travelbug, on 27 October 2013 - 12:49 AM, said:
yup i pretty much know this but i was asking about changes to personal gamestyle rather than specific group tactics. and yup i already have a group i run with.
I think the biggest differences in light play from pug to 12 man competitive is that you can't expect not to get hit, and that you have to win games with your legs and eyes, not with your guns. As far as getting hit is concerned, good players will smash you. You have to stay unseen or at least significantly out of range if you want to survive. That is the biggest single change. You try to remain as active as possible but you cannot make yourself a target or you will get one-shotted. Winning games with your legs+eyes means knowing when to go to cap, knowing when to fake going to cap, knowing when to commit to fights against other lights, knowing when to defend your base vs attacking theirs vs attacking the main force of the team, knowing when to be where to deflect attacks, knowing how to get the enemy lights to think there is an attack that needs to be defended, etc.
Lights are not all that powerful in any one place, but they are the most able to get to different places to present SOME power at least. Things like "picking off isolated mechs" is often trumpeted as a job of lights. This is true in pugs, but in 12 mans, it is the THREAT of getting picked off that is really powerful. The only things you will be picking off is other lights, and that isn't easy because they can run...It really is the threat of lights that is more powerful than the bite.
Here's an example. Let's say that I send my force of lights to the enemy base on good information that nothing is defending. Enemy team sends back 2 meds and 2 lights to fight my 4 lights, and we run. Then 2 minutes later, we send all 4 lights to base again, and again the enemy sends back the same force and we run. By now, lets say the base is half-capped. There are a ton of things you could do from here, but let me take one potential option. The next time another minute or two later, I send 1 light to base with the intention of being spotted by the enemy lights and meds which likely now are staying near their own base. I have that light report to me, and he says that the 2 meds and 2 lights are still on base, and that they are chasing him. At this point, I coordinate with the commander of the rest of our forces a full frontal push on the enemy main force, AND I send our 3 lights to be a part of this push, and they can because they didn't go to base this latest time. We just took a fight 11 mechs to 8, with our final light being able to get back and make it 12-8 before the enemy can even get their out-of-position lights and meds back to the battle. We should win that battle every time assuming equal skill, and we should win it a significant amount of the time EVEN IF the enemy is better at straight up fights... Now what did the lights do? Oh, only 200 damage each, touched cap but didn't finish it, and spent a bunch of time running away, but we won the game with our legs, not our guns. This kind of thing would not be possible in a pug match because of the lack of a centralized goal and centralized communication, but comes out quite nicely in 12s.
Edited by PEEFsmash, 27 October 2013 - 02:09 PM.
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