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Balancing Weapons, Or How Weapons Determine Your Playstyle

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#1 332Balu

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Posted 22 August 2017 - 06:20 AM

Hello,

today i learned something interesting, so i thought i share it with the community. Maybe someone has similar or completely different experience with this topic.

I played MWO for a time after launch as founder, bit took a long time off after returning a couple weeks ago. For now i just play solo drops. I think i finally understand the game somewhat, as my matchscores in average have drastically improved.

During the last couple weeks, i mainly played a Dragon 1C.XL 280 engine, RAC-5 and 2 Large Lasers, full armor and the rest heatsinks and ammo. I found the right playstyle for this build, and have a lot of fun. I do (almost) consistently more than 600 damage per match, surviving most of the wins with not much armor or structure left. Most of the time i get 1 or 2 kills, some destroyed components.

I decided to switch things up a little bit, and changed to Large Lases to 1 heavy PPC. At first glance, not much difference, or so i thoung. The PPC has a little less damage, a little more heat. But the damage is pinpoint and not spread out like the large lasers. Minimum distance is not an issue, since i'm keep the fights at medium range.

But somehow, with this new build, my scores, and especially my damage number dropped by a large amount. From 600-900 in the old build to something like 300-500. I still survived most of our wins, and generally was one of the last mechs to die in a round, so time on the battlefield was not the issue here. But something changed. And it was not the 3 damage difference per Laser or PPC shot, but something more.

I played a little more, and noticed i was using a lot less ammo for the RAC than before.

Without me noticing, my playstyle had changed. With the PPC, i usually found myself peeking out of cover, shooting, back to cover. The time it took for the RAC to spool up felt way too long to be exposed. When the RAC finally fired, i felt like i needed to get back to cover or twist right away.

Switched back to lasers, my playstyle changed back. Fire the lasers, by the time the lasers finish, the RAC is spooled up and firing. The transition felt more smooth and natural. This resulted in longer times facing the enemy and dealing much more damage with the RAC.
With the old build, i instantly started dealing out a lot more damage again.

The worst part is, this happend without me doing something on purpose, but rather subconsious.

Lasers and RAC's work well together, PPC's and RAC's not so much.

TLDR:
Balance your weapons not only for range, but also with the method of employment in mind, mainly DPS or pinpoint/alpha weapons.

#2 Prof RJ Gumby

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Posted 22 August 2017 - 07:12 AM

Using weapons that do not complement one another is #1 reason that a build is bad. A good build will have weapons that work well in tandem and a mech that can carry them well. This is why boating is always so popular and effective, identical weapons work perfectly well together.

Lasers actually work not bad with RACs, despite the fact that one requires leading and the other staring. You use RAC to blind the enemy so that he cannot return fire precise enough to focus a component, while you use your lasers at your leisure. Especially effective if you equip it on a mech that has narrow hitboxes, like the enforcer.

Other examples:
smrs and AC20 - both front-loaded, both short range. You can shoot and twist to shield immediately. If you would try to switch one of those weapons for lasers, you would loose on the shielding advantage (because lasers need staring), unless you would use very short-duration lasers like spls or mpls. MPLs can still work decent with srms, medium lasers not so much.

Lasers with other lasers - just make sure that range and duration are similar, MPLs with ER Larges are a bad combination, Large Pulses with meds or er meds work well.

LRMs/ATMs + lasers - getting a lock often requires staring, so it's a good idea to use that time to utilise those lasers. To do that however, you must be an active missle boat (best type of missle boat) and try to stay as close to the front line as possible, ideally just behind a big ally that's closest to the enemy (which is actually the most effective way of lurming anyway, as vicinity limits the time your enemy have to run for cover).

PPCs + gauss - now a thing of the past due to them having commong ghost heat, but it was argued to be the best combo in the game, allowing people to have an 50 points of front loaded pinpoint damage alpha.

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 22 August 2017 - 07:13 AM.






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