42 replies to this topic

[Navy Sixes]

Felio, on 26 February 2014 - 03:09 PM, said:

Very, very high and very sustainable DPS.

Pretty much this. 16 points of damage every 1.06 seconds at what? 600m? Others can complain if they want, I'm very glad you are going to be overheating often.

[El Bandito]

Ph30nix, on 26 February 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

Why Does 4Ac/2 Get Heat Penalty?

Because PGI does not want us to have fun.

Macroing 4+ AC2s were just too damn fun for its own good.


Bummer.

Tycho von Gagern, on 26 February 2014 - 08:43 PM, said:

Pretty much this. 16 points of damage every 1.06 seconds at what? 600m? Others can complain if they want, I'm very glad you are going to be overheating often.

It already heats really fast without ghost heat.

[Joseph Mallan]

FupDup, on 26 February 2014 - 03:46 PM, said:

What I find to be utterly hilarious is the fact that heat was supposed to stop alpha striking and encourage chained-fire, but the AC/2 heat penalizes chain-firing and rewards alpha striking them.

Heat only affected one of my builds, and with a light application of fire control My Jager40 works as intended.

[MountainCopper]

They made a quad AC2 build have an additional 4.5% of generated heat. I'm ok with that balance change...

What really is annoying now with this build and ghost heat, is that you HAVE to fire them at the same time in the same weapon group, or you will be getting a much larger heat penalty per shot, I don't fully understand the mathematical reason for...

Edited by GoldenFleece, 27 February 2014 - 06:22 AM.

[627]

What I don't get is why they didn't just increase the cooldown. If 4 AC2s are so OP then make them fire slower.make the bullets fly slower.

Ghost heat is just... meh I give it up. Since it is here there was not even one adjustment to this system (putting PPCS and ERPPCS in one group and the like doesn't count). This alone tells enough...

we have balancing steps of 6 months and more

Look how long pulse lasers needed - they where "normalized" when, 10 month ago? And at that time, paul stated that they want to bring them in line and start balancing them from there on. And look how long it took?

More and more I start to believe that the whole PGI team minus Alex and the guy who program the mechs took a year off...

[Chemie]

Bagheera, on 26 February 2014 - 03:29 PM, said:

True Story:

Burst firing (alpha if you will) those same 3 ac2s not only does more damage than chain firing them, but it also doesn't trigger ghost heat.

The chain fire "problem" was a red herring and too many people fell for it.

Full disclosure: I've run various triple-deuce builds since closed beta and the only macro I know how to use can be found on the lens of a camera. Never used the "dakka macro" because I didn't want to nerf myself.

I have only ever alphaed AC2...any good player does. My point was that for new players, they read "avoid ghost heat via chain fire" and this does not apply to AC2 (but easily could if PGI had programmed they properly)

[Andross Deverow]

Ph30nix, on 26 February 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

just came back recently and was about to hop into my old 4ac/2 jager and i notice a little yellow warning symbol telling me that firing more then 3 ac/2's will generate more heat then normal..... wtf? 4 ac/2s are still butt hurting people that badly they felt the need to nerf it farther?

again just came back recently when i last left as long as they were all group fired it was fine.

does anyone know if they said WHY 3 is the cut off point? if it something they said on the forums a link would rock, if its something said on twitter.... f that i dont use twitter.

AC2's are inherently hot to begin with, its the only way to manage the extremely high rate of fire. Otherwise people would be using macro's and shredding assault mechs in a matter of seconds, been there done that it was not very fair. In all honesty I dont have a problem with ghost heat on them. Ballistics in this game are so over the top now that I feel noone has anything to complain about when there is a small nerf to them. I hope they give machine guns some soft squishy nerf love next.

Regards

[627]

Chain firing AC2s was not for damage but for suppression and it excelled at it. This was more crowd control and blinding.

Problem was, if you had to suppress more than one enemy, that's when you got into trouble. And this happened mostly against premades so there's your explanation why you didn't see that on higher levels.

Every halfway good Dakka pilot could fire in chain or alpha, and alpha was the preferred method to kill someone.

Andross Deverow, on 27 February 2014 - 04:30 AM, said:

AC2's are inherently hot to begin with, its the only way to manage the extremely high rate of fire. Otherwise people would be using macro's and shredding assault mechs in a matter of seconds, been there done that it was not very fair. In all honesty I dont have a problem with ghost heat on them. Ballistics in this game are so over the top now that I feel noone has anything to complain about when there is a small nerf to them. I hope they give machine guns some soft squishy nerf love next.

Regards

What macro let you shred assaults in seconds? A macro don't let you shoot faster, did you even read what bagheera wrote?

[Andross Deverow]

627, on 27 February 2014 - 04:36 AM, said:

Chain firing AC2s was not for damage but for suppression and it excelled at it. This was more crowd control and blinding.

Problem was, if you had to suppress more than one enemy, that's when you got into trouble. And this happened mostly against premades so there's your explanation why you didn't see that on higher levels.

Every halfway good Dakka pilot could fire in chain or alpha, and alpha was the preferred method to kill someone.



What macro let you shred assaults in seconds? A macro don't let you shoot faster, did you even read what bagheera wrote?

The convergence and high rate of fire with a macro ended up shaking the cockpit enough to where most players wouldnt be able to react. basically you could take someones XL in oh lets say 6-7 seconds and you could cockpit someone is around 4 seconds. Legging a mech was all to easy as well.

Regards

[NextGame]

Ph30nix, on 26 February 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

just came back recently and was about to hop into my old 4ac/2 jager and i notice a little yellow warning symbol telling me that firing more then 3 ac/2's will generate more heat then normal..... wtf? 4 ac/2s are still butt hurting people that badly they felt the need to nerf it farther?

again just came back recently when i last left as long as they were all group fired it was fine.

does anyone know if they said WHY 3 is the cut off point? if it something they said on the forums a link would rock, if its something said on twitter.... f that i dont use twitter.

3 AC/2 is better than 2 LLAS, yet 2 for some reason is the magic number on that.

I think they just rolled a dice for each weapon and used the resulting number as the limit.

[Bagheera]

Sandpit, on 26 February 2014 - 07:28 PM, said:

[Citation Needed]

I was under the impression that it was implemented to stop big alpha strikes. NOT boating

Well, technically it was a direct response to things like 4-6 PPC or LL builds so without a direct statement either interpretation could be correct. The result though was that it punished boats far more than it did the "big alpha."

Chemie, on 27 February 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

I have only ever alphaed AC2...any good player does. My point was that for new players, they read "avoid ghost heat via chain fire" and this does not apply to AC2 (but easily could if PGI had programmed they properly)

Agreed. The counter intuitive nature of ghost heat in ac2s is just one of many ways the game confuses new players.

Honestly though, the practicalities of applying effective dps with an ac2 are such that the whole thing is unnecessary. It was the massive QQ from people who failed to understand the dakka macro did less damage that pulled the trigger on applying gh to the deuce.

[Sandpit]

Bagheera, on 27 February 2014 - 06:56 AM, said:

Well, technically it was a direct response to things like 4-6 PPC or LL builds so without a direct statement either interpretation could be correct. The result though was that it punished boats far more than it did the "big alpha."

If they had wanted to stop boating they'd have just introduced something that prevented players from boating. I'll dig but I'm pretty sure I've seen it defined as an alpha deterrent by someone on the dev team

[Ph30nix]

I just dont see the problem with a 4 ac/2 loadout. Yes ac/2's can do alot of DPS but you have to actually HIT yourtarget the whole time to do that DPS. what is so OP about firing 100 shots for 200 damage in about 12 seconds if you only hit with 20 of them? (depending on range/HSR this isnt out of the question). If someone sneaks up on you and has a full 12 seconds of you not moving and point blank range well then.... you deserve to get eaten alive. Because in that situation almost any weapon can kill you.

i still say one of the Dev's got butt hurt one to many times by a dakka machine.

[Bagheera]

Sandpit, on 27 February 2014 - 08:26 AM, said:

If they had wanted to stop boating they'd have just introduced something that prevented players from boating. I'll dig but I'm pretty sure I've seen it defined as an alpha deterrent by someone on the dev team

I think we both know how well that worked to curb the dominance of front loaded damage.

[Sandpit]

Bagheera, on 27 February 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:

I think we both know how well that worked to curb the dominance of front loaded damage.

It was just a response to stop people from firing off 4-6 big weapons with impunity because for some reason players got it stuck in their head that alpha striking was the norm as opposed to a last-ditch type response

[FupDup]

Sandpit, on 27 February 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

It was just a response to stop people from firing off 4-6 big weapons with impunity because for some reason players got it stuck in their head that alpha striking was the norm as opposed to a last-ditch type response

For people who aren't using loadouts that are specifically listed on the max alpha chart, alpha striking is still the norm.

And for people using the AC/2, alpha striking is the only way to avoid the heat penalty!

Edited by FupDup, 27 February 2014 - 10:05 AM.

[Artgathan]

It was implemented like this to stop people from trolling. There's no good reason to chain-fire AC/2s in quick succession - it reduces your effective damage output while simultaneously turning your target's game into Earthquakewarrior: Online. There used to be a thread from (Niko Snow?) about it on the forums.

[wintersborn]

To me Ghost Heat was to prevent boating, not big pinpoint alpha's. If you wanted to prevent pinpoint high damage alpha's you would just limit the damage per shot or DPS for the entire mech.

I like boats and wish this game left the ability to make what you liked and not forced players to use mixed weapon builds. Removing options and Nerfing things just makes for a boring game
to me.

What is the Meta now ?
Big Jump jet snipers that use a combo of AC/PPC for pinpoint high damage snap shot alpha's. Ghost Heat did not stop it but just changed it so you are forced to mix weapon types.

So what does it matter if you get hit by mixed or the same weapon type if they do the same thing?

Edited by wintersborn, 27 February 2014 - 11:38 AM.

[Ph30nix]

Artgathan, on 27 February 2014 - 11:05 AM, said:

It was implemented like this to stop people from trolling. There's no good reason to chain-fire AC/2s in quick succession - it reduces your effective damage output while simultaneously turning your target's game into Earthquakewarrior: Online. There used to be a thread from (Niko Snow?) about it on the forums.

thats the thing it also punishes anyone using 4 ac2's which was a fairly standard build. 4 Ac/2's should have been the cut off point not 3.

And the better solution then would have been to reduce cockpit shake/explosions from ac/2's not ot make them borderline useless.

[Roadkill]

Chemie, on 27 February 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

I have only ever alphaed AC2...any good player does. My point was that for new players, they read "avoid ghost heat via chain fire" and this does not apply to AC2 (but easily could if PGI had programmed they properly)

Yes, actually, it does. But not for the reason people think.

If you chain fire a weapon group containing 4 x AC/2 what happens is that you fire one AC/2 every 0.52 seconds. That's what chain fire does - it rotates through the weapons in a fire group, one at a time, firing one of them every 0.52 seconds.

But, of course, that's exactly the same as the AC/2's cycle time. If you fire that exact same weapon group of 4 x AC/2 using group fire, you'll fire all 4 of them every 0.52 seconds. And in doing so you'll trigger ghost heat, which in this case causes and additional 4.5% extra heat. Or an extra 0.35 heat per second. Yeah, 0.35. Not really a big deal.

What causes crazy amounts of ghost heat using AC/2's is using a macro to fire them in rapid succession to constantly rock the target. But doing that means that there's never a 0.50 second gap in the firing chain, so every single shot counts against ghost heat until you stop firing. If you rip out 20 shots in a row over 3 seconds you'll generate a crazy amount of ghost heat without really accomplishing much of anything.

TL;DR - never use chain fire with AC/2s. Also, never use a macro to rapid-fire them - just put them in one weapon group and mash the trigger.