Here is my tiering of least to most favorite:
Least favorite:
SRM/LRM range. LRMs are already near useless at the end-envelope (past 800 meters) because few targets at serious levels of play stay locked that long. By the time the missiles arrive, the target is dead or has dropped behind cover. SRMs move too slowly to accurately shoot beyond 175 or so with any real predictability, and with their ammo limitations risking wasted shots is a fool's choice. Only useful if your enemy is charging right at you, sitting still, shut down, or making some other dumb mistake.
Ballistic range. Ballistics are accurate to their crosshair, but the crosshair is calibrated for specific ranges (and even then barely - check out this video to see why:
http://www.twitch.tv...monky/c/6482367 ). If you're upping the max range, you're messing with the point of impact and not adjusting the crosshair. If you can come up with a way to overcome this, I'm fine with it, but as is it is poor at best. The exceptions to this are PPC (I know, handled by its own quirk) and Gauss max range as they are unaffected by gravity, so the crosshair stays relevant for point of impact. Machineguns get a little bit of benefit from this as well, but their CONE OF FIRE is ridiculous at any extended ranges, making it basically throwing ammo away even if you're getting full damage per shot.
Beam duration reduction. This is a powerful quirk, but we already have beam duration differences between pulse and normal lasers. Further, due to being percentage based, normal and ER laser reap a much larger actual benefit. For example, an IS large pulse has 0.67 beam duration and an IS large laser has 1.00 duration. Subtract 50% from those numbers and the difference between the two shrinks from .33 seconds to .17, making the Large Pulse comparitively worse. If you're going to do beam duration reduction it needs to be a flat milisecond reduction, not a percentage, or you're making wonky balance issues where pulses are no longer valid choices.
Projectile speed. In addition to messing with point of impact on gravity affected projectiles (like covered under ballistic range) this quirk's poor application is highlighted by mechs which have had to recieve ENORMOUS PPC speed quirks to make using PPC's even remotely viable. If you have to use quirks like this to even get the weapon on the field in a serious environment the problem is with the weapon as a whole. The solution here is don't apply this to gravity affected ballistics, and up PPC overall speed, limiting its application to Gauss rifles realistically.
LBX Spread quirks - Same issue as mentioned before - quirking into viability. If LBX aren't useful MAKE THEM USEFUL don't try and make a few edge cases with quirks. Put on your balancer pants and for once in the 3-4 years MWO has existed and make the LBX work! Not trying to be negative here but they have NEVER been viable in the history of MWO! Get on it, WITHOUT quirks as a crutch! Some helpful tips: Look at SRMs and what they do: SRMs have the same basic functionality, but accomplish it in a way that works: Good weight to power ratio! LBX are heavy, in order to be viable they need more power. Bring in the spread -some- so you can hit all shots on a light mech (for isnstance locust) at the max range and then up the power of each projectile.
NARC Quirks - Narcs are useless because they are poorly implemented overall, same as LBX. FIX THE NARCS!
So those are the main offenders.
Quirks which could use improvement in how they are applied:
Heat generation - This is a handy quirk, but it needs to be applied pretty heavily to light mechs. Lights have the least cooling potential in the game due to limited weight and space (as they often require XL, Endo, and Ferro upgrades along with DHS to be viable). This means they can't really pack in heatsinks. To make matters worse, a lot of lights can't get up to an XL 250 meaning they HAVE to spend precious remaining space on heatsinks. As you can probably tell, this means at some point you have to make your mech less effective just to fit the heatsinks required to run in, and lights are already the least effective weight class pound for pound. Further, if you're on an energy hardpoint heavy light, there is simply no way to fill all the slots and make use of them since you'll be so far past your heat cap. The FS9-A is a good example of these quirks being properly applied, an example of poor application would be the JR7-F, which relies on 6 energy hardpoints but can't even remotely keep up due to being outcooled by other quirked lights. The FS9-S runs 5-6 medium pulses, but runs it so much cooler, you'd be screwing yourself by taking the Jenner which doesn't have any other options!
Beam range - Not the right name but basically energy beam weapon range. This quirk is great for three things: Making inner sphere pulse lasers and small useable (a problem related to IS pulse and small laser design! shouldn't have to be quirked to accomplish!) Making IS medium lasers reach out as far as Clan ER Mediums (which is a valid application because you'd have to pack larges otherwise, 5x the weight, not viable), and making IS ER Larges reach as far as clan ER Larges (also valid to allow clans and IS to trade fire on long range positions without having to have everyone in IS use Gauss rifles exclusively). So, overall, beam range is good, but inner sphere small and pulse lasers need to be overhauled rather than quirked into viability with it.
SRM/LRM Velocity/Spread. Lumping these together - I don't like SRM velocity because using SRMs relies on timing the flight vs your enemies moves, adjusting that to be different on mechs makes it HARDER to use SRMs in a fight, but it isn't the worst thing in the world If you want to do that, make it for SRM's overall. LRM speed quirks, hey that's alright, LRMs already take so long to hit you're basically not going to hit anyone who hadn't already given up on life and wandered into the open in front of the enemy without ECM. As far as spread I think it has some merit, but needs to be sizeable to have any real impact. 5% spread reduction is almost nothing and that's what we're looking at right now. 15% might be a meaningful impact that could make some changes in how some mech's missile hardpoints are looked at.
Energy/Missile cooldown. These quirks are great overall, but on mechs where the cooling potential is low they need to be paired with decent cooling quirks, simple as that. Firing faster just means overheating faster for some mechs as it is.
Quirks that are great:
Agility quirks - in order of importance: Accel/Decel, turn rate, yaw/pitch degree, yaw/pitch speed. Accel/Decel lets mechs poke, an all important aspect of mech warfare. Turn rate allows mechs to manuever into positions or brawl, important overall and for when your enemy has closed on you to counter your poking. Yaw/pitch degree is important because it establishes what fields of fire you can actually put down with torso weapons. yaw/pitch speed is somewhat important because it assists with shielding and getting weapons on targets rapidly. Please don't bother with arm quirks aside from possible degree of movement which would be weak on a mech where most/all firepower isn't in the arms anyways, speed is a pointless arm quirk.
Ultra AC Jam chance - I like it. It works, it boosts DPS without giving a hard buff, and it doesn't make the jam mechanic invalid. Kudos!
Ballistic Cooldown - Since ballistics are (relatively) cool running, this quirk is exceptionally powerful in defining the role of a mech. A great example is the Grid Iron which went from worthless to competitive with simply increasing Gauss reload by 50%. A simple, powerful quirk that can stand alone. A minor issue with it is that you can end up over-pidgeonholing mechs by putting specific ballistic quirks that are very powerful, and general ballistic quirks that are weak by comparison. Consider doing different ratios than 2/1 (50% gauss cooldown/25% ballistic cooldown for instance could be 50% Gauss cooldown/35% ballistic cooldown).
Edited by Monky, 21 April 2015 - 05:25 AM.
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