211 replies to this topic

[Lightfoot]

Mycrus, on 10 September 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

on the contrary, i love them now... as it takes skill to use them

i haz 4xERPPC on my AWS-8Q - on chain/dual fire of course

4 ERPPCs fired in two staggered sets puts you at or over the max heat threshold with 22 DHS and then you need to wait 10-12 seconds for the heat to zero out. So that 3rd and 4th ERPPC are not being used.

They should give us real DHS 2.0's after all the heat nerfs and ghost heat. They are just creating a GunWarrior version of MechWarrior if all they nerf is Energy, but allow guns to fire at 2xRecharge.

Edited by Lightfoot, 10 September 2013 - 02:03 PM.

[PropagandaWar]

Tyman4, on 10 September 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I don't like them being that hot. PPC is okay at nine or 10 heat and ERPPC at 12 or 13 sounds just fine to me. I only run a single ER on my cent. It is reaally hot now. Y punish a single ERPPC build with 15 heat (33% more than the normal PPC for the same damage), its not a crazy alpha build. This is the second increase to heat on PPCs isn't it?

Tyman4, on 10 September 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I don't like them being that hot. PPC is okay at nine or 10 heat and ERPPC at 12 or 13 sounds just fine to me. I only run a single ER on my cent. It is reaally hot now. Y punish a single ERPPC build with 15 heat (33% more than the normal PPC for the same damage), its not a crazy alpha build. This is the second increase to heat on PPCs isn't it?

So what do you do with Clan ER PPC's that do 15 heat 15 damage???? Yeah they are fine where they are.

[BulletChief]

they're fine where they are. and yeah, i'm eliting my awesomes right now.

they do high instant damage over a long distance. they were outright broken before compared to large lasers.

[Raidyr]

PropagandaWar, on 10 September 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

So what do you do with Clan ER PPC's that do 15 heat 15 damage???? Yeah they are fine where they are.

Adjust the numbers when the time comes.

[TOGSolid]

Raidyr, on 10 September 2013 - 01:19 PM, said:

Haven't had a chance to use regular PPC's yet but ERPPC's feel like they generate slightly too much heat.

I'd actually just give ER PPCs a bit more shot velocity to make up for their high heat rather than to drop the heat they do produce.

[Corvus Antaka]

PPC/ERPPC is perfect now. I've been running from 1-4 erppc and ppc and they still are incredible location damage guns, they just need more skill and patience to use.

[Koniving]

DaZur, on 10 September 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Depends on your play-style...

PPCs front-load your damage and deliver it to a singular spot upon impact. LLas require one to maintain focus on that same singular spot over a duration to reap full damage potential.

Typically if your more of a ranged fighter you'll benefit from PPCs more... If you like to close and brawl, lasers are the better choice.

A tool for each job an a job for each tool...

Don't forget: PPCs fire every 4 seconds. Large Lasers fire every 4.25 seconds, for 2 damage less and less range.

[TexAce]

lockwoodx, on 10 September 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

I wouldn't be surprised if mechs start being able to "strafe" at the rate this game is going. Torso twisting isn't that much different when you think about it yet with armor still being useless the twisting doesn't save you much.

How can armor be useless? Are you dropping without any then??

[Bishop Steiner]

Khobai, on 10 September 2013 - 06:22 AM, said:

Except the skillcap on them hasnt changed at all. All that changed was the rate you could fire them.

PPCs are pretty useless now because other energy weapons, specifically large lasers, are outright better.

For the PPC to be a worthwhile weapon it needs to be able to do something that no other weapon can, which it currently doesnt.

Still a far better sniper weapon. Significantly better range than large lasers, front loaded damage, no need to stay exposed and on target for a full second, which is not easy to do against GOOD opponents at 1K. (well, 900 meters, for Larges)

One simply can't brawl indiscriminately with them AND use secondary weapon at the same time, or fill the sky with PPC spam. But then, you couldn't with mechs built around them like the Warhammer or Marauder in TT, either.

[Alpha087]

deanon, on 10 September 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

The heat cost is to high

Stop trying to fire 2 or more at once over and over.

Also pick your shots more carefully.



They got rid of Poptart Warrior Online for a reason.

[Bishop Steiner]

TOGSolid, on 10 September 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

I'd actually just give ER PPCs a bit more shot velocity to make up for their high heat rather than to drop the heat they do produce.

I agree with this.

I don't want them mathced to Gauss, to minimize shot syncing, but I do feel the PPC nerf might have been slightly over aggressive. Heat I am fine with. Minimum range to PPC I am fine with. Or Shot speed nerf. All 3 seem a little much, TBH. Maybe 2 out of 3, take your pick which, would be about perfect. My preference would be projectile speed, but even simply returning the under 90m damage to PPC would be fine, since it's not like you were doing great damage for heat anyhow. But it did allow you SOME degree of PBR defense with them.

Either way, I'm still mostly OK with the nerf in general.

TexAss, on 10 September 2013 - 03:09 PM, said:

How can armor be useless? Are you dropping without any then??

people gotta blame something for their failure. And we know it can't POSSIBLY be lack of skill.

[TOGSolid]

Quote

I don't want them mathced to Gauss,

Oh hell no. Especially not now that the Gauss is damn near point and click damage.

[Alpha087]

I still run dual PPCs on my AS7 DDC and it still works just fine. No I can no longer continuously spam the weapon over and over without waiting for the heat level to drop, but that's how high damage energy weapons are suppose to work... It's meant to be a long range, high heat generating weapon, and that's what it is now.

Stop trying to boat weapons. That's not how the meta of this game is suppose to be, and it's not fun when it is.

[Heat Seeking Civet]

deanon, on 10 September 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

The heat cost is to high, never put out enough damage for them to be worth it, Large Lasers are pretty much allways better since they allow you to fire more.

Good, that's how it is supposed to be.

[SteelPaladin]

Alpha087, on 10 September 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

Stop trying to boat weapons. That's not how the meta of this game is suppose to be, and it's not fun when it is.

The problem is, while they continue to slap on penalties for boating, they still haven't really addressed the reasons why it was so appealing to begin with. The unique firing characteristics of every weapon means the best weapon that chains (not even alpha, just on the same weapon group) w/Weapon A is... more Weapon A. You can't put Weapon B or C in there, because you'd have to change your aim point between each shot and worry about varied cooldowns. That's as detrimental to chained fire as it is to alpha fire. Combined w/a heat system that encourages front-loaded fire and well...

They've got a freshly baked apple pie on the shelf that smells delicious, but they punch you in the face every time you reach for it and wonder why you keep trying to sneak around the guard instead of giving up. If they took the goodies out of the window, they could stop having to pay so many rent-a-cops.

[Billygoat]

My two favourite mechs (BJ-3 w/ 2xPPC, 4xSLas and BJ-1 w/ 2xPPC, 2xMLas, 2xMG) are still working very well post-nerf.

Increased heat means I just have to spend marginally more time between attack runs cooling down or be willing to take the risk of overheating to get a killing blow. Projectile speed was easy to adjust to. I was half expecting to have to shelve PPC-based medium builds after the patch, but that simply hasn't been the case. The impact of the nerf may be more painful on big, slow mechs, but I never really used PPCs on those, so I couldn't say.

I still think the hard, 0-damage cutoff at 90m is stupid though. I feel that mechanic is only really appropriate for LRMs in this game and it feels out of place on PPCs, especially when at 89m you can see the shot connect, see sparks fly, etc, but nothing happens. It either needs some visual feedback to show the shot fizzling out or a return to the old sliding distance/damage scale. Or better yet, remove the silly minimum range mechanic entirely for non-missile weapons if it's not going to be applied evenly to Gauss, AC/2s, etc. that also have penalties at short range in Battletech.

It's not a huge deal for me, since normally my preferred PPC mechs can stay outside of 90m without much trouble, but it still just seems arbitrary and (as if this really needs to be said for this game) is poorly documented inside the game.

[SteelPaladin]

At the very least, I'd like to see the sliding damage return, but tightened. It may have been allowing too much damage before, but a magic line going from 10 to 0 is a bit bizarre. Just move the 0 point down from 90 to 60 and let it scale linearly from 90 like it did before. That way, it's still pretty lame for brawling (no one wants to be eating 10 heat to do 6 damage at 80m) but you don't completely lose a shot because the target stepped 1m over the magic line at the last second.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Tyman4, on 10 September 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I don't like them being that hot. PPC is okay at nine or 10 heat and ERPPC at 12 or 13 sounds just fine to me. I only run a single ER on my cent. It is reaally hot now. Y punish a single ERPPC build with 15 heat (33% more than the normal PPC for the same damage), its not a crazy alpha build. This is the second increase to heat on PPCs isn't it?

This is yet another point. My Dragon Slayer use to mount a ER PPC, LB-10X, 2 ML and a SRM6 on 14 DHS and I don't think anyone would have considered this uber OPed or even anything beyond average firepower, yet with the move to 15 heat on the ER PPC, I can't even run this build at all on a hot map without running into Overheating issues very quickly. I probably lost 30% or more performance and efficiency on this mech with the heat change.

It is things like this that I am upset about. I never used PPCs or ER PPCs in a boat build, rather I used them in mixed builds like my Dragon Slayer yet now to fix boating, they made them useless for mixed builds. I guess sure, I can completely stop firing with my ER PPC when it gets down to effective range of my other weapons but if I do that, then the ER PPC, one of the key weapons of my build, becomes 7 tons of dead weight on my mech because they are too hot to heat manage appropriately.

[PropagandaWar]

Raidyr, on 10 September 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

Adjust the numbers when the time comes.

we need consistency. Its like the friggin streaks doing 2.5 dmg. Why? SRM 2's do 2 and you know they are going to nerf the {Scrap} out of them when sixes and fours come in. Get it right now don't adjust when they come out. 15 is fine for a er ppc. Because when clan comes out it won't need adjustments/

[Khobai]

Quote

Yes and no, Khobai. If you want to compare, you're pretty much looking at pitting 3 PPCs (21 tons and 9 crits) vs. 4 Lrg Lasers (20 tons and 8 crits).

The problem is its very hard to run 3 PPCs and be successful because if someone gets within 90m youre screwed. Thats why PPCs require mixed loadouts, which is the exact reason theyre no longer worth using. Large lasers are outright better because they dont have that 90m deadzone.

ERPPCs still sortve have a place in the game though.