14 replies to this topic

[docd]

Well, I finally saved enough to purchase my favorite mech, since 1997 or so lol

I'm trying to decide which variant to buy. I'm inclined to pick the Prime variant because it's the one I picture when I think madcat; but, I hear the S version is really the superior model.

I don't get a whole lot of time to play, so it takes me forever to get c-bills so It's likely I won't be able to get another for at least a month (if I'm lucky).

Any thoughts?

[Nightshade24]

"Superior" is only in terms of the meta. and you should NOT let the meta or the cheese build or what is OP or UP to shape what you want to play or what you like doing.

if there is a weapon or mech you like that isn't considered good but you love playing in it and do well then that is the best mech in game for you.

That out of the way. The timberwolf is a great chassis and if you imagine the Prime as hte main timber then I suggest you go for it.

I personally removed the LRM 20's for a pair of LRM 15's so I got more ammo and heatsinks and also remove the medium pulse laser for a er medium to save another ton for heatsinks.

Using it stock is not the best idea due to the mixture of heat issues AND the low ammo on the LRM 20's.


You need 3 different variants or alternative configerations to use the elite skill set for a mech. aka 10% speed tweak, power on/ off faster and step out of over heating faster from shutdown. and also doubling all the basic efficiency once you got all elites... this includes turn rate, torso rate, cooling down, etc...


So if you want you can get the prime and play with it and then get more C-bills to get the S, the C, what ever. until you get 3 timberwolfs... PS you are more then free to use more then 3 timberwolfs if you like playing all of them. However 3 is basicly the quota to get the elites done and mastery and then you can sell the other 2 timberwolfs if you want.... personally I never sell mechs but some people are low on mechbays.

[bad arcade kitty]

timber is an omni mech so all its omni pods except the central torso are interchangeable

the best central torso it's probably timber wolf s (tbr-s) because it has a jump jet (in this game jump jets, especially on heavies, are mostly useful to climb some hard slopes and obstacles and usually 1 is enough, every timber wolf can get tbr-s side torso but it has fixed 2 jump jets and they eat the precious free space too)

note, i don't suggest you to buy tbr-s, it has probably the best central torso (not for every build, double torso ballistic is better to do with another ct since you have to use one tbr-s side torso with 2 jump jets for that), but if its stock omnipods don't suit you, timber wolf omnipods are costly to swap; actually since you buy tbr-s for its central torso with 1 jump jet, you should waste more than 600+ thousands of c-bills only to swap tbr-s side torsos to omni pods from other variants to get rid of 4 unneeded jump jets, it's probably too expensive for you yet

timber wolf a (has the best side torso for laser sniping) or timber wolf d (more missile oriented) or timber-wolf prime (has a ballistic hardpoint in the stock side torso) will be cheaper then, buy one of those

what build you want to run exactly?

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 05 July 2015 - 04:49 PM.

[Nightshade24]

bad arcade kitty, on 05 July 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

what build you want to run exactly?

I do not really want to speak for him as it's his decision and I can't possibly know 100%.

but judging from the fact he wants the prime based on the stock omnipods and weapons I think he wants a mixed energy missile mech that has machine guns.

[docd]

Yeah, I understand that it's probably not a viable thing for competitive play, but I really loved the classic variant: lrms, lasers, and even the gimpy mgs xD

So far, I don't really have much of a preference for builds, per say. I like brawling, but I'm pretty bad.

This'll probably be what finally drives me to put money into the game. If it wasn't 55$ I'd have straight up bought the damn thing already... pretty sure the wife would kill me if I did lol

[bad arcade kitty]

docd, on 05 July 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

Yeah, I understand that it's probably not a viable thing for competitive play, but I really loved the classic variant: lrms, lasers, and even the gimpy mgs xD

So far, I don't really have much of a preference for builds, per say. I like brawling, but I'm pretty bad.

This'll probably be what finally drives me to put money into the game. If it wasn't 55$ I'd have straight up bought the damn thing already... pretty sure the wife would kill me if I did lol

why, the classic loadout isn't bad per se, also it has a decent armor distribution

you shouldn't use the unchanged stock tbr-prime because it has too little lrm ammo, but if you want lrm, lasers and mgs you can run something like this

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...4fe714e7e14b1dd

2 lpl (or some other combination of lasers), 2*15 lrm with 5 tons of ammo, 3 mg with 1 tonn of ammo, also 2 jump jets

should be a decent and fun mixed build, it needs to buy only 1 additional omnipod for tbr-prime, tbr-s left torso
(honestly to minmax it it would be better to swap both tbr-prime arms to tbr-d arms (those have less energy hardpoints) to decrease negative laser quirks, but it's not that important); you will need to buy plenty of weapon though, also it has neither tag nor artemis, but for this build they are not that important, 2 lpl already a fearsome weapon

now, for easy brawling... well... note, i'm a huge fan of streaks so take it with a grain of salt :3
so, for easy brawling you can consider slightly modified tbr-d which already comes with 4 streak srm-6
but brawling isn't easy per se, it's hard to find the right time when you should approach

something like this http://mwo.smurfy-ne...49e964330369883

4 streak srm-6, 5.5 tons of their ammo, uac-5, 3.5 tons of its ammo and clan active probe, you will need to buy only tbr-c right arm, c-uac 5, clan active probe (mandatory, otherwise any ecm will shut you down) and some ammo; also you have to buy artemis upgrade too, it works for streaks not increasing their launchers weight due to some old bug which is a feature now

the problem with this build, sandblasting with streaks is easy but may take a lot of time and a lot of stare time... for a true streakboat you should have 5 ssrm-6 minimum, timber can have only 4 but timber can supplement them with c-uac 5 (streaks + lasers usually are way too hot and this build depends on constant dps, note that streaks are ghostheated so don't shoot more than 3-4 alphas or so, use chainfire on your streaks if you shoot a large target on a hot map)

note the armor distribution, for both builds it's important (taking head armor is usually the safest bet to an extent, master headshooters are rare and art/air strikes aren't that scary, the second build also takes a lot of armor from the empty hand)

also note that the second build has lower arm actuators which are absent in the stock; it's free to add them, you should check their 'lower arm actuator' boxes in the mechlab; it's important since (you have to turn off weapon lock btw) they significantly improve your aiming

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 05 July 2015 - 06:48 PM.

[Vlad Striker]

Timber Wolf is VERY fragile and tends to be overheated. So be warned. Any AC5 Dragon easily outgunned this mech.

[SnagaDance]

docd, on 05 July 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

Yeah, I understand that it's probably not a viable thing for competitive play, but I really loved the classic variant: lrms, lasers, and even the gimpy mgs xD

And have you HEARD those Clan machine guns?!!? Man they sound incredible, who cares about effectiveness, it's about sexiness!!

[zudukai]

actually most folks consider the "C" and "A" variants to be the best because of the CT energy, the S next, with JJ's and D after with *multiple missile hardpoints.

*edit

Edited by zudukai, 07 July 2015 - 09:38 AM.

[bad arcade kitty]

zudukai, on 06 July 2015 - 11:38 AM, said:

actually most folks consider the "C" and "A" variants to be the best because of the CT energy, the S next, with JJ's and D after with missile hardpoints.

if you want ct energy it's also tbr-d
tbr-c omnipods may be interesting only if you want ams or a ballistic arm

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 06 July 2015 - 02:28 PM.

[docd]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I just bought the prime variant and plan to tweak it, just a little, as suggested.

Is there any particular order I should be making the aforementioned changes? I have a grand total of 162,473 c-bills, so another omni-pod is off the table right now.

I'm thinking I can start by swapping the medium pulse for a er medium and another ton of lrm ammo, to start playing with, anyhow. Or maybe just swap the laser for another double heatsink?


edit: at 242k c-bills, now. Just played it stock, overheated like crazy lol

Edited by docd, 07 July 2015 - 08:20 AM.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

I don't recommend the prime. All that fits in that CT ballistic slot is a machine gun. I recommend grabbing the S and any two of the others with a CT laser

[Nightshade24]

Rouken, on 07 July 2015 - 08:23 AM, said:

I don't recommend the prime. All that fits in that CT ballistic slot is a machine gun. I recommend grabbing the S and any two of the others with a CT laser

Well atm this guy wants multiple machine guns on the prime, so it's not that bad =P

[docd]

I was strongly considering the S, but my decision to buy a timber wolf was more for nostalgia than efficacy. That said, I still want it to perform to the limitations of my abilities(very limited).

I still intend to start saving for the S as soon as I get this one straightened out. However, I'm going to be stuck using an outdated laptop for the next 2 weeks or so. I know that it won't perform very well and I'm going to be worse than ever lol

Another question: any advice for getting higher fps on 10 year old laptops? Aside from just dumping the gfx settings, which is already done

[Nightshade24]

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...b#i=163&l=stock

This is the stock Timberwolf Prime. I will go step by step with what I think you may need to do and/or show minor variations of 'my' build!

Step 1: I would say changing the LRM 20's to LRM 15's.
LRM 20's is a great weapon as a singular weapon for support (ie a single LRM 20 on a king crab, atlas, direwolf, etc) HOWEVER as a main weapon and not exactly an LRM boat per se, ie the timberwolf. It's to much weight for the trade off and it has the worst accuracy. LRM 15's are more accurate and lighter and lighter is what we need right now! So I removed the LRM 20's to LRM 15's for slightly more heatsinks and more ammo.

TBR-PRIME

Now, the mech is 'good' enough to be played overall. It has enough ammo to do 720 damage to enemies with LRM's only if you need to (excluding ams, misses, etc) and it still retains it's 2 ER medium lasers, it's Medium pulse laser, and it's 2 ER large lasers.

This is good enough to use in combat but it's a tad hot, you may need to get your basic and elite efficiencies.
Your basics increase how much heat you can hold as well as how fast you remove that heat while getting all 4 elite efficiencies will x2 the basics so you can see how getting 3 timberwolfs are important. If you want to go the minimalist way.
You can just remove the medium pulse laser for now and add 2-3 tons of heatsinks / ammo.
TBR-PRIME
now this is much cooler. A bit too cool but removing some heatsinks later on for the medium pulse laser may be worth it!
However here's a build with the medium pulse laser removed for 1 medium laser and 1 extra heatsink, this is also viable for the later game as well as being colder and also having another heatsink to cool you off faster overall. The cool point here is that the ER medium laser now matches up with the other 2 medium lasers so now you got a trio of these medium-rated energy weapons with the same beam length, reload, damage, range, etc. So it's kinda better then medium pulse in this way. (as you have to keep in mind, the clan pulse laser isn't an ER laser to begin with and pulses generally have less range then normal beams) However if you are a fan of mechwarrior 4 you may have remembered there timberwolf prime having...
"2 medium pulse, 2 er large lasers, 2 machine guns, 2 lrm 20s", we can do a similar build in MW: O if that's your cup of tea.

TBR-PRIME
This one is a bit better up close and is a bit cooler and may be what you are looking for in a timberwolf.



The one last build I got is one that is more LRM focused, 1Ton more ammo and instead of that "medium pulse laser" in the side torso it's a TAG. This is not only for yourself but also for your team mates who need spots and such.
TBR-PRIME




I highly suggest these builds as they follow the stock Timberwolf prime quite nicely and maintains most of the energy weapons and just lowered the missile weapon, and keep in mind, practice helps a lot with mechs like these! So if you are bummed that it isn't destroying everything then just practice, if you have the passion for it it would be very easy and the best part is this timberwolf prime build uses 100% of the prime hardpoints.


TBR-PRIME