85 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 31 July 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

How about "normalizing" of the pulse lasers (specifically, the LPL), and "normalizing" of the ACs? Then again, Ghost Heat took the AC2 away more than the current AC2 nerf.

Oh, the memories.

and how, even today, Ghost Heat ruins multiple AC2's under the limit because if they fire out of sync, it's very easy for the system to read them as breaking ghost heat bounds.

If you, say, mount 3 AC/2's, with two in one group and the third in another(say, for left and right arms), and press those two buttons offset by a quarter of a second or so, yay! Exponentially growing ghost heat!

Got mech skills? Now it's even easier to trigger ghost heat with just two AC/2's! Put them in a dragon? Unless you have them both in the same group (and even sometimes when you do) they'll trigger Ghost Heat.

Poor AC/2's. I honestly have never understood why Paul insists on continually nerfing them. At no point have they ever been better than any other autocannon, under any circumstances.

Edited by Wintersdark, 31 July 2014 - 02:16 PM.

[Deathlike]

Wintersdark, on 31 July 2014 - 02:14 PM, said:

and how, even today, Ghost Heat ruins multiple AC2's under the limit because if they fire out of sync, it's very easy for the system to read them as breaking ghost heat bounds.

If you, say, mount 3 AC/2's, with two in one group and the third in another, and press those two buttons offset, yay! Exponentially growing ghost heat!

Poor AC/2's. I honestly have never understood why Paul insists on continually nerfing them. At no point have they ever been better than any other autocannon, under any circumstances.

It's kosher PGI logic. There are no bounds!

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 31 July 2014 - 02:16 PM, said:

It's kosher PGI logic. There are no bounds!

Indeed. I'd probably vote for AC/2 nerfings (if there was a blanket entry) as, while I find Ghost heat... well, I've made my thoughts clear about that elsewhere ... I loved AC/2's. I loved them for what they were, even though I understood how they were simply inferior weapons, because they were fun. But that wasn't good enough; oh no. People cried about Evil AC/2 Macros tearing through their mechs in half the time (despite that being ridiculous and impossible) so Paul had to nerf them anyways.

Sorry, I get ranty about AC/2's. It really makes me twitch.

[Lightfoot]

No.

It's better, but MechWarrior Online is GunWarrior. All the nerfs to control damage are directed at Heat and Heat is already the weakness of Energy weapons. Ballistics ignore Ghost Heat and DHS 1.4 since they get all the DHS 2.0's they need from the Engine DHS. Guns are heavy (other than the AC2) so you are unlikely to be able to, or need to, carry enough to incur a Ghost Heat penalty.

They would need to really buff Energy to make it the equal of Ballistics, but they are preparing for a nerf to PPCs is what players seem to be saying.

Ghost Heat does a triple nerf on Lasers since it extends the beam duration time by 0.6-1 second if you stagger them. So using lots of lasers on the Awesome is effectively blocked.

I think that will leave Flamers? Hey, you, Dire Wolf, with the 3 UAC10's and ER Mediums, better watch out for me! I am an AWS-8Q with 7, SEVEN! Flamers!

The Battletech mechs are only balanced because the three weapon types are roughly equal once heat, ammo, heatsinks, recharges and range are figured in. You can't just nerf and nerf Energy weapons and continue to use the canon Battletech loadouts because you will have ruined all the Energy-only or Energy primary mechs. If that is the best that can be done with balancing MechWarrior Online they should just give all the mechs several Ballistic hardpoints because that is the game play that is being fostered.

Edited by Lightfoot, 31 July 2014 - 02:48 PM.

[MonkeyCheese]

MonkeyCheese, on 31 July 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

And if cbills allow one day I might just rebuy my old fully mastered 8T awesome and rebuild it to its old 2lrm15 4LL tag days.

Sold a few pointless things and rebuilt my 8T awesome time to party

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Guys... Guys...

They just want PPC's to be the super skill, slow flying but high damage weapon they were in Mechwarrior 2.

[Kaox Veed]

Flash Frame, on 31 July 2014 - 02:39 PM, said:

Guys... Guys...

They just want PPC's to be the super skill, slow flying but high damage weapon they were in Mechwarrior 2.

Oh dear I was living in a nostalgia dream world about what MW2 looked like...and you ruined it!

[AztecD]

Flash Frame, on 31 July 2014 - 02:39 PM, said:

Guys... Guys...

They just want PPC's to be the super skill, slow flying but high damage weapon they were in Mechwarrior 2.

Oh man im getting high just looking at it

live mw2

[Mister Blastman]

Dragon could use that CT Buff... the 5N could also use 6 ballistic hardpoints in that arm... > : ) And melee combat + knockdown strength. The Dragon could use all of the above.

[verybad]

1. Make the PPC a charging weapon just like the Gauss.

2. Mkae firing Charging weapons up to two at a time fine, no ghost, etc.

3. Make firing MORE than two at a time have a chance of shutting down your mech as it draws too much power from the engine, the more you fire, the higher the chance.

4. Get rid of the charging process for gauss however, and don't introduce them for PPC.

It's overly convoluted, and they need to look at the overall goals here, not what's going now. This makes firing more than 2 charged weapons at a time a chance to put the firing mech into trouble. So it's possible, but dangerous.

The current system is ridiculously odd.

Reducing the speed of PPC shots is a bad idea, it makes no sense. They're a Charged particle cannon, the thing is a controlled lightning bolt.

Edited by verybad, 31 July 2014 - 02:58 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Absolutely do not make the PPC a charge up weapon like the Gauss Rifle. That would break the game because then the only FLD weapons would be Ballistics which are so heavily favored now it's already broken the mechs that don't carry ballistics. Like the Awesome. It was nice for PGI to try to do something for the Awesome, but all the Energy weapons are horribly nerfed regardless.

Edited by Lightfoot, 31 July 2014 - 03:04 PM.

[MonkeyCheese]

MonkeyCheese, on 31 July 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

And if cbills allow one day I might just rebuy my old fully mastered 8T awesome and rebuild it to its old 2lrm15 4LL tag days.

MonkeyCheese, on 31 July 2014 - 02:34 PM, said:

Sold a few pointless things and rebuilt my 8T awesome time to party

To follow up considering it goes 61kph and I am more familiar with my 85kph awesome I did well first match back in my 8T 613 damage and 11 assists and I didnt die and only lost my front CT armor towards the end of the fight thanks to a 3PPC awesome on the other side.

So yes Energy and CT buffs are great. Still 100% not a noob friendly mech tho.

Edited by MonkeyCheese, 31 July 2014 - 03:06 PM.

[badaa]

all these stupid changes are a waste of time when the real problem is pinpoint

[Impyrium]

Don't listen to them Bishop! A fully mastered Awesome, along with the new quirks, is definitely a lot better now. It is still, however, not 'great'. It won't beat the meta, but I don't give a flying stravag's ass about the meta. The most efficient build for me is still 2PPC, Large Laser, 3ML, SRM6 and AMS with a puny XL320 or something along those lines. A 3PPC build is viable, but obviously much hotter, and without the large laser you loose your ability to effectively defend yourself up close.

Obviously you can't play it like other Assualt 'Mechs, like the Atlas, due to the barn door someone strapped to it. You're a support 'Mech, positioning is key.

So now it's at least fun to play. It probably won't beat other Assault 'Mechs still, especially up close, but the changes did help a lot. Also speed is NOT always key, since so many seem to be stuck in that rut.

EDIT: Though what really holds it back are the weapon mechanics, not the 'Mech itself. PPCs being unable to deal damage up close. Other 'Mechs scoring pinpoint on your vulnerable side torsos. That damned ghost heat. Seriously, get rid of ghost heat for the Awesome.

Edited by AUSwarrior24, 31 July 2014 - 04:31 PM.

[Wintersdark]

badaa, on 31 July 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:

all these stupid changes are a waste of time when the real problem is pinpoint

Pinpoint instant convergence is a problem, but its not THIS problem. Fixing pinpoint doesn't fix the Awesome, which has long been hampered by a huge, impossible to miss barn door torso and reliance on heavy energy weapons severely cursed by our heat system and Ghost Heat.

So, yeah, pinpoint is a major issue, but it doesn't belong in this thread.

[Bishop Steiner]

Yokaiko, on 31 July 2014 - 01:39 PM, said:

How he still has that position is a mystery.

very compromising photographs, is my guess.

[Fleeb the Mad]

I've been running Awesomes for a long time. Someone who's handled one before the buffs could feel the changes immediately.

Any time in the past few days I've managed to stay alive with a deep red CT has been thanks to that little armor buff. Just makes it take one more good hit to end you than it did before. That's let me escape a few scrapes barely alive instead of dead, able to roll around somewhere else and keep shooting for a while. It's hard to feel out how long you last in a firefight, but it's fairly telling when you come out of a fight, look at your CT and realize that extra armor was the difference between being alive and dead.

But the most telling buff was heat. Felt like I was walking into the shade the first time I wheeled my 8Q out after the patch. Could keep on shooting much longer than before. It was a bit of a strange sensation trading shots in brawl range with a Mad Cat and being able to completely lapse on fire discipline without overheating. Keep in mind that while the 10% dissipation bonus and the -12.5% heat on energy bonus is something tangible if you're salvo-firing ER PPCs, its much more pronounced on cooler-running builds that have more continuous fire over a longer prior of time.

Since any mech's ability to keep up continuous fire becomes less about its heat cap and more about the difference between heat gained/lost over the weapon cycle times, a small reduction can have a disproportionate influence. Let's make up some numbers. If you generate 30 heat in 4 seconds (We'll just assume you wait that half second to fire your third PPC) vs 14 dissipation in those same seconds, you gain 16 heat every salvo and it builds up until you overheat and have to hold off the trigger. After the buffs this becomes 26.25 heat vs 15.4 dissipation, for a net heat gain of 10.85. That means you can fire 33% longer than before, which is fairly great mileage out of a buff that looks like 22.5% on paper.

What this really means for the Awesome is that now it can do something that a Stalker or a Battlemaster can't match with the same payload. It is no longer a mech that only trades down from its closest peers. That was a long time coming, and quite honestly seems to be a well thought-out choice.

[Lightfoot]

Well, I am just using an AWS-8Q with 2xERPPC and 1 PPC and 20 DHS. You can generally make this work by managing the heat spike a bit, but 3x PPCs don't compete with any ballistic plus laser attacker. I am very good with hitting the center torso on opponents so the PPCs would not be much better for someone else. The key to success or failure is if you attract the attention of the other team or not. If not, you can whittle them down, if you become their primary target, it's over because the Awesome is slow and easy to hit. so.... how do you hide an AWS-8Q shooting bolts of slow (well slower than the Gauss and AC2) blue lightning across the map? That is your challenge.

Edit: I suppose I should run this with the 9M and an XL, but I wanted to test the toughness of the AWS-8Q with a ST engine. Toughness is better, but you still get ripped apart by ACs mixed with medium lasers.

Edited by Lightfoot, 31 July 2014 - 08:07 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Bishop Steiner, on 31 July 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Obviously, with no JJ and Ballistics, to our Meta-Overlords, it will always be a scrub mech, for BADs, unless we see a serious sea change to the state of the Meta. So, no, I'm not asking if it's becoming all the range in Comp12 matches.

I'm more interested in what the other 99% have seen.

Does the CT boost and energy cooldown make a difference? Is it now playable for PUG matches, and casual play?

What are the builds you are toying with, which variant, if any do you feel is the standout? Has Pretty Baby actually become playable? This will probably be my dry run on the AWS-8Q


And as an aside, what about the other "quirked" Mechs?

IMO:
the CT of the Dragon needs a similar boost to the AWS.
Love the Left Arm armor for the Centurion
Hunchback should have gotten an armor boost to the RT, also.
Could the Victor get nerfed any harder? (and in all the wrong ways, still?)

TBH, it needs a redesign. Not a quirk redesign, though I very much appreciate that, but a model redesign.

People have been saying it's too big since time immaterial, because it's really is just too big. It was designed far before most of the meta emerged that really started to highlight the flaws in the chassis. It looks cool, is hands down my favourite BT mech, and I had close to a cool mil XP for it before I got bored and coverted great swathes of it in sales.

The new energy perks are Awesome, but you still have to play like a fragile little flower. The CT just attracts too much fire, and is designed so that even mad epileptic torso twisting with a max rated engine isn't enough to protect your proud, jutting pecs from annihilation.

My wish; let Alex revisit it, and make it into the svelte and rock hard killer it is supposed to be.

[YueFei]

Kiiyor, on 31 July 2014 - 08:11 PM, said:

TBH, it needs a redesign. Not a quirk redesign, though I very much appreciate that, but a model redesign.

People have been saying it's too big since time immaterial, because it's really is just too big. It was designed far before most of the meta emerged that really started to highlight the flaws in the chassis. It looks cool, is hands down my favourite BT mech, and I had close to a cool mil XP for it before I got bored and coverted great swathes of it in sales.

The new energy perks are Awesome, but you still have to play like a fragile little flower. The CT just attracts too much fire, and is designed so that even mad epileptic torso twisting with a max rated engine isn't enough to protect your proud, jutting pecs from annihilation.

My wish; let Alex revisit it, and make it into the svelte and rock hard killer it is supposed to be.

They could stick with the existing model and just make the arm hitboxes HUGE. There's already precedence for this with the Raven leg hitboxes being larger than the visual model. They could make the Awesome's arm hitboxes larger than the actual arms, and have it cover the side torsos as well. Then whatever's left of the torso hitboxes are much slimmer, just divide that among left/right/center torso.

So, in exchange for being reliant on energy, and most variants being slow, and having low-slung weapons and no JJs, they'd be the toughest 80-ton mech in the game, provided that the pilot torso twists.