MischiefSC, on 04 April 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:
Damage from even pulse lasers spreads most the time unless the target is standing still and often the attacker needs to be as well.
Ballistic PPFLD all hits the same location, every single time. Hill humping or hoverjet poptarting lets that get exploited. The problem currently is that due to different travel times and questionable accuracy (due to lower projectile speed) it's not a reliable enough way to put damage on target to warrant the heat.
Most poptart builds hit heatcap in about 3 shots. It was still optimal.
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The ability to peek for a fraction of a second and put your full damage in a single location on a single hit location on a sprinting Firestarter is always better than lasers. Always, always have been and always will be.
Pretending that a small heat change or refire delay change or the like somehow affects this is crazy.
People seriously exaggerate the whole DoT thing. It hinders Clan UACs quite a bit, but lasers for both factions get past it quite easily (especially Clans). Why does DoT work for one but not the other? My own guess is probably that lasers travel at the speed of light, which is a very significant boon. Not to mention just being relatively low on tonnage and having infinite ammo.
The only laser that seems to be hindered by DoT is the Clan ER Large...and even then it still has a specialist use as an extreme-range poker-sniper.
Thanks for mentioning poptarts, because that reveals what caused all of this in the first place. The ability to accurately fire weapons while in the air, and immediately drop down to cover before you can get hit, is what was actually overpowered at the time.
It wasn't about those guns used on the ground being too strong, it was the toaster pastry manuever that was too effective. Coincidentally, frontloaded guns had higher synergy with the poptart maneuver, which caused them to become the weapons of choice for jumpsnipers.
The mistake you're making here is that you're confusing the effectiveness of old PPCs on poptart builds with the effectiveness of PPCs on ANYTHING EXCEPT A POPTART.
Jumpsniping was the problem, PPCs and other FLD guns were the symptom. Don't nerf symptoms, fix problems. In this case, JJs need to be redesigned to emphasize mobility and make it a lot harder to fire while you're in midair (but still possible).
PPCs
by themselves (as in, no jumpsniping involved) were only overpowered at 2000 m/s velocity and 8-9 heat (12-13 for ERPPCs). At 10(15) heat and 1500 m/s, they were great guns but
mostly fine.
If you actually, legitimately felt that something like a Catapult K2 with 2 PPCs or my Griffin with 1 ERPPC were overpowered in the past, I will slap you through the internets.
MischiefSC, on 04 April 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:
Clanner laservomit happened because Clan ACs were not PPFLD and ERPPCs were too hot to boat.
It's also because Clan lasers are just so damn awesome. They're so awesome that they forced IS mechs to either pack bigger XLs than usual and use lasers to free up enough weight for that engine (Gman's term for this is the "Big Engine Stomp Meta"), or use a STD engine so that pinpoint accurate laser vomit couldn't sidecore their IS XL.
The state of Clan ACs won't change the fact that Clan lasers are just amazing by themselves.
I used some ERPPC builds for derps on my Clan robots pre-nerf. For example, a 2 ERPPC + 2 ERML Thor or a 2 ERPPC + 4 MG Nova. I even ran a 2 ERPPC Puma for a little bit. And, I'll admit, I also cheesed and did the 2 Gauss + 2 ERPPC Dire Whale. Speaking of which... (see next quote block).
Nowadays, my main gun of choice is the CLPL, with some CERML usage when I can't find the tonnage or heat for the former. Even with DoT, I find a use for at least 2 UAC/5s on some builds (like 4 ERML + 2 UAC/5 Loki). For IS I tend to use ERLL and/or ML for energy, maybe throw on UAC/5 or something for ballistics.
I don't touch PPCs or ERPPCs with a 30 foot pole unless they've got huge quirks for them, like my Resistance Panther's ERPPC...that's about it.
MischiefSC, on 04 April 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:
Clanners will always be laservomit because they have no solid low heat ballistics save the Gauss, though you still see ERPPC+Gauss builds on Dires and TWs. Why?
The Dire Whale gets away with it because it's a 50 point alpha. In fact, this is the exact, specific outlier build that caused PPCs and ERPPCs to get smashed so hard in the first place. This one build ruined it for every other mech in the game, basically.
The Mad Cat's preferred Gauss build is probably Gauss + 5 ERML, actually. A lot more versatile and easier to use (hitscan vs slow projectile). Better heat efficiency too.
MischiefSC, on 04 April 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:
Because PPFLD is, all other things being equal, superior to DoT.
What you're overlooking is that all other things
aren't equal.
There are lots of differences including weapon tonnage, heat, projectile speed (fast/slow/hitscan), raw damage, cooldowns, and any other miscellaneous mechanics like minimum range or whatever. Lasers have
other traits to make up for being DoT, like being point and click (speed of light), having less heat, being lighter weight in most cases (excluding LPLs), doing damage within 90 meters (compared to regular PPC only), and having a higher damage-per-tonnage ratio ("more bang for your buck").
This isn't like we're just copy-pasting all the weapon stats and just making one FLD while the other DoT. There are other stats being changed at the same time that offset this.
MischiefSC, on 04 April 2015 - 02:28 PM, said:
Making PPCs better than lasers means they trump lasers.
Making lasers better than PPCs means they trump PPCs.
Edited by FupDup, 04 April 2015 - 06:57 PM.