8 replies to this topic

[Zombie Gandhi]

So, I had another engagement from the other day that stuck with me, and I figured I'd turn to you all for your thoughts on the matter.



Hindsight is always 20/20, but it may help me in future battles with similar factors (mechs present, environment, etc).

Thanks for your time.

~ZG

[habu86]

Two things I could offer up there.

1.) When the friendly MAD dropped, you might have wanted to fade out of sight until more friendlies showed up. Atlai are extremely tough these days and you hadn't yet a chance to get paperdoll info on it, so no way to know for sure if it still had armor or was ready to drop. SHKs are neither small nor agile enough to go solo against assaults. Using JJs to get vertical position advantage helps, but would have been better put to use before engaging.

2.) When the friendly TDR (? - looked like one, but couldn't see for sure) joined the fray, it may have been more helpful if you'd stayed engaged, as opposed to fading back around the corner. As it was, the Atlas was free to focus on fighting a single target at a time and was able to take your buddy down before succumbing - Atlas toughness is real, never assume you can successfully brawl one unassisted just because they're open and have yellow CT.

[Zombie Gandhi]

habu86, on 20 January 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

Two things I could offer up there.

1.) When the friendly MAD dropped, you might have wanted to fade out of sight until more friendlies showed up. Atlai are extremely tough these days and you hadn't yet a chance to get paperdoll info on it, so no way to know for sure if it still had armor or was ready to drop. SHKs are neither small nor agile enough to go solo against assaults. Using JJs to get vertical position advantage helps, but would have been better put to use before engaging.

2.) When the friendly TDR (? - looked like one, but couldn't see for sure) joined the fray, it may have been more helpful if you'd stayed engaged, as opposed to fading back around the corner. As it was, the Atlas was free to focus on fighting a single target at a time and was able to take your buddy down before succumbing - Atlas toughness is real, never assume you can successfully brawl one unassisted just because they're open and have yellow CT.

Both very good points. I suppose I did things in a bit of a reverse order: brawled when I should have faded, faded when I should have brawled.

[epikt]

I think Habu is right.
When engaged, you fought well, nothing much to say (maybe stop shooting your lasers when you're hot, the SRM are much more heat efficient, so you'll increase your DPS by shooting only your missiles)(I also see no real point on taking the high ground with your torso mounted weapons, except if you want to buy time)(but those are details).
But your timing on when to engage/disengage was a bit off. It might sound selfish, but I think you shouldn't have jumped to help your teammate. He clearly was out of position, big mistake, but his mistake. The worst that can happen in these situations is when your teammate dies before you can do anything, and then you find yourself out of position. You got lucky there was one one enemy remaining, and overheating. If there are several enemies, it can quickly turn into a snowball of your team dying one by one. Don't let a teammate's mistake drive you to make a mistake yourself. I would have cleaned up F5 first, regroup the team and then move together. by then your teammate would have been dead for sure, but it's safer this way.

And yep, Atlas are though, they have 30 additional structure points in the CT, 20 in each side, you can't take them 1v1 in a brawl.
A good way to deal with him would have been to, when your teammate in the Orion engaged, sneak behind him and hit the rear (what you did when the Marauder was still alive).

(edit: but, again, it's easier to say this watching the replay, in the heat of battle we sometime have bad reflexes)

Edited by epikt, 20 January 2016 - 02:39 PM.

[Zombie Gandhi]

epikt, on 20 January 2016 - 02:35 PM, said:

I think Habu is right.
When engaged, you fought well, nothing much to say (maybe stop shooting your lasers when you're hot, the SRM are much more heat efficient, so you'll increase your DPS by shooting only your missiles)(I also see no real point on taking the high ground with your torso mounted weapons, except if you want to buy time)(but those are details).
But your timing on when to engage/disengage was a bit off. It might sound selfish, but I think you shouldn't have jumped to help your teammate. He clearly was out of position, big mistake, but his mistake. The worst that can happen in these situations is when your teammate dies before you can do anything, and then you find yourself out of position. You got lucky there was one one enemy remaining, and overheating. If there are several enemies, it can quickly turn into a snowball of your team dying one by one. Don't let a teammate's mistake drive you to make a mistake yourself. I would have cleaned up F5 first, regroup the team and then move together. by then your teammate would have been dead for sure, but it's safer this way.

And yep, Atlas are though, they have 30 additional structure points in the CT, 20 in each side, you can't take them 1v1 in a brawl.
A good way to deal with him would have been to, when your teammate in the Orion engaged, sneak behind him and hit the rear (what you did when the Marauder was still alive).

(edit: but, again, it's easier to say this watching the replay, in the heat of battle we sometime have bad reflexes)

I think you're correct again, Epikt. All too often I see the solo/straggler from a group run off and die as a result. Following in their footsteps, even if it's with good intentions, doesn't help the team if I just end up exploding.

[Void Angel]

The most important takeaway is that ";atlai" is not a word:



On the fight, however - as a veteran Atlas driver, I can tell you the biggest thing you and your three teammates did wrong - you left the side torsos alone until the end. Atlas torsos are very hard to take down now - but that's a structure issue, not armor. This is important because it means that you can blast apart my guns without actually killing the torso. What you and your teammates seem to have done is to hammer down on the Atlas' center mass, firing on cooldown. As a result, the Atlas kept both side torsos - and all of his guns - until just before he was taken down. He even almost lost an arm: I strip armor from my Atlas' arms first to save weight - I never lose an arm!

So what you (and your team) wanted to do was this:

• First, take out a torso. Sure, if he's just staring at you, or drooling obliviously toward the horizon, just core him out. But against an Atlas that's mitigating like this one was, you want to smash one of the side torsos before you try to hammer down that CT. You don't care about destroying it, per se - you just want to kill his guns.
  
• Second, and a bit paradoxically, don't waste your firepower when he's twisting away. You don't want to use your firepower and heat to kill whatever body part he's decided to show you. For your example, you could shoot him with the medium lasers, and then hammer him with the SRMs on his vulnerable side torso when he twisted back.

Edited by Void Angel, 22 January 2016 - 03:26 PM.

[Omi_]

I'd say once you got into the fight you did okay, but for the purpose of review I'll be picky. Two things I noticed:

1) The Atlas was having a hard time tracking you. If you were against an Atlas that could have played better to their situation, they could have taken you down with only a couple well-placed alphas. Essentially, that time you spent circling the Atlas yet remaining in front of it was enough time for many players to put you down - you played into it's strength rather than your own. Mind you, it was running hot and I presume was a bit spent from earlier in the battle, you could have been more efficient. That first hop up onto high ground was a particularly fine move; it was trying to trap you against that wall so that you'd either have to switch your rotation up or back away down a straight firing line, but you totally juked it. Actually, you got a lot of great use out of your jump jets all video long.

2) Running in to help your teammate was a noble move, but if you're trying to be efficient you should have kept poking on F5 in the presence of the majority of your team. Your Marauder buddy was out of position and destined to die, and while you did run over there to tackle the Atlas, he eventually died anyway and you spent some time engaging the Atlas alone. Teamwork is OP in this game. Clean up F5 with your strength in numbers, let your Marauder friend play rambo, and then crush the Atlas with your entire team. As a rule of thumb, always consider balling up with your team as your presence can help press an advantage. When your team gets an edge, you should always try to snowball that advantage into a victory where possible. In this sense, not helping the Marauder could be thought of as "mitigating additional losses".

One note, though: The game was effectively won. Even well-coordinated groups will yolo at this stage of the game for c-bill grabs. Given how late in the match this was, my advice does feel a bit like splitting hairs - your team did not need you to secure a win at this point.

Edited by Hornsby, 23 January 2016 - 01:53 AM.

[Jman5]

One thing you should try to be more aware of when you play is shielding your weapons better. Your left side is expendable with only a medium laser, but your right side has 2 SRM 4s and a medium laser.

At 30 seconds you get LRM fire and turn to shield with your right torso instead of your left.

In the fight with the atlas you keep exposing your increasingly vulnerable right torso to the atlas and you lose an SRM in the process. If you had tried circling him the other way around (counter clockwise), it would have kept your right torso to the outside making it harder for your opponent to zero in on it.

[Zombie Gandhi]

I think many of my issues stem from trying to re-live the closed beta 100+KPMH Hunchbacks.

You all make very excellent points, and I've been keeping them in mind while I play. I tend to get tunnel vision sometimes, and forget to play to my strengths, which in turn, as has been pointed out, I ended up playing into theirs (in this case, the Atlas).

Critiques make me better as a player, so I thank everyone who's watched the video(s) and handing out constructive pointers.

Edited by Zombie Gandhi, 26 January 2016 - 10:42 AM.