88 replies to this topic

[Horse Pryde]

I got a new laptop and have now loaded the game and love it. Have been waiting a while to get into it as my old machine didn't have everything you'd want to be able to play.

This is where i stand:
I haven't found a style i love yet. Ive got 6 kills, 49 kill assists and 20 deaths in my 25 missions, my first 4 missions did not go well at all.
I have done the most damage with LRM's as they are the easiest to be accurate with. I would love to be a brawler but I am not sure I have the pilot skill for that yet but I'm improving.
I love the Direwolf as it is the mech that got me into CBT in the first place but is that practical? I also really like the Timberwolf or Madcat.
I don't want to be a liability to any assigned team by taking up an assault spot in a drop.
I do not have an issue with spending a little $ on the game. Just wondering where to go from here.

any tips or help is much appreciated.

Edited by Horse Pryde, 09 June 2016 - 06:06 AM.

[TercieI]

Play the trials until you find a style you love. Stop LRMing as soon as possible.

Edited by TercieI, 06 June 2016 - 09:04 AM.

[Digital_Angel]

Overall, Terciel gave great advice. Keep playing some of the trials until you know what you like. Nothing worse than blowing all your starting cash on a mech you end up hating. If you just have to buy a mech now because those C-Bills are burning a hole in your pocket, Timberwolf is a solid mech that can do almost anything fairly well (energy, balistics, missiles, jump jets, decent speed, reasonably tanky), but people know it is good and will concentrate on it more than most other Heavies.

Also, once you get out of Tier 5, LRMs will become less and less effective. They CAN be great weapons (even at higher tiers) once you learn how to use them well, but there are several hard counters to them in the game and they loose effectiveness a lot once you reach Tier 3 and above.

If you haven't run through a lot of the tutorials in the Academy, you can earn about another 5 million C-Bills that way too.

[TercieI]

My anti-LRM advice is actually not primarily because they're ineffective against good players (though they are), but because they do not help you develop any of the skills needed to be good at this game. My assumption is always that people desire to be good if they're asking questions.

[Koniving]

Horse Pryde, on 06 June 2016 - 08:58 AM, said:

I got a new laptop and have now loaded the game and love it. Have been waiting a while to get into it as my old machine didn't have everything you'd want to be able to play.

This is where i stand:
I haven't found a style i love yet. Ive got 6 kills, 49 kill assists and 20 deaths in my 25 missions, my first 4 missions did not go well at all.
I have done the most damage with LRM's as they are the easiest to be accurate with. I would love to be a brawler but I am not sure I have the pilot skill for that yet but I'm improving.
I love the Direwolf as it is the mech that got me into CBT in the first place but is that practical? I also really like the Timberwolf or Madcat.
I don't want to be a liability to any assigned team by taking up an assault spot in a drop.
I do not have an issue with spending a little $ on the game. Just wondering where to go from here.

any tips or help is much appreciated.

Strangely your name color suggests you haven't yet done all 25 cadet missions.

That aside:
Dire Wolves are great mechs -- if you're 1) patient and 2) extremely situationally aware.
Everything about assault mechs is about position. Minimize firing arcs by having allies nearby to cover your flanks. Focus enemies down and deliver pain to them rapidly. Let nothing get behind you. Don't get cut off from allies. All these things are more difficult with a Dire Wolf than any other mech due to its slow speed.

Timberwolf / Mad Cat is good in every iteration of Mechwarrior and Battletech because it is the pinnacle of versatility.

Supplement your LRM use with additional weapons. Any good LRM boat has the ability to brawl when it must.

This is a bit dated, but it is a fine example of a brawl-capable LRM mech that I often use as a command mech.

Another one that I dug up while looking for a different match; watching it through I'm actually surprised I haven't spread it around more because it was really good. Also a battlecry I haven't used in forever, "Tacos with Onions!"

Has a Battlemaster and a Jagermech match, and starts with a Jagermech match that was kinda meh.
Battlemaster is a brawling LRM boat; you'll see the brawling fun come up before too long.
(Shar Wolf is in that video as "Himself.")

Anyway, exactly how to build a brawling LRM boat depends on the size of the mech; something in the 55 ton range would need to focus on fewer launchers and more brawler while something bigger can have more launchers and less guns as the tankiness can help mitigate the lack of close range firepower (as would all that squishy softening you've been delivering before they got close).

Check out Smurfy http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab and take a peek at different mechs. Try some experimental builds. See what you can come up with and perhaps set a goal to getting and making one.

Edited by Koniving, 06 June 2016 - 10:36 AM.

[Horse Pryde]

TercieI, on 06 June 2016 - 09:24 AM, said:

My anti-LRM advice is actually not primarily because they're ineffective against good players (though they are), but because they do not help you develop any of the skills needed to be good at this game. My assumption is always that people desire to be good if they're asking questions.

Oh i have been trying the last few matches to stick with lasers and ballistic weapons so i can learn to place shots best with them. I'm still a work in progress but I enjoy the game enough to take the time to get better.

[TercieI]

Horse Pryde, on 06 June 2016 - 10:41 AM, said:

Oh i have been trying the last few matches to stick with lasers and ballistic weapons so i can learn to place shots best with them. I'm still a work in progress but I enjoy the game enough to take the time to get better.

Good! That's the most important thing: Always improving. I had 5 kills in my first 100 games, now I play on a Tier 1 comp team. Practice is an amazing thing.

[Rhavin]

If you find yourself wanting to become an assault pilot look at spending all of your cbills on one mech. Alternatively you could spend some RL money and grab 3 Kodiaks in the store for 20 US.
Dire wolves are powerful when they have support or a great pilot, but they are slow and easy kills when they are alone. The Kodiak lineup has simular builds to Dire wolves but is capable of going much much faster.

Timberwolf is a great mech, real jack of all trades when you start moving pods around. But they are a priority target. You will never be ignored when piloting a Timberwolf . They have speed, armor and firepower in a combination that no other clan mech has.

Depending on how much you want to spend the best option if you want to play FW on the clan side is the Clan Wave 3 pack. If you buy the ebon jaguar pack at 90 bucks you get the best clan light (Arctic Cheetah ) 2nd best clan medium (shadowcat ) and the arguably tied for 2nd best clan heavy (the ebon jaguar) plus all thier mechbays, and 3 faction packs that have 3 paint schemes and 9 colors, so,e warhorns and cockpit fluff. One each of those mechs is a prime (s) which will grab you extra cbills when you play in it just like a hero mech. Also you get so,e premium time to double your exp and cbills. It's the best deal for a player interested in the clans.

The ebon jaguar is a mini timberwolf, it's just as fast but lighter armored so it has more tonnage than TW to mount guns and ammo, plus it can boat anything due to havING a wide variety of pods to mount. It's only competition for 2nd is the hellbringer, and only because hellbringer has ecm because it can't carry the same payload a jaguar can.

The shadowcat is an ecm capable , MASC toting medium, whike it suffers from lack of hardpoints it can reach light mech speeds when you turn on the MASC, works great as a skirmish mech or a sniper mech, but can brawl well in a pinch with shorter range weapons. I run mine with AC 10 and medium lasers and brawl, but it can be effective with LRM loadouts and a tag laser.

Arctic Cheetah, best light in the game imho. Fast, has ecm, has great hitboxes, can boat medium/small lasers or SRMs or just tote an er large laser and snipe.

Should you decide that's a bit much, try the Kodiak pack for clan play but it's a regular battlemech, not an omni. Or look at warhammer and Maurader packs for Innersphere mechs, both are great heavy mechs, but neither are lrm boats.

Investing some money in MWO is not a pay to win thing, it won't make you a better pilot but it will make you better equipped because you can spend your cadet cbills on weapons and upgrades to truly customize your mech. Building a mech you enjoy playing is half of the fun in this game and you cant do that when you are cbill broke.

[Rogue Jedi]

if you like LRMs then I second what Koniving said about a brawling LRM Mech, set up a Mech with a good short range load out and some LRMs, the Timber Wolf is one of the best Mechs for that sort of role because you can take 20-30 LRM tubes with plenty of tonnage available for 4-6MPLs + 2-3 machine guns and Jumpjets as well as max armor, adequate ammo and cooling ^{(provided you do not fire the pulse lasers with the LRMs).}

Warhawk, Mad Dog, Hellbringer and Ebon Jaguar can also do that sort of build pretty well.

some will tell you [insert weapon name] is useless because [reasons], and they will not be wrong but they may not be correct ether.
Some weapons are objectively better than others however some people are more effective with the "bad" weapons than the "good" weapons, same with Mechs finding "your" Mech is far more useful than taking "the best" Mech
for example. during the "PPC+AC5 and PPC+Gauss Poptart" meta days I was far more effective with SRM brawlers despite the fact that at the time SRMs and brawling were both widely considered to be useless.

I am not saying disregard advice but weigh it and make an informed decision, if 1 person says LRMs are great, another says LRMs are worthless and a third says LRMs can be fine in certain circumstances they are probably all correct.

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 06 June 2016 - 11:22 AM.

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

TercieI, on 06 June 2016 - 09:24 AM, said:

My anti-LRM advice is actually not primarily because they're ineffective against good players (though they are), but because they do not help you develop any of the skills needed to be good at this game. My assumption is always that people desire to be good if they're asking questions.

Great advice!

learning to aim weapons is easiest in the lowest tiers- so might as well practice while you can!
Lower your sensitivity, the default is absolutelly terrible. I personally play at 1.8 (almost all the way to the right of the slider).

Learning how to peak corners, or any map movement for that matter, is less punishing in the lower tiers as well. In the upper teirs, peaking at the wrong time can mean insta-death! Take the time to learn the hard stuff while you can in the lower tiers- and have fun at the same time!

[Void Angel]

Horse Pryde, on 06 June 2016 - 08:58 AM, said:

I got a new laptop and have now loaded the game and love it. Have been waiting a while to get into it as my old machine didn't have everything you'd want to be able to play.

This is where i stand:
I haven't found a style i love yet. Ive got 6 kills, 49 kill assists and 20 deaths in my 25 missions, my first 4 missions did not go well at all.
I have done the most damage with LRM's as they are the easiest to be accurate with. I would love to be a brawler but I am not sure I have the pilot skill for that yet but I'm improving.
I love the Direwolf as it is the mech that got me into CBT in the first place but is that practical? I also really like the Timberwolf or Madcat.
I don't want to be a liability to any assigned team by taking up an assault spot in a drop.
I do not have an issue with spending a little $ on the game. Just wondering where to go from here.

any tips or help is much appreciated.

Most of what I'd say has already been covered, so I'll only reiterate a few points.

First, the meta is a rule of thumb. Normally the metagame comes about by imitating the competitive scene, where often a small number of tactics have been found to be the most viable, and therefore competitive. However, like best-in-slot lists for MMOs, sometimes the top-tier meta only works best if you have all the pieces - meaning skillsets, tactics, and teammates who do the same things. This means that you can still be effective and have fun with anything that works for you; the meta is usually objectively better, but you can worry about top-level play when you get there. So, do what works for you, but take the meta seriously and learn how and why it works - if only to know what meta players are likely to be able to do to you.

Second, as some have told you already, the trial 'mechs are a good way to figure out what kinds of 'mechs and weapons you enjoy. Once you know that, buy the corresponding 'mech (preferably one that appears at the top of a lot of people's tier lists.) Recognize, however, that many 'mechs - depending on their available loadouts, etc - rely heavily on Pilot Skill unlocks to achieve their full potential. This has been particularly true of my Ebon Jaguars and Hellbringers; both came highly recommended, but until I progressed far enough into the skill trees to get doubled Basics, I was starting to be afraid that I had made a mistake. Give the builds time, and pay attention to what works now - a very effective build with doubled basics may overheat one critically important alpha too soon to really shine when you first pick up the 'mech.

And finally, though you haven't mentioned it, I want to make clear a point on which many players are mistaken: Clan 'mechs are not more expensive (in terms of c-bills) than their Inner Sphere counterparts. Many players assume this is the case because the purchase price for an individual 'mech is so much more expensive: but that's so because the Clan OmniMechs come pre-upgraded, while the Inner Sphere often has to refit their 'mechs with Endo-steel, Double Heat Sinks, XL Engines, etc. Overall, the cost to buy and upgrade a Clan 'mech is roughly the same as for the Inner sphere.

[Horse Pryde]

Do the trial mech's stay for as long as I want or do they go away if I purchase a mech?

[Barkem Squirrel]

If you are looking at LRMs, but want to be able to try other play stiles there are always the 55 ton mediums. Griffins, Shadow Hawks and Wolverines. You can run Auto cannons, LRMs, SRMs, and some lasers on these. The 3M Griffin is a little bugger of a LRM mech.

One things LRMs will do for new players is make them learn situation awareness. Plus live longer and see how things develop.

The ability to live longer in of it's self is very important. So is the ability to use one chassis to run various load outs, which these three allow.

Now heavies there is always the jagermech pack with three mechs or the battlemaster pack if you want to spend some money. The Jagermech A and the battlemaster 1S are some of the best LRM boats out there.

I think that the trial mechs are changed every month or so for variety.

[TercieI]

Horse Pryde, on 06 June 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

Do the trial mech's stay for as long as I want or do they go away if I purchase a mech?

You can always play trials, though they do rotate. (I have 300+ mechs and have played trial mechs in the last few months to complete Steam achievements).

[Horse Pryde]

I did have 1 cadet mission left but got that completed.
I took my 21 million C-bills and got myself a DireWolf S. Its my favorite Mech and i will still rotate between it and the other trial Mechs. I just figured if I was going to learn it would be on something I enjoy playing anyway.
Thanks to everyone for your advice. I truly appreciate it. See you on the battlefields.

[Fiona Marshe]

Horse,

While you build up your cash again (DireWolf is not a good mech to learn the right play habits), think about:
a. Do you want to play Faction Warfare (and which House or Clan you favour)
b. What your 240t drop deck will look like in 3 months time.

This will influence your early purchases.

The standard 'starter' pack for new players that is recommended time and again are 3 Hunchbacks with your cadet bonus.
a. the 3 variants have different weapon foci (AC, laser and missiles)
b. you learn to twist and have enough speed to also manoeuvre
c. gaining Elite skill x2 bonus makes a big difference to the handling
d. by the time you have Elite/Mastery on the 3 hunchbacks, you know enough about the game to know your limitations and which mechs to spend your c-bills on.

[BaconTWOfourACTUAL]

As said before, ditch the LRMS. If I spot you in an LRM boat, I will tear you up with my Spider-5k... Nothing worse than: TARGET...Red Circle Fire... Target...Red Circle....Fire...

Also as said above, while it may be satisfying to see the hit indicator, and know you're doing damage, you don't learn how to properly pilot from hanging back and firing salvo after salvo.

Myself, and many others make it a habit to look for LRM boats, to destroy them early to save from being annoyed during the match. We get annoyed, not because we're hit, but because we continuously look for cover, which makes your LRMs (primary weapon) completely and totally useless.

I have a Shadow Hawk (Medium) which has great versatility, and I have an LRM10 on its shoulder, just to reach out and touch somebody, however its not my main attack. I have 2 MPLs and an AC 5 for that.
Not to mention I have AMS, which until my ammo runs out, will protect myself and my lance from your LRMs.

[Audacious Aubergine]

Is the King Crab champion build one of the trials at the moment? If so, play a few games in that - if you can handle that alright then you might not have too shabby luck with assaults (though I'll freely admit that I'm biased towards King Crabs - no other assault mech that I've used is as effective in my hands)

[Horse Pryde]

BaconTWOfourACTUAL, on 08 June 2016 - 04:42 AM, said:

As said before, ditch the LRMS. If I spot you in an LRM boat, I will tear you up with my Spider-5k... Nothing worse than: TARGET...Red Circle Fire... Target...Red Circle....Fire...

I went with the S variant as it is more of a brawler for a Direwolf. I havent changed it from its original but it doesn't have any stock LRM's and I dont plan on adding any. I have only played a few times with it but had good success both times. I have tried to mix it up a lot and still use the trial mech's also. I also dropped $20 and got the Kodiak package. Still a lot left to learn but putting the time in.

[MOBAjobg]

Horse Pryde, on 08 June 2016 - 05:19 AM, said:

I went with the S variant as it is more of a brawler for a Direwolf. I havent changed it from its original but it doesn't have any stock LRM's and I dont plan on adding any. I have only played a few times with it but had good success both times. I have tried to mix it up a lot and still use the trial mech's also. I also dropped $20 and got the Kodiak package. Still a lot left to learn but putting the time in.

In my own opinion, you've made a wise choice to spend $20 for the Kodiak package. It should give you considerable enjoyment as a mech pilot.

Just before I got into the cockpit of a KDK-3, my mech of choice was Dire Wolf (DWF-S & DWF-W).

I can provide a few base statistics for comparison and the KDK-3 is a mech that can heavily influence the outcome of a "quick play" game.

DWF-S win/loss ratio is 25/39 = 0.64 and kill/death ratio is 41/49 = 0.84
DWF-W win/loss ratio is 90/110 = 0.82 and kill/death ratio is 118/142 = 0.83
KDK-3 win/loss ratio is 305/234 = 1.30 and kill/death ratio is 634/352 = 1.80