9 replies to this topic

[CancR]

Proposition: Huge fundamental change to lasers, to make them as borked as any other weapon, since PGI seems to be heading to the MW4 style of balance.

Overall: Lasers are direct hit with the caveat that the damage is split up into two beams that fire in quick succession. Pulse lasers only fire the single direct beam.

Specifics:
Small laser: 3 damage, 2 heat, 1.25 cycle
Small Pulse: 4 damage, 3 heat, 1 cycle
Medium laser: 5 damage, 3 heat, 2 cycle
Medium pulse:6 damage, 4 heat, 1.5 cycle
Large Medium: 8 damage, 8 heat, 3 cycle
Large Pulse: 9 damage, 9 heat, 2.5 cycle
ER Large: 8 damage, 12 heat, 3.5 cycle

Such a fundamental change is needed for lasers to be useful to all chaises. The 'Lasers are fine' crowd as small as they are, don't have any need to rely on them because they boat missiles or ballistics and only use lasers as a secondary weapon. We who love and rely on lasers are tired of being ****** by the minimal damage, extra heat, and 4-5 second wait time in between firing them, and being able to fire them again and this needs to change sooner rather then later.

[Sheraf]

The current laser is fine to me. keeping it one beam look better

[CancR]

What's fine about them?
How you get less damage overall, and dps then taking ppc/gauss?
How you have to wait 4-5 seconds to fire them again, when all other weapons will already be on their third shot?
How you have more heat to damage ration then other energy weapons?
How they went from being a high skill, high reward weapon in CB to being a high skill low reward weapon in OB?

[Farix]

Energy weapons have a lower DPS because they do not have any ammo limitations. Ballistics and missile on the other hand have ammo limitations, hence why they have a higher DPS. By reducing the cycle times of energy (you didn't mention anything about duration), you are essentially buffing their DPS to be equal to ballistics without the drawbacks of limited ammo.

[Biglead]

Put on more lasers.
Don't fire them all at once.

Presto, problem solved for X. (How to shoot lasers more often)

[Hellcat420]

i use lasers as the primary weapons on most of my mechs. they work just fine for me.

[Angel of Annihilation]

CancR, on 08 August 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

Proposition: Huge fundamental change to lasers, to make them as borked as any other weapon, since PGI seems to be heading to the MW4 style of balance.

Overall: Lasers are direct hit with the caveat that the damage is split up into two beams that fire in quick succession. Pulse lasers only fire the single direct beam.

Specifics:
Small laser: 3 damage, 2 heat, 1.25 cycle
Small Pulse: 4 damage, 3 heat, 1 cycle
Medium laser: 5 damage, 3 heat, 2 cycle
Medium pulse:6 damage, 4 heat, 1.5 cycle
Large Medium: 8 damage, 8 heat, 3 cycle
Large Pulse: 9 damage, 9 heat, 2.5 cycle
ER Large: 8 damage, 12 heat, 3.5 cycle

Such a fundamental change is needed for lasers to be useful to all chaises. The 'Lasers are fine' crowd as small as they are, don't have any need to rely on them because they boat missiles or ballistics and only use lasers as a secondary weapon. We who love and rely on lasers are tired of being ****** by the minimal damage, extra heat, and 4-5 second wait time in between firing them, and being able to fire them again and this needs to change sooner rather then later.

Well I have put the math up here several times now pretty much proving that LLs are about the best weapon in the game and much better than PPCs and even ER PPCs so I personally know they have no issues.

To reiterate some of my findings.

One - Lasers have a higher accuracy than any other weapon in the game. Just go to you stats and look at your accurary ratings with each weapon if you don't believe me.

Two - Lasers do more damage per time fired than PPCs. This is taking into account their inherent accuracy over PPCs and keeping in mind that a PPC is all or nothing, where as a laser can be corrected back to the target on a miss.

Three - Even with spead, due to the fact lasers do at least partial damage and in general hit much more often than PPCs, concentrated damage is about the same.

Four - LLs weight 2 tons less than PPCs, are much cooler and take up less critical slots which in turn means more room for extended cooling, more weapons or some other item that would generally improve a mech.

Using my stats I hit about 61% of the time with PPCs and 84% of the time with LLs. When I did the math, I found that due to the accuracy, LLs did on average 23% more damage than PPCs when I equiped them.

Even if we claim that the LL damage is subject to "damage spread" due to beam duration, 23% is a pretty large buffer to account for that and that damage is STILL getting applied to the enemy mech somewhere which in turn means each mech I engage with LLs ends up being more vulnerable to being killed in some way, form or fashion, much faster than when I use PPCs.

Additionally, since even with the PPC I can be aiming at the CT and accidently miss and hit say an arm or side torso, I contend that PPCs are just as subject to spread as a LL. Remember, a PPC is all or nothing, you either hit your intended area or you don't where as a LL can be corrected back to the intended target if you happen to miss.

Lastly, above and beyond all these accuracy and damage numbers, you have to remember what I mentioned before, LLs are 2 tons lights and much cooler to run leaving more weight that can be devoted making your mech better overall than mount a PPC for example.

Now I know this topic isn't about LLs being better than PPCs, but since the PPC is the current scapegoat for all the woes of the game due to it being OPed, well it is not hard to see how proving that a LL is at the very least comparable if not outright better than a PPC would go a long way to prove that Lasers don't need a buff or change.

[Divine Retribution]

Only Large Pulse and Medium Pulse lasers need to be better. Your system would mean a 6 medium laser Jenner can do 150 damage in 10 seconds. For 6 tons invested..... and no ammo requirements, and no travel time, and reduced heat than current energy weapons. I'll agree to it if the lasers take on ballistics-equivalent weights. That medium laser can do 5 damage every 2 seconds without ammo or travel time, but it weighs 8 tons. Good luck cramming 6 of those on your Jenner...

You're comparing medium lasers to a PPC/Gauss boat? Well your 6 medium lasers that do 30 damage and generate 24 heat only requires a 6 ton investment. 2 PPCs and Gauss with the minimum required 1 ton of ammo does 35 damage every 4 seconds (yeah they need to recharge too), requires 30 tons, requires more crit spaces, requires travel time, is only fully effective for 10 alphas, but only generates 19 heat.

That tradeoff seems unfair to you? It seems normal to you that a Jenner should pack the equivalent firepower of an assault mech, but at a lower heat cost, lower tonnage investment, lower crit space investment, and without any ammunition requirements? No real downside whatsoever? I'll just leave that comparison with you without declaring my opinion on the matter, lest I have an aneurysm.

Edited by Divine Retribution, 08 August 2013 - 07:23 PM.

[CancR]

Biglead, on 08 August 2013 - 06:26 PM, said:

Put on more lasers.
Don't fire them all at once.

Presto, problem solved for X. (How to shoot lasers more often)

Jenners can only mount 6 lasers. Oh, Right..It's my fault for not talking an assault or heavy.

Viktor Drake, on 08 August 2013 - 07:14 PM, said:

Well I have put the math up here several times now pretty much proving that LLs are about the best weapon in the game and much better than PPCs and even ER PPCs so I personally know they have no issues. [+ lots of stuff]

That may be so, but my biggest beef is with how they made MLs go from a great workhorse weapon in CB, to being useless in OB as they went from 3 heat, 3 second fire, to 4 heat, 5 second fire which when all you can use on you mech of chose is lasers, you are unjustly ******. The same can be saind about small, small pulse, and med pulse weapons.

As far as your 'math' goes, some one already pointed out it's ********* If you take the '60% accuracy' and calculated that each beam for the LL is 1.5 (and yes, it is 1.5) seconds, times that by 100 times fired, you arrive at 150 seconds. so if you are hitting the beam 60% of the time, you are hitting with the beam for total of 90 seconds. Multiply that by A LL's dps which is 2.12, and you are only doing 190.8 damage. Needless to say; doing the same math with the ppc, the ppc does much more.

Divine Retribution, on 08 August 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:

Only Large Pulse and Medium Pulse lasers need to be better. Your system would mean a 6 medium laser Jenner can do 150 damage in 10 seconds. For 6 tons invested..... and no ammo requirements, and no travel time, and reduced heat than current energy weapons. I'll agree to it if the lasers take on ballistics-equivalent weights. That medium laser can do 5 damage every 2 seconds without ammo or travel time, but it weighs 8 tons. Good luck cramming 6 of those on your Jenner...

You're comparing medium lasers to a PPC/Gauss boat? Well your 6 medium lasers that do 30 damage and generate 24 heat only requires a 6 ton investment. 2 PPCs and Gauss with the minimum required 1 ton of ammo does 35 damage every 4 seconds (yeah they need to recharge too), requires 30 tons, requires more crit spaces, requires travel time, is only fully effective for 10 alphas, but only generates 19 heat.

PER ALPHA, Divine, 24 heat PER ALPHA. As I played almost nothing other then the Jenner F since CB I can speak to the numbers with no doubt that going back to CB heat for MLs and making them DH and cycle fast like they did in MW4, that nets me 1 more alpha then I can with the stupid and non-nonsensical extra heat they have now. In a practical, game sense, this means that a Jenner F can alpha 4 times (5 for a cold map,3 for the hot maps) before having to run away and cool down. All this will do for jenners is be able to let them front load the alphas allowing them to hit and run like they should. Jenners can be one shotted easily in this current meta, and the fact that they have to hold lasers on their enemies only makes them easier targets. You dont play a Jenner full time, when you go into your jenner and die in the subsequent opening minutes in the game, you just get in your cats, or your Jager or some other heavy or assault and play the meta. I just want Jenners to be on the same level as they should be, as other mechs.

As much as the skill socialist cry wanting to preserve their easy mode where they can hide behind the most amount of hp (armor in this case) and damage output, I want an equal footing for lights and mediums that we had enjoyed in CB before streak/ecm hell.

After all, in both MW and in BT, lights are spouse to be feared because of their speed and maneuverability, being able to get behind enemies and pick them apart.

Making MLS better will also make them a more viable choice for mediums, heavies, and assaults rather then a placeholder weapon.

[Angel of Annihilation]

CancR, on 08 August 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

Jenners can only mount 6 lasers. Oh, Right..It's my fault for not talking an assault or heavy.

Do you have any idea just how much firepower 6 MLs is on a 35 ton mech that can run well over 140 kph and mount 200+ armor. It is huge. That is 30 alpha and you can make the Jenner run really cool doing it.

One game in the 12 vs 12, I managed 2 kills, 8 Assists and 591 damage with a Jenner F and 6 ML. Another I managed 6 kills, 2 assists and 736 damage just before the patch. Nothing wrong with MLs, nothing at all.

CancR, on 08 August 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

That may be so, but my biggest beef is with how they made MLs go from a great workhorse weapon in CB, to being useless in OB as they went from 3 heat, 3 second fire, to 4 heat, 5 second fire which when all you can use on you mech of chose is lasers, you are unjustly ******. The same can be saind about small, small pulse, and med pulse weapons.

Played in CB and one of the main issues was that everyone was boating MLs because they were so much better than anything else. They needed a nerf. As to preformance, let me point out to you my last comment about how well my 6 ML Jenner performs.

CancR, on 08 August 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

As far as your 'math' goes, some one already pointed out it's ********* If you take the '60% accuracy' and calculated that each beam for the LL is 1.5 (and yes, it is 1.5) seconds, times that by 100 times fired, you arrive at 150 seconds. so if you are hitting the beam 60% of the time, you are hitting with the beam for total of 90 seconds. Multiply that by A LL's dps which is 2.12, and you are only doing 190.8 damage. Needless to say; doing the same math with the ppc, the ppc does much more.

You missed the point entirely. Your finger is not on the fire button constantly thoughout a match. Sometimes you can go for minutes without firing anything, LL or PPC. My point was that when you are firing, you hit more often with LLs than you do with PPCs by a fairly large margin which translates into doing more damage, enough more than any "spread" damage is negated for the purposes of concentrated damage.

Also if you want to start quoting "up time" for the two weapons, meaning how much a given weapon is off cooldown, ready and capable of firing, then your forgetting that PPCs generate significantly more heat which translates to more downtime waiting for your mech to cool enough to fire.

Additionally you can add two DHS for every LL you mount instead of a PPC due to the weight savings of the large laser vs the PPC. This means your mech runs even cooler which again translates into more uptime with your weapons firing vs downtime cooling like you would be with a PPC.

Overall you might be able to fire a LL up to 1.5 times more than a PPC for the same heat pool and at an 84% accuracy vs a 61% accuracy, this means the LL has even a larger damage margin over the PPC than my initial math indicates.

Now back on the subject of ML. How can you complain about a weapon that does 5 damage every 4 second and weighs only 1 ton? Two of them do 10 damage for 8 heat every 4 seconds vs a PPC that does 10 damage for 9 heat every 4 seconds. That is virtually the same damage and heat as a PPC for only 2 tons of weight investment leaving you 5 tons for something else. I don't know about you but tradeing a range of 540m for a range of 270m for the benefit of saving 5 tons of weight is a pretty darn good trade if you ask me.

Lastly, MPL and LPL. There was never anything wrong with MPL. They work great and were absolutely the best choice for many builds, now with a lower beam duration they are even better. LPL are in a bit of a tougher place but once they lowered the beam duration, they have came into their own much more. The damage output is great and heat is actually better than a PPC for the same weight right now. Their only disdvantage is their range of 300m which I have to admit is still kind of a big disadvantage. However they are good enough now that I have traded my ER PPCs on my K2 for LPLs and haven't had any regrets, especially in their better heat profile and damage output.