Widowmaker1981, on 14 October 2015 - 01:05 AM, said:
It needs testing, but at face value with those stats:
IS-ERLL
Range 675
Max range 1350
Dmg 9
heat 8
duration 1.25
GH cap 3
tons 5, slots 2
vs C-ERLL
range 740
max range 1184
dmg 10
heat 10
duration 1.5
GH cap 2
Tons 4, slots 1
This seems fine at face value, the Clan laser is overall significantly worse, but its smaller and lighter, so thats ok (though i think it may be a tad too much worse now). HOWEVER Omnimechs pay a steep price in customisation (and therefore available tonnage) for their lighter equipment, and really? These changes are too much, unless PGI are also looking at unlocked ES/FF and DHS customisation in Omnis
I'd certainly be happy with the weapon nerfing, given their lighter/smaller nature, if they also unlocked the omnimech customization.
After all, locked customization is a very poor means of balance: it doesn't create better balance or serve as a "disadvantage to counter other clan advantages" because it's a fixed, but not equally applied factor. It only serves to ruin mechs that don't have an optimal set of "locked" features, while it totally leaves those optimal mechs aside.
What people ultimately have to realize is that given an equal numbers game, Clan weapons are going to have to be - HAVE to be - actually worse than IS weapons. They are smaller, they are lighter, they are used alongside safer XL engines. That doesn't mean worse in all ways, but it does mean that the sum of them must be worse than the sum of IS weapons.
You can't have a faction mounting more, better weapons, and achieve balance.
Previously, they've attempted to balance the factions by adding quirks, but this has turned out to require
massive quirks. Massive weapon quirks are basically identical in end result to simply having IS weapons be better weapons.
This method - nerfing the clan weapons - is exactly the same thing as buffing IS weapons (or extremely quirking IS mechs) except it reduces TTK instead of increasing it.