Nekki Basara, on 25 October 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:
You seem to like piloting mediums or at least be aware that they are suffering in the high-alpha metagame. The current situation they occupy is a bad one, since the mech scaling makes them a proportionally easier target than they should be, as easy to hit as heavies without any of the durability. The solution to this would be to increase durability across the board, so the first mistake stops being lethal for them, as has been suggested elsewhere a number of times. The game I want is the one where my mech clomps around taking sustained fire for minutes before falling over, not the current step out of cover and get cored meta that exists now and which Ghost Heat did very little to address.
Now, the other tweaks to weapon fire have worked far better to at least inconvenience the previously dominant meta by requiring better timing and skill, but we are still left with nonsensical crippling of canon builds functioning as newbie traps and the oddness of chain-firing AC2s shutting you down faster than doing the same with ERPPCs.
This is exactly what the heat changes addressed. Were you playing the game when you could step out in a HEAVY or ASSAULT and get 6 PPC'd and insta-gibbed? Are you playing the game now where that doesn't happen anymore?
I have never seen people running more balanced builds than at this point in the game right now, so in that sense I would call their changes successful. A bit weird yes, but effective in preventing those ridiculous alpha strikes.
Canon builds? Let's talk about that for a second. What canon builds ran 6 PPC's or AC2's? During the LRM raining from the sky cheese builds what mechs in canon ran 80 LRM's? The heaviest missle platforms were vehicles, and maybe the Longbow. ALSO, for those canon builds that ran heavy amounts of heat producing weaponry you basically had a choice: overheat or don't fire all your weapons. The game right now doesn't include all of the risks you experienced in TT either, so that's also worth pointing out: ammo explosions, reduced movement, and targeting penalties. The only effect you get in this game is you go straight to shutdown.
The game has never been in a better state of preventing exactly what you complained about above, and that is survivability.
People that rely on heavy alpha strikes are the worst kind of player, the ones who can't stand losing and will do everything in their power to circumvent the spirit of the game in order to convince themselves they're much better players than they really are.
Cheating and using cheese mechanics is just a way of admitting to yourself that you suck, and can't compete on a level playing field.