34 replies to this topic

[Ken Harkin]

Moldur, on 07 July 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

Assaults require patience and awareness. I pull out the founder Atlas every so often and still do 600 or 700+ damage with 3-5 kills.

For most of the round as an assault, I play as support. I take shots of opportunity. I try to look unimportant. I DON'T TAKE DAMAGE. I don't really jump in, because assaults will get easily focused at the beginning of the round if they expose themselves, and a cored whale or atlas is no good.

The most important part is reading an opportunity.
You have to see when you have a favorable opportunity. An assault mech can become a force multiplier in a push. Nothing is more crushing than being midway through a game and coming face to face with an Atlas, Dire, or King Crab at 85 or 90% armor. It does way more good than say, a 90% atlas that comes face to face with a bunch of 85 or 90% heavies and mediums.

This is why your durability is so important. At this point, you've bided your time. Now you've gone in, and are obliterating 70% targets left and right. Your team is helping you. Enemies are focusing you, the assault with almost all your armor intact. The thing is, you don't care about the return fire, because every time you fire, another enemy mech is going down. The more mechs you kill, the less fire you take.

Assaults can do other things as well, but they are better at mopping than anything else. They don't just mop when it's already almost over, they can start the mop when it looks close. Again, 90% king crab rounds the corner, starts blasting AC 40 with his team coming to his aid. It looked like a close game, but now you realize you're done for.

Bingo! Patience is key and no module is as wonderful as seismic sensor. Watching that blob approach the corner you are targetted on only to have it eat 50 - 75 points of damage in one barrage is a wonderful thing.

[Dingo Battler]

All these comments are good and well when playing in a good team, but the fact remains - that in Pugandia, assaults are probably the hardest class to use. Usually, things end in 3 scenarios in Puglandia:

1) You get a good team - They either mop up everything, you get 0 kills, 2 assists, 200dmg, or they Deathball with you, you get 4 kills, 8 assists, 800dmg

2) You get the worst possible team - They abandon you as soon as the match starts, despite much begging. Most of your team dies, then some raven finds you, and cores you out

3) You get an average team - They push, and half the time, they fall back in a failed push, leaving your arse in the wind. You fall back with crippled sides. Repeat 2-3 times, and you're dead

Scenario 3 happens the most. It's not even bad pugging to fall back in a failed push. In fact, it happens all the time in Puglandia, you poke a bit, push, fall back, push again, fall back. It's fun in a medium or heavy, but a death sentence for assaults.

Heavies and mediums know death when they are staring at an assault, so most pilots has evolved to run away the moment they see assaults, giving you an extremely small and limited window to unload your alpha all over them, combined with slow torso twisting, which makes it much harder.

Also, meeting a light when you're at the tail end of your deathball (happens often in puglandia) is a death sentence. Other pilots has no idea how deadly that is, and it happens too often when everyone gets contact and starts poking. Its so bad that every game, I pray for a streakcrow, because the moment they see a light, they rush to it straight away. No one else cares.

Tips to circumvent puglandia will be appreciated.

[needforsleep]

Assault mechs are the linchpin of your death ball. Where ever your team is in contact with the bulk of the enemy you need to plop your fat metal ass down there, and tie up the enemy assaults/heavies while your team swings around you. That means staying put behind cover, setting up a firing line and trading shots with stupid little mediums and heavies that think hill humping and corner peeking is a good idea when there is a whale sitting on the other side. You're too slow to charge into a brawl, and flanking will just leave your heavies and mediums to get rolled by enemy assaults without you, so you sit there like a big useless slab of meat and make the enemy team think twice about pushing out of that tunnel, long enough for you mediums to flank and its safe for your heavies to charge.

TL;DR sit behind a rock and be scary

[Dingo Battler]

needforsleep, on 07 July 2015 - 06:30 PM, said:

Assault mechs are the linchpin of your death ball. Where ever your team is in contact with the bulk of the enemy you need to plop your fat metal ass down there, and tie up the enemy assaults/heavies while your team swings around you. That means staying put behind cover, setting up a firing line and trading shots with stupid little mediums and heavies that think hill humping and corner peeking is a good idea when there is a whale sitting on the other side. You're too slow to charge into a brawl, and flanking will just leave your heavies and mediums to get rolled by enemy assaults without you, so you sit there like a big useless slab of meat and make the enemy team think twice about pushing out of that tunnel, long enough for you mediums to flank and its safe for your heavies to charge.

TL;DR sit behind a rock and be scary

The thing is, this requires:

1) a good team
2) a narrow corridor/lane

half the time, mediums and heavies simply have to attack you 15 degrees away from your reticle and duck away, while you whale spends 2 seconds twisting there, and another 1-2 aiming, while they're long gone. I know, I played a TWF, and went 1-on-1 with whales just by doing that.

Also, in Puglandia, sometimes, even being in the middle of the deathball is bad. Enemy pushes sometimes work, and everyone around you disappears, leaving your ass in the wind to spurt out your last alpha before they core you. I don't blame people who run away from a successful push, in fact, I was one of them. There is 0 incentive in Puglandia to be a hero and die. The longer you live, the more damage I can deal, the team win be damned.

The only purpose of assaults in Puglandia is to absorb damage, be scary, and die. You play a role, sure, but its a really crap role. Assaults have a lynchpin role in units, but in puglandia, you're just fodder to absorb damage for heavies and mediums.

When I was running around in my TWF, I laughed at stalkers and EXEs who try to go 1 on 1 with me. I played peek-a-boo with DWFs, and ate the damaged ones up. Now on the other in a DWF, the feeling really sucks, for lack of a better word. I'm bored with my TWF, but at least I got plenty of kills. When I see a wubshee or TWF, I feel scared. When I see a Raven, I know the game is up. Rear torso cored. Pretty ironic that I'm more scared in an assault than a heavy...

Edited by KBurn85, 07 July 2015 - 06:55 PM.

[stalima]

i think alot of people mistake the weight of an assault mech as it being an up front "tanky-takes-hits" mech, while they do have huge armour values, this is just to protect them from their own slow speeds, theyre typically either long range snipers, the strongest firing liners,"clean-up" mechs or dedicated LRMers, essentially the role of the assault is simply to throw out an overwhelming amount of firepower to be generalised.

@ the arguement that its stupid that they need to be more cautious, this is how it would be if you were actually piloting that thing, your essentially piloting a walking pile of C-bills and half a dropship worth of weight so you gonna have one angry boss if you walk a direwolf into destruction. So you need to be careful not to waste that.

Roles do vary as any other mech, for example an atlas is usually the last thing that enters the battle, while the awesome is typically used to support the vanguard.

The assault mech is the most reliant on the teams "scout" and "soldier" mechs, these guys show it where to go while also protecting it from flanks (or at least should be doing that, chances are youll have a firestarter thats trying to be a heavy)

[Colonel Clunge]

Thanks for the good advice everyone!

Some really interesting points in here that I will definitely heed. Hadn't thought of the importance of seismic for my Atlas so will drop that module in pronto. Also, made me think about the role and build I should be going for with my assaults.

I will persevere and get those double basics locked in and see how I go.

Thanks again

CC

[SmoothCriminal]

Just an extra point to fit in with the advice above - as an assault you will get focused so stick with the other assaults to spread the focus. The most successful pushes are when 2-3 assaults move up at the same time and suddenly the defensive team (without comms) wont know which one to hit first. Also: sit behind a rock and be scary.

[L1f3H4ck]

In my somewhat limited experience with assaults, one thing you need to do, is commit to a role and strategy. The available weight and hardpoints may tempt a player to build a jack of all trades, but that usually fails hard, lacking the required mobility. Many stock loadouts are guilty of this. During the match, you need to think more strategically, you're usually slow (although a 400XL Pretty Baby can do terrible things quickly), so you gotta make a plan and stick to it. Sometimes that plan fails and you die helplessly, thats the assault life.

[Top Leliel]

I'm still somewhat a newbie myself, but I'll pitch in from my experience.

Assaults have more max tonnage, making them slower for the same engine size than other mechs, but capable of equipping the most armor and weapons of any weight class. The slowness makes it hard for assaults to rely on cover/hit and run/poptart tactics. Assaults need to pick their battles very carefully, based on map awareness of what the other players are doing.

If an Assault mech goes head to head with any other mech in a fair fight, it will win. Whether you're in a Banshee with a bunch of lasers or a King Crab with a bunch of autocannons, a single alpha strike against a smaller mech will be devastating. Just remember that your armor doesn't last forever: you may have the strongest mech out there, but also the slowest, and you can't let yourself be surrounded. Assault lances are the backbone of a mech battle line: they hold it together with incredible strength, but if positioned incorrectly, they break the hardest.

[Appogee]

Colonel Clunge, on 07 July 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

Don't you think they should change the game mechanics then? It feels counter intuitive that assaults are the the mechs you have to be the most cautious with!! I mean, their title even suggest aggression!

No. If bigger just meant better, there'd be no point running Heavies.

Assaults require a different approach to Heavies (and Mediums and Lights). And that's exactly how it should be.

KBurn85, on 07 July 2015 - 05:19 PM, said:

Tips to circumvent puglandia will be appreciated.

Join a unit.

PGI can't and shouldn't balance for players playing badly, nor is their any magic bullet that stops an Assault falling victim to a bad team playing badly.

When I take an Assault to the PUG queue, I take a very fast one to reduce somewhat the exposure to bad team mates playing badly.

Edited by Appogee, 17 July 2015 - 09:10 AM.

[Shadey99]

Top Leliel, on 17 July 2015 - 09:01 AM, said:

If an Assault mech goes head to head with any other mech in a fair fight, it will win.

MWO isn't fair. A clan Ebon Jaguar or Timberwolf can blow through the armor of basically any assault in a single volley or two. I mean they can literally have an alpha higher than at least what their side torsos can guard against, and depending on front/rear balance can do the same to the CT. On the other hand the opposing assault may or may not be able to do the same. King Crabs and Banshee that need to rely on ballistics actually have the most problem with this as they need time to inflict damage that MPLs and SPLs basically don't require. Only the Direwolf really can mount the same sheer firepower in laser form as smaller mechs, but actually has more problems using them.

[Athousandson]

I used to pilot an Atlas very frequently and I think in recent times it has become more difficult to pilot one given the large number of laser vomit builds running around in PUGS. But I don't think the Assaults are irrelevant, I can still do fairly well in my Atlas with correct positioning and a team that cooperates. In a push, for example, I don't mind taking damage for a while because if it helps my team gain the balls to move forward, why not? What I usually do before I push is to find the first piece of cover and move towards it while firing at any targets when the push begins (usually with me saying, for example, "push blahblah") . Once the team has started to move forwards, depending on the situation, the enemy team might not be organized enough to retaliate. And then I can move out and start tearing people up (This only applies to PUGS though, I don't play in units).

I've moved on to other mechs like Warhawks and Griffins. I do admit it's alot easier to pilot a medium. If I make a mistake I can swoop back into cover or just jump out of the way. And in my Warhawk (2x ERPPC, UAC 10, 2x SRM6) I'm fast enough to hit and run or just fire from range. The point is, different mechs and classes have different play styles. Some my require more time to perfect than the others, and some other dependent on how your team plays. So at the end of the day, it's really your preference and patience to build up familiarity with the chassis and recognize what it can or can't do.

[Aggravated Assault Mech]

InspectorG, on 07 July 2015 - 01:43 PM, said:

You get it but to make a Chess analogy, Assaults are like Rooks and Bishops. You set them up, you dont run all over.

Some can brawl, most create firing lines.

IMO, and i started as a light pilot, Start with Stalkers-they peek amazing, Banshees(xl400 Wubshee goes 75kph with speed tweak- strike and harass), Warhawks can do a bit of everything aside from boating dakka...but with the new C-AC patch 2UAC10 may be all you need.

Later get into the slower assaults, Dires are very unforgiving. Stalker LRM boats...dont even.

Easiest advice is stay in the middle of the blob, and let the enemy come to you. DO NOT PEEK unless you are sure its a good idea - let some enemy scrub peek into your alpha.

If you get caught in a NASCAR...start cutting corners on the map. You will need luck and fortune favors the fast/bold.

This is the most realistic assessment of Assault play in a pug game posted in this thread.

You aren't a tool just for "assaulting", you're a centerpiece for your team to work around- especially so in the case of "true" assaults like the DWF/KGC/STK/AS7/BNC vs. "big heavies" like the VTR/ZEU/GAR. You really need your team to be your eyes, since a bad push, or getting caught out by a swarm of faster enemies is going to put your team down on a lot of firepower.

Games are more often won by taking positions that give overlapping fields of fire and gaining numbers advantages in health or living players than they are by making large, dramatic "just push" pushes. The team that gets 2-3 kills early is often the one that wins.

Edited by vnlk65n, 21 July 2015 - 01:51 PM.

[Dingo Battler]

Playing assaults in PUG has got to be the hardest thing ever. More often than not, everyone will naturally follow the light lances, as they see the doritos heading away, while the assaults, who are the furthest away, struggle to catch up. If they stick together, you get yelled at for being slow. If they don't, they get chopped down piecemeal.

Playing certain maps, like NASCAR valley are terrible. You get left behind, beg for them to slow down, then an enemy light pops open your back.

If they don't wait for you, its fine, because by the time you arrive there, your whale should be able to 1shot 1 or 2 mechs before you die. If they play NASCAR, don't follow them. Instead, run up by the side of the map, near the hills. Hide when the enemy comes on the side you're hiding, then reappear when your team is there, shoot some enemies, try to lure them and your own team towards you.

I find that for bad PUG matchups, its easier to just run up by the side of maps away from where you can't reach them anyway, then reappear to mop up or die

[Knighthawk149]

My experience with assaults being mostly Assault/Heavy pilot myself it comes down to intimidation and positioning. Don't put yourself in a position where you will be shot to pieces if you cant take it. Know the maps Know what works and doesn't. Lance and team communication is important. not always but more often than not a lone assault is a target to lights and meds. So travel with your lance and focus fire selected targets and they'll drop like flies with the firepower that assaults mount alongside good positioning and communication. For the intimidation sometimes you can tell you just made another pilot **** themselves(mostly in an Atlas or Dire wolf) and and they'll be shouldering their mech back and forth and trying to retreat because they will be outmatched in a firefight against that kind of firepower. From there make clear shots on specific components depending on their degradation.