57 replies to this topic

[Dingo Battler]

This is pretty true, at least for me. In the other tiers, I had to ask others to stick with the assaults, and sometimes it wouldn't work. Lights will often bee-line towards to enemy side, and the rest of the team will chase after them, leaving the assaults in the dust to be killed. NASCAR seems much more common in lower tiers too. mediums/light like to use you as a shield, which is fine, other that they'll stand at your back and fire into your rear armour, and never let you reverse, especially on a ramp. Lots of whinging about how assaults should push, then you'll push alone and die, because they're too stupid/scared to follow you, then they'll whinge in <All> about how little damage you did. When you get ambushed by lights, they'll just ask you to hurry up, or leave you to die and NASCAR even harder. Lots of pointless kill stealing, standing in front of you when you've cored-out someone, the whining hardcore when they run into your lasers, often in <All> as they try to force you to apologise for their stupidity.

Playing assaults in tier 2 is far less frustrating, the team will head towards the assaults without being told, wait for them and support them properly, push together with you. Everyone gives you a wide berth, people play their role well, no blaming, much more high-level play. If you're good in thinking and positioning, your team will create plenty of situations where you can bring all your big guns to bear, which is really fun, as you melt away mechs. Your team will usually call out the mechs you cored but ran away. Rarely any kill stealing, and even if they do it, they rarely stand right in front of you in mid-laser shot. They'll usually stand behind you, or flank them.

So if you're thinking of getting an assault, get it earliest when you're about to finish off tier 3 for some practice in positioning and thinking, or you'll be in a world of frustration.

Edited by KBurn85, 04 May 2016 - 03:29 PM.

[Ted Wayz]

Assaults are only viable when piloted by people who know how to pilot assaults.

Same goes for lights needing to be piloted by people who know how to pilot lights, and mediums by medium pilots and heavies...well anyone can pilot a heavy.

[Khobai]

assaults are still way less viable than they should be compared to heavies.

the negligible armor increase assaults gain isnt worth the loss in speed/agility and massive increase in hitbox sizes.

CW illustrates the problem pretty clearly... you dont see people taking 2 direwolves and 2 mistlynxs. What you see is decks like 3 ebon jaguars and 1 stormcrow. Or 3 timberwolves and 1 mistlynx. Because ton for ton the heavies are much better.

The power curve needs to be readjusted so assaults are back on top. They cost the most in CW. So they should be the strongest mechs in CW.

Edited by Khobai, 04 May 2016 - 03:57 PM.

[The Great Bear]

using assaults your team needs to support them that does not really happen at low tiers. they get left behind or team does not back up assault pushes

[Dingo Battler]

Khobai, on 04 May 2016 - 03:58 PM, said:

they get left behind at tier 1 too.

the worst part is its a really easy fix in quickplay. just have the slowest mechs always spawn in the central spawn location. instead of having them spawn off to one side in the middle of nowhere and making them walk the farthest possible distance to join up with their team.

of course assaults still need a buff to make them worth taking in CW dropdecks...

There's much less of it. Its a rare event to get left behind. Even if you get left behind, there's no expectation that you take out the whole enemy team yourself, turn all their CTs cherry red, so people can kill-steal, and fight off lights. Best of all is there's no blame game, no idiot blaming you for not pushing and dying by yourself.

The lower tiers are really 12 seperate players trying to get as many kills as they individually can. T3 is ok, very hit and miss, but nevertheless, very frustrating. T2 has been really really good, and I've been there 2+ mths. Not sure about T1, but reaching there soon, and I think it'll only get better.

[Lord0fHats]

You'll see Battlemasters and Stalkers pretty often in CW. For awhile it was all about Stalkers because damn were they good, but Battlemasters kind of get to be kind of the IS assault hill now. Assaults mechs probably work better in some ways in CW than in normal que (the chance of being spawn rushed is very low). Clans don't use them because Clan assaults all suffer from the same two problems; they're sub-par, or they're very niche. Gargoyles can go pretty well in CW, but they're really only good at brawling. Dire Wolves can do well on defense, but they can't poke well and they're ungodly slow. Warhawks and Executioners are just sub-par.

That might change when the Kodiak drops. Can pack damage on par with a Dire while being much faster. Might not change. For all we know the Kodiak will have the worse hit boxes imaginable.

Assaults probably have the highest skill cap in the game. You really need to know positioning, map awareness, and really need to know what builds do and don't need team support. In the normal que you can never rely on getting support, so slow as hell assaults with mountains of dakka are inconsistent performers. Faster builds (at least > 68 KPH) might have less dakka, but they're fast enough to not be completely left behind. NASCAR is still really common, and it does screw assaults in pick up games.

Might I suggest the Strikgles, a nice little semi-brawler with a sweet 1-2 punch and the speed to keep up with the group, or the classic Meta Banshee?

[Jman5]

Really? I had the exact opposite experience. I created an alt account a couple months ago and once I got the cash, the only mech I used was a Warhawk without speed tweak. My biggest issue was the lack of movement coming from my teammates. I had great difficulty slowing myself down because I was so used to a faster pace of play.

[LT. HARDCASE]

All of those bad things happen in T2/T1 matches as well.

[Khobai]

Quote

Assaults probably have the highest skill cap in the game.

of course, youre playing with a massive handicap.

so why wouldnt the skill cap be higher?

assaults need to be substantially buffed so heavies arnt outright better

particularly clan assaults because clan assaults are virtually unseen in CW. And clan heavies are used more in CW than all other weight classes combined.

Edited by Khobai, 04 May 2016 - 04:58 PM.

[Bilbo]

KBurn85, on 04 May 2016 - 03:26 PM, said:

This is pretty true, at least for me. In the other tiers, I had to ask others to stick with the assaults, and sometimes it wouldn't work. Lights will often bee-line towards to enemy side, and the rest of the team will chase after them, leaving the assaults in the dust to be killed. NASCAR seems much more common in lower tiers too. mediums/light like to use you as a shield, which is fine, other that they'll stand at your back and fire into your rear armour, and never let you reverse, especially on a ramp. Lots of whinging about how assaults should push, then you'll push alone and die, because they're too stupid/scared to follow you, then they'll whinge in <All> about how little damage you did. When you get ambushed by lights, they'll just ask you to hurry up, or leave you to die and NASCAR even harder. Lots of pointless kill stealing, standing in front of you when you've cored-out someone, the whining hardcore when they run into your lasers, often in <All> as they try to force you to apologise for their stupidity.

Playing assaults in tier 2 is far less frustrating, the team will head towards the assaults without being told, wait for them and support them properly, push together with you. Everyone gives you a wide berth, people play their role well, no blaming, much more high-level play. If you're good in thinking and positioning, your team will create plenty of situations where you can bring all your big guns to bear, which is really fun, as you melt away mechs. Your team will usually call out the mechs you cored but ran away. Rarely any kill stealing, and even if they do it, they rarely stand right in front of you in mid-laser shot. They'll usually stand behind you, or flank them.

So if you're thinking of getting an assault, get it earliest when you're about to finish off tier 3 for some practice in positioning and thinking, or you'll be in a world of frustration.

I found playing assaults was much more forgiving in tiers 3 and 4 than it is in two. In my opinion, if someone wanted to play assaults, they are much better off learning to do it before they get to the higher tiers.

[Raso]

I have never had any issues running my Battlemasters in PUG queues. Then again, it's not super slow. I tend to use it as a mid range direct fire unit, with a set of 4 LLas. I find the extra rang means I'm less likely to miss the party. I know people want assaults to be big, scary brawlers but for the time being I find my assaults to work best as mech killers with loads of power weapons useful at medium range and some added armor to allow them to stand and deliver while trading fire.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Khobai, on 04 May 2016 - 03:49 PM, said:

CW illustrates the problem pretty clearly... you dont see people taking 2 direwolves and 2 mistlynxs.

CW doesn't illustrate anything because many pilots in that mode are bad.

I don't normally play CW, but when I do, I make sure to have my trusty dakka whale.

Jman5, on 04 May 2016 - 04:30 PM, said:

Really? I had the exact opposite experience. I created an alt account a couple months ago and once I got the cash, the only mech I used was a Warhawk without speed tweak. My biggest issue was the lack of movement coming from my teammates. I had great difficulty slowing myself down because I was so used to a faster pace of play.

That aggression gets me killed in lower tiers, every time

[MechWarrior5152251]

I used a trial Battlemaster on my Tier4 account. Most matches were over 1000 damage.

[Escef]

A big part of the problem is also the slow assaults. Especially the Dire Wolves. Before the clans hit, almost no one considered a 300 engine in an Atlas a good idea, it was too slow. Because of the nature of Omnimech customization, Dires don't have a choice. Yet the Dire is also quite possibly the most dangerous weapons platform in the game, it brings an almost comically large amount of firepower.

The more experienced players have adapted to the idea of escorting the sub-60kph assaults around. Less experienced players have not. Personally, I am not a big fan of the slow assaults, it's too easy for the flow of battle to leave them behind. Probably why I prefer the BattleMaster.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Khobai, on 05 May 2016 - 07:45 AM, said:

clan assaults absolutely need a buff. because clan heavies are outright better.

They need a buff to keep up with IS assaults, not because of Clan heavies, because there are other factors as to why people don't take 2 Whales and 2 Mist Lynx (mainly the fact that you have 2 worthless mechs) and because CW isn't the only mode that matters (and still matters less than any other mode give how bad it is, still).

Khobai, on 05 May 2016 - 07:45 AM, said:

and the bad pilots are the ones using clan assaults in CW.

Not really what my scores say

Against IS teams, if you are facing a fatty push on the first wave, that is perfect for mechs like my Dakka Whale, which is better at melting that sort of weight than any other Clan heavy. Clan heavies are just semi-better suited to brawling which is probably the only way Clan heavies can beat the IS mid-range laser vomit.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 05 May 2016 - 07:58 AM.

[LordMelvin]

In a vacuum yes, heavies will be better. They are faster than assaults with comparable firepower and have better armor than mediums. If you get caught out in a heavy you have a better chance of getting back to safety because you'll be tanky enough to weather the first few volleys until your speed can get you back to cover.

With the right application though some assaults can outperform heavies. For sheer frontline spearhead skullf**king Atlases and King Crabs are terrifying. Battlemasters and Banshees do very well with large engines and plenty of face punch. The Executioner can maneuver like a medium for short periods of time with MASC with is scary for a 95 ton assault. The Zeus is basically an oversized heavy. The Dire Wolf, while a glorified turret, can put a blistering amount of firepower on a single chassis.

The strength of assaults is not their armor necessarily but rather their ability to carry more overall equipment than lighter chassis. This includes engines. The FotM Black Knight does ~83 with a 58 point alpha. An XL 400 Battlemaster-3M does ~82 with the same build and ~60 more armor. Quirks mean the Black Knight projects a little better but the Battlemaster can eat a full alpha.

[TercieI]

Jman5, on 04 May 2016 - 04:30 PM, said:

Really? I had the exact opposite experience. I created an alt account a couple months ago and once I got the cash, the only mech I used was a Warhawk without speed tweak. My biggest issue was the lack of movement coming from my teammates. I had great difficulty slowing myself down because I was so used to a faster pace of play.

That was my experience too. Running the trial BNC, it took me a couple matches to realize I had to slow down...then it was easy.

[Iron Pete Chiwalski]

TercieI, on 05 May 2016 - 07:59 AM, said:

That was my experience too. Running the trial BNC, it took me a couple matches to realize I had to slow down...then it was easy.

Same here. it was odd being so far out in front of the rest of my team so early in the match. In an Atlas of all things. I constantly had to wait for the mediums and heavies to catch up.

[Sir Wulfrick]

I'd say it's not about any particular tiers. Assault mechs are awesome (no pun intended) in teams, whereas they're inconsistent at best in PuG matches.

[wanderer]

Quote

I created an alt account a couple months ago and once I got the cash, the only mech I used was a Warhawk without speed tweak

To be honest, Warhawks aren't slow. They're not fast either, but 64kph or so puts them in the speed range of slower heavies, which is to say they won't generally get left trailing like a 48kph Dire Whale.