80 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

TW. It's the new meta.

[Viges]

ShinobiHunter, on 26 July 2014 - 08:21 PM, said:

Timby is closer in weight to a Victor than a Phract though...

waaaat

Madcat - 75t
Phract - 70t
Victor - 80t

and madcat as phract are heavies but victor is assault so with 3(3) mm rule madcat competes with phracts not victors

Carl Avery, on 26 July 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

I do. I'm not sure what that has to do with my assessment that the old pro-build Victor still has the highest reward/effort ratio, nor my observation that many pro-level players are now choosing the Victor over the Timberwolf (presumably because the Timberwolf's novelty has worn off, and because of the pro-build Timberwolf's heat problem). I'm unsure whether the Victor or the Timberwolf is the better competitive 'mech altogether, but I would guess that it's still the Victor.

The Timberwolf has much greater speed & maneuverability than the Victor, yes, but these attributes have never really been what wins the battles in MWO; firepower & armor have always counted for more (imagine a team of cheese Victors versus a team of cheese Shadowhawks). Sure, both the Victor and the Timberwolf can mount a 35-pt. PPFLD alpha, but the Victor has a much better sustainable DPS while doing so (which does matter even for this alpha-sniping playstyle). Of course, too little speed & maneuverability are no good (which is why I haven't been seeing the pro-level players seriously running Direwolves), but the Victor looks to be once again at the sweet spot for the super-competitive players. YRMD.

As other people said ppc/ac/gauss combo is not a new meta, its madcat with speed and agility of mediums and durability and firepower of assaults and crazy adaptivity.

[ShinobiHunter]

My bad, I thought it was 65 tons...

[Lukoi Banacek]

PPC/AC5 is still the meta. TW's are just a great Clan Mech and the new shiny....thus heavily played.

If push comes to shove, competitive teams will still resort to FLD carriers that can jump in the form of SHD/3D/VTRs with FS9/JR7 light support. Of course their will be minor exceptions here and there (AC20 BJ, the occasional dual K2/JM6, the occasional harasser/ECM 3M/3L), but the preponderance will remain with the best Mechs in the game to move swifty and deliver pinpoint damage to the same locations over and over.

Simple as that. TW's do not supplant that fact at all, try as they might. Great Clan Mechs, but not the new "meta."

[MischiefSC]

I think you'll find a lot of top competitive teams playing with the broader range of Clan weapons than AC/PPC poptart VTR/SHD/3Ds.

[Rhent]

Viges, on 27 July 2014 - 04:29 AM, said:

waaaat

Madcat - 75t
Phract - 70t
Victor - 80t

and madcat as phract are heavies but victor is assault so with 3(3) mm rule madcat competes with phracts not victors



As other people said ppc/ac/gauss combo is not a new meta, its madcat with speed and agility of mediums and durability and firepower of assaults and crazy adaptivity.

ROFLMAO, someone wrote durability and put Madcat in the same sentence.

The Madcat is probably the most fraglile of the clanners. The arms on the madcat are low slung and cannot act as a shields. The weapon points are low slug making the madcat having to expose more of itself to fire than other mechs. The madcat is a faster Stalker with the EXACT same torso losing capabilities.

[Zervziel]

Alistair Winter, on 26 July 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

Do you guys play the game at all? It's not like the clan mechs came out yesterday. And it's not like you have to be Stephen bloody Hawking to pick up on some of the most elementary trends in this game, is it?

If you guys are expecting the meta to change at any minute, because people realize that Timberwolves are actually easily countered by Dragons with AC2's, I've got news for you. It's not happening.

How does me mentioning the forums having master pre-emptive bitching equate with not having played the game?

[Khobai]

Quote

I consider lasers to be pinpoint, since they do converge and hit where the crosshair is. But there have been debates on it.

lasers are pinpoint but theyre not frontloaded. theyre pinpoint damage over time.

99% of balance problems in MWO are caused by weapons that are both pinpoint AND frontloaded.

Edited by Khobai, 28 July 2014 - 02:32 AM.

[Rhaythe]

I've solo'ed a Mad Cat with a near-stock YLW. I've been cored out by a Mad Cat at a thousand paces while in a Cataphract.

Perhaps when the game queue isn't chock-full of Timberwolves and always sitting at 40% heavies, we'll actually get a good idea of how this mech performs in a mixed game. Right now, you can't even find a game without at least 3 Timberwolves in it.

Yeah, it's a versitile mech. But I kill a lot more things using my stock Stormcrow Prime.

[Alistair Winter]

Zervziel, on 28 July 2014 - 02:24 AM, said:

How does me mentioning the forums having master pre-emptive bitching equate with not having played the game?

Well, I made the mistake of thinking that your post was recent, when it was actually quite old. In my mind, it wasn't pre-emptive.

Although I do think that there's a lot of "pre-emptive bitching" on the forum that is really very valid, from time to time. Some fans take an almost agnostic view to game balance, like it's impossible to estimate whether or not it would be good for the game if jump jet shake was removed, for example. I think there's been many times where PGI made mistakes and was forced to correct those mistakes, when a number of fans could have accurately predicted the outcome before it happened.

People who play this game 30 hours a week do often have the ability to make accurate predictions about upcoming changes. And they can rather quickly make a good assessment about the impact of recent changes.

But that's not as relevant to this discussion to your post as I originally thought.

[MonkeyCheese]

OneEyed Jack, on 17 June 2014 - 10:29 PM, said:

No. It doesn't.

When people refer to pinpoint damage, they're referring to all the damage hitting in a single, small point. Not just all converging on the reticle.

Tell that to all the people I have creeped up behind and then proceeded to pop them in the back or the countless arms and side torsos I have ripped off, sure a laser boat blackjack is an overheating machine but I still call it pinpoint damage when aiming and arm lock are involved...

[Rear Admiral Tier 6]

The 2 ER PPC + Gauss Timberwolf runs too hot to be OP,sure its annoying as hell and nasty,but it cant sustain DPS same way as the IS meta mechs,lets say Cat 3D with 2 normal PPC:s and Gauss.

But the catch about Timby is the versatility.It can be a good LRM-boat,light deterrent (not hunter,too slow for that),SRM bomber and dakka platform.

And yes i run the metatimby sometimes and its fun.

[Wrenchfarm]

Guys, guys, please.

This 75 ton mech that moves as fast as a medium, brings more firepower than most assault mechs, and has some of the tankiest hitboxes of the already tough Clan line-up is in NO way, shape, or form the new meta. It totally isn't blatantly better than every other mech in the game, offering an unbeatable blend of speed, firepower, and survivability and only happens to be available for cash money.

Stop talking it up, lets just ignore it and shut up so it has as long as possible to dominate without nerfs (which should hit riiiiight around the time Madcats are available for cbills).

Adapt and overcome to this mech that does everything.

[Gas Guzzler]

MischiefSC, on 26 July 2014 - 04:35 PM, said:

My point is that gauss + 2xERPPCs isn't the peak build. There's a lot of options. Not that hard to leverage the UAC10 vs the Gauss. I had to admit it but the Gauss just... isn't that good on Clan mechs. Not for the tonnage, not outside of DWFs (for whom tonnage is less of an issue than hardpoints and space).

Try the UAC10. What I don't get is why you wouldn't just go with the UAC20. I get a lot of killing done with it. I find the ERPPCs to often be inferior to the CERLLs; the pinpoint is nice but DAT HEAT... and for 50% more tonnage? 4 tons for 11pts is a hell of a payoff, even at 1.5 seconds on target for full effect.

UAC10 with a TC, 2ERPPCs though? That would work. The TCs perks mesh very well with the multi-projectile nature of CUACs. It's a law of averages game at that point.

Teams or pugs I don't see a lot of ERPP+Gauss TWs. When I do, they do alright but not exceptional. I see UAC and LBX builds doing consistently better.

That hasn't been my experience. My teammate that loves jump sniping all the time runs it and is very successful. I see the HoL guys running that specific build as well. I like to run it too but I like to drop in all kinds of mechs. I take gauss over the clan UAC because range, projectile speed, and single projectile. Sure the UAC is better in a brawl but I don't want to brawl with 2 cERPPCs.

Wrenchfarm, on 28 July 2014 - 07:23 AM, said:

Guys, guys, please.

This 75 ton mech that moves as fast as a medium, brings more firepower than most assault mechs, and has some of the tankiest hitboxes of the already tough Clan line-up is in NO way, shape, or form the new meta. It totally isn't blatantly better than every other mech in the game, offering an unbeatable blend of speed, firepower, and survivability and only happens to be available for cash money.

Stop talking it up, lets just ignore it and shut up so it has as long as possible to dominate without nerfs (which should hit riiiiight around the time Madcats are available for cbills).

Adapt and overcome to this mech that does everything.

It's not how big your firepower is, it's how you use it.

[Gyrok]

Adiuvo, on 26 July 2014 - 06:18 PM, said:

We aren't.

This. Top tier comp teams are not using Gauss/PPC any more...BRAWLING IS BACK!!!! CERLL are pretty big right now too...

Edited by Gyrok, 28 July 2014 - 09:02 AM.

[Clit Beastwood]

Stormyblade, on 18 June 2014 - 07:33 AM, said:

I'm curious...according to your screenshot it appears as though you dropped as a 4-man group. Why, pray tell, are you logging significantly higher damage than your clanmates? Are they just not as good?

If he had someone spotting and managed to crunch through ~1800 lrms then 1400 damage is super-doable. It's do-able without lrms, for example, take 4 erll and a mkv+ targeting computer and chain fire nonstop. With the damage outlay vs. kills its ~325 dmg/kill, which is 100 dmg/kill too much for direct fire, so I'm guessing lrms - areseye's a better shot than 325 dmg/kill with direct fire. I'd personally guess a lot of chain-fired lrm's, so more hit the CT.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Here is the ironic part. All the whining and complaining about the Timber Wolf being OP is one of the reasons why we have so many Timber Wolf mechs in game.

[divinedisclaimer]

I've probably said it once and I'll say it again: unless a T-Wolf is already cored, don't go for his CT. This is contrary to what you're used to.

1.) He can twist+turn so fast his large side torsos will take damage very reliably, even with TBR-S debuffs. You almost aren't going to hit his CT unless he chooses to face you mutually.

2.) The arm hit-box starts very low. You can aim for it's "shoulders" and hit it's side torso. It's arms do not obstruct it's side torso well enough to act as shields.

3.) Half a T-Wolf is generally difficult to keep alive.

It actually makes more sense to take both side torsos or one and the CT due to this mech's high agility and turn speed. A common armor distribution is 44/20 - most T-Wolf side torsos have 44-50 armor tops, and they are very large targets.

So you have to break ritual a bit for this mech.

Viktor Drake, on 28 July 2014 - 09:20 AM, said:

Here is the ironic part. All the whining and complaining about the Timber Wolf being OP is one of the reasons why we have so many Timber Wolf mechs in game.

I bought the T-Wolf because it was the most versatile and for it's heinously high move-speed. It is, however, more fragile than pilots who do not have experience with it realize.

Edited by divinedisclaimer, 28 July 2014 - 09:33 AM.

[CDLord HHGD]

This would like to provide more options for deathy kill kill.....

[Carl Avery]

Viges, on 27 July 2014 - 04:29 AM, said:

As other people said ppc/ac/gauss combo is not a new meta

You say that like I implied that it was new. o O
The PPCs + [choice of AC5s or Gauss] + JJ has been effectively mandatory on the competitive level for at least the entire ~9 months that I played public matches. It's probably been going on for longer than that. I don't play public (mis)matches anymore, so I don't know what the uber-comp folks have been doing for the last two weeks, but I doubt that the old [PPC + heavy ballistic] is going away any time soon. I haven't seen any of the top-scoring players using anything else on their Victors & Timberwolves & Cataphracts.

Edited by Carl Avery, 29 July 2014 - 02:25 AM.