60 replies to this topic

[LastKhan]

IS Ac's are good. Clan UAC 10 and 20s are good anything below and their regular counterparts are trash.

[Sandpit]

LastKhan, on 31 December 2015 - 08:38 PM, said:

IS Ac's are good. Clan UAC 10 and 20s are good anything below and their regular counterparts are trash.

I love clan ACs
all of them

[Jman5]

There is room to improve specific autocannons and LBX, but I think the UACs are in viable spot at the moment. I really don't have any trouble keeping up with laser vomit damage when I run clan Dakka.

I would like to see 4 things done to ballistics though
1. Lower jam time of the Clan UAC/2
2. Weapon Cooldown module added for all AC/2s. (srsly PGI WTF?)
3. Improve Clan LBX with either a damage buff or a reduction in weight+slot size
4. Buff Ammo/Ton to match AC/10s 200 dmg/ton. (improves weight disparity)

I take care in judging my builds objectively. Part of it has to do with the fact that I tend to do my own thing so I don't have anyone but myself to rely on. If I was lagging behind with my dakka builds I would dump them and never look back. But instead I'm doing great in them and keeping up with players who I respect that are playing builds this community would consider top tier. This tells me they are at the very least in the neighborhood of competitive.

To be honest, I'm surprised more of the comp guys don't run dakka. It's a higher skill oriented weapon and it's fun as hell.

[LastKhan]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 08:46 PM, said:

I love clan ACs
all of them

I pity you using Clan regular ACs then. A bandaid that should be dealt with already.

[Mcgral18]

MGs and Flamers suck

ACs range from mediocre to good.

All cACs (not UAC), AC2s, isAC10s fall under that mediocre

Good would be isUAC5, isAC20 (for the niche range), cUAC10


200 Dam/ton doesn't solve your issue with their effectiveness. Your proposed 480 Dam/ton of the cUAC is laughable...I don't think you were serious about that, though.


cACs are an easy fix, as are AC2s...and pretty much of of them could have simple effectiveness improvements (velocity, for example, a single variable which makes a fair difference), or cooldowns.



Mostly accurate old chart.
I did just notice a Typo...cAC20 is 4 slugs of 5 damage, not 5 of 5.
5 of 5 could make it worth taking too, but not intended on my part.

Notice nearly across the board Velocity buffs, with AC2 improvements and cAC improvements.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I adhere strictly to a 10-ton minimum ballistic ammo count (8 tons if AC/10). That's a bunch of ammo... and tonnage. But it does mean you don't have to take as many heatsinks, and you can out-brawl anyone with lasers since they will overheat and you can sustain 20+ seconds of solid fire.

I would like to see more ammo per ton, but that's because I want to have more power. Muwahahaha.

[Jman5]

Mcgral18, on 31 December 2015 - 09:14 PM, said:

MGs and Flamers suck

ACs range from mediocre to good.

All cACs (not UAC), AC2s, isAC10s fall under that mediocre

Good would be isUAC5, isAC20 (for the niche range), cUAC10


200 Dam/ton doesn't solve your issue with their effectiveness. Your proposed 480 Dam/ton of the cUAC is laughable...I don't think you were serious about that, though.


cACs are an easy fix, as are AC2s...and pretty much of of them could have simple effectiveness improvements (velocity, for example, a single variable which makes a fair difference), or cooldowns.



Mostly accurate old chart.
I did just notice a Typo...cAC20 is 4 slugs of 5 damage, not 5 of 5.
5 of 5 could make it worth taking too, but not intended on my part.

Notice nearly across the board Velocity buffs, with AC2 improvements and cAC improvements.

I think its best for everyone if we just pretend those base Clan Autocannons do not exist. They were originally placeholders and trying to balance them on top of everything else just complicates things further. For the sake of sanity I say we just pretend that Clans have two choices. LBX # or UAC #.

[Tarogato]

Prosperity Park, on 31 December 2015 - 09:17 PM, said:

I adhere strictly to a 10-ton minimum ballistic ammo count (8 tons if AC/10). That's a bunch of ammo... and tonnage. But it does mean you don't have to take as many heatsinks, and you can out-brawl anyone with lasers since they will overheat and you can sustain 20+ seconds of solid fire.

I would like to see more ammo per ton, but that's because I want to have more power. Muwahahaha.

wut? Your CDA-3M has 10 tons of UAC ammo? Your Centurion/Enforcer has 10 tons of AC/20 or 8 of LB10? Your Hellbringer has 10 tons of gauss ammo? What about dual gauss or triple/quad UAC?

Edited by Tarogato, 31 December 2015 - 09:27 PM.

[Nightmare1]

ACs aren't bad off but they are definitely inferior to lasers in terms of boating and damage output/meta usage. If PGI would remove all Ghost Heat from ACs, I think we'd see them go a long way back towards being on equal footing with lasers.

[Sandpit]

LastKhan, on 31 December 2015 - 08:50 PM, said:

I pity you using Clan regular ACs then. A bandaid that should be dealt with already.

You know what I honestly and truly find funny?
People use to tell me the same thing about using LLs a lot.
I'm just glad my stats and opponents didn't get that memo

[LastKhan]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 09:45 PM, said:

You know what I honestly and truly find funny?
People use to tell me the same thing about using LLs a lot.
I'm just glad my stats and opponents didn't get that memo

Okay thats fine anyone can do well but clan ACs still are in need of something done to them, can we agree on that? Its essentially the point im making not oh cant do well using trashy weapons.

[Mcgral18]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 09:45 PM, said:

You know what I honestly and truly find funny?
People use to tell me the same thing about using LLs a lot.
I'm just glad my stats and opponents didn't get that memo

cACs are objectively worse than their UAC counterparts

Worse cooldowns, larger, no double damage.

They're made to be gimped.

[Sandpit]

LastKhan, on 31 December 2015 - 10:02 PM, said:

Okay thats fine anyone can do well but clan ACs still are in need of something done to them, can we agree on that? Its essentially the point im making not oh cant do well using trashy weapons.

I don't see them as trashy. What would you propose to improve them?

[LastKhan]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 10:11 PM, said:

I don't see them as trashy. What would you propose to improve them?

Multiple threads on it but i personally would probably suggest maybe making them single shells for their longer cd and range. Or Maybe cut the CD down and a slight tweak toward crit chances or maybe heat so they are not drasticly superior to their IS counterparts.

Clan UAC's like 5 and 2s to me maybe a reduction on jam rates but not so much on 5s since most dire dakkas use so many of them for boating and of course maybe at the cost of small heat or less crits.

Edited by LastKhan, 31 December 2015 - 10:23 PM.

[Captain Stiffy]

Metus regem, on 31 December 2015 - 07:01 PM, said:

Now to you, what sounds like the better deal? I'll take the AC personally.

Yes acs are good in TT but remember they require ammo and a feed mechanism (case). A very valid TT tactic is to stay at range and in cover and wait for ammo pools to run low when you are running a lot of lasers.

Edited by Captain Stiffy, 31 December 2015 - 10:53 PM.

[Ultimax]

I'd like to see all ACs get the following:

1) Increase velocity by about 20-25% across the board, rounding up.
2) Increase ammo per ton by about 50% to compensate for all of the additional structure and to reduce the total "weight package" that a single AC requires on a build.
3) I'd reduce Ghost heat penalties by a significant amount (or just remove them entirely).


I'd make those changes and then let it play out for a month or two. LBs need more work than that, but there has been dozens of threads with good ideas on how to improve them.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 31 December 2015 - 11:17 PM.

[kapusta11]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 06:25 PM, said:

you're forgetting about the drastic heat differences between ACs and Lasers


You know what I find truly ironic about this? For nearly 3 years now it's been widely accepted that lasers were "inferior" to ACs

It was accepted that lasers were inferior to AC/Gauss/PPC combo and rightfully so. Back then there were no clan lasers, IS MPL generated 4.6 heat, IS LPL gererated 8 heat, there were very few IS mechs that had more than 6 energy hardpoints and enough weight and space for heat sinks to be efficient, GH cap for IS large and large pulse lasers was 2 and not 3 like now and of course there were no quirks.

Edited by kapusta11, 01 January 2016 - 11:55 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Auto cannons are meant to be the low heat option (well mostly) to add to your DPS.

Thats the problem right there. Theyre DPS weapons. But the current meta is BURSTFIRE.

Current meta is about hiding in cover, popping out for 2 seconds, alphastriking everything you have into the enemy, then popping back into cover to cool down. You want to minimize facetime by using weapons like lasers rather than give the enemy more facetime by using weapons like autocannons.

For autocannons to make a comeback, brawling needs to be brought back to the game... and to do that they need to severely nerf the range on laser vomit. Its still way too long range. You have ISERLL/CLPL builds doing their full damage out to like 700m. Thats ridiculous.

Quote

You know what I find truly ironic about this? For nearly 3 years now it's been widely accepted that lasers were "inferior" to ACs

But a lot has happened since then.

1) we got longer range lasers via clan tech and IS quirks as well as better hit detection on lasers
2) they added 12v12 without increasing ammo by 50%, which favored energy weapons more
3) autocannons got severe range/projectile velocity nerfs making them inherently worse at longer ranges

Edited by Khobai, 01 January 2016 - 04:57 AM.

[zagibu]

Sandpit, on 31 December 2015 - 06:25 PM, said:

You know what I find truly ironic about this? For nearly 3 years now it's been widely accepted that lasers were "inferior" to ACs

Well, during this time, ACs had 3x max range and mechs didn't have energy weapon quirks. Lasers became popular with the introduction of the clans and subsequent introduction of IS quirks. Before that, it was PPFLD all day every day.

IS lasers are still kind of bad without quirks.

[Khobai]

Quote

IS lasers are still kind of bad without quirks.

And thats entirely part of the problem. PGI should not be using quirks to balance weapons.

IS and clan tech should be equal before quirks are even factored in. Note that equal doesnt necessarily mean identical though. Two things can be equal but different. IS vs clan tech should be asymmetrically balanced so both have their own playstyles, but neither should be outright superior to the other.

quirks should then be applied to BOTH IS -AND- Clan mechs as a means of differentiating similar mechs. because its completely stupid that clan mechs arnt allowed to have quirks, because how is a nova or summoner supposed to be differentiated from a stormcrow or timberwolf respectively? the only way you can do that is with quirks... clan mechs need quirks for differentiation. Otherwise you end up with the current situation where only like 3-4 clan mechs are good and the rest all suck because theres no quirks.

PGI needs to go through and rebalance all the clan weapons so theyre equal to the IS weapons. Then PGI needs to redo quirk passes on every single mech so quirks are used in the way they were originally intended: differentiation of similar mechs rather than core game balance.

Edited by Khobai, 01 January 2016 - 05:05 AM.