448 replies to this topic

[Mavairo]

Wow. Just wow.

If you can't figure out how to tank with 600 points of armor. Wow.

[MischiefSC]

Atlas with LRMs at around 200 to 250m behind the heavies/ mediums. Close enough for Long Range sensors to let you target ECM mechs. Have an AC20 and some lasers for the brawl that's going to happen. When they get in trouble they can run home to daddy who's still got the UMPH up close to brawl (with support). I'm finding it works well in pugs. A pure brawler atlas can end up a bit feast/famine based on map and team makeup. A more balanced build (LRMs plus brawling AC and lasers) takes more skill to use but lays a lot of smack down. Especially with Advanced Sensors and either ECM or BAP. Possibly Advanced Decay or whatever other modules you want. Get that D-DC to Master and you'll have 4 to choose from, this makes it a potent LRM transport.

2x LRM15s is enough to do a lot of damage and still keep the LLs and AC20 plus ammo to use all of them for a good long brawl. For pugging it's a solid, reliable build that works best when supporting a team but still runs fine on its own.

People 'tank' in low Elo. In high Elo it's all focus fire. The difference between an Atlas getting crushed in the open and a Hunchie is literally about 3 seconds. There are no 'tanks'. A rush needs a few Atlases in close proximity, even teams on VOIP have trouble keeping solid focus when that comes down on them and even with focus fire it's got the power to overwhelm.

1 Atlas though doesn't 'tank' for the heavies with it. It just dies 3 seconds later.

[Drenzul]

Merky Merc, on 16 March 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

.... wat.

Read the lore, Mechs aren't the big open field vehicles of the BT universe. Tanks and aerospace fighters do this. Mechs are designed to fight in heavy terrain than tanks e.t.c. can't handle do perform special ops behind enemy lines, same as infantry and heavy infantry (elementals)

Mavairo, on 16 March 2013 - 03:22 PM, said:

Wow. Just wow.

If you can't figure out how to tank with 600 points of armor. Wow.

3 alpha mechs can focus fire an atlas down instantly. Please tell me how ANYONE is meant to tank that?

[Mavairo]

Drenzul, on 16 March 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

Read the lore, Mechs aren't the big open field vehicles of the BT universe. Tanks and aerospace fighters do this. Mechs are designed to fight in heavy terrain than tanks e.t.c. can't handle do perform special ops behind enemy lines, same as infantry and heavy infantry (elementals)



3 alpha mechs can focus fire an atlas down instantly. Please tell me how ANYONE is meant to tank that?

Yeah and they can focus fire anyone down in theory that they could hit just as fast. Try torso twisting some time instead of just blundering forward. You'll live longer that way.

[Drenzul]

Works great vs slower weapons or rookies who are quite happy to hit arms, doesn't work at all vs faster weapons with decent pilots.

Perhaps if you played like infantry and actually use cover to shield you, you wouldn't NEED someone else to tank for you. You know, as mechs were actually intended to fight.

Against that kind of firepower, torso twisting is at BEST only going to extend your life by a few seconds.

[Wintersdark]

Yeah... I kind of die inside when I see Atlas's kitted out solely with LRM's, but simply carrying them in a balanced loadout - particularly given today's longer ranged meta - is simply wise. A purely short ranged atlas can easily end up utterly useless.

You don't need to boat LRM's to use them effectively alongside other weaponry.

Further... Damage soak? No. Just no. Maybe in low-Elo land, or as a concerted push with multiple atlases, sure. But in pug matches? Hell no. There are two likely outcomes.

Entry level Elo (middle ranked, then): You try to be the speartip, but there's at least a 50/50 chance you'll be the tip, but there'll be no spear behind you.

Higher Elo: If you're alone up front, you will die. Torso twisting won't help. Facing the swarms of K2's with Gauss and AC20, and Cataphracts with oodles of Gauss and PPC, twist all you like, they'll rip your torso apart in seconds. And if they don't, the Splatcats coming right behind that first couple volleys will finish the job.

Everyone moves together. You need a hammerblow and target saturation, or else you make focus fire too easy. Maybe it's different at very high Elo, but at my level (medium-high) there certainly is focus fire, and if one mech leads the charge, guess who gets focussed? Right.

You're welcome to play that Atlas if you like, but I'm not. I'll stick with my mid-ranged build, thanks.

Now, if you're packing a mid-ranged build (say, AC/5 and PPC range) and you're advancing with, but slightly behind the faster mechs who can actually evade some incoming fire, you can deal crippling damage before targetting switches to you. In that time, yes, the heavies take damage, but if they are good they survive it. Damage is spread throughout the team, and focus firing is broken.


Finally: An atlas is built to do what it's builder builds it to do. I could care less what the canon role was for a given variant, because once a player has modified that build it's his own variant. HE decides it's role. If/when tonnage considerations come back into matchmaking, there could well be valid points here, but right now? All an Atlas - or any other mech - is "out of the box" is a weapons platform with particular hardpoint restrictions and a maximum tonnage and armor cap. Taking an atlas right now may just mean you give the opposing team a Dragon.

This means that the Atlas is arguably the best weapons platform simply because it can pack the heaviest armament in. It's role will be determined by it's final armor, speed, and weapons loadout.

[Killerwithin]

As long as everyone is doing their job the fight will go well. It's not going to be the atlas pilots fault for losing that sits in the back and LRMs effectively(as long as he is LRMing effectively) it's the silly pilots that fail to realize that in order to win you must work together as a team and take cover. That means by not running off or standing still while 60+ LRMs are launched at your face and getting killed because you did something stupid. When you do something like that the tables have now turned in favor of the enemy and your team now must work harder because of your failures.

Now might it be helpful if that atlas that is shooting LRMs possibly be setup for brawling to help push the line if there is no one else available to push the line yes but it is not entirely required but extremely helpful.

[Wintersdark]

Khobai, on 16 March 2013 - 12:06 AM, said:

Then why play an Atlas? If they can't soak damage there's literally no reason to play one. Because light mechs can effectively tank damage. And other heavies and assaults can do way more damage than an Atlas. The way I see it the Atlas does nothing that other mechs can't do better...

What? Normally, I respect your opinions... but this?

The atlas can carry heavier weaponry than any other mech. That's a pretty good reason right there. The Stalker can carry more weapons, but it's lower tonnage, inability to mount low-heat ballistics and equal crit space limit it.

The Atlas also has articulated arms, leading to far superior pinpoint precision with it's arm mounted weapons - a 4PPC -RS is much more threatening than a 4PPC Stalker, as it can fire more accurately over a wider arc, and has more tonnage available for armor, heatsinks, and secondary weaponry.

[Josef Nader]

Suki, on 16 March 2013 - 01:59 AM, said:

It's a reaally bad idea shooting "anyone and everything". The team shooting "anyone and everything" vs team focusing fire = loosing 0-8. I've seen many matches like this when team focusing fire was left alive 30-40% health when team spreading damage was all dead.

I never said the team should shoot anything and everything. I said you as an Atlas should shoot anything and everything. Everything's shooting at you. What's the point of focusing one target? Take as much armor down with you. Knock as many holes as you can into the enemy mechs before you drop and you've done your job. It should just be a matter of your teammates mopping up after that.

Your team should focus fire. Your Atlas should not. He should be hitting everything as fast as his weapons cool down without putting himself into heat shutdown. He should never pass up an opportunity to fire on a target, even if it isn't the focus primary.

It's your job to **** everyone on the enemy team off, draw their fire, and survive as long as you can while dealing as much damage as you can. Do this right, and most matches will go 8v1 in your favor, with you being the only death.

Edited by Josef Nader, 16 March 2013 - 04:44 PM.

[Mavairo]

Drenzul, on 16 March 2013 - 04:01 PM, said:

Works great vs slower weapons or rookies who are quite happy to hit arms, doesn't work at all vs faster weapons with decent pilots.

Perhaps if you played like infantry and actually use cover to shield you, you wouldn't NEED someone else to tank for you. You know, as mechs were actually intended to fight.

Against that kind of firepower, torso twisting is at BEST only going to extend your life by a few seconds.

I find it hilarious that you a cowardly Fatlas pilot that would rather stand in the open and attempt (and fail) to snipe at enemy mechs down range rather than hit fade, from cover to cover is trying to give this advice to someone that plays Calvary. That being said you -need- big armor in a match especially on the front lines. It's an anchor point for the whole team if the atlas pilot isn't a chump, no one else can do their job when the Fatty won't do theirs properly.

I suggest you become literate, and reread my posts.
Cover makes atlas armor incredibly potent, especially when grouped with allies.

Standing ontop of a hill in a big slow tall pig, with the largest target silhouette in the game is not an effective long arm mech.
Long arm mechs have to have decent mobility to get back into cover, so they don't get focus fired into pieces Derp.

Heavy armor and low mobility also is dramatically better in heavy cover areas. Because it is much harder to out move them. Especially when they have slashers moving around them, and assisting in bringing down hard targets.

Heavy Cover also tends to be the front line above the Suck for Luck tiers because people above Suck For Luck don't want to be sniped to pieces or LRMed to death. Imagine that.

Edited by Mavairo, 16 March 2013 - 04:49 PM.

[Crockdaddy]

KinLuu, on 13 March 2013 - 01:28 AM, said:

There is no "tank" role in this game. Everything dies in seconds.

The job of an atlas is doing as much damage as possible. Drawing fire is the job of the fast lights - because in MWO evading damage is much better than taking damage. And much easier.

Clearly you don't play the Atlas all that much. With smart torso twist you can easily soak 600+ damage while inflicting serious harm onto the enemy. The hard part with an Atlas is when your team leaves your rear exposed.

[Grayseven]

Atlas' lend themselves to a good weapons mix. Their downfall is that they are extremely slow. Without support, they are meat to almost any other mech.

Packing an LRM to use while advancing at a ponderous pace is just smart. It goes well with that AC/20 most Atlas' pack on their hip. An SRM6 works well with an AC/20 and a few energy weapons round out the mix.

None of which matters if you leave your Atlas to fend for himself. If your Atlas is moving into the furball, you'd better be right there with him or his ability to draw fire, soak damage and put the hurt on enemy mechs will be wasted. 100 tons of mech is impressive, but not when 500 tons of combined mech are all firing on it.

[Wintersdark]

CrockdaddyAoD, on 16 March 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

Clearly you don't play the Atlas all that much. With smart torso twist you can easily soak 600+ damage while inflicting serious harm onto the enemy. The hard part with an Atlas is when your team leaves your rear exposed.

This is where the differences in play between Elo brackets make conversation difficult.

At higher Elo ratings, you find ever more instant hit weaponry that isn't fired as it comes off cooldown but is instead timed and aimed to core you as you twist. It's not hard to avoid shooting arms and to put your gauss, PPC, and AC rounds right where you want them.

And believe me, as you creep higher up that ladder, there are ever more builds specializing in just that - AC/20 or Gauss K2's, Gauss+PPC Cataphracts, etc. And they will be hitting where they want to hit more often than not, no matter how cleverly you twist.

Of course, you still have to twist, or it happens far faster. Twisting is only really effective vs. missiles and lasers. Against single-hit weapons, if they're aimed and timed properly, all it does is delay the shot by a second or so.

As you get higher up, there simply is no tanking anything.

[Royalewithcheese]

Grayseven, on 16 March 2013 - 05:29 PM, said:

Packing an LRM to use while advancing at a ponderous pace is just smart. It goes well with that AC/20 most Atlas' pack on their hip. An SRM6 works well with an AC/20 and a few energy weapons round out the mix.

I actually find that a pair of UAC5s or an AC20 is fine for mid-range shots while you advance. They're good at convincing the other side to stay behind cover, and UAC5s are legitimately good long-range weapons.

[Josef Nader]

Holy crap people still don't understand what the word "tank" means in this context. It doesn't mean rhinohiding through damage. It means being able to be the primary focus target of the enemy for as long as possible. The Atlas is a tank. That armor does not let you meathead through attacks. It gives you the durability to survive prolonged periods of enemy engagement. If you aren't a trash pilot, the enemy will be -hunting- you for the entire duration of the engagement, not shooting at you.

The Atlas is an exceptional tank. It gets attention quickly, draws fire like a magnet, and is incredibly lethal if ignored. This does not mean it can walk directly into enemy fire, nor is anyone who is arguing for the Atlas being a tank saying this is the correct way to play. We aren't saying that torso twisting will give you carte blanche to soak all the damage in the world. A good Atlas pilot knows how to twist to soak damage. He knows how to time those 4 second cooldowns on KC20s and Gaussapults, and he knows how to bait them into shooting without letting them have his CT. A skilled Atlas doesn't focus down a single target, especially not one bringing a lot of pinpoint firepower to the mix, because this keeps his CT nice and predictable.

No, a skilled Atlas pilot lays into any enemy in his firing arc, and swings his arcs around unpredictably to take as many shots of opportunity as his heat scale will allow. A good Atlas will force the enemy to invest significant time into killing him rather than his teammates, and if all goes well a good Atlas pilot will take so long to kill, and deal so much raw damage to his attackers, that his teammates simply have to mop up the pieces.

tl;dr if you're trying to DPS as an Atlas, you're doing it wrong. That's the role of more agile, squishier mechs like the Cats and 'Phracts. Don't sit there and lay into one target. Peel armor off of everything. Soften everything up while everything is busy pumping rounds into you. Give your teammates kills by opening up armor, stripping weapons, and weakening as much of the enemy force as you can as long as you can. Use cover, terrain, knowledge of your own weapon placement, and your own situational awareness to make yourself a ******* to kill. This is how to win at Atlas.

[Mavairo]

Josef Nader, on 16 March 2013 - 05:46 PM, said:

Holy crap people still don't understand what the word "tank" means in this context. It doesn't mean rhinohiding through damage. It means being able to be the primary focus target of the enemy for as long as possible. The Atlas is a tank. That armor does not let you meathead through attacks. It gives you the durability to survive prolonged periods of enemy engagement. If you aren't a trash pilot, the enemy will be -hunting- you for the entire duration of the engagement, not shooting at you.

The Atlas is an exceptional tank. It gets attention quickly, draws fire like a magnet, and is incredibly lethal if ignored. This does not mean it can walk directly into enemy fire, nor is anyone who is arguing for the Atlas being a tank saying this is the correct way to play. We aren't saying that torso twisting will give you carte blanche to soak all the damage in the world. A good Atlas pilot knows how to twist to soak damage. He knows how to time those 4 second cooldowns on KC20s and Gaussapults, and he knows how to bait them into shooting without letting them have his CT. A skilled Atlas doesn't focus down a single target, especially not one bringing a lot of pinpoint firepower to the mix, because this keeps his CT nice and predictable.

No, a skilled Atlas pilot lays into any enemy in his firing arc, and swings his arcs around unpredictably to take as many shots of opportunity as his heat scale will allow. A good Atlas will force the enemy to invest significant time into killing him rather than his teammates, and if all goes well a good Atlas pilot will take so long to kill, and deal so much raw damage to his attackers, that his teammates simply have to mop up the pieces.

tl;dr if you're trying to DPS as an Atlas, you're doing it wrong. That's the role of more agile, squishier mechs like the Cats and 'Phracts. Don't sit there and lay into one target. Peel armor off of everything. Soften everything up while everything is busy pumping rounds into you. Give your teammates kills by opening up armor, stripping weapons, and weakening as much of the enemy force as you can as long as you can. Use cover, terrain, knowledge of your own weapon placement, and your own situational awareness to make yourself a ******* to kill. This is how to win at Atlas.

Thank you. God I was starting to think I was alone in this thread.

Also, your allies should be stepping in during critical moments of the atlas's torso rotations. The Atlas might be absorbing a great deal of fire (which he should be doing his best to reduce both through cover, and twisting), but his team mates should also be taking some hits, and doing their best to get the focus off the Atlas. Lights on his six? Sanitize them off.

Heavies opening a can? Everyone else should be either trying to head shot the SOB, or blow the offending weaponry off ASAP.

It's a concerted, combined arms force that makes an Atlas good. Not some dip wad cowering out in the middle of nowhere, presenting the largest silhouette in the game for every tom **** and harry to just blow to pieces and at the very least, render the fatty mostly harmless before it can get into cover. And on the flip side, not some derp that won't even twist correctly or put the hammers down in the correct places.

Edited by Mavairo, 16 March 2013 - 06:00 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

• Defending your team.
  
• Blowing up robots.

[Forestal]

Onmyoudo, on 13 March 2013 - 12:46 AM, said:

An Atlas is a damage soak. It has the most armour, it has the most durability and in a lot of cases it has ECM. If you are not soaking damage, you are not doing your job. Did you get 600 damage? Great. Did you get 2 kills? Well done. Did the rest of your team die because they got alpha struck to death while you were playing coy buggers in the buildings? Then you're next, bucko, and the game has been lost. If you're winning, then it's likely because someone else has been soaking up the damage that you should have been sharing.

Due to the nature of how MWO works, an Atlas is always needed on the front lines. Massive burst damage and concentrated fire can and will annihilate members of your team that, if able to actually fire their weapons (perhaps due to the enemy team instead firing at the large 100 ton behemoth striding towards them) will allow your team to do more damage overall than you alone can manage. 400 + 400 is better than the 600 you will do by yourself.

Seriously, if I drop into any "Assault" match where an Atlas announces:
"tanking it to the enemy base..."

I swear that I will guard it with my life-- and even TANK FOR the Atlas!


But so far, all I get to do is do rear-guard duty for the lites in "Conquest" mode who bother to declare:
"taking kappa/ theta/ etc..."

Edited by Forestal, 16 March 2013 - 06:03 PM.

[Josef Nader]

You're still blowing up robots. If you -don't- fire weapons as soon as they've come off cooldown (or your heat scale will allow it), you aren't piloting an Atlas right either. The point I'm trying to make is that you shouldn't hold your torso still and lay into a single enemy mech. This makes it -waaaaaaay- too damn easy for the rest of his team to core you like an apple. No, you need to be shooting back at EVERYONE who's shooting at you, and doing everything you can to manuver your mech in and out of cover, exposing different sides to fire at all times, and generally being extremely calculating as to how you present yourself to the enemy. Every little detail matters, from the position of your legs to the side you expose first in an engagement. Your goal is to stay alive, preserve your most valuable weapons, and keep the enemy shooting at you above getting kills. Leave that to the Cat jockies.

Edited by Josef Nader, 16 March 2013 - 06:00 PM.

[Dataman]

Drenzul, on 16 March 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

So is an atlas. 3-4 volleys can take one down.

Only difference is an atlas can't get out of the way.

There is NO mech in this game designed to tank.

There is NO mech in this game designed to spear-head a rush.

Mechs are ultra-heavy infantry, if you want to do a spear-head charge, thats what tanks are for. Mechs are the special ops forces of the BT universe.

dude... are you... my head hurts.