29 replies to this topic

[Jun Watarase]

Pre patch : Pretty much the only mechs you see in CW are tbolts, battlemasters, stalkers and the occasional light mech to round out the drop deck.

Lots of people claimed that the new quirk re-balancing meant that "over-quirked mechs are now balanced" which should thereotically lead to equal usage among most mechs.

A week from now, are we going to see the same mechs and builds pre-patch or will we start seeing more mechs and more varied builds?

[Arandmoor]

Post patch: Every team has 3-4 Marauders.

[FupDup]

On the Clan side I expect to see nothing change.

On the IS side I expect to see some modest shifts but no massive revolution. Some specific mechs like the Huginn, Grid Iron, and Dragon are likely to rejoin the endangered species list, to be replaced by other new prospective metabots.

[MBT808]

not really, although certain mechs will be less common. Stalkers got somewhat buffed so they'll be more common, Pulse spam Thunderbolt 5SS's weren't nerfed to much to lose their viability, Jager's generally got buffed so they'll probably be more common, cat's might make an appearance(not sure though), and Grid Iron might be the only IS gauss rifle equipped mech you will see in CW because the unnecessary IS Gauss nerf doesn't affect it too much.

[Kira Onime]

If a mech falls out of meta, something else will take its place.

[Bishop Steiner]

Arandmoor, on 01 December 2015 - 07:27 PM, said:

Post patch: Every team has 3-4 Marauders.

pretty normal for a new mech release. Give it a week for the new to wear off. Sheesh.

[Jun Watarase]

Kira Onime, on 01 December 2015 - 07:41 PM, said:

If a mech falls out of meta, something else will take its place.

Only if a game is so poorly balanced that certain builds are vastly superior to others.

[Kira Onime]

Jun Watarase, on 01 December 2015 - 07:45 PM, said:

Only if a game is so poorly balanced that certain builds are vastly superior to others.

No, happens in every game. No matter how "balanced" you claim a game to be, there is always that one thing that can tip a mech being better than the other.

[Elizander]

Spartan076, on 01 December 2015 - 07:39 PM, said:

not really, although certain mechs will be less common. Stalkers got somewhat buffed so they'll be more common, Pulse spam Thunderbolt 5SS's weren't nerfed to much to lose their viability, Jager's generally got buffed so they'll probably be more common, cat's might make an appearance(not sure though), and Grid Iron might be the only IS gauss rifle equipped mech you will see in CW because the unnecessary IS Gauss nerf doesn't affect it too much.

The Shadowhawk 2H has -25% ballistic CD. Close enough to the 30% the GI has. It also has good agility quirks and some structure to make it better at peek and shoot. JJs too.

Mechs with 20% Ballistic CD will have 4.215 second shots. I think that's close enough to the 4.07 second unquirked shots from the previous patch. Unquirked laser CD is usually around 4.25 seconds

[Jun Watarase]

Kira Onime, on 01 December 2015 - 07:51 PM, said:

No, happens in every game. No matter how "balanced" you claim a game to be, there is always that one thing that can tip a mech being better than the other.

That only applies if one option is significantly better than the other.

[Kira Onime]

Jun Watarase, on 01 December 2015 - 07:53 PM, said:

That only applies if one option is significantly better than the other.

No.

[Jun Watarase]

Kira Onime, on 01 December 2015 - 07:55 PM, said:

No.

The entire point of the meta is that one option is significantly better than the others which is why people are flocking towards it.

If the game was well balanced people would be using all options relatively equally. If the game only had two weapons, which are both lasers that are identical except for their color, there wouldnt be a meta because there wouldnt be a vastly superior choice to either.

Rock, paper, scissors doesn't have a meta because each option is equal and has the same chance of winning, barring external factors like "i know this guy always uses rock".

You may be using a different definition of meta if you dont agree.

Quote

Abbreviation of Most Effective Tactic Available. Mostly used when comparing tactics in a game, but can be used in other things as well.

If there is no option that is the most effective because all options are equal (or there is only one option), there literally cannot be a meta.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 01 December 2015 - 08:03 PM.

[Kira Onime]

Jun Watarase, on 01 December 2015 - 07:58 PM, said:

The entire point of the meta is that one option is significantly better than the others which is why people are flocking towards it.

If the game was well balanced people would be using all options relatively equally.

Rock, paper, scissors doesn't have a meta because each option is equal and has the same chance of winning, barring external factors like "i know this guy always uses rock".

You may be using a different definition of meta if you dont agree.

I don't agree with your use of the word "significantly".
A mech doesn,t need to be miles ahead of an other one to be considered meta, it just needs to be better, period.

How can it be better? Could be multiple things.
-better quirks
-higher engine cap and can make sue of it
-better placed hardpoints.

[Davers]

I don't think there will be any large shift in mech diversity, especially on the Clan side. Maybe a handful of IS mechs will become/fall out of meta, but otherwise it's the same game.

[MBT808]

Elizander, on 01 December 2015 - 07:52 PM, said:

The Shadowhawk 2H has -25% ballistic CD. Close enough to the 30% the GI has. It also has good agility quirks and some structure to make it better at peek and shoot. JJs too.

Mechs with 20% Ballistic CD will have 4.215 second shots. I think that's close enough to the 4.07 second unquirked shots from the previous patch. Unquirked laser CD is usually around 4.25 seconds

I personally doubt the shadowhawk personally(based on my experiences with them and fighting them), before this patch they were incredibly squishy mechs and usually died quickly into most matches(both CW and Randoms).

I also forgot to mention that one thing that will change is that the Raven 3L will probably be replaced by the Raven 4X because of the ECM nerf.

[Davers]

Spartan076, on 01 December 2015 - 08:03 PM, said:

I personally doubt the shadowhawk personally(based on my experiences with them and fighting them), before this patch they were incredibly squishy mechs and usually died quickly into most matches(both CW and Randoms).

I also forgot to mention that one thing that will change is that the Raven 3L will probably be replaced by the Raven 4X because of the ECM nerf.

Nah, ERLL Ravens won't be hurt by the change nearly as much as those ECM Ravens who stayed by their team to provide cover. It just reinforces the 'sniper who stays away from his team' stereotype.

[Adamski]

Every TDR took a small nerf to its quirks, which should place the EBJ firmly ahead of it for the 65t category.

You may see more AS7-D-DC now with all their bonus tankyness, and possibly some more lights to counterbalance the weight.

JM6-S got some nice buffs, so you should start seeing more of those soon.

A lot of lighter mechs got some large general energy range quirks, so you may start seeing a lot more tiny mechs with extreme range ERLL sniping.

I doubt you will see any IS mech packing Gauss now that its 15t plus ammo for 2.4dps, its permanently better to take an AC5 or 2, or even AC2. Clan side might still take the Gauss for its single shot projectile, but I'm betting players will start learning how to land the stream fire UAC now.

With the large nerf to ECM range, you may start seeing some more LRM on Clan side thanks to them being half the weight, which should see an increase in people carrying AMS.

[Jun Watarase]

Kira Onime, on 01 December 2015 - 08:01 PM, said:

I don't agree with your use of the word "significantly".
A mech doesn,t need to be miles ahead of an other one to be considered meta, it just needs to be better, period.

How can it be better? Could be multiple things.
-better quirks
-higher engine cap and can make sue of it
-better placed hardpoints.

Okay lets say we have two mechs. They are identical except that one mech has 1 point more of head armor.

By your definition there would be a meta because technically one mech is better.

Realistically speaking, there would be no real difference in game play because 1 point of head armor is not going to make or break a match and it will almost never make a difference because the number of headshot kills alone is astronomically low, especially if you filter out headshots on AFKs. The impact on game balance would be minimal and most people wouldn't care.

Note that MWO never used the term "meta" until PGI removed the ballistic firing delay in closed beta and introduced DHS/XLs that allowed people to boat PPCs and ballistics. Oh sure there were more effective options, but the gap wasnt as huge before then and there were a lot more varied builds. People only started to use the term "meta" when people started boating dual gauss, dual ac20s, quad ac5s, etc, which had ridiculously fast kill times due to pinpoint FLD issues (which is something that people told PGI would happen from day 1 because every MW game had the same problem) but they refused to listen.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 01 December 2015 - 08:21 PM.

[MBT808]

Davers, on 01 December 2015 - 08:10 PM, said:

Nah, ERLL Ravens won't be hurt by the change nearly as much as those ECM Ravens who stayed by their team to provide cover. It just reinforces the 'sniper who stays away from his team' stereotype.

Light mech players generally use their ECM more for personal protection, the DDC's and Hellbringer's basically provided most of the ECM support generally because they move with the rest of the mechs while light mechs need to stay on the move to survive which limits the helpfulness of their ECM module. Atleast from my experience anyway.

[Gas Guzzler]

Jun Watarase, on 01 December 2015 - 07:25 PM, said:

Pre patch : Pretty much the only mechs you see in CW are tbolts, battlemasters, stalkers and the occasional light mech to round out the drop deck.

Lots of people claimed that the new quirk re-balancing meant that "over-quirked mechs are now balanced" which should thereotically lead to equal usage among most mechs.

A week from now, are we going to see the same mechs and builds pre-patch or will we start seeing more mechs and more varied builds?

Instead of lasers and gauss we will see just lasers.