6 replies to this topic

[XTerranite]

1/2 year or so player just got to tier 3 in last week. (Guessing,) moderate skill level, cannot be sure of course.

I do not agree currently with what I perceive to be the majority of players view on Clan/IS balance. If that viewpoint is in fact that clan is far inferior. Reasons below.

When I started I viewed clan as the clear superior. Better armament-working ultras, stronger damage dice, higher heat/damage difference on certain lasers, omnipods for stacked hard points, insta arming LRMs etc.

Two months ago I bought a Dire wolf. My first clan mech. I bought probably 15-20 IS mechs before that. 4x CTF's 3x CPLT's 2x CMD 1x Stalker, and all the griffins. (griffin 2N is perfect mech in my mind. takes a page to list all that mechs strengths nearly.)

So I spent some time learning that Dire Wolf and the clan tech. I learned ofc that solo queing a Dire wolf pretty much sucks if you're not a pro. Every player under 50 tons goes mysteriously WW2 Japanese on you the moment they lay eyes on you. (which is not always a bad thing for your team, but certainly bad for you personally.) Especially since, to my complete shock, the Dire Wolf falls over like an aluminum can beset by an army of BB gun wielding boy scouts. My CTF was finally feeling durable to me!

This led me to do some serious thinking, and some investigation. My conclusions were thus. (not asserting this is all fact, simply MY conclusions at the time)

The Bad
1:
Forced XL really is THAT bad. especially when coupled with no quirks for structure. Omnis aren't doing squat. All the weapons in the world do not do a lot of damage if they don't get a chance to fire. This leaves weapon boating as the only role for clan assaults. No chance for the tank role (w/e we call that for MWO)
2:
The crazy horribly bad thing that is "superior clan auto cannon tech, AKA laser damage dice with crappy ballistic shell velocity," is prohibitively bad to my mind. LBX being an exception.
3:
Certain mechs with certain weight/HP/etc may get stuck with builds they cannot support the heat for with the Clans higher heat burst requirement to reach the next higher range.
4:
Clan LRM arming does not outweight IS burst firing in boats. This suprised me since I never even realized that was happening despite seeing it 100s of times while admiring clan mechs firing LRM's point blank.
5:
No STD PPC is mildly annoying. Although not really because why should I ever really use a STD PPC

The Good
1:
The heat concerns of Clan mechs are almost completely false when weighed against the difference of heat vs damage or damage per heat, (compared to the extremely slight difference in IS mechs,) and the capacity for higher damage dice. Especially if the tin can you're driving only gets one chance to fire its weapons before mysterious time traveling kamikaze pilots grind you into dust.

2:
I would go into battle with no arms if I could put SSRM4/6's on my Griffin 2N. Really, I would.


So,
Needless to say, I promptly sold my pepsi can and bought an Atlas-D-DC. (I might over-value ecm a bit IDK.) I cannot say I was very shocked this time around. A touch annoyed by the extremely confined hard points on the DC, but I can live with that. Being able to put in an STD engine makes the atlas the assault I expected an assault to be. Not a weapon boat with no effective hp.

It was around this time that I got to thinking again...

I was equipping a light IS mech one day and I slapped an XL on it because I wasn't able to think of a sufficient reason not to and I realized the same would be true in probably 90% of light mech variants at least for me with my current understanding. The same is true of many mediums. Although not 90% probably more like (guess) 50% or w/e. And I would venture probably something like 20-40% of heavies. hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Let's examine light mechs for a moment. As stated above,

BAD
1: XL
Don't need to force me to put an XL in my IS light.
2:AC
Can't fit an AC on any light I want to pilot and I speculate that no mech you do need one for is somehow superior to all the laser lights.
3:Heat
Haven't seen a light yet that COULD support it's heat so what's one more heat on my 7 MPL cheetah.
4:LRM
Any mech I make with low ammo tonnage LRM's won't be concerned with it's LRM's being max damage so much as them being versatile. especially a light mech who more frequently wishes to fire them at point blankish range.
5:PPC
Don't Light mechs mostly take PPC so they can panic fire them in advanced zoom from their mountain when everyone else is dead? Well you need ER range to fire from mountain if so. I don't do it so not going to presume here.

GOOD
1:Heat
As stated in nearest row 3 above.
2:SSRM 4/6
JR7-IIC,KFX,ACH with them is kinda nice to have available. Conversely to my conclusions below, Summoner-B seems to rock.

New Found Conclusions.

LIGHTS
Clan>IS

MEDIUMS
Clan>IS

HEAVIES
IS>Clan

ASSAULTS
IS>Clan

Not much else to say, thanks for reading. If you can teach me something about this I haven't understood yet, please do. I'm learning. Always appreciate good willed critique!

Edited by XTerranite, 02 May 2016 - 06:14 AM.

[VinJade]

I can understand your dislike for XLs, but compared to the IS XLs, losing a side torso in a Clan mech will not cost you the match just half of your weapons in the entire side.

now losing the other side torso sure the mech is out of the fight for good.
If you mounted LRMs on your Clan mech you would most likely notice that they fire much slower than their IS counter parts as well.

[p4r4g0n]

Why is this in the off topic discussions sub-forum? It belongs in the General Discussion sub-forum.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 02 May 2016 - 03:52 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

XTerranite, on 30 April 2016 - 11:56 PM, said:

New Found Conclusions.

LIGHTS
Clan>IS

MEDIUMS
Clan>IS

HEAVIES
IS>Clan

ASSAULTS
IS>Clan

Not much else to say, thanks for reading. If you can teach me something about this I haven't understood yet, please do. I'm learning. Always appreciate good willed critique!

I think you are over simplifying things.

the Clan XL has no real downside compared to the Standard engine unless you literally want to be able to survive with just torso/head, ok loosing 1 side looses you 20% heat and speed, that is not nothing but for that you get a lot of extra tonage where as the IS XL vs Standard engine is a much larger tradeoff.

lets take for example Light Mechs, the best are in no particular order Arctic Cheetah, Firestarter, Raven, Jenner IIC and Spider, depending on who you ask and what it is for if the person answers seriously they will most likely say one of those 5 Mechs is the best Light ingame at this point, as for the worst well that is almost definitely the Myst Lynx, a Clan Mech, so saying Clan is better than IS for Lights is inaccurate, however if you were to say a stock Clan Mech is better than a stock IS Light Mech you would have a point.
outfitting IS Light Mechs is rather expensive, total cost is usually about 3 times purchase price as you will want DHS, Endo, an XL engine and often also Fero.

I could offer a similar summary for each weight class, but in no case is Clan or IS outright better in any weight class.

[XTerranite]

p4r4g0n, on 02 May 2016 - 03:51 AM, said:

Why is this in the off topic discussions sub-forum? It belongs in the General Discussion sub-forum.

I was a touch confused by this forums layout. I can see where my error lies at this time but I don't know how to move it. But yeah, you're right.

[XTerranite]

Rogue Jedi said:

the Clan XL has no real downside compared to the Standard engine unless you literally want to be able to survive with just torso/head, ok loosing 1 side looses you 20% heat and speed, that is not nothing but for that you get a lot of extra tonage where as the IS XL vs Standard engine is a much larger tradeoff.

VinJadei said:

I can understand your dislike for XLs, but compared to the IS XLs, losing a side torso in a Clan mech will not cost you the match just half of your weapons in the entire side.

I think maybe I didn't word this correctly to make my intent/impression/conclusion clear. I don't take issue with the mechanics behind clan XL's whatsoever but in their forced nature. VS IS mechs STD availability coupled with quirks for structure. IMO Clan being harder hitting easier to punch, IS being tankier with less damage makes IS mechs more ideal for heavy/assault class and clan mechs more ideal for light medium in general. Particularly since XL is a gimme on so many lights and ST is a gimme on so many assaults, including clan mechs if you had the option.Will edit thread to reflect this better hopefully.

On a side note I probably am over simplifying things some. I'm not a 3 year veteran, these are a half year players impressions. So you're probably right there Rogue Jedi!

What can b said though is this. I am finding it extremely difficult to be happy with the nature of my light/medium IS mechs and the same is true of my heavy/assault clan mechs. They simply don't seem to stack up to what I have available on the other side of the table. OFC this wouldn't be an issue for CW since you guys are fenced into a brand and will always be dealing with both sides of that coin as a whole package, (I suppose.)

Full kodiak pack coming to me in 15 days so you might say this is a bit of a let down for me.

Edited by XTerranite, 02 May 2016 - 06:25 AM.

[Luscious Dan]

In some ways you're definitely on track. There's some big differences between Clan and IS tech, not necessarily one being better than the other, but certainly different. That's a shift from tabletop/lore because simply put, Clans being overwhelmingly powerful relative to IS counterparts would make a pretty crappy game experience.

(The often overlooked fact is that IS in lore had very limited access to lostech like DHS, endo steel, XL engines, etc. in this era, whereas in MWO you can upgrade any IS mech with these if you want and it helps immensely)

Anyway, there are some assaults that can tank, but Clan assaults are usually more about damage output than durability. They don't have structure quirks inflating their HP, not all of them can run asymmetrically very well, without agility quirks they can't shield as effectively, etc. They're still viable platforms, but they have limitations. Like your Dire Wolf for example, those things can do beastly damage but they are hella slow, and any positioning errors by you or your team can get you killed quickly. Especially since even PUG players are willing to play as a team when they spot a Dire Wolf. You'll simply attract more attention than any other mech since everyone knows how much weaponry you are bringing.

Anyway you're a newish player, but you're spending time to think critically and do some research, which means you're on the right track. Faction Play is a weird thing right now, I won't bother speaking to it, but if you keep an open mind and whatnot I'm sure you'll keep trending upwards and find plenty of mechs to enjoy. Kodiak should be fun, I'm sure it will attract as much attention as a Dire Wolf when it comes out, but with more speed (especially on Spirit Bear) it might not be a sitting duck as often.