64 replies to this topic

[Daekar]

I know they recently changed pulses up a bit, and I would like to know what kind of experience people have had with them. Are they worth taking now? If not, what do you think needs to be done to fix them?

My feelings are:
Small Pulse - I've seen them used effectively by a Firestarter once, but their range renders them entirely too situational in comparison with the ML.
Medium Pulse - I think these need the most work. The heat is most of the way to a large laser, which is my main problem with them. I want to use them, but I have literally never found a situation in which they made sense. Maybe I'm missing something.
Large Pulse - I think these are in a pretty good place, actually. I almost always take PPCs instead though.

If I could only change one thing, it would be to drop the beam duration to 0.5 seconds on all three pulses. What do you think?

[aniviron]

I'll reiterate what I said just after the pulse laser buff patch:

Quote

Out of every hit I have with medium lasers, I do 61% of my maximum possible damage averaged over thousands of shots for shots that hit; for that 1 second beam time, I am hitting for .61s. Out of every hit I have with medium pulse lasers, I do 61% of my maximum possible damage on every shot that hits, also averaged over thousands of shots; for the .6s beam time, I am hitting for .366s.

When I first found out that my damage percentages over hit shots were identical for pulse and normal lasers, I couldn't believe it. It felt like I should get much more damage per shot out of the pulse lasers! So I started to pay a lot of attention in game, and found that the advantage was really about as negligible as the numbers were suggesting, which means that, at least for me, pulse lasers are heavier, hotter, and shorter range, and confer exactly no advantage to make up for this. I switched everything that was using pulse lasers to normal lasers with more heatsinks and immediately saw a noticeable performance improvement; for everyone I have queried about this, they have also found that their pulse laser damage stats are within a percentage point or two of their normal lasers as well.

Still, more data is always good. If you want to find out if pulse lasers are doing anything for you, just take your total number of hits, and then multiply by the damage that the weapon does for a 100% hit. For normal medium lasers, that's 5, for MPL, it is 6. Then, take the total damage you've done with the weapon and divide by the number you just came up with in the previous operation; this will give you the percent of the damage you've done out of the total possible damage. Unless your pulse laser percent is significantly higher than your normal laser percent, you're not getting any benefit out of the shorter burn time.

So essentially pulse lasers get no tangible benefit from having a shorter burn time except for having to face your opponent for .4s less during the burn time. Given that pulse lasers are heavier, hotter, and shorter ranged and confer no advantage with their shorter burn time, I can't think of any reason to ever recommend them.

[Bishop Steiner]

They are hot and heavy.

That said, the mediums, can be effective, depending on the tonnage you have to spare.

I rather like the LPL. Seems to pair with LBX's like chocolate and peanut butter for brawlers.

[CycKath]

LPL has its place as it meshes nicely with weps like the LBX, but MPL and SPLs don't offer enough advantages over their mundane counterparts IMO.

[Durant Carlyle]

For me (using Archived data only. Current data isn't statistically significant):

ML: 2.87 damage per hit (480,531 damage divided by 167,710 hits). That's 57.4% effectiveness.
MPL: 3.79 damage per hit (47,926 damage divided by 12,643 hits). That's 63.17% effectiveness.

So the shorter duration does make a small (~5.8%) difference in my case.

[Jin Ma]

Maybe they'll see a return when SRMs are fixed and brawling is more viable

[Cyborne Elemental]

Its just not worth it to me, I have a hard enough time cooling my builds as is, why would I sacrifice the extra tonnage for such little gain.

If the tonnage lineup was as follows.

1 SL= 0.5 ton
1 SPL = 0.75 ton
1 MedLas = 1 ton
1 MedPulse = 1.5 tons
1 LL = 5 tons
1 ERLL = 5 tons
1 LPL = 6 tons

That would be ideal.

As they are now, they're just way too hot and heavy to be considered useful in any arena.

They don't provide any advantage to brawling really.

With the extra tonnage I balance towards pulse, I have to either put a smaller engine in and slow me down, or I drop ammo or heatsinks, neither of which is good considering how low heat is in any ballistic build which makes putting tonnage there more beneficial.
I find that everytime I drop with pulse lasers, I just handicap myself.

[TimePeriod]

I've yet to see any reason to land with pulse lasers so far, even on cold maps. I will keep my PPC thank you.

[YueFei]

Crazy idea -- Maybe make them into the "ultra" version of normal lasers, as in twice the firing rate. Make it so pulse lasers recycle super fast. Like a Large Pulse laser shooting every 2 seconds. Yeah, you'll overheat fast, but what this means is that instead of taking 2 LPL, you could take just 1 LPL and still put out the same DPS you were doing before with 2 of them, which frees up tonnage for extra heatsinks to cool it off, a bigger engine, whatever.

It'd be absolutely bat-sh*t insane DPS from just 7 tons of weaponry. Like 4 DPS from that thing. Comparable to the current AC/2 DPS but shorter ranged, lots of heat, but no ammo limitation, yet a higher burst damage potential. Similar weight investment.

[Thorqemada]

I do not use them - 2 Mechs of mine use 1 and 3 (ER)PPC and any other Mech does use Standard Laser for energy slots.
SPL/MPL weght to much and lack range, LPL is outranged by (ER)PPC and (ER)LL and i am not fast moving enough to overcome all the issues on the many Long Range Maps the Matchmaker makes me play for 80% of the time.

Edited by Thorqemada, 15 April 2014 - 01:31 AM.

[Rex Budman]

Hot - Not worth bringing.

[Latorque]

They are not LRMs; so there is little reason to mount them.

Serously though; i equipped my K2 wth AC5s and MPLas back when i was still playing. It worked surprisingly well -it ran hot of course; but with the ACs as fallback you were able to melt the armor of an assault pretty quickly. Anyway, it's not a build i'd think viable in the current game mechanics. But then again, none of my builds would be

Edited by Latorque, 15 April 2014 - 01:56 AM.

[Asmudius Heng]

LPL seems ... ok right now

MPL need to be much more heat efficient or damaging for thier range ... make them a viable knife fighting weapon. This means they need to hit hard at the cost of heat, or be able to continualy outlay damage without being overly punished by heat. So a damage increase or heat decrease would be best.

SPL - since this is trying the balance against the medium laser itself but with WAY less range you gotta ask just what the damage and heat needs to be to be viable ...

Weapons that suffer poor range are at a serious disadvantage not just because they cannot cause damage at range, but because you have to really commit yourself to a brawl to get the most out of them. The risk of closing to optimal range needs to be offset by significant advantage. Staying in a brawling situation and overheating is also really bad ... i do not feel pulse lasers fit the niche they should have being highly accurate and quite damaging but short range lasers ...

[Joseph Mallan]

Never been a fan of the IS versions. I like killing at range more than in my face. But for in close... they need that +2 to targeting for the weight they add.

[tayhimself]

New stats, several hundred games already

LL : 4.5 damage per shot
LPL : 5.4 damage per shot

My hand isn't the most stable, and I fire the LL a lot more are far out targets hoping to scratch them so these may not be representative for most people.

As others have mentioned above, LPL can be worth it, depending on the situation, while for MPL and SPL the range is far too short.

[MisterPlanetarian]

I'd leave them where they are now but lower their cooldown a bit. two tons is a pretty big tax to pay for shorter range and burntime. I always envisioned them as skirmish oriented, accurate at close range with higher DPS than large lasers and PPC's but far higher heat per second as a penalty without affecting heat per shot too much.

[Carrioncrows]

They need to drop the heat penalty

Be the same Heat as regular lasers, we already pay a tonnage penalty. We shouldn't have to pay a heat penalty too.

[xCico]

LPL - 0,5 beam duration would be nice, but current are OK(LPL is my favorite weapon)
MPL - Range to 220m and 1,5 tons would be ideal
SPL - Maybe a range boost?

Im doing great with 3 LPL stalker.. I would love to see ghost heat allows LL,ERLL,LPL of 3 MAX, by firing 4th you get massive heat.

[Shlkt]

Small Pulse vs. Medium Laser
I compare the small pulse to the medium because they have the same weight and same # of crits. They're basically interchangeable.

SPL Pros:

• 13% better heat efficiency
  
• No ghost heat

SPL Cons:

• 66% range reduction
  
• Fast recycle time requires facing target more often

So if you're running hot and facehugging your opponent with a HBK-4P, you might benefit from SPL. But frankly facehugging opponents with a hot medium mech is just not a good tactic, so it makes little sense to build your mech around it.

Medium Pulse vs. Medium Laser
I also compare the MPL to the medium laser because it's the most similar in terms of weight and # of crits.

MPL Pros:

• 34% DPS improvement
  
• 20% stronger alpha potential

MPL Cons:

• 36% range reduction
  
• 4% worse heat efficiency
  
• 100% heavier

The weight and the range are what kill the weapon for me. In the TT game the 100% weight is justified because the -2 to-hit modifier can literally increase your expected damage output by 200% or more vs. a fast moving target at close range. This mechanic doesn't translate into MWO; the shorter beam duration helps only a little when targeting lights.

The range reduction doesn't sound like much on paper, but in practice I spend a lot more time engaged at 300 meters than at 200 meters. All the potential DPS gains are therefore lost to range penalties.

Even when I'm limited on hardpoints I usually prefer to take a medium laser just because of the range. In fact I'll probably prefer the medium laser even when I can't use the extra tonnage.

Large Pulse vs PPC
I'm not going to compare the LPL to a laser because the PPC is a better match in terms of tonnage.

LPL Pros:

• 10% DPS improvement
  
• 33% better heat efficiency
  
• 6% stronger alpha potential
  
• 1 fewer crit slots
  
• No minimum range

LPL Cons:

• 35% range reduction
  
• Beam duration

Of all the pulse lasers I feel like the LPL is the most attractive. First of all it does full or nearly full damage at the critical 300-400 meter range, which is where a lot of "close" engagements actually take place. Secondly, it has the best DPS of any energy weapon, which makes it an intriguing option for 'Mechs with a limited number of hardpoints. Finally, it actually has a better heat efficiency than its non-pulse counterpart!

In its current state I think the LPL has a decent niche as a backup weapon on an assault or even as a main gun on a medium. Range is still its biggest drawback. I still prefer the PPC in most of my 'Mechs, but I will occasionally run the LPL without feeling woefully underpowered.

But I wouldn't bring it to a 12-man.

Edited by Shlkt, 15 April 2014 - 06:25 AM.

[Triordinant]

Carrioncrows, on 15 April 2014 - 04:51 AM, said:

They need to drop the heat penalty

Be the same Heat as regular lasers, we already pay a tonnage penalty. We shouldn't have to pay a heat penalty too.

We're already paying a range penalty as well.