58 replies to this topic

[mistformsquirrel]

Hi all! I'm a longtime Battletech player and Mechwarrior player from way back when - I hadn't played a whole lot of MWO until recently however; but I'm starting to get into it in a big way. I bought Heavy Metal and overall have been having a blast with it.

The problem is... I can't actually tell if I'm doing well or not. I know that sounds bizarre; but this game plays a fair bit like World of Tanks (something else I've long played); and I've learned from my time over there that there's a lot more to this kind of combat than "how many kills you have at the end of a match".

Now, damage isn't a perfect metric either - but I'm driving an Assault, and with a brawling setup at that, so I figure it's probably as fair a method as exists for measuring my abilities with this particular machine.

Last few matches I've gotten ~400ish - I just can't tell, is that good? Bad? OK?

Additionally; I'm mostly dueling enemy assaults, trying to keep them from having a chance to focus on anyone else, basically acting like an MMORPG tank only well... with actual damage capability. Is that the proper role for an assault in this game? Or should I be doing something a bit different?

I guess to make a long post short:

I'm trying to do well, but I can't be sure I'm not failing horribly and I don't want to make the mistake of thinking I'm doing well if I'm actually playing terribly.

If it's relevant, I'm running my Heavy Metal with a Gauss Rifle, 3 Medium Lasers, 2 SRM6s, and a 330STD engine; kind of set up to get up in an opponent's face (relatively) quickly.

Oh, one other question sorta unrelated to the above:

Lasers in this game appear to stay 'on' for a second after being fired - do you have to keep them on target during that whole second to do full damage? Or do they do it all up front and the rest is just visual? Same question applies to pulse lasers - does it do damage per pulse or is it all frontloaded? (Sorry if that's silly but I honestly haven't been able to tell and it has a pretty large impact on how I use my lasers in the future.)

Thank you in advance < . .>/

*edit*

Weird, I shouldn't have a Founder's title since I don't have a Founder's package.

Edited by mistformsquirrel, 03 July 2013 - 04:54 AM.

[Adran]

400 damage is just fine. As an Assault, you're basically the tank of the game, as that's one of their primary roles thanks to their high armor amounts and high weight allowing them to bring heavier weapons, so you're doing that right too.

As for lasers, yes, you have to keep them on target to do full damage. Pulse lasers suck because they're shorter range than normal lasers with a lot more heat, and not nearly enough benefit right now to make up for it, but otherwise function the same as standard lasers (aside from taking just a bit less time to deal full damage).

[4lex]

Normal laser do their damage over time (beam duration) so you must keep them on target, better on the same part of the mech.

Some weapon will deal more damage than other but have that damage more spread out. You can destroy most mech in 3 alpha strike with 6 med laser fron the back for 90 damage. Or you could hose an assault for 250 damage with ac2 and make most of hes armor yellow/orange all over the place with little result.

Damage dont mean much nor kill. Some match youll feel you did great some time you will feel noobish for making a mistake and some time youll feel like your alone with no team. Score board is only good for self esteem boost.

400 damage in a brawler assault is ok/good in this long range meta

[Silchas Ruin79]

I've played a fair few public games now and I would say 400 is a pretty handy amount of damage, I would consider 700+ to be really good imo.

With the lasers I believe you have to hold it on target for the full burst to get full damage and it helps to hold it on one location if possible say on an arm or CT.

I pilot a Stalker mainly not really a brawler and instead of trying to tank I would generally say try to stay near some kind of cover to avoid being caught by LRM boats or groups of mechs and try to surprise or isolate a mech and destroy it then move on. I wouldn't advise duelling, fight dirty! Shoot em in the back or gang up on them. Sounds bad but works well

[Arete]

Depends a lot on playstyle and such. In general, if your team wins you probably did OK :-)

Damagewise it's harder to judge, but you can have some general guidelines for yourself to see if you improve or not. 400 damage in an assault brawler is OK, but depends a bit of how many kills you feel you actively contributed to. If you shot off 100 damage into an enemys arm while your teammate is working on the open front CT then that damage really didn't contribute to anything. That being said, if you have low heat it's never a bad idea to strip some armor off enemys even when it's not directly contributing to the kill since you might remove some components from it.

Can't judge directly off kills either. I sometimes do good matches where i "kill" many enemies in a slow mech but they manage to get away from me only to get killed by a fast striker mech. I might end upp with 600-800 damage but only assists, but I know they were "my" kills so even though the stats don't reflect it I still know I had a good match. And on the same note, I've had 600+ dmg games where I've felt I hardly did anything to help.

[xenoglyph]

OVER 9000!!!

[Lostdragon]

400 is pretty good, especially as you are learning. It is definitely a good contribution to the team. This is the Lostdragon scale of damage I use to evaluate my matches:

<100: I really screwed up and screwed my team over
101-200: Bad
201-300: OK
301-500: Good
501-700: Great
701-999: Dominating
>= 1000: Unstoppable killing machine

Edit: Some thoughts about tonnage

Others have pointed out that you should temper your expectations based on tonnage with lighter mechs doing less. This is probably true when you start out with a lighter chassis. It is much easier to do big damage in a heavier mech because they are more forgiving.

However, I have seen players in every single chassis dominate games. It is really impressive to see a light or medium do that kind of damage but it is very possible with an optimal loadout and very good pilot on certain variants. When I started playing Jenners I had tons of terrible matches and thought I would never break 500, but now I often have matches that fall under Great and rarely Dominating (my best damage match in JR7-F was like 756).

So while it is more difficult to do huge damage with lighter mechs it is not impossible. Watch videos, read guides, spectate, practice and do anything else you can to learn and you can do great in any weight class.

Edited by Lostdragon, 03 July 2013 - 06:46 AM.

[Koniving]

Anything over 200 is adequate for most mechs. Assaults really should strive for the 300 mark minimum.

If this says anything, these are with twin flamers and triple LB-10xs.

The build.


The scores.

Spoiler

516. Several enemy PPC users here, the ones that didn't score so well were the ones I got to first.


Like above, another pugging match. This time 531. No PPC users. The YLW who scored the second highest had 1 AC/20 and 2 ML, and he last that AC/20 very early because I was one of the first people he ran into. Fastest YLW I ever seen, must've had an XL engine.


Another match. Score's pretty obvious. This time was in a 4-man (which usually puts us up against at least 1 4-man or a 3-man with a 2-man). Their team had a lot of LRMs guarded by a lot of AC/20 builds. Thankfully my shotguns reach farther than their AC/20s. For some reason all the Jagers had standard engines. Lucky guys.

A trick to note: For some reason if you just fire 3 AC/10s or 3 LB-10xs, they seem to do less damage than if you fire two, then one or if you fire them one at a time. The difference is rather astonishing. Don't fire them at the same time.

[Mokou]

Lostdragon, on 03 July 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

>= 1000: Unstoppable killing machine

Unstoppable bad aim machine

Average damage depends on average enemy mechs weight.

Edited by Mokou, 03 July 2013 - 05:48 AM.

[zraven7]

400 damage is fine. Damage as a scale is kinda a funny thing. A low damage can mean not hitting, or very precise hitting. If I'm in my Jenner, and I drop 2 mediums with 3 alpha strikes to the backplate each, that's only180 damage, but it's 2 kills.

Honestly, just ask your team, especially if you're on Voice Chat with someone. They'll let you know. As a general rule, however, anything over 200 is helping, and anything over 300 is a good game.

[Dalziel Hasek Davion]

Some 'Mechs are DPS engines and will do loads of damage, but tend to do few kills. Others have heavy killing strokes, and so will tend to cause less overall damage, but more proportionately more kills. This model is twisted by the way the damage you cause is calculated. It seems to be that if you knock lumps out the enemy (destroying a torso and knocking an arm off) then the damage you cause skyrockets. I don't know if it's factoring in ammo explosions only - or also factoring remaining front/rear torso armour on the destroyed component.

There is an implied proportional relationship between expected damage delivery and 'Mech size. I don't think anyone expects poorly armed light 'Mechs to score 400 damage, but many assaults will be expected to do that kind of level.

In general I think most players only have eyes for their own numbers and couldn't really care much for the game stats of others.

Stats should be a way of you measuring the impact of changes in the way you play - and there isn't an objective measure of how good someone is. You seem to already get that. So here's my tuppence: I think 100-200 x (weight category) is a reasonable objective to set yourself.

• 100-200 (Light)
  
• 200-400 (Medium)
  
• 300-600 (Heavy)
  
• 400-800 (Assault)

Too much over the upper target and you've probably got high rate-of-fire and inaccurate weapons and a bit more precision may have made it quicker. Too much under the lower target and you may not have been in the game - too far from action/passive or killed too quickly.

[Lostdragon]

Mokou, on 03 July 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

Unstoppable bad aim machine

Average damage depends on average enemy mechs weight.

Maybe, but if you are able to do that much damage you are doing something right. I have seen 1k very rarely since I stopped using most missiles, but it still happens sometimes when I intentionally cripple then kill multiple enemies. I often times shoot out the RT of HBKs and Atlai to neuter them or I will leg a tough enemy to take him out of the fight then come back for him with help when the rest of the team is dead. If you do those types of things to 2-3 enemies you can break 1k and have applied that damage tactically.

[B0oN]

Lostdragon, on 03 July 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

400 is pretty good, especially as you are learning. It is definitely a good contribution to the team. This is the Lostdragon scale of damage I use to evaluate my matches:

&lt;100: I really screwed up and screwed my team over
101-200: Bad
201-300: OK
301-500: Good
501-700: Great
701-999: Dominating
&gt;= 1000: Unstoppable killing machine

Also set this in relation to your tonnage ^^
The higher your tonnage the more "potential" damage you can deal.

Seeing you are a brawler the whole calculus gets trickier by far though as you have to close distance with the bad guys and then still need to have enough of yourself left to contribute to fights either through "tanking" (= use your armor to soak up damage that other mates cannot afford to take anymore) or through "damage dealing" (= pretty self explanatory, albeit killing specific weapons/locations on enemy mechs can make you have that much easier a time, or you just use weakened spots your teammates have worked on to neutralize threats significantly or completely).

So your average of 400 dmg ain´t bad for starting and I furthermore wish you good luck dealing out them pains !

Edited by Rad Hanzo, 03 July 2013 - 06:21 AM.

[mistformsquirrel]

Thank you all, this is a big help!

[BookWyrm]

400 is a good match. The more damage you're doing the more the rest of your team is sucking. If you're pulling in 1000 you're seriously carrying most of the weight.

[Tor Gungnir]

I'd say it is pretty unfair to judge performance only on damage done...

Edited by Tor Gungnir, 03 July 2013 - 07:02 AM.

[Tanimaga]

Average 200 or so in my 3L Raven. Once topped out at just under 1200.

[Kraven Kor]

Keep in mind "Lots of Damage" but no kills or kill assists is not technically "good" either.

~100 damage per kill = God of MWO, hitting a specific target on a mech more often than just hitting the mech somewhere.

200 per kill, not bad.

400 per kill, you are doing great damage, but spreading it around too much.

[Corison]

Honestly your putting to much weight on Damage, and not enough on being effective.

You can easily roll in 800 damage, 0 kills... Yes you hit your targets, but if your team loses because you cant finish them off you really didn't do much.

A better way to look at is... Did your team win? Yes, great.. no? Why not. If you lose with 0 kills/0 assists you have to work on your skills. Your team still lost and you had 4 kills and 500+ damage? Well at least it wasn't your shooting.

If you pick up a couple kills and assists, you did your job no matter how much damage was dealt. I can score 2 kills easily with under 90 damage if there are enemy catapults on the map. Being able to put damage on target to either kill, or assist with kills is what counts.

I have seen more than a few matches were people run around chasing lights and ignoring CT critical heavies and assault mechs... Sure they were scoring damage but...

[The Basilisk]

I read most of the replys here and to my surprising no one got straight to the point.

Dmg numbers are next to irrelevant !!!!!

You can be an LRM spammer and do over 1000 dmg per round and be next to useless because you didn't make any significant hit to any single enemy.
You can be an AC2 or Ulra 5 carrier and do over 700 dmg and be all the same ....next to useless because you distribute ur dmg too much.

On the other hand you can be a sneaky scout blasting some heavys from behind, scoring 5 kills and doing around 200 dmg. Or be a skilled K2 sniper blasting some cockpits. You get 24 dmg points for a clean headshot. Let it be not 100% clean and go out of a match with 4 kills and around 150 dmg.

Both cases displayed above are extremes I encountered myself. Reality goes between them.
But seeing an direct fire Assault mech with over 500 dmg and 4 assists isn't quite impressive.
Seeing an LRM mech with less than 500 dmg an some kills isn't impressive either.

Thats about it. View your personal stats for your weapons and your accuracy. View your win loss indicator ( D/K isn't quite comprehensive ).
Accuracy is the most informative stat.
Lasers should be well over 75 %
ACs well above 60%
A high accuracy with SRMs means you are using them right. (standing targets and close up)
LRM accuracy is a bit tricky it strongly depends on ur targets and spotters.
PPCs should be higher than ACs (sniper weapon) If you are using them where they actualy can miss means you are in a situation where a sniper shouldn't be.
Same goes for Gauss