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Confessions Of A Tier 5 Potato


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#1 treggon

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 02:39 PM

Summary, my advice is to:
  • learn to work as a team
  • try not to be a LURM boat
  • get Radar Deprivation as soon as you can
  • watch Twitch.com streams of good players to learn how good Mech pilots play

Background



There are many shades of potatoes, but they all start at tier 5 in the Mechwarrior Universe. I just got out of the lowest potato bin and had to geek out on it a bit. This is a bit of general geekery on how I approached getting out of the 5th tier.

Potatoes are the fodder that sacrifice their armor and lives every day so meta-tryhards can accelerate up the top tier charts rapidly. This post is about how to understand the stats that matter in the ‘tier’ system on Mechwarrior Online. I got so sick of getting destroyed in the pick up groups that I started to wonder how I could possibly do better. I am a massive stats nerd, so I decided to start taking detailed stats on my performance to see what exactly I was doing wrong.
Posted Image

My educated guess is that scale of ‘PILOT SKILL RATING’ above is 200 wide. My conjecture is that the total pilot rating system scale is somewhere between 1000 and 1500 units, and those units are broken down into 5 tiers. This means that each tier is 200-250 ‘Pilot Skill Ratings’ wide. To go up in scale, ‘Pilot rating green’ (green up icon) needs to be won more than ‘Pilot rating reds’ (red down icons). A rating of equal yellow means that your skill rating stays the same.

What do I mean by this? At the end of a Mechwarrior game you are rated on your pilot rating. I equated the 3 states of this as +1, 0, and -1, and started keeping track of all the other stats I could write down in a reasonable time after a game was over. I have gotten faster at it, and color coded the cells to spot trends, but it looks something like this these days:
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Stats & Methods of Measurements



I am working on my 500th game record now as I write this, and I broke the 5th tier at around my 487th game. This quantity of data provides a good amount of stats to start understanding what exactly gives you that +1, 0 or -1. I estimate that I probably missed 10-15 games over the course of this stat taking.

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‘Game’ in this table was recorded as a 1 if we won, and a 0 if we lost. I found that the number one thing that matters is winning games.

How can I state that with surety? I ran the correlation coefficients between the pilot rating and every stat and found that winning the game had the highest correlation coefficient. Having a 0.90 correlation between pilot rating and Game win means that winning games is what matters for my set of stats, and my game style during the period of time these stats were taken.
To obtain the correlation between two sets of data you do the following in excel:
=CORREL(Data1, Data2)

This produces a number from 0… 1 that represents how correlated two sets of data are. As you can see from the above set of data, winning matters more than any other stat.
If I want to get better, I have to win games.
Posted Image
You can see my trend in February of this year going into March, I was straight out sucking, and my pilot rating was plummeting. I was basically loosing more than I was winning, so my pilot rating was plummeting. Much of this was due to levelling up new mechs, and trying to figure out how to become better.

I don’t play all the time so I looked at pilot rating by date and by game # to make sure I was steadily improving.
Posted Image
One thing I learned was that if you buy a brand new mech in the mech-store under the old system, my pilot rating would always take a dive until I start getting some of the more core skills like Radar Deprivation. Now because of the conversion and the ability to jump-start a new mech using banked in-game currency, I don’t experience a huge dip in pilot rating when I first get a new robot.

This is a very interesting side effect of the new skill tree and the ability to rapidly put SP into a mech through XP, CBILLS or GXP. I find that for a non-ecm mech, levelling up to obtain some level of Radar Deprivation is the most important thing a Mechwarrior can do to improve their winning abilities.

Observations and Suggestions



There are a couple other phenomenon I have noticed that are related to group-play. As a tier 5 player solo-dropping into the Quick-Play queue, there are players learning what the game is about, and generally not able to coordinate as a group.

Teamwork



People don’t really understand that this game is about team-work, or they are shy, don’t have a proper microphone setup or come from an FPS background where teamwork is vastly different. Mechwarrior is a different beast. The team-work in the game is facilitated through the in-game VOIP system where you push a button to talk to other players on your team. You can also chat via text, or use the command wheel where simple commands are broadcast to the team. A well-coordinated team uses all of these tools to communicate and coordinate with each other to win games.

A big problem for lower skilled, tier 5 players is that to get better and win more games, you must really be a part of a group and work together. When you group up with other people, even other people that are tier 5, the matchmaking system pairs you up with a completely different pool of players than you fight when you are solo-dropping. This is my experience in the game and it has been told to me by other players.

VOIP



Most well-coordinated teams use 3rd party VOIP solutions like Discord or Team-Speak to communicate within their team. This means that a squad of elite Mechwarriors is usually communicating in real-time in these 3rd party systems. When any group of 2-12 create a group in Mechwarrior, they then have the rest of their ranks filled out to form a 12-man team. When in group play, I have found that other group players will fill out your queues. This has a side effect of having many of these players communicating outside of the core VOIP system. This leads to much of the information that is needed to coordinate with the group to be shared outside of the MWO VOIP/TEXT/Command system when you are playing with the higher-level players.

I think this phenomenon will continue, and there should be a way to allow for 3rd party integration into the VOIP system so that if a group wants to use Discord or Team-Speak to do comms, they can also jack in their feeds to the MWO system, or the MWO system could use a 3rd party service in general for comms. Whole communities are organically forming on these servers, and if you go to any of the top Twitch streamers, they tend to have their own Discord channels where fans, MechWarrior’s and devs all are communicating even when the game is not playing.

Sometimes it just takes engagement of one players within the groups to use the MWO VOIP system and start dialogue. “Greetings Mechwarriors”, “Hows it going tonight”. In the beginning of the game, when everyone is waiting for each other to connect then hit the placebo READY button, I have found that time is so important to engage each other and create the vibe of the game. Usually if there is no-one willing to say hello, greetings, o7, or engage with each other, I can tell we are either dealing with people who are not paying attention to VOIP, have VOIP muted, or are on comms outside of the MWO VOIP. All the players need to engage with each other, hopefully make a bit of a plan, and attempt to perform team-work. If there are no comms in some fashion, 8/10 times you are going to just loose. Statistically, this means you are loosing pilot ranks, and you are going to continuously get worse and worse games.

LURMS



Games at the higher levels are completely different than games in a tier 4/5 solo queue. The weapons used, tactics employed and level of players are way different for a tier 1,2,3 vs. a tier 4/5. One of the biggest phenomenon’s is Long Range Missiles, or LRM’s, the dreaded “Lurm’s” and the dreaded “Lurm Boats”. There is an almost comedic bent to the hatred of Long Range Missiles in this game. The level of disdain that is put forth towards people who sit back behind their team-mates and lob 40-80 missiles at a time towards an enemy is legend.

The problem is that the technique is so effective for lower tiered Mechwarriors, and you can stay alive long enough to get some satisfaction; so there is a positive feedback loop.

Here’s the situation, you’re a new Mechwarrior and you get the snot kicked out of you every time you have walked around any of the maps. You are starting to understand cover and staying behind it, but you don’t understand the radar very well. You don’t understand the radar defeat aspects of the game, and you really want to damage some mechs while trekking across large swaths of snow-laden fields.

You sit back behind your crew who is perpetually going to the right around the map (NASCAR Style), and lob Long Range Missiles from behind your team at every single target that anyone has the courtesy to hit R to give you a lock. Many times, this is an assault mech and everyone is begging you to take your armor up front and share in the exchange of armor game. In your mind, you are doing SOMETHING besides absorbing PPC/Gauss rounds to help better players win games. It feels better to be hitting armor, even if on the other end it is just an endless stream of toxic ‘I hate this game’ LURM rain.

You are taking the largest meat shield and moving it to the back of the line where you are super susceptible to attack by lights wielding 6 small pulse lasers, 30 alpha, (thanks @TheB33F ++ snarky honor comment), shooting you in the a$$ 3 times, killing you with that 90 points of laser damage, and running off.

When you are on the receiving end of raining LURMS, and you are losing armor all over your body and you know it took almost NO skill to strip your armor, an experienced player can get super frustrated. Anyone can understand that. Good Mechwarriors have figured out how to huddle around ECM mechs and level up the skill tree to obtain Radar Deprivation and Seismic Sensors. Close to within 200 meters of a LURM boat and destroy it, because even though it may have an 80 alpha strike at range and it can hit you from behind cover, it can’t hurt you if you are close to it, or it can’t see you on radar.

The moral of that part of this story is that experienced players generally hate LURM boats and LURM boats are easy to defeat. To defeat them, use ECM or get radar dep and close to within 200m and kill them. LURM boats can be very useful for suppression fire when used in a coordinated fashion, especially when combined with a front-line light mech running NARC, and they are able to communicate. This reinforces that teamwork is what this game is about. Tactics that emphasize teamwork will win this game. Even LURMs can work if proper tactics are employed.

PILOT RANKING



Some comments on how I measured the Pilot Ranking.

LowerTierMeasurement.PNG
Posted Image


I basically started by creating an arbitrary scale that went up and down every time I either gained or lost a level. I then started screen capturing the pilot rating section of my screen.
You can see my measurement lines in these images. With this scale I started creating ratios of proposed pilot rating vs. the actual image scale.

So to obtain pilot rating per inch (or per pixel):
= [(Rating2-Rating1) / (Pixel2-Pixel1)]

I used rulers in photoshop and had each of levels of my image on different layers in my photoshop document so I could take image measurements. I had taken these images on different computers, and had to scale each to overlay each other. There was error in this part of the measurement. There was another source of error where I date-stamped the images and on each of those dates, I had a range of pilot ratings.

After a while I started to get better at creating a more uniform image for the measurement, taken at the exact same screen resolution. I also got better at picking a specific data point and putting that into the measurement so my scale got more accurate. This led me to believe that the scale was between 200-250. (233 is what excel tells me right now as an average). So that is the reality, the total scale is between 5*(200 to 250) so 1000 to 1250 as a total scale for the tiers assuming the entire pilot rating system is linear across the different tiers.

From this I found out that I basically have to play 5 games to permanently go up one pilot tier rating, and I basically gain a pilot rating per day over the course of my career. My advice to new players is to learn to work as a team, try not to be a LURM boat, get Radar Deprivation as soon as you can and watch Twitch streams of good players to learn how good Mech pilots are doing it.

Other interesting stats from a tier 5 potato.
Here was my map stats:
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Interesting Game stats for game type:
Game Type Game Stat
Incursion 9%
Escort 6%
Assault 25%
Domination 24%
Skirmish 37%

Posted Image
It’s very obvious what is the most popular game types, and how the new modes of Incursion and Escort have generally not excited people. I think that is sad, as pretty much everyone treats every game like Skirmish, and calls the game modes ‘Mini-games’, especially the higher tiered lance commanders who show public disdain for these game modes.

o7

treggon (MWO) / tregtronics (twitch)

PDF Link of original text of this (I have edited online since)


Edited by treggon, 29 May 2017 - 09:14 AM.


#2 Exilyth

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 02:54 PM

This wall of text is very solid and informative.
It would be even better if it was divided into sections (formatting wise e.g. headers for voip, teamwork, lrm).

#3 treggon

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 03:00 PM

Exilyth, thanks for the comment, I edited the post to add headers to my definite wall of text, and make it a bit clearer. Good comments. I just had to get my thoughts out this morning.

#4 Serpentine Shel Serpentine

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 04:02 PM

Thanks for the info. But the links unfortunately are not working for me. I get this message:

An error occurred during a connection to tregtronics-my.sharepoint.com. Invalid OCSP signing certificate in OCSP response. Error code: SEC_ERROR_OCSP_INVALID_SIGNING_CERT

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

#5 Serpentine Shel Serpentine

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 05:29 PM

Thanks for this. Interesting. One possible correction: you said "When any group of 2-12 create a group in Mechwarrior, they then have the rest of their ranks filled out to form a 12-man team. When in group play, I have found that other group players are more statistically likely to be put into your ranks to fill out your queues." I have been told by experienced players that groups can only be joined with other groups. its an exclusively group queue. If you are solo you are not dropping with groups even if sometimes it seems like they are (like they are not saying anything at all in VOIP). So the statistical likelihood of groups joining with other groups is 100%. I agree though that when in a group game the groups ought to communicate using VOIP, not TS or Discord, if they are with other groups.
Group games can be much harder due to lack of tier-based matchmaking. A group of all newbies is very likely to get stomped .. so join an experienced group, and the larger the group the better.

#6 treggon

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 06:50 PM

Delores, I modified that bit of text. Thanks for that. I also tried to fix all my links. Let me know if there is still problems.

My main point that is new in this post is the understanding of the total scale of the Pilot rating, and the math basis behind it.

Everything else is pretty much an opinion based on my nerd-servations. The group queue is a different kind of animal compared with the Solo queue and thanks so much for the clarification. That definitely matches my experience. I'd love to see more and more people in the Mechwarrior ranks, so these discussions helps (IMO!).

#7 Kubernetes

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Posted 28 May 2017 - 11:46 PM

Damn, dude, this is fantastic. I wish I had read something like this when I first started out.

One suggestion I would make is to always spectate. If you start to recognize names of good players and units, spectate them when you die. There are also great players who stream on Twitch or post to YouTube. Watch them because you can learn a lot.

Your sections on VOIP and teamwork are key. I played this game solo for four years before joining a unit and dropping in groups. Don't be like me. Download TeamSpeak, jump on a team channel and ask to join. More units than not are willing to carry a few noobs so long as they follow orders.

#8 Serpentine Shel Serpentine

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 02:47 AM

I am also a Tier 5 potato and have been stuck there a long time (since February) and have about 500 games. But my win-loss ratio and Kill-Death ratio are both moving in tandem and in average steadily upward. In assaults where I tend to play best I am almost 1-1 in the current season. That sounds pretty lame but for a Tier 1 newbie I think that a reasonable goal and about average. (It's hard to know where I am percentile-wise for Tier 5 since PGI doesn't give that info directly.)

Only recently has my progression up the Tier scale accelerated. This does not mean in my view that I am a bad payer for Tier 5 although there is lots of room for improvement. It does reflect this is a highly complex and team oriented game. There are so many variables and the Skill Tree has added more complexity. I like that and it helps make the game endlessly fascinating and even addictive. But it can also be daunting.
Your post is very helpful in terms of emphasis on team work being the key to winning and the advice that winning games is paramount in tier progression. That's my experience and what I have read elsewhere. Here are some other things I have learned that may be helpful to other newcomers.

Study MWO Tactics 101: Comics .. This be found in "guides" in the New Player section but most up to date version is here: https://steamcommuni...s/?id=573089143

Watch YouTube experts like Molten Metal, Kanajashi, BlackhawkSC, Snuggles Time. There are more but those are my personal favorites.

Learn the NATO radio phonetic alphabet: Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot etc. You can find this in several places on the internet but this is comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia..._alphabet#NATO. A handy printable card is here:
http://www.radio-sco...20Postcards.pdf

Basic Strategy learned by hard experience :

SILENCE=DEATH. If no one on your team is talking your chance of winning or even doing well on a solo basis is far reduced, especially if the other team is talking. Therefore, when in Public Queue if no one is talking try to get people talking about strategy.

ALWAYS LOCK TARGETS. Press R. It's free and quick. And wait long enough to get the target info paperdoll which tells you the enemy loadout and health in different components. Use this Intel (see below). Identify short and long range weapons or even better weps that don't have effect at short range: PPC (but not ER PPC) and LRMS have little to no effect at short range - learn their minimum effective range for clan and IS versions.

STAY TOGETHER! Long version: Don't divide forces before you know the strength and position of the enemy. This is basic military strategy (see e.g., the movie Zulu Dawn for an example of what happens when you ignore this). Exceptions: lights or very fast mediums should cap objectives in conquest and assault, get batteries in Incursion, and scout. But all others should stay together unless there is an agreement to split up to flank or because the enemy has split.

INTEL=LIFE. Take a UAV if you are not a laser boat that needs two cool shots. Use it when there's no Intel and you think the enemy is close. Ideally scouts should be launching UAVs from the enemy rear, but if they are not any UAV is better than none.

CAMPING=DEATH (and AGGRESSION=VICTORY). I find that my team is far more likely to be stomped when it is timid and tries to play a trading game while camping behind cover or on top of or behind of a hill. This error is most common in Grim Plexus and Frozen City. It is far better -- once you know where and how many the enemy is (see above) -- to commit to flanking or a direct assault, especially if you have a local numerical or other strength advantage (e.g., enemy is heavily damaged, or seems disorganized). MASSED AGGRESSION WINS GAMES. However, as boring or fatal as it may be to camp indefinitely, DON'T ATTACK ALONE.

ANY PLAN IS BETTER THAN NO PLAN. If you ask for a plan and no one gives one then volunteer a plan. It could be as simple as a rally point location, calling for a push, or calling for a flanking move.

MOVE TOGETHER. Make sure there is implicit or explicit agreement that a push is being made before attempting one. But always join the push once it is agreed to (unless you have already been beaten to a pulp). Don't lead a charge or flanking maneuver when you don't know if anyone will join you. I've been the sole member of the the "charge of the light brigade" too many times to count. (By the same token -- don't expect others to join you if you don't ask them; I've heard too many players complain that others are not in the right place when no one called for the maneuver in the first place.)

CURIOSITY KILLS THE MAD CAT. Don't hill hump or corner peek if you don't know what's on the other side, UNLESS you are moving together with at least three allied mechs. When peeking make sure you are moving slow and already starting to reverse when you get the peek.

"DON'T GET COCKY!" My single most common error is overextending myself even when I follow all these other learned rules. I get too far out front or into the furball when I don't have an agile mech.

"DON'T CHASE THE RABBIT" My second most common mistake is chasing after a weak target, when it takes me away from my team or out into an exposed position. Often I end up a sweet target for five other opponents. Let the kill go if you would have to move to a dangerous position to get it.

"CROSS THE T". This is a basic naval warfare maneuver from the age of sail with some application here because most mechs are slow to turn and have limited firing arcs, like sailing ships. Imagine the mechs are a line of ships .. to maximize effective firepower you want your line to form a T against their line where you are the top line of the T. You can all shoot the top of the T and it's a lot harder for them to all shoot at you. This requires coordination, intel, and a good opportunity. The obverse is even more important .. don't let the enemy be the top of the T, by for example flanking your line to the right or left.

FOCUS FIRE and CALL TARGETS. This means if you are shooting at someone note the unique target designation above their HUD marker (A, B, C, etc), or if someone else calls a target look for it and fire at it if you can. (I didn't even know there was a unique target letter until a couple of hundred games.) This allows you to "cross the T" virtually by calling targets. Focus on weak targets to bring them down and use the target info Paperdoll to identify and call out weak components (CT, RT, LT, RL, LL, etc). Even if working alone, focus your own fire on a single target and if possible on a single component that shows up weak in the target. (Component targeting in the heat of battle is the most difficult of the key tactics for me.)

SKILL TO STRENGTHS. When skilling up a mech be aware of the mech's base stats and quirks for structure, armor, AND agility (turn rate, acceleration) etc. These can be found in the mechlab (I only just found the basic agility stats -- they are not obvious). Quirks and base mobility stats can effect which skills are relatively more efficient: especially as between structure vs. armor, and mobility vs. other skill trees. More detail is beyond the scope here, but it's a good idea to investigate and think about this. A percentage increase in a very small agility base stat is probably not worth it compared to the same percentage on a large or quirked base stat (e.g. structure). Generally that means you skill up your strengths, rather than skilling up to compensate for weakness. (But see below re: laser duration.). But the system is VERY complex, with trade offs and judgment calls, and is very mech and playstyle specific, so smart players can differ. The threshold for a base stat that is too weak to usefully skill up is hard to define.

Weapons also matter of course and be careful in the firepower tree to avoid what you don't need. E.g.: At first I automatically skilled up laser duration if I had any lasers at all,but pulse lasers benefit much less from that skill because they have a short base duration. So for those lasers points are better spent elsewhere .. usually in the Operations tree to get heat management skills.

Find good players to group with by looking at the Team Stats at the end of the match and sending a friend invite to the ones with high match scores, kills and damage (unless they are otherwise unpleasant). You can invite them to group in later sessions.

Have fun and good luck!

Edited by DeloresAbernathy, 29 May 2017 - 10:46 AM.


#9 General Solo

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 05:06 AM

If you want to go up in tier the most important thing in my opinion, is your performance on a loss.
As this is the only time you lose psr, just saying.

So what to do?

After a while you can tell when a loss is immanent.
So my rule is when a loss is likely, do as much damage as you can, as long as you can before the team disappears.

Crack 450 match score on a loss and your psr dont go down.
Do this more often than not and you will go up in tier.

On a win, shoot a few times is enough.
This rule "do as much damage as you can, as long as can" works for win too.

But But But
Often when loss likely, spirit crushed, morale crushed, mojo absent so no make do as much damage as you can, as long as can rule.

Edit : Spam the fire button when a loss is likely, Which I do all the time so no big change

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 30 May 2017 - 02:37 AM.


#10 warner2

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 05:41 AM

The number one thing that matters is winning games because you can't go down on a win. That's also why many bad players who play long enough find themselves in the higher tiers because there is a general upward trend on the tier system.

As such your primary goal shouldn't be to go up tiers beyond say tier 3 as it really makes no difference. Tier 1 players play with tier 3 and 4 players. What I mean is once you are tier 3 there is no point obsessing over going higher as it doesn't seem to make a difference as the tier system is flawed.

It's also a bit sad to see Polar and Frozen as two of the top 3 popular maps.

Also, kind of sad to see that Incursion and Escort as the two most recent game mode additions are also the least popular... PGI really needs to go back to the drawing board on game modes and figure out what the player base actually wants and implement that.

#11 Serpentine Shel Serpentine

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 05:58 AM

This qualitative explanation of Tier progression from the developer Paul Inouye gives an idea of what matters but gives no specific numbers.

https://mwomercs.com...-tiers-and-psr/

A player estimate of the thresholds for up/down progression is here:

http://mwomercs.com/...-as-best-i-can/

Edited by DeloresAbernathy, 29 May 2017 - 05:59 AM.


#12 Too Much Love

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 06:00 AM

Nice and neat job, appreciate it.

What you need to read is this
https://mwomercs.com...-tiers-and-psr/

Dev's explanation of tier system.



#13 Atomic Hamster

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 06:36 AM

View PostOZHomerOZ, on 29 May 2017 - 05:06 AM, said:

If you want to go up in tier the most important thing in my opinion, is your performance on a loss.
As this is the only time you lose psr, just saying.

So what to do?

After a while you can tell when a loss is immanent.
So my rule is when a loss is likely, do as much damage as you can, as long as you can before the team disappears.

Crack 450 match score on a loss and your psr dont go down.
Do this more often than not and you will go up in tier.

On a win, shoot a few times is enough.
This rule "do as much damage as you can, as long as can" works for win too.

But But But
Often when loss likely, spirit crushed, morale crushed, mojo absent so no make do as much damage as you can, as long as can rule.


Never actually considered that even though it is blindingly obvious when you do - thanks for that!. Looking back through my screenshots of defeats with no rank loss (yes they are so uncommon for me that I ss them), it looks like the break point is about 400 dmg (my lowest was 408 dmg w 2 kills, 1 kmdd + 1 solo - match score on that was actually only 288).

Seems harder to do if your team has been rolled and it's just a few of you against the entire enemy team - getting focus-fired by the enemy team doesn't give you long to get that damage out.

2 most common situations for getting rolled seem to be when the team scatters all over the map at the start or just sits behind cover firing LRMs. Not sure how much of this is to do with lack of map knowledge (as well as lack of communication like the OP pointed out) - doesn't seem to happen on easy-to-navigate maps like Caustic. Have to say that for me not knowing the maps well enough is the main cause of getting into bad/fatal situations (that and minority pushes where most of the team stays behind or scatters).

Also thanks to the OP and Delores - very helpful posts.

Edited by Atomic Hamster, 29 May 2017 - 07:19 AM.


#14 Kaoba

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 08:01 AM

I wish all new players were like this guy, instead of complaining on the forums about "OP this OP that, I got spawn camped...etc"

#15 JC Daxion

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 11:44 AM

Nice post.. But just got to say, there are is nothing wrong with LRM's, You just need to use them right. If you are not using them like longer ranged SRM's aka 250-500m then you are doing it wrong. I personally don't like total boats, you need at least some back up ML/ERML's preferably 4. But they can work in any pug match, and are not the reason why teams win/loss, unless of course you are just sitting back, not sharing armor, and not giving another target, or using your other weapons just like anyone else that does this no mater what the long range weapon is keeping them from pushing up.. Often LRMers, can be in the lead push. Push the corner, grab your lock, Fire off some volleys then let the Bralwers push by and they become the priotiry target.

You just used your armor, and softened them up a little, and now the brawlers are fresh and your still firing, holding the lock you just grabbed as they are not taking AC20 shots to that torso you opened up.

To use LRM's against good players, and use them well is a hard skill to learn. Really the easiest weapon in the game are lasers, its point and click. So if you have aim troubles, lasers are what you need to use, then use a backup weapon like a ballistic/missiles or single PPC to learn to aim.


I did find the rest of the post interesting, and similar to my experience 4 years ago. Way back when i had a win/loss of .4 a KDR of .7 and if i hit 200 i was having a great match. Eventually i learned Posted Image

Edited by JC Daxion, 29 May 2017 - 11:54 AM.


#16 Kaoba

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 12:15 PM

View PostJC Daxion, on 29 May 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

Nice post.. But just got to say, there are is nothing wrong with LRM's, You just need to use them right. If you are not using them like longer ranged SRM's aka 250-500m then you are doing it wrong. I personally don't like total boats, you need at least some back up ML/ERML's preferably 4. But they can work in any pug match, and are not the reason why teams win/loss, unless of course you are just sitting back, not sharing armor, and not giving another target, or using your other weapons just like anyone else that does this no mater what the long range weapon is keeping them from pushing up.. Often LRMers, can be in the lead push. Push the corner, grab your lock, Fire off some volleys then let the Bralwers push by and they become the priotiry target.

You just used your armor, and softened them up a little, and now the brawlers are fresh and your still firing, holding the lock you just grabbed as they are not taking AC20 shots to that torso you opened up.

To use LRM's against good players, and use them well is a hard skill to learn. Really the easiest weapon in the game are lasers, its point and click. So if you have aim troubles, lasers are what you need to use, then use a backup weapon like a ballistic/missiles or single PPC to learn to aim.


I did find the rest of the post interesting, and similar to my experience 4 years ago. Way back when i had a win/loss of .4 a KDR of .7 and if i hit 200 i was having a great match. Eventually i learned Posted Image

If you are in relatively big group and have a dedicated narc its fine for the lulz, but NEVER bring LRMs to solo play, thet are not just efficient to kill a target, you better doing direct fire. And even with narc and coordinated team if you come to face a good team you are gonna lose with LRMs

#17 JC Daxion

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 02:59 PM

View PostWayTooSexy, on 29 May 2017 - 12:15 PM, said:

If you are in relatively big group and have a dedicated narc its fine for the lulz, but NEVER bring LRMs to solo play, thet are not just efficient to kill a target, you better doing direct fire. And even with narc and coordinated team if you come to face a good team you are gonna lose with LRMs



You might as well just say don't bring SRM's or anything short ranged to QP too. I can't tell you how often i end up on teams with nothing but PPC's and gauss cause they are considered so great, yet people can't hit the same place twice. What does pin-point matter if you take 3-4 shots if you can't hit the same place twice, and that is if you even hit. At least LRM's from 400-500m will pretty much all hit the target no matter what if used correctly.

If you come up against a good team, your gonna loose anyway in group. QP, any well played mech is worth having, I don't care what the weapon system is. An LRM guy doing 450 damage and a 8 assists.. or a KDR that dies after 90-200 cause half their shots missed, or never hit the same place twice? Well played, is well played.. QP all you need is well played. I know many folks that have carried teams with well played LRM mechs, and i get to bat clean up with an AC-20 HBK with 4-5 kills and 200 damage. It just all depends.

Edited by JC Daxion, 29 May 2017 - 03:07 PM.


#18 Kaoba

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 03:06 PM

View PostJC Daxion, on 29 May 2017 - 02:59 PM, said:



You might as well just say don't bring SRM's or anything short ranged to QP too. I can't tell you how often i end up on teams with nothing but PPC's and gauss cause they are considered so great, yet people can't hit the same place twice. What does pin-point matter if you take 3-4 shots if you can't hit the same place twice, and that is if you even hit. At least LRM's from 400-500m will pretty much all hit the target no matter what if used correctly.

If you come up against a good team, your gonna loose anyway in group. QP, any well played mech is worth having, I don't care what the weapon system is. An LRM guy doing 450 damage and a 8 assists.. or a KDR that dies after 90? Well played, is well played.. ANd QP all you need is well played

Take my words only for LRMs, I mainly play faction, I only use QP to level mechs and run Troll builds (not LRMs), but if ppl missing its a skill problem, btw ill take a guy doing 300 dmg but getting CT kills rather than one doing 600 but spreading all the damage

#19 JC Daxion

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 04:47 PM

View PostWayTooSexy, on 29 May 2017 - 03:06 PM, said:

Take my words only for LRMs, I mainly play faction, I only use QP to level mechs and run Troll builds (not LRMs), but if ppl missing its a skill problem, btw ill take a guy doing 300 dmg but getting CT kills rather than one doing 600 but spreading all the damage


Yes, skill to hit the same place twice,... That is exactly the issue.. Yes you would take the person that can land a shot on the ct every time and get 300 damage. But those are not the average player playing QP. If you are not hitting the same place consistently, it doesn't mater if you are taking pin-point, hit-scan, or spread weapons. Hitting and concentrating fire is the most important part for much of QP. We are not talking comp tier. We are talking average player.

But i'm not going to derail this thread any more, the OP made a nice post, i made a small counter to think about..

Edited by JC Daxion, 29 May 2017 - 04:52 PM.


#20 Tier5 Kerensky

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Posted 29 May 2017 - 06:11 PM

I wont comment on the advices or anything like that, but I notice something very, well, unusual I think. Or lets say curious, distinctive.

Compare his map stats, to mine:

Now of course my average tier per game is probably somewhere between tier 3 to tier 2, I can only remember for the first about 200 games I was in tier 5, after that I got my third owned mech and pretty immediately jumped to tier 4 and fairly fast rose to tier 3 too. Getting to tier 2 and gradually tier 1 took a lot more time, but I don't rememeber much difference between for example tier 3 and tier 1, the mechs, the maps, the playstyle is all pretty similiar, because the whole tier thing is not really a measure of skill or anything else for that matter.


But still, consider how in tier 5 the cold maps are so much more common, than on higher tiers. The only common thing is alpine and Terra therma are rare.

And mind you, I've played for nearly two years now, and Im pretty sure all these maps have been existing during that time. I know some maps are newer than others, so some players might not have comparable maps being available when they have played. It is of course possible that the distribution of the maps have slighly changed.

Although it's the players who actually choose the map, it's the server that chooses which maps can be voted at any given time, so it's possible the distribution has not been the same.


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