45 replies to this topic

[Navid A1]

This thing is very nasty thing: 90... in the face + another 10 lurm spray

DWF-PRIME

Swap the single psychological LRM 10 with SRM6 or SSRM4 for taste.

fire mediums with 0.5 s delay.... it also has 1 JJ.

Edited by Navid A1, 04 July 2015 - 01:15 PM.

[One Medic Army]

Navid A1, on 04 July 2015 - 01:11 PM, said:

This thing is very nasty thing: 90... in the face + another 10 lurm spray

DWF-PRIME

Swap the single psychological LRM 10 with SRM6 or SSRM4 for taste.

fire mediums with 0.5 s delay.... it also has 1 JJ.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...73a61af654cca01

Cooler, no ghost heat, no missiles, includes TC1.

[Navid A1]

One Medic Army, on 04 July 2015 - 01:17 PM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...73a61af654cca01

Cooler, no ghost heat, no missiles, includes TC1.

yup... that is very nasty too. I'd remove the TC for a lower arm actuator though.
also... 2LPL + 4 ML + 2xGauss DWF-PRIME. gives quick and cool 84 alpha... but that is meta try-harding which does not give a good feeling.

[Hit the Deck]

LordKnightFandragon, on 04 July 2015 - 12:58 PM, said:

Yeah, how often do fights end up being outside any range beyond like 300m.....

The engagement range depends on how long you want it to be (e.g. if you are piloting an AC/20 HBK-4G you certainly want to be inside 300m from the enemies, quite different when you are piloting a 3ERLL SHD-2K).

Actually, the weapons themselves are already balanced (by FASA) with short range (brawling) builds having very high potential alpha plus high DPS (the sustainability you're talking about) and vice versa for long range builds.

Somewhat off tangent, what is a quad UAC/5 King Crab? It only has 20 pts alpha but eats anything from zero to 600m (ok maybe not that far away because of aiming). A long range "DPS" machine.

[Slow and Decrepit]

A dire with two UAC5's and two UAC's10's is all you really need to just cut most mechs into tiny pieces! Just be sure to stay away from other dire's with 2 gauss, and 2 or more LL/ERPPC's or a King Crab with same dual gauss loadoutas they can kill you from way far away!

Edited by beleneagle, 04 July 2015 - 04:52 PM.

[Light-Speed]

627, on 04 July 2015 - 12:10 PM, said:

you forgot the Wubhopper.

48 alpha, no ghost heat, short burn time and can shoot all day before overheating. Ok, not all day but heat is not a big problem with it.

Are you sure you gave us the right build man?...
I suppose it's ok if you just poptart...

[Light-Speed]

I think that people should consider the heat capacity of the mech and the total amount of damage they can smoothly output before they reach heat limit more.
What the hell is the extra 5 (just example) lasers are going to do for you if you overheat after using them once or twice? You'll be better off switching them out for heatsinks so the rest of your weapons can fire longer, perhaps ending up doing more total damage and therefore kills more easily than the hotter build.

[Aim64C]

Personally, one of my most effective builds so far:

BLR-1G

4 Large Pulse Lasers.
2 Medium Lasers.

The quirks round them out okay, and the large pulse lasers have a range that compares well with the medium lasers (that don't add too much heat to the firing cycle, anyway). The burn times are short enough to keep the alpha largely on target, and if you are bearing down on a target, I've found that simply having RT and LT grouped together makes things easy.

You can alpha about twice before you run into trouble once you have the machine mastered, and you have enough mobility to keep pace with the team and to put the lasers where they need to go.

I've found it's a great hull-******* on 'mechs that usually have enough armor to tank and bulldoze right over their targets. If I'm the one drawing fire, I can alpha and then follow up with an alternating cycle to make sure that if it doesn't die - my team almost certainly kills it. If I'm not the one taking fire - I'm more than happy to just alternate my weapon groups into whatever side is presented to me. Component destruction is points and most side torsos don't last through more than about two complete cycles.

Sometimes, the annoying small pulse laser locust can be melted in place with a single alpha.

That's probably my most fearsome alpha. Sure - there are bigger alphas in terms of total damage, but nothing that really compares to the effective damage that thing can put out except for, perhaps the king crab I've got with 4 LPLs and 4 SRM 6s. That might come close. But it's running a standard engine and does -not- keep up with the group.

From a Clan perspective... I'm still building an inventory of Clan stuff, so stand by.

[GreyNovember]

Lasers seem. Overrated. When it comes to alpha damage. It isnt a short enough burst to put all that damage in one place, and you tend to miss a bit with it.

The highest I think I've ever had is a Dual Gauss/PPC Crab. 50 Alpha assuming someone stays still, with the PPCs usually connecting funny.

[bad arcade kitty]

148 alpha dire wolf! (with double tap)

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...47b6d68ec0d3119

be very scared (:

[Aim64C]

GreyNovember, on 04 July 2015 - 07:11 PM, said:

Lasers seem. Overrated. When it comes to alpha damage. It isnt a short enough burst to put all that damage in one place, and you tend to miss a bit with it.

The highest I think I've ever had is a Dual Gauss/PPC Crab. 50 Alpha assuming someone stays still, with the PPCs usually connecting funny.

It depends a lot upon the target. ... and the laser.

The IS large pulse laser is a much different story than the Clan ER Medium Laser. ... And, of course, it depends upon the quirks and what-not.

For the IS lasers - particularly the pulse lasers, they are short enough in duration to be able to get most of the damage into one spot, and yet long enough in duration that you can let a fast moving target drag its legs through your stream.

bad arcade kitty, on 04 July 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

148 alpha dire wolf! (with double tap)

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...47b6d68ec0d3119

be very scared (:

Jesus.

Just make sure you shoot all of that ammo before incoming fire identifies it as tasty.

[Xmith]

I have seen nice sized laser/ballistic alphas posted here. However, they share one serious flaw. Too hot, shutdown city when things get hot heavy.

This build has a 41 alpha every 3.25 seconds without having to worry about overheating.

http://[smurfy]http://mwo.smurfy-ne...ee484dd00ff21f0[/smurfy]

Edited by Xmith, 04 July 2015 - 08:18 PM.

[Zordicron]

Alphas:
Sliding scale, starting at around 30 for 45 tons mechs, going to 60-80 for 100 tons.

And those are generally heat efficient enough for how the game plays, namely, blast, blast, hide and cool. For instance, dual gauss 5MPL DWF. 70? point alpha, totally fine heat for fireing a few times, and really, the target will be dead or run away at that point. DWF is of course on the fringe with these types of things, and pays for it in agility and durability for it's size. IMO, if we could swap out engines the DWF would be stupid OP in regards to sustainable firepower. As it is, one has to consider the idea once you commit, you are in it with a DWF, so the alphas tend to go up.

there are exceptions that can spam out slightly lower alphas then the average for a much longer time due to quirks or hardpoints. Some require quirked mega DPS, but you dont hear QQ's about those too much because they are also easy to spank and hide against.


in reality, the alphas are IMO, about double what we used to see at anything over 300M, due to quirks and clans mostly. To be fair, a clan ERML is basically an IS LL, so when you have clammers running around with 6 or 8 of them, you are going to see some big alphas at range. I myself don;t generally play to that, as I prefer the less is more/mobile type of play. For instance, where some one might run 6 ERML, I would probably run 4 and 2 DHS, or change it out comppletely with like an UAC10 and 3 ERML and less DHS. Run and gun, suppression fire, etc are all a lot more fun to me then BOOM, headshot CoD horse **** is with stupidalphas online. Fireing that 70 point laser barf off a Stormcrow and then hiding to cool for 35 seconds is boring as **** to me.

Edited by Eldagore, 04 July 2015 - 08:33 PM.

[Random Carnage]

LordKnightFandragon, on 04 July 2015 - 12:58 PM, said:

Yeah, how often do fights end up being outside any range beyond like 300m.....

Generally every game in which I take a brawler build...

[Navid A1]

bad arcade kitty, on 04 July 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

148 alpha dire wolf! (with double tap)

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...47b6d68ec0d3119

be very scared (:

You simply can not double tap in that.... you'll either power down or blow yourself up... ghost heat is real.

[Y E O N N E]

XX Sulla XX, on 04 July 2015 - 09:37 AM, said:

I keep seeing posts with people saying most mechs have alphas in the 60-80 range. From what I see that is just not true. So lets look at see with some help from you guys.

First lets say we are talking about a balanced alpha where you can do it around 3 times without over heating. Not a one shot and shut down alpha.

Next lets not include super short range builds. Those should have large alphas because of the huge disadvantages they have.

So we are looking at short mid range to long range builds that can alpha around 3 times and are not gimped in a huge way just so you can make a point If you look at the list below at the common direct fire non LRM mechs you will seea trend. They seem to be trying to keep alphas in the 40s and where heat is high enough so you cant just alpha over and over again.

Seems those saying things like we have lots of laser vomit alphas in the 60-80 range are wrong.

Best Timber Wolf build at the moment is probably this one. 48 Alpha http://mwo.smurfy-ne...3932df08caf3380

Hellbringer http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d3ad4bae0075cbe 50 Alpha and its really hot. 2 Alphas maybe?

Ebon jaquar 57 Alpha and hot and limited on alphas. And I think the EJ is going to get some negative nerfs in the future. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9fa63674e12a952

Wolverine 32 Alpha http://mwo.smurfy-ne...0af55a6a9547830

StormCrow 46 Alpha http://mwo.smurfy-ne...2b6fbded10b92e0

Executioner. 61 Alpha but probably so hot it would not count. The 54 Alpha version is probably more managable for most people. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...f193990c5181edb

Stalker 54 Alpha but huge ghost heat so really not an alpha machine but figing in groups. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...dae3bc95797abf5

King Crab 57 Alpha and good heat. But it is a 100 ton mechs so about right I think. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9ab07cca133ee73

Banshee 43 http://mwo.smurfy-ne...4d03bdfd1d77042

Warhawk 44 http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c5f44b087f2bf63

Warhawk laser vomit 59 but not really ment to alpha because of huge ghostheat. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...e697ba56e4a2472

Atlas 68 alpha but AC20 and SRM so short range and does not count. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8655d71912cb3d8

Thunderbolt SS - 42 Alpha. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9cea1863d0df921

Dire Wolf. 68. Ahh now here is one with a large alpha and decent heat. Also though 100 tons and slow moving. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...15b2a641fb07f7a

Let's look at a slightly different metric for all of those builds. Let's look at damage per second of duration, or impulse damage:

TBR: 39.32 dps
HBR: 45.43 dps
EBJ: 51.52 dps
WVR: 37.65 dps
SCR: 29.99 dps
EXE: 53.04 dps
STK: 36 dps
KGC: 60 dps
BNC: 43 dps
WHIK-C: 32.17 dps
WHK-Prime: 35.76 dps
AS7: 70.71 dps
TDR: 70 dps
DWF: 70.87

Flat Average: 48.25 dps
Weighted Average: 52.37 dps

All of these are nominal, and obtained by dividing max laser damage over longest duration, with ballistic damage added on after. If the laser grouping needs to be staggered to avoid ghost, then the laser damage is divided over the longest duration plus a half second. Quirks have been factored in. It's worth noting that auto-cannons can fire twice in about the time it takes to complete a laser burn on some of these, like the BNC-3E which will actually provide a 58-point shot.

Eyeballing it, it looks like the Timberwolf is actually under the performance curve. But, that's a little misleading. From my experience, this metric matters most in a 1v1 when both 'Mechs are within their optimum ranges. In most cases, the superior speed and range on Clan equipment conspire to provide an edge in combat. Once a Thud has closed to 350 meters, though, you'll be hard-pressed to actually win against it using an HBR or EBJ. It can dump massive damage faster than you can react and then spend the extra time soaking damage like a champion. In another observation, the Dire Wolf is amazing for the same reason the Atlas is not: the Dire Wolf can deliver that pin-point, impulse shock from 450 meters away, and even at 600 meters it's still at a level competitive with the lower values of the other listed 'Mechs. The Atlas, however, can't do this. It has to be below 300 meters, and it's spread around.

[Jman5]

When people complain about 80+ damage alphas, they're referring to things like this.

But lets put that aside and think back to what sort of common alphas we had pre-clan. The big kahuna was a dual ppc + gauss. Assaults were running 35 damage alphas. Now we have alphas that are close to if not exceeding double that running around. That 55 ton wolverine is the only thing on your list that's lower than what Assaults used to run competitively.

There is no getting around the fact that firepower has gone through the roof. And hitpoint quirks have not kept pace for most mechs.

[Thorqemada]

Pre Ghost-Heat MWO had a race for the biggest Alpha and 6xPPC Stalkers and stuff like that appeared.
Ghost-Heat was implemented to get this gamebreaking Big Alpha Race into a healthy value range.
Since Clan Mechs we have Alphas that go way beyond we had in the worst past of this game.

Edited by Thorqemada, 04 July 2015 - 11:12 PM.

[WatDo]

Everyone is kind of glossing over the elephant in the room.

A 40 point, pinpoint alpha doesn't seem very high... until you hit the side torso of a light, or a medium.

You're discounting how much damage each mech can take. 4 40ish point alphas to the CT will kill a fresh Atlas. Yes, there's twisting, but the fact still stands.

Lets not forget the other issue in dual gauss mechs, or more importantly the dualgauss+ppc/dualppc mechs. That's atleast 30 ppfld damage. Crabs and whales can pack a whopping 50 ppfld alpha, which will kill said fresh atlai's CT even faster. Ignoring the most obvious examples in those, there's all the laservomit mechs, especially clams. They can do those 40+ pinpoint alphas at range.

The Atlas in question is the most heavily armored mech in game, aside from the whale. Meaning anything else will die from even LESS alphas.

Edited by WatDo, 04 July 2015 - 11:31 PM.

[TheCharlatan]

Navid A1, on 04 July 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

yup... that is very nasty too. I'd remove the TC for a lower arm actuator though.
also... 2LPL + 4 ML + 2xGauss DWF-PRIME. gives quick and cool 84 alpha... but that is meta try-harding which does not give a good feeling.

So THIS is what hit me a few weeks ago, instantly melting a side of my Misery that had almost full armor.
And i thought that i got flawed hit-reg multipling the damage i took.
That thing is BRUTAL. I'm happy i haven't met more of those in the Pug queue.