43 replies to this topic

[Mauricio Gomes]

I own 3 catapults...

All 3 need a workign team to work (when my team works, then they perform brilliantly, earning lots of cbills and xp)

But sometimes I have a team that is outright stupid, and it is absolutely infuriating, for example I just had a match where the Alpha lance of my team rushed alone against the entire enemy team and died before some mechs of our team even started moving.

Then my lance had two King Crabs, that decided that the best course of action was wait for everyone else to die, while they huddled in a cave.

Then after everyone else was dead, they rushed the enemy, but not even not near each other, instead they tried to make the worst positioning possible (example: back into a wall, and force the other teammate to cross his line of fire).

Meanwhile I was in my LRM catapult... not doing much, since there was never any enemy to lock on in the radar, except when I got tired of waiting the King Crabs and decided to peek at the enemy by myself (the enemy instead of sniping me, sent a wolf pack of lights at me... the last non-slow mech of my team decided to just wait me die to THEN engage the wolf pack and die too).


I want to know what mech I can get, so I can survive matches where my team went full ******, until I can get high enough Tier that allow me to play my support mechs.

[Elizander]

Just pick any of the usual meta mechs and practice until you start dealing 500-1k damage per match at the cost of sacrificing the lives of your nubbie teammates.

People have risen out of the low ranks with almost any mech even if they are bad. It's mostly the mindset of:

"I have to not die early."
"I have to be active and spam lots of damage."
"I have to get kills quickly before these guys kill my team."

Pretty much gotta get into that carry mentality and tighten that lifting belt. Whatever mech that lets you do that should be fine. Try out the trial timberwolf/stormcrow and see if they do you any good or the trial Thunderbolt and others.

[Sylonce]

The thing to keep in mind with regards to tier is that it isn't exactly a skill bar. So long as you can put out decent damage a decent damage output, and can get away with about average score, you should be able to rise in tier even if you lose half your games.

Catapult was one of the mechs I used frequently out of tier 4 (although I also ran a combination of urbie, hellbie, and timby).

The thing I find helps is that you should drive something that can at least carry it's own weight without too much team mate dependency. In using a Catapult, I also decked mine in such a way that in addition to being able to fire off LRMs, I also maintained a combination of pulse and medium lasers so that I can handle knife fights. Even if my team couldn't get me any locks (not that you should depend on this), I could still pop forward and unload lasers onto the enemy.

Edited by Sylonce, 28 November 2015 - 01:51 PM.

[Rogue Jedi]

I cannot suggest any specific Mech because next patch (Tuesday) the great rebalance happens, it will probably be a few weeks before people figure out how to exploit the new situation, it is quite likely that many of the current "best" Mechs ^{(mostly the overquirked IS Mechs like the Thunderbolt and Dragon)} will end up below average come Tuesday evening.

the easiest way to increase your PSR is to get lots of damage, if you always get at least 300 damage you should keep going up.

there are other things besides damage which help but damage usualy seems to make up more than half my score ^{(and I only average 200-350 per match depending on chassis)}

unfortunately taking team reliant builds is a bad idea if you are after increasing your PSR, unless you are dropping with a group and can guarantee you will have people working with you.

I prefer teamwork orientated builds, and only drop with a team about half the time hence I am unlikely to ever make it past tier 3.

hopefully now that PGI with the great rebalance are putting more of a focus on roles other than damage dealer they will start fairly rewarding other roles, e.g. an information warfare Mech, damage sponge, or harasser needs to be able to make as much per drop as a damage dealer otherwise what is the point of having the various different roles?
A good pilot in a SDR-5V ^{(the most lightly armed Mech in the game)} should be able to make about as much as a comparable pilot in a TBR or DWF, and that is currently not the case, unless you do really well a Light will rarely get scores similar to an average performance from a heavy or assault

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 28 November 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Practice in the trial mech enforcer. Set ML in arms on one tic, AC10 another and the two torso mounted (chain fire) on another.

Keep Arm mounted tic highlighted to switched to chain fire.

Used the trial enforcer/cheetah/raven to complete the event on two alt accounts (do not own any mechs) and raised it from the default tier 4 to approx 5% into tier 3. The T-bolt is doable, though I preferred my customized one on this account with 3xLL/2ML. That trial enforcer is a beast when handled properly. It does have an XL engine, the weapons or low slung but with its speed, as long as you do not try to tank it can do some serious damage before being taken out.

And adjust mouse settings to have more control over aiming.

I am at the point to where if I purchase any of those 4 mechs, basic skills would be completed and with the points to finish up Elite once another 2 variants are skilled up.

In the current climate, the cat tends to be a specialist, tis arms (boxes are huge and no coverage for side torso, making IS-XL engine non-friendly, so it lacks the speed to evade effectively. You would be better off going with SRMS instead of LRM, since with me most missile damage done to me is by SRMs by a big margin when compared to LRMS.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 28 November 2015 - 03:16 PM.

[Chocowolf Sradac]

I'll be honest Lrms are not as good as what people think they are

You may have noticed that all the catapults except for the K2 and Jester are Missle platforms most revolving around Lrms. In the right situation and with good scouts lrms have their use but they are quite situational of a weapon system that relies quite a lot on team mates. I would advise practicing using direct fire weapons such as lasers, Autocannons and Gauss which are the main weapons many meta mechs use. Lrms do have their place but in solo cue you have seen it yourself that there are games you can't rely on teammates.

Keep in mind that the PSR is only really a system to try to balance teams nothing more. There are a number of aspects that does not reflect on your PSR so I would say don't even worry about it. When it comes to piloting catapults it's really important if your using the lrms to learn about the maps so that you know where you can be to be able to hit your target. You can dumbfire the lrms which is a lost skill from many pilots to be able to do. Keep in mind that your Lrms do have a Minimum range of 180m and a max range so avoid shooting if your out of range it only is a waste of ammo and unnecessary heat generation

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Mauricio Gomes, on 28 November 2015 - 01:34 PM, said:

I own 3 catapults...

All 3 need a workign team to work (when my team works, then they perform brilliantly, earning lots of cbills and xp)

This is your primary problem. Any 'mech that is wholly dependent on its teammates is inherently a total crapshoot (in the dice regard mostly). If you want to advance your PSR and don't drop with the same people consistently while driving it, your games are going to be very extreme- extremely good, or extremely bad. I would recommend setting your 'mechs up to be capable of independent function. You don't have to have a complete weapons suite for any given range or anything like that if you don't want to, but you should always have a solution- being fast enough to escape, tough enough to endure, or dangerous enough to kill anything dangerous are the primary solutions here. With more practice, you can also pull off sneaky enough not to get caught or annoying enough to drive foes away.

Mauricio Gomes, on 28 November 2015 - 01:34 PM, said:

But sometimes I have a team that is outright stupid,

I'm sorry, but this is going to happen no matter what tier you're in. It's not necessarily stupidity- some players are in the wrong tier by inflating their scores with high-damage 'mechs and then shifting to lower-damage 'mechs that make their actual performance as a pilot more significant to their score. Some players just don't like working together and got their high scores by being opportunists and letting their teammates take the fall so they could get a high match score, win or lose. Some players are actually good, but occasionally go haring off on their own without saying anything.

The best thing you can do about this is to communicate as much as you can with your team- via VOIP or a voice chat, or, if you have to, in-game text chat. Whether or not and how your teammates respond can tell you a lot about what to expect from them during the match, and you can modify your actions accordingly.

Mauricio Gomes, on 28 November 2015 - 01:34 PM, said:

I want to know what mech I can get, so I can survive matches where my team went full ******, until I can get high enough Tier that allow me to play my support mechs.

The actual solution here depends on your real goal.

Do you just want to get into a high tier, because you're sure that'll solve your problems? Take anything that can haul around three or four UAC/5s if Inner Sphere, or any of the most popular Omnis (Stormcrow, Timber Wolf, Dire Wolf) if Clan. These 'mechs can output huge amounts of damage win or lose, whether or not they're scoring kills, and damage is still very heavily weighted in match score, which determines your PSR advancement. This won't actually fix things for you, and may make it worse, because it can push you up into matches with opposition you're not ready to face and then you wind up rubberbanding between tiers as you experience the same kind of awesome-or-fail matches you're having now playing a missileboat.

Do you want to not have as extreme an experience and instead deal with matches where you're performing consistently? Take a 'mech with a partially mixed loadout, particularly if it has variants that differ strongly from one another, or most variants can perform a wide variety of roles. Most Omnimechs can do this if they're Stormcrow or heavier, and on the Inner Sphere side, Hunchbacks, Shadow Hawks, Thunderbolts, and to a lesser extent Jagermechs can fill this position. All of these are tried 'mechs with lots of possibilities, so you can take something 'meta', such as a dual gauss Jager or an SRM Splatcrow and tweak it until it fits best with how you function, or even muddle your own way to a build that plays to your strengths and mitigates your weaknesses as a pilot. Your PSR value may not accelerate, but being able to solve your problems yourself will mean a much more consistent and good-feeling performance and it will mean you learn more about the game as you progress to higher tiers and your actual skill improves.

Do you just want your teammates to work with you? The best solution, then, is to find a unit that wants new players and whose existing members you get along well with. Join them and drop primarily alongside them. They'll learn how to work with you, you'll learn how to work with them, and you'll be able to rely on them when you need to. They'll probably also tell you to take a more varied or flexible build on your 'mech, but that may depend. You could be a fantastic missile-hucker, in which case they'd adjust to suit you- or you could just be average at it, in which case you and they will meet on some middle ground.


The main thing is the second one, though- you need to be driving a 'mech that can handle any situation, either by overcoming, escaping, or preventing it. Anything beyond that is entirely on your skills and choices as a pilot, but until you do that, you'll keep having this back-and-forth win-or-suck experience.

[Artemis Ellis]

I am in tier 4 and I havent played a long time but ive noticed that it seems like many mechwarriors in pugs are looking out for themselves alone. Two out of three lost matches has someone blaming teammates for the loss and calling them noobs etc. Few people even type "GG" at the end of the match.

Is there any way that you can change your loadout so that its not so dependent on others? Im not experienced with your mech so please forgive my ignorance.

Edited by Artemis Ellis, 28 November 2015 - 06:19 PM.

[Mauricio Gomes]

Catapults are made solely for support.

I own a Splatcat (it is my best mech that can handle itself, still, it requires stealth, in the sense of your team attracting enemy attention, so you can flank the enemy), a LRM boat cat (The Catapult C4, its quirks are solely to improve LRM 20), and a K2, the K2 CAN be a reasonably "solo" mech, but it is not good as some other mechs, the main use of the K2 is fire support with PPCs (ie: you keep hitting peekers with PPCs, preventing them from sniping your assaults)

[Revis Volek]

Direct Fire

Anything with lots of Direct Fire

Lasers and AC's (other then the Ac2) should be your go to weapons....certain mechs, certain builds and certain styles (mostly tight, aggressive groups) can get away with other things but even in group queue Direct Dmg is king.

With Lasers and AC's most of the time if you see it you can shoot it and having a nice cool mech with long range and a high alpha is what most meta players go for these days. Cruise the build forums and find mechs that fit this mold but that you also pilot well. If you simply dont like a mech a dont do well in it i dont care how META it is its not the one for you.

Find the fine line with a mech you enjoy that also conforms to the higher tier players builds and start climbing.

[Ingga Raokai]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 28 November 2015 - 05:02 PM, said:

Do you just want to get into a high tier, because you're sure that'll solve your problems? Take anything that can three or four UAC/5s if Inner Sphere, or any of the most popular Omnis (Stormcrow, Timber Wolf, Dire Wolf) if Clan. Most Omnimechs can do this if they're Stormcrow or heavier, and on the Inner Sphere side, Hunchbacks, Shadow Hawks, Thunderbolts, and to a lesser extent Jagermechs can fill this position.

I agree.

Or use MetaMech. Check loadout, choose ones that suits you pstyle, adjust here and there.

Elizander, on 28 November 2015 - 01:40 PM, said:

mostly the mindset of:

"I have to not die early."
"I have to be active and spam lots of damage."
"I have to get kills quickly before these guys kill my team."

Though I think the first 2 is enough, by the time I get to the 3rd usually the enmy is already stripped down or killed by my team (mainly because my ping 250~320ms, so I need a bit more choosy to time my appearance).

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I'll just throw in that the Hellbringer is really a solid mech. Load it with 6 medium pulse lasers and all the heat sinks you can pack in and you are good to go. Its fast, has ecm, heavy firepower, decent armor, and can spread damage decently well. I think its the mech that has the most 1000+ damage games of mine. So far I've mastered 1, elited 2 others, and am close to mastering them. Its also a great mech for CW since you can get 3 and a 45 ton mech. Usually I only ever have to use 2 of the Hellbringers in a winning CW match anyway.

If you ever get bored of the lasers you can use the omni pod swapping to use ACs or missiles even.

[Chocowolf Sradac]

DarthRevis, on 29 November 2015 - 10:04 PM, said:

Direct Fire

Anything with lots of Direct Fire

Lasers and AC's (other then the Ac2) should be your go to weapons....certain mechs, certain builds and certain styles (mostly tight, aggressive groups) can get away with other things but even in group queue Direct Dmg is king.

With Lasers and AC's most of the time if you see it you can shoot it and having a nice cool mech with long range and a high alpha is what most meta players go for these days. Cruise the build forums and find mechs that fit this mold but that you also pilot well. If you simply dont like a mech a dont do well in it i dont care how META it is its not the one for you.

Find the fine line with a mech you enjoy that also conforms to the higher tier players builds and start climbing.

I agree with this and pretty much want to echo this if your looking for mechs that don't rely on team mates. With how MWO is setup Direct fire weapons is much better then indirect which relies on team work to properly utilize. Lazers, Auto cannons or gauss riffles should be your go to weapons however keep in mind on the IS there are quirks for each chassis which help tell you what loadout the mech should be. Quirks is a system that is changing really soon so don't get too used to it but for example if we look at the Grid Iron it has massive bonuses to using a gauss riffle or the Dragon 1N has bonuses for AC5s etc.

The Catapult is a support mech which is good in team play but on it's own it's not a very strong mech. With direct fire weapons you can focus your fire on a single component where as Lrms or Streaks they spread throughout the mech so the time to kill a fresh mech is actually higher on a support mech then it is a direct fire mech. To properly play the catapult you should learn each map so you know where to be to best hit the enemy with your missles without exposing yourself or having too many obstacles to block your fire. if you go with streaks it's deadly against lights if you catch them by surprise but also relies on team work.

[Solarise]

King Crab is very good =)

[Nerdboard]

This is a rather complex subject so bear with me if I am writing a text wall here.

I want to adress mainly three points

• Whether or not you need a good mech
  
• What a good mech in my opinion is
  
• and if you really want to rise up in order to play support (LRM?) mechs

1. My first point is that piloting a strong mech will make the game easier for you. My personal experience is (might not be the same for everyone) that playing a game on an easy difficulty (single player) or with strong loadouts/characters/builds etc might provide a good way to get into the game without too much frustration and will give you the opportunity to learn all the basic mechanisms. It does however not serve me well when I want to improve. Because it allows for more mistakes. Playing mechs with weaknesses will teach me how to deal with those.
I wanted to make this point since I do not know how new you are to this game. How much you feel you need to learn and how much or if you want to improve yourself (if you do there are a couple of good general guides to be found here in the forums and you can find lots of good gameplay on youtube).

2. Many of the mechs considered strong at the moment use laser or gauss vomit builds. Here clan mechs provide the advantage that you can change their loadout easily to suit your playstyle. If you want one of those I could recommend the Ebon-Jaguar, Timber Wolf, Hellbringer and Stormcrow. On IS side the BJ-1X, GRF-1E (Sparky), ENF-4R, TDR-5SS, TDR-9SE, BNC-3M and BNC-3E seem to be good candidates which can be played very effectively in both public que and community warfare. For builds search for the metamechs site, it does provide the majority of the currently popular builds which a description of their strengths and weaknesses. There are obviously a lot more good mechs and my list is highly subjective.

3. Finally you mention that your goal is to rise in tiers in order to get matches in which you can support the team using for example LRM's. I have to warn you here. Do not assume that in tier 2 and tier 1 the soloQ is teamplay only. It is not. You will find your share of players here just trying to get kills and damage without regard for their team, just as much as you will find in lower tiers. The higher tier players will do this more efficiently but it is nowhere near a competitive match in terms of teamplay. If you want to really play a support role I would rather advise you to find some people to group up with. This will allow you to drop mechs which synenergize together and you go in right away with the mindset to play together and support each other rather than to farm kills.


I hope any or all of this helps.

[Rogue Jedi]

Solarise, on 01 December 2015 - 04:30 AM, said:

King Crab is very good =)

for some people yes, but in my hands it is useless, I am literally more effective in the SDR-5V, the most lightly armed Mech in the game than a 100 ton Assault Mech.

to find your "best" Mech will take a bit of experimentation, use the trial Mechs to figure out what works for you.

Nerdboard, on 01 December 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

Many of the mechs considered strong at the moment use laser or gauss vomit builds. Here clan mechs provide the advantage that you can change their loadout easily to suit your playstyle. If you want one of those I could recommend the Ebon-Jaguar, Timber Wolf, Hellbringer and Stormcrow. On IS side the BJ-1X, GRF-1E (Sparky), ENF-4R, TDR-5SS, TDR-9SE, BNC-3M and BNC-3E seem to be good candidates which can be played very effectively in both public que and community warfare. For builds search for the metamechs site, it does provide the majority of the currently popular builds which a description of their strengths and weaknesses. There are obviously a lot more good mechs and my list is highly subjective.

just bear in mind that some of the suggested Mechs are having there quirks reduced in today's patch, as I said earlier we will not know the post rebalance "best" Mechs for a few weeks, and even then some Mechs just do not work for some people, I have seen complaints that the current 2 "best" Mechs in the game (Timber Wolf and Stormcrow) are rubbish because people do not understand them.

after first trying the Spider I disregarded it as useless, it was only after getting the Firestarter that I went back to it and figured out how the Mech was supposed to work, the Spider has been my favorite Chassis since March 2014

also with regards to metamechs again that site is based on the game in its current state, so will likely be outdated come todays patch, check back in 2-6 weeks and they may have it updated for post rebalence
also Metamechs is aimed at competitive players, the Mechs listed there often require a level of skill and understanding you may not yet have, also "Meta" builds tend to, in my experience, not be very interesting to play

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 01 December 2015 - 05:33 AM.

[Yozaa]

In the higher tier
Their are no support mechs
Sorry

[Nerdboard]

Rogue Jedi, on 01 December 2015 - 05:16 AM, said:

just bear in mind that some of the suggested Mechs are having there quirks reduced in today's patch, as I said earlier we will not know the post rebalance "best" Mechs for a few weeks, and even then some Mechs just do not work for some people, I have seen complaints that the current 2 "best" Mechs in the game (Timber Wolf and Stormcrow) are rubbish because people do not understand them.

[...]

also with regards to metamechs again that site is based on the game in its current state, so will likely be outdated come todays patch, check back in 2-6 weeks and they may have it updated for post rebalence
also Metamechs is aimed at competitive players, the Mechs listed there often require a level of skill and understanding you may not yet have, also "Meta" builds tend to, in my experience, not be very interesting to play

Absolutely true. The quirk changes however are not drastic. None of the top mechs is going to be bad now. But yeah everyone has their own favourite mechs. In general mechs with many and good positioned hard points can be recommended.

[Pskonejott]

Perhaps an explanation of how the PSR system actually works might be more helpful. When you win a match you go up in rating, when you lose a match you either get 2 down bars, one down bar, or no change. So if you're trying to climb out of a tier, your goal should be to maximise your score in losing games. If you lose a game and achieve enough score for no change, then you've actually achieved 2 up bars. The reason for this is that you should be around 50/50 win loss ratio, so every loss should have a pairing win, and if your loss is no change then it's pair gives you a net double up.

The devs have described the system and you might of already reached the conclusions they were trying to get across, most players, with enough games should end up in tier 1. With a 50/50 win loss ratio, to not go up, you would have to never achieve match scores on losing games for only one down bar, or no change.

As for mechs, as others have stated the "meta mechs" are probably your best bet for a starting point. Pugging you're probably going to be best off with a heavy, or maybe a good light if that's your thing. You're probably going to want to stay away from LRM boats, I've run them, and I still enjoy running them from time to time. However, and this is very important, their performance when your team is great and supporting you makes no difference to you going up in rank. What matters is how they perform when your team does not support you, enemy movement does not allow you to get many volleys in, and things like that. They are just too situational and you're probably going to score higher on those losing games with a more rounded mech. You probably want to stay away from brawler mechs too, same reason.

You're going to want something with moderate speed that can reach out and do damage where the teams typically stop and start trading fire. This means ML, MPL, LL, LPL, UAC5's. I'm avoiding suggesting specific mechs because I haven't really delved to deeply into the changes brought about by today's patch. But like the last poster said, the mechs that were great performers before due to good hardpoints and hardpoint locations are still going to be good, with the exception of some of the previously "overquirked" mechs that were only great performers because of very large quirks.

Edited by Pskonejott, 02 December 2015 - 04:04 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Pskonejott, on 02 December 2015 - 03:45 AM, said:

Perhaps an explanation of how the PSR system actually works might be more helpful. When you win a match you go up in rating, when you lose a match you either get 2 down bars, one down bar, or no change.

just wanted to add, you can also stay the same on a win but you cannot go down, also Community Warfare (Faction play) matches do not modify or take into consideration your Player Skill Ratin

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 02 December 2015 - 04:11 AM.