1453 R, on 26 May 2015 - 04:24 PM, said:
Yeah, which is actually more what my modernizing Clan fleet looks like - less OMGBEAMZ crazed alpha spikes and more a moderate number of beams with a stupidly high number of DHS.
You can get cool-running Clan builds, but they don't tend to have the bleeding-insanity spike alphas that get forumites' blood boiling and set crowds to screaming 'OP!'. Now don't get me wrong, I do feel that Clan beams in general still need some adjustments, but after this little experiment in my Grasshoppers, I really do want to stress the word 'adjustments'. The sky is not falling, one side is not madly pwnooblerating the other, things are generally closer to okay than not, and there's fun to be had on both sides of the tech divide, against both sides of the tech divide.
Also your Lolbringer has no ECM and is thus sad. It is a Sadbringer. You should give it ECM and make it happy again.
First off, fun read and I tend to agree with your conclusions. Whenever I write about balance, I'm operating under the assumption that everybody knows it's pretty close already and am concerned primarily with closing the remaining gaps. Some of those gaps (like the relationships between range and damage or range and weight) cannot be closed without some butchering of Clan equipment, ridiculous buffs to current IS equipment, or the introduction of the more advanced IS gear. In current regular matches, though, quirked IS stuff is pretty decent if you use 'Mechs without gimped geometry and hit-boxes. I rack up huge numbers in my BJ-1X (which you should definitely try running if you haven't already), It can actually out-
gun many Clan machines by smart use of terrain with its superlative hard-point placement and top speed. It runs cool even with a STD 280. I don't even run it that often any more precisely because it's so expertly effective; I tend to stick with the more challenging BJ-3 and BJ-1DC. So, yeah, claims of "Clans OP!" tend to be greatly exaggerated.
At any rate, I quote the post above to emphasize something I've been saying since the very first adjustment to Clan lasers; they only run hot if you make them run hot. That is, if you give it a ridiculous ranged alpha that the IS can't typically hope to obtain without running a super heavy and slow machine, then yes, it will spike to 98%. That was the point: you trade on heat to get sheer damage. A good laser alpha on the Inner Sphere side starts at 30 points and ends around 40. That damage range gives you the best balance between reach, heat, and damage without making tremendous sacrifices in speed, armor, or engine durability and can be mounted on almost any 'Mech. But it seems Clan players are not satisfied with lasers alphas between 30 and 40 points. They want 50, 60, 70 points and they can mount it easily, which is why they got smacked with higher heat and super long duration on that first go-around. It's why I get frustrated when certain parties complain about the general heat characteristics on Clan lasers, because it sounds like they want to enjoy those massive strikes with the same level of heat that an IS build would generate with between 30 and 40 points of damage at much closer distances, and to me that's completely ludicrous.
And you are also absolutely right to compare the product builds rather than potential. The goal is to see what you can do pragmatically to compete with the opposite number. Nobody is going to build a 7x ERLL Banshee, and nobody is going to build a 6x C-ERLL Warhawk or 8x C-ERLL Dire Wolf (actually, not true, they used to do that regularly before the ghost heat and duration changes and it was terrifying if that assault had support).
TL;DR: finally, somebody else gets it!
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