150 replies to this topic

[Scout Derek]

Lol, can't wait to see them try IIC vs IS mechs.

12v12 Jenners guys... I'm sure that the original is better XD

[CainenEX]

I'm glad to see the floor open to discussion. I'm going to work on a post game analysis video to talk about what was seen. I think as BanditB17 and I mentioned on the stream there were several discrepancies. Also I do not want the end of the event to ether effectively "win" or "defeat" the argument of LRMs as a weapon. Yes they have their uses and yes this weapon needs some support from the devs to help them out abit (different firing modes that change the arc and, Fire and forget were good suggestions). I want this to lead to a greater discussion or discourse of the weapon system and how it can be greater utilized and/or improved upon by both players and devs alike. So please continue the topic. I hope to have a video out soon with some footage, sadly my footage during round 1 was not recorded.

[Tarogato]

Here's my take on this after having played for the LurmTeam and watched Bandit's shoutcast:

► This whole endeavour proved nothing other than that Envisage doesn't understand the meta well enough yet to challenge it. Envisage is still what... Tier 4 in the game? Maybe Tier 3? He's still not regularly seeing Tier 1 players in his queues (or being subjected to their obnoxious queue times... ) so it's very easy for him to draw conclusions that don't apply to the game as a whole.

► The MetaTeam had better players, better focus, better drop callers, and a natural cohesion because more of them were used to playing with each other. Envisage chose half top-tier players, and half second-rate players with a little bit of garbage tier mixed in. He had the advantage of being able to draft his players first, and chose poorly because he wasn't familiar with the players or the units they come from.

► Envisage put us in very specific builds that didn't have good cohesion and weren't adapted to the maps, for example:

• he insisted on having three BJ-1X with ERLL, despite the fact that LRMs work best from 250-500m, inside a range where ERLLs are not ideal.

• he also insisted that at least two of his lights were ACH with a single ERPPC and that they harassed the rear at a range of ~800m, which is just something that A: isn't going to happen: B: is beyond the range where ERPPCs are useful against such a light enemy dropdeck.

• he wanted some of us in builds that we weren't used to or comfortable with running, period. Mostly because we're used to using builds that are actually effective and for a good reason...

► Envisage wanted to use the public queue drop requirements for 12-mans: 500-600 tons, which is 50 tons per person. This is an incredibly light deck which means nobody even once took an assault mech, and LRMs work best against slow targets such as assault mechs. Instead the LRMs were trying to get locks and hits on a mess of 30-65 ton enemy mechs that were all fast enough to evade LRMs easily. This was never going to work, but wasn't something that occurred to me until now. Maybe with a 750+ ton deck...


► Too much tonnage was invested in LRMs. Envisage insisted that the team brought LRM100 and spread it out across 4-6 mechs on the team. Realistically this mean that mechs that were supposed to do trading, such as the EBJs and our TBR, were wasting tonnage on a fire support weapon system that they couldn't poke with - they would lose direct fire trades against the enemy because they don't have the firepower available to win those trades in the first place.

► The engagement range for an LRM-focused team is too fickle against an organised enemy. You almost can't engage beyond 500 meters because the enemy will fade to cover before the LRMs can reach them. You also can't really engage in the sweet spot range because it's just inviting the enemy to pounce within minimum range and out-brawl you. You can't spread your LRM mechs out to create multiple points of fire because that makes it too easy for the enemy to use angles and cover to single out one of your mechs. This is one of the reasons why tight deathballing is a rather predominant concept in this game - an enemy can't poke against a tight-knit group and single out one mech to win a trade, every time they poke they get hit my multiple enemy mechs that are close together. If they spread out, you might be able to get an angle on one of them and win your trade without being exposed to the others.




The idea of a LRM-focused team is just never going to work competitively and will even only have mixed success in the group queue and CW. The best way to use LRMs, contrary to what Envisage thinks (because he bases a lot of his theories on Table Top), is to boat them on 1-2 mechs. This way none of your mechs are gimped and each and every one can do the job it specialises in. For instance, when the LurmTeam won on Viridian Bog, it was because they had three full-LRM boats and that suckered us into their trap. When the MetaTeam made the call to dive in and brawl the defensiveless LRM boats, they got absolutely shredded by the LurmTeam's full complement of SRM brawlers. The LRM boats, although they did deal some crippling damage on one single mech at the start, spent the majority of the match just as meatshields and benign decoys. Also, it was the team with the better players and better organisation that won all five matches - the two teams actually switched roles in the end so that Envisage's side had the meta and TheSilken's side had the lurms. This goes to prove even further than Envisage was taking entirely the wrong approach and was doomed to failure from the start.

My thoughts on competitive LRMs? Make like Jman5 and bring one LRM medium in a dropdeck. It's a gamble, but I've seen it work. Unfortunately I'm not even sure it will even work anymore, because the successes I've seen were due to the outrageously over-quirked HBK-4J and it's absurd dual LRM10 cooldowns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no LRM mech can put out that amount of DPS anymore (post re-balance) without investing drastically at least ten more tons or a heavy slot in the dropdeck.

Tractor Joe, on 14 December 2015 - 10:46 AM, said:

Actually the guy calling all the shots on the Lrm team has less than a months experience playing MWO and that bit with going in the water was absolutely stupid.

Actually, Envisage was not calling anything. He let it up to the more experienced players and drop callers to actually call the matches and strategies after he explained what he wanted to achieve with the builds he put us in. And actually, going water was probably one of the best options that the LRM team had available, strategically speaking (at least from that side of the map spawns).

Edited by Tarogato, 14 December 2015 - 07:18 PM.

[Davegt27]

You probably won't get much discussion most people are smart enough to realize when talking to to comp players its best to just keep your mouth closed

The reason LRMs don't work is because PGI does not want them to work
My guess is people cried them into oblivion

Before the groups got banished from pug land I would take out my missile jager good teams would send an assassin to kill my missile Jager

Of course my pug teammates would just watch me get killed but it told me I was causing enough trouble that I became marked for death lol

Anyway good event something different

Edited by Davegt27, 16 December 2015 - 11:54 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

*Not even using Mad Dogs to hill hump with LRMs*

[Robot Kenshiro]

Just out of curiosity. What was lrm team runniing in regards to direct fire weapons? I know its lrm vs meta. But was just wondering what other weapons were equipped. Any videos from the other teams view?

[Rattazustra]

In my opinion LRMs have always been a weapon that is "easy to learn and hard to master". Unfortunately, that has been their downfall so far.

Because they are easy to learn, many n00bs used them. With some success. They work incredibly well on low tiers. So well in fact, that they seem to be completely overpowered. So new players, incompetent players and fools cried wolf and let slip the dogs of nerf. Not just once.

Because they are hard to master, many players quickly reach ascend to the ceiling of their own competence with LRMs. This leads to other people believing that everyone who uses LRMs is at best mediocre.

I don't want to go into the details of why that is the case exactly, or how some of these elements express themselves in-game.

What I DO find astonishing though is how much LRMs are nerfed and castrated in this game.

They are literally the only weapon in the entire game that gives a warning to the victim. Ever heard "Warning: Someone is aiming at you with a gauss rifle from over a click away"? No. But "INCOMMING MISSILES", yeah. We all know that.

No other weapon in the game is hard countered by a piece of equipment. I'm looking at you, ECM.

No other weapon in the game is hard countered by a moduke. I'm looking at you, radar deprivation.

No other weapon in the game is soft countered by a piece of equipment. Yes, AMS. That is you.

No other weapon in the game requires support gear to work well. Support gear with absolutely no other purpose than to support LRM. TAG and NARC.

No other weapon in the game has a similar delay between fire and impact. Only the machinegun has an equally ridiculous projectile speed that makes you wonder if an average baseball player could not throw them harder and faster.

This is actually quite strange. If LRMs are so weak, why does PGI feel the need to comfort all the losers who still cower in fear of this mighty weapon so much? Why is there layer upon layer of anti-LRM system?

So no, of course LRMs are not competitive with most other weapons at the moment. A floodwave of whining and crying on these very forums got them nerfed to where they are now. And it still knows no ends. Play some games with LRMs and you will see. If you lose you will be insulted as some kind of molusc for even using them and if you have the audacity to win then you will get a truckload of "you only won because LRM are op" nonsense. In my experience nothing in this game is hated, despised and feared for no good reason as much as the LRM. As if it was some kind of magic button that made people stupid on both ends of the launch tube.

I think this experiment here showed with crystal clarity that LRMs are in bad need of some serious buffing, because no weapon in the game should be impaired like that.

[Davegt27]

Lol makes you wonder why the comp team took ECM

[Deathlike]

I'll post some thoughts on this, as I was kinda interested in the discussion, but wanted it to play out... since I can't really stand LRMs in general... though I have used them.

Tarogato, on 14 December 2015 - 07:17 PM, said:

Here's my take on this after having played for the LurmTeam and watched Bandit's shoutcast:

► This whole endeavour proved nothing other than that Envisage doesn't understand the meta well enough yet to challenge it. Envisage is still what... Tier 4 in the game? Maybe Tier 3? He's still not regularly seeing Tier 1 players in his queues (or being subjected to their obnoxious queue times... ) so it's very easy for him to draw conclusions that don't apply to the game as a whole.

The solo queue tells a story... as you simply don't see as much LRM usage as you climb the ranks (although, since you're not actually seeing Tiers, you kinda guess through results and mostly seeing some of the same faces again there).

Quote

► The MetaTeam had better players, better focus, better drop callers, and a natural cohesion because more of them were used to playing with each other. Envisage chose half top-tier players, and half second-rate players with a little bit of garbage tier mixed in. He had the advantage of being able to draft his players first, and chose poorly because he wasn't familiar with the players or the units they come from.

TBH, naturally better players are generally more cohesive, regardless of what they run. Still, you need a competent drop caller... although drop calling for LRMs is a bit different than drop calling for direct fire in mostly a set up type of deal...

Quote

► Envisage put us in very specific builds that didn't have good cohesion and weren't adapted to the maps, for example:

• he insisted on having three BJ-1X with ERLL, despite the fact that LRMs work best from 250-500m, inside a range where ERLLs are not ideal.

• he also insisted that at least two of his lights were ACH with a single ERPPC and that they harassed the rear at a range of ~800m, which is just something that A: isn't going to happen: B: is beyond the range where ERPPCs are useful against such a light enemy dropdeck.

• he wanted some of us in builds that we weren't used to or comfortable with running, period. Mostly because we're used to using builds that are actually effective and for a good reason...

I almost get the "blind" feeling. Those are anti-PUG builds (or rather - stuff that's effective vs bad players) that work OK in PUGs but don't truly work vs good players.

Quote

► Envisage wanted to use the public queue drop requirements for 12-mans: 500-600 tons, which is 50 tons per person. This is an incredibly light deck which means nobody even once took an assault mech, and LRMs work best against slow targets such as assault mechs. Instead the LRMs were trying to get locks and hits on a mess of 30-65 ton enemy mechs that were all fast enough to evade LRMs easily. This was never going to work, but wasn't something that occurred to me until now. Maybe with a 750+ ton deck...

Assaults with LRMs are a bad deal, honestly. A more annoying LRM dropdeck is one that's most mobile (but we're not talking about Lights here) like Griffins (2N ideally).. things that can relocate and reposition due to terrain/obstructions. I still abhor the Timberwolf LRM boat, but it beats using something like a Stalker.

Quote

► Too much tonnage was invested in LRMs. Envisage insisted that the team brought LRM100 and spread it out across 4-6 mechs on the team. Realistically this mean that mechs that were supposed to do trading, such as the EBJs and our TBR, were wasting tonnage on a fire support weapon system that they couldn't poke with - they would lose direct fire trades against the enemy because they don't have the firepower available to win those trades in the first place.

More LRMs are not better - because you're generally trading off mobility (engine size) for tonnage (XL Stalkers are bad). You want "efficient" launchers like LRM5s, 10s, and even 15s (when you need as many LRMs to be efficient, while avoiding ghost heat). Backup weapons need to be along the lines of at least 2 ML or 1 LL... if under the optimal situation where one LRM boat is under siege, but the others need to be able to LRM at will to help out (and not be totally useless when under direct fire).

Quote

► The engagement range for an LRM-focused team is too fickle against an organised enemy. You almost can't engage beyond 500 meters because the enemy will fade to cover before the LRMs can reach them. You also can't really engage in the sweet spot range because it's just inviting the enemy to pounce within minimum range and out-brawl you. You can't spread your LRM mechs out to create multiple points of fire because that makes it too easy for the enemy to use angles and cover to single out one of your mechs. This is one of the reasons why tight deathballing is a rather predominant concept in this game - an enemy can't poke against a tight-knit group and single out one mech to win a trade, every time they poke they get hit my multiple enemy mechs that are close together. If they spread out, you might be able to get an angle on one of them and win your trade without being exposed to the others.

What it kinda amounts to though is that you need more like a 4-4-4 type of system. Max 4 of LRM boats... the rest need to be some combination of tanks (efficient short-ranged killers) and mid-range fighters (optimally meta) with some Lights in there (ideally fighters, with the occasional LRM support... primarily through UAVs). Of course, I could tell you that removing 1 or more LRM boats would improve your efficiency.. but that obviously devolves into meta (and still obviously the optimal choice).

Essentially, for every 1 LRM boat, you will need everyone else to "carry" that person and once you reach a certain threshold (my assumption is more than 4) where you can't help the LRM boaters out effectively

Quote

The idea of a LRM-focused team is just never going to work competitively and will even only have mixed success in the group queue and CW. The best way to use LRMs, contrary to what Envisage thinks (because he bases a lot of his theories on Table Top), is to boat them on 1-2 mechs. This way none of your mechs are gimped and each and every one can do the job it specialises in. For instance, when the LurmTeam won on Viridian Bog, it was because they had three full-LRM boats and that suckered us into their trap. When the MetaTeam made the call to dive in and brawl the defensiveless LRM boats, they got absolutely shredded by the LurmTeam's full complement of SRM brawlers. The LRM boats, although they did deal some crippling damage on one single mech at the start, spent the majority of the match just as meatshields and benign decoys. Also, it was the team with the better players and better organisation that won all five matches - the two teams actually switched roles in the end so that Envisage's side had the meta and TheSilken's side had the lurms. This goes to prove even further than Envisage was taking entirely the wrong approach and was doomed to failure from the start.

My thoughts on competitive LRMs? Make like Jman5 and bring one LRM medium in a dropdeck. It's a gamble, but I've seen it work. Unfortunately I'm not even sure it will even work anymore, because the successes I've seen were due to the outrageously over-quirked HBK-4J and it's absurd dual LRM10 cooldowns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no LRM mech can put out that amount of DPS anymore (post re-balance) without investing drastically at least ten more tons or a heavy slot in the dropdeck.

It sounds about right.

You can kinda see this work occasionally in CW, but you still end up doing a lot of what a meta-team does... which is push, suppress, and focus fire. LRMs boats do all of that poorly.

Quote

Actually, Envisage was not calling anything. He let it up to the more experienced players and drop callers to actually call the matches and strategies after he explained what he wanted to achieve with the builds he put us in. And actually, going water was probably one of the best options that the LRM team had available, strategically speaking (at least from that side of the map spawns).

The key thing about LRM boats is that they need space to operate. The optimal situation is to put yourself on Alpine and try to fight the long range battle as long as you can, but you need mid-range distance to operate (since that is when LRMs are most optimal) so every distraction... where it is a short range brawler (which is generally bad on Alpine, unless you have decent long/mid-range suppression fire - and by that I don't mean LRMs) is the greater threat at the moment, instead of the LRM boat. Any distraction is key to making LRMs more effective (like being NARCed), but all of this is usually accomplished more efficiently with direct fire.

If you're honest with yourself in a LRM boat (while doing the "most damage"), the guy (or group of people) that's demanding the most attention on your team is the one that doing the most work for you.

LRM boats will never be the center of attention... they are simple "vehicles" for people who dislike/hate LRMs to be crushed on their way to a victory. That guy that is doing direct fire is always going to be a greater threat than the LRM boat that's backing up to avoid their target getting into min-range. That is reality.

[El Bandito]

I have seen the Marik Republican Roughriders do nasty things to Clanners in CW using a couple of Light NARCers and some dedicated LRM boats. Poor sods simply disintegrated when the LRMs hit.
Seeing a CW team pulling it off frequently was refreshing. Of course, such strategy needs secrecy up until the last second.

Edited by El Bandito, 26 December 2015 - 09:15 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Lyoto Machida, on 14 December 2015 - 02:22 PM, said:

In Wildstreak's defense (and keep in mind that I only watched the first game that Col. O'Neill uploaded), that spot in the water on Crimson was bad for LRMs. There wasn't really that much room in terms of water that the other team had to cross to get to them. In fact, they didn't have to cross the water at all to kill them...

Agreed.
I saw the stream matches from one of the Spectator's views, after seeing the first match and how the LRM team positioned and played, I was convinced they would lose overall without even knowing details like loadouts. There are rules that have been made by players who have developed skilled use of LRMs over MWO's lifetime that are not observed or even known by new players. Catalina Steiner is one of the people who knows them, has a topic on it in the Guides section and from his/her (cannot tell from name, sorry) post I got more of an idea what went wrong. I knew of another but have trouble finding it thanks to how this forum and its search feature is done. Some decisions made on the LRM Team side before Match 1 happened that I read now after this is over gave Meta Team advantages.

Xiphias, on 14 December 2015 - 10:15 AM, said:

What tactic would you have recommended instead? These aren't new players who have no idea what they are doing. What is your competitive MWO background? If you haven't played competitively in a league, no offense, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Competitive matches between good teams are very different from any other game play, group queue is nowhere close.

.....

As for me, I believe that actions are far more convincing that words. Until someone actually uses LRMs successfully in competitive matches (props to JMan for his efforts) you can say all you want about their effectiveness, but it's nothing more than empty rhetoric if you can't back it up with action.

Your waving the competitive flag invalidates your post. I have been here long enough to know the changes done to LRMs and what really caused it, I also know the argument competitive players will not face up to and how sometimes they use PGI as an excuse when sometimes it is the fault of comp players some thing remain a problem. PGI and previously IGP have gotten things wrong but not all the blame belongs to them all the time. I know where to find the videos to back that up. Posts like yours are why I don't listen to some "Comp" players because there is some flawed arguing in such posts.

Davegt27, on 14 December 2015 - 08:42 PM, said:

You probably won't get much discussion most people are smart enough to realize when talking to to comp players its best to just keep your mouth closed

Sometimes the comp players are wrong and keeping quiet because of their 'social status' is wrong too, just because they have some skill does not make them infallible.