10 replies to this topic

[Amatsukaze]

I have recently gotten into brawling in MWO & have begun experimenting with various brawler builds. For better or worse I am working with the Black Knight chassis.

At 1st I was going with a high Alpha build (8MPLs & enough Dbl sinks to do 3 alphas in rapid succession without shutting down on any map) & had a fair degree of success unless I got swarmed. Then I had several drops in a row where the other team pushed hard & I was spending more time twisting & chain firing to manage heat then anything. That got me to thinking about tweaking the build or firing groups to maximize DPS as opposed to Alpha.

Are there any schools of thought on this or does everyone do their own thing? In the brawls I have been in I have seen players using what appears to be both methods.

I appreciate any insight.

[Koniving]

High alpha is ideal for one on one battles. In fights of attrition I find that rapid dps and low heat firepower is better suited so you can take on enemy after enemy nonstop.

Sadly rapid dps mechs require a lot of face time. This leaves them very vulnerable at range.

[Jables McBarty]

Amatsukaze, on 03 March 2017 - 12:33 PM, said:

I have recently gotten into brawling in MWO & have begun experimenting with various brawler builds. For better or worse I am working with the Black Knight chassis.

At 1st I was going with a high Alpha build (8MPLs & enough Dbl sinks to do 3 alphas in rapid succession without shutting down on any map) & had a fair degree of success unless I got swarmed. Then I had several drops in a row where the other team pushed hard & I was spending more time twisting & chain firing to manage heat then anything. That got me to thinking about tweaking the build or firing groups to maximize DPS as opposed to Alpha.

Are there any schools of thought on this or does everyone do their own thing? In the brawls I have been in I have seen players using what appears to be both methods.

I appreciate any insight.

In my experience, MPLs aren't ideal brawling weapons so much as skirmishing weapons. Stay out at your max range, hit, get under cover, hit.

When brawling, the goal appears to be to use a mixture of SPLs/MLs with AC/20s and SRMs. Hit, twist while on CD, hit, repeat.

DPS (like a 3AC/5 Marauder) can be good if it causes screenshake and makes it impossible for the enemy to see you. But in general the DPS 'mech sits back and harrasses while the brawlers get up close and mix it up.

That's been my experience at least. Better players may say otherwise.

[Rogue Jedi]

Jables McBarty, on 03 March 2017 - 01:51 PM, said:

In my experience, MPLs aren't ideal brawling weapons so much as skirmishing weapons. Stay out at your max range, hit, get under cover, hit.

did you realy mean max range, or the edge of optomum, if you stay at max range your 8MPL alpha will be doing maybe 1 point of damage ^{(probably less)}, that does not seem effective to me.

I usualy use MPLs on Mechs moving 80-120kph ^{(small pulses are better on fast Mechs in the 125kph+ range)} and do brawl ^{(150m or less, keep firing and twisting until me or my target is dead)} or skirmish ^{(fire and move on, while movining at full speed from cover to cover)} with them, usualy 3-6 with some low heat backup weapons, and sometimes with an LRM rack as well so I am not completely worthless during the early match.

[Jables McBarty]

Rogue Jedi, on 03 March 2017 - 03:14 PM, said:

did you realy mean max range, or the edge of optomum, if you stay at max range your 8MPL alpha will be doing maybe 1 point of damage ^{(probably less)}, that does not seem effective to me.

Yes, that. Definitely that lol.

Quote

I usualy use MPLs on Mechs moving 80-120kph ^{(small pulses are better on fast Mechs in the 125kph+ range)} and do brawl ^{(150m or less, keep firing and twisting until me or my target is dead)} or skirmish ^{(fire and move on, while movining at full speed from cover to cover)} with them, usualy 3-6 with some low heat backup weapons, and sometimes with an LRM rack as well so I am not completely worthless during the early match.

I'm about the same

But with SRMs instead of the LRMs. Have a TBR and a MDD set up like that. And I guess my HBK-IIC-B, though that's more SRMs than MPLs.

[The Basilisk]

You will experience different results for both approaches dependant on the organisation level of your team and the enemy team.

When playing highly organized calling and focussing targets down, dps builds just suck.
On both sides of the medal.

When you are playing in a mixed team where one part of the team plays organized and the rest runs wild you may be able to use both strats to good success as long as the swarming group is large enough to swamp the enemy high alphas with constant barrages.
Your own high alphas will now be able to make the kills.

Generaly high frontload builds have always the advantage as long as you manage to concentrate the firepower of multiple mechs at one target to make quick kills, or as long as you concentrate on finalizing kills.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

In any case you need good sustained damage, that'ts nearly the same as DPS. Normally that would mean any kinds of ACs as they are cool.

But Blank Knight is laser only. I recall IS large pulse is about as heat efficient as medium pulse and nothing is better. So I would try to have 3 of them, in a group, as 3 is the ghost heat limit. All can carry 3 of them in hands, which is important for precision. Dump the rest on double heatsinks. If that seems too weak then I would try medium pulse, as you can have more of them, but they are fairly close range, not that large pulse has good range either.

But try first that 3 large pulse, it has fair range, relative good sustained damage, and they fire fast, so you fire them, then twist your side, if you need to stay visible to enemy, or if you can, peek, fire and hide behind hard cover to cool off.


If you are very new to game, you absolutely need to get double heat sinks if the mech doesn't have them as stock.

Endo upgrade depends on build and mech, as they take a lot of slots, you might not have enough, and as the upgrades always cost to switch, just take double heatsinks for starters as you will never switch that off. Deside on endo later. Same thing for engines, try to avoid changing any engine that you don't have in stock, as they are so daaam expensive to buy. Also in IS brawler you can't have XL engine, because that would limit your effective health too much.


Does it have any quirks that would make favouring some other lasers better; I got my game in queue in PTS and Smurfy doesn't show quirks, I just assumed it doesn't have anything that would make normal or ER lasers better.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

Here is ghost heat limits of different weapons.

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

Basic idea for IS tech available to black knight:
two normal/ER PPCs
three normal/ER/pulse large laser
6 med pulse or 6 normal medium, unlike others they are not linked together, so you can fire 6 of both types together with no ghost heat. While you can't fire 2 large lasers and 2 large pulse lasers at same time without ghost heat.


Ghost is is extra heat created when you fire too many weapons, in period of 0.5 second.

Because of that, it makes no sense to have 8 medium lasers of same type. You could have 6 med pulse and 2 medium. But if you have 8 med pulse or 8 normal medium, those two extra will create some extra heat. Not a lot, but enough to make no sense.

So if you take medium, have only 6. On some mechs it can make perfect sense to have like 10 or even 12 medium/medium pulse lasers, because you can fire them 6+4 or 6+6 and you only need to "leave" 0.5 second in between them. But 6+2 makes no sense since the extra 2 should be used for heat sinks.


Some small detail about chain fire:
Chain fire leaves that 0.5 second interval between each shot, as long as you keep the buttom pressed down. If you repeatetly press the button fast, you can fire faster than that.

Now particularly for IS med pulse, they have a cooldown of 3 seconds, and beam duration of 0.6 seconds. The cooldown period starts after the beam has completed. Now one Black Knight has 10% energy cooldown quirk. With it, one medium pulse takes 0.6+3x0.9 seconds, which is 3.3.

With chain fire you can fire a group of 6 of them without being slowed down by the chain fire.

But if you were to add a weapon cooldown module for it for a max of 12% less cooldown, one medium pulse would take 0.6+3x0.78 =2.94. But with chain fire you would fire them in 6x0.5 =3 seconds. So the difference is small, but by using chain fire you would fire them slower than with group fire.

Does this matter, well yes, for some fast weapons, or if you have large group of weapons. For example if you were to have 8 medium pulse and you fire them in group fire keeping the button pressed on, it takes 8x0.5 = 4 seconds to fire them all at once. Yet, each of them with the 10% cooldown quirk without extra weapon modules, they cycle faster than what the group fire shoots them.

For medium pulse that's easy to counter just pressing the button repeatedly fast enough.

Edited by Teer Kerensky, 03 March 2017 - 06:16 PM.

[Leone]

As a consummate brawler, I've always been in favour of the high dps approach. A tactic to try on the eight medium pulse build would be to set up a six medium pulse weapon group to avoid the ghost heat an maintain a higher dps whilst keeping the fairly vicious medium pulse spam alpha.

My own medium laser black knight traded out two lasers for a pair of flamers for even more brawling supremacy, but bewarned, they are, no doubt, close range weaponry.

~Leone.

[Robinhood78]

I think the simplest way I would approach this question is to look at what your alpha and DPS are compared to your opponent. Really it comes down to picking the fights you know you can win. For example maybe you've got an alpha of say 40, but your heat won't let you fire more than 2 full alpha whereas your opponent has a lower alpha, say 30, but can fire 3 full times. Who did more? The guy who is sitting overheating get a third face full of SRM? Probably not.

My advice is to make a build you like as a brawler; ballistics, SRM, SPL, MPL, and ML will all work ok. Get the heat where you feel comfortable with it and then go pick the fights you have the best chance of winning. You can't control who picks them with you of course, but pay attention to what and how your target is firing and if it doesn't appear like a good match up, try to find another or do something to get the advantage like maybe wait until he has fired a couple times at someone else to go introduced yourself . Get on his weak side to get in an early shot. Aim well, try to learn what might be an XL for IS mechs and focus that. Learn how to really cripple mechs, like the obvious RT for most hunchies and the LT for hellbringers. Then your alpha vs DPS question is moot.

Good luck!

[Koniving]

Here's an idea. Go for both.

Twin large pulse gives a similar high impact as an Inner Sphere AC/20, but with extra damage. Supplement this with several light weight medium lasers or small pulse lasers. Have a strong engine and a LOT of double heatsinks.

You now have your heavy hitter alpha weapon (twin large pulse), and the secondary weapon (medium lasers or small pulse lasers) can supplement as your "DPS" in either alpha (heavy sucker punch) or chain fire form (flurry of lighter hits to 'ride the heat').

Whatever the case, with high alpha builds you need to always have a chance to back off and cool. A design with primary and secondary weapons will reduce the need to do this, as well as provide some DPS benefits even if it isn't truly DPS oriented.