64 replies to this topic

[Questia]

No... this is unforgivable. Questia here, and if you heard of me from The Daily Whine, then you'll know my problem here.

It's simply disheartening to go with the best mech, the best builds, and the most optimal stuff (I have elited two of them, and the third needs only less than 7k XP to complete), and STILL find yourself utterly beaten time and time again. Seriously, here's a short list of the blunders that I have done in a Timber Wolf:

• immediately focused down and relieved of 16% max HP after just one poke
  
• Gotten a barely-above-100 damage game
  
• Gotten no kills at all
  
• Averaging less than 400-500 damage per game
  
• Finding oneself always out of step, firing out with no one to stand by, no one to follow through, [insert common blunder in pugs here]...
  
• Not even getting into good engagement range without being slaughtered
  
• And more...

Mind you, those are on three different chassis: one (TBR-PRIME) with the standard laservomit, another (TBR-S) with a ballistic brawling build, and a third (TBR-C) with MPL spam. And no, lag is not an excuse either: I get 240 - 340 ping, which should be good enough for things.


So... in what is essentially a continuation of my first topic, is there any tips that you experts can give to get those consistent 3-5 kills and 500+ damage that you vets tend to brag about? Er, sorry, that's a bit rude... but seriously though, it's gonna take the sacrifice of both my legs and a lot of livestock just to gain the mad skills that you guys have...

Basically, any hard tips for playing Timber Wolves? I don't want to be shamed as the noob in an OP mech, and I'm really looking for an answer here. I don't want to ever feel that I'm not contributing anything ever again...

EDIT: And the main reason why I'm posting here in this forum is because I still consider myself very new, and because I don't want to see others suffer what I am going through.

Edited by Questia, 27 March 2015 - 09:09 AM.

[Hospy]

At a quick glance, a lot of your list is resolved by sticking with the group.

The Timber Wolf is a great mech, but you're not about to take on the entire team on your own.

[TheSilken]

Also Timbers get focused fired very badly. Only a few other mechs get focused more and they are all Assaults. In other words make sure you are out of sight if possible.

[BINDLETORC]

Hey Questia! We ALL feel your pain. Don't expect averages of 3-5 kills and 500+ damage. Be a smart player, watch how others play and practice. Join a unit if you can as teamwork in this game is paramount. Even when you pug, stick with your team and your lance and communicate.
If Timbers aren't doing it for you, try another mech. The Timberwolf is a potent mech so you will be focused on. And do not sweat the bad OMG-I-only-did-10-points-of-damage rounds. They happen. To everyone. In any mech.
Try watching some vids over at NGNGTV, Sean Lang has some great tips and some awesome builds that may help you.
And keep reading the replies to this 'cuz a bunch of other people are going to want to help you out too.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

I assume you are pugging by yourself. It sounds as though you are running out from cover and making a big target of yourself. That works if the team is behind you but you can't count on that in pug matches. Stick to cover and focus on trading shots. 1 on 1 there are not many mechs that should be able to out poke you. If you're winning trades (dealing more damage than you're taking) be aggressive keep up the fire as much as you can without overheating.

Edited by Rouken, 27 March 2015 - 09:24 AM.

[InspectorG]

First off, dont beat yourself up.

MWO has a VERY steep learning curve. Think of it like high school wrestling, if you never wrestled before and were out of shape. You will get rag dolled often.

Its ok, i started in Commandos and struggled to get 200 damage a game for half a year. Let alone kills.

Good news for you, you have Timbys which are very powerful. Should lessen the pain.

Look for friends and practice, fastest way to get better.

Beginners dont realize MWO is a team game and is about focusing fire on choice targets, not running around trying to get kills.
Map knowlege will come, just pay attention to the red and blue triangles and you will eventually get a 6th sense on whats about to happen.

Tips:

Stay with the group, you wander off alone, you get killed via getting outnumbered.

Think of either making peek-a-boo 'trades' in a Pug match. Or a 'Push'. Pushes are less common in a Pug unless the other team is getting steamrolled...but thats more like a feeding frenzy.

So a favorable trade is you hitting the enemy with a solid hit but not getting hit in return.

Be sure to go into MWO settings in the mechlab and turn the mouse settings down very low, this steadies your aim.

Use terrain to hide behind because it has infinite HP, you do not.

Positioning is everything so set up optimal places to peek and poke from.

If you are taking damage, twist left and right to spread damage across your mech instead of staring down the enemy.

When in doubt, aim for the enemy's Right Torso. Most mechs store their best weapon there or have an XL engine.

When moving, dont run into the open, move behind cover.

Press 'R' out of habit, many noobs dont and wish they did. Plus it tells teammates vital info about the enemy.

Watch the streams of GOOD players and steal their habits. Make friends and ask questions.

[Voivode]

Let me make a simple statement.

There is no mech so good that it will totally cover for bad tactics. There is no mech so bad that it will not succeed with good tactics.

Others have pointed several things out and I'll second what they say. Sticking with group is essential. Learning how and when to poke out to strike is important. More important than that is knowing where and when to move. In pugs, it can be frustrating because often pug teams take a little fire and enter "total inertia" mode.

This isn't a simple game to play and the process can be frustrating. I've been where you are. Stick with it and you'll figure out how to succeed. Personally, I don't even care which mech I take. The advantages one mech may have over another are such a small factor compared to the skill of the player. Concentrate on learning the game and don't sweat the chassis too much.

[Corbenik]

Also make sure when sticking to the group make yourself a harder target to hit be a couple steps behind someone else but dont also be so close that you hit them and never be in the forefront. target what they are hitting and never just hit everything or whatever is near you. make sure you try to finish the target that you already or is already taking fire.

[Spleenslitta]

Never come out of the same piece of cover over and over. Relocate after firing once.

Now you're thinking :" but if i relocate after every shot my damage will decrease since i spend so much time running back and forth"
Yup that is true but your damage might increase too since your more likely to survive longer.

I got another piece of advice, but it goes against the meta so you might want to take it with a pinch of salt. -
- Have a weapon selection that is flexible with range. Having the ability to make use of ALL opportunities is another form of firepower.
A single long range weapon might not sound impressive according to the meta, but that single weapon combined with all the opportunities during a match to use it to it's maximum potential can be devastating.

I'm sure you have had plenty of experiences where your mech only has weapons reaching out to about 500 meters effective range.
Then an enemy pops out at very long range. If you had a Gauss rifle, ER PPC then you could have given him a real POW to the face.
But you got a mech filled to the brim with C ER ML, SRM's and AC 20. Frustrating right?

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Voivode has the biggest point here.

For all that competitive teams and competitive players will tout the godliness or complete uselessness of a variant or chassis, the chassis simply doesn't matter if your personal skill isn't where you think it is. For all that experienced players will tout their skill at movement and aim and leading shots, these simply don't matter if you don't have the tactical awareness and team support you need to make that movement in the right direction and take those shots at the right targets at the right times.

For that matter, the power of the chassis can be made or broken by what, exactly, you've got loaded in the chassis and how it relates to your personal reactions to various situations. An extended-fire weapon like a laser or even a burst-AC or C-LRM rack- or a small-bore rapidfire autocannon in general- does you no good if your personal habits lend themselves more to peeking and other very brief fire exchanges, for instance.

Frankly, being in a Timber Wolf specifically is the LAST element of what will affect your performance. What makes them 'superior' to other Clan 'mechs (and I put that in quotes because of how distant that concern is compared to other, more important factors) is their specific combination of overall efficiency of build, particular tonnage (75-ton 'mechs are the second most efficient weapon-mass to total-mass in the game, after 70-ton 'mechs), favorable hitboxes (with sometimes apparent 'vanishing point' invincibility angles on the CT seams), overall profile (while wide, they are low and have lots of 'holes' for shots to pass through harmlessly), and hardpoint flexibility, all of which need to be leveraged by your personal skills and choices in order to matter in the first place.

People who know what they're doing in 1V Locusts and whichever Spider that was that has virtually no weapons capacity whatsoever will absolutely wreck face compared to someone in a Timber Wolf who hasn't got through Elite skills, hasn't learned the maps and how to leverage their positioning, isn't working with their team at the time of encounter, and hasn't built the 'mech to suit their personal actions in game.

I know there are people who are going to knee-jerk that I'm talking about 'special snowflake builds' and I'm not just talking about that. I'm talking about particular selections- Large Pulse versus ER large, specific amounts of heat sinks compared to more/heavier laser weapons, which ones go in which mounts (hardpoint location matters), and whether to lean more on range or damage are all concerns that differ from pilot to pilot between 'laservomit' builds and have a huge effect on the result when done differently by the same pilot.

Consider all these things and constantly be ready to tweak or change around elements of your 'mechs. Don't assume that one person's laservomit build will work better for you than another person's any more than you would assume that one person's missile heavy build would work better for you than one of the two laservomit builds. (Also don't assume the missile-heavy build will be inherently worse. Try everything!)

Oh, and leverage the hell out of team power whenever you can. Watching your minimap to see what the people who you can't talk with or won't listen are doing, because working with them instead of winding up off on your own will save not only your 'mech, but the match.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 27 March 2015 - 09:55 AM.

[Tesunie]

I'd also like to mention that 300+ ping isn't exactly a good thing either. But Host State Rewind does help with this issue provided your ping is stable. If you fluctuate by 100 ping, then you will have issues as HSR can only do so much.

Beyond that, I think everything else has already been basically covered. Stick with your team. Try to use good sense and tactics. Have fun, as it is a game after all.

Most people consider 150 damage to be "contributing" to a match, but even then don't sweat over a low damage match. It happens to all of us. I've been known to have matches where I have done 0 damage. Then again, I've also had matches with 1000+ damage and no kills.

As far as kills per match goes, don't count on it. Not everyone in a match can get 2-3 kills. Many times, you may find yourself the one doing all the work, only to find someone else slipped in a single laser shot and took the kill for almost no work on their part. Don't worry about it.

Kills per death is a bad metric to try and measure yourself by. What I find a decent measure (not that there really is one here) is to find the average damage per match for your mech, and then figure out average damage per match per ton. (Go to your stat page in your forum profile. Take your total damage and divide by number of matches played. That is your average damage per match with that mech. Then, take that number and divide by the tonnage of your mech. That is your damage per match per ton invested into that match.) I tend to find a damage per match per ton (DPMPT) of 5 is a good number. If you aren't there yet, that's alright. If you are above that, then you are doing good.


The key is, are you having fun? If yes, then don't worry about how efficient you are. Just have fun. This is a game after all, and a game is designed to be enjoyed.

[RazorbeastFXK3]

Patience. That's the main thing. A lot of patience goes into good matches. Coordination with your team helps too as I've gotten in a bit of a habit of either opening up the Battlemap and looking to see where the main body of my team is going and I try joining up with them or I'll shout out over the voice comms "Ears on, locked and loaded. Which way do we want to go?" Sometimes I'll get a smart comeback of "Uh.. we want to go to the enemy!" Other times there are more strategic responses of "Let's move (this way) and try to stick together, call out targets."

Try not to be the first to go around the blind corner unless you have a better than average idea of what to expect. (Seismic Sensor helps a LOT with this situation)

So far I'm not usually anywhere near the top dawg in any of my matches and I'm generally happy if I get at least one kill so my K:D ratio doesn't get any worse than it already is.

But yeah.. patience is the key. I know the Skirmish/Assault/Conquest matches are only x15 minutes each and a single minute can sometimes feel like anywhere from a split second to an eternity but yeah, try exercising a bit of patience. Also.. don't rely too much on your sensors (outside your Seismic Sensor) as a lot of the times you can see the enemy with your naked eye off in the distance before your electronic sensors even register an enemy contact. 'specially the ones just within range of your longest ranged weapon.

Then there are the times when you can't reach out and tickle an enemy so just report the sighting so your team can be ready for the encounter (if they're paying attention that is)



[EDIT]I seriously dislike how my weapons end up passing harmlessly between the enemy's legs or under their armpits but when I try shooting through those spots of a friendly to hit an enemy I end up tearing them (the friendly) up instead. It got to the point when I just stopped doing that 'cause it's just ridiculous how that works. 'course I understand it's all about trajectory and angle from cockpit to firearm but still..

Quickdraw Crobat, on 27 March 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

overall profile (while wide, they are low and have lots of 'holes' for shots to pass through harmlessly),

[/edit]

Edited by RazorbeastFXK3, 27 March 2015 - 10:06 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

I am one of the more experienced players, I have been around since closed beta, I do not have any Mech with an average damage above 304 ^{(the Timber Wolf A has 304, and thank you PGI for putting the results in a format I can paste into Excel from)}
my highest Kill Death Ratio is 1.8 (the NVA-S, I am extremely surprised about that, as I hated playing the Nova).

sorry Questia I think you are probably just looking at matches people upload to Youtube or perhaps the end of match scores and thinking the scores of the top players are normal rather than scores you may get 1 game in 5 (unless you are a truly exceptional player).

if you want to improve your scores the easiest way to do this is to join a group and practice with them, once you get to know the people you are playing with your averages definitely go up because you know someone will work with you and help cover for mistakes you may make by having your back

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 27 March 2015 - 10:13 AM.

[AlmightyAeng]

Doing well in this game is about making good trades, and hitting weak spots when you see them.

Take a shot or two that ISN'T returned by the enemy. Reposition. Rinse repeat. That's why the Timby is so good. Great alphas, good enough heat to alpha 3 times, and enough speed to fade away, cool down, and do it again.

Don't facetank other mechs. If you get into a face-to-face situation try to do so with friends around you. Otherwise, hit that CT (or side torso, if you think it's an IS mech with an XL) and tank as much as you can with your arms.

[Puschk1n]

It's actually quite easy:
500 damage is about average and enough to kill a mech. And obviously,the average amount of kill every Player will make will be exactly 1!For every game and Player that makes two kills in a sigle game there will another Player/game with no kill.

So you use an optimized build and have max experience for that. Guess what,so do most of your opponents. Dropping with pugs and not using voice com is what seperates you from others.

Also, don't get blinded by those guys with 5+ kills ... they aren't 5 times better than someone with 1 kill. It's just that, when you are for whatever reason still alive at the end of the game, then you can rake in kills pretty easily because many opposing mechs will be severly damaged already. By others.

[sycocys]

The one thing I see a lot of pug players do with clan mechs is alpa strike themselves into shutdown. Over and over and over and over.

[Elizander]

Spleenslitta, on 27 March 2015 - 09:43 AM, said:

Never come out of the same piece of cover over and over. Relocate after firing once.

I do this with my Dragon-1C's highmount ERLL and I time it just right so I repeatedly shoot and duck with very minimal chance of return fire. Sometimes I get away with it maybe 5-12 times in a row then it induces so much rage in the enemy team that they all charge me and get shot up by my team unless my team gets scared and hides behind rocks. Then I die.

[Stealth Fox]

Questia, on 27 March 2015 - 09:07 AM, said:

• Gotten no kills at all
  
• Averaging less than 400-500 damage per game

Erm..Man the **** up and stop whining when you even break 300 maybe?


But yeah ..stick with the group and voip it out, but those two just seem like petty whines to me.

[Tim East]

Voivode, on 27 March 2015 - 09:29 AM, said:

There is no mech so bad that it will not succeed with good tactics.

14 flamer Nova.

But seriously, mech ability is pretty important. In my experience, it pays off to drive bad mechs to get good at tactics, followed by good mechs because the enemy has hypothetical tactical ability identical to the maximum tactical ability for the situation at hand possessed by any human being. That is to say, no matter how good you are, there is likely someone better in a given set of circumstances, and using equipment that plays to your strengths as a pilot is pretty important. Also, some mechs are just objectively better than others. Firestarter leaps to mind, with its ability to boat light energy weapons, run fast, tank damage, AND jump. The Firestarter can basically do everything my Locust 1E can do, but better, with the sole exception of running fast.

Anyway, with all tactics considered equal, the mech/loadout makes for a pretty useful tie-breaker.

Tesunie, on 27 March 2015 - 09:54 AM, said:

I'd also like to mention that 300+ ping isn't exactly a good thing either. But Host State Rewind does help with this issue provided your ping is stable. If you fluctuate by 100 ping, then you will have issues as HSR can only do so much.

Truth.

Tesunie, on 27 March 2015 - 09:54 AM, said:

Beyond that, I think everything else has already been basically covered. Stick with your team. Try to use good sense and tactics. Have fun, as it is a game after all.

Most people consider 150 damage to be "contributing" to a match, but even then don't sweat over a low damage match. It happens to all of us. I've been known to have matches where I have done 0 damage. Then again, I've also had matches with 1000+ damage and no kills.

As far as kills per match goes, don't count on it. Not everyone in a match can get 2-3 kills. Many times, you may find yourself the one doing all the work, only to find someone else slipped in a single laser shot and took the kill for almost no work on their part. Don't worry about it.

Kills per death is a bad metric to try and measure yourself by. What I find a decent measure (not that there really is one here) is to find the average damage per match for your mech, and then figure out average damage per match per ton. (Go to your stat page in your forum profile. Take your total damage and divide by number of matches played. That is your average damage per match with that mech. Then, take that number and divide by the tonnage of your mech. That is your damage per match per ton invested into that match.) I tend to find a damage per match per ton (DPMPT) of 5 is a good number. If you aren't there yet, that's alright. If you are above that, then you are doing good.


The key is, are you having fun? If yes, then don't worry about how efficient you are. Just have fun. This is a game after all, and a game is designed to be enjoyed.

DPMPT is pretty good, though for raw usefulness to the team, I'm a big fan of kill most damage notices. They aren't perfect; you can get them from sandblasting, but if you sandblast enough to get one, I feel like you helped enough to deserve the credit. Sandblasting armor off of mechs may be inefficient, but it does make it easier for your allies using PP weapons to drill, since they probably don't have as far to go, and it can reveal locations where the enemy thought to get away with stripping armor.

My personal damage score necessary to reach satisfaction in my performance varies by mech, but is generally around 300.

One fun thing about driving Locusts? My DPMPT is really high. Like a bit over 10 for my 3M, and almost 15 for my 1E.

[Rear Admiral Tier 6]

Timberwolves get focus fired really easily,thats about it.

Also almost all Timby-setups run stupid hot so avoid brawling at all costs.