28 replies to this topic

[UnofficialOperator]

Hello to all you new recruits!

Rejoice, for I have successfully departed the unwashed and unshavened masses of Tier 5! The rumors are true, there is valet parking here!

Tryharding and metameching, I live, I die, I live again!

And finally, after 39 days and 1390 matches, I have fought my way across Pugland, through the gates of Valhalla and into Tier 1!

Shiny and Chrome!!!!! Shiny and Chrome!!!!!

Ask me anything so you too can rise up through the ranks and share the bountiful spoils of war in T1 where consumables are plentiful and gold mechs abound!

PS: Screenshots for epeen

Edited by UnofficialOperator, 13 August 2016 - 08:25 PM.

[Roughneck45]

How many mechs and builds did you use?

[UnofficialOperator]

I used a variety at the start of Season 1 as I was a returning player from 2012 and unsure of which mech to use. As my skill level was low, I stuck to assaults as it was the most survivable if you made a mistake. Faster mechs get out of position faster when you are new and have zero map knowledge. And my experience in lighter mechs was not good.

I read a lot on metamechs and settled on the KGC 000B with 4 uac x 5 in Season 1 as I realized its better to stick to 1 mech to grind and it has better punching power. The speed was a problem once you reach a certain tier level i.e. you get nascared or left behind. Hence I was looking to a slightly faster mech which has comparable punching power.

I primarily used the Kodiak 3 with 2x uac 5 & 2x uac 10 (add in er ppc or lasers for finisher) + Targeting Computer for Season 2. I would try to include AMS, Clan Active Probe in order to help the team better.

Modules are as per metamechs.com i.e. Radar Derp, Advance Seismic, weapon cooldown mods. I couldnt get airstrike or artillery to work for me, so I primarily used 9x9 cooldown and UAV. UAV helps Puggers a lot as it provides confidence for them to push and of course for those who hide behind and lurm on the team.

Edited by UnofficialOperator, 13 August 2016 - 09:06 PM.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Welcome to the high XP club.

Here is my question:


Group or solo que?

P.S. next quirk pass I am assigning you -50% to E peen for using the skill bear to hit tier 1.

Edited by Boogie138, 13 August 2016 - 09:46 PM.

[Elizander]

Can this be done with an Urbanmech?

[UnofficialOperator]

Boogie138, on 13 August 2016 - 09:44 PM, said:

Welcome to the high XP club.

Here is my question:


Group or solo que?

P.S. next quirk pass I am assigning you -50% to E peen for using the skill bear to hit tier 1.

I did almost all matches in solo queue. Maybe less than 20 matches in group queue near the end. Even then the group queue wasn't as difficult as I expected.

Hmm I think using Skill Bear is ok for a new player. If you look at the leaderboards, those really good players could probably reach T1 even with a light mech with high WLR and KDR.

[UnofficialOperator]

Elizander, on 13 August 2016 - 10:00 PM, said:

Can this be done with an Urbanmech?

Depends on your time horizon and skill level I guess. I have pretty poor experience with lights and none with urbies so I dont really know. But if you look at the leaderboards, there are extremely good light pilots with high KDR and WLR so I am thinking its possible .

In my opinion though I feel that lighter a mech is, the less forgiving it is and harder to pilot and hence I wouldn't recommend it for a new player. An experience pilot could probably accomplish this in an alt account.

PS: Actually I have a longer answer for you later on this. Got to go for lunch first. Basically I believe that most success is driven by meta. Meta is driven by map size, map type & weapons type & mechanics. The higher skilled pilots can ignore more of these conditions as their skill level increases.

Edited by UnofficialOperator, 13 August 2016 - 10:31 PM.

[Rogue Jedi]

UnofficialOperator, on 13 August 2016 - 10:27 PM, said:

In my opinion though I feel that lighter a mech is, the less forgiving it is and harder to pilot and hence I wouldn't recommend it for a new player. An experience pilot could probably accomplish this in an alt account.

I am not a tier 1 player, but I have found slow (below 70kph) Mechs to be far less forgiving than fast (120+).

now I am tempted to make an alt account just to see how high I could get during the cadet bonus period.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

UnofficialOperator, on 13 August 2016 - 10:27 PM, said:

PS: Actually I have a longer answer for you later on this. Got to go for lunch first. Basically I believe that most success is driven by meta. Meta is driven by map size, map type & weapons type & mechanics. The higher skilled pilots can ignore more of these conditions as their skill level increases.

While I do not disagree, that has nothing to do with PSR.
To make a point, I litterally LURM'd my way into tier 1.

Side note, I do not agree with your conclusion on light mechs.

[UnofficialOperator]

Boogie138, on 14 August 2016 - 12:48 AM, said:

While I do not disagree, that has nothing to do with PSR.
To make a point, I litterally LURM'd my way into tier 1.

Side note, I do not agree with your conclusion on light mechs.

There are 2 issues at play here for raising tiers which contributed to why I did not go with lurms for levelling up

1. How PSR increase or decrease
2. How lurms work

1. I believe there is a chart around where they showed how PSR increased during a win/loss. The most important criteria is damage dealt. As long as your damage dealt was very high, even in a loss, your PSR increased or remained constant. So my criteria is to maintain high damage for every game, even in a loss.

2. This is anecdotal but I have not seen very high damages in PUG solo queue from lurmers. Usually some pilots would voice out that they have lurms and they are usually in the 200 to 400 damage range maybe? And they require a lot of assistance in the form of modules required, narcs, tags and map choice in order to perform well. So far I have only seen a few times when a large number of the team bought lurms and there was a narc involved and then only did the team do well. Even then the damage was pretty spread out. I feel this is unreliable if you are solo queue pugging.

The reason why I chose direct damage weapons like ballistics was because as a new player, I did not want to deal with heat issues (less heat means more continuous fire, especially during a brawl) and less need to rely on team mates in a game. PUG games are unreliable most of the time and most times you can only depend on yourself to get high damage dealt.

Anyway the time horizon is important as well for tiering. Given enough time and WLR, I guess any weapon can be used to tier up. In my experience, direct fire seems more reliable in getting a good score in a solo PUG.

TL:DR: High damage = psr increase whether its a win or loss

3. Which part do you not like about the light mechs?

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Anecdotal evidence, but I have a screen shot of my final tier 2 match. Well over 1k dmg, with an Orion VA lurm boat. About as non-meta as they come.
Point being, it puts out high dmg with ease (if you know what you are doing and the red team is clueless).

Does not mean anything though. TTK sucks, even with a target standing in the open. Youre just spreading damage all over the place. But again, high dmg so your PSR goes up and you can pretend you got gud.

As far as lights go: it is just a different skill set pure and simple. Telling others to avoid them tells me that you probably just dont have that skill set.

If anything, I could make the argument that rookies should avoid Skill Bear (kdk3). You wont learn as much in it because you have enough firepower and armor to derp your way out of a lot rookie moves.

[UnofficialOperator]

Boogie138, on 14 August 2016 - 02:36 AM, said:

Anecdotal evidence, but I have a screen shot of my final tier 2 match. Well over 1k dmg, with an Orion VA lurm boat. About as non-meta as they come.
Point being, it puts out high dmg with ease (if you know what you are doing and the red team is clueless).

Does not mean anything though. TTK sucks, even with a target standing in the open. Youre just spreading damage all over the place. But again, high dmg so your PSR goes up and you can pretend you got gud.

As far as lights go: it is just a different skill set pure and simple. Telling others to avoid them tells me that you probably just dont have that skill set.

If anything, I could make the argument that rookies should avoid Skill Bear (kdk3). You wont learn as much in it because you have enough firepower and armor to derp your way out of a lot rookie moves.

Exactly thats why I said it was anecdotal. Anyway just going by my experience, ballistics seems to be the way to go to get large numbers and tier up . I have very seldom seen lurmers in solo pugs get very high score. However the ballistics guys usually get the 600-800 above damages or high KDR.

Yes you are right as to why I do not use a light mech to tier up as I feel that my skillset is lacking, having returned after 4 years I do not have the map knowledge or positioning knowledge to play lighter mechs. In my opinion, the better pilots should be those in lighter faster mechs where speed and positioning is key. You would need to have very good map knowledge and positioning on the map hence my personal stance is I do not recommend new players to try light mechs.

For playing Assaults, there is only so much movement lines that you can take in game so it helps out a new player if he does not have to remember so much or where to go about on each map. The lack of speed actually helps a new player to avoid pushing too far and to stay with the murderball where there is strength in focus fire.

Survivability is important to a new player as the longer he stays alive, the better he can learn other maneuvers, the more he can learn about how to play the rest of the map or about how a typical game plays out from start to finish.

[Inner Wolf]

I own three Arctic Cheetahs and I am in tier 5. As of now, I do not own any other mechs, because I haven't finished mastering these three. I would like to advance in tier as a light pilot. Assaults and heavy mechs are not my cup of tea... personally.

If I were to work my way to tier 1 with the Cheetah... would it be considered a tainted accomplishment because I used only one chassis?

I read the Cheetah used to be hated for being overpowered, but since has been nerfed... would it still be considered to be like the KDK-3 as too easy to use to advance in tiers?

I've never used the KDK-3 myself, but I have fought against A LOT of them. I learned to stay behind them, out of sight... or die.

Edited by Inner Wolf, 14 August 2016 - 04:34 AM.

[UnofficialOperator]

Inner Wolf, on 14 August 2016 - 04:32 AM, said:

I own three Arctic Cheetahs and I am in tier 5. As of now, I do not own any other mechs, because I haven't finished mastering these three. I would like to advance in tier as a light pilot. Assaults and heavy mechs are not my cup of tea... personally.

If I were to work my way to tier 1 with the Cheetah... would it be considered a tainted accomplishment because I used only one chassis?

I read the Cheetah used to be hated for being overpowered, but since has been nerfed... would it still be considered to be like the KDK-3 as too easy to use to advance in tiers?

I've never used the KDK-3 myself, but I have fought against A LOT of them. I learned to stay behind them, out of sight... or die.

Ah personally I am the opposite. Mastered the Ach but not my cup of tea. Hmm in my opinion theres no need to mind what other peoples values are towards using a mech. This is a game after all, so use the Artic Cheetah as long as you are happy with your style of gameplay and your own progress.

[ZonaW]

graz to UnofficialOperator, it's been a long trek.

Innerwolf: I agree with UnofficialOperator. Mastering the ACH is not easy, especially for a new player since there are so little room for any mistake. One wrong position or careless dash and that's it. On the other hand, on a good match it's so freakishy fun.

I'd like to get roadrunner warhorn to my ACH..

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

If you guys think the ACH is unforgiving, I'd hate to see what you think of the new firestarter...or panther

[Inner Wolf]

Keshav Murali, on 14 August 2016 - 07:57 AM, said:

If you guys think the ACH is unforgiving, I'd hate to see what you think of the new firestarter...or panther

If you don't mind me picking your tier 1 brain... Since I love the ACH so much, would you recommend the Firestarters as my first IS light mech? They seem pretty similar as far as loadouts but I would probably need radar derp.

Thanks.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Inner Wolf, on 14 August 2016 - 04:32 AM, said:

If I were to work my way to tier 1 with the Cheetah... would it be considered a tainted accomplishment because I used only one chassis?

Objectively, no, it is still a light mech which has a relatively high learning curve. Still requires you to put out high(ish) dmg to go up in tier. Though it is still one of the best lights, I would say ACH is in a pretty good place right now and is not the absurd OP "leg cheater" it was upon release.

Subjectively, personally I would say you need to diversify. Nothing wrong with having an absolute favorite class/chassis/variant whatever. IME, one of the best ways to learn to fight against other play styles, weight classes, or tactics is to learn how to use them yourself.

Plus if you want to get into leagues or comps(or faction play to an extent), then you may not always be able to use that one favorite mech you have.

Inner Wolf, on 14 August 2016 - 10:25 AM, said:

If you don't mind me picking your tier 1 brain... Since I love the ACH so much, would you recommend the Firestarters as my first IS light mech? They seem pretty similar as far as loadouts but I would probably need radar derp.

Thanks.

Ostensibly they play fairly similarly to the ACH, biggest problem is post re-scale they got HUGE. Their arms are incredibly easy to shoot off now, so focus on variants that have a good number of torso mounted weapons.

[Inner Wolf]

Thanks. I will consider the torso mounts on the FS9's

I meant no disrespect to anyone that isn't tier 1. I'm not and may never be, but I know the top tierS had to fight to get there... so I try to pick the brains of any willing to impart wisdom.

Respect.

Edited by Inner Wolf, 14 August 2016 - 03:08 PM.

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

Inner Wolf, on 14 August 2016 - 10:25 AM, said:

If you don't mind me picking your tier 1 brain... Since I love the ACH so much, would you recommend the Firestarters as my first IS light mech? They seem pretty similar as far as loadouts but I would probably need radar derp.

Thanks.

My exp bar has no worth and you shouldn't care too much about it.

The firestarters were once the best light mech in the game with the downside of needing to get close to do damage.

Firestarters got a good bit larger with the rescale, and seem to have been made of wet toilet paper ever since, which is why I would want to tell you not to pick them up, but except locust and commando, all the IS lights got bigger.

They are indeed similar in loadout to the cheetah, being a full out energy boat but lacking ECM, so if that's your thing, go for it!

Just don't poke from the same place twice or get into a fight you are not sure of winning. (Aka, don't duel another light mech without support and don't facehug.) Shoot, and move on. (but these apply to all the fast lights)

As boogie said, the arms have always tanked a lot, so I'd say FS9-A, S and H