Khobai, on 11 April 2017 - 12:54 PM, said:
the dire IS garbage compared to the kodiak
1) kodiak has higher hardpoints and nearly as much firepower as the direwolf
2) kodiak is way faster and more agile and has better hitboxes and better geometry for damage mitigation
3) kodiak is more customizable and has more available tonnage because it can take endo
4) spirit bear can take masc and is probably the single best assault brawler in the game right now (atlas-s gives it a good run for its money though). while the dire is even lucky to get into brawling range at 52kph lol.
thats kindve the whole point im trying to make. that some mechs are now obsolete and no one seems to wanna talk about making those obsolete mechs viable again.
I mean sure you could give the dire wolf its ecm variant and maybe shore it up a bit with structure quirks. But thats not really going to fix it. The issues run deeper than that. Theres too much importance placed on mechs having good geometry. Like the direwolf cant really mitigate damage because its protruding CT can be hit from virtually any angle. While the kodiak's geometry lets it mitigate damage much more easily. Especially since engine rating is still coupled to agility.
The only way you can really fix the bad geometry issue IMO is to minimize the impact of having bad geometry by implementing more damage spreading mechanics. Again we already have a bunch of damage spread mechanics in the game for a reason, and going more in that direction makes sense to me. I dont really see it pissing anyone off besides the people who are dual gauss, dual erppcing, but theyre a blight on the game anyway. Theyre the ones primarily abusing pinpoint alphas because they understand that it badly breaks the current armor system.
Id start with the most overpowered weapons like cgauss. Cgauss is a good candidate for a damage spread mechanic. Specifically because its way better than the ISGauss. If CGauss did splash damage like the CERPPC I think it could help balance the fact it weighs 3 tons less with no real downside. For balance reasons, Clan weapons should never be outright better than their IS counterparts, they should always have at least one downside. Thats the case for all other clan weapons except for cGauss. why is it the only exception?
Yes. The Dire is much worse than the Kodiak, due to geo - which is
always going to be important, even with more weapons spreading, and the Omnimech build system which is overly restrictive - the dire simply needs buffs of some kind.
However i dont play in the same ppfld nightmare you apparently do. I play primarily solo queue, but with a fair bit of group queue mixed in, and what actually happens in the game is that i can spread damage all over my mech the vast majority of the time. I admit i dont play comp, so i cant speak to what happens there, but in the game i play? many styles are completely valid. Im bad at PPC gauss and barely use it, and i do fine running laserboats, dakka, dual/quad PPCs, mixed dakka PPCs, etc, and really dont feel this boogieman you speak of.
There are LOADs of mechs, including assaults, of both tech bases, that spread damage really well - but you do have to play at least somewhat carefully. If a 100 ton assault is looking at you, you should really ideally know about it already and be reacting, you should never stand still really (just random rocking back and forth throws off those pinpoint alphas, etc...
IS Gauss does needs to be buffed to make up for the tonnage - i think it should be just be changed to not explode at all.