35 replies to this topic

[Elizander]

Once I started noticing that my lasers were dealing low damage due to hitreg, I took them out. All of them. Doesn't matter if I have an extra energy slot and a spare ton, I don't put in a medium laser. My average damage has gone up significantly since I switched to PPC/AC/Gauss/SRMs because I am actually hitting things.



This isn't for boasting. I normally have lasers on my atlas or direwolf and I'm happy to get a 500 damage round. Most times I'm at 150-250 damage. I haven't done anything different other than to completely remove all lasers. I learned how to hit with PPCs, SRMs and ACs and now I had several rounds today where my damage is at 800-900 (and I suck - I mentioned earlier that my damage is usually much lower).

If you feel like you are doing horribly then take the leap and throw away all your lasers in favor of anything projectile. Learn how to hit with it and see if it improves your performance. The Atlas I'm using now has an AC20, 2 SRMA6 and an ER PPC. Based on what I've experienced at 250-300+ ping/latency, 1 PPC will outperform 4 medium lasers if you can hit with it due to hitreg being so bad - at least for me.

Lasers might be holding you back.

[Mad Ox]

Hit reg on lasers is very fishy one game it rocks next game what no way did way more then that. But yeah agree damage is much more consistent with direct damage weapons ppc, ac, srm, just switching my summoner to ssrm4's i doubled my damage with that mech hitting 600-900 noweven though i am in a more dangerous brawling position.

[RazorbeastFXK3]

I've noticed that small and small pulse and medium lasers don't register damage at times even when you use them all at 90M away from your target and your target is stationary.

Medium Pulse Lasers ontheotherhand.. They act like surgical tools carving up the opposition which is rather nice.

[Zack Esseth]

Lasers with bad hit reg? I don't think so, to much laser barf timbers and storm crows.

Things that are issues for lasers, they are hit scan and not front loaded like AC/PPC/Guass/SRMS. So if you don't hold them on target, or your target rounds a corner, of course your not going to do a lot of damage. Next issue, and I spend way to much time training people on, Lasers are hot! If you get in a brawl, unless your only weapon is Lasers, stop using them. Use your AC/SRM/Guass for a brawl, you wont overheat and can keep up a faster rate of fire. To many people try to get in the brawl and use all of their weapons and then complain that they don't do any damage when they spend half the time shut down cause they tried to fire 4 mediums, an AC20 and a pair of SRM6s wile at 90% heat. Not going to work.

Lasers are on most builds a back up, not a primary weapon. If you use them as a back up, as in when your out of ammo, you will do the same kind of damage as if you run like you say you are without them.

[Kodyn]

It really is situational, depends on the match, depends on the lasers as well. For instance, i tend to use combinations of AC/5s and LPLs or ERLL, and on any mech I use those combos on, I often run out of AC ammo, and end up using the lasers for part of the match. Those are the rounds where I get 800-1k damage, and there's no way I'd have reached that without the lasers bolstering the ACs.

I have on the other hand, seen PPCs, LL, and ERLL flat out do no damage to a target in the open, well within range. I'm still convinced this is due to differences in their and my ping, but whatever the case, i tend to focus on AC as main weapons, with lasers as the backup, particularly the LPLs, since they seem to suffer the least hitreg issues.

[Lily from animove]

Laser hitreg is an issue, I had 2 days ago a match vs a circada, i easily cored it dark red with 2 volleys, after another amazing 6 volleys of 2 CERML, which fully or partially hit its CT it just refused to die. Lasers are very much TT atm: a Dicegame.

[Redshift2k5]

Zack Esseth, on 19 October 2014 - 04:46 PM, said:

Lasers with bad hit reg? I don't think so, to much laser barf timbers and storm crows.

I think the OPs issues are related to being antipodal to the game server, giving him above average latency. Laser hitreg itself isn't broken (as you said, laservomit TBRs are doing fine) but not all players have ideal ping and I'm glad the OP was able to work around his issue.

Edited by Redshift2k5, 20 October 2014 - 02:32 AM.

[That Dawg]

I cringe when I load up and see half the enemy team with pings in the 200-300 range.
Mines typically high 30s since the change.
I wonder if other low pingers are having a problem or its something else.
my scores/damage are pretty consistent, but at times I can't figure out how I can steady pump whatever into a red torso and it just keeps running away

[Lily from animove]

Redshift2k5, on 20 October 2014 - 02:16 AM, said:

[/size]

I think the OPs issues are related to being antipodal to the game server, giving him above average latency. Laser hitreg itself isn't broken (as you said, laservomit TBRs are doing fine) but not all players have ideal ping and I'm glad the OP was able to work around his issue.

sry sure my laser vomit wolf does fine, but there are still many situations where the one or the other vomit hits but feels like someone just made a rainbow out of it instead of laserweapons.

[Gamuray]

THIS might be one thing leading to lights and mediums being less common. They generally depend upon lasers for the bulk of their firepower...

My ping is generally below 50 and I still agree with the OP here. Lasers are very unreliable for damage. Though I think they are often worse against componentry than armor. Many times (as someone else mentioned) where an enemy has cherry red CT, but multiple volleys of laser vomit to that general area fails to kill, despite having stripped the armor easily.

[WarPickle]

My Hunchie 4P with nine lasers has no problem dishing out the pain.... I've never had an issue with lasers...

[Bilaz]

Its easy to prove if you are right or wrong. You have stats that show how much you hit and miss, and more importantly how many damage you dealt total. For instance i have 85% accuracy with m.lasers - that means that 15% of shots deal 0 damage. Moreover i can take my total damage and have it divided by 5 (max damge per mlaser shot) and by total shots hit - that would show how good i'm at keeping laser on target. For me its 61% current, 58% archived. And if you take total damage and divide it by 5 and by total shots fired you'll get your total mlaser accuracy - how much of its damage potential you convert to damage - for me its 52% current, 48% archived.

For comparison you can do same stuff with Ac weapons (clan having multishot ac's would have to do exactly the same i think) - i for instance have 65% eff. current and 66% archived (cant totally rely on accuracy stat in any case - since your damage with ac decline past optimal range, plus you may have critical's - so you may end up with less or more than 20 damage per hit even with IS version (for me it was super close in both cases))

So yes - for me ac20 is closer to its theoretical dps, than m.lasers and to reliably outshoot one ac20 i'll need 6.5 sustained (m.laser) dps (and i dont think that can be done on IS mech). But that doesn't mean that its so for ALL lasers and all ac's, and situation may be different for another player.

So all of you have stats - and you can calculate your effective dps with all weapons and make your config - armed with that knowledge, not some hearsay (ofc one also have to keep in mind desired range and mech limitations/quirks)

[mogs01gt]

Funny post since SRMS and PPCs are known to have hit registration issues.

[Blakkstar]

Elizander, if your ping is regularly 300+, I wouldn't doubt you have hitreg issues with lasers. Holding on target with a high ping is tough and reliant on anticipation and luck.

Ballistics and lock-fire weapons (LRM, Streak) will probably help out anybody with consistently high ping.

[RadioKies]

My ~104ping Raven3L loaded with nothing more than dual ERLLasers or sometimes LLasers disagrees with you, here are a few screencaps from recent games to support my lovely laser based light mech:





Your ping is horrible, so maybe lasers not working is a HostStateRewind in combination with high ping problem.

Also, why am I almost always in Bravo lance? Not just on the screenshots, but in most of my drops. Alpha is 2nd and I honestly can't remember a drop that I was in Charlie lance.

[Azmaat]

I wonder if Ammo Explosion counts as damage dealt . That would explain all this ridiculous high damages from all these kill-leaching lights .

[RazorbeastFXK3]

I honestly do miss the times when I see the component destruction registry light up when hitting someone in the right spot and watching all their internals explode in that one section. So far the most explosions I've seen was about 5 or 7.

Azmaat, on 20 October 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

I wonder if Ammo Explosion counts as damage dealt . That would explain all this ridiculous high damages from all these kill-leaching lights .

[Alienized]

lasers work well against slow fat mechs. everyone knows that they have hitreg problems on fast moving small targets.
all a matter of how you use them.

[Tim East]

I have moderate success with SPLs on my Locust, even against faster targets. On the other hand, I'm usually within a couple dozen meters of anything I'm shooting at as well. I can't speak definitively, but I can say anecdotally that I feel like they are functioning properly.

[SixstringSamurai]

We've been noticing some serious degradation in Laser based hitreg in our matches beyond the normal target latency. Laser Vomit Timbers seem to be supported more by the LPL then the mediums. It seems the beam based ones are spotty registration at best.