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I have opinions on that, but that doesn't matter right now. It's more important that people understand that the big red numbers are only scary if you don't know what they mean. In fact the quirks seem to be very specifically, and I daresay, intelligently targeted.
Yeah, seriously. For real and stuff. Let me tell you why.
Bigger Cooldown Numbers:
So what does longer weapon cooldown mean to the Stormcrow and the Timber Wolf?
My thought is...not very much honestly.
As someone who drives some Clan mechs, I tend to notice that in any sustained firefight, my damage is limited more by heat than by cooldowns. The negative quirks on my Dire Wolf laser pods are meaningless because I can only fire my lasers two times before overheating. The extra cooldown time doesn't matter when I can't shoot any more. Same is true of the Stormcrow. It carries way more firepower than it can sustain using.
So...all a cooldown increase means is, in situations where I'd fire to my heat cap and go into cover to cool, I have to wait a bit longer to fire twice. If I was in a Stormcrow with 7 lasers, that would be 21% cooldown and 21% on laser duration. Big scary numbers.
Actual maximum time difference on Medium Lasers: 21% on 3 second cooldown = 0.63 seconds. 21% on a 1.15 second burst = 0.24 seconds. Total: 0.83 seconds more exposure per volley, assuming no quirks and no modules.
That's noticable but it's not crippling. It doesn't even matter if you shoot and scoot only a single volley because hanging out for 4 seconds to wait for refire before the changes was never in the cards.
In a sustained fight you'll be waiting for your heat to bleed off so you can fire, so it's only meanginful for an alphastrike-centric build that has to fire multiple volleys in quick succession.
Laser Duration Numbers
Laser duration is effectively a direct damage reduction. It's harder to keep on a target for a longer burst, so more damage is wasted. Give a target more time to twist or duck back into cover. It's that 0.24 seconds again (or 0.315 on those large lasers).
So it's harder for my Stormcrow laser boat to focus damage and also to deal its full damage. That hurts the most in brawl range where things are moving a lot. The more things move, the more damage gets spread around no matter how good a shot you are.
Conspiratory-Like Conclusions
These quirk changes give progressively bigger penalties the more you boat lasers on the SCR and TBR, creating weaknesses that limit the situations a pure laser spam build is good in. But it also does so in a way that doesn't hit other builds very hard. There's no change to how either of them maneuver or tank damage.
PPCs aren't affected by duration and you don't need to stack lots of energy hardpoints for them. Given they're again, heat-limited, changes in cooldown only matter in trying to fire to heat cap as fast as possible.
Conspiracy point two: did you ever notice a common complaint on the forums is about pinpoint-alpha abilities and instant convergence making it too easy to focus damage? Increasing laser duration makes it harder to concentrate damage on one location and increasing cooldown hurts laser-alphastrike builds, but doesn't effectively limit sustained DPS on brawlers because of heat limits. It even seems to encourage the use of missiles or autocannons on brawler builds. Or just use fewer lasers that you need to shoot more.
Conspiracy point three: Timing. People have been saying this is a way to promote Wave III sales. As a Wave II buyer...uh, well. I'm not feeling like they did a lot to push that particular purchase. If it was all about timing, it would've been nicer of them to nerf the first Clan mechs months ago to boost Wave II sales, then nerf the Wave II mechs. But I seriously can't recall my Garg being pay to win or popular enough for a near-future nerfing to increase Wave III sales. I think it has to do more with the coming Steam release and pushing very hard to take care of lingering issues that will be important for first impressions. I kinda wish this sort of stuff would've happened ages ago, but better late than never.
My conclusion is that the quirk changes were chosen to specifically reduce the amount of pinpoint damage laser spam builds could dump over a short amount of time, without seriously affecting the viability of other builds.
My personal opinion on the topic is that it's warranted and I'm OK with it. I am in favor of lower TTK and I'd rather bring the top performers down rather than let them set a bar everything else has to be brought up to. The numbers look scarier than they actually are, and personally I wonder if it will actually make a big enough dent to change anything. Will people take Novas for laser spam now? Is...is that a thing it's supposed to be good at? People on the forums raging over it need to test it before calling upon heavenly justice to avenge their purchases.
Seriously, how dumb is this going to look if the meta doesn't actually change?
Edited by Fleeb the Mad, 17 May 2015 - 11:57 PM.
