I_AM_ZUUL, on 08 April 2017 - 10:10 PM, said:
Any good LRMer who is worth it if in an Assault will be in an AWS-8R (best LRM boat in the game), BLR-1S (3rd best LRM boat in the game), and far down the list & last "viable" Assault is a MAL-1R (though really most Heavies are better & some Mediums)... if not in one of those three, then they are highly unlikely to be good. The problem is that to be a "good LRMer" has the highest skill set necessary yet the easiest skill floor to start with so the majority of players who stay using it as others get better are those incapable of getting better period. They try to play this mini-game where they try to keep the most armor as possible, which i believe gives them this very false sense of what kind of damage their mechs can take. When they go from to 100% to dead in 3 seconds at the end of the match being the last one alive while being focused upon but 8 mechs... they quite literally think that that is how it is normally (even have had some them say things to effect.) So it is a self-fulfilling assessment based on Correlation not Causation about how LRM Assaults are bad... Operator Error not Mechanical Failure is the Cause.
This is often how I see things play out as well. I'm one of those ******* spotters who Isn't afraid to put Tag on my BHII's CT E slot or NARC on my Shadow Cat. Having a few friends to drop with increases this usefulness quite a bit as does shoehorning ECM in there (cannot wait for heavy lasers).
But the LRMs exist in an unusual position that people I think are often times un-aware of.
In the competitive sets, 8v8 is the norm and the teams know where they're dropping and what they need to optimize for in that environment. Pug que's are simply "grab a mech and hope like hell you get a decent map for it" which encourages diverse design across the board. If i were dropping with a 12 man group into a public game I'll be sure to tell you we wouldn't be running pure meta or all PPFLD when we have access to tubes, trickery, and other methods of dismantlement that most people ignore.
Equip AMS!? ppftt nah bro that's another 2 Heat-sync... Nevermind if as stated previously on this page (8, hopefully anyway) that someone on the enemy team is running 3 AMS /w overload and a shitload of ammo or perhaps several units spend a ton or two on the AMS dome then it might be beneficial to not getting splatfaced by LRMS. Particularly slower mechs like the King Crab and Dakka Mauler i see often times get lit up by NARC and then just erased. Could it be done with Gauss or Dakka? Absolutely, probably even more efficiently per weight capita. But it wont save the armor that you don't expose. Indirect fire is exactly that, denial of target.
I get into these discussions a lot over obscure and "not meta" ideas in different games as well and the result is always the same, blatent disrespect to those who have low ranks or don't play competitive matches because they "don't understand" or don't have the experience that the others do in their minds.
I'm not here to say the LRM's are good, I'm just saying don't discount them in the PUG (always thought that stood for Public Unorganized Group btw) if you have at least one friend to drop with because the narc / LRM assault deletion committee is real.
Another point on the LRM wagon is that you can do some really odd tactical things like suppression which in MWO is quite difficult in the first place. Yes you can blat someone in the face with dakka and they won't be happy about it but you aren't going to be able to do that once they retreat from your sight lines and you won't make a lasting impression on the match unless you've successfully ripped a torso / arm or unit. The LRM + NARC combo can relentlessly harass slower opponents and if the mechs involved are fast enough (NARC Cat and LRM Crow) you can get away with quite a bit of precise pressure in ways that don't really exist in any other facet.
Pop the hill, narc + ERLL, call target while retreating /w MASC, LRMS fly... you get the idea you've all seen it before. While good players with faster mechs don't have as big of an issue with this. Faster mechs can be cleaned up in brawl or starvation situations with other mechs on your team. As a LRM / NARC wing of the team your job should be to make anything fat and slow rue the day it decided a 300 was "enough engine"
If I've made any errors feel free to correct me. Thanks for bothering to read this gigantic post.