41 replies to this topic

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

So, with the sale going on as it is, I picked up a few mechs, namely I picked up the remaining Orion I needed to master Orion's, but I also picked up 3 Battlemasters and 3 Victors after debating for a while what the next mechs I wanted to master were.

So I set to work with Battlemasters first.

Now keep in mind, up until this point, I never really played either of these mechs. I have noticed I see very few Battlemasters for sure in game. So I started asking myself why.

As I've worked my way forward with the mechs, I will admit, the Battlemaster is...different. It feels like a larger Thunderbolt really... which isn't a bad thing, I quite like the T-bolts too. But soo many people decry the Battlemaster as this absolutely terrible mech. And it's not...

It's energy heavy certernly, but that's not a bad thing really, less worry about ammo shortages. Most variants have a spot for an SRM or LRM or 3, which is nice, and it's got decent torso/turn rates for a heavy. The arms are easily to move around meaning you can take snap shots with PPC's/Autocannon...

I really don't see much of a downside to this mech.

Victors are... a mixed bag for me currently. The jump jet nerf's have definately hindered this mech. It needs to be able to use it's jumping ability for the mobility it really needs. But it really can't with the current way Jump Jets work.

Twisting is a bit...rough with it, especially without the basic tier's done. But that's not to say it can't do well in a brawl... in fact most of my wins have been in brawls with the chassis, and it does quite decently. [though part of me is starting to wonder if it's because people ignore the victor seeing it as "useless"]

So my question is, objectively... focusing on Solo Que... are the Victor and Battlemaster bad mechs? Because personally, up to this point, I haven't had this much fun mastering a set of battlemechs in a while.

[MischiefSC]

My condolences. Good luck.

[B0oN]

Oh, you, Mischief, stop scaring ´ im

Battlemaster and Victor are not really fun until you have mastered them fully, so :

STEEL YOURSELF !

After leveling they are damn nice and useful mechs, both in their own ways .

[Gattsus]

Blr's are awesome , never tried a Victor though.

I've never been disappointed by a mech though. It's all about matching your play style and the build you use.

For example, my first mech was a Kintaro-18. The first time I built it as a srm boat... in which I sucked... badly. Then I converted it to a streak boat, and dam! boom, much better results. Besides I went from brawling to being a light or already critted mech hunter.

Recommendation use, mechspecs to look for builds recommended by the community and then, adapt them to your own playstyle.

Edited by Gattsus, 19 August 2014 - 01:27 AM.

[MischiefSC]

They're both easy targets. Play at range, you're going to brawl alright until you level them up enough to play against people who will hit the BLRs fat torsos from a mile away. The VTR is going to get eaten my every light who's going to peg you for the easy snack you are; you turn like an atlas but only 70% of the armor.

You're going to die a lot, get frustrated. Then you're going to find out that the 1G literally can't torso twist far enough to cover its CT when backing up. So it's got the torso movement of a Stalker but the hitboxes of an Awesome.

Yeah, they're terrible and terrible on purpose. As bad as PGI intended them to be.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Rad Hanzo, on 19 August 2014 - 01:24 AM, said:

Oh, you, Mischief, stop scaring ´ im

Battlemaster and Victor are not really fun until you have mastered them fully, so :

STEEL YOURSELF !

After leveling they are damn nice and useful mechs, both in their own ways .

Really? I just hit elite with one of my victors a bit ago... I really haven't found using them to be a chore at all... there are times where I get wrecked... had a great game earlier that had me vs a Jenner who was circling me. I must say, this pilot was damn smart... but that didn't stop me from nearly coring his torso... had his team not been raining LRM's on me while I was fighting him, I'd have killed him before going down.

Alas... there were unfriendly LRM's at play....

I dunno, I just don't feel they're near as bad as everyone's trying to make them out to be... sure the Victor probably sucks compaired to how it WAS... but I'm coming into it fresh with how it is now... and I'm not seeing that big of an issue.

Battlemasters are a bit... clunkier? to me... I mean, I dunno how to explain it, I think I just haven't found a build I like yet.

MischiefSC, on 19 August 2014 - 01:31 AM, said:

They're both easy targets. Play at range, you're going to brawl alright until you level them up enough to play against people who will hit the BLRs fat torsos from a mile away. The VTR is going to get eaten my every light who's going to peg you for the easy snack you are; you turn like an atlas but only 70% of the armor.

You're going to die a lot, get frustrated. Then you're going to find out that the 1G literally can't torso twist far enough to cover its CT when backing up. So it's got the torso movement of a Stalker but the hitboxes of an Awesome.

Yeah, they're terrible and terrible on purpose. As bad as PGI intended them to be.

That's got me curious about the 1G now... any idea why it got hit so hard with the negative quirks?

[Duke Nedo]

I mastered the Victors before the JJ nerf, havn't tried them lately.... that being said, when they could jet they were definately the best IS mech I have mastered! I played either (2x ppc, 2x AC5) or (2x ppc, 1x AC20) most of the time, great fun ad the first build was very efficient!

For the BMs I strugged a bit with the -G, while the -S and -D (pre-ac2 nerf though) really kicked ass in the solo queue.

Main problem was durability, I tried to play them like heavies rather than assaultmechs...

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Duke Nedo, on 19 August 2014 - 01:38 AM, said:

I mastered the Victors before the JJ nerf, havn't tried them lately.... that being said, when they could jet they were definately the best IS mech I have mastered! I played either (2x ppc, 2x AC5) or (2x ppc, 1x AC20) most of the time, great fun ad the first build was very efficient!

For the BMs I strugged a bit with the -G, while the -S and -D (pre-ac2 nerf though) really kicked ass in the solo queue.

Main problem was durability, I tried to play them like heavies rather than assaultmechs...

I haven't exactly tried vtr's with meta builds... Primarily because the meta frustrates me and I'd rather not cheese it out.

In fact my 9b and 9s run an SRM6 LB10X and 2mlas. With my 9k replacing the LBX with a Guass Rifle, keeping the SRM pack, and adding a 3rd Mlas. Engines are stock standards...

My BLR's however... utilize an ERPPC as the primary on my G and M variants, with an SRM6 and 6mlas. my 1D utilizes 4mlas and a UAC5 with 2mg's for backup/crit seeking.

I'm still toying with what I like for the BLR... but my Victors are pretty much where I want them.

[KhanCipher]

Flash Frame, on 19 August 2014 - 01:34 AM, said:

That's got me curious about the 1G now... any idea why it got hit so hard with the negative quirks?

the same reason the 3M got hit with the negatives, too many energy hardpoints it can't use. Or just having too many hardpoints, but that's a bad excuse since the STK-3F has 10 total hardpoints (same as the BLR-1G/3M) and it has better torso radius than all the other stalkers...

and pretty much Victors are good, Battlemasters are trash.

[MonkeyCheese]

My one solo victor still seems to work but it was never a poptart and I always run odd builds, it has always had an AC20 and 2 Large Lasers backed up by 3 ssrm2s. I still run it occasionally only real chance was the 3 ssrm2s into 3 lrm5s.

[MischiefSC]

Flash Frame, on 19 August 2014 - 01:34 AM, said:

Really? I just hit elite with one of my victors a bit ago... I really haven't found using them to be a chore at all... there are times where I get wrecked... had a great game earlier that had me vs a Jenner who was circling me. I must say, this pilot was damn smart... but that didn't stop me from nearly coring his torso... had his team not been raining LRM's on me while I was fighting him, I'd have killed him before going down.

Alas... there were unfriendly LRM's at play....

I dunno, I just don't feel they're near as bad as everyone's trying to make them out to be... sure the Victor probably sucks compaired to how it WAS... but I'm coming into it fresh with how it is now... and I'm not seeing that big of an issue.

Battlemasters are a bit... clunkier? to me... I mean, I dunno how to explain it, I think I just haven't found a build I like yet.



That's got me curious about the 1G now... any idea why it got hit so hard with the negative quirks?

Because those of us who bought the Phoenix Package get a 30% cbill bonus with it and they seem to really, really like nerfing mechs with that an extra 30%. There is no good reason otherwise at all.

Victors are.... alright. What you're going to find though is that a Cataphract 3D pushes almost the exact same firepower and does it faster. You've got limited hardpoints and especially at range are stupidly vulnerable. Someone is going to get behind you and blow you apart and you're not going to get around in time.

The idea I think was that rather than nerfing PPCs (which we've done anyway already) they would nerf the Victor to be almost useless for anything BUT poptarting because that would.....

stop poptarting?

I dunno. It was Ghost Heat/CERLL 2.0 burn time logic. This realization that you know what the problem is (boating weapons/stacking efficiencies/damage and range too high respectively) but rather than just address the issue with a simple direct fix some alternative not-fix that has sweeping impacts everywhere BUT the primary issue (Ghost Heat has done little to stop boating and people worked out ways around it before the code was dry, CERLLs were nerfed to mostly useless, made non-viable for lighter mechs but still do more damage at longer range) and mostly serves to screw everyone but the source of the problem.

Inexplicably it seems like PGI decides not to fix actual issues but just make them less fun - but still powerful. So to be competitive you have to do something non-fun.

Take PPCs. Finally got the nerf they needed a year ago and people have moved on to other weapons and poptarts are nearly non-existant, making everyone happier. All the 20 or so nerfs across the game done to avoid doing just that are still there. If they'd just cut PPC heat a year ago we would have a better game today.

Same thing with the Victor nerfs and BM nerfs. Both had the potential to be fun mechs. The Victors were; you could set it up to brawl OR snipe OR even a mix of both. Like the TW is today but not nearly so OP as it used regular IS weapons. Gauss + PPCs though were crazy OP and it carried both so it became the poptart overlord. So the chassis got nerfed... for brawling. So you couldn't brawl with it, only poptart.

The Battlemaster could have been the premier Brawling assault - something to challenge the Atlas for that. So they decided to make it Awesome width and gimp its mobility to hell, making it like the Awesome - only with less mobility.

The BLR-S makes a decent missile boat. It's no stalker but it's alright. You can put PPCs and AC5s on them and snipe at range, or go with ERLLs and do the same sort of thing. Just that the Stalker does all that better and can actually tank damage, which the BM absolutely can not.

I hope you have fun. I had fun for a while with Dragons. It was like playing in hardmode. I even had a few decent games with them. They laser + Gauss decently well. However the Shawk is better all the way around with JJs and the same sort of loadout so....

MEH. MEH I say.

BUFF FUN UNTIL IT IS OP! NERF THE DESIGN CHOICE TO MAKE MOST IS VARIANTS AND EVEN CHASSIS INTENTIONALLY BAD.

[Vassago Rain]

They're pretty bad, yes.

Battlemaster is just an awesome with a bigger engine.

[Nauht]

No mech is bad in the solo queue.

But Victors have been brought down to below mediocrity - other chassis are better depending on what you want to do.

[Ewigan]

i actually do like my Battlemasters.

They are far from the best mechs, but you CAN play them and not suck.
One is an LRM Boat, one an energy boat, and the third one runs 3x AC2. What rocks actually ^^

Victors once were the king of the assault-poptart-meta.
since the JJ AND agility nerf, well... you either have a DS or ignore victors all together.

[Kiyoshi Amaya]

I think the problem here is most peoples boating or meta mentallity. It just doesn't work on all mechs.

Here's my BLR-1S http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8491a9971106cb1
Yes, it does really well. It's chewed through plenty of dire wolf ct's.

[Duke Nedo]

The fun-factor can be high on the BLR, here are a few builds just to show how versatile they can be... though all use XL engine, so they cant tank and need to be played like a heavy mech. That's possible though since it does 79 mph and the shoulder mounts are really high up so you can peek over hills. All those are capable of 1000+ scores, good times and bad times etc.

BLR-1S (or use SRM4's)
BLR-1S (lurms)
BLR-1G (a bit hot)
BLR-1G (2 groups, left and right lasers, both on chain fire)
BLR-1D (wreaked havoc before the ac2 nerf, hopefully they will be unnerfed soonish)

Edited by Duke Nedo, 19 August 2014 - 04:07 AM.

[POWR]

BLR feels so slow and can't really mount enough firepower to outweigh their slowness. It needs to be equipped with a XL and meh, then you just lose out on any damagesoaking. But then, that may not be a problem on the BLR as whenever I play it my CT is blown out in a few seconds.

[MonkeyCheese]

Only Battlemaster I will truly be afraid of

[Budor]

Battlemaster is the orion of assaults imo. Looks good but is bad.

[Dirgez]

MonkeyCheese, on 19 August 2014 - 04:07 AM, said:

Only Battlemaster I will truly be afraid of

That is some obnoxious color scheme you got there. And as for being afraid, sure, when it actually gets to the battle... 10 minutes after the rest of the team either slaughters or gets slaughtered.

Personally I have acquired 2 Victors over the last couple sales and I must say, both are pretty fun to play. I admit though that jjs on it are a waste at its current mechanic and I don't find much use with them. (So I have them currently removed)

Edited by WM Dirges, 19 August 2014 - 04:33 AM.