18 replies to this topic

[Slowth]

So.
How broken I the laser system?

IS.

Large and ER-Large does 9 Damage
Large Pulse does 10 Damage

Med's and ER Meds do 5 Damage
Med Pulse does 6 Damage

Small's and ER Small's do 3.25 Damage
Small Pulse does 3.5

Clan

ER Large does 11 Damage
Large Pulse Does 12 Damage

ER Mediums do 7 Damage
Medium Pulse does 7 Damage

ER Smalls do 5 Damage
Small Pulse Does 4 Damage


All pulse lasers weigh more and have shorter range

Seriously WTF PGI?

I know some of you are going to jump in and say burn times and heavy lasers and such, but still how about we just fix the numbers first

[Prototelis]

Why should pulse lasers, which have shorter duration, have longer range?

I'm not really sure what you're crying about.

[Lucifaust]

Bro. pulse lasers can't be objectively better than other lasers...

Edited by Lucifaust, 09 August 2017 - 08:21 PM.

[FupDup]

The situation is that PGI decided that they wanted to rework pulse lasers to have a "DPS" role, as opposed to the burst damage role that lasers currently have. They wanted to do this because both pulses and normal lasers fulfilled the same basic function, so it was just a matter of picking the one that had the best blend of stats.

The problem is that PGI is being extremely overcautious about it. They've reduced the damage on pulses, but only gave them very tiny cooldown buffs in exchange. Thus, their DPS is actually not higher than before. Some of them have LOWER DPS than before. Their role is still burst damage, they're just less effective at it than they used to be.

PGI needs to go whole hog on this. Reduce the damage even further, reduce the heat somewhat, and drastically speed up the cooldown time. Make them like laser autocannons that shred people who stay exposed but weaker in poke/peek usage.

Edited by FupDup, 09 August 2017 - 07:55 PM.

[Naglinator]

Life is tough pumpkin... but you'll manage. Also, i forget... is this BALANCED Warrior online.. or Mechwarrior Online? Asymmetry comes with the territory. Would you play a tank game where the M3 Lee, Tiger 1, and IS-1 have the exact same gun and armour just so it's "fair"?

[Alexander of Macedon]

Naglinator, on 09 August 2017 - 07:21 PM, said:

Life is tough pumpkin... but you'll manage. Also, i forget... is this BALANCED Warrior online.. or Mechwarrior Online? Asymmetry comes with the territory. Would you play a tank game where the M3 Lee, Tiger 1, and IS-1 have the exact same gun and armour just so it's "fair"?

Nah, you play a tank game where a T-34 has the same armor as a Tiger II and a better gun because the dev is Russian.

[Alan Davion]

Naglinator, on 09 August 2017 - 07:21 PM, said:

Life is tough pumpkin... but you'll manage. Also, i forget... is this BALANCED Warrior online.. or Mechwarrior Online? Asymmetry comes with the territory. Would you play a tank game where the M3 Lee, Tiger 1, and IS-1 have the exact same gun and armour just so it's "fair"?

Just because there's asymmetry between the sides doesn't mean there can't be balance between them.

Hell, go back and look at some of the Battlefield games. Battlefield 3 let's say. The FAMAS in that game sprayed at 1000 rounds a minute, but did comparatively little damage per shot, and had crap accuracy because of how fast it fired. On the other side, pretty much any Russian gun had maybe 750 rounds a minute at the most, usually more like 600-650, but did comparatively more damage per shot and had better accuracy because of that slower fire rate.

Asymmetric, but balanced against each other.

There's no reason we can't have the same in MWO except for PGI's combined ineptitude with coding and their constant back and forth sweeping changes going too far one way or the other instead of smaller, more iterative changes.

Edited by Alan Davion, 09 August 2017 - 08:09 PM.

[Naglinator]

Yeah clan weapons are stupid hot and have long beam time. UACs were lighter but had multiple projectiles, bleh bleh lists goes on. I was also fine with the quirk system, buff IS mechs, all the same to me. The problem, to me, is that weight is a poor balance for quick play. I'd have made pre-mades no bigger then 4 and used an BV system(internally) to make sure both sides got clan and IS mechs in relative equality. For Invasion, when we still only had invasion for FP, Clan gets 3 drops, IS 4. Boom done. Not elegant and neat, but it'd work. Now with other game modes in FP and this "new" tech, good luck ever getting any balance.

[Shifty McSwift]

I think about 50% at least of players ideas/ideals surrounding balancing are just plain whack. People think the devs are bad then posit even crazier ideas.

"Devs suck, ghost heat is dumb and shouldn't exist" was probably my favorite of late, I mean sure, if you want to make 10+gun mechs the only viable ones and eat 200 damage alphas from single targets constantly... Right?

To the OP; weight is one of many aspects, pulse and normal lasers have closer damage rates now but also more distinct burn times and cooldowns, which do make that weight gap worth it, if you can afford the weight.

The burn time on the damage is just as important if not more so, assuming the damage isn't crappy... Lower burn times mean better damage accuracy on more targets in more situations and faster in general too, with how it procs the cooldown quicker, before even getting into the shorter cooldown also.

[Carl Vickers]

To be fair, I suspect he is looking at the CMP and CSP in particular.

The above 2 pulse lazors are, damage wise, out of alignment with what PGI are saying they should do.

Edited by Carl Vickers, 09 August 2017 - 09:23 PM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Slowth, on 09 August 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

I know some of you are going to jump in and say burn times and heavy lasers and such, but still how about we just fix the numbers first

Duration is expressed in the form of time, which is a number. Soooo........

[Paigan]

Slowth, on 09 August 2017 - 07:14 PM, said:

So.
How broken I the laser system?

IS.

Large and ER-Large does 9 Damage
Large Pulse does 10 Damage

Med's and ER Meds do 5 Damage
Med Pulse does 6 Damage

Small's and ER Small's do 3.25 Damage
Small Pulse does 3.5

Clan

ER Large does 11 Damage
Large Pulse Does 12 Damage

ER Mediums do 7 Damage
Medium Pulse does 7 Damage

ER Smalls do 5 Damage
Small Pulse Does 4 Damage


All pulse lasers weigh more and have shorter range

Seriously WTF PGI?

I know some of you are going to jump in and say burn times and heavy lasers and such, but still how about we just fix the numbers first

Sorry, but you have to understand what cooldown (dps), duration and heat (dph) is.
Just looking at damage values themselves is ridiculous.

Out of the goodness of my heart, I give you an example to learn:
Say a weapon has 2 damage.
That's really bad, right?
But say it fires 10 times in one second. That would make it an UBER-MG with 20 damage per second. You have to think through and understand what that means.
It means: 20 damage, 20 damage, 20 damage, 20 damage, 20 damage ... enemy dead. In a matter of 5 seconds. That's the reload time of one single gauss shot.
It would be hilariously overpowered and everyone would only use that weapon and nothing else.
(Everyone who wants to have a chance to win, that is.)

Similar with heat.
Unless a weapon is REALLY a one-shot killer (like doing 100 damage in one shot), high damage or even dps alone means nothing if the weapon is too hot to be used a lot of times before the Mech has to shutdown/hide to cool down. At the very least, it makes the weapon much more difficult and situational to use (poking etc.)

There's also duration, range, falloff, amount of slots occupied.

You have to consider ALL values of a weapon before you can properly judge it.
Just looking at the damage numbers gets you nowhere except being laughed at.

Edited by Paigan, 09 August 2017 - 11:19 PM.

[Jun Watarase]

IMHO clan large lasers should get 3 max ghost heat to match with IS counterparts.

Small pulse badly needs to do more damage than small lasers. The 165m range is crippling unless you are running a light mech. Your survivability goes WAY down. I used to use heavy mechs and brawl with small pulse lasers...it was very limiting on what you could do. IS small pulse shoulld go up to 4 damage as well.

Clan ER meds need to serve more of a purpose other than mounting 6x for sniping. I think the range gap between clan and IS lasers should be lowered so that the other stats can be tweaked to be more in line with each other. Clan ER meds should be for medium range engagements, not the go to sniping weapon.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 09 August 2017 - 11:40 PM.

[panzer1b]

Honestly, after the nerfs, there is very little incentive for me to touch any pulse laser unless it comes down to not enough slots and plenty of tonnage left (ill put 2 LPLs on my ebon as otherwise i have 3 tons leftover when its full of heatsinks with the 2 ERLL and 6 ERML build). The other issue is that even if they provided considerably more DPS (which they do not at least not DPS/ton), lasers are simply not useful in the DPS role because they are too hot post new tech release. They would need to give pulse lasers close to a 2 damage/heat ratio (as any less and they are just too hot to provide any real advantage in DPS compared to ERs or regulars) and maybee theyd be viable after. Now if they gave pulses like half the reload of regular lasers, and a little bit less dmg but much less heat gen, i think they'd have a niche in the hitscan DPS role that nothing else can truly fill. As they are now, they are still going to be used in the alfa strike role (too heavy to be used as a backup weapon package alongside a dakka/gauss/missile boat) and in their current form they make no sense for anyone that isnt excessively concerned about beam duration (and really most of them dont offer that big a difference here anyway (1.1 cLPL vs 1.35 cERLL, meaningless imo).

Unless they get some buff, ill pass on pulse lasers entirely, meds and smalls are just too short range to bother with after they lost alfa strike capability and most of all heat efficiency, and LPLs on both sides just dont offer enough positives to justify the 2 tons they eat up (id rather have 2 more heatsinks and loose 1 point of dmg and gain way more range out of the deal then a little bit of burn duration and DPS). HLLs may have many issues, but id rather have 1.5s beam duration (and do boatloads of dmg) then bring pulse lasers...

[Khobai]

clan pulse lasers are the only clan lasers I use

the other clan lasers are !@#$ing stupid

CERSL has the same duration as an ISERLL ahahaha

and the CERML duration is even longer

Quote

I think the range gap between clan and IS lasers should be lowered so that the other stats can be tweaked to be more in line with each other.

CERML beam duration makes them unusable IMO. I wont touch a laser with 1.25s beam duration except for the CERLL; the CERLL's beam duration is tolerable only because it gets sick range.

But any clan non-pulse laser feels like Im swinging a !@#$ing lightsaber around. if I wanted to swing a lightsaber id go play a starwars game.

CERSL and CERML need shorter beam durations. CERLL is good.

CSPL needs more damage, CMPL and CLPL feel fine where they are

Heavy Lasers need a huge buff. Cooldown is awful. Heat is awful. They dont sync up well with other weapons. Their beam duration is fine though. Its just that cooldown and the heat ruin them.

Micro Lasers need a light mech platform they can thrive on like the PIranha. The main issue with microlasers is that there just isnt a clan light mech that can really spam enough of them to make them worth it.

And Clans need chemical lasers. WTF didnt you give us chemical lasers? why PGI why?

chemical lasers >>> heavy micro garbage lasers

Edited by Khobai, 10 August 2017 - 04:47 PM.

[PurpleNinja]

What exactly is broken?

[GrimRiver]

People often have opinions on things they know nothing about.

Alot cry on how PGI don't know how to balance a game and offer their own ideas that end up worst than whatever balance decision PGI made, everybody has been guilty of this.

But the C-SPL nerf was a bit heavy handed.

Could've been nerfed to 5 dmg instead of 4.

At this point C-ERSL is more economical than C-SPL, heck even the C-HSL is better.

[Pjwned]

Shifty McSwift, on 09 August 2017 - 08:36 PM, said:

I think about 50% at least of players ideas/ideals surrounding balancing are just plain whack. People think the devs are bad then posit even crazier ideas.

"Devs suck, ghost heat is dumb and shouldn't exist" was probably my favorite of late, I mean sure, if you want to make 10+gun mechs the only viable ones and eat 200 damage alphas from single targets constantly... Right?

The irony is immense.

I'll just give you a hint and tell you that convergence is the problem, not alpha strikes.

[Alan Davion]

PurpleNinja, on 10 August 2017 - 04:38 PM, said:

What exactly is broken?

The OP's understanding of the game mechanics I would guess.