61 replies to this topic

[Snazzy Dragon]

RestosIII, on 24 January 2017 - 12:18 AM, said:

Man, I really need to run some non-lore builds. When my instinctual reaction to something like that is a snort laugh because of the TBR ears being in my head, it's a sign I've been running them too long.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...680167870733284

Behold, the earless timber wolf that is colorblind friendly. No gauss cheese and it's still better than the whammy 2UAC5 + meds build for a variety of reasons.

[RestosIII]

Snazzy Dragon, on 24 January 2017 - 12:26 AM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...680167870733284

Behold, the earless timber wolf that is colorblind friendly. No gauss cheese and it's still better than the whammy 2UAC5 + meds build for a variety of reasons.

Not as much ammo as I'd like, because I enjoy having oodles of ammo, but if I ever want to make the mech engineers cry, I'll run that one.

[Scout Derek]

Snazzy Dragon, on 24 January 2017 - 12:26 AM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...680167870733284

Behold, the earless timber wolf that is colorblind friendly. No gauss cheese and it's still better than the whammy 2UAC5 + meds build for a variety of reasons.

Err....


That's kind of..... cool? I don't wanna say anything about it, but, my face can only do this:

(´ー｀)

(then again it's been awhile since I've tried messing with Timbers)

[Snazzy Dragon]

Scout Derek, on 24 January 2017 - 12:41 AM, said:

Err....


That's kind of..... cool? I don't wanna say anything about it, but, my face can only do this:

(´ー｀)

(then again it's been awhile since I've tried messing with Timbers)

Just because it's not meta doesn't mean it isn't effective. it benefits from being incredibly difficult to strip of firepower in PUG play.

[Y E O N N E]

You would be better off ditching that TC1 for another ton of ammo, though.

Yes, shocker, a TC1 isn't always ideal.

[Scout Derek]

Snazzy Dragon, on 24 January 2017 - 12:44 AM, said:

Just because it's not meta doesn't mean it isn't effective. it benefits from being incredibly difficult to strip of firepower in PUG play.

I know I know.... I just am hesitant as UAC nerfs made UACs significantly more prone to jamming while in the heat of battle.

[Snazzy Dragon]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 January 2017 - 12:47 AM, said:

You would be better off ditching that TC1 for another ton of ammo, though.

Yes, shocker, a TC1 isn't always ideal.

I've rarely run out of ammo on it because I have bad RNG when it comes to jams, but yes, swapping the tcomp for ammo is a good choice.

And yes I know you can just not double tap but I'm a sucker for dakka.

Edited by Snazzy Dragon, 24 January 2017 - 12:53 AM.

[LordNothing]

bushie needs to be a top tier medium. i doubt it because it just doesn't have meta features or useful quirks or severely inflated hardpoints. but we really need a few new murderbots that are a head above the others.

hard point inflation is another thing i like to point a finger at. clans have had 12+ laser vomit mechs since they dropped. the most laser points ive seen on any is mech is 9. is mechs also have this tendency to stick all its ballistic points in one section, this means you cant really get some of those clan esque ballistic boats. id like to see an is mech with ballistics in 4 sections, mechs with 3 sections are rare, the ctf-im, and at least one bushie varient will allow 3. omni pod system lets you put ballistic points anywhere you want, so its much easier to boat large clan ballistics than large is ballistics. and thats before you factor in tonnage. is still has the clan beat on missile space, with a few that have 7+ missile points stock. when we get new weapons i want to make sure the is gets the big end of the stick with reguards to missiles. i dont think ive seen a clan mech do more than 6. we either need is omnis or we need some mechs like the fafnir to give us a large array of ballistics. even, dare i say it, retrofit inflated hardpoints in some of the older mechs.

also, 14 slots per endo/ff upgrade. clan gets away with 7. is ff really needs a buff to justify 14 slots on anything but a light mech. either more points per ton or raise the armor caps on all sections when ff is installed. endo feels about right but the fact that it overshadows ff by a huge margin need to be balanced out by something. ferro needs to be more effective for is.

my take on engine problem is to simply allow players to move a couple engine crits into the ct, thus giving the engine only 2 crits on the st, meaning you wont die if it gets shot out.

Edited by LordNothing, 24 January 2017 - 01:03 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Snazzy Dragon, on 24 January 2017 - 12:52 AM, said:

And yes I know you can just not double tap but I'm a sucker for dakka.

I only remind people about that when they try to use the limp "don't have DPS when I need it" excuse for why UACs are "bad."

[RestosIII]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 January 2017 - 12:59 AM, said:

I only remind people about that when they try to use the limp "don't have DPS when I need it" excuse for why UACs are "bad."

But also, those UAC nerfs absolutely ruined my Stormcrow B, and by extension the Mr. Gargles B, lore build. I won't forgive PGI for that.

[LordNothing]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 January 2017 - 12:59 AM, said:

I only remind people about that when they try to use the limp "don't have DPS when I need it" excuse for why UACs are "bad."

im actually starting to run cacs more. they run cooler and are reliable, and are also on par with the guns on the is side. only caveat is that they have no quirk or module representation. of course with skill trees, that problem goes away.

[Paigan]

Snazzy Dragon, on 23 January 2017 - 11:08 PM, said:

[Snazzy rant]

I have to love that post alone for the competent use of paragraphs and punctuation to properly structure the thoughts.
Even decently used font decorations.
Yes, that's how far we've already come.
(And yes, I'm being arrogant and yes, I think it's urgently needed to state that unsocial behavior of not structuring one's thoughts properly for the reader is becoming more and more acceptable instead of bein critized. Idiocracy is nigh)

But on topic:

As someone playing purely clan Mechs (because lore reasons, becaue IS UI color is an unbearable disease and yes, because crappy tech without the lore's balancing mechanisms), I ...

... have to agree.

I can put it much shorter, though

- The 3-crit rule for engines is missing, meaning Clan Mechs are way more durable than they actually should be.
- The IS XL is WAY too fragile in comparison. If IS old tech would be WAY more robust than clans tech for its lack of firepower, then okay, but it isn't.

My balance idea would simply be:
- Loss of a C-XL side torso: -25% (or so) heat dissipation and speed
- Loss of a IS-XL side torso: -50% (or so) heat dissipation and speed

Edited by Paigan, 24 January 2017 - 01:24 AM.

[JudauAshta]

i think allowing clan tech on IS mech will solve all the problems.

i await the day i can use inner sphere ac20s on daishi

[Fox With A Shotgun]

My two cents on the state of this, with respect to light mechs:

Clan Lights, with the exception of the ACH, generally have very unfavourable hitboxes, scale or geometry to compensate for their cXL.

MLX has arm-mounted weapons, and it has low-slung gorilla arms which are almost as large as both its STs combined, making it ridiculously easy to disarm.
KFX has armor quirks on the large arms, but its even larger bell shaped STs have neither substantial struct nor armor quirks to protect them.
ADR has the same issue, with the addition of a giant hood that acts as a LRM catcher and counts as STs and CT.
JR7-IIC has the same issues as the standard JR7, which is that it acts like a giant walking CT.

Compare this to the IS mechs. Barring the GiantStarter (which, I must admit, is a walking deathtrap), most of the IS lights enjoy favourable scaling, animation and/or geometry. RVNs enjoy very high mounted hardpoints, a janky walking animation and a very tiny frontal profile. LCTs and COMs are minuscule and agile. SDRs are actually still really small and skinny relative to other 30 tonners; how I would love the KFX to take a diet and slim down some so it can dodge like a boss. All of the humanoids have well proportioned ST/CTs, making spreading damage a fairly reasonable task on them.

Clan OmniMechs, in particular, have hard-locked parts in omnipods that prevent them from being fully optimised in the same way that IS mechs can. Take a look at the MLX and its hard-locked CAP and JJs, and tell me that the cXL is a worthy tradeoff for having a hard-locked 1 ton of equipment that is on a tonnage-starved light. Hard-locked armor/struct/other fluffy bits of mech otherwise prevent the full use of hardpoints in others (KFX-S RT / LT, with ballistic hardpoints that can't get many useful things in them); how I would love to put a LBX20 in a KFX's RA, only to have it blocked by a single fixed armor slot.

I guess, if you look at it this way, the problem is not so much cXL on Clan Omnis as it is cXL on Clan BattleMechs. These can be sorted by giving them grossly inefficient engine sizes; for example, is a XL 375 really not excessive on a heavy? Why would you have a XL 210 on an ADR when you can have a XL 225 for more speed, cooling and crit space in exchange for an effective -0.5 tons of podspace? A hard-locked engine means that you have to work with it, and it's generally easier to counter a mech whose specs you are at least partially certain of, than a mech that may have literally anything in it.

To put it simply, cXL was fine before the addition of Clan BattleMechs. The fixed engine sizes made a knapsack packing problem out of the remaining podspace. You couldn't just upsize an engine if you wanted to go faster with a lighter payload, or go slower with a bigger payload. You got that amount of payload and speed, and you have to work with it. Fixed struct/armor/heatsinks constrained what you could stick on it; imagine a KDK-3 with a fixed heatsink on each ST. No more Bad Touch Bear because the UACs wouldn't fit. Now, it's become an utter nightmare to balance.

To add to this, I think another factor that made the cXL horrendously powerful to most people is that many of the favoured mechs for clans had very favourable geometry overall. While the DWF's box shape and small arms meant that it was literally impossible to shield STs and it became a LRM catching mitt in the open, the KDK has no such flaws in its geometry. ACH has perfectly-sized ST/CT/Arms on top of being very agile. It may not actually be necessary to nerf cXL if the clans' mechs were correspondingly larger to catch more incoming fire.

[Kasumi Sumika]

IS XL should works like Clan XL and that is ability to survived after 1 ST loss. Then adding some penalties like making slower move, decreased cooling efficiency and mech will be destroyed after 2 ST loss after 1 ST loss.

I rather break the lore for sake of balancing so IS XL can compete with Clans XL.

Edited by Kasumi Sumika, 24 January 2017 - 02:43 AM.

[a gaijin]

Aaaaaand CUT!

Well, that's a wrap. Good job, everybody.

Okay, let's go. Drinks are on me

[Deathlike]

Ugh, I already used up my Billy Madison quote for a different thread, so I won't use it here.

I'll do a quick summation:

If you don't understand the mechanics of your own game, this is the logic produced by people are soooooo out of touch (ironically not just balance) with how things work. Why do such people continue to work on balance? Are the ONLY running the special builds our balance overlord is running? Is there no review of the MWOWC or any subsequent league-style tourneys that have been recorded since? Has there even been talk with the people involved in the highest level of play (aka not the two people paid by PGI that work for NGNG)?

Just reading it and seeing all the other balance changes prior to this demonstrates the lack of attention to detail or just even basic comprehension of the game and its mechanics... and the longer this continues, the more people will call PGI out.

It's unacceptable when the people balancing this game talk like they are totally new to the game... instead of "being experienced veterans" that they claim to be in this industry.

[L3mming2]

Tarogato, on 23 January 2017 - 11:41 PM, said:

What if I told you...

clan mechs are typically very close to death by the time they've lost a side torso, so they might as well have innersphere XL anyways?

At least... that's my experience anyways. Generally when my side torso is gone, my CT is about to blow. I rarely lose a side torso and keep chuggin' along.

What if I told you...
the only reason thats the case is cos a load of ppl shoot the CT of a clan mech cos they know shooting the side torso wont kill it..

[Tarogato]

L3mming2, on 24 January 2017 - 04:33 AM, said:

What if I told you...
the only reason thats the case is cos a load of ppl shoot the CT of a clan mech cos they know shooting the side torso wont kill it..

I would say, "touché", but a load of people even at the competitive level prefer to shoot CT on IS mechs that are obviously XL, even though they know the side torso will kill it.

[Kmieciu]

Deathlike, on 24 January 2017 - 04:12 AM, said:

Just reading it and seeing all the other balance changes prior to this demonstrates the lack of attention to detail or just even basic comprehension of the game and its mechanics...

In my opinion the balance changes were somewhat correct: Warhammer was, and will still be the best IS heavy.
Dragon, Cataphract, Orion were underpowered and needed that buff. And bonus armor in place of structure is a huge change.

The way Summoner quirks were re-shuffled is brilliant IMHO: you can either take great (paywalled) hardpoints, or quirks - but not both.

Timberwolf and Night Gyr are both superb mechs, but exactly how much stronger are they compared to a Warhammer? The difference in performance is minimal. In my experience (solo, group and FW) the Timber is more dependable, but I had more "amazing" games in a Warhammer.

Edited by Kmieciu, 24 January 2017 - 04:58 AM.