49 replies to this topic

[Angel of Annihilation]

davoodoo, on 10 July 2017 - 01:56 PM, said:

How exactly can these mech shine? normally they would trade engine power for firepower, but since theres ghost and cries for ed it cant really put much firepower can it?

So artificially bump them in agility till they are good at role they were never designed for??

No you can put plenty of firepower on it, you just can't click one button and Alpha all that firepower all at once. Instead you have to cycle through groups and use this thing called "Skill" to maximize your DPS over time.

Example. 30 PD, 60 Firepower. Set up two groups of 30 damage and cycle between the two. Fire one group, wait 0.5 to 1.0 seconds, fire the other group. 2 seconds later group one is off Cooldown so fire it again, followed by a short pause before firing the second group, wash, rinse, repeat. Then if you want to alpha, you pay the price by skyrocketing your heat but maybe the pay off for that alpha is worth the extra 30-45 seconds you will need to cool off, then again maybe not, only "Skill" will determine if it was worth it or not.

You all make GH and PD out to be a much bigger deal that it is. Sure it makes the game a bit harder and more tricky but is that so bad and when I say a bit I am talking pushing two buttons in a cycle-like rhythm rather than one click like most of you do right now. Hell I have some mechs I run as low as 1.08 Heat, using weapons that if alpha'ed would generate tons of GH but cycling through groups of weapons, instead of Alpha, Alpha, Alpha all the time and they are some of my top performers.

A far as the issues with the 100 tonners. It is all about the ridiculously low mobility they get. I mean they are they half the value of a 95 tonner, that is 50% for those who can't do math (hehe j/k). 50% difference is huge and that is compared to the next closest agility class. Compared to the majority of Assault mechs it is more like 66% less agile I mean what the hell?!?!?!

This is then compounded by two other important issues. First, is there is no such thing as a fast 100 tonner. Using the biggest engine they can mount at most they can reach 64 kph before tweak however if they use that big honking engine to barely get about 64 kph, then they loose a fair amount of that fearsome firepower that everyone is afraid of. The second issue is that the Skill Tree really does nothing to help them out because the mobility bonuses that are offered are the same across all weight classes. Hate to tell PGI this but a 20% increase to bad mobility still equals bad mobility and what is worse, because the bonus amount of mobility gained is so minuscule, the value of your SP investment is very, very low.

One last thing. The numbers on the spreadsheets may be tallying up behind the scenes but balance doesn't mean squat if that balance isn't fun. Right now that balance isn't fun. My 100 tonners are all rusting away in their mechbays and until PGI does something about their mobility to make them more comparable to 90-95 toners, say maybe 20% less agile rather than 50-66% less agile, they are going to stay there, right up to the point I give up on them and sell them all off.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 10 July 2017 - 03:52 PM.

[davoodoo]

So wait, not only it cant twist effectively, but now it also is supposed to stare at enemy forever continously poking it with 20 dmg?
No **** that, id get ebj, tbr or mad2c and laser vomit at higher speed...

You still cant see where the problem is??

Edited by davoodoo, 10 July 2017 - 03:59 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Just give the lot of them good agility. They'll still be slow from point A to point B though, but at least they're not as hard to pilot anymore.

[Coolant]

Respawn..then they can feast on those that are spawn camping

[dario03]

Other mechs need more help than the big assaults. Like the OP said they still bring the pain, and they often can do that from range too. Most of the big damage numbers I see at the end of matches are heavies and assaults, and that includes the Atlases, King Crabs, and Dires.

Edited by dario03, 10 July 2017 - 04:42 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

davoodoo, on 10 July 2017 - 03:56 PM, said:

So wait, not only it cant twist effectively, but now it also is supposed to stare at enemy forever continously poking it with 20 dmg?
No **** that, id get ebj, tbr or mad2c and laser vomit at higher speed...

You still cant see where the problem is??

Nope because the way I learned to play is by cycling through usually 3-4 weapons groups and I rarely fire full alphas at anything. Oh and I made it to Tier 1, imagine that. Oh and I can usually hit the top 75 during leader board events as well if I actually try. Forgot that for a minute but it sure goes to show you that you can actually play the game and still be competitive by doing something other than hitting the alpha button over and over.

It was kind of funny actually. When PD was out on the PTS I kept seeing so much QQ that I took the time to download and play around on it for a bit to see what the fuss was and because I tend to play while cycling through weapons groups like I mentioned, my mechs didn't feel one bit different on the PTS than on the Live server, in fact if anything alot of them played better. My point is that PD is just learning a new way to do things, a way that take a bit more skill perhaps but not so much skill that 90% of the players couldn't adapt to it in probably a few weeks at most. However no one gave it a chance and we go stuck with GH and other crappy balancing tactics to compensate. Go-Go team, thanks for making the game worse hehe.

[Revis Volek]

If you cant move fast enough to mitigate dmg then you need to be able to twist to either get your face into the fire or rotate something out of it.

SO mobility and Twist speeds need to go up on these mechs, not a lot, but enough to make it capable of defending itself from the circle jerk. But also mechs like the lowlander need the things that make it great to be actually good at least. Like JJ's? If you have a slow sluggish mech but he can jump (actually jump) and use his EXTRA (useless) TONNAGE to get his butt places fast as other mechs which have the mobility then there is no need to really exaggerate what the mech can do mobility wise, just let it DO what it DOES already! But those items actually have to work.

Without some other factor helping mechs in this game (like RNG for weapons which i detest) which need that help what can you do really but make them self reliable. If any mech in the game cant beat other mechs on its own then how does it help the team win? DWF, KGC, HGH (both flavors) and many other sad assault mechs need to have the target in a small like 115 degree arch in front of them or it not worth shooting at...

and mechs like that arent worth piloting.

Edited by Revis Volek, 10 July 2017 - 04:52 PM.

[Bud Crue]

Nothing...that PGI is willing to do... can "save the Juggernauts" .

Almost anything they can do some other, lighter mech can do better.
Quirks are an obvious solution. Be they offensive, defensive. But with the push to "drastically reduce all quirks" that Chris Lowrey has repeatedly stated as a balance goal I can't see them getting any help here. They might return some mechs agility, but since they just reduced them all I don't see that happening as it would be a tacit admission that they got their balance overhaul with the skills tree very very wrong. So nope. Realistically there is nothing that can be done to "save" the fatties. Play them as they are and be happy PGI hasn't nerffed them further.

Apropos, the melt downs on the IS side are going to be epic when they finally hit the Battlemasters. I give it two months top, though they might hit it this month so as to "hide" it within the chaos/irrational exuberance of new tech. By the end of the year I expect Victors to have their armor quirks pulled back a bit, and the Dire Ultraviolet will get smacked with the nerf hammer as well. Save the Juggernauts? Shhheeeitt, PGI is not even done smacking them around yet.

[l33tworks]

Why would the ultraviolet get the nerf hammer? What does it have thats good? Everytime i see one they get obliterated. I would get one bcos i love dires but it seems its the worst way to spend 10,000mc bcos you cant do anything with the two extra hard points thats worth while due to exactly what is discussed in this thread. Pasr a ceetain point hardpoints are useless due to gh and heat cap.

[LordNothing]

ive had a lot of excellent games in my cac2 ultraviolet lately. its slow and it doesn't have any of the speed tweak nodes unlocked. the effectiveness of a 100 tonner is very dependent on the competence of the team. do they see that 100 tonner as a liability or is it going to be treated as an asset that can be used to break the enemy lines? when those big guns open up will the team do everything in its power to keep that firepower on the enemy or will they head off and do their own thing.

[El Bandito]

The Trojan Titan, on 10 July 2017 - 02:22 PM, said:

Atlas, Banshee, King Crab, Direwolf, Stalker, Executioner.

Just make it so that every other Banshees have better twist and turn than the 3M. Cause 3M's performance poisons other variants, like that of KDK-3.

[Bud Crue]

l33tworks, on 10 July 2017 - 06:30 PM, said:

Why would the ultraviolet get the nerf hammer? What does it have thats good? Everytime i see one they get obliterated. I would get one bcos i love dires but it seems its the worst way to spend 10,000mc bcos you cant do anything with the two extra hard points thats worth while due to exactly what is discussed in this thread. Pasr a ceetain point hardpoints are useless due to gh and heat cap.

Because I bet that on average...on average mind you...they are over performing over other Dires. The last town hall they articulated that that is how they are approaching balance. Over-performers relative to their chassis and weight class get nerfed. I think those few, but regular players who put up stellar numbers in the AC2 spam builds are skewing the numbers and thus, PGI will nerf the things eventually.

[Kaptain]

Giving 90-100 toners some more acceleration/deceleration and torso speed would do a ton to improve them.

[l33tworks]

Bud Crue, on 10 July 2017 - 07:04 PM, said:

Because I bet that on average...on average mind you...they are over performing over other Dires. The last town hall they articulated that that is how they are approaching balance. Over-performers relative to their chassis and weight class get nerfed. I think those few, but regular players who put up stellar numbers in the AC2 spam builds are skewing the numbers and thus, PGI will nerf the things eventually.

PGI also needs to look at how Many players are playing a particular chassis not just how well its doing for those that are playing it... For example if there is an overperormer mech, just how many people are playing that overperformer mech? If its a small ammoumt of people playing it , it means only the ones that are VERY skilled at playing that mech arecthe ones playing it at all, making it sewm better than it is on average, because the others gave up cos they cant do well in it, meaning its only skilled players left playing that mech, NOT that the mech is OP.
It takes a lot of skill to do be exceptional in a dire

p.s the 8 uac 2 build uv is trash. Your better of with 6 and more heatsinks and ammo.

Edited by l33tworks, 10 July 2017 - 07:23 PM.

[Big Tin Man]

I miss the fast torso twisting King Crab...

Also, I'd look at giving certain quirks to these guys to increase firepower. Like remove ac20 ghost heat, raise ppc ghost heat triggering limit by 1 (i.e. fire 3 without triggering gh). Big weapons only.

[Christophe Ivanov]

as a DW fan with 4 DW mechs mastered, I can say before the skill change, it was much better than it is now. It's too slow, cant turn like it used too to give me half a chance to combat them "lil tumors" trying to core me in the back. Now, they can do this at will.
We are not asking for a Super Mech that is a 100 ton battlefield team killer in one sweep, but more one that can hold it's own in a respectful fight. I have said it in the past and will again, PGI dropped the ball on the assaults. The best two builds I use are 2XUAC10's, 2Large ER lasers. My other is 2XLarge Pulse Lasers, 4XMedium Pulse Lasers. I do OK with these, but not like I used to be.

Edited by Christophe Ivanov, 10 July 2017 - 07:48 PM.

[Johnny Z]

Agility or speed hurt the sim. Always, always, always sim ftw.

So much effort is put into the models, animations, textures to create these sim like games, then the designers mess it up. This game hasn't done that at all and has even moved closer to the sim in many ways, lamps posts getting knocked down etc.

So anyway lets hope they can maybe look at improving this and not hurt the sim.

Edited by Johnny Z, 10 July 2017 - 08:56 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

TIL: slow and bereft of capability == sim.

[Savage Wolf]

Give them a bigger allowance in Energy Draw. Yes, that will give them bigger alpha's and firepower, but their downside is being slow and being easy targets.

And this really requires Energy Draw to work. Ghost Heat isn't flexible enough to allow a few mechs to behave differently. And be even more confusing than it already is.

[Bud Crue]

l33tworks, on 10 July 2017 - 07:20 PM, said:

PGI also needs to look at how Many players are playing a particular chassis not just how well its doing for those that are playing it...

Yes frequency most certainly is relavent and ought to be a big factor in their balance analysis. I don't think it is though; or at least it wasn't. All through 2015 and 2016 they said they exclusively rely on in game data for balance decisions. Yet for longer than those two years many mechs were asserted to be "just fine" by PGI but utter garbage by the majority of players. Take Victors for example. The only thing that I can think of which would justify the three year view that such a mech was "fine" is if they had data from a select few players who were doing well in it. Cuz neither I nor anyone I knew played them or had ANY success in them. But PGI felt that they were "fine"...right until December of last year when they suddenly were in need of massive armor quirks instead of structure. If frequency of play had been looked at I think Vic's would have been buffed a long time ago.

Same issue different out comes in regard to Grasshoppers. Throughout 2016 all the hoppers were nerfed repeatedly, except for the 5P. The one variant that was considered "meta" the one that was a significant presence in CW, the one that for a time was the primary IS counter to clan long range PPFLD, with the 5ERLL build...yeah that mech was not nerfed despite being clearly more often played at all tiers; they nerffed the rest of them repeatedly and the 5J (with the least and worst hardpoints) the most dramatically. Only way that makes sense to me is that a select few players were doing really well with the 5N and 5J and those outlying performances (outlying if frequency of play across the chassis was looked at) were presenting PGI with skewed data that they failed to consider in view of the average scrub who was bringing down the performance averages of the 5P. If frequency would have been looked at from the beginning, the 5P would have been nailed, and crapier variants would have been buffed despite those oulying performances in these mechs. It took another year before someone finally looked at the data and concluded 'huh, it looks like the 5P gets played a hell of a lot more than any other Hopper...hey maybe that means something!"