82 replies to this topic

[Odin]

Cathy, on 22 November 2013 - 06:04 AM, said:

currently the only mechs worth putting pulses on are lights to hit as they charge past eachother, and they make a nice spound

LPL are pointless compared to erll and standards,

mpl and spl are in general not worht the weight and extra heat, though as I said sometimes they work with a mixture of standard lasers

however on the whole they are pointless in MWO with the present meta

Not true.

I beg to differ.
And announce the 700th Battle in my Victor S.
This uselessness, culminated in 130 scorewhatsoever, 6 kills, 2 assists and 927 damage.
Sporting 28 shots AC20 and 2 LPL. Chainfire? Alpha? No matter. A heat efficiency at 1.41.
This, of course, was a team effort. 12Pugs.

Hurt when you hit.

Edited by Odin, 24 November 2013 - 03:11 AM.

[Odin]

IMO the key to LPL is, deploy them as a DOT weapon.
They are hitting, were the Canon does. For the Alpha,
but their usefulness comes with chainfire.
They accumulate damage, while your right arm is on cool down.

AC20 and PPC is nice. But more like a min/max build, not as versatile and cunning as a pair of LPL.
IMO.

[Stardancer01]

Large & small pulse lasers are useless BUT I do like medium pulse lasers.
I use 3MPL on my spider builds 18 damage fast and concentrated is sweet.
I use 2MPL on missile boats in order to know exactly where 180m is.

I think pulse weapons should be the (shortened range) SR version of normal lasers with a large heat reduction as much as ER lasers get a heat rise.

[Funkin Disher]

How about making them fire in 2-3 short bursts instead of a single stream? That would mean packing their ticks closer together and give a tiny chance while firing to retrain your aim without changing range, heat, recycle time, etc.

[Asmudius Heng]

Did not read all the thread but Pulse lasers have bugged me for a long long time.

I think that LPL might be the best of them right now, but even then the sacrifices are too great.

How they function I feel is fine, you pay a premium for a shorter burn time and slightly higher damage. This is great for targeting lights in heavier mechs, and it is good for lighter mechs who have less time on target when moving fast and dodging.

There is a great niche for these weapons - but the premium you pay is too high.

RANGE:
The lower range of a pulse laser is is major shortfall. With the double damage drop off this makes them seriously under-ranged forcing a very close in usage which makes the shots you do out of optimal range extremely punishing with the very quick damage drop off.
Reduced range is fine, but it is too punishing considering then ..

WEIGHT:
Medpulse is DOUBLE the weight of a medium laser. This is a huge increase for very limited gain. When you have a single energy hardpoint and a 2 ton laser would fit this should be a viable choice but its not. The LPL is 7 tons - when you put that up against a PPC or ERPPC, or even a LL for only 5 tons the damage and heat are just not worth that huge tonnage in comparison.

HEAT:
Increased heat is fine, but its quite punishing for the range and weight


SOLUTION:
The weight will not change as this is BT lore, the mechanics could change but I feel shorter burn time is fine and gives it a nice niche as it is also hitscan. Where the changes can be made are: Damage, Heat, Range.

I think the optimal solution is to increase the range of Pulse lasers slightly. Make them less than their regular variants but by far less a margin. I think their damage could be upped a tiny bit as well, and the heat can remain the same. These are small changes that would just push them into usable territory without making them overpowered in anyway.

If i felt that a medium pulse could reach out and touch someone with a decent heat to damage ratio and a shorter burn time I would be happy to pay the tonnage premium for them depending on my build.

Right now though, i have tried and tried but its just not worth the investment

[JimboFBX]

I think on cold maps the pulse lasers are preferable, but on hot maps they are a liability. This is really the issue honestly; it's hard to say they are useless because we aren't choosing our maps yet. A range increase wouldn't hurt as well.

And I think changing the damage profile to 3 pulses with it doing:

50% + 25% + 25%

damage each pulse might make them more worthwhile as well. Then you can focus on making the first shot which would make them more viable as a shoot then torso twist weapon.

[Huntsman]

FupDup, on 21 November 2013 - 10:54 AM, said:

Unfortunately, the devs currently feel that pulse lasers are "normalized" and thus working as intended.

Pulse lasers are indeed "normalized" on paper, but someone may need to explain to the devs that this isn't the same thing as them being balanced and useful in real gameplay.

[FupDup]

THE GOSPEL OF WUB WUB.

[Karl Streiger]

Asmudius Heng, on 24 November 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

I think the optimal solution is to increase the range of Pulse lasers slightly. Make them less than their regular variants but by far less a margin. I think their damage could be upped a tiny bit as well, and the heat can remain the same. These are small changes that would just push them into usable territory without making them overpowered in anyway.

QFT

I really ask my self:
Role Warfare:
Does it end with Mechs only?
What is the main advantage of a Medium Pulse Laser over a Medium Laser?
You can take TT - the MPLAS is perfect weapon for CloseQuarter combat - it is equal efficient or worser above 120m with the MLAS. So what is necessary for such short engagement ranges?
Increase that need - and decrease the ability of the MLAS to server at this range as effective. You maybe should think about making a single MPLAS more effective as 2 MLAS at current range bracket.

While I know, that language is a though barrier for me a comparison:
take a simple FPS - you have pistols, shot guns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles.
- if your pistol is as effective as your sniper rifle to take out targets at 500m and more - something is ill
- if your shot gun is not able to be more effective at CQ than your assault rifle - you need to move back to the drawing board
- if the most effective weapon is your light machine gun - with ACOG - you really should think about the roles of your computer game.

[Satan n stuff]

This might need it's own thread, but since we have one here already I'm just going to pitch this here.
I was thinking pulse lasers might be more useful if each pulse was a single powerful hit, instead of the recycled damage over time mechanic we have now. That way they could more easily focus damage, and they would be somewhat effective at critting, which lasers normally aren't. It might make them a bit harder to aim for newer players but since they're hitscan I'm sure they'll manage.
There could also be some changes to the effects to keep them consistent with the mechanics, for example speed up the sound a bit and add some boom to it and make the beam a bright flash that dissipates over a short time and stays in place rather than following the crosshair.

[Cornmiser]

I particularly like the suggestion made by giving pulse lasers the same range profile as ballistics, that is, they can deal damage at up to triple the optimal range, as opposed to only the double. Although still the best at short range combat, doing this would make up for the limited range they have by making them just a little more useful than they are currently.This also makes some sense (fuzzy logic) fluff wise, as the pulse lasers had greater accuracy.

[Krujiente]

I use medium pulse lasers in Hunchback 4P to get around ghost heat and have a little bit better equipment for dealing with fast things. 3 MPLs 6 MLs. It generates like 10 less heat then a 9 laser alpha and the shorter burn time is better for dropping pesky lights, especially when they are on your arms. MPLs have absolutely no ghost heat hindrance at all they're just hot heavy and short ranged, makes them hard to use. But if I want to get full 48 point alpha out on my Hunchback without having a huge penalty, the pulse lasers found a good place in my heart.

[Pjwned]

I made a thread a while ago about pulse lasers myself and it got a number of replies. I've since tried using a couple SPLs on my Jenner (for reduced heat and thus less need for heatsinks) and I like it enough, but the extremely small range can be very frustrating even on a light going just under 150 kp/h, and it also deals less damage than a Mlas while weighing the same amount.

Opinions incoming on each laser size.

• I do think SPLs have a place on fast light mechs and maybe as a backup weapon on heavier mechs with mostly long range weapons, but I think they could still be more attractive because their damage:tonnage ratio is pretty bad compared to Mlas or even 2 Slas. They don't have a reduced range like the other 2 bigger pulse lasers, but that doesn't really matter a whole lot when their range is smaller than my johnson, so a range buff for both types of small lasers might be warranted.
  
• I personally don't see a place for MPLs at all, they just weigh far too much compared to their standard counterpart and the reduced range (in addition to increased heat) makes an already fairly short range weapon even less desirable due to damage dropoff being a constant problem, and they're too heavy to justify using in a light mech.
  
• I think LPLs are in the best shape, mostly because the tonnage increase is not nearly as bad compared to SPL and especially MPL. However, the reduced range is by far the most noticeable on LPL, making its range only slightly more than a Mlas while being 7x heavier, and this makes their usage pretty much exclusively limited to heavier brawler mechs. A reduced range penalty would go a long way towards seeing LPLs fielded on more mechs I think.

Here's the thread I made on pulse lasers a while ago: http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

Edited by Pjwned, 17 January 2014 - 10:32 AM.

[Warblood]

Pulse Lasers will b in a better place once we get the X-Pulse Lasers in the game.. same damage as reg. pulse lasers but with the range of reg lasers n just bit more heat.

ex:
LL = 450-900m
LpL = 300-600m
X-LpL = 450- 900m

[Prezimonto]

You know what would be neat? If pulse lasers actually dealt pulsed damage.

[dwwolf]

My fix proposal -33% optimal range , x3 extreme range. 20% extra damage. That equals to the same max range they currently have but a pronounced damage hump at close range.

[Carrioncrows]

The only thing with a longer history of pulse lasers being bad is the patch after patch of them being ignored.

[Too Much Love]

Its obviously needs buff.

1) Pulse lasers are rarely used, I almost don't see them at the battlefield.

2) They need buff as a part of increasing power of close range weapons. If pulses were buffed, less ppl were complaining about PPC and AC.

[Khobai]

Quote

You know what would be neat? If pulse lasers actually dealt pulsed damage.

This. Pulse lasers should work like they did in MWLL and actually fire pulses.

http://www.youtube.c...e&v=pTjDjVo39Gc

at 5:40 he shoots pulse lasers

Edited by Khobai, 18 January 2014 - 09:49 AM.

[Artgathan]

It might be interesting to re-work the pulse mechanic in the following fashion:

Each Pulse Laser has an "energy bar" associated with it. This bar depletes partially whenever the Pulse Laser trigger is held down, and recharges whenever the Pulse Laser is not being fired. Think of it like an energy machine gun (from most other FPS): you can hold down the trigger to empty the mag in one long burst, or fire it off in several "discrete" bursts. However, while you need to "reload" at a set point in most FPS games, the Pulse Lasers in MWO would have a "constant" reload because their bar would always be re-filling whenever they weren't in use.

This would make them great for "burst brawling".