3 replies to this topic

[Sable]

As a preview of my overall opinion of this round on PTS i wasn't feelin it at all. Phase 2 and 3 were almost there and some middle ground there would have been great but phase 4 just feels like we took two steps back and then dived off a cliff. Lets just go down the list.


Gauss Rifles - I feel really disappointed that the charge up was put back on the gauss. It's back to being a duel use only weapon as using one gauss rifle isn't worth the effort you have to use to focus on charging and releasing to use only 1. I thought the long long cooldown and the 100% explosion chance were fair enough disadvantages to allow the gauss to be a useful weapon again as a single weapon. The 20 powerdraw made sure it had a significant heat cost when using them in pairs.

cERPPC - I can't say i'm surprised that the damage was lowered from 15 to 10+splash but i do wish that PGI would try a middle ground approach like 12+1.5 splash. I mean it's 15 heat, there has to be some kind of appeal to hit over the large pulse. But like i said a bit disappointed is all that they did a full retrack instead of middle ground.

Lasers - duration and cooldown changes don't seem significant enough to make much difference across the board, at least to me, But that wasn't the issue before, it was always about the total alphastrike which is what energy draw was accomplishing before this patch. I was starting to get the feeling in the other rounds of testing that you wouldn't have to worry about heat that much as long as you focused on not going over your energy draw limits. It was really great too. It forced you to regulate your fire but didn't keep you from punching harder when you needed too

Heat Sink Changes - This was not enjoyable or wanted at all. Sure it does limit fire, but that is because once you heat up it takes so long to cooldown long enough to fire again that you might as well alphastrike and then hide for 30 seconds. Even a warhawk with 28 double heat sinks was not enjoyable. The fun factor was at an all time low.

Autocannons - It was nice to see the jam times lowered a bit for the smaller caliber UACs but upping the jam chance especially on UAC2s was kinda weird.


Overall opinion was negative but i believe it was mostly do to the heat sink changes. There was no base line to compare weapon performace because the base line had been blown out of the water. They didn't seem to fit at all with the previous changes. There also didn't feel like there was any difference at all between single heat sinks and double heat sinks. Guess this ruins any chance of energy draw making it into next weeks patch.

Edited by Sable, 13 September 2016 - 06:21 PM.

[Arkroma]

Whoever proposed all these "low cap" thing needs to have a taste of their own idea.

While goose waffle is kinda of "useless" as a single weapon, you can wipe the floor with two of them. Mechs that can carry two goose waffles AND some supporting weapons suddenly become god-tier.

[Wintersdark]

Arkroma, on 13 September 2016 - 06:32 PM, said:

Whoever proposed all these "low cap" thing needs to have a taste of their own idea.

While goose waffle is kinda of "useless" as a single weapon, you can wipe the floor with two of them. Mechs that can carry two goose waffles AND some supporting weapons suddenly become god-tier.

Low cap is great. But it has to be low cap, high dissipation. This is low cap, low dissipation. In the former, what we WANT, you can actually output equal or more damage over time than live (as dissipation is what limits the majority of damage output overall, excepting dakka), but the low heat cap prevents huge alpha strikes.

Thus, LC-HD results in more damage over time oriented play, less alpha strike.

But this? Dissipation was nerfed in the PTS; depending on your build it could have been nerfed very heavily. For example, a 10-DHS mech when from dissipating 2.3 heat per second to dissipating 1.79 heat per second after skills. That's a monsterous nerf to lighter mechs.

[Kaptain]

Wintersdark, on 13 September 2016 - 06:40 PM, said:

That's a monsterous nerf to lighter mechs.

Or mixed weapon/mixed ranged assaults and heavies that were heavily reliant on those engine heatsinks. My mauler (fav assault and top 5 fav in my 85 mechs) 2xultra5, 2xLRM10, 6xML, 300std, 12xDHS +ES... By no means meta (hell I have LRMs on it ffs). On live once I am hot I can fall back to either the LRMs or the Ultra AC5s. On PTS4 either weapon fired by itself overheats me. Even cramming in 2 more of these .17 "double" heatsinks does not help.

This is not what any of us wanted when we said we wanted to test low cap with high dissipation. This is low cap and greatly reduced dissipation and its crap. I for one feel like they are doing it this way so they can point out how unpopular it is in the future. "See we gave you reduced capacity and no one liked it" Its a bait and switch if I have ever seen one.