122 replies to this topic

[Royalewithcheese]

SRMs feel fine on my DDC, but considering that we're hearing a lot of complaints from medium pilots and that SRM6 is one of the only good close-range weapons that even fit on medium robots, I would definitely be a fan of increasing missile damage to TT values.

[Swiffllama]

I did a lot of testing before I decided to post. Didn't want to jump to conclusions until I used all three a bit. After a number of hours testing I think that the damage is about spot on for all three but LRM's do need a few slight changes.

1. Increase the flight speed of LRM's just a tad. Don't go all drastic here. Just a little and see how that feels.
2. Increase Ammo per ton. It's slightly low right now. 10% to 15% should do.
3. Remove the incoming missile warning for mechs not equipped with BAP. This isn't a big deal for SSRM or SRM since you usually can see they are shooting at that point and being so close you don't have time to move anyway.

1 & 3 will have the effect of making LRM's "feel" like they do more damage without actually increasing the physical damage they are doing. Also gives a reason to actually take BAP.

[BR0WN_H0RN3T]

I started another thread because I noticed that Mechlab was reporting lrm10 dmg as 3 and lrm15 dmg as 4.5 (i.e. 30%, not 70%). The other lrms seem to be 70%.

[MischiefSC]

LRMs - well balanced now. Tiny damage buff if any, more importantly they need a speed buff and a shots/ton buff.

SRMs - well balanced now. Needs a tiny damage buff for sure and a decent sized buff to shots/ton.

Otherwise it's all good. Makes them good weapons, well balanced with everything else.

[Anjian]

I feel that everything is just about right.

[Ravingdork]

I don't boat missile weapons. I'm a brawler who favors hunchbacks. In particular, I pilot an HBK-4SP with four medium lasers and two SRM6s.

Before this nefarious nerf, I made ~200,000 credits every three games. Now, it takes me six or more games to earn that much. My armament has been so reduced in damage potential that my formerly highly effective support brawler is now barely more effective than a light mech, except he doesn't have the luxury of running circles around his enemies and dodging fire effectively like they can. I can't seem to kill anyone now. Some opposing players have even taken to ignoring me!

This nerf doesn't just hurt boats, it hurts everyone who uses missile weapons. MWO is now one step closer to just being another shooter. I pray that the pendulum swings back the other way a bit. This "patch" (*laughs* *spits*) was just too much.

I can understand bringing LRMs down a bit (but not nearly this much), but why touch SRMs at all? They were perfectly fine! Unlike LRMs, you can't fire those from the safety of a far mountain range or lock on for an easy fire and forget victory. I just don't know what possessed the game's developers into caving into a bunch of whiny newbs who don't know how to use cover properly.

In short, this update sucks. I hate it. I can't wait till it's undone.

[Dedzone]

Agent of Change, on 21 March 2013 - 06:18 PM, said:

Trying to figure out where to put this and this seems good enough.


I ran an hour of a stalker heavy missile boat prior to the patch then and hour after wards to compare the two.

Now I didn't do any of the math but here are my observations.

Prior to the patch: (4 lRM 15's)

Averaging 1400 to 1600 damage (all missiles gone) (4-6 kills)
Barely need my lasers to finish off mechs.

Post patch: (same mech build)

Averaging 500-700 damage (all missiles gone.) (2-3 kills)
Primarily getting kills from laser coup de graces.


In a stroke a skilled LRM boat pilot (I considered myself to have developed this skill set) has been taken from dominating the scoreboard and leveling the finger of god upon all i survey to focusing fire, using all my tools, and working to get the top spot on the board.

In my mind the LRMs are about right, at this moment, harassing and softening tool worth throwing on a mech but still effective when boated. I don't think they are perfect right now but I do think they are close. I would work on either a slight damage increase (.1 or .2) OR preferably just speed them up a bit and keep damage and pattern the same.

This post sums it up VERY nicely and is as far as I need to read in the thread.
Nice way to describe it.

[Lightfoot]

The problem with MWO LRMs, when they are, "working as planned", is they have to be boated to be worth taking and this is wrong. The reason they need to be boated is because they do primarily area effect damage. Area effect damage would be okay for LRMs, but it will never be balancable in an interactive multiplayer game because you will always get the LRMs before the last hot-fix or after it and neither of those are balanced.

It's like this, guided area effect damage is going to hit, so the only thing left to be adjusted is how much damage they do. That amount is either mechs-go-boom damage or mechs-take-no-real-damage. Neither one is balanced for fair gameplay. Either you are hosing the LRM pilot or the pilot being LRMed.

So to have LRMs worth taking they have to work well and do point damage when using line-of-sight flight paths and do area effect damage with no line of sight. This puts the tactical burden evenly on both pilots and is not unfair to either. It gives LRMs a place to be tactically good, just like an AC20 is tactically good in close range combat. In this way the amount of damage can be balanced with the amount of difficulty, or skill, to use LRMs well.

Before the last LRM Bug, I refused to use LRMs at all. MWO's LRMs are total nonsense and useless if you have even a medium skill level at aiming direct fire weapons. The LRM Bug made them overpowered on AoE damage, but they were working about right if that were construed as the Line-of Sight tracking advantage.

[ArmageddonKnight]

Voted about right.

Thoughi would point out that LRM's r hitting CT to much, they need to be a bit more spread out and the damage as such may need a tweek up to compensate. Otherwise they seem fine.

Generaly those who dont like them as they r now are just to used to the OP IWIN stats of the LRM's prior to the hotfix, and cant adapt their loadouts and playstyle to compensate.

[Korlandril]

I like the way things are now. It will stop people from just boating LRM's and SRM's , so they have to actually play the game a little, instead of just standing back and pressing a ''delete'' button on enemy mechs. In my opinion the only people that are really going to rage against this are the people that are used to missiles being OP. they seem balanced now, arent superior anymore. Like any weapon you need to learn how to use them effectively...not rely on there raw power but there implementation. So go out there and learn to pilot mechs, not sit back and press buttons boys and girls

[Commander Kobold]

It's a shame that the nerf only really hurt balanced builds with 1-2 launchers they should up LRM dmg to 1 SRM dmg to 2 and streaks should stay at 1.5-1.8(since they never miss)/ then they can do something about people who boat the things and cause the q_q

[Lightfoot]

ArmageddonKnight, on 23 March 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

Voted about right.

Thoughi would point out that LRM's r hitting CT to much, they need to be a bit more spread out and the damage as such may need a tweek up to compensate. Otherwise they seem fine.

Generaly those who dont like them as they r now are just to used to the OP IWIN stats of the LRM's prior to the hotfix, and cant adapt their loadouts and playstyle to compensate.

Artemis Equipped LRMs try to hit the CT, or land a more focused swarm, with line of sight to the target. That might be what you are seeing.

Generally people who like LRMs now don't use them.

Edited by Lightfoot, 23 March 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[DEN_Ninja]

I currently only boat LRM's on one of my mechs and have only boated or used LRM's on heavy and lower mechs.

The point of LRM's is the "support" role. People misunderstand that LRM's are just there to soften and help brawlers take on heavily armored mechs. This is total bull. Read any novel and understand that LRM's have and always been support because they are resource intensive. They are not front line weapons. They are support because they are used in conjunction with other weapons and tactics.

You think that Precentor Focht simply let the clans run across mountains, hills, and fields without taking damage? No long range missiles paired with other weapons were used to great effect. The Com Guards would engage at range, retreat, restock, and continue all the way back to the objectives.

I really don't give two [Redacted] about SRM's and Streaks. In fact they are were they should be.

LRM's are horribly underpowered. Everyone acts like it is so easy to achieve hits. People act like it is not necessary to even aim. People believe that the true damage output is 100% and they used basic arithmetic to say that LRM damage is overpowered.

The only people who die to LRM's are the ones that walk out in the open with no ECM and have no situational awareness. Move from cover to cover, Disengage our locks. Find Cover with ECM. Equip AMS.

Either increase the damage and wide the spread. Or increase the speed and ammo per ton.

Otherwise it will be FPSWarrior: Online. Lasers, Ballistics, and SRM's are all pretty much straight shooting weapons.

Oh and my C4 is now useless since Six Tons of LRM's do so little damage when you account for that more than half of the missiles miss or won't hit damn thing.

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 23 March 2013 - 12:58 PM.

[DEN_Ninja]

The LRM5 was meant and purposed to be a lightweight carrier for missiles. These missiles gave a capable long range capacity for lower weight class mechs that tended to have shorter ranged weapons.

Guess what, even if you manage to hit someone with LRM5's and with new spread bound to come in the 3.5 damage of the LRM is going to be spread out. So accounting for spread the LRM5 has the POSSIBILITY of doing over 4 damage for the cost of 3 tons including ammo. That amounts to barely over 1 damage per ton compared to a medium laser that does 5 damage for just one ton. Hell the AC/20 gets a 1.33 damage per ton. The fire rate of the AC classes are higher too allowing for a higher DPS if not Damage per ton.

[Sybreed]

Lightfoot, on 23 March 2013 - 11:59 AM, said:

The problem with MWO LRMs, when they are, "working as planned", is they have to be boated to be worth taking and this is wrong. The reason they need to be boated is because they do primarily area effect damage. Area effect damage would be okay for LRMs, but it will never be balancable in an interactive multiplayer game because you will always get the LRMs before the last hot-fix or after it and neither of those are balanced.

It's like this, guided area effect damage is going to hit, so the only thing left to be adjusted is how much damage they do. That amount is either mechs-go-boom damage or mechs-take-no-real-damage. Neither one is balanced for fair gameplay. Either you are hosing the LRM pilot or the pilot being LRMed.

So to have LRMs worth taking they have to work well and do point damage when using line-of-sight flight paths and do area effect damage with no line of sight. This puts the tactical burden evenly on both pilots and is not unfair to either. It gives LRMs a place to be tactically good, just like an AC20 is tactically good in close range combat. In this way the amount of damage can be balanced with the amount of difficulty, or skill, to use LRMs well.

Before the last LRM Bug, I refused to use LRMs at all. MWO's LRMs are total nonsense and useless if you have even a medium skill level at aiming direct fire weapons. The LRM Bug made them overpowered on AoE damage, but they were working about right if that were construed as the Line-of Sight tracking advantage.

Agreed. IMO, PGI should just prevent people from boating LRMs and up their damage. Right now, none of my mechs boat LRMs, and I don't use any of them anymore since they're useless. I'll wait for them to buff LRMs back a bit, but IMO, LRMs shouldn't be allowed to be boated. It screws balance too much.

[DEN_Ninja]

Sybreed, on 23 March 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:

Agreed. IMO, PGI should just prevent people from boating LRMs and up their damage. Right now, none of my mechs boat LRMs, and I don't use any of them anymore since they're useless. I'll wait for them to buff LRMs back a bit, but IMO, LRMs shouldn't be allowed to be boated. It screws balance too much.

I would love to see the spread of LRM's increase as the quantity increases. Even with Artemis the LRM 20 should be splashing all over the mech while the LRM 5 should be a tighter cluster. Not to mention a deep increase to heat for boating LRMS.

That way you can't make an LRM boat just by stacking a tag with multiple LRM's. Heatsinks and speed are a factor to an LRM user.

[Dimitry Matveyev]

That is what should be done to prevent boating, in my opinion. But after that weapons can be normaly balanced.

[TapFragger]

i hate the new missile tweak. LRMs are way underpowered

[DEN_Ninja]

Ghost1321, on 23 March 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

Exactly, it doesn't feel like 3.5 damage per launch, or even 7 with two launchers, is worth all the rigamarole I have to go through to get that voluminous damage on target--tracking, flight time, exposed to counter-fire, target can easily dodge most or all the damage. To do the damage basically of a small laser or two, spread out over multiple areas.

They wanted us to judge by feel, and I don't think it feels right at this point. There is a problem for non-boaters who want to use their missile hardpoints.

The Trench Buckets have the worst of it. They can't carry much more than an single LRM 20 with enough ammo.

[Sybreed]

Dimitry Matveyev, on 23 March 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

That is what should be done to prevent boating, in my opinion. But after that weapons can be normaly balanced.

Yeah, don't get your hopes up. Let's say I talked to some people and chances of having such a system implemented are slim to none...