201 replies to this topic

[armyof1]

I've tried to live up to the myth of mediums being great flankers/harassers, but let's face it. Lights are way better in that role than mediums are. They do less damage per attack, but the ability to use their speed to get in and out quickly from/back to cover means they can do it more often and eat return fire a lot mess than a medium. Damn even my Dragons are better at that role as they can actually go faster with an XL engine than my poor 4SP can. And the argument that a flock of mediums being dangerous, have anyone seen what a flock of lights can do? They not only gang up and make it close to impossible to return fire with cockpit shake combined with fast movement, you can't even run from them because they're as fast or faster than you are.

As MWO is now with no weightclass matching the clear underpowered class is the medium that can't reach the speed of a light with a big XL engine. A Dragon with XL can easily outrun you and even a Catapult can almost be your equal in speed. Poor HBK and most Centurions are most certainly in need of some help here to get back on even grounds with the rest of the mechs. I used to recommend a 4SP as a starting mech as it's a pretty all-round mech, but as it is now all-round means you're not good at anything at all.

Edited by armyof1, 26 February 2013 - 02:33 AM.

[Leslie Haywood]

My opinion about the topic is this: mediums are nothing for casual players like me. Casual players who don't get millions of CBills to invest in xl Engines, double HS and that stuff and who don't get thousands of exp to pick all those skills to get more out of the Mech (and all that within a week). So my Trebuchet with LL, ML and LB10X is nothing like cannon fodder so far. And I really gave him a chance to show me his advantages. I tried builds with 2 SRM6 (worthless in that variant with only 2 missile tubes = a delay in shooting all 12 missiles = not the same effect on moving targets like a mech with enough missile tubes to shoot all 12 missiles together), with AC10, with only 1 SRM6 and 2 ML + AC10. But the result was always the same.

- with 82 kph he is slow: I lost a run vs. an Awesome who was faster than me! And nearly every Cat, Phract and Dragon is as fast as I am (if not faster, and they are all heavies)
- the fire power is only sufficient for kill assists or a very lucky shot
- the armor is like paper: I got one-alpha-shot by SRM-Cats and Stalkers just because I made a wrong move and he decided to click once and moved on to his former target as if nothing happened
- since using my Treb I have much time for watching my teammates performance because average match time for my Treb was between 2(!) and 4 min
- I have to fear my own team because one accidential broadside of a Stalker, Atlas or anything with firepower of 30+ dmg is a sure way to get useless, so I have to stay away from most brawls (= at the moment the most part of the game)
- the Mech is useless against lights because of the very low firepower and speed

Conclusion: medium class = victim class (at least for me)
As long as I drop in matches with 4 Atlas 2 Stalkers 1 Hunchback and me on one side and 4 Stalkers 2 Atlas 1 Centurion 1 Raven on the other side it makes no sense at all to play a medium mech which could get one shot by about 75% of the enemies or do next to zero damage.

In this state of the game I totally agree with the opinion that all what medium mechs can do: a light or heavy can do it even better. Sure there are some mediums which do a great job but not my ones (and I tried the Hunchback too).

Edit: I respect all those who try to play mediums (and maybe are successful)! It's the real challenge in MWO atm.

Edited by Leslie Haywood, 26 February 2013 - 02:44 AM.

[DocBach]

mediums take a lot more patience to play. You need to make way more use of effective cover to shield movements, and realize when the best time to show your hand is.

You have to make severe compromises in pretty much speed, armor and weapons loadout due to tonnage limitation, and it's a lot harder to specialize in one category like you can with other weight classes.

[armyof1]

DocBach, on 26 February 2013 - 02:41 AM, said:

mediums take a lot more patience to play. You need to make way more use of effective cover to shield movements, and realize when the best time to show your hand is.

You have to make severe compromises in pretty much speed, armor and weapons loadout due to tonnage limitation, and it's a lot harder to specialize in one category like you can with other weight classes.

But that's the problem right there, if you play with the same frame of mind with a light or a heavy, you'll do better with them because you can either take/dish out more damage or you can easier avoid damage while outflanking your opponents. Mediums are in a limbo where they don't have the tonnage to pack a lot of punch/sec or have the speed to hit and run that well. The only thing you can do is slap the biggest 300+ XL engine you have tonnage for in it and pretend you're a light.

[Mild Monkey]

I am piloting mediums exclusively, with a strong focus on the 4sp. While Vlad Ward's point is entirelly valid with PUGs, the situation is somewhat different (IMO) with premades or 8-groups. I can go toe-to-toe with most phract jockeys, they can't follow me with their arms. I won't facehug an Atlas or an Awesome, butI sure as (fill in inappropriate metaphor of your liking) will attack them if the opportunity presents its ugly head.
When drop leader tells me to flank, I do flank. It opens the enemy ranks and draws fire. With decent scout support I can do a lot of tactical work for the heavies and assaults. This being said, I'm a bit sad my K/D isn't as good as my overall battle efficiency (0,93). I would love to have a better K/D ratio, but with my chosen role, it will take some time. I started out with heavies and lights and noticed after almost 1000 games and a K/D of some 0,45 that this isn't my line of work at all. so I rigged up my mediums and the ratio is climbing, slowly but it is climbing.

*edited for spelling

Edited by Mild Monkey, 26 February 2013 - 03:02 AM.

[Rushin Roulette]

My current main workhorse is a 4SP LRMboat (LRM10+LRM15 with TAG and 4 ML, XL Engine and nearly full armor and enough DHS to effectively shoot continuously if needed). I must say it is an incredible glass cannon in certain situations though. On open maps such as Caustic or Alpine peaks it can easily dominate a whole team (keep them behind cover while my team advances or take out 3 mechs completely (mainly on Alpine where cover is extremely sparse).

I have no problem with 1 light mech as the 4 ML can shoo them away relatively quickly and enough speed to get away from any high damage Assault or give them trouble with long range sniping. Where the mech completely gets taken apart is if I am maneuvered too close to a high damage close range Assault / Heavy (Splatcat or 4 ERPPC Stalker). These can make short work of side torso armor... but they can do that with any mech in the game. That is where the XL shows its obvious weakness). On the other hand I have no problem at all to take out any mech standing open/semi open at range with the LRMs as I am easily maneuverable enough to place myself in a good position to shoot. Enemy Heavy/Assault LRM boats dont worry me much either, as I always aim to be in cover within 10 seconds at least (easily enough time for long range LRM fire to either lose lock or for me to be directly behind cover if I cant loose lock in time).

[Jay Kerensky]

Jade Kitsune, on 25 February 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

As I said, Mechwarrior:Online rewards the kill, instead of rewarding the "class" based apon it's "Role"

The problem there stems from what exactly do you reward, if a light mech takes down the majority of an assaults armor, should it get extra points? That kind of thing. The balance is tricky and as Garfuncle said, Cheese is currently king. if you're not boating SRM's, or running flavor of the month mechs, you're pretty meh at best.

Can you HAVE fun in a medium, of course, I love taking out my founders hunch, or my Centurians, or my YLW. but at the end of the day, I'm not going to do nearly as well as if I'd taken my Atlas, or my Illia. Because while I can do decent work, I'm not getting the kills I can with those other mechs, I'm not out there utilizing ECM, or boating massave ammounts of SRM's.

it's unfortenate really... Mechwarrior:Online has the chance to really reward Class based warfare. Maybe even reward builds that are more varried than just "SLAM ECM AND SRM'S ON STUFF AND KICK EVERYTHING'S ARSE" but it seems like the devs are a bit afraid to do this because it strays WAY too far from what is traditionally done with games of this type, that rewards the kill over anything else.

That's it - that comment has just nailed why I am suddenly bored with this game just as ELO hits and it should be more fun to pug.
I have cheese builds and they were fun at first. SRM cats just make you laugh, but you can't keep playing them. You get bored and where is the fun in making a new mech, trying a new build when it won't compete with the cheese builds for kills??

Why play anything else that's not going to reward you???

BEACUSE IT'S FUN TO PLAY OTHER THINGS I hear a few of you yell Yes it is - after reading this I got back into my Hunchies and had some fun. No kills - 7 assists in one match, but no kills. I don't care anymore for the kills if I'm enjoying playing again, but the game should not be kill focussed. Record them, give you stats - fine, but lose them as the main focus.

Perhaps you could even earn xp and C-Bills if all mechs stayed within so many meters of each other for a set period of time - would make teams stick together if they got rewarded for it Just a thought.

Anyway - thanks for the topic. I'm having fun in meds again!

[Khobai]

The best medium mechs IMO are the ones that heavy mechs can't emulate in loadout.

There is no heavy mech with three missile hardpoints and a ballistic hardpoint for example. That is why the Centurion A is one of the only good medium mechs.

[Johnny Morgan]

I've been grinding the Cicada class and now started on Hunchbacks.

Like any class it has it's sucky variants but I can't agree that they are useless when I am doing good damage (400-600) and getting 1-3 kills per match.

It's just a different mech, my 4SP has a 58 Alpha, that's nothing to sneeze at or ignore (which people totally do) and more importantly they are FUN to play.

I love my Cataphracts and Dragons (Flame is my goto killer) and I like playing a striker/skirmisher role. I tend to get a bunch of kills plus high assists per game.

Mediums could use some attention, I suspect they will over the coming months but like any mech they are only as good as the pilot

[Mercules]

Part of the problem is the limited play.

Alpine helps a bit in that it gives the speedier mechs a role again. It makes the Faster Mediums and the Dragon more useful as they can get to a given location fairly quick and deliver good damage once there. However the game is still stuck matching 8 players to 8 players.


In TT we tend to use Battle Value (2.0 preferably) to balance the two sides. 5 Medium mechs might end up with the same BV as 4 Heavy mechs. The firepower and armor should roughly balance out. So what often happens if you want to match it as 2 lances, 8 mechs, you would often end up with 2 more powerful lights and 6 more powerful mediums against 4 light and 4 heavy. You would have two fast "striker" lances against a "scout" and "heavy" lance in other words.

In MWO there is no such thing. Every mech is either stock(trial) or in the process of, if not heavily modified. Vast majority while PUGging are optimized and when in groups they all are optimized. The matchmaker doesn't match up a well customized Medium to a Stock Heavy.

In addition the objectives of the game are limited. It is basically TDM (or least always played that way) and in TDM all that matters is how much damage you can do and how much armor you have. The additional objectives help only minimally. An organized team could make a group of walking turret Atlas and Stalker, pack as much for weapons and armor on them as they can going slow as heck and probably do fine in Conquest as long as the rest of the team support those 4-6 mechs.

Yes, there is no niche for Mediums because of how the game is built and played. Customization throws some of their role out the window since you can speed up a Heavy and Armor/Weapon up a light. The rest is the game basically being about brawling and moving around in a clump. The final straw is not being able to drop in mismatched numbers.

A company of Mediums would swarm over and kill 2 lances of Assaults and this is exactly how they are used in the canon and lore. A Company of Mediums might be purchased for the cost of one Assault lance, you still need to train the pilots but that is why every house looks for mechwarriors and trains them.

The Medium mech is the workhorse of the Battletech universe because it often is not a specialist and it is inexpensive. Since none of that is reflected in MWO, it loses it's role.

[Exoth3rmic]

Whatever they are eventually "meant" to do they allow people that would otherwise have mothballed their mechs to continue playing with a little pinache for a bit of fun.

Variety = good.

Edited by Exoth3rmic, 26 February 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[Penance]

Doobles, on 25 February 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

There has to be some role they fill.

to die slightly slower than lights.

[Revorn]

Iam not the best Player, but i like it to run a bit around and make some Pew Pew. Why i choosed a Medium to do this?

Well, the bigger Boys are to slow and fat for my feeling, and the Ligths are to fast. I guess its a Question af Taste, not anyone looks for the Numbers only. I like to getting better in performance while playing various builds, if someone other is better in his Build, i dont care much about.

Atm, iam fine with my 2 LRM15+Artemis in my Cent, but i also like my 3 LargePulseLasers Combo, even if it dont does as much dmg, it can be intresting to play.

Do i have a Role on the Field? Well, i guess the Best ist not to looking verrry dangerous (easy, iam in a Medium) and then dealing some surprising dmg. Everyone knows what a Ligth does, everyone knows what a Assault does. No one knows what this Freak in his Medium is about to do. I can run and i can figth, booth a little bit. This flexibility gives me my Role, i guess.

[Padic]

Vlad Ward, on 25 February 2013 - 09:04 PM, said:

I play with some damn good Medium pilots, but they excel because they're damn good - not because Mediums aren't underpowered.

I dunno. Isn't that good enough? If an excellent pilot can excel in the chassis, what more can you really ask for?

So, to stay on topic - what do these "medium-pilots-who-carry-their-weight" use their mechs for?

[NitroDev]

IMO, a good medium will stick with the assault(s) they dropped with and support/defend them. A good light pilot can take out an assault, but an assault and a medium are going to be nigh impossible, (barring incompetence, prior heavy damage, etc.)

[Yokaiko]

Leslie Haywood, on 26 February 2013 - 02:39 AM, said:

My opinion about the topic is this: mediums are nothing for casual players like me. Casual players who don't get millions of CBills to invest in xl Engines, double HS and that stuff and who don't get thousands of exp to pick all those skills to get more out of the Mech (and all that within a week). So my Trebuchet with LL, ML and LB10X is nothing like cannon fodder so far. And I really gave him a chance to show me his advantages. I tried builds with 2 SRM6 (worthless in that variant with only 2 missile tubes = a delay in shooting all 12 missiles = not the same effect on moving targets like a mech with enough missile tubes to shoot all 12 missiles together), with AC10, with only 1 SRM6 and 2 ML + AC10. But the result was always the same.

- with 82 kph he is slow: I lost a run vs. an Awesome who was faster than me! And nearly every Cat, Phract and Dragon is as fast as I am (if not faster, and they are all heavies)
- the fire power is only sufficient for kill assists or a very lucky shot
- the armor is like paper: I got one-alpha-shot by SRM-Cats and Stalkers just because I made a wrong move and he decided to click once and moved on to his former target as if nothing happened
- since using my Treb I have much time for watching my teammates performance because average match time for my Treb was between 2(!) and 4 min
- I have to fear my own team because one accidential broadside of a Stalker, Atlas or anything with firepower of 30+ dmg is a sure way to get useless, so I have to stay away from most brawls (= at the moment the most part of the game)
- the Mech is useless against lights because of the very low firepower and speed

Conclusion: medium class = victim class (at least for me)
As long as I drop in matches with 4 Atlas 2 Stalkers 1 Hunchback and me on one side and 4 Stalkers 2 Atlas 1 Centurion 1 Raven on the other side it makes no sense at all to play a medium mech which could get one shot by about 75% of the enemies or do next to zero damage.

In this state of the game I totally agree with the opinion that all what medium mechs can do: a light or heavy can do it even better. Sure there are some mediums which do a great job but not my ones (and I tried the Hunchback too).

Edit: I respect all those who try to play mediums (and maybe are successful)! It's the real challenge in MWO atm.

You got THE worst Trencher variant and left it stock.

I've mastered the chassis

-3C dual SRM6+artemis quad Mlas 335XL with endo, and FF (and enough armor to use it) run at 119KPH good for 600 damage and 3 kills pretty near every time I drop it.

-5J PPC, 4 mlas SRM6 x4 JJ (needed crits) endo, FF, 325XL pretty much like above except jump and "only" goes 115kph

-7M PPC x2 mlas and x3 SSRM x3JJ decent, good for busting off single ravens, not really happy with the build, this one I have to re-visit later.

None, are victim mechs, the JJ models can get you into and out of trouble extremely quickly, the -5J in particular I look for straggling assault, and ruin their day.

[Stoicblitzer]

valkyrie, on 25 February 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

It used to help keep the enemy team from getting an extra D-DC, -3L, Splatcat, etc.

Now? Pfft, your guess is as good as mine. Being Medium Mechguca is suffering.

This. I would take a HBK because I'm pretty good at it so I feel like the other team having one less Heavy/Assault would help my team win. Now it's like you take a Medium and the other team gets four D-DCs while your team is all mediums and one AWS.

Anyways, like someone else said, maybe Mediums should be the exclusive info warfare class and ECM should be exclusive to them. That way they would tag along with lights for scouting and tag along with the main assault force for LRM/targeting cover.

[Mrllamaface]

I love mediums and use them effectively as close support for assaults. Although not the fastest mechs if you have good situational awareness it is easy to maneuver behind larger enemies while they are distracted by your big buddies.

[Strykewolf]

Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

[General Taskeen]

Yokaiko, on 26 February 2013 - 08:25 AM, said:

You got THE worst Trencher variant and left it stock.

I've mastered the chassis

-3C dual SRM6+artemis quad Mlas 335XL with endo, and FF (and enough armor to use it) run at 119KPH good for 600 damage and 3 kills pretty near every time I drop it.

-5J PPC, 4 mlas SRM6 x4 JJ (needed crits) endo, FF, 325XL pretty much like above except jump and "only" goes 115kph

-7M PPC x2 mlas and x3 SSRM x3JJ decent, good for busting off single ravens, not really happy with the build, this one I have to re-visit later.

None, are victim mechs, the JJ models can get you into and out of trouble extremely quickly, the -5J in particular I look for straggling assault, and ruin their day.

You min/maxed something. Yawn. I applaud people who at least attempt stock build or stock-like designs. Its more challenging and builds true skill.