Posted 30 December 2014 - 05:45 PM
The Summoner is not as disadvantaged as the Nova or Adder, given the fact that it’s a heavy ‘Mech with 70-tonner armor and that carries its own innate advantages over a light ‘Mech that moves slower than some heavies and a medium ‘Mech bigger than some assaults.
Is the Summoner ‘solidly tier 2’ as you’re claiming, Ultimatum? I don’t really think so.
Admitting that I haven’t put a ton of playtime behind it, unlike some others in this thread, in my experience the Summoner is much akin to the Adder in that it can do disproportionately well if its pilot manages to slip agro and avoid enemy attention. I’ve had multiple 600+ games with my Adders (shut up, I just enjoy piloting the things, okay? >_>), but that doesn’t somehow make Adders good. They’re awful, because they’re crippled by their speed. They get more firepower because of their lack of mobility, and in fact if the thing could load 6+ energy weapons to take advantage of its firepower advantages it might be somewhat less awful, but it’s still a really terrible ‘Mech to be in when the enemy notices you and decides they’re done with your shenanigans. When I’m in a larger, nastier ‘Mech, I’ll often actively pursue any enemy Kit Foxes or Adders I see because I know for a fact that they’re counting on enemies ignoring them, and if I deny them that attention deficiency they’ll fold without much trouble and I can much more quickly reduce the enemy team’s numbers.
The Summoner’s in the same boat. It’s the sort of ‘Mech which many people claim works well as a vulture, picking off inattentive/wounded enemies, but here’s the thing – just about anything makes a good vulture. If all you’re attacking is people otherwise occupied, or people someone else already whupped, then yeah, you’re going to win most of those fights. But at some point you’re going to have to fight someone that’s not below 50% integrity and who is also fully aware of your location and your intent to do him harm. At that point the Summoner’s nasty case of hardpoint deficiency bites it hard.
The best* fits for it seem to be the Gauss/4xML and quintuple SRM-6 options, as generally agreed on by most folks who know what they’re doing. The quint SRM-6 build is a dangerous niche attacker, and I’ll admit that getting caught out by one in its optimal range is a bad time, but the Gausslasers build isn’t really anything exceptional, and I say this as someone who ran the Gausslasers Flame for many moons back in the 8-man days when Dragons weren’t T5 bottom-scrapers, and who still runs Gausslasers on his Gray Death for nostalgia’s sake. There are numerous ‘Mechs which compete well with a Gausslasers Summoner inside its chosen range bracket, and a smaller but still significant number of ‘Mechs which outright beat it (even discounting the Timber Wolf for the moment).
The quint-SRM build is harder to outright beat, but the Griffon can nearly match it, on the Spheroid side no less, for fifteen less tons and with the benefit of shield-side combat and a more focused SRM barrage, while the Stormcrow can do quint-SRMs while also hanging a laser off its noggin, moving faster, and being more durable than the Summoner at the same fifteen less tons. No, the Crow can’t jump, which is a definite point in the Summoner’s favor, but while the number of ‘Mechs able to mount 5+ SRM launchers is small, the number able to mount 4 is significantly larger, and many of them are also able to mount secondary armaments alongside those launchers. Many of those are mediums, and when your 70t ‘Mech’s performance is matched or near-matched by several mediums, you have an issue.
Plus, of course, the fact that once we acknowledge the Timber Wolf’s existence the Summoner loses straight-up in absolutely anything it wants to do. This is more a problem with the Wolf than the Summoner, I will admit, but still. The Hellbringer also does most any non-Splattoner build better than the Summoner does, and has a much greater number of overall options besides.
Which, really, gets down to the heart of the matter. The Summoner is an OmniMech and is thusly supposed to be a versatile, flexible generalist. It’s not. It has builds that can almost compete, but those builds are as restrictive as a Spheroid unit’s optimal quirked build, except without actually having the benefits of adhering to its quirks. It has a paltry two-odd “competition semi-viable” builds forced on it by its anemic hardpoints, and deviating from those builds kicks it down into the bottom half of T3 at best. Going by Piranha’s tiering scale and not Metamech’s, since I have no idea who the Metamech guy is or why I should pay attention to him.
So…the Summoner is acting like an IS quirked ‘Mech that doesn’t have quirks. This is not what I would expect of “a solid T2.” The Hellbringer is edging up into T2 – it has its problems and is highly bothered by losing tonnage to the lack of Endo or Ferro, but even discounting the Jesus Box for the moment, the Hellbringer at least has enough hardpoints to enable a variety of builds and keep the machine from being predictable. Throw the Jesus Box in and it likely ends up as a pretty fair T2 choice, once again showcasing that the entire Information Warfare pillar needs ripped out and redone badly, but that’s an argument for another thread.
The argument is not “the Summoner is absolute garbage that is worse than an unquirked Quickdraw humping an Awesome”, it is that the Summoner is the least viable of the four released Clan heavy ‘Mechs – which it is – and that something should be done to help it out so that people who like it can stop feel bad for piloting it.
Make any more sense now, Ultimatum?
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Mcgral18, on 30 December 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:
