38 replies to this topic

[Vlad Striker]

LB cannons best used with the combination of pinpoint weapon. For example pulse lasers, IS AC or UAC5.

[no one]

I sometimes drive a completely unarmored locust (because it's funny). The lb 10-X is the only 12+ tons of weaponry in the game that will consistently fail to kill me in one shot.

Quickdraw Crobat, on 28 January 2016 - 11:33 AM, said:

The LB-10X:

• Destroys criticals. If you're shooting at a heavy or assault that's got an open component, and you need to stop the weapon there from firing again in order to save your 'mech or your teammate's 'mech (and the damage won't tear off the component), this effect is invaluable. If you don't know how to time your fire or pick your targets for those situations, though, this trait is completely meaningless- it amounts to a random chance of fun bonus if you can't manage your fire with this in mind.

Good effort, nice guide but this is fundamentally untrue. Given the MWO critical health model the lb 10-X is objectively worse at destroying critical components than any 10 point damage weapon, especially if there's more than one component in the damaged section of the 'Mech.

Edited by no one, 28 January 2016 - 12:02 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

no one, on 28 January 2016 - 11:54 AM, said:

Good effort, nice guide but this is fundamentally untrue. Given the MWO critical health model the lb 10-X is objectively worse at destroying critical components than any 10 point damage weapon, especially if there's more than one component in the damaged section of the 'Mech.

On its own, perhaps. But the bolded point is bolded for a reason.

You should not be using a single LB-10X on its own.

When you have other weapons, especially multiple other weapons that don't do 10 equipment damage each on a critical hit, the LB-10X is amazing for crit destroying, because it fills out the remaining bits of damage quickly and effectively. This is most noticeable with weapons that do ten or slightly less than ten damage, because most pieces of equipment have 10 HP and those that don't mostly have less than 20 HP, but it's still significant.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 28 January 2016 - 12:11 PM.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Are you playing in a stock mech league? If not don't use it.

Alternatively, when you're dicking around and want to have fun.

[jss78]

Objectively it's a pretty awful weapon. As pointed out, it's situationally nice: for plowing into exposed internals. So there's that late-game scenario where it is nice. But the problem is that it's an 11-ton (plus ammo) situational weapon, which is to me a very challenging proposition: 13 tons (with ammo) for something that "might come handy"?

In practice, I'd take the AC/5 (3 tons lighter) let alone UAC/5 (2 tons lighter) over the LB-10X every time, for the ability to pinpoint damage from longer range and thus far greater tactical flexibility.

Something to consider is that I run 3x closely-packed SRM 2's on some mechs. They have a pretty similar feeling spread and similar total damage (12.9 vs. 10) as the LB-10X, and work as a similar "shotgun effect" backup weapon. Range is much shorter of course, but then the LB-10X isn't really that useful beyond 270 m either. But the real difference: 3xSRM 2 weigh 3 tons vs. LB-10X's 11 tons. That kind of drives home the problematic situation of the LB-10X.

I believe in the BT lore the LB-10X has the ability to fire both the shotgun rounds and the normal AC/10 rounds, but alas PGI hasn't been able to code that into MWO. That's too bad, as if we could run say 2 tons normal rounds and ½-1 ton clustershot (for those special situations), that'd make the LB-10X a fun, flexible, and useful weapon.

All that said, it's a cool weapon and sounds awesome. I used to run a Shadow Hawk with the LB-10X, 3xSRM4 and I think 2xML. It was a bad*ss if suboptimal brawler.

Edited by jss78, 28 January 2016 - 05:44 PM.

[Solis Obscuri]

Crobat summed things up pretty nicely, and I'd echo that the low heat/shot is one of the best features of the LB 10-x AC.

However, while the heat per shot as a percentage is a lot better than an AC/10, the scalar 1 point of heat doesn't amount to enough difference to make up for the the loss of concentrated damage, particularly at range. And with massive single-salvo pinpoint damage still the dominant theme in battlemech build "customization" (pretending like there's lots of originality and variety out there) that means the LB 10-x is suboptimal most of the time. The rare exception being when you're really strapped for crits and tonnage in an otherwise strong but maybe a little hot-running brawling build and need something that runs cool...

[Sug]

The best situation to use the lbx is playing around in the testing grounds or running some crazy builds in low tier games.

It's not an effective weapon against a fresh opponent. And a late game weapon isn't a thing.









Edit: 2 year old video so I just tried to recreate it since there have been LBX buffs in the last 2 years. Took 34 shots to kill the commando compared to the 55 in the vid. Better but still not worth using.

Edited by Sug, 28 January 2016 - 06:52 PM.

[Vlad Striker]

commando front kill:
270m 26
200m 18
120m 10
90m 7
60m 4
30m 4

[no one]

Testing area, stationary Jenner front kill:

270m 20 shots (Two of which missed entirely despite the cross-hair being leveled dead at it's center of crotch.)
200m 12 shots
120m 7 shots
30m 6 shots, all of which were technically head shots.
. . .

LRM 10 - 9 salvos, 450m
AC 10 - 5 shots, 450m

That's a small sample size of course, and the Jenner has a larger CT hit box.

Edited by no one, 29 January 2016 - 12:29 PM.

[InspectorG]

Dave Korhal, on 27 January 2016 - 07:42 PM, said:

What situations is the LB 10-X AC "Shotgun" good in? I'm outfitting a tanky Atlas D-DC, and my reticle seems to shake too much while I'm getting pounded to accurately fire the one-shot ACs. I went with the "Shotgun" in the hopes I can still hit something with it no matter how much fire I'm taking. Is this a good way to use it?

Dont LBX despite how cool they sound, they are terribad because the crit system is wonk.

In TT, LBX was a brutal crit-fisher because in TT, equips had no HP. They got hit= equip gone. So 1 damage was enough.

In MWO, equips have HP starting at 10hp. Roll a crit on that 1 damage pellet and you net...2 damage. Im sure you see the problem.

Regular AC10 crits at, what? 20 damage? All in the same components to boot.

SRMs are the REAL shotgun of MWO.

Edit:
As far as the reticle shake, its only visual, you can still place aim. Part of getting gud is holding reticl under fire or quick aiming as you 'un-twist'.
Best to learn now.

Edited by InspectorG, 29 January 2016 - 12:25 PM.

[Sir Immortal Shadow]

LB10X pairs good with lasers because of its amazing heat even compared to other ACs and it's ability to lay on crits. I love taking it with medium lasers or large pulses. Runs cool, good alpha, gets crits (as much as that helps). Good show.

[Exard3k]

Don't test with stationary targets please. You won't hit enemy mechs with your weapons on the same spot in actual combat either.

LB10 on IS side is one less ton and less slots than an AC10 and cooler. <300m the spread isn't worth mentioning.

Also 2x LB10 fit in a side torso, while 2x AC10 won't.

[The Basilisk]

Sir Immortal Shadow, on 05 December 2017 - 02:22 PM, said:

LB10X pairs good with lasers because of its amazing heat even compared to other ACs and it's ability to lay on crits. I love taking it with medium lasers or large pulses. Runs cool, good alpha, gets crits (as much as that helps). Good show.

NECROOOOOOOO

No LBX are still pretty bad weapons...but seriously who cares if you are in an dual LB20 X Hunchback IIC in scouting mode oneshoting IS noobs in jenners or commandos.

[Damnedtroll]

LBX is a good long range harass weapon, easy to hit with, don't do damage but you can do a lucky hit on damaged mech. At short range is quite good and it's easy to destroy component or to hit the red parts because of the spread.

It's a cold weapon, the velocity is pretty good and a combo of ppc and lbx10 is interesting because of velocity and range similarities.

Exard3k, on 05 December 2017 - 02:39 PM, said:

Also 2x LB10 fit in a side torso, while 2x AC10 won't.

Yep, that's good too.

It have downfall but it's a descent and useful weapon.

Edited by Damnedtroll, 05 December 2017 - 03:01 PM.

[Koniving]

Just a heads up.

Bonus damage against structure, currently, an AC/20 can max out at a maximum possible damage of 29 per shot.
An LBX-20 can max out a maximum possible 38 damage per shot.

AC/10 at a maximum potential 14.5 damage.
LBX10 at a maximum possible 19 damage.

And since the bonus damage is 15% of crits, and thus relies on you getting said crits to do the extra damage to structure, LBX is more likely to achieve at least some to moderate extra damage (with moderate being the same as AC/10's maximum potential) than AC/10 is to get even some of its potential.

The reason for the mechanically induced difference in actual maximum potential is that LBX (semi-recently) got its delivered crit damage doubled. And since 15% of crit damage delivered is also added as bonus damage, well that makes a good shotgun.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

4 on a mauler

[mogs01gt]

Sir Immortal Shadow, on 05 December 2017 - 02:22 PM, said:

LB10X pairs good with lasers because of its amazing heat even compared to other ACs and it's ability to lay on crits. I love taking it with medium lasers or large pulses. Runs cool, good alpha, gets crits (as much as that helps). Good show.

Troll post? AC10 crits better than the lbx.

[Burning2nd]

i run my ddc with ac2 lbx10 2 er large and 1 lrm 5

[Koniving]

mogs01gt, on 06 December 2017 - 10:13 AM, said:

Troll post? AC10 crits better than the lbx.

Do you mean focused crit damage to a single component? In which case the AC/10 will destroy an item and have nothing carry over to another item. (For that single crit, each crit is rolled and applied separately). Which many items destroy kinda easily now with like 4 to 5 health. But the AC/10 has about a 48% total chance of scoring ANY crits at all per shot (with 3% of that being the maximum value).

Meanwhile, an LBX has a 67% chance per "pellet" per shot... meaning you are, in fact, guaranteed at least a single crit from any of these pellets, with more than 50% per pellet and if you're lobbing 10 to 20 pellets, there's definitely at least one to two component's worth of destruction per shot guaranteed, even if the damage is spread out so that multiple components wind up dead by the third or fourth. Yes an AC/10 might destroy a component instantly if it crits, but you could go four or five shots without it scoring even one.

Oh and 7% chance of triple critting for the LBX.

Since different mechs have different spread patterns, with as of 2013 mechs having up to 5 spread patterns locked in, each, some mechs are naturally better with them than others.

As you can see here, Hellbringers love LBX-20. 300 meters as a single bullet. Skip to 1:50. Watch the fight, note that all damage was done to CT, and finally the with HUD on demonstration.


Since a single crit from ANY LBX pellet is 2 damage, and component health ranges from 3 to 25 at the most, with the typical amount being 7 or less, there's a lot leaning for the LBX.

Edited by Koniving, 06 December 2017 - 11:22 AM.