairly often and that an experienced Atlas in a brawler build will destroy you in 1v1.. but you can kill most other Medium-Assault 'mechs in a few salvos if you pick a critical component to take out first (a leg or RT in most cases).