120 replies to this topic

[Shlkt]

Quote

do artillery and air strikes actually count towards your damage and match score?... If so, I sure am doing this the hard way...

YES they do! If you hit a big clump of enemies you'll score ridiculous amounts of damage. Which is another good reason to play Conquest for tournaments - 'mechs frequently clump together near cap points and make easy targets for arty. But lots of pilots will be looking for the same opportunities. We really need an audio cue for failed arty attempts due to global cooldown. Often I'll target artillery, see it hit, and then realize several minutes later that it was deployed by somebody else on my team.

[Cimarb]

Shlkt, on 27 March 2014 - 06:38 AM, said:

YES they do! If you hit a big clump of enemies you'll score ridiculous amounts of damage. Which is another good reason to play Conquest for tournaments - 'mechs frequently clump together near cap points and make easy targets for arty. But lots of pilots will be looking for the same opportunities. We really need an audio cue for failed arty attempts due to global cooldown. Often I'll target artillery, see it hit, and then realize several minutes later that it was deployed by somebody else on my team.

I guess I need to start practicing, which means I may need to switch from my Stalker to my DDC or BLR, as the Stalker just doesn't have the module slots to give up...

[Solahma]

First two days I almost exclusively used my Banshee and Firebrand. Had a couple good games, but most were pretty average with a couple kills/assists and 500+ damage. My score leveled off at ~2000

Sunday I got tired of LRM spam so I exclusively ran with a variation of Mason Grimm's "Super Chicken" Raven-3L. My two best games of the tournament were in my Raven. Both games were very similar: 6 Kills 6 Assists and 1100-1200 damage. I was always the last mech left, running for my life, while dividing up the remaining enemy mechs to core them out. One was on Canyon Network, the other was on Tera Therma, both were extremely well played games by myself, my team, and my opponents.

I wish I had used the Raven-3L for the entire tournament, would have easily gotten into the 2500-2600 range based on my games Sunday. Oh well, it was fun to play different mechs during the tourney. Overall I am more than happy with my score and did not expect to place so high. My goal before Sunday was to reach break 2100, mission accomplished.

I enjoyed this tournament a lot more than the Mediums vs. The World. I think the omitted Survival points was a good move and made it easier to concentrate on your team winning, and not your personal survival. I also liked being able to use any mech to contribute to your score, not a specific medium or any light, heavy, or assault. A single rank made it a personal goal to improve and try different mechs and builds to increase your score.

Banshee 3E "Howling Banshee" (2x UAC5, 2x AC2, 4x MLas, STD300)
-Mech ran pretty hot, but heat management was not very difficult. After the tournament I started running a STD325 and regular AC5s. This change runs much cooler and is a lot more consistent. I believe that 2 AC5 and 2 AC2 is a superior load-out for this mech.

http://i.imgur.com/sOgCLW3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FKFMC2v.jpg

Firebrand "Light Eater" (1x AC20, 1x LB10X, 4x MLas, XL300)
-Fragile brawler well suited for taking out lights and mediums, but can still hold it's own against heavies and even assaults. Keep moving and torso twisting. Always shoot the AC20 first followed by 1-2 shots with the LB10X. The build only has 2 tons of LB10X ammo and 3 tons of AC20. I have found this to be a perfectly adequate amount of ammo to last a match with well-placed shots. You can still clean up a match since you have 4 MLas to fall back on when ammo runs dry.

http://i.imgur.com/nGom1tV.jpg

Raven "Super Chicken" (2x ERLLas, ECM, XL255)
-Personal preference to sacrifice a little speed for a couple more Double Heat Sinks. The success of this build depends on how long you can keep firing from range until you get close to over-heat. The extra DHS keeps the mech firing longer which means more damage potential. Most people know this mech and see it frequently so there is not much else to say.

Can't remember if I took screenshots of the Raven Games, but they certainly haven't been uploaded yet. I'll see what I have back at home.

Congrats to all the others!

[Cimarb]

Solahma, on 27 March 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

First two days I almost exclusively used my Banshee and Firebrand. Had a couple good games, but most were pretty average with a couple kills/assists and 500+ damage. My score leveled off at ~2000

Sunday I got tired of LRM spam so I exclusively ran with a variation of Mason Grimm's "Super Chicken" Raven-3L. My two best games of the tournament were in my Raven. Both games were very similar: 6 Kills 6 Assists and 1100-1200 damage. I was always the last mech left, running for my life, while dividing up the remaining enemy mechs to core them out. One was on Canyon Network, the other was on Tera Therma, both were extremely well played games by myself, my team, and my opponents.

I wish I had used the Raven-3L for the entire tournament, would have easily gotten into the 2500-2600 range based on my games Sunday. Oh well, it was fun to play different mechs during the tourney. Overall I am more than happy with my score and did not expect to place so high. My goal before Sunday was to reach break 2100, mission accomplished.

I enjoyed this tournament a lot more than the Mediums vs. The World. I think the omitted Survival points was a good move and made it easier to concentrate on your team winning, and not your personal survival. I also liked being able to use any mech to contribute to your score, not a specific medium or any light, heavy, or assault. A single rank made it a personal goal to improve and try different mechs and builds to increase your score.

I had a lot of fun this tournament too - much better than the previous ones, definitely.

You were a few ranks behind me most of the weekend, but things must have clicked for you on that Raven because you skyrocketed at the end. Well done.

[Coburn]

I finished 9th Place in the Davion Bracket.

I played a total of 25 Matches over weekend in roughly 3 hours. Wish I had a little more time to play but I didn`t.

Here is my best score from the weekend using a Jenner with 6 mediums and a XL 300.

Jenner F + 6 Kills + 5 Assists + 920 Damage + Win

Edited by Coburn, 27 March 2014 - 12:14 PM.

[Solahma]

Coburn, on 27 March 2014 - 11:50 AM, said:

Jenner F - 6 Kills - 5 Assists - 920 Damage - Win - Survived = 271 Points

There was no survival points in this tournament

Still a good round though! Nice!

Edited by Solahma, 27 March 2014 - 11:55 AM.

[Carl Wrede]

5th place FRR here.

First i thought that art and airstrike would not figure into the score so i didnt use them unfortunately.

I started out with my Goldenboy Kintaro using 5 LRM5s chainfire and 3 Mpulse and did pretty well.

Then i switched to my Stalker 5M and rebuilt it with 5 LRM10s chainfire, 4 Mlas and lots of missiles to see how much i could get out of it now with the new LRM speed.

The Stalker proved to be very efficient (unless the enemy had to many ECMs) and i actually broke my damage record with it getting first a round with 1488 damage and then 3 rounds after that a round with 1318 damage.

I used only Skirmish (normally i dont like that one) simply because it gave you the greatest chance of doing the most damage.

One thing that was noticable was the frequency of D-DC Atlases was much higher than on normal gamedays.

Edited by Carl Wrede, 28 March 2014 - 01:08 AM.

[Cimarb]

Yeah, by Sunday roughly a third (or more) of all mechs were either DDCs or another ECM mech every match...

[Remarius]

Have got to be the party pooper and admit I loathed the tournament despite coming 7th for Davion (2nd for 4 hrs on Sunday).

Felt a bit like pulling teeth and I found myself doing a set of 3 drops then walking away for an hour... then back like a gullible victim.... just one more. Looking at my profile I ran maybe 40 battles but wish I'd logged my results as I'd maybe have felt more competitive.

Hated the fact that you'd glance down the teams in most matches and recognise each player and know you'd get 3 kills even playing well so the match was a "waste" even before you started. After the last 10 or so with no improvement to score and finding myself with the same players in the top 5 each of us getting 2-3 kills each match I called it to do 12 man practice and battles... 3 hours of genuine fun later I wasn't even tempted to come back. First battle got 6k 5a, a bucket load of damage and thought.... ugggh not in the tournament.

Started with a triple AC5/ML BNC-3E, took a break for a truly awful experience in a gauss boat where I turned into a magnet for firestarters... ran a couple as a Slayer but am out of practice in that.... then started steadily rebuilding and tweaking the BNC-3E till I had a variant of 3 AC5/2 PPC that really fit me.


Made the same mistake Coburn did - didn't notice the survival element had been removed but then I wasn't logging results. Kept hanging off and generally played very tactically. Taught me a lot about the mech and instinct shooting. By the end it no longer felt clumsy and sloooooooooowwwwww......

High point was getting Ace of Spades. Unfortunately even then I was going for the kill every time with volleys so no padding of score. Efficiency at 891 damage was superb imo but pointless in the tournament where stripping dc'd mechs seemed to be the winning tactic (bitter much? ... yup ).

Low point was watching the synch droppers help each other pad scores... seriously how desperate and pathetic can you get? Its not like those of us who see you regularly in 4 man lances don't recognise you and notice when you're killing the same people each time .... when ghosting you it was laughably easy to see. This is probably the real reason I didn't enjoy the tournament much as it felt like an uphill struggle if you played straight.

Learning point: never used artillery or airstrike once .... fail... but I hate the stuff. My situational awareness against artillery improved a lot though and I managed to walk away from a lot of artillery untouched... then would get jammed against a blind mech trying to hide behind me to steal kills and be at ground zero... MUCH rage (that luckily they couldn't hear)!

Don't get me wrong overall I'm glad I took part but more as a learning experience as it pointed to 3 areas I need to work on and left me with a load out I really do quite well in.

[Zplayer]

Carl Wrede, on 28 March 2014 - 01:08 AM, said:

One thing that was noticable was the frequency of D-DC Atlases was much higher than on normal gamedays.

Very true, they were coming out of the woodwork at one point I thought - still seeing a lot this weekend as well coming to think of it.

[Cimarb]

Zplayer, on 29 March 2014 - 01:34 PM, said:

Very true, they were coming out of the woodwork at one point I thought - still seeing a lot this weekend as well coming to think of it.

It's because it's the only ECM mech you can boat LRMs with, as well as the only large mech at all with ECM. Sad, though, as I really don't like the chassis very much... give my STK or BLR ECM, lol!

[FREDtheROLF]

I was just exploiting the new meta of the weekend.
Not that I had to change the loadout of my BLR-1S.

it was LRM based.
2xLRM15 + ART
1xLRM5 + ART
3xML
1xTAG

http://i.imgur.com/vLozluL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/vrdPH7a.jpg

FtR

Edited by FREDtheROLF, 30 March 2014 - 03:02 AM.

[KumoriMyou]

only did 14 matches

Mech > Boarshead
4 medium lasers
2 large pulse lasers
1 gauss
XL400

Average per game
1200 damage
4 kills
5 assists
100+ match score
AS7-BH K/D 9.77
By not playing my Pay to Win Heromech Boarshead i Allow the other team a chance to win a match

10 points from first place
In your face XL engine haters
I don't do Meta
Still haven't gotten any tournament gold

Edited by KumoriMyou, 30 March 2014 - 10:58 AM.

[Jaawa]

I don't use the forums, so I didn't know about this thread before now, sorry!

So yeah, I ran a Boar's Head, 6 Medium Laser, AC20, STD370. I entered the faction tournament to just have fun, that I did. I was surprised I ended up in the top10 with such a goofy 'mech.

While I did have fun, many people did not, due to the huge amount of assault 'mechs on the field during the whole weekend. So I have very mixed feelings about the event, it's nice that I did well and had fun doing it, but then again I did so in an assault 'mech, so I was just part of the problem. I'm glad that the launch module is upon us and 3-3-3-3 matches come to redeem the gameplay. I hope that the future events will somehow enforce you to use 'mechs from multiple weight classes.

Anyway, it was a blast brawling with you all, congratulations for doing so well, mechwarriors of all factions!

[Nryrony]

Hello, Nryrony here No 10 Steiner
(...and sorry for being late, just noticed...)

Weapon of choice for this tournament where:

Jager (JM6-S) with 4xAC5
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...301e47d24844da3
(I tested different variations with lower engine / more armor / ammo - however this one is close to perfect, at least for me -> in therms of speed and ammo, even with the low armor)

Jenner F x6 med - my classic
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...2165c3c81a819b9

Atlas DDC personal PUG build with 2xUAC5, 2xLL and streaks
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...db8733616959a30
(you can switch the LL with ER-LL ofc, or fit in more ammo, the streaks help to crush lights in a shorter time - This mainly is a ranged build!)

Experiences:

First things first, I'm "usually" the light pilot and my fav. light would be the Jenner F with x6 med. However this was the time of the "big" LRM buff, this made live as a light without ecm pretty painful. So in the end I mainly used my Jager.

With a quad AC5 build you are a short to long range dmg dealer that mainly focuses on medium ranges (roughly 300-600). Ofc you can hit enemy's 1000m away but ammo in this build is somewhat limited so you need to make your shots count.

The upside is that with an XL 255 your pretty fast, have very good dps and can place that dmg at the spot you want. Basically you can kill anything from a light to an assault unless you get overwhelmed by incoming fire. The key is to wait for an opportunity to deal dmg and to be in the spot to do so, distractions / flanking helps, hurt or lower enemy's can simply be dueled down.

So most of the time I had an good experience with the occasional pointless death on my side. If the match was a good one you mainly had 2 problems, finding an enemy that's alive and ammo. Also strikes and situations to use them are a big random factor. therefore this tournament (concept) is partial luck/grind.

Mechwise, my Atlas did well, but I feelt it was too slow/bulky to keeping up with the kills. While the Jenner, as a light had a harder time achieving the required amounts of dmg in the average match compared to the Jager, not to mention the LRM hassle with made backstabbing a pain.

In the end the only limiting factor was luck/time, this type of tournament is always a grind, and my motivation left me on Sunday ...

Edited by Nryrony, 14 May 2014 - 08:44 AM.

[Jun Watarase]

OP you could have just summed it up with "metabuilds". Nobody in the top 5 are using anything other than metabuilds.

[Cimarb]

Jun Watarase, on 25 May 2014 - 07:42 PM, said:

OP you could have just summed it up with "metabuilds". Nobody in the top 5 are using anything other than metabuilds.

That totally depends on what you mean by "metabuilds". If you mean poptarts with AC+PPCs, you would be wrong. If you had read through this thread, there were quite a few non-poptart builds, such as my LRM boats.

If you watch the tournament that is currently going on, there are a large amount of poptarts, but also many brawler builds and even some LRM boats. I honestly think teams would do better if they took more advantage of LRMs, actually, as I have quite a bit of success against poptarts (just not brawlers).

[Jun Watarase]

LRM boats ARE metabuilds...especially when chainfired since a single LRM boat chain firing will prevent you from shooting back. Your crosshair just flies all over the place even with AMS and improved gyros. Im trying to make it into a animated gif but its hard since even at 5 seconds the gif size is HUGE...and the forums doesnt support webm.

If you are referring to the 12v12 tournament, i know someone whos participating and he told me the first round was dominated by PPC/AC boats (not necessarily poptarts). One match had 10 jagermechs i believe? I think that says a lot.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 26 May 2014 - 02:23 AM.

[Eglar]

Jun Watarase, on 25 May 2014 - 07:42 PM, said:

OP you could have just summed it up with "metabuilds". Nobody in the top 5 are using anything other than metabuilds.

nothing wrong with that though. :-)

[The Great Unwashed]

not playing a meta gives me the excuse I need for not being in the top 10... (quit playing at #18 in Liao but dropped 'somewhat' since).

(I used a twin AC5/PPC BLR-1D; that's a tart that doesn't go 'pop'. Perhaps I should call it the poptartless)

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 26 May 2014 - 03:20 AM.