92 replies to this topic

[SweetJackal]

Do remember it is also that players still haven't adapted to the quirks, meaning that mechs that were considered not a threat (like Dragons) before are a threat and are getting ignored.

The curse of fast fire rates is that you have a lot of face time, 2 AC5s put a lot of firepower in one arm and Dragons almost always run XLs. Though the nose-er-CT is very prominent and easy to hit the same can be said for the STs since they are very well defined and are lacking arms that let them spread damage. In essence to protect your STs you have to turn into the fire to force it to your CT.

Dragons are still very fragile and though the quirks allow them to do an insane amount of damage they are still just as easy to take down. They are now a real glass cannon and a very real threat. They still have glaring weaknesses and players will learn in time to exploit those weaknesses.

[Appogee]

meteorol, on 05 November 2014 - 11:40 PM, said:

"The dragon was good before"

So many people who just don't realise reality.

I've been watching team mates clean up in 1Ns for months. The Mech was competitive, it just wasn't fashionable. It's wasn't the best Heavy Mech on the battlefield (take a bow, TimberWolf) but for those who liked ballistics, it was always competitive.

Now even my Dragon-loving team mates feel the 1N is somewhat over-quirked from a balance perspective.

But you can't tell the fashionistas...

"I herd Dragon is bad herp derp but you think its good LOL".

Edited by Appogee, 11 November 2014 - 12:19 AM.

[pwnface]

Nauht, on 06 November 2014 - 05:30 AM, said:

Hey guy, still waiting for your awesome Dragon stats screenshot.

The DRG-1N is still incredibly squishy. Don't ignore it and it isn't OP.

Edited by pwnface, 11 November 2014 - 12:18 AM.

[Appogee]

pwnface, on 11 November 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

The DRG-1N is still incredibly squishy. Don't ignore it and it isn't OP.

I wouldn't go so far as to declare it "OP", but nor do I think it's as easy to take out as you're implying.

I've battled quite a few 1Ns over the last weekend. They're best when they're part of a pack and not singled out. Their high rate of fire adds formidable DPS in that kind of scenario.

That being said, I couldn't solo one in a Victor last night. I had AC10+2PPCs and was torso twisting like a *****, but the 1N still cored me before I could take out its CT. (The enemy pilot was protecting his arm, which is what I would otherwise have been aiming at.)

[Widowmaker1981]

pwnface, on 11 November 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

The DRG-1N is still incredibly squishy. Don't ignore it and it isn't OP.

sorry, this is a tad hilarious.. see my 1400 damage screenshot, but my this mech isnt at all OP. Come on, you know that cooldown quirk is excessive.
If its not toned down substantially in the next patch im going to assume it will stay awhile, and will buy the dragon mastery pack

[SweetJackal]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

[/size]
So many people who just don't realise reality.

I've been watching team mates clean up in 1Ns for months. The Mech was competitive, it just wasn't fashionable. [snip]

The Dragon has been viable but that isn't the same thing as competitive. Fielding one has never been an instant loss but has required a more specialized method of play and playstyle to do well in. The Dragon has been a unique blend of high speed mobility with a heavy reliance on ballistic weapons (due to borked missile tubes and few energy hardpoints) with severe weaknesses including a heavy reliance on arm mounted firepower, easy to hit profile, and low and wide fire lines. Traditionally it's carried an amount of firepower comparable to that you would see on 50 tonners, just with a really large XL (due to Jenner CT Syndrome, few energy hardpoints and 2 crit spaces for missiles) and what the quirks have done is made the ballistics better by giving firepower worth it being a threat.

Before the quirks they were a twitch-baby's dream. I often had to use armlock just to not lose the mouse with how it's movement snapped around. Felt like a big and fat light mech, the heavy Cicida, which was awesome and fun but objectively it required more effort to function compared to K2s, Jagers and Catas. Yet some players found the Dragon easier to use as we are naturally more efficient at the skill set and style that the Dragon requires and rewards.

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 12:25 AM, said:

[/size]I wouldn't go so far as to declare it "OP", but nor do I think it's as easy to take out as you're implying.

I've battled quite a few 1Ns over the last weekend. They're best when they're part of a pack and not singled out. Their high rate of fire adds formidable DPS in that kind of scenario.

That being said, I couldn't solo one in a Victor last night. I had AC10+2PPCs and was torso twisting like a *****, but the 1N still cored me before I could take out its CT. (The enemy pilot was protecting his arm, which is what I would otherwise have been aiming at.)

The new Dragon is a high DPS build that requires a lot of face time, which means exposing itself a decent distance from cover because of it's wide fire lines and staring down it's target due to fast fire rates. You were in a Victor with an AC/10 and 2 PPCs, two weapons that have slow fire rates by comparison which is a huge advantage as it allows you to apply your volley damage to one location and make much better use of cover. Your situation is that of the TF2 Soldier vs the TF2 Heavy, success comes from abusing your mobility and burst to minimize the damage you take from his sustained DPS. That method of dealing with the threat will mean that most of your deaths to them will be due to teamwork and positioning rather than losing a straight fight.

Also, the arm and CT are secondary targets, obvious choices that are misleading. The Arm because it is where the majority of the firepower is and the CT because it is just so big. Both have been the wrong answer to dealing with a Dragon in the past, they have been merely the easy targets to choose or hit. The moneyshot when dealing with the Dragon has always been the STs, the vast majority run XLs, there is significantly less armor in the ST and the STs are very well defined in the Dragon meaning they are a very easy to hit box.

I would say that you lost to a Dragon solo because of poor decisions and positioning on your part.

[meteorol]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

[/size]
So many people who just don't realise reality.

I've been watching team mates clean up in 1Ns for months. The Mech was competitive, it just wasn't fashionable. It's wasn't the best Heavy Mech on the battlefield (take a bow, TimberWolf) but for those who liked ballistics, it was always competitive.

Now even my Dragon-loving team mates feel the 1N is somewhat over-quirked from a balance perspective.

But you can't tell the fashionistas...

"I herd Dragon is bad herp derp but you think its good LOL".

I love this "no one used the mech because no one understood how strong it actually was, the dragon being bad is just a myth" kind of talk.
The dragon was not underused because someone spread the message that it is bad and everyone was believing it without drawing own conclusions. Almost no one was using it because it was bad.

It had and still has some of the worst hitboxes this game has to offer. It was not even close to being the best or even a good heavy before the TW was introduced. Like ballistics? The CTF and the Jager are just flat out better. There is a reason why the number of dragons fielded in competitive games boils down to pretty much zero. Because it never was competitve.
It's the lightest mech of its class which doesn't make things easy for it to begin with, has bad hitboxes and no overwhelming hardpoints which would make up for its shortcomings. The one and only thing this mech ever had was the speed. The TW took this last advantage it had over other heavies away (going 90kph at 75t).

[Appogee]

SuckyJack, on 11 November 2014 - 01:16 AM, said:

I would say that you lost to a Dragon solo because of poor decisions and positioning on your part.

Of course you would.

[pwnface]

Widowmaker1981, on 11 November 2014 - 12:48 AM, said:

sorry, this is a tad hilarious.. see my 1400 damage screenshot, but my this mech isnt at all OP. Come on, you know that cooldown quirk is excessive.
If its not toned down substantially in the next patch im going to assume it will stay awhile, and will buy the dragon mastery pack

1400 damage match doesn't automatically make a mech OP. Heck Eglar had a 1900 match in a Nova a few months back, nobody was crying for Nova nerfs. As I've stated repeatedly, the DRG-1N isn't overpowered but the damage might be a LITTLE BIT too high at the moment. The craptacular hitboxes and low armor are significant weaknesses to overcome.

I'd like to see the DRG-1N around 15dps rather than 18dps but I'd rather have it be slightly stronger than it should be than the garbage it was before.

[Appogee]

meteorol, on 11 November 2014 - 01:20 AM, said:

The dragon was not underused because someone spread the message that it is bad and everyone was believing it without drawing own conclusions. Almost no one was using it because it was bad.

Those are two sweeping generalisations which are certainly wrong in all cases, and probably wrong in most cases, given the large number of casual players who don't have an extensive collection of Mechs.

How many people tried Dragons and rejected them, vs asked about Mechs in the forums are were advised against them? You have no way of knowing.

But I know that I never bought Dragons previously because I was told repeatedly that they sucked. And I have more than 70 Mechs in my hangar. So there's the living disproof of your generalisations.

meteorol, on 11 November 2014 - 01:20 AM, said:

It was not even close to being the best or even a good heavy before the TW was introduced.

Noone said it was. In fact, I explicitly said that it wasn't.

meteorol, on 11 November 2014 - 01:20 AM, said:

Like ballistics? The CTF and the Jager are just flat out better. There is a reason why the number of dragons fielded in competitive games boils down to pretty much zero. Because it never was competitve.

Yes, it was competitive. As I said, I have two teammates who demonstrated this for months before it was quirked. Its limitations - CT size, vulnerability to weapon loss on the arm - are all well known. That didn't make it uncompetitive. It just wasn't the "best" Mech in its class.

Fact is, if we had weight limits instead of class limits, we'd probably have seen more Dragons because then there'd have been a need for a trade off against tons. At the moment, tons aren't even a consideration. People just take "best Mech in a class", because there's no reason not to.

Edited by Appogee, 11 November 2014 - 01:41 AM.

[pwnface]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 01:32 AM, said:

Yes, it was competitive. As I said, I have two teammates who demonstrated this for months before it was quirked. Its limitations - CT size, vulnerability to weapon loss on the arm - are all well known. That didn't make it uncompetitive. It just wasn't the "best" Mech in its class.

Fact is, if we had weight limits instead of class limits, we'd probably have seen more Dragons because then there'd need to be a trade off for tons, and no incentive to just take "best Mech in a class" regardless of tonnage in that class.

As someone who purchased Dragons as their very first mech chassis (in open beta), I quickly sold them after mastering them because they were really just not that good. I really don't think Dragons qualified as competitive mechs since the end of the "dragon bowling" era. Sure, some pilots can make them look pretty good, but there is a reason none of the top competitive teams ever brought dragons to compete. Even with tonnage limits, a Jagermech was a much better choice than a Dragon for just 5 more tons. Heck I'd even take a Shadowhawk for 5 tons less over a Dragon pre-quirk. It seems like Dragons may be viable for competitive play at this point, but I doubt many teams will take them over Timberwolves.

Edited by pwnface, 11 November 2014 - 01:43 AM.

[SweetJackal]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 01:25 AM, said:

Of course you would.

A very detailed and convincing rebuttal. Your ability to wordsmith a counterpoint astounds me.

meteorol, on 11 November 2014 - 01:20 AM, said:

It had and still has some of the worst hitboxes this game has to offer. It was not even close to being the best or even a good heavy before the TW was introduced.

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 01:32 AM, said:

Noone said it was. In fact, I said explicitly that it wasn't.

Yes, it was competitive. As I said, I have two teammates who demonstrated this for months before it was quirked. Its limitations - CT size, vulnerability to weapon loss on the arm - are all well known. That didn't make it uncompetitive. It just wasn't the "best" Mech in its class.

Fact is, if we had weight limits instead of class limits, we'd probably have seen more Dragons because then there'd need to be a trade off for tons, and no incentive to just take "best Mech in a class" regardless of tonnage in that class.

I do not think you understand the definition of "Competitive" or how much you contradicted yourself in two lines. A mech cannot be "not one of the best or a good mech" and be competitive at the same time. Being competitive means either being the best or one of the best mechs for it's class in that it has very worthwhile tradeoffs compared to the other Best In Class. Competitive means being a top design.

The word you are looking for is "viable." Despite naysayers the Dragon hasn't been a dead on arrival mech but it is the lightest weight heavy that leans towards heavy ballistics, requires being highly mobile due to poor hitboxes and a wide profile, and has very low and wide firing lines meaning it cannot effectively make use of cover and return fire. This is trying to compete directly with the Jager and Cata, which better mount ballistics due to tonnage and spread out hardpoints, have high mounted weapon hardpoints so they can return fire from low cover, have better hitboxes and in the case of the 3D, has more mobility through Jump Jets.

The Dragon was even below the K2 for a ballistics mount as the K2 has the option of forgoing arm armor and is able to carry two large ballistics on an XL.

The Dragon wasn't a competitive mech because for any build you ran on it there was a better mech for it. It was a bottom rung heavy yet was still viable as you could take it out into a match and do well. Just doing well required more effort than other mechs even if some players found the Dragon easier to use as it was easier -for them- to account for it's weaknesses.

[Appogee]

pwnface, on 11 November 2014 - 01:43 AM, said:

It seems like Dragons may be viable for competitive play at this point, but I doubt many teams will take them over Timberwolves.

On this we can certainly agree.

As I said above, until tonnage becomes meaningful in the game, there's never a reason why you might need to take a Mech which is lowest tonnage it its class. You're always better off with the higher loadout and armor.

(One exception: the Kit Fox, which is 5t less than the only other Clan Mech Light, the Adder, but does have ECM and jump jets.)

[Lily from animove]

The issue with good and competitive is: there are mechs where you need to be aware 100% of the time and that dpon't allow a signle wrong step to achieve good matches and scores. And then there are mechs where you can pet your cat with one had, your girlfriend with the other, and your face rolling on the keyboard and it will still makethe one or other match come out great.
If you try to push that emch on its limits, it will constantly perform good and will take you a lot less skill and caution. And thats basically where mechs start to be competitive or not.

[Appogee]

SuckyJack, on 11 November 2014 - 02:03 AM, said:

A very detailed and convincing rebuttal. Your ability to wordsmith a counterpoint astounds me.

My ability to rebut is fine, thanks. In fact, I started to provide a detailed rebuttal, pointing out the various battle circumstances which made your conclusion incorrect.

But then I realised that, as a MechWarrior player for 30 years, a MWO player since open beta, and more than 10,000 matches played, I really didn't need to justify my abilities on positioning and decision-making to every random on the internet who makes an ignorant comment.

As for "competitive": look up the definition, discern the difference between the words "best" and "competitive", and apply them to your future understanding. I come here to have interesting discussions with players on Mechs, not to help people understand the nuances of the English language.

I shared my experiences and observations of being in a lance with them for the past few months, seeing how they performed, and hearing ad nauseum from their pilots how under-appreciated the chassis was. And that was before the significant stacking enhancements recently made to the 1N.

Edited by Appogee, 11 November 2014 - 02:25 AM.

[pwnface]

1 : relating to, characterized by, or based on competition <competitive sports> 2 : inclined, desiring, or suited to compete <a competitive personality>

By definition 1 any mech u bring to a competitive match is competitive. This isn't super useful in making distinctions in good or bad mechs.

By definition 2 dragons are not really suited or inclined for competitive play. In a race u want the fastest car, a slower car may win due to superior driver skill, but the faster car has the advantage making it more competitive.

[Appogee]

http://dictionary.re...competitive?s=t

Definition 2. And no, it doesn't mean that every Mech you bring to a match is "competitive". A "competitive price" means that that price is not "the best" but is within a bracket of prices which are, to use SuckyJack's word, "viable" in creating sales.

But not every price is "competitive", and nor is every Mech taken into a battle by definition "competitive".

Now please, this is getting beyond time-wasting and into irritating. You don't want to believe Dragons were okay before the quirks? That's fine by me. I'll go with the evidence of my eyes over the course of literally hundreds of matches over the past few months. I shared that experience here for the benefit of everyone.

Others can come to their own conclusions, through whichever means they wish, be that prior prejudice, outdated intel from the metas of days gone by, weighed opinions shared by experienced pilots playing at higher Elo levels, or Ouija Boards. I really don't mind either way.

Edited by Appogee, 11 November 2014 - 02:46 AM.

[SweetJackal]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 02:10 AM, said:

As for "competitive": look up the definition, discern the difference between the words "best" and "competitive", and apply them to your future understanding.

I come here to have interesting discussions with players on Mechs, not to help people understand the English language.

Quote

as good as or better than others of a comparable nature.

The Dragon, before Quirks, was not as good as or comparable to the Jager, the Cata and now the more recent TW. Therefore not competitive to any definition of the word.

If you wanted to talk about why I was wrong then a discourse would have been possible but instead you chose to make a statement of outright dismissal without context or content, which is an insult in of itself and I have fun being a sarcastic jerk when faced with that, easier to just laugh it off. If you need to bring out time spent in MWO and experience with it's history I've been 'enjoying' the game since the closed beta before the founders injection. Got to experience the Dragon when it didn't even have STs that could be hit from the front.

You've been providing anecdotal evidence to your points, that your friends have been cleaning house in Dragons and that you couldn't solo kill a 1N using a sustained DPS build in a Victor with a Burst Front Loaded Damage build. Doing well in a mech or chassis is a very personal matter, a subjective look when one should be looking to objective analysis as to why they are doing well, there are a lot of factors beyond the mech to doing well with that mech including supporting infrastructure of the game itself. As for your problem losing to a Dragon, your statement that you were TTing implies that you were not playing your strengths (vertical mobility and not needing to expose yourself for long periods of time to do damage) against his weaknesses (wide firing lines and needing to stare down the target to do sustained DPS) as to why you lost. Your statement that he was protecting his arm shows he had skill and knew what he was doing as well. The information you provided paints a picture of you putting yourself in an exposed fight and just trying to brute force it by torso twisting, a choice that cost you your CT and what I would call a poor decision.

Not saying you're a bad player but merely that many of us are still running under the old threat assessments we have applied to the Dragons before which leads to mistakes in decision making. Treating the Dragon as a high DPS build that is just as vulnerable places it higher on the priority list as you can deny more firepower from the enemy team by neutering them or disabling them. A good number of low threat mechs now have very threatening builds that have even more glaring weaknesses and are easy to shut down. They just aren't getting treated as being as dangerous as they are.

Anyways, it's been fun. Have a good day!

Edit: Just a quick clarification. Never saying that the Dragons weren't playable (infact before the stat reset the Dragons were my best performers strangely enough) but from a purely objective standpoint, all things being equal, the Dragons were lower than their counterparts when good game design in the direction MWO is leaning in requires Different Yet Equal, which is a huge hurdle to cover. To say that they were competitive before the quirks was factually false.

Edited by SuckyJack, 11 November 2014 - 02:51 AM.

[Krivvan]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 12:17 AM, said:

[/size]
So many people who just don't realise reality.

I've been watching team mates clean up in 1Ns for months. The Mech was competitive, it just wasn't fashionable. It's wasn't the best Heavy Mech on the battlefield (take a bow, TimberWolf) but for those who liked ballistics, it was always competitive.

The Mech wasn't competitive from quite literally day one of the closed beta because what it could do other mechs could do better.

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 02:43 AM, said:

I'll go with the evidence of my eyes over the course of literally hundreds of matches over the past few months. I shared that experience here for the benefit of everyone.

Those matches don't mean anything because someone could play amazing games in a Locust.

And hundreds over months isn't nearly the amount of experience some players have. I mean, say what you will but I never touched the Firestarter-H until quirks:

The Dragon-1N has pretty big weaknesses. I'd gladly take on any Dragon-1N in a Light mech, it just isn't scary to me. As many have said time and time again, it has terrible hitboxes and requires constant face time, so it's a glass cannon and force multiplier.

Edited by Krivvan, 11 November 2014 - 03:20 AM.

[Torgun]

Appogee, on 11 November 2014 - 12:25 AM, said:

[/size]
That being said, I couldn't solo one in a Victor last night. I had AC10+2PPCs and was torso twisting like a *****, but the 1N still cored me before I could take out its CT. (The enemy pilot was protecting his arm, which is what I would otherwise have been aiming at.)

If you're soloing a Dragon and you focus on the CT if it's not heavily damaged, you're doing it wrong. You should have focused on it's right side torso and err towards hitting the right arm with its' main weapons rather than the CT when you aim. both of them only have fortyish armor.