20 replies to this topic

[Jamico]

Are there any assaults in the game that are so bad, that you might as well just play a heavy? Some of the assaults have only 1 more ton of free space than some of the heavies.

[Roughneck45]

The Awesome and the Victor are probably bottom of the barrel right now.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Gargoyles would fit that bill. they move about the same speed as most clan heavy mechs but have less free tonnage because they use a huge engine and have no endo steel. An Ebon Jaguar is 15 tons lighter and has 10 tons more free space for weaponry.

Victors also are like a heavy, but they got some nice armor quirks that make them play like a tanky heavy now.

Awesomes are pretty similar to heavies if you are using one with a large engine, but most only bring a STD300 engine so they have more of an assault feel even with their heavy mech levels of firepower. They rely on quirks for their firepower to make their weapons more powerful.

Zeuses tend to move quick and die quicker, basically a heavy mech with a bit of extra armor.

So pretty much I just listed all the 80 tonners.

[The Basilisk]

#Outright bad:
--Victor, and Gargoyle

#Better take a heavy mech so you don't steal an assaults place-->
-- Zeus: not nessessaryly a bad mech in QP but it takes up the place of an assault while not having the resilience or firepower of one.
-- Awsome: a quite situational mech than can be very dangerous in the right hands (Quad PPCs are like firing dual AC20 at 600m but without needing ammo) Awsomes are quite ok on large maps like frozen, turmaline or polar.
Again their problem is beeing somewhat less sturdy than some heavys and they take up an Assaults spot.

#And last but not least the category "learn to play large and slow mechs before you try those":
-- Banshee...still a feersome mech at medium to long ranges but slow as sin.
-- Atlas: Posterboy of MWO but a ride for experts only
-- Direwolf more forgiving than tose above but still in severe need of either team backup or a good portion of advanced mapknowledge timing and battlefield awareness

Edited by The Basilisk, 23 March 2017 - 05:50 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Jamico, on 23 March 2017 - 05:20 AM, said:

Are there any assaults in the game that are so bad, that you might as well just play a heavy? Some of the assaults have only 1 more ton of free space than some of the heavies.

lets rephrase this as are there any assualts which I concider to be better than any heavy.

there is one, it is the Kodiak, otherwise the speed and agility advantage of the heavy, at least for me, completely outclasses the firepower advantage of the assualt.
The classic example is the Dire Wolf, the most heavily armed chassis in the game, but I am far more effective in the Spider, the least heavily armed chassis in the game.

in many cases an Inner Sphere assualt needs a standard engine, and does not have space for all the upgrades while a heavy can get away with an XL engine making the heavy faster, more agile and more heavily armed thanks to the weight saving upgrades.

There are assualts like the Gargoyle which have less tonage available than some mediums, in the spoiler below is a list of assualt Mechs and free tonage

Spoiler

free tonage does not realy indicate combat capability but here is free tonnage for assualt Mechs assuming stock engine, max armor and endo steel internals, in many cases you will need to change the engine size to get the most out of the Mech so this is a rough guideline only

Inner Sphere;

80 ton
Awesome 44 tons free
Victor 45 tons free
Zeus 35 tons free

85 ton
Battlemaster 35 tons free
Stalker 45 tons free

90 ton
Cyclops 28 tons free
Highlander 47 tons free
Mauler 52 tons free

95 ton
Banshee 27 tons free

100 ton
Atlas 50 tons free
King Crab 50 tons free

Clan Battlemechs - can fit all the weight saving upgrades so this is with both endo and fero, as well as the stock sized XL engine

85 ton
Marauder IIC 48 tons free

90 ton
Highlander IIC 57 tons free

Supernova 57 tons free

100 ton
Kodiak 45 tons free

Clan Omnimechs, have fixed engine size and in many cases fixed heatsinks as well as sometimes other fixed equipment

80 ton
Gargoyle, 19 tons free

85 ton
Warhawk, 32 tons free

95 ton
Executioner, 24 tons free

100 ton
Dire Wolf, 50 tons free

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 23 March 2017 - 08:17 AM.

[G4LV4TR0N]

Poor thing about many assaults is that they are easier to kill than heavies because of their size. Easier to find on map, easier to target and obviously bigger hitbox size. Also slow torso twist speed.

Anyway you've forgot about Executioner, mech that currently has 8t of nearly useless Jump Jets. But one day, maybe with "Skill Tree" Jump Jet upgrades or new omnipods...

As for Gargoyle he's good brawler, on colder maps you can use 12 small lasers and you got armor.

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 23 March 2017 - 09:25 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

G4LV4TR0N, on 23 March 2017 - 09:19 AM, said:

Poor thing about many assaults is that they are easier to kill than heavies because of their size. Easier to find on map, easier to target and obviously bigger hitbox size. Also slow torso twist speed.

Anyway you've forgot about Executioner, mech that currently has 8t of nearly useless Jump Jets. But one day, maybe with "Skill Tree" Jump Jet upgrades or new omnipods...

As for Gargoyle he's good brawler, on colder maps you can use 12 small lasers and you got armor.

Executioner sorta acts as a tankier Timber Wolf if its going with ERML+LPL. The Jump jets have some use and are good enough to poptart with with dual ERPPC in the upper torso even without the skill tree jump jet upgrades.

Besides that it also outclasses the Gargoyle in a brawl, 12 SPL, more armor, more cooling, and it turns and accelerates and decelerates faster with MASC and has jump jets to spread damage to legs.

[G4LV4TR0N]

No. Gargoyle has better torso twist speed and when you turn with MASC it makes your targeting rectangle jump. With Structure quirks that make him almost as tanky as EXE he's much better for brawling.

Edited by G4LV4TR0N, 23 March 2017 - 09:35 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

G4LV4TR0N, on 23 March 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

No. Gargoyle has better torso twist speed and when you turn with MASC it makes your targeting rectangle jump. With Structure quirks that make him almost as tanky as EXE he's much better for brawling.

Lets agree to disagree and keep on using our preferred Clan laser brawling assault mechs.

[Koniving]

Gargoyle.

Beyond that. No. Awesome might be the closet but this is largely due to its wide nature and pure energy focus. Its missile totting variants fair decent.

Victor is something many abandoned but to them i suggest trying it again. It performs far better than most expect. But after being top dog for so long plus past nerfs (since removed beyond the jumpjet one) people just sold them off and haven't touched them since.

Seriously though vets. Try a Victor again. You'd be surprised. Its among my money makers right now.

G4LV4TR0N, on 23 March 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

No. Gargoyle has better torso twist speed and when you turn with MASC it makes your targeting rectangle jump. With Structure quirks that make him almost as tanky as EXE he's much better for brawling.

Gargoyle got buffed with structure? Might need to pull the mothballs out.

My trouble is decent weaponry for it.

[Jamico]

Ok, you've identified the culprits; awesome, victor, Zeus and gargoyle. Now for the other part of the question. How do they compare to heavies? Is it better to just play a heavy? Is it a waste of an assault slot on your team to play one of these assaults? On that note, does matchmaker put the same number of each type of mech on each team?

[Rogue Jedi]

Jamico, on 24 March 2017 - 02:34 PM, said:

Ok, you've identified the culprits; awesome, victor, Zeus and gargoyle. Now for the other part of the question. How do they compare to heavies? Is it better to just play a heavy? Is it a waste of an assault slot on your team to play one of these assaults? On that note, does matchmaker put the same number of each type of mech on each team?

the 4 you have listed are all 80 ton Mechs, they do not have the weapons tonnage of the heavier assualts, but lack the speed and/or agility of heavies, because of the higher tonage per increment for larger engines to go the same speed, e.g. 81/88kph in a 75 ton Mech you would pay 26.5 tons for an XL 275, but to get the same speed on an 85 ton Mech you need an XL400 weighing 33.5 tons, so that is an extra 7 tons for the same top speed on a Mech 5 tons heavier (of course go slower and there is less of a tonage increase) but in general the same speed does not give the same agility the smaller Mech has, you are also paying extra tonnage for structure and armor.

a 70 or 75 ton Mech is better if you are after speed and agility, if you consider speed and agility to be important go heavy or medium, if you want armor and firepower and do not care as much about speed or agility you should usualy go 85 tons or heavier.

I do consider speed and agility to be more important than armor or firepower, the only assualts I enjoy piloting are the 85 ton Battlemaster and the 100 ton Kodiak (mostly the Spirit Bear hero Mech, with MASC which can increase its speed and agility to better than the 75 tonners in short bursts), in both cases I do fit an XL400 and still have tonage for a decent weapon payload and max armor

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

Roughneck45, on 23 March 2017 - 05:28 AM, said:

The Awesome and the Victor are probably bottom of the barrel right now.

No! No... say it ain't so!

The truth hurts...

Le sigh...

[Sixpack]

Minor exception for the gargoyle is the one with the 2 energy hardpoints in the cener torso. You can make a 12 small pulse laser build with that and go melt faces. The other variants could only carry 10 of those so might be a little different and also a little less terryfying when in your face.

Looked a little in to the awesome and it seems to probably work best as a fire support mech, so ER ppcs, large lasers and while not always a good idea LRMS is probably the way to go with them.

The Zeus to me feels more like an assault meant for the frontline, issue with that is its lower weapon mounts and a mere 80 tonners armour available to it. From what I understand it was a cheap and easy to produce assault for the Lyran Commonwealth and thus so good, something you can not realy reflect in a no respawn team deathmatch game.

Can't comment on the victor as I have never even looked at it but it might be the weakest of em all.

You might also notice that I only listed 80 tonner assaults.

*user experiance may vary

Edited by Sixpack, 26 March 2017 - 03:58 AM.

[oldradagast]

The main problems experienced by the 80-tonners in this game isn't that their 5-ton lower weight from popular meta 85-ton mechs is crippling them - it's other issues.

The Awesome, Victor, and Zeus have - between 3 mechs - a single high-mounted weapon hardpoint (the Awesome's head-laser.) Meanwhile, the 85-ton Battlemaster and Stalker are literally covered in high, heavy weapon mounts that can carry devastating firepower. If you moved at least 2 of the Awesome's energy mounts up to the upper torso and a couple of the Zeus's, they'd see serious play.

Other issues haunt them as well: PPC's, the Awesome's preferred weapon, are wonky. Hit-reg is questionable, and basic PPC's have that stupid minimum range, below which they do 0 damage, which shouldn't even be in the game and doesn't match table-top at all. Damage falloff or spread, sure - but having the lightning bolt magically do nothing until it gets 90 m from the mech is just dumb. The Victor, meanwhile, has messed up missile tube counts, which hinder it from performing well as a solid ballistic + SRM brawler. If PGI would fix the Victor's missile tubes and PPC's, these mechs would see a bit more play. The Zeus has neither of these problems, although it still suffers from low weapon mounts.

On the Clan side, the Gargoyle is simply a design failure because the stupidly oversized engine resulting a mech the size of an assault with the firepower of a medium. If it had a 320 engine instead of a 400, it would see some play since it would have enough pod space to pack a punch. Also, it has extremely limited hardpoint choices, which hinders it further.

Long story short, 80-tonners are generally poor in MWO, but that's more because of hardpoint locations, other bugs, and failed mech designs more than something being wrong with the 80-ton weight class.

[Jamico]

Ok, so, at least right now, it seems that it is better to play a 75 ton heavy instead of an 80 ton assault. Also, nobody seems to get mad if someone plays an 80 ton assault. An 80 tonner just can't do what a 100 tonner can. So, does it make sense that an 80 tonner plays more like a 75 ton heavy, and occasionally (or late game) does some of the things that bigger assaults are supposed to do?

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Jamico, on 28 March 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

Ok, so, at least right now, it seems that it is better to play a 75 ton heavy instead of an 80 ton assault. Also, nobody seems to get mad if someone plays an 80 ton assault. An 80 tonner just can't do what a 100 tonner can. So, does it make sense that an 80 tonner plays more like a 75 ton heavy, and occasionally (or late game) does some of the things that bigger assaults are supposed to do?

It really depends on the mech and not just its tonnage.

Difference between a gargoyle and a mad iic is just 5 tons. Mad is as assaultish as it gets and the gargoyle plays more like a fat medium striker. Obviously, if you play a Mad like a medium you get trouble, likewise, play a medium like an assault and you get trouble too. Play the mech to its strong points and you should be good. what's the point in having an assault with 87kph if you play it on arialdenial like a dwf. Flank with it and strike where you see fit and you should have fun with it.

[Rogue Jedi]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 28 March 2017 - 12:23 PM, said:

It really depends on the mech and not just its tonnage.

Difference between a gargoyle and a mad iic is just 5 tons. Mad is as assaultish as it gets and the gargoyle plays more like a fat medium striker. Obviously, if you play a Mad like a medium you get trouble, likewise, play a medium like an assault and you get trouble too. Play the mech to its strong points and you should be good. what's the point in having an assault with 87kph if you play it on arialdenial like a dwf. Flank with it and strike where you see fit and you should have fun with it.

earlier I spectated a Kodiak which went all out for firepower, its top speed was less than 50.
to me going that slow seems like a waste of a great Mech but the pilot made it work with 4 kills and more than 1,100 damage.
my point is just because something that slow would be completely worthless to me does not mean someone else cannot make it work well, and I can guarentee there are at least a few people who have specilised with each of those "bad" assualts mentioned earlier and have plenty of 1,000+ damage games in those chassis, one chassis may be harder to do well in than others but the right persion is able to make any Mech work realy well.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

Jamico, on 24 March 2017 - 02:34 PM, said:

Is it better to just play a heavy? Is it a waste of an assault slot on your team to play one of these assaults? On that note, does matchmaker put the same number of each type of mech on each team?

Yes, somewhat yes. Yes.

So, because the MM just tries to give both team equality by mech classes and not by total tonnage or more complex factors, then any weak assults will perform worse than heavies, because on average the assults on enemy team will be better.

One on one most weak assults would still win againts a heavy due to more armor and such, but the game is not one on one.

[Rogue Jedi]

Teer Kerensky, on 29 March 2017 - 01:05 AM, said:

Yes, somewhat yes. Yes.

So, because the MM just tries to give both team equality by mech classes and not by total tonnage or more complex factors, then any weak assults will perform worse than heavies, because on average the assults on enemy team will be better.

One on one most weak assults would still win againts a heavy due to more armor and such, but the game is not one on one.

matchmaker balences on PSR first then tonnage for solo queue, if weight class matching is a factor that is a realy minor factor, I know it used to be the major factor but was changed early to mid 2016, I have had solo queue games recently where one team has 2 lights, 3 mediums, 4 heavies and 4 assualts, the other has 4 lights 3 each heavies and mediums and 2 assualts, the heavy team had 10 tons on the light team, and lost.

For group queue it totaly ignores Mech classes and tonnage in matchmaking, it is possible for a 12 player group with 600 tons to come up against six 2 player groups with literaly double their available tonage and, in my experiance, it is not unusual for one team to have 300 tons on the other.

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 29 March 2017 - 03:20 AM.