39 replies to this topic

[Tooooonpie]

Been playing a lot of games, doing a lot of damage (600+ majority of the time), but i'm getting pretty much no kills, and so my k/d has fallen from a respectable 1.41, to 1.23 and no sign of improving.

I know this isn't the worst thing ever, but I really want to try and improve it - But my choice of mechs seems to never allow me to get the killing blow. So I ask, what would you guys recommend to get a bunch of kills?

[Damon Howe]

You're asking the wrong question:

The question is: How does one increase their K/Dr in Pugs?

The answer is finding a group and dropping in 4 mans.

[Lukoi Banacek]

It might not be the Mech. It is more likely your loadouts and how you play if you are doing 600+ in matches on more than just rare occasion.

Are you LRM boating? Are you heavy on lasers? Are you carefully aiming for the weakest portion of an enemy Mech or just worried about landing your shots in general? The list of questions goes on from there but it is a good start.

Also, KDR is just one of so very many statistics that actually illustrate anything about a player. Fixating on just your KDR is likely to drive you into playing selfishly and will actually in the long term, make you a worse pilot overall imo. I would not sweat it overly much tbh.

[PenitentTangent]

Honestly, I don't think we should care about K/D whatsoever. It's a worthless stat imho. for a game like MWO, it should be about teamwork, functionality, effectiveness, and objective completion, not "how many casualties were brought about in your wake."

That being said, I find a constant cycle of lasers are the best at Kill stealing.

My TDR-5ss has a nearly heat-neutral all-laser build and a staggering 2.20 K/D. None of my other mechs surpass 1.20.

Edited by PenitentTangent, 01 December 2013 - 05:13 PM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

K/D is also irrelevant in this game.


You need to reevalutate your play style.

[Mahws]

Step 1: Turn off your computer
Step 2: Find your closest mountain and climb it
Step 3: Meditate until you learn not to care about a meaningless number only you can see
Step 4: Return to playing the game and have fun

If the above don't work try weapons with high pinpoint burst damage (20-30 total damage is good) and focus on dropping the hammer on wounded mechs to secure a kill. Large lasers or ballistics are ideal (PPC if you can handle the heat), best mounted on a faster mech that can be where it can do the most hurt easily. Shadow Hawks are probably a good place to start.

Edited by Mahws, 01 December 2013 - 05:13 PM.

[Davers]

Tooooonpie, on 01 December 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

Been playing a lot of games, doing a lot of damage (600+ majority of the time), but i'm getting pretty much no kills, and so my k/d has fallen from a respectable 1.41, to 1.23 and no sign of improving.

I know this isn't the worst thing ever, but I really want to try and improve it - But my choice of mechs seems to never allow me to get the killing blow. So I ask, what would you guys recommend to get a bunch of kills?

As the above posters said, K/D is a useless stat and players who are K/D whores are actually pretty bad for the team in general. After all, everyone has seen those players who ignore enemy mechs who are shooting team mates (and even themselves) tripping over each other to get the last hit on a disarmed Atlas.

That said, to answer your question, AC/40 Jagers are really good at getting those last hits.

[Tooooonpie]

Thats the thing though, I can't ignore it - What other measurement do I have in this game to judge my improving/bettering myself? Wins/Losses and K/D are the two things, so of course I'm going to care about these numbers lol

And I'm not saying I haven't been focusing on improving myself, or playing with team mates to achieve a win, but it still remains that I want a decent K/D ratio to have something official justifying that I'm improving

[scJazz]

OK if you really want to focus on a meaningless statistic focus on Win/Loss.

[Tooooonpie]

scJazz, on 01 December 2013 - 05:38 PM, said:

OK if you really want to focus on a meaningless statistic focus on Win/Loss.

But.... thats whats rewarded in this game lol - Getting Kills and Winning are the two things that get tracked, so while I agree that while in premades its 100% irreverent because all that matters is playing well and doing your role, if pugging the only thing you really have to go on is those stats.... if that makes sense....

[Mahws]

Getting kills doesn't matter as it has no relation to your performance in the game. I've had rounds where I've been absolutely useless to the team and gotten 5+ kills, I've had rounds where I've carried the whole team and only got a kill or two, or even none. It's completely meaningless.

Winning doesn't matter because you're 1/12th of a team and your personal skill is very rarely the deciding factor on whether your team wins or loses. It's completely meaningless.

So either learn to use your own judgement to determine how well you did in a game ("I took down that poptart that was pinning my team down allowing them to push through to the enemy. I did well." or "I managed to warn my team of the players flanking us and held them off. I did well") or stop caring and either play for fun or find something else to do with your time. There's no simple measure of how well you did, if you need that to have fun then this game won't work for you.

Edited by Mahws, 01 December 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[Celestial]

Mahws, on 01 December 2013 - 05:46 PM, said:

Getting kills doesn't matter as it has no relation to your performance in the game. I've had rounds where I've been absolutely useless to the team and gotten 5+ kills, I've had rounds where I've carried the whole team and only got a kill or two, or even none. It's completely meaningless.

Winning doesn't matter because you're 1/12th of a team and your personal skill is very rarely the deciding factor on whether your team wins or loses. It's completely meaningless.

So either learn to use your own judgement to determine how well you did in a game ("I took down that poptart that was pinning my team down allowing them to push through to the enemy. I did well." or "I managed to warn my team of the players flanking us and held them off. I did well") or stop caring and either play for fun or find something else to do with your time. There's no simple measure of how well you did, if you need that to have fun then this game won't work for you.

Disagree.
I'll take the opposing viewpoint, you are 1/12th of your team, how you play matters a lot. and kills certainly aren't "Completely meaningless".
The rule of the vital few states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In other words, roughly 20% of your team is responsible for 80% of the final outcome (victory). ELO is designed to take the best players (the ones that win games) and distribute them evenly. You can be a part of that 20%, the only way you will know is if you consistently win games. Which is why Win/Loss is an important stat. Kills are also very important IF you are a designated Mech killer (Assault Mechs, Heavy Mechs, slow mediums)

[Roughneck45]

Step one - get a four man group you are confident in.

Step two - purchase a Highlander 733C and put 2 PPC's and 2 UAC5's on it

Step three - play games, win games, watch KDR go up.

Edited by Roughneck45, 01 December 2013 - 06:17 PM.

[Mahws]

Celestial, on 01 December 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

Disagree.
I'll take the opposing viewpoint, you are 1/12th of your team, how you play matters a lot. and kills certainly aren't "Completely meaningless".

If ELO distributes high ELO players evenly then it's still irrelevant. Of course better players will swing matches, but the majority of PUG matches aren't decided by the glorious knight sitting upon his High ELO Steed, it's decided by whether his low ELO back up folds, doesn't push, gets themselves out of position, gets themselves killed and leaves them sitting high and dry. High ELO players are a predictable quantity, they're all fairly good, low ELO players are a roll of the dice because their performance is never predictable. More often than not the match isn't decided by how good the best players on your team do, but how poorly the worst players do.

If a match is 3 good players and 9 decent vs. 3 good and 9 poor then it's clearly not the 4 good players on either team who are likely to be the deciding element of the game.

Designated Mech killers also don't exist as far as I see it. If you deal 80 damage in your Assualt to an enemy's CT and I swoop in and finish them with a single medium laser the kill goes to me, rather than the 'designated mech killer'. Kills rarely go to whoever stripped the most of the enemy mechs CT armour. There's only two types of player types in Assault, DPS and Burst. Burst usually steals the kills, DPS usually makes them happen. Either way kills aren't a good measurement of how much a player contributed to the win.

Edited by Mahws, 01 December 2013 - 06:24 PM.

[Wildstreak]

Tooooonpie, on 01 December 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

Thats the thing though, I can't ignore it - What other measurement do I have in this game to judge my improving/bettering myself? Wins/Losses and K/D are the two things, so of course I'm going to care about these numbers lol

And I'm not saying I haven't been focusing on improving myself, or playing with team mates to achieve a win, but it still remains that I want a decent K/D ratio to have something official justifying that I'm improving

One stat I never see anyone measuring is Deaths / Matches, aka D/M aka Survivability. How's THAT one? Especially if you are a Light pilot.
Speaking of that, how about Kills / Matches, aka K/M? If you fuss over that.
What about weapon hit rates (WHR)? Which ones do you suck with and how do you improve them if you want to?
I consider D/M and WHR my important ones. I think I may have an odd stat on MGs.

Tooooonpie, on 01 December 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

But.... thats whats rewarded in this game lol - Getting Kills and Winning are the two things that get tracked, so while I agree that while in premades its 100% irreverent because all that matters is playing well and doing your role, if pugging the only thing you really have to go on is those stats.... if that makes sense....

Oddly, I am not sure. Right now driving Locusts, there are times I get great XP but bad CB, sometimes the other way around. I think the best bonuses are coming from Savior Kills, I don't know how that is measured but it is either I save someone's *** or they save mine, either way I get a bonus from it. Being a Locust helps.

[Celestial]

Mahws, on 01 December 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

Designated Mech killers also don't exist as far as I see it. If you deal 80 damage in your Assualt to an enemy's CT and I swoop in and finish them with a single medium laser the kill goes to me, rather than the 'designated mech killer'. Kills rarely go to whoever stripped the most of the enemy mechs CT armour. There's only two types of player types in Assault, DPS and Burst. Burst usually steals the kills, DPS usually makes them happen. Either way kills aren't a good measurement of how much a player contributed to the win.

A designated Mech killer is a mech that's sole purpose is to destroy other mechs very effectively and efficiently. not to cap, not to gather information or scout. AKA assault and heavy mechs. If you aren't doing damage and getting kills, you aren't playing right. DPS mechs in this game are nearly worthless, they never do consistent damage to one area on a mech, they spread the damage and they aren't the ones that "allow" kills to happen while the burst mechs "steal" them. The Burst mechs, at least in competitive play, are the ones that rule the field. That's why you see the best teams taking burst weapons like PPCs, Guass and AC20s. Because they are flat out superior in every way, (except DPS, which is useless)

[Redshift2k5]

K/D is a bit pointless since it's private, most other players won't care, etc. Having a personal goal is fairly important, though.

However, I think you may be looking at this from the wrong angle- Unless you're running a dedicated Scout mech, then improving your K/D is only indirectly related to improving your overall performance. you should focus on improving your skills (contributing to wins, surviving matches, defensive torso twisting, aim, etc) as opposed to simply improving a number.

I would say being able to consistently hit a moving target at range, or to hit a target in a specific section, etc etc etc is more important than padding one's KDR, because improving your skill at the game will of course lead, organically, to improved statistics.

Edited by Redshift2k5, 01 December 2013 - 06:45 PM.

[Mahws]

Celestial, on 01 December 2013 - 06:39 PM, said:

A designated Mech killer is a mech that's sole purpose is to destroy other mechs very effectively and efficiently. not to cap, not to gather information or scout. AKA assault and heavy mechs. If you aren't doing damage and getting kills, you aren't playing right. DPS mechs in this game are nearly worthless, they never do consistent damage to one area on a mech, they spread the damage and they aren't the ones that "allow" kills to happen while the burst mechs "steal" them. The Burst mechs, at least in competitive play, are the ones that rule the field. That's why you see the best teams taking burst weapons like PPCs, Guass and AC20s. Because they are flat out superior in every way, (except DPS, which is useless)

Remember we're talking about PUG games here. Scouts don't exist and neither do 'dedicated cappers' (hopefully that'll change once we get the long awaited c-bill rewards for capping in Conquest).

By DPS builds I mean builds that can brawl half way effectively. Usually Assaults or heavies that can grind enemies down with damage over time (DPS was the wrong word, it's more about effective DPS, how much damage they can dish out over a protracted fight without losing firepower due to overheat. I guess "Tanks" would be the better term?), then there's smaller/faster or boatier mechs that tend to land the finishing blow. A Jenner would be a good example, can't brawl well but can clean house against damaged enemies, equally a JagerBoom, doesn't have the armor or speed to last one on one but can dish out sudden damage that ends fights.

[Kenyon Burguess]

WARNING: if you use a cheese mech and improve your K/D, you will end up in ELO hell, which is you waiting a very long time for matches with really terrible players.

Edited by Geist Null, 01 December 2013 - 08:03 PM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Tooooonpie, on 01 December 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

Thats the thing though, I can't ignore it - What other measurement do I have in this game to judge my improving/bettering myself? Wins/Losses and K/D are the two things, so of course I'm going to care about these numbers lol

And I'm not saying I haven't been focusing on improving myself, or playing with team mates to achieve a win, but it still remains that I want a decent K/D ratio to have something official justifying that I'm improving

You say you want to improve, yet you seek a mech that will boost your KDR? That isn't you getting better, thats you finding a mech that will improve your ranking. Improving your mastery of the Meta, but not making you a better pilot.

You want to improve, then set a goal of getting better damage using a weapon system you are not comfortable with. Or one that most people consider sub-optimal like SRMs.

I do know that I wouldn't want a glory hound on my team.....

*edit*
But since we are supposed to help by answering questions, the easiest way is to take a (relatively) fast Assault/Heavy mech, hide like a little female dog until the enemy has taken a lot of damage, then rush in to steal kills.

Edited by Nick Makiaveli, 01 December 2013 - 08:16 PM.