110 replies to this topic

[Mercules]

Jman5, on 23 June 2014 - 08:59 AM, said:

Notice how the Clan laser stays ahead of the IS laser in damage throughout the entire beam duration?

Notice how I am paying 5 heat for that beam instead of 4?

[FupDup]

If I have to pilot a mech with mediocre hitboxes, lacking Endo or using FF in place of Endo, atrociously horribad hardpoints (no inflation), an engine too small, an engine too big, and/or hardwired equipment that isn't useful (i.e. 2 surplus jets on the Thor/Nova, Adder's Flamer), in order to use these weapons, then those weapons damn well better be individually stronger.


When discussing Clan gear, you have to also factor in the highly inefficient platforms carrying that gear, because otherwise you can't even use the gear in the first place.

Edited by FupDup, 23 June 2014 - 10:10 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

OMG.

They do .38 more damage in the same amount of time?!?!?! (I actually pointed this out during the PTS play). (Sorry, just felt a little overreactionary, so on to non trolly part of the post)

Yeah, they do. Here's the thing. Same amount of time, they do an extremely tiny amount more damage.

But whether they hold the beam on target for the duration of a standard medium, longer or even LESS, they still pay 25% more heat per medium laser. It would be one thing, if they could choose to stop firing at 1 second, and put out slightly more damage. But they can't.

And once you go multiples, and into Ghost Heat multipliers, that extra pt of heat per laser adds up fast.

That said, I do feel it's not quite perfect for balance. I think the obvious answer is to reduce the heat on the Inner Sphere MLaser to it's canon correct 3, instead of 4. Then the heat tradeoff vs range/damage is very much there and inarguable. Hardly deal breaking now, but again, could use a tweak.

More an eye opener is the ER Small. It only does 2 pts heat, same damage as a Medium, faster cooldown, and has 2/3 the range for half the weight. The Issue, in my mind, is the ER Small, is supposed to be doing 3 heat. Thus it would be the same heat and damage as the IS Medium, with 2/3 the range and half the weight. A much fairer trade-off, especially since Clan Smalls are have Ghost Heat (IS ones do not) and further, they fall under the same GH umbrella with mediums, so it's not like you can game it with 6 mediums and 6 smalls, something the IS CAN do (In theory).

ER Large are fine as is, since they do have to work to keep beam on target for that long, and they do less damage than their canon counterparts.

Conversely, Clan Pulse ALL need markedly shorter beam duration to be remotely worth taking. (As do IS Pulse)


So in short......
to "fix" the ER M.Laser, reduce the IS Medium Laser heat by 1 pt,
and to fix the ER S,Laser, add 1 pt heat to it.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 23 June 2014 - 10:16 AM.

[Deathlike]

FupDup, on 23 June 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

If I have to pilot a mech with mediocre hitboxes, lacking Endo or using FF in place of Endo, atrociously horribad hardpoints (no inflation), an engine too small, an engine too big, and/or hardwired equipment that isn't useful (i.e. 2 surplus jets on the Thor/Nova, Adder's Flamer), in order to use these weapons, then those weapons damn well better be individually stronger.


When discussing Clan gear, you have to also factor in the highly inefficient platforms carrying that gear, because otherwise you can't even use the gear in the first place.

You mean... when is the Kodiak going to suppress the Daishi?

Soon™.

[Valdherre Tor]

I like the longer duration times on the clan lasers and I think they are better at range and against moving targets. Consider your mech moving at full speed and you target a light mech moving full speed is kinda hard to hit, some IS laser shots might just graze the target not dealing much damage however a Clan ER with longer duration times you can swipe most of your target even if you intially miss.

I also assume anyone would rather take a direct hit from an IS laser over a Clan Laser, just saying.

[FupDup]

Deathlike, on 23 June 2014 - 10:16 AM, said:

You mean... when is the Kodiak going to suppress the Daishi?

Soon™.

Assuming PGI gets around to adding non-Omni Clan mechs, which would open a whole new can of worms. They would either have too much customization and wreck everything, or they would have too little and would be outright useless.

[Ultimax]

Jman5, on 23 June 2014 - 08:59 AM, said:

Medium Lasers

A Clan Medium Laser does 7 damage and has a 1.3 beam duration. This means that it takes 1.3 seconds for the full 7 damage to apply. An Inner Sphere medium laser does 5 damage, with a 1 second beam duration.

However, if you do the math this means that a clan medium laser is going to do 5.38 damage per second of beam duration, while an inner sphere medium laser does only 5 damage per second of beam duration.

So if you manage to keep the beam on target for 30% longer, and you also pay an extra 25% more heat you can generate 0.38 more damage per second.

Jman5, on 23 June 2014 - 08:59 AM, said:

Small Lasers

A clan er small laser does 5 damage with a beam duration of 1 second. an IS small laser does 3 damage with a beam duration of 0.75 seconds. This gives clans 5 damage per second of beam duration and the IS 4 damage per second of beam duration.

This one is in favor of the Clan SML. But I'll come back to this point.

Jman5, on 23 June 2014 - 08:59 AM, said:

I believe I have convincingly refuted the commonly held belief that longer beam duration gives IS lasers an advantage in this field. The truth is that the increased damage the Clan Lasers have counteract the disadvantage of the longer beam duration, thus making it irrelevant when you compare them to their IS counterpart.

I believe your analysis is incomplete, and therefore your conclusions are incomplete - yes even with your disclaimer.

1) You left out heat vs. effective damage ratios in your calculations.
2) You left out an entire class of lasers, LLAS/ERLLAS/cERLLAS. Whether it's coincidental or on purpose, this one will largely favor the IS ER LLAS vs. c ER LLAS (0.9 per tick vs. 0.74 per tick, means it will take 1.2s to equalize vs. the IS LLAS.


On top of this, you have isolated weapon systems in a vacuum, without looking at their respective ecosystems nor the platforms they will be used on.

These are quantitative points that are just as important as qualitative ones, they just don't make for pretty charts.

For example, as good as the 180m cER SML is (and it is excellent) - Clan lights (the most likely users of these, aside from the Nova) are unable to break 100kph.

Would you trade 30 or 50 kph off the top of an IS mech so you could have an additional 60m of optimal range and slightly higher damage efficiency?


Yes, the cER MLAS are excellent and they are mounted on Mechs that have burst fire ACs instead of pinpoint FLD ACs - they better be more efficient and higher DPS, because that's what those mechs have going for them against 30 pinpoint FLD alphas, and light mechs that are 30 to 50% faster.


The cER LLAS are balanced, and possibly even underperformers (time will tell, I'm not ready to make a judgement now).

You have 810m range, but mostly low slung mounts on many clan mechs.
You do 11.8 damage, but it takes a second and a half to do it in a game environment where getting a full 1s beam was not really a given.


And more importantly, and kind of shocking really, you completely ignored that more required time on target will generally mean more spread. So even if you get every last tenth of a second on target, you will likely have more overall spread on average with the clan lasers due to longer beam times.


Are we truly at a point in game where people are worried about the impact of slightly more efficient Small and Medium lasers on mechs who have much fewer pinpoint FLD options, unchangeable engines and unchangeable armor/structures?

Edited by Ultimatum X, 23 June 2014 - 10:47 AM.

[Jman5]

MourningZero, on 23 June 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

Worth noting that these two that you have picked for your math are the only ones where it is remotely the case that clan beams compare to IS beams on damage per second during beam uptime, and even here I would consider 1.252/dps vs. 1.25 dps to be practically a push.

My guess is that these weapon systems are intentionally slightly stronger to create a role for the clan light mech who is unable to reach MWO light mech speeds.

You may be right. I just picked two lasers that interested me and IMO are most commonly used. If you or anyone else want to do the math on the 8 other lasers, I'm sure people here would appreciate it. However it doesn't change the facts about these four lasers I mentioned.

I added the disqualifier at the end for just this reason.

Mercules, on 23 June 2014 - 10:07 AM, said:

Notice how I am paying 5 heat for that beam instead of 4?

As I mentioned at the end, You get higher heat, but you also get nearly double the range. IMO the double range is much more valuable because it makes you more flexible and safe. It's also worth mentioning again that the small laser and clan er small laser have identical heat requirements.

Regardless, the purpose of this post was not for me to pronounce judgement on how or if we should re-balance. The purpose was to provide a factual analysis for why the ER SL and ER ML longer beam duration does not give it a disadvantage in damage to the IS ML and IS SL. Even in optimum situations.

Edited by Jman5, 23 June 2014 - 10:44 AM.

[MechWarrior5152251]

Clan weapons cost more heat. I would rather have 10 damage ppcs rather than 15 damage C-ERPPCs. Personally I would pay the extra ton for regular ppcs, though with some maps the extra range of Clan is very significant.

[Xyroc]

but its supposed to be better & balanced not just balanced.

[xMintaka]

Beliall, on 23 June 2014 - 10:50 AM, said:

but its supposed to be better & balanced not just balanced.

That's an oxymoronic statement.

[East Indy]

I see some mentions of heat efficiency, which is accurate, but since the Clan ER large actually deals less DPS than the Inner Sphere regular large, it's totally appropriate to ask the devs why that isn't consistent across other lasers.

[Atheus]

East Indy, on 23 June 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:

I see some mentions of heat efficiency, which is accurate, but since the Clan ER large actually deals less DPS than the Inner Sphere regular large, it's totally appropriate to ask the devs why that isn't consistent across other lasers.

Not sure what you're talking about, but the overall dps of the clan ER large is 12% higher than IS large.

[MourningZero]

Damage per second of beam duration (the supposed IS advantage that has been debunked)
ISERLL: 9 dps vs. CERLL: 7.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 20%
ISLL: 9 dps vs. CERLL: 7.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 20%
ISML: 5 dps vs. CERML: 5.4 dps. Winnar: Clan by 8%
ISSL: 4 dps vs. CERSL: 5 dps. Winnar: Clan by 25%
ISLPL: 17.7 dps vs. CLPL: 9.1 dps. Winnar: IS by 94%
ISMPL: 10 dps vs. CMPL: 6.4 dps. Winnar: IS by 56%
ISSPL: 6.8 dps vs. CSPL: 4.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 51%

So, you can see that focusing your argument on the small and mediums vs the clan er counterparts is a particularly skewed way of looking at the list. IS retains a great lead in this category on 5/7 weapons, and as everyone has mentioned the 2 that are leftover are the weapons that the odd duck clan lights are saddled with - very likely being the reason for the weapons improved stats.

[1453 R]

Two things:

First of all, the C-ERML and C-ERSL feel powerful and excellent. They feel like weapons of great and terrible war, while the IS beams have long felt somewhat anemic, especially in comparison to the FLD options availabe to the Sphere. Did it never once occur to any of the CLANS OP PLZ NERF people that mebbe...just mebbe...the answer is to revisit IS beams and not knee-jerk supernerf the Clan beams? Sure, I could see the C-ERSL picking up another point of heat - that thing is ridiculous. Glorious, but ridiculous - but at the same time I want the CSPL to stop being an utter failure, and maybe IS beams need help more than Clan beams need a [REDACTED] straight up their [REDACTED]?

Second thing. THIS IS TOTALLY A CLANS OP PLZ NERF THREAD. THAT MEANS IT TOTEZ LEGIT NEEDS ONE'A THESE: ATTN.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Sug, on 23 June 2014 - 09:06 AM, said:

Just using beams is itself an disadvantage. You're comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges.


Is Damage Per Second even relevant when looking at a single second? My math made the Clan LLs look weak to me.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

IS Large Laser: 9 damage with a 1 sec duration, every .1 seconds it does .9 damage. (10 x .9 = 9)

Clan ER Large Laser: 11.25 damage with a 1.5 sec duration. If it did .9 damage every .1 sec like the IS LL it should do 13.5 damage. ( 15 x .9) But it doesn't. It actually does .75 damage per .1 second. ( 15 x .75 = 11.25)

For Pulse Lasers:

IS L. Pulse Laser: 10.6 damage over 0.60 seconds. Every 0.1 seconds it does 1.76 damage. (1.76 x 6 = 10.6)

Clan L. Pulse Laser: 11.8 damage over 1.30 seconds. Every 0.1 seconds it does .907 damage. (13 x .907 = 11.8)

So Clan LpLs do about half the damage per .1 sec that IS LpLs do.


Again, correct my math if i'm wrong but looking at the damage per tick it seems like IS weapons have the edge. But again, beams are weak anyways.

Wow, Clan PL get double the discharge time? dayum. can the Clan PL get like 1s now? holy crap.

[Atheus]

MourningZero, on 23 June 2014 - 11:05 AM, said:

Damage per second of beam duration (the supposed IS advantage that has been debunked)
ISERLL: 9 dps vs. CERLL: 7.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 20%
ISLL: 9 dps vs. CERLL: 7.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 20%
ISML: 5 dps vs. CERML: 5.4 dps. Winnar: Clan by 8%
ISSL: 4 dps vs. CERSL: 5 dps. Winnar: Clan by 25%
ISLPL: 17.7 dps vs. CLPL: 9.1 dps. Winnar: IS by 94%
ISMPL: 10 dps vs. CMPL: 6.4 dps. Winnar: IS by 56%
ISSPL: 6.8 dps vs. CSPL: 4.5 dps. Winnar: IS by 51%

So, you can see that focusing your argument on the small and mediums vs the clan er counterparts is a particularly skewed way of looking at the list. IS retains a great lead in this category on 5/7 weapons, and as everyone has mentioned the 2 that are leftover are the weapons that the odd duck clan lights are saddled with - very likely being the reason for the weapons improved stats.

And based on that, how many scenarios would you sacrifice range, total dps, and total heat efficiency to pick a laser from the IS arsenal?

The thing is you've got the C-ERML competing with the ISLL, ISLPL, ISML, ISMPL, you name it, and basically being the better choice just about every time. It doesn't particularly matter if the C-LPL isn't all that good. If it's not good, nobody will use it, just like IS.

[Sephlock]

Based on what happened previously when similar posts showed up, I predict unwarranted laser nerfs.

OoeEEEEEEooooOHHH!

[FupDup]

Sephlock, on 23 June 2014 - 11:13 AM, said:

Based on what happened previously when similar posts showed up, I predict unwarranted laser nerfs.

OoeEEEEEEooooOHHH!

The Nerfinator is coming.



Effective laser weapons? In HIS MWO? It's less likely than you think.

[Verkhne]

The long beam times are also a defensive drawback as they allow for less torso twisting, better aim versus Clan mechs. I imagine PGI does account for it however.