106 replies to this topic

[bad arcade kitty]

it's hard to hold the laser on the specific component for the whole duration of the beam, hence the absolute duration matters more than the damage per a unit of time

[aniviron]

It's also important to consider the following:

The metric for damage per duration is in favor of the IS for LL, LPL, and MPL. ER ML and ER SL go to the clans while SPL is a draw. ER SLs and SPLs are not used on any mechs except lights and some highly unusual builds. For 90% of the lasers being used, you're looking at medium and large class lasers, where the IS wins overall.

Second, there are very few clan mechs with laser duration quirks- the Nova, Mist Lynx, and Summoner all get a small amount, and that's about it. The majority of IS laser boats, however, have fairly significant laser duration quirks.

Finally, I can't help but notice that the chart in the OP leaves heat completely out of the equation. I have to assume that's because if you're poking with clan lasers and you're trading only half your volley when the guy in the TDR-9SE hits you with the whole volley, even if you both do approximately the same damage to one another, the clan lasers generate more heat and are thus trading damage per heat far less efficiently than the IS lasers.

Are clan lasers OP? Yes, absolutely. I'm sick and tired of seeing nothing but laser boats in match after match. But please stop trying to make up silly statistics that prove nothing.

[Revis Volek]

You didint factor in quirks....

Take any of those lasers and with the locust 1v for example cut the number in half...

-50% laser duration

That table is nice, but it doesnt tell any story other then what weapon do before the are equipped to mechs or mechs with no quirks at all.

LordKnightFandragon, on 14 September 2015 - 04:48 PM, said:

At this point, I fail to see how duration even really plays a part in lasers balance, since really, once you get a hang of aiming and stuff, they are just plain amazing. Hence, why laser vomit is the meta. Its not because "beam time spreads my damage all over". CUz, I mean, if PPD was such the overriding factor, PPCs and Gauss would still be the meta, inspite of the nerfs to PPCs.

As it sits now, lasers, both IS and clan are the meta b/c of dmg/weight/heat/range ratio vs other weapons. PPCs for the heat generated are just not worth it, PPD or not. While the 4x CERPPC WHK is busy overheating after fired 40 dmg, 10 at a time, the 4x CLPL WHK or even the CERLL WHK is still busy firing 56 or 44 dmg 26 or 22 at a time. THe Lasers are even easier to aim with, in that they basically are hit scan and have a nice beam to the target. And when PPC builds in general are not really even viable on a Warhawk, they sure as hell are not on anything with fewer heatsinks.

I kinda stopped worrying much about beam time after having played with the 4x CLPL Warhawk and a few other laser builds, and after a large number of games in my PPC Warhawk. The differences in performance, ease of use and overall effectiveness is quite vast.

You can get 8 ERppcs out of the WHk before it Overheats....

[Kira Onime]

Davegt27, on 14 September 2015 - 05:36 PM, said:

Just noticed this



2 lasers fired at the same time causes a heat spike lol

"more than 2 ".

[bad arcade kitty]

nobody uses clan er larges anyway, they burn for like half an hour

[Kain Demos]

Shorter duration lasers ARE a huge advantage. To say otherwise is silly.

[InspectorG]

bad arcade kitty, on 14 September 2015 - 08:36 PM, said:

nobody uses clan er larges anyway, they burn for like half an hour

ill run a Warhawk with 5 ERLL. If you position right, its lols.

-edit: though you said IS ERLL at first

Edited by InspectorG, 14 September 2015 - 08:52 PM.

[lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]

Yellonet, on 14 September 2015 - 03:00 PM, said:

Here and there I see people claiming that the shorter durations of IS lasers compared to clan lasers are a clear advantage.

I took a closer look at this, and it turns out that there really isn't any overall advantage.

While it's true that IS lasers have shorter durations, they also has a lower damage potential per duration.

As the table below shows, some IS lasers have better DPS than some Clan lasers and vice versa.

DPS is what is key, but I've also put in Damage per Equal Duration (DED) which shows how much damage each laser does when hitting the target for the same duration (IS weapon duration).

Depending on if you compare CERLL with LL or ERLL it's either a draw or +1 to IS for DPS.
It should however be compared to ERLL as the CERLL shoots further than both IS Large Lasers.
So in pure duration/DPS it's an overall draw.




When both IS and Clan lasers start to fire it's an overall draw, but, then the IS laser stops firing, and the Clan laser continues to put damage on target. From further away.

Now, please, stop saying that IS has an advantage in laser duration.

If both mechs are standing still and staring at each other, then your spreadsheet data is correct. However, in practice, and IS mech can land laser fire pinpoint for its full amount where it needs to go and torso twist rolling clan laser damage across its mech.

[Mordin Ashe]

Yellonet, on 14 September 2015 - 03:00 PM, said:

Here and there I see people claiming that the shorter durations of IS lasers compared to clan lasers are a clear advantage.

I took a closer look at this, and it turns out that there really isn't any overall advantage.

While it's true that IS lasers have shorter durations, they also has a lower damage potential per duration.

As the table below shows, some IS lasers have better DPS than some Clan lasers and vice versa.

DPS is what is key, but I've also put in Damage per Equal Duration (DED) which shows how much damage each laser does when hitting the target for the same duration (IS weapon duration).

Depending on if you compare CERLL with LL or ERLL it's either a draw or +1 to IS for DPS.
It should however be compared to ERLL as the CERLL shoots further than both IS Large Lasers.
So in pure duration/DPS it's an overall draw.




When both IS and Clan lasers start to fire it's an overall draw, but, then the IS laser stops firing, and the Clan laser continues to put damage on target. From further away.

Now, please, stop saying that IS has an advantage in laser duration.

Dear OP,

in battle you don't fight stats tables but real Mechs. IS has clearly smaller laser duration but there are also general quirks on most Mechs I meet in battle. It is nice of you to ignore this whole thing and I think it was intentional. How else would you point out to IS having "no advantage" when we can clearly see that IS has the advantage? Misinterpreting one half of reality and consciously ignoring the other, naughty you!

[kapusta11]

Yeah, like torso twisting will help save IS their slow STD asses, or fragile XL ones.

[totgeboren]

bad arcade kitty, on 14 September 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

it's hard to hold the laser on the specific component for the whole duration of the beam, hence the absolute duration matters more than the damage per a unit of time

So you are saying it's easier to do damage to a specific component with a ML (duration 0.9 s) than with a LL (duration 1 s), even though the LL does 62% more damage per tick than the ML?

What the op points out is that if you have a clan mech and a IS mech, both with the exact same time available before their target moves into cover, the clanners will still often do more damage in that short amount of time. This is taking into account that more of their laser beam hits cover instead of the mech.

The main thing this shows is that quirks are needed to make IS vs Clan weapons balanced. If they remove most quirks, they will need to buff IS weapons or nerf clan weapons to create some form of meaningful balance, and that would still not deal with the problem of some mechs simply being better designed than others.

Edited by totgeboren, 14 September 2015 - 10:44 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Cute, you are just now discovering the things I fleshed out in detail months ago and that others have also probably known for longer.

Kudos for your curiosity leading you to uncover new things. I regret to inform you, however, that the novelty of your find is unique to you.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 14 September 2015 - 10:51 PM.

[rasak]

Lykaon, on 14 September 2015 - 05:01 PM, said:

And very soon all those weapon quirks go away and we are left with the data as presented.^{[Citation needed]}

[Duke Nedo]

OP is correct in a way, but to be fair the clan lasers become hotter because you often place part of your dps where you don't want it because the target twists or ducks. Had clans been able to cancel their shots mid-beam I guess it would stand true.

The clan pulses are really good though, they have reasonable duration and great range/damage. Compare 4x cMPL @ 8 tons to 3x IS-LPL @ 21 tons...

[Sjorpha]

Yellonet, on 14 September 2015 - 03:51 PM, said:

Depending on what weapon you have you could as the table shows just allow for a shorter burn on target before you twist and still deal the same damage as an IS laser.

You can, and it often makes sense for clan mechs to do that, but the tradeoff is that you still suffer the full heat for the part of the duration you twist away.

So even if you apply the same spike damage per second as the is mech in that situation you are going to run hotter from your wasted extra duration while the is laser brawler can twist and fire more times.

This increased control over heat, and not dps/dpd, is the real advantage of short durations.

Of course that doesn't change the fact that clan lasers are way stronger than is, and their brawling lasers (csl, cspl) are way stronger too, but I still thought it needed to be mentioned for fairness sake.

[Aresye]

If you can do more damage to your opponent than you take in return, you have the advantage.

If you can do your full damage and get back into cover in less time than it takes your opponent to do full damage, you have the advantage.

These are fundamental truths in MWO. It doesn't matter that Clan lasers will "eventually" do more damage, because any IS player that's even remotely competent is not going to stand around waiting for their opponent to finish their burn.

I'm curious OP, but have you played both sides competitively? Have you played as Clan against a competent IS team in CW running firing lines of STK-4N's followed up by wave after wave of WVR-6Ks and RVN-2Xs? I own all of those mechs and I've played the IS side in CW with them. I know their potential, and they are devastating.

They're devastating because they take your speadsheet stats and take a massive, steaming dump on them, in the form of quirks that (in some cases) nearly half their laser duration, in addition to boosting their ranges and cooldowns significantly.

Not saying Clan mechs aren't better.
Not saying Clan lasers aren't better.
But IS absolutely has the advantage in laser duration.

[kapusta11]

Lol at people not getting OP's point haha.

[Sjorpha]

Aresye Kerensky, on 14 September 2015 - 11:49 PM, said:

These are fundamental truths in MWO. It doesn't matter that Clan lasers will "eventually" do more damage, because any IS player that's even remotely competent is not going to stand around waiting for their opponent to finish their burn.

I think the OPs point is that there is no "eventually" because the clan lasers actually do as much damage per duration even if you twist them away early, which is absolutely true.

But he forgets to account for the wasted heat in that twisted away damage. So twisting away is going to severely hurt your sustained DPS even though you have the same or superior spike DPS, that's ok when poking midrange, because you can dictate the cooldown rhythm by staying longer in cover, but it's going to kill you in a brawl.

[Aresye]

Sjorpha, on 14 September 2015 - 11:59 PM, said:

I think the OPs point is that there is no "eventually" because the clan lasers actually do as much damage per duration even if you twist them away early, which is absolutely true.

But he forgets to account for the wasted heat in that twisted away damage. So twisting away is going to severely hurt your sustained DPS even though you have the same or superior spike DPS, that's ok when poking midrange, because you can dictate the cooldown rhythm by staying longer in cover, but it's going to kill you in a brawl.

Spread damage is wasted damage, so while the damage "output" might be close, if one side is putting the majority of that into the opponent's CT while the other side is spreading it across all 3 torsos and both arms, that side has the advantage.

And no, the damage isn't similar up until the point the IS player twists away, because the numbers on those stats reflect base values for the weapons, and completely neglects quirks. With any of the popular IS laser vomit builds the DED value is HEAVILY in favor of the IS.

[kapusta11]

Aresye Kerensky, on 15 September 2015 - 12:07 AM, said:

Spread damage is wasted damage, so while the damage "output" might be close, if one side is putting the majority of that into the opponent's CT while the other side is spreading it across all 3 torsos and both arms, that side has the advantage.

And no, the damage isn't similar up until the point the IS player twists away, because the numbers on those stats reflect base values for the weapons, and completely neglects quirks. With any of the popular IS laser vomit builds the DED value is HEAVILY in favor of the IS.

Can't remember 4N having burn duration quirks.