77 replies to this topic

[Nightmare1]

Not a fan of the nerf. I know the dual Gauss and quad Gauss Mechs were a bit powerful, but I don't think so harsh a nerf was needed as to make single Gauss Mechs (especially the Summoner) non-viable.

[Navid A1]

Nightmare1, on 31 December 2015 - 06:59 AM, said:

Not a fan of the nerf. I know the dual Gauss and quad Gauss Mechs were a bit powerful, but I don't think so harsh a nerf was needed as to make single Gauss Mechs (especially the Summoner) non-viable.

A single gauss was the only weapon that could make the summoner slightly less trash... now it is pure trash

[MarineTech]

stjobe, on 30 December 2015 - 02:56 PM, said:

Feathers: Unruffled.
Jimmies: Unrustled.
Panties: Neither bunched nor wadded.
Gauss Rifle: Still one of the best weapons in the game.

Ditto

[mogs01gt]

I support nerfs to all ranged weapons in a way that affects their brawling potential.

[Ultimax]

MischiefSC, on 31 December 2015 - 01:42 AM, said:

You don't get it. I am hugely in favor of a gauss nerf. I'm saying CD isn't going to really do anything about it.

The CD nerf has removed it from play in my experience.

After two weeks now of dropping, solo and in team queue, I don't see anyone using it.

Too much weight, too much risk - not enough reward.

That's what the CD nerf has done.


It did not need a 37% CD nerf while keeping all of its other drawbacks, that's ridiculous.

[Moldur]

Ultimatum X, on 31 December 2015 - 08:04 AM, said:

The CD nerf has removed it from play in my experience.

After two weeks now of dropping, solo and in team queue, I don't see anyone using it.

Too much weight, too much risk - not enough reward.

That's what the CD nerf has done.


It did not need a 37% CD nerf while keeping all of its other drawbacks, that's ridiculous.

I have 6 or 7 unequipped gauss in my inventory right now. My reasoning was that it's too inefficient damage-wise for single gauss. I'd be pretty well off with 25-35 rounds for a single gauss in solo, but I found I was hard pressed to get even half of that off with the new cooldown, so I just took them all off or reduced their ammo.

[Almond Brown]

Bishop Steiner, on 30 December 2015 - 02:49 PM, said:

can't say it rustles my jimmies or wads my panties, TBH.

It's still one of the most effective heavy weapons in the game. In reality, that sort of says it all.

Interestingly enough, to get a 15 pt PP shot without that long CD, one could mount 2 x AC10's and fire at (roughly) 660m.

But alas, that would require 24t + ammo + 6 Heat and not 12t + ammo + 1 Heat but the CD is nearly 1/3. (not counting modules and Quirks for certain Mechs) Oops, sorry projectile speed is not quite up to par either...

Damn it. Can't seem to just have it ALL in one neat tidy package apparently.

Edited by Almond Brown, 31 December 2015 - 09:24 AM.

[Chuck Jager]

MrMadguy, on 31 December 2015 - 01:00 AM, said:

Be competitive, but only against other competitive players - not against players like me, who play for fun only. And the intention of MM in any game - is to provide allies and enemies with proper skill level. It's your choice to use 4xC-Gauss Dire God and 4xC-Gauss Dire God - isn't valid reason to nerf C-Gauss. But your shouldn't be matched against players, like me, who use old obsolete IS 'Mechs, like Atlas, Highlander, etc. Cuz matching Meta players against normal players - is unfair. And this is the reason, why PGI constantly tries to nerf Meta. But they don't realize, that when they nerf Meta - they nerf non-Meta too. So nerfing Meta - is wrong approach. Matching you against other Meta players only - that is the right solution. You can abuse your 4xC-Gauss Dire God. Yeah. But don't cry, when you will be stomped by something like another 6xC-UAC5 Dire God. Cuz "being competitive" doesn't mean "stomp n00bs via your uber skill".

Actually I started an alt account in T4 and it is even more fun.
I have been given the ability to know where I will score higher. That is what I am doing, and guess what it is very fun.

If folks want to play in bad mechs, they will have less of everything including fun.

If I get stomped by good players that is my chance to learn. I see myself as a mediocre plus comp level player who has a responsibility to help their team by bringing their A game every time. This is how MM and the smaller population works in PGIs game. Hindering my team performance by being too lazy to bring the best is just selfish. I can go play a PVE quest on other games to do this.

[MischiefSC]

Dakota1000, on 31 December 2015 - 01:57 AM, said:

An XP bar still indicates that a player has played more and thus should know more, if you are in T1 right now you've played at the very least 1000 matches, you will know your mech like the back of your hand, you'll probably know the enemy's mech just as well.

In action the tier system has been working well. Take a look at T5 and tell me with a straight face that they could manage to survive in T1. If you aren't doing good in matches on average you *will* go down, if you aren't getting out enough damage in a match to at least assist someone on a win you won't go up, if you lost because your team couldn't carry you you'll go down.




I don't see how nerfing a weapon's cooldown to the point where the only ballistic it out DPSes is the machine gun doesn't make it a questionable choice. Its not really the godly super OP ballistic weapon you seem to think it is.

Best ballistic /= godly super op. Don't put words in my mouth.

Gauss is an outlier. A niche design of sorts. All other ballistic and energy weapons are balanced by damage per shot, range, accuracy (speed) and heat along with cooldown. They all have highs and lows, give and take.

Gauss doesn't quite do that. It's pretty much maxed out the damage, range and accuracy bars while having almost no heat. So all the things you tweak to balance on every other weapon is maxed out on Gauss.

We want to keep it that way. Want to keep it in the role it's in. That rrole though isn't one that depends much on dps so dps nerfs don't hurt it. Also while a couple gauss is strong, it's not op. The issue is gauss being high damage, low heat and fast enough to stack with lasers and be accurate. So much so it trumps any other ballistic.

So while everything else has several balancing legs the gauss doesn't. It has cooldown and then two unique negatives - it explodes and has a charge-up. These don't so much balance it as increase the skill cap to use it effectively.

So gauss needs another balance leg. I'd love to remove the chargeup too. It just needs something to affect it's ability to stack in a 0 heat 15pt near hitscan ppfld hit with everything else while still being a premier sniping weapon.

[Squirg]

As someone who is very invested in a ranged, supporting fire playstyle that the gauss should excel at, I have to say that gauss is now nearly worthless. Sure they have good velocity, range, and damage, but now their cons outweigh the pros. AC10s now have easily twice the effectiveness as gauss for a slight decrease in range. They also don't have a chargeup, but the lower velocity means yo have to lead a little.

Did gauss need a nerf? Possibly. But a whole 1.5 sec cd increase is just too much. Gauss is still usable to an extent even after the nerf but imo since they are so outclassed by AC10s now I've stripped them from my mechs.

Edit I also forgot to mention the agility nerfs, which most people have overlooked, have hurt the gauss playstyle extremely hard.

Edited by Squirg, 31 December 2015 - 01:48 PM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

MischiefSC, on 31 December 2015 - 12:06 PM, said:

Best ballistic /= godly super op. Don't put words in my mouth.

Gauss is an outlier. A niche design of sorts. All other ballistic and energy weapons are balanced by damage per shot, range, accuracy (speed) and heat along with cooldown. They all have highs and lows, give and take.

Gauss doesn't quite do that. It's pretty much maxed out the damage, range and accuracy bars while having almost no heat. So all the things you tweak to balance on every other weapon is maxed out on Gauss.

We want to keep it that way. Want to keep it in the role it's in. That rrole though isn't one that depends much on dps so dps nerfs don't hurt it. Also while a couple gauss is strong, it's not op. The issue is gauss being high damage, low heat and fast enough to stack with lasers and be accurate. So much so it trumps any other ballistic.

So while everything else has several balancing legs the gauss doesn't. It has cooldown and then two unique negatives - it explodes and has a charge-up. These don't so much balance it as increase the skill cap to use it effectively.

So gauss needs another balance leg. I'd love to remove the chargeup too. It just needs something to affect it's ability to stack in a 0 heat 15pt near hitscan ppfld hit with everything else while still being a premier sniping weapon.

So we can't just have a weapon that is actually good at dealing long range damage and damage up close but is balanced by the fact that its the heaviest weapon in the entire game, explodes the moment you sneeze on it, requires ammo, requires a charging time that lowers DPS and desynced them from other guns. The thing is a liability to both your survival and damage output.

My issue is I'm just having trouble figuring out why its "the best ballistic" when it costs your build so much to bring along.

[Rhent]

Gauss has the highest heat per damage value in the game 1 heat for 15 damage. Gauss has the highest velocity of any non-laser weapon in the game. Gauss has the second highest pin-point damage in the game 15 vs AC/20's 20. If we assumed that weapon damage values were based on 10 second turns with armor doubled, Gauss still is doing TT damage values. When gauss fires there is little to no visible trail of where the weapon is fired from.

The amount of damage that Gauss puts out for its heat, its hard to argue against the nerf. If we didn't have perfect pin-point conversion there could be some disagreement on the nerf, but with all of gausses bonuses, there is no way to argue against the time increase at this time.

[Khobai]

Quote

Gauss has the highest heat per damage value in the game 1 heat for 15 damage. Gauss has the highest velocity of any non-laser weapon in the game. Gauss has the second highest pin-point damage in the game 15 vs AC/20's 20. If we assumed that weapon damage values were based on 10 second turns with armor doubled, Gauss still is doing TT damage values. When gauss fires there is little to no visible trail of where the weapon is fired from.

The amount of damage that Gauss puts out for its heat, its hard to argue against the nerf. If we didn't have perfect pin-point conversion there could be some disagreement on the nerf, but with all of gausses bonuses, there is no way to argue against the time increase at this time.

One valid argument you can make is that assault mechs needed an overpowered gauss in order to have more firepower than heavy mechs.

Assaults are in a bad place right now because of the gauss nerf. Assaults relied HEAVILY on gauss to boost their firepower without also increasing their heat. Because assaults had the spare tonnage to use dual gauss in addition to other weapons.

Im not saying that the gauss nerf wasnt warranted. But at the very least, PGI does need to compensate assaults somehow for the loss of firepower. Otherwise heavies are going to reign even more dominant than before.

Edited by Khobai, 31 December 2015 - 05:19 PM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Rhent, on 31 December 2015 - 05:13 PM, said:

Gauss has the highest heat per damage value in the game 1 heat for 15 damage. Gauss has the highest velocity of any non-laser weapon in the game. Gauss has the second highest pin-point damage in the game 15 vs AC/20's 20. If we assumed that weapon damage values were based on 10 second turns with armor doubled, Gauss still is doing TT damage values. When gauss fires there is little to no visible trail of where the weapon is fired from.

The amount of damage that Gauss puts out for its heat, its hard to argue against the nerf. If we didn't have perfect pin-point conversion there could be some disagreement on the nerf, but with all of gausses bonuses, there is no way to argue against the time increase at this time.

[MischiefSC]

Gauss fills a number of useful roles and while it needed a bit of a nerf the problem is that because of how it works (big sniper gun) a cd change is just a binary for it. It's either still useful or it's not. If it is, it's better. If it's not, it's worthless.

That's where I'm saying it needs a new balance leg. The explosion part is irrelevant on Clan mechs and barely relevant on IS mechs.

Ideally you introduce a new Balance mechanic for it and remove the charge up. Give it a metric that can be tweaked in addition to cd. This gives it two points you can adjust on it. Unlike the other weapons you don't want to mess with its heat, damage, range or velocity. So as we're in agreement that those 4 factors we use for other weapons are off the table for Gauss we need to give it a new tweakable variable. Explosive when damaged and the charge up are not good variables for controlling performance, they are just skill cap factors to add layers to the difficulty in deploying it.

Add a balance metric (charge vs other weapons, affecting heat dissipation, whatever) that can we tweaked to affect performance to replace the otherwise static damage, heat, velocity and range metrics.

[Ultimax]

MischiefSC, on 31 December 2015 - 05:29 PM, said:

Gauss fills a number of useful roles and while it needed a bit of a nerf the problem is that because of how it works (big sniper gun) a cd change is just a binary for it. It's either still useful or it's not. If it is, it's better. If it's not, it's worthless.

That's where I'm saying it needs a new balance leg. The explosion part is irrelevant on Clan mechs and barely relevant on IS mechs.

Ideally you introduce a new Balance mechanic for it and remove the charge up. Give it a metric that can be tweaked in addition to cd. This gives it two points you can adjust on it. Unlike the other weapons you don't want to mess with its heat, damage, range or velocity. So as we're in agreement that those 4 factors we use for other weapons are off the table for Gauss we need to give it a new tweakable variable. Explosive when damaged and the charge up are not good variables for controlling performance, they are just skill cap factors to add layers to the difficulty in deploying it.

Add a balance metric (charge vs other weapons, affecting heat dissipation, whatever) that can we tweaked to affect performance to replace the otherwise static damage, heat, velocity and range metrics.

I get where you are coming from, but a 15 ton weapon that causes penalties when using other weapons is simply unusable.

It is unusable because 15 ton weapons that do 15 points of damage are not sufficient on their own.

That's due to double TT armor values, and heaps of added structure.



If a single Gauss rifle was actually as powerful and OP as everyone makes it out to be, then those 1x Gauss Cicadas and Shadowcats would arguably be decent builds - they are not, they are always better off taking energy weapons.



Every powerful Gauss build from this and previous metas was based on the other things you could take with Gauss.


Gauss + 20 points of PPC damage
Gauss + Gauss
Gauss + 26~40 points of laser alpha



Gauss by itself as a "sniper weapon" is a load of ********. One Gauss isn't enough to snipe anything, you need to combine with something else to actually have a real build.

So if taking and using Gauss forces any kind of penalties on the other weapons you also have, then Gauss use will be untenable and therefore go unused.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 January 2016 - 03:13 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Ultimatum X, on 01 January 2016 - 03:07 PM, said:

I get where you are coming from, but a 15 ton weapon that causes penalties when using other weapons is simply unusable.

It is unusable because 15 ton weapons that do 15 points of damage are not sufficient on their own.

That's due to double TT armor values, and heaps of added structure.



If a single Gauss rifle was actually as powerful and OP as everyone makes it out to be, then those 1x Gauss Cicadas and Shadowcats would arguably be decent builds - they are not, they are always better off taking energy weapons.



Every power Gauss build from this and previous metas was based on the other things you could take with Gauss.


Gauss + 20 points of PPC damage
Gauss + Gauss
Gauss + 26~40 points of laser alpha



Gauss by itself as a "sniper weapon" is a load of ********. One Gauss isn't enough to snipe anything, you need to combine with something else to actually have a real build.

So if taking and using Gauss forces any kind of penalties on the other weapons you also have, then Gauss use will be untenable and therefore go unused.

You're missing the point though -

The goal is to make Gauss usable in singles and a good weapon to bring in its own right instead of only when stacked with energy or when you take 2 of them.

It needs another balance leg to do that. I don't want to see speed, range, etc. messed with.

So you have 1 gauss affect heat reduction for a couple seconds. With 2 gauss it becomes a big issue; making 2xgauss + lasers heatspike like you would expect for a huge alpha without actually changing gauss heat mechanics. 1 gauss + a bunch of lasers is doable but more in line with what the same alpha worth of lasers would be. The difference being you can still cycle the gauss alone while your heat drops (it's still only 1 heat per shot) but you just extend that by X%, because every time you shoot the gauss you're cooling more slowly.

You do this *in addition* to removing chargeup and rolling back all the cooldown nerfs so it's back to ~3.25 or 3.5 seconds. This increases the viability of gauss as a single weapon or even a 2xgauss loadout alone without making gauss + lasers OP.

It's a bit convoluted to try and explain but would be relatively simple in practice.

Gauss + few other weapons (like the Scat) would work way better than they do now. No chargeup, faster cooldown on the Gauss, it slows heat dissipation for the couple of lasers when it alphas but the whole build is so low heat that it's not a big factor plus the faster overall firetime increases its ability to take shots of opportunity.

Gauss + a ton of lasers becomes a questionable choice. Like, say, gauss + 7 SPLs/CERMLs. You can do it but you're going to have longer cooldown but only if you want to shoot the lasers again. It's not that the Gauss is unavailable, you can shoot it again in ~3.25 seconds for just 1 heat but the overall heat level is still high so you can't alpha the lasers again as quickly. You can do the lasers without the gauss and be just fine, or gauss + 2 seconds then lasers and be fine. You just can't 64 alpha someone at 400+m with near hitscan weapons and then do it again all from a 65 ton mech.

The goal is to do what charge-up/long CD was trying to do, desync the gauss from other weapons, without making the gauss useless UNLESS you're boating it with other weapons. Which is what the long CD and charge-up have done. You should be able to rock face in a Hollander but Gauss should not be an easy free 15pts of firepower to add to your laservomit if you have the tonnage to spare.

We've leveraged gauss to push the game to a 60+pt alpha as a 'standard' and it's hurt TTK and overall game balance. Desync of gauss and lasers is a good idea, we just need a way to do so that doesn't make gauss alone (or with a reasonable supply of other weapons) total crap. This idea even works with Thunderhawks and the other lore gauss-boats - they'll work awesome and scare the pee-water out of people (as they should) without being super-gimped by CD and charge-up.

[Ultimax]

MischiefSC, on 01 January 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

So you have 1 gauss affect heat reduction for a couple seconds. With 2 gauss it becomes a big issue; making 2xgauss + lasers heatspike like you would expect for a huge alpha without actually changing gauss heat mechanics. 1 gauss + a bunch of lasers is doable but more in line with what the same alpha worth of lasers would be. The difference being you can still cycle the gauss alone while your heat drops (it's still only 1 heat per shot) but you just extend that by X%, because every time you shoot the gauss you're cooling more slowly.

You do this *in addition* to removing chargeup and rolling back all the cooldown nerfs so it's back to ~3.25 or 3.5 seconds. This increases the viability of gauss as a single weapon or even a 2xgauss loadout alone without making gauss + lasers OP.

It's a bit convoluted to try and explain but would be relatively simple in practice.

Gauss + few other weapons (like the Scat) would work way better than they do now. No chargeup, faster cooldown on the Gauss, it slows heat dissipation for the couple of lasers when it alphas but the whole build is so low heat that it's not a big factor plus the faster overall firetime increases its ability to take shots of opportunity.

Gauss + a ton of lasers becomes a questionable choice. Like, say, gauss + 7 SPLs/CERMLs. You can do it but you're going to have longer cooldown but only if you want to shoot the lasers again. It's not that the Gauss is unavailable, you can shoot it again in ~3.25 seconds for just 1 heat but the overall heat level is still high so you can't alpha the lasers again as quickly. You can do the lasers without the gauss and be just fine, or gauss + 2 seconds then lasers and be fine. You just can't 64 alpha someone at 400+m with near hitscan weapons and then do it again all from a 65 ton mech.

If Gauss affects my heat dissipation thats effectively similar to simply generating more heat.

So why would I take 15 tons of weapon + 3 tons off ammo instead of just pumping that back into more energy weapons and heatsinks to run them?

MischiefSC, on 01 January 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

The goal is to do what charge-up/long CD was trying to do, desync the gauss from other weapons, without making the gauss useless UNLESS you're boating it with other weapons.

Every weapon in this game is weak unless you boat it with other weapons.


Double Armor Potential, Everyone runs max armor on critical locations (unlike stock builds) big structure quirks.

That's the reality of this game.



The Gauss moves to un-dseirable status, because its a huge tonnage investment for relatively low damage.


The reasons people took Gauss with builds are:

1) Pinpoint Front Loaded Damage.
2) No heat impact.


If you remove either of those from the equation (for example, impacting dissipation), its no longer valuable.


The only way you could ever convince me to use a single Gauss rifle that doesn't work or play well with other weapons, including itself, is that it would need to do like 30 points of damage by itself on a single strike.


Then, it could be a slow recharge "sniper weapon".

It is simply not going to fit that role without doing that much damage, and that's exactly why we see Gauss sniper builds stacked with other damage sources - because 15 points on their own are not sufficient for a "build".

Edited by Ultimatum X, 01 January 2016 - 03:37 PM.