42 replies to this topic

[Drunk Canuck]

Some of those builds....just wrong.

[Kahoumono]

Yes, the metabuilds have their vulnerabilities in one v one situations but you almost never catch them alone, unless the pilot is dumb, in which case you need no special tactics anyways. The core of the problem is that there are fundamental problems that will not be addressed. Perfect weapons convergence, badly thought through ecm mechanics, ditto with lrms. Don't want to turn this into a long rant so I'll stop.

[Water Bear]

Someone posted that the word "meta" as used on this forum can roughly be defined as "optimal in the current environment," and that seems accurate. The current "meta" is what it is not (so much) because of play styles but because of game mechanics. Eg., the heat advantage of auto cannons means that their heat-adjusted DPS over the course of a game is just way higher than a lot of energy weapons in most situations. Among other reasons, this is why autocannons are in the above sense "meta."

Moreover, by observation the current "meta" is optimal in ways that are resistant to small changes in game mechanics. The superiority of autocannons was such that even after the LRM update (Edit: and the slight autocannon nerf) they are still extremely good weapons to have, and are still found on the same "meta" builds that used them before (now with some switching to LRMs).

My point is that I don't know how much sense it makes to write a guide about overcoming meta builds since it seems that they are optimal in ways that, given equal player skill, guarantee an advantage due to game mechanics.

Edited by Water Bear, 12 May 2014 - 04:40 AM.