8 replies to this topic

[Chados]

Okay, full disclosure. I'm tier 4, about 3/4 of the way to tier 3. I started playing MWO in mid-July 2015 and I played the Mechwarrior games Multiplayer Online Battletech, MW2, and MW4 before this. I also played both Mech Commander and Mech Commander 2.

I started with the Jagermech A and I was awful. My life expectancy was measured in seconds. Th game wasn't fun and I was ready to quit by the first week of August. I then discovered the Catapult C1, which I bought by selling the Jäger and cleaning out my meager inventory, and blowing every last Cbill on setting it up. My balance was zero and I was about to hang it all up.

But the Catapult was FUN. LRMing gave me a new lease on life in the game and I became an ardent advocate of LRMing. And mentioning it on these forums caused the salt to flow and flow. I learned that LRMs aren't thought of well.

I progressed, determined to master direct fire techniques, if for no other reason than to be able to do something productive when I ran out of LRMs. And I started discovering other mechs. Victors were my real introduction to direct fire, with AC/10 and large pulse lasers. Then, the Dragon, the Marauder, and the Rifleman. Along the way I tried Summoners and the Timberwolf. I discovered Wolverines and the Zeus via the loyalty mechs we got last year. That brings me to this story.

I've been wanting an assault mech, a light one, that plays like a heavy, to run in solo queue when the heavy queue is bad like it basically is all the time now since the Archer hit. Last Thursday night a week ago, I was in my Rifleman and got killed early in the Canyon Network, so I spectated a Zeus 5S. It was outfitted with one AC/10, two large lasers, and one SRM6. And this guy wrecked face! I wanted to try this. I had a ZEU9S2 and I'd bought a 5S and 9S with Cbills last year, basiced them, then sold them. The plan was to elite the 9S2 and run it in CW as a LRMisher. And it got boring, and I'd shelved the 9S2.

I used Cbills to buy the 5S back, outfitted it with a uAC/5, two LL, ASRM6...and promptly began to brawl. It was great fun. I mastered it early in the week, and that got me thinking. Maybe the Zeus deserves a second look. I wanted to get one Resistance mech, just because I didn't have one, so I splurged and got the a la carte Zeus. That meant that now I have all five.

The 6SR...I like it. I like its crash bars and fins and its red, white, and black paint job. I put two AC/5s, four MLs, an ASRM6, and a STD325 on. And I mastered it from zero in 15 hours straight, in the group queue, running with Tier 1 and Tier 2 pilots in my unit. Which means I pulled my weight-or I wouldn't have tallied up the experience points. Fifty-one drops to master it-I know, that's scrub-tier but I'm a scrub and I don't care. I've never done that before or had that much fun in the game. I had a won/loss ratio of 3.25, and a KDR around 1.26.

Tonight, I got out the 6T and tried again. I wasn't on nearly as long, just long enough to pull 16 drops and get it through basics. I miss my ballistics on the 6T, and like all Zeuses it is truly awful when it's not basiced yet. A Zeus doesn't start waking up til it's got speed tweak and fast-fire done. But after 16 drops I had a KDR of 1.06...and a W/L of 0.3 .

0.3.

I had two matches where I had over 1,000 damage and we lost them both. One of them ended in a four-kill 11-12 slugfest where I was the last one standing on my team, and went down with eight seconds left in the match when I ran into the fresh King Crab left on the other side that apparently hadn't done anything for its team.

But 0.3! That's AWFUL, even for me!

My loadout on the 6T right now is one LL, three ML, three ALRM10, and 1280 rounds, over an XL340. I say "right now" because that is subject to change when I get speed tweak and fast fire checked, because I'm going to look at some loadout changes. But for getting through basics, with the missile quirks on the 6T the rate of fire is like LRM5 spam...only with LRM10s.

That 0.3 got me thinking. Do I do more for the *team* when I bring ballistics and SRMs? Same mech...same teammates...same conditions...0.3 vs 3.25, but my kill/death ratio is positive either way. It sure looks like it. And I don't hang back 900 meters away to LRM, when I bring missiles I'm a LRMisher that works at optimal range for backup lasers, so I'm up there sharing armor. I know, 16 matches in the 6T vs. 51 in the 6SR are statistics of small numbers. But it did make me think, and it did make me consider more deeply than I typically do about how I equip my mechs. I own 44 mechs now, most of which are from buying all variants of a single chassis I like, and I essentially have the ones I really want. I do have the basic Phoenix Hawks on order thanks to Ilikerice, though, and I'm considering the KK hero just because.

I'm not ready to join the "LRMs bad and only bads LRM" crowd. But that experience did give me pause.

Edited by Chados, 26 March 2016 - 09:42 PM.

[Novakaine]

Get the Orion VA.
You'll have all three.
Nasty

[Karmen Baric]

If your K/D is similar then the mechs for you are perfoming similar, but your team was weaker due to lower win / loss. having said that it seems like a very small sample size to read too much into it.

[El Bandito]

In T4, all weapons can perform well, even LB10X.

[MischiefSC]

Chados, on 26 March 2016 - 09:19 PM, said:

Okay, full disclosure. I'm tier 4, about 3/4 of the way to tier 3. I started playing MWO in mid-July 2015 and I played the Mechwarrior games Multiplayer Online Battletech, MW2, and MW4 before this. I also played both Mech Commander and Mech Commander 2.

I started with the Jagermech A and I was awful. My life expectancy was measured in seconds. Th game wasn't fun and I was ready to quit by the first week of August. I then discovered the Catapult C1, which I bought by selling the Jäger and cleaning out my meager inventory, and blowing every last Cbill on setting it up. My balance was zero and I was about to hang it all up.

But the Catapult was FUN. LRMing gave me a new lease on life in the game and I became an ardent advocate of LRMing. And mentioning it on these forums caused the salt to flow and flow. I learned that LRMs aren't thought of well.

I progressed, determined to master direct fire techniques, if for no other reason than to be able to do something productive when I ran out of LRMs. And I started discovering other mechs. Victors were my real introduction to direct fire, with AC/10 and large pulse lasers. Then, the Dragon, the Marauder, and the Rifleman. Along the way I tried Summoners and the Timberwolf. I discovered Wolverines and the Zeus via the loyalty mechs we got last year. That brings me to this story.

I've been wanting an assault mech, a light one, that plays like a heavy, to run in solo queue when the heavy queue is bad like it basically is all the time now since the Archer hit. Last Thursday night a week ago, I was in my Rifleman and got killed early in the Canyon Network, so I spectated a Zeus 5S. It was outfitted with one AC/10, two large lasers, and one SRM6. And this guy wrecked face! I wanted to try this. I had a ZEU9S2 and I'd bought a 5S and 9S with Cbills last year, basiced them, then sold them. The plan was to elite the 9S2 and run it in CW as a LRMisher. And it got boring, and I'd shelved the 9S2.

I used Cbills to buy the 5S back, outfitted it with a uAC/5, two LL, ASRM6...and promptly began to brawl. It was great fun. I mastered it early in the week, and that got me thinking. Maybe the Zeus deserves a second look. I wanted to get one Resistance mech, just because I didn't have one, so I splurged and got the a la carte Zeus. That meant that now I have all five.

The 6SR...I like it. I like its crash bars and fins and its red, white, and black paint job. I put two AC/5s, four MLs, an ASRM6, and a STD325 on. And I mastered it from zero in 15 hours straight, in the group queue, running with Tier 1 and Tier 2 pilots in my unit. Which means I pulled my weight-or I wouldn't have tallied up the experience points. Fifty-one drops to master it-I know, that's scrub-tier but I'm a scrub and I don't care. I've never done that before or had that much fun in the game. I had a won/loss ratio of 3.25, and a KDR around 1.26.

Tonight, I got out the 6T and tried again. I wasn't on nearly as long, just long enough to pull 16 drops and get it through basics. I miss my ballistics on the 6T, and like all Zeuses it is truly awful when it's not basiced yet. A Zeus doesn't start waking up til it's got speed tweak and fast-fire done. But after 16 drops I had a KDR of 1.06...and a W/L of 0.3 .

0.3.

I had two matches where I had over 1,000 damage and we lost them both. One of them ended in a four-kill 11-12 slugfest where I was the last one standing on my team, and went down with eight seconds left in the match when I ran into the fresh King Crab left on the other side that apparently hadn't done anything for its team.

But 0.3! That's AWFUL, even for me!

My loadout on the 6T right now is one LL, three ML, three ALRM10, and 1280 rounds, over an XL340. I say "right now" because that is subject to change when I get speed tweak and fast fire checked, because I'm going to look at some loadout changes. But for getting through basics, with the missile quirks on the 6T the rate of fire is like LRM5 spam...only with LRM10s.

That 0.3 got me thinking. Do I do more for the *team* when I bring ballistics and SRMs? Same mech...same teammates...same conditions...0.3 vs 3.25, but my kill/death ratio is positive either way. It sure looks like it. And I don't hang back 900 meters away to LRM, when I bring missiles I'm a LRMisher that works at optimal range for backup lasers, so I'm up there sharing armor. I know, 16 matches in the 6T vs. 51 in the 6SR are statistics of small numbers. But it did make me think, and it did make me consider more deeply than I typically do about how I equip my mechs. I own 44 mechs now, most of which are from buying all variants of a single chassis I like, and I essentially have the ones I really want. I do have the basic Phoenix Hawks on order thanks to Ilikerice, though, and I'm considering the KK hero just because.

I'm not ready to join the "LRMs bad and only bads LRM" crowd. But that experience did give me pause.

You'll need ~40 matches to be at a viable sample size. At ~40 you'll be at a point pretty close to where it'll settle out.

LRMs, by their nature, don't carry as well as direct fire. They do a lot of damage but it's vastly inferior to direct fire damage if you're even passingly accurate.

There's some good LRM pilots. Novakaine is one - the guy carries with LRMs and he does well. I've known a few. They are dramatically the exception to the rule. It takes a lot more work to carry with LRMs than direct fire as by and large the usefulness of LRMs declines with the competency of your opponent.

Which is where a degraded win/loss comes in. In those matches where your opponents are better than normal are when you need to do better, not worse. So what happens with LRMs is that against bad teams (when you had the advantage anyway) you'll just clean up. Huge damage numbers (since you're splattering damage all over) and with a steady stream of locking weapons fire you'll steal no few kills from the guys doing the precision direct fire or in the front, taking damage to do damage. So it gives the illusion of 'helping'.

In reality however against good opponents you'll find the value of LRMs declines quickly and thus your team, already disadvantaged by the other teams competency, is now short the value you would otherwise bring.

There's people who play LRMs well. There's LRM builds (like stacking LRM5As on some Clan mechs to supplement direct fire weapons with what equates, with LoS and at 200-400m, equates to an AC5 with a 100% hit rate almost all to the CT) that do alright. By and large though LRMs buff your damage stats on average between matches while nerfing your teams total win/loss viability.

[Chuck Jager]

Jesus loves all, but Jebus loves LRMS.
And love can conquer all.

IF you like lrms get the target decay module even if you have to buy it with MC cbills conversion (will really PO the mommies basement dwellers)

Watch the commentary about playstyle, myself included. I will beech and moan about hiders and bugger slingers because I do want them on my team. The main reason is many folks use support mech as reason to let others do the hard work in winning while they get the easy damage and epeen awards. These lazy sh*t heads never realize that their string of losses and high damage may go together, and then they post to the forum to have PSR changed so they can move up in tiers. Damage is easy with lrms, winning is not.

After you get to t3 you should notice it is harder to get both damage and wins. It is not lrms, but mostly the mechanics of lrms and the folks who gravitate to them. They seem to reward passive aggressive play, but in a true competitive environment this type of play is not what is needed for a team to succeed. Folks who play aggressive direct fire have an easier time influencing a win than a lrm boat.

That being said my hat goes off to both *pa*m and Je*us, who I have played with quite a bit and they are more up front and beside you making a push before many other OP META BUILDS. Yeah they may get a bit more splash damage and epeen numbers, but they are beside you doing what needs to be done while making life a pure hell for the folks shooting at you.

For myself I pretty much only play 2-3 lrm builds with one being the hunchie (quirked yes) and the WHK but with 2 erppc. The main thing is the high torso mount lrms that allow following the main push while firing over the team at bottlenecks. I do expose myself and use direct fire while getting my own locks. I estimate I may use these builds 1 of 20 matches, but learning how to see the strengths and weaknesses of all weapon systems is better than just reading the forums.

Edited by Chuck Jager, 27 March 2016 - 12:10 PM.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

The reality is LRMs can be just as devastating in higher tiers, however they are MUCH harder to use effectively.

Primarily because you arent as likely to fight an an entire enemy team that will allow you to be a 2 button hero (button 1: target button 2: fire).

To remain effective your situational awareness must be maxed out.

You need to fully know your enemies position as well as your own. So fundamentally this means you need an intimate knowledge of the maps.

You need to be a lot more picky with your targets.
If your mech is not relatively agile (meaning you are able to mark your own targets) then your target selection game becomes crucial. IE: look out for enemy cqb brawlers that are less likely to play peekaboo.

I could go on and on. The reality is it is MUCH harder than playing peek-a-boo lazorz robot championship but that does not mean it is not viable.

Everybody told me you cant lurm past T5. Still waiting for that to be true. When I hit T1 and all of a sudden I find myself being deadweight with LRMs I will gladly admit and report back. Should it be case I wont be at a loss at all as I can play just about every other trope in this game just fine.

[Chados]

Up to 23 matches played on the ZEU-6T and I had to put the LRM focused build aside when I started today, because after the first game I got hunted again and it's just too stressful not to be in there being the hunter instead. I wanted a more aggressive build while retaining some LRMs for indirect supporting fire, something like you see on a lot of the Atlases out there. So I started experimenting.

Started out with flat brawler builds and they didn't answer...all-laser builds are boring to me and I wanted something different. So I ended up with this:

ZEU-6T

After 23 matches my WLR is up to 0.44...a fairly interesting gain from 0.3 in a short time...and my KDR dropped to 0.94, which is statistically a wash from 1.06, as I'm averaging 9 assists and three KMDDs per match-I get a lot of people jumping in front of me to steal kills for the event, typical event driven behavior, and the ALRM15 keeps me in the game when teammates jump in front of me to steal the kill. Six matches played with mixed builds...and my teams are winning more, though my personal damage done is less than half what it was. Interesting.

Your mileage may vary, but I'm finding that LRMs answer best for my playing style as an adjunct. I want to have one to make my mech more flexible, but I've pretty much got to where I don't like to depend on them anymore.

When the Catapult is remodeled I may end up sticking with the Jester. I never saw that coming six months ago, honestly.

Edited by Chados, 27 March 2016 - 12:39 PM.

[Damia Savon]

I just play what I want. When I try to play something "meta" to help out I invariably have less fun, more stress and do less damage. So I stick with what I love and everyone benefits. *shrugs*