46 replies to this topic

[Rhent]

A couple of things that will help everyone when they are using LURM's:

1st. Find your moat
-Whats a moat?
Open range where you can target enemy mechs and they have limited cover on their approach to you AND you have some cover preferably. A few examples of moats in the game:
-Alpine:

• Top of main hill. No brainer, If you can get to the very top of the hill you can crest, get a lock, ride it and fire and the opposing team has little cover to protect them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Back of main hill by the fort section with the buildings. You have to take the north route to get here, but if you can get there and start firing once your team engages, you'll do tremendous damage. For them to return fire, they have to go through the buildings and if you move to the side of the path up top on the hill behind the buildings you'll extend your moat to get 2 more LRM blasts on the targets.

-Crimson Straights:

• The main hill is a ridiculously good moat if you can get to the top of it. A Stalker without the hill climb module can still climb to the top after the nerfs, but you need to go over the saddle towards the back end and make your climb up there. From that hill you have an unobstructed view of red team. The only thing that should force you off the hill will be when they send flankers to your rear. And as soon as they do it, hop off the hill and evade them and rejoin your main team. You do need red team to take the right side of the hill for this to work well. If they stick to the left side of the hill, you are going to have to close to see the other side of the hill and your moat will be very short, 500M give or take.

-Terra Firma

• Center of crater works as a fairly decent moat, however you will have to rely on your team to get locks from there. However you are very close to front lines and you can get off missile volleys at 250M range, so a lock is a hit from there.

-Frozen City

• The unused side route below the battlefield that no one uses. It can be one of the better moats in the game. You can run up close to it, there is a little hill and fire at targets up to the crashed drop ship that splits the battlefield in half. AND when a red team gets a wild hair up his *** to aggress you because you are a helpless LRM boat, as long as you are reading the map and scanning for aggressors you should be to the back of the map with 750M+ range of LRM fire on the opposing mech. Don't forget to drop a UAV as you are retreating to ensure your lock stays on the guy. He should be dead at the 200M marker. Easey Peasy.

2. Pick your style of LURM

• LRM Boat (3+ launchers) with minimal back up ML/SL/MPL/SPL. This build will be able to put out a lot of LRM's initially, however the build will start running into heat issues eventually. The other drawback is the inability of defending itself. 4 ML is not going to stop a Firestarter with 6 spl's.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• LRM boat (2 launchers) with main weapons ERLL/LL/LPL/PPC/ERPPC. This build can do a good sustained LRM damage and can defend itself against a lone light mech. The main drawback is the decrease in LRM volleys put out. The main benefit is when your tag is on the opposing mech you know to fire your main weapons at range with a good chance at hitting them. You'll get a faster kill with this build 1 on 1 compared to the other mechs because you can open a torso while firing your lurms.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• LRM 5 boat. Tends to be a fast mech with multiple LRM5. They have potentially the tightested grouping and best chance to core an assault. Of course the exact same build against a mech carrying AMS is going to have to mass volley and will run into heat issues very quickly. You'll see a lot of fast medium mechs with a few ML/MPL/SPL as back up. Although you can pull this off on a stalker LL build (4 LRM5 + 4 LL).

3. Pick your supporting equipment

• Advanced Target Decay Module: Mandatory
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Radar Deprivation: Very good to have with the increase in LRM's in the game
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Adv Sensor Range: 25% sensor range and you'll pick up most targets just short of 1,000M.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• BAP: Stop opposing ECM from humping you and preventing your LRM's frm being able to lock. OF course, if you have an ECM mech humping you and you are firing LRM's off at an enemy you are going to die from a rear torso breach in 5 secs. Its really only of use to faster Med/Light LRM boats who want the scouting, not worry about ECM stopping their locks and who want to help the team.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• UAV: Mandatory. Especially for Nascar, as you get stuck circling, drop a UAV and when you set up next spot you'll have a target. You can also use a UAV as a "taunt" in the game. Some players as soon as they see a UAV will quit firing on you and take out the UAV. I've been saved a number of times firing off a UAV as a distraction whil evading.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Artillery Strike/Air Strike: If you get closed on by a light and the light isn't good and you are fully armored, call a strike down guessing where he'll be on the next circle and watch him blow up OR when you have an opposing red mech coming up to you on your moat, judge where he'll be and drop an arty strike. If they are stupid enough to run through it, more damage, but often it will stop them and they'll wait and you'll get in 2 LRM strikes on them before they close.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• TAG: Mandatory
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Artemis: Nice to have, works very well with a dual launcher LRM boat + other main weapons. You will be staying in the open firing your ERLL's and benefiting from Artemis as well.

4. Fighting

• Always hold off firing at a random target you can't see at 950M at the start of the fight. You will not connect and waste a volley.
  
• Scope out your team. If you are lucky you got brawlers and you'll have no problems with locks. Pay attention to see if the blue doritos are next to the red doritos and then unload, you will hit.
  
• Keep your armor intact. Most LRM boats are running XL's to carry extensive amounts of ammo. You need to last the entire fight to do the maximum amount of damage.
  
• When fighting, pay attention and pick distracted targets. If you can peek out, and find a red sniper start unloading LRM's on him and benefit from TAG &/or Artemis.
  
• Watch the mini map, you get on the wrong side of red team rush you are dead.
  
• Watch the mini map, if you can get yourself to the side of red team and unload your LRM's they won't have cover and take full hits.
  
  
  
  
• Use your LRM's to stop red team pushes. If I see a few assaults pushing over a hill, I'll target each assault individually and fire a single launcher, it will force a few assaults to stop the assault and you might get 1 or 2 assaults in the open for easy kills.
  
  
  
  
• Avoid launching LRM's at lights early on in the game. Focus on Assaults/Heavies if possible. You'll get the most bang for your ammo and help the team early on by removing their sniper and heavy brawler capabilities.

5. Clan LRM vs IS LRM



Clan LRM's stream and spread out more and are probably 33% less effective compared to IS. Running a dual launcher + taking advantage of the Clans energy weapon advantage you can do very well. Boating is possible on storm crows and maddogs, but compared to the IS options (Kintaro, Shadowhawk), you will do less damage by your LRM volley but you will have significantly better energy weapon back up.

IS LRM's do significantly more damage but weigh almost twice as much as their clan equivalents. You have many platforms to use. My own personal favorites are a Catapult LRM boat (dual ARLRM15's + 1 ML) and a STK-3H w/ dual ARLM20 + (2 LPL or 2 ERLL). The Awesome 8R is a good ride for chain launching LRM15's but you are going to have little to no close weapon defense and those multiple LRM15 are going to run hot (15% less heat but 30% faster firing).. Its a players choice in ride, but if you want to go heavy LRM with little to nothing else, the 8R is a very good choice.

6. AMS

As more players start to use LRM's, AMS will start to get more of a resurgence in use. Right now, its probably used on 1-2 mechs per team. 1 AMS = approximately 5 LRM's destroyed. If you chain fire, you give the enemies AMS more time on target to destroy your LRM's. If you fire in a single volley, you will lose at the most 5 LRM's.

Lets do some made up math, because frankly there isn't really a great way to get the firm numbers on this other than visual observations on what is actually hitting. Lets say you are firing 4 LRM5's against a mech with 1 AMS.

Chain Fire:
Lets say the first volley 100% are destroyed (5LRM's), but now AMS has to play catch up with the 0.50 sec delay between impacts. Lets say now 40% of the LRM's are destroyed 2 LRM's. Out of firing LRM5's in chain you lost 5 initial LRM's + 6 LRM's from streaming, so you lost 11 LRM's and hit with 9 LRM's.

Lets say you are past the initial 5 LRM loss, and are now in chain fire, losing 40% of your LRM5's, so you are now hitting with 3 per LRM5 chain fired. So, 3 * 4 = 12 LRM's hit.

Volley Fire:
You fire all 20 LRM's at once, lose 5 and hit with 15 LRM's. You get the heat penalty, but damage > heat when dealing with ammo.

12 hits vs 15 hits, what would you prefer?

Edited by Rhent, 15 December 2015 - 01:09 PM.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Have you considered the E5 hill on Terra Therma? You can only get up there if you have JJs, but as a LRM boat that place is the most secure location on all of TT. You can rain shots with impunity from there to about a full third of the map, with no way to be spotted or be shot.

This is the place where there's a notch in the caldera wall at the top where you can fire PPCs down into the caldera, so also good if you had LLs or PPC for backup.

Also, for medium LRM boats; HPG has two good ones on the walls. Need JJs to cross one of the exits, but once you're up on top of the base walls it's very difficult to get shot at (unless another JJ light gets up to you).

Edited by ArcturusWolf, 07 December 2015 - 05:58 PM.

[MavRCK]

This is an advanced point which 99% of MWO doesn't understand and only the top 10 competitive teams do:

- (your team's COMBINED effective health + damage taken) if greater than (your enemy team's combined effective health - damage DONE) = win

The problem is LRM boats is that you remove your armor / structure / attention to draw enemy damage from your team's COMBINED effective health.

So unless you are taking fire and rolling damage, your team is at a disadvantage with you playing LRMs (at this current meta / moment).

My strong suggestion is to not play them but if you are, look at the lightest most tonnage effective mech to play them, ie a medium mech like the Hunchback-5J. And get your own locks with tag.

[pwnface]

MavRCK, on 08 December 2015 - 06:40 AM, said:

This is an advanced point which 99% of MWO doesn't understand and only the top 10 competitive teams do:

- (your team's COMBINED effective health + damage taken) if greater than (your enemy team's combined effective health - damage DONE) = win

The problem is LRM boats is that you remove your armor / structure / attention to draw enemy damage from your team's COMBINED effective health.

So unless you are taking fire and rolling damage, your team is at a disadvantage with you playing LRMs (at this current meta / moment).

My strong suggestion is to not play them but if you are, look at the lightest most tonnage effective mech to play them, ie a medium mech like the Hunchback-5J. And get your own locks with tag.

Couldn't agree with this more. LRMs are not good for your team, please stop using them.

If you absolutely must use LRMs because you are a masochist, use a HBK quirked for massive LRM spam.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

MavRCK, on 08 December 2015 - 06:40 AM, said:

This is an advanced point which 99% of MWO doesn't understand and only the top 10 competitive teams do:

- (your team's COMBINED effective health + damage taken) if greater than (your enemy team's combined effective health - damage DONE) = win

The problem is LRM boats is that you remove your armor / structure / attention to draw enemy damage from your team's COMBINED effective health.

So unless you are taking fire and rolling damage, your team is at a disadvantage with you playing LRMs (at this current meta / moment).

My strong suggestion is to not play them but if you are, look at the lightest most tonnage effective mech to play them, ie a medium mech like the Hunchback-5J. And get your own locks with tag.

This. LRM should -never- be your primary. Use it for the initial skirmishing, use it for the approach to the enemy, pelting them with missiles that they cannot dodge. But never, NEVER ever use it as a primary and sit in the back lines. I've had more than my fair share of light and medium lances getting torn to bits because the heavies and assaults decided to LRM from the back lines while the enemy pounds us with lots of direct fire.

[Novakaine]

Novakaine approves of this guide.
I would only add these gems
1. Never shoot into the ECM bubble kill everything outside of them.
2. Let your team know what your'e launching on to concentrate your firepower.
3. Hold your fire until the brawlers engage less chance of your getting focused on.
4. Fire at every mech you see Bitching Betty is your best friend
6. Ignore the above poster.

And here's why.
Not a single mech bothered firing on the lone Hunchback on their flank.
My team keep their attention face forward while the attacked up slope.
By the time they realized what was happening the match was pretty much won.
The first five were lrm kills and the last two were laser kills.

Edited by Novakaine, 08 December 2015 - 07:00 PM.

[pwnface]

Novakaine, on 08 December 2015 - 03:57 PM, said:

Novakaine approves of this guide.
I would only add these gems
1. Never shoot into the ECM bubble kill everything outside of them.
2. Let your team know what your'e launching on to concentrate your firepower.
3. Hold your fire until the brawlers engage less chance of your getting focused on.
4. Fire at every mech you see Bitching Betty is your best friend
6. Ignore the above poster.

And here's why.
Not a single mech bothered firing on the lone Hunchback on their flank.
My team keep their attention face forward while the attacked up slope.
By the time they realized what was happening the match was pretty much won.
The first five were lrm kills and the last two were laser kills.

Let's be real here, with only 441 damage the majority of your kills were lucky and given to you by your teammates doing 1100 and 800 damage. This screenshot is a really poor justification for using LRMs.

[Kin3ticX]

pwnface, on 08 December 2015 - 03:49 PM, said:

Couldn't agree with this more. LRMs are not good for your team, please stop using them.

If you absolutely must use LRMs because you are a masochist, use a HBK quirked for massive LRM spam.

sings: LRM rainbow goes across the skyyyyyy-yie


edit: HBK-4J still an awesome LRM support mech after the rebalance. Treb-7M is dangerous as well.

If you are running one of those and you get Caustic, you should have an evil grin on your face to go with it. (but should also lose all faith in humanity)

LRM support can be rather gimmicky though because of many variables making them have feast or famine behavior (like map, # ecm, enemy skill, plenty of locks, etc)

Edited by Kin3ticX, 09 December 2015 - 02:05 AM.

[The Basilisk]

MavRCK, on 08 December 2015 - 06:40 AM, said:

This is an advanced point which 99% of MWO doesn't understand and only the top 10 competitive teams do:

- (your team's COMBINED effective health + damage taken) if greater than (your enemy team's combined effective health - damage DONE) = win

The problem is LRM boats is that you remove your armor / structure / attention to draw enemy damage from your team's COMBINED effective health.

So unless you are taking fire and rolling damage, your team is at a disadvantage with you playing LRMs (at this current meta / moment).

My strong suggestion is to not play them but if you are, look at the lightest most tonnage effective mech to play them, ie a medium mech like the Hunchback-5J. And get your own locks with tag.

THIS, EXACTLY THIS !

The most pesky thing in current gameplay: LURMER screeming for locks while beeing removed from frontline.
He will still screem when all his team is gone and then brag about how he was the only one doing real damage for the team.
( Not to mention half of his potential dmg hit his own brawlers backs and was distributed 4 times wider than that of any other team member. )
Damage distribution is one of the sad sad keywords in this violation of Battletech called Mechwarrior Online
If you still insist on using LRMs and if you are one of the few gifted individuals able to get your own locks and operate from the midst of your team and if you still insist on beeing able to do supa roxor high damage be advised that you should divide your damage done by the number of zones you distributed it over minus the number of zones that caused the destruction of zones leading to the enemys demise then you will have the effective damage you did.

f.e.: A1 LRM5 Cat doing 1200 dmg in a match, but firing mostly indirect voleys without own target lock.
He will mostly hit the upper torsi of enemy mechs and distribute his dmg over torso front and rear + arms ( 8 zones ) Enemy is a Clan Timberwolf that, finaly after valiant torso twisting goes down with both side torsi destroyed and ower Cat gets a solokill, so the effective dmg you did in maximum to destroy this mech would have been 2x 96dmg ( side torsi has 32 HP and 64 armor in maximum ) < 192dmg.

So when I see a Lurmer boy with 10 assists and around 1200 dmg and eventualy one or two kills .... yea....quite useless right ? Look out for the few guys and gurls having two or three assists and 1 or two kills in addition while doing the same dmg as the many assists guy.

Edited by The Basilisk, 09 December 2015 - 02:55 AM.

[B0oN]

I don´t always bring LURMS .

But when I do, I´ll have my own TAG and frontline enemies like everyone else does .
That´s when the LURMS hurt most ... 450m to 180m, should try it, LRM boaters ^^

Example straight from Tukkayid
TBR-Prime :
2 LM15Art
4 ErMed
1 Tag
2 JJ

AVG : 1 kill, 600dmg+, loads of scared enemies once the LRMs hit

Edited by Rad Hanzo, 09 December 2015 - 03:36 AM.

[MavRCK]

Ok new players:

This match will be streamed this coming Sunday to show you why you don't play LRMs:

http://mwomercs.com/...h-lrms-vs-meta/

Enjoy the carnage.

[Novakaine]

pwnface, on 09 December 2015 - 12:11 AM, said:

Let's be real here, with only 441 damage the majority of your kills were lucky and given to you by your teammates doing 1100 and 800 damage. This screenshot is a really poor justification for using LRMs.

You clearly misunderstand my friend.
This was a planned attack, I really was only suppose to its be a annoying distraction.
And perhaps pull some firepower off the hill.
They totally ignored my Hunchie and lost the match.
If the had sent but one fast mech down the match probably would have turned out differently.
So you see this clearly illustrates one of the many uses for Lrms in match.
Not some bragging right for myself sheesh man it's a video game.
So keep LRM hatin cause LRM-haters gonna hate.
But don't ignore that LRM boat because it might just be me.
Deuces.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Rad Hanzo, on 09 December 2015 - 03:36 AM, said:

I don´t always bring LURMS .

But when I do, I´ll have my own TAG and frontline enemies like everyone else does .
That´s when the LURMS hurt most ... 450m to 180m, should try it, LRM boaters ^^

Example straight from Tukkayid
TBR-Prime :
2 LM15Art
4 ErMed
1 Tag
2 JJ

AVG : 1 kill, 600dmg+, loads of scared enemies once the LRMs hit

Agreed. I'll go a step further. THIS is the only mech in my 51 bays right now that keeps LRMs on around-the-clock. EBJ-PRIME, 2x ALRM-15 (900 990 rounds), 5x cERML, cAP, TCompI, lotsa armor. The LRMs aren't what I consider my primary weapon system here. Scout encounters enemy within a KM but out of LoS? LURM it. Scout draws squirrel chaser into LoS within 500 M? Death by yellow lazors (AND lurms, if it's big 'n' scary).

Thing is, there are a lot of folks here who simply DO NOT GET the whole concept of supporting indirect fires, and maneuver with indirect fire support. It's a lot harder to make it work in a video game, where we have the patented Health-O-Meter and so little consequence to anything. That is, some aspects of the meta game make those less important. A PURE LRM boat is something one should only ever run if in close coordination with a team that is prepared to use it wisely, and then with an LRM boater that can use that weapon system VERY effectively. Otherwise, hybrid LRM/laser mechs are the best way to go.

And no, I don't TAG. WTF are scouts for, if not to find and designate targets? After all, in the 98% of my matches that I've tried to play that role, there's usually been at least one poor soul out there with tons o' lurmy fun that was glad to have me. When it comes my turn to fly heavy, someone else better be hookin' it up.

After all, I don't do the DEDICATED LRM boat thing. If it's close enough to TAG, it's close enough to ...

" ... too close for missiles; switching to (laser) guns ... "

EDIT: Updated Smurfy link. Wrong (older, not so well done) build posted previously. All better now, with 1/2 ton more LRM ammo.

Edited by TheRAbbi, 12 December 2015 - 10:07 PM.

[MavRCK]

https://www.reddit.c...ay_1213_5pm_et/

Starts now.

[EmperorMyrf]

I really only see 3 effective ways of carrying/using LRMs.

1. Staying with the team on the front lines, taking damage and getting your own locks. Not only are you not having to rely on your team to get locks, but you are improving the distribution of damage taken by your team by just being there with them. As many have said, the HBK-4J is the king of this as it is tanky enough to take damage and fast enough to keep up.

2. Working in tandem with light spotters before firing lines have formed. Basically, the teams have not met but your team's lights have spotted stragglers and your LRMs are dealing damage while the enemy is unable to deal any back to any of your teammates. The typical disadvantage of not bringing your armor to the front as an LRM boat is not present as the enemy has nothing to fire at. This however is not a common circumstance and designing whole builds around this is not terribly wise.

3. As ArcturusWolf pointed out, using LRMs upon approach to make sure you're still dealing damage on your way to the front lines. This is typically for larger, slower mechs. For example the stock Atlas builds are designed around this principle as they all have a large LRM rack to make sure that long march to the front isn't spent completely idle.

At the same time, this is a game. If you're having a blast hanging back and raining then by all means go wild.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

I don't know about boating, but I know the LRMS sure are useful as tertiary weapons after the patch. My Executioner is built to brawl, but it has a LURM 5 & LURM 10 to back up the close range guns.

I don't think I can seriously play another Assault mech besides this one. I focus on getting into a good brawling position to take my lumps, and while I'm doing that I'm LURMing targets of opportunity.

My logic is this: Because of the diminishing returns you get from stacking more and more non-ballistic weapons ontop of each other (due to heat), I find that once I've got my close range damage set up (UAC/10, 6x cERSL) my tonnage is better spent on utility equipment rather than more lazors. It's for that reason that I run the LURM packs, because I consider them a utility item that allow me to help shoot the guys I can't yet see.

Edited by Jack Shayu Walker, 13 December 2015 - 04:31 PM.

[Tesunie]

Just did a quick overview of the OP. Looks solid, and accounts for more styles than just boating LRMs. I like that concept...

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Tesunie, on 13 December 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

Just did a quick overview of the OP. Looks solid, and accounts for more styles than just boating LRMs. I like that concept...

Precisely. Boating is pretty uncommon, at least being done right (coordinated with a spotter/scout, both to deal damage and to suppress enemy positions), and that's for good reason.

But LRMs are still plenty useful for mechs IN maneuver. Since the meta game evolved from PPC pop tarts to medium-range laser vomit, and that laser vomit requires some time exposed, a good TAG/AP combo and a quick-witted mechwarrior can combine to score some serious damage.

With the influx of Steamers lately, that's likely to be rich damage farming for some time.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

TheRAbbi, on 13 December 2015 - 07:41 PM, said:

With the influx of Steamers lately, that's likely to be rich damage farming for some time.

It will be until they start getting Radar Deprivation. Once that's in place, it'll be much harder to get a solid lock on targets.

[Chados]

I enjoy LRMs very much. First I used them solely in indirect firing modes while I was learning. I ran Catapults C1, A1, and C4 during this phase of my MWO career, and later a Zeus 9S2(L). As I became more comfortable with direct fire weapons I started doing what I like best...tanking, at least as much as you can in MWO. I've adopted Dragons and Marauders. The LRM is still viable, as a secondary weapon for indirect modes when a target drops over reverse slope and for direct sight locks in combination with autocannon and energy weapons. I taught myself how to do this running the Zeus, it is well suited for the tactic.

I don't enjoy simply boating. I like to get in there and brawl. And LRMs can be a great assistance, ten tubes can give you more dimensions to work in, when you're in a difficult match.

I've discovered that SRMs aren't bad to have along either. A SRM-6 can be a big help in close.