1453 R, on 17 January 2014 - 04:21 PM, said:
Not anymore, you're not. Instructions and materials for swapping out your Man Card are in the mail. Management expects to see you in skirts by next Thursday. No excuses.
Shar: I'm perfectly willing to debate the merits and drawbacks of the Lurmisher playstyle in a reasonable and productive manner. I'm fairly sure neither Victor nor Tesunie are really doing that anymore - the both of them have pulled in their horns and aren't really
listening anymore. It's sad; I can so easily see where both of them are coming from, but Victor is Victor and Tesunie's going to defend that Stalker until the entire Internet rusts away.
I'll leave it with just a single point, I suppose. Tesunie: if I was in, say, my JR7-D(S) (yes, the (S) is important. Get 'em good), and you were in your STK-3F, there's a super-cool thing I could do that I couldn't really get away with against a pilot in a Lurmisher medium.
Builds assumed for comparison, for the sake of clarity:
Tesunie's STK-3F:
Cap'n Ahab
1453-R's JR7-D(S):
Get 'Em Good
Anyways. Looking at Tesunie's Stalker, it's clear as crystal that the 'Mech is intended primarily for bombarding enemies with its LRM launchers. Nobody brings eight tons of ammo for backup weapons. In this instance, the 'Mech is also equipped with four medium lasers and two Streak SRM-2s as personal defense weapons. This allows the Stalker to fight back against lightweight threats, such as my Jenner, and possibly even kill them if the light pilot is sufficiently terrible/Tesunie is sufficiently on the ball.
Here's the thing, Tesunie -
that means I don't have to kill you to disable you.
If I can get close to you and just keep harassing you, tossing SRMs and laserfire at you every few seconds whilst ducking around and focusing primarily on avoiding your return fire, then I have effectively taken your Stalker out of the fight. Your LRM batteries - the BattleMech's primary weapons - are going to be going silent because you can't afford to leave me alone to chew up your backplates. I don't even have to focus especially on killing you - simply be being able to
threaten you, I can force you into your fallback weapons and remove your primary armament from play. Sure, this means I spend all game playing tag with an LRM battery if I'm insufficiently awesome to finish you off myself, but you know what? I'll trade my 35 tons to keep your 85 tons out of the game any time you'll let me.
A Lurmisher medium moving ninety klicks an hour doesn't ever really need to make that choice. My Treb can scrape lights off on its teammates far,
far easier than your Stalker can, and if it comes down to a situation where I
can't, for whatever reason, scrape the light off...well, you know what? Trading 35 tons for 50 tons is a whole helluva lot more even than trading 35 for 85.
I is sad. I get confused as a girl over the phone, (when I was in school) in office notes, and now online!
My Jenner is also an (S), and it's so much better than those normal Jenners...
You make a good point about tieing up a larger mech. My LRMs are, I shall admit, more of a focus than my SSRMs and lasers (but I don't like to leave myself undefended, and 6 med lasers wasn't cutting it anymore for what I wanted the mech to do. I wanted to deal more punishment to lights). I shall fully admit, if weight balancing was in swing, then this would be a very big point out of favor for my Stalker build. However, at least for the moment, there is no weight balancing. A team of Locusts might drop against a team of Atlases right now (not saying it does). However, this doesn't invalidate what you are saying though.
The difference between what you are saying and Victor is, you aren't calling it "bad" just because it's slow, or it's a Stalker. You seem to at least take notice that, especially in Pugland, this build seem to be effective, at least for me. And you seem to also understand that different people play different ways.
I'm haven't been saying that "My Stalker can kill everything", but it does seem to preform well for me in PUG matches so far. I'm able to defend myself, close in if I must, or use LRMs when I can. I agree that, if placed in the 12v12 arena, it might not preform as well (Victor's playground).
You see, with you, I can agree with what you are saying, and understand it. Unlike Victor, you don't tell me "You will lose", but it's more of a "you probably will lose". You aren't talking in definitives, or saying I'm just a bad player because I play differently from you. I shall admit that my Stalker isn't going to be "great" at everything, but you do have to admit, at least I will never be useless.
As far as "scraping lights off on teammates" I tend to be near my team, and I also tend to try and play as a guard near them. (I think I'd be the one you'd want to scrap a light off on...) But you have a point again, if I do end up being away from my team, and a light (or a group of them most likely) finds me, I'm less likely to be able to get help or support. There is a reason I try to stay with the team, or at least near them.
Victor Morson, on 17 January 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
Despite 1453 R's best efforts (and very well written by the way man!) I see you still don't get it.
A lot of why I've continued to argue this point is because it needs to be said here, for newbies reading the guide, that what Tesunie is talking about doesn't really work well at all.
If you enjoy playing a gimmick or sub-par build, that's totally fine. I own a few myself. I sometimes even drive my Awesome for kicks. It's all good. But I'm not going to attempt to classify it as a "really good 'mech" that's capable of hanging with proper designs, and that's what is going on in these posts.
I see YOU still don't get it. He's given me more consideration and courtesy than you have. He hasn't told me I "will always lose". He understands how game play in PUGland works, where as you seem to be too stuck in "competitive only 12v12" play advice, something most newbies don't get into for a while. Most new players, the supposed audience of this guide, don't play 12v12 for a while, and instead play it out like most players do in this game, out in PUGland. They need advice that will work more reliably in PUGland, and not just "cutting-edge competitive play" where you can work as a team more. They also are normally not skilled enough at the game to be able to preform these builds as you would, or even as I would.
I'm not saying you don't have good advice, and a good guide for LRM skirmishers, and advice that can help to improve someone's game play. But I still don't think every piece of advice written by you "must" be followed or you are "bad" (or "your mechs are bad" rather).
Did I say that my mech was "the supreme mech build"? I said "here is a Stalker build I think works well, despite being slow". I presented it as a good solid mech that seems to get rather solid performance in my PUG matches. I'd be tempted to see what it can do in a 12v12 with more proper teamplay and see how well it works there. I presented it as an example of a mech that "preforms well" (at least in my hands) that breaks a few of your rules, like TAG and Speed to name the big ones. I have Artemis, shoot out 20 missiles in a single volley (5 short, unless you include the rapidly following 10 behind that, making it 30), have BAP, I don't suffer ghost heat, I have Advanced Target Decay (and Advanced Sensor range). I break the tube count a little (I would have placed two LRM10s in, and more sinks, but if I did that I'd have 2 tons left over and no place to use it without dropping Endo, with his another expense I don't have the C-bills for again and would eat up more than the space I would have had left), I brought back up weapons, I move slower than you would like, and I didn't bring a TAG. I follow more than half your rules, but because I don't have all the rules followed, my build is "bad". I'm just saying that it seems to be working well fine enough in my PUG matches.
Victor Morson, on 17 January 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
I didn't take the time to optimize this right now, but here you go:
Example Victor (Not Slow)
A 300 standard with 2 UAC/5, 2 PPC, and 5 tons of ammo. Again, it's got a tiny bit of left over tonnage because I didn't take time making it a real perfect build, just putting this out there to show you how wrong you are on this.
And... it moves as fast as my Stalker, which means I can control range against it to some extent, and probably line of sight options as well to some extent (maybe not perfectly). My LRMs, as you have mentioned, would be more effective on it as well as it is slower. It will run hot (but you already said you didn't optimize it, so I'll give a little there) as well. I can't say I will or wont win, but I can at least fight back against that Victor at any range it engages me in. I wont be useless against it at any one time or range (except for extreme ranges).
You didn't "prove me wrong". You proved me correct. It's not as fast as most people would like, as it's got a Std engine in it, and it moves about as fast as my Stalker does (same engine size). No Jump (on your version at least, I know, not optimized so I'm sure you would find a way, so this can probably be ignored). And will run hot with the PPCs. As I said, it would need an XL to run as most people would prefer it to run, faster, jumping, and with a cooler running system.
Your Victor runs slow, by a lot of Victor builds. (What I feel I'd probably see more often:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8b12f740c6d0e97 or
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...89e3801928065a8 ) I tend to see VIctors with XLs more often on the field, just like Awesomes, as people feel if it can take a larger engine then they should stuff one of the largest ones they can into it. These would be considered "fast" for an Assault. Though your first one was "good", it wasn't any faster overall than my Stalker was, and you considered that slow.
Victor Morson, on 17 January 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
To be entirely honest? Not buy a Stalker. Ghost Heat destroyed builds like the 5 large lasers you mentioned (which were awesome and fun), so only the Misery gets used much anymore. To be entirely honest if I were to build a Stalker, it'd probably either run the old 4 PPC standby and setup a macro to time the Ghost Heat, or set it up as an oversized splat cat with some PPCs mixed.
Neither would be be very great, but they would play to the Stalker's strengths.
I still see the 5 large laser builds, but now I see them either chain fire them all the time, or fire them in bursts of two lasers. I will admit I don't often see Stalkers on the field too often, but that doesn't mean that they are bad. They are still considered fairly good, and would be considered better if SRMs actually registered hits/damage more accurately. I will admit, Ghost heat did take a toll on the mech.
I still feel that, for the intended role I wish for my Stalker on the field, my load out isn't a bad one. It's intended to "LRM Brawl", using the LRMs at closer ranges, as well as support the team with indirect fire, as well as guard my team (particularly the support elements) from attack (such as by lights and the sort).
A build I could think of for the Stalker without LRMs could be:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...51a3bba41eeff33
ERs for long range (all range), can be replaced with normal if it runs too hot, and med lasers and SSRMs for close in fights/light warding. Weakness: Ranged combat, speed, heat. Strengths: Close combat, Light warding/killing.
More could be made easily enough, but there are other ways that I could play it. Stalkers aren't that bad if you asked me. Just, the old metas don't work anymore (ghost heat) and the new Meta are ballistics. The Mysery not only has a Ballistic (meta), but it also is a hero mech with 30% more c-bill gain. Seen as no other Stalker can follow the current meta, of course they have fallen out of favor. Just like they were everywhere before ghostheat and PPCs got changed. Or Cats when the SSRMs mechanics were different and they where overpowered (blinding/shaking/everything hit CT). Or the Splatcat. Now, you don't see that many cats as well.
I see more Orions (Ballistics), Cataphrats (Ballistics), Atlases (Ballistics), Shadowhawks (Ballistics) and Battlemasters (Ballistics) (and other Ballistic mechs) on the field, as they all follow the Meta (Flavor of the Month as the expression goes).
Victor Morson, on 17 January 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
I didn't say you were a bad player, and everyone is free to ignore any advice here and run whatever they want. But they will be less effective for it.
This guide was, again, built to give newbies access to information on how to be the most effective. They can take from that what they will.
You almost got it, and then you mess it up again with the next sentence. "But they will be less effective for it". That, once again, implies that "if you don't do it my way, you suck". That's what people see that as. That is one of the largest problems that we end up having with your statements. You provide great information, and then say "do it this way or you aren't doing it right", when in fact you only touch on one small piece of LRM usage. I understand why you only touch the one aspect, as a guide that covers everything will be long.
However, something I don't feel your guide touches, when new players are being kept in mind, is the fact that they don't have the experience to pull of most of the same things you do when you play. They will have a harder time keeping within a certain range, and keeping people out of the minimum range. They will have a harder time understanding/knowing the maps, and where are good places to typically go, and where are typically going to be deathtraps or moshpits. They wont know where to always look and where ambushes might come from. For a new player, I suggest a couple of close range weapons, something that they can protect themselves with, though something that shouldn't be so "powerful" that it tempts them into too close of a range. They can, of course, try out a pure LRM skirmisher, and who knows. They might grasp the concepts naturally. However, most new players get ambushed easily. Being able to at least put up a fight will make them feel less useless and less frustrated.
Victor Morson, on 17 January 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
I honestly don't know if you'd ever even get the Streaks in play at all.
I have Artemis with those SSRMs, meaning they will lock quickly. Unless they can kill me in one volley (I see that as unlikely unless I'm already damaged, or they hit my cockpit and detonate the ammo there, which can happen), I will most likely get the SSRMs into play. I'll actually probably get to use them a few times, though my lasers will probably splash them a bit depending upon how they are moving. I can't say they will drop me, and I can't say I will drop them. However, if they are like the other lights I've played with, I probably will drop them, or cause them enough grief that they will find a less defended target that doesn't fight back as much, leaving me for an opponent that is better suited to taking me on (then probably coming back in when I'm distracted to shoot my back out while dealing with someone bigger).
The Streaks are the wild card, as we can't tell where or how they will hit. We can only guess, and know they will do damage when they hit, wherever that may be... (They also depend upon a lock to do anything, which also places more wild card onto them, if you know what I mean.)
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