242 replies to this topic

[JC Daxion]

FupDup, on 14 October 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

Coolant flush nodes in the skill tree recently got nerfed a bit, and I really think it's a stupid idea to balance lasers around the assumption that the user is always using coolant. That's not a laser problem, that's a coolant flush problem. Go for the disease instead of the symptom.



Wait, do you actually think that the IS Medium needs a longer burn time?



Pulse lasers are mechanically still an alpha-focused weapon. They just alpha a little bit faster than regular/ER lasers.

Look at games like MW3, MW4, MA, etc. for examples of true DPS-based pulses.

You don't need to use coolant flush to do a double alpha typically. You need it for a third.



As for burn time, i dunno, maybe slight. .1 or ..2 perhaps



This is still in a step direction for DPS verse burn, but yes pulse are more pin-point, not sure if i have an issue with that or not. slight time increase could be in order anyway

[Kali Rinpoche]

It looks like its time to vote on these draconian laser nerfs with my discontinued financial support of Mech packs. I'm a IS loyalist. Its depressing enough to get laser vomited to death in FP over and over again, now my return fire will take longer to trade less damage every volley.

Put these changes on test server first. We will play it and vote/flame them down, and you want have to be embarrassed to pull these nerfs off live.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 14 October 2017 - 04:31 PM.

[Alex Morgaine]

Hmm... You think they did this to try to get people to alpha less and fire smaller groups of vomit to try to keep at least one our two lasers ready to fire due to cooldown?

[Y E O N N E]

Alex Morgaine, on 14 October 2017 - 04:27 PM, said:

Hmm... You think they did this to try to get people to alpha less and fire smaller groups of vomit to try to keep at least one our two lasers ready to fire due to cooldown?

No, because your DPS is the same regardless of whether or not you fire all at once or one at a time.

[Gas Guzzler]

Alex Morgaine, on 14 October 2017 - 04:27 PM, said:

Hmm... You think they did this to try to get people to alpha less and fire smaller groups of vomit to try to keep at least one our two lasers ready to fire due to cooldown?

LOLno

Yeonne Greene, on 14 October 2017 - 04:32 PM, said:

because your DPS is the same regardless of whether or not you fire all at once or one at a time.

....so why would you increase face time by firing in multiple volleys?

If anything, due to the decrease in HPS of these lasers, you are encouraged to stack MORE lasers and maximize your alpha, so you can giga alpha then fall back to cover for cooldown. That, or you will choose to instead boat larger lasers and fire from 2 volleys from further away. IS mechs may go this route, Clan mechs will probably go the giga-alpha route, more than they already do I guess.

[Stf Sgt Marblez]

Gas Guzzler, on 14 October 2017 - 04:36 PM, said:

LOLno



....so why would you increase face time by firing in multiple volleys?

If anything, due to the decrease in HPS of these lasers, you are encouraged to stack MORE lasers and maximize your alpha, so you can giga alpha then fall back to cover for cooldown. That, or you will choose to instead boat larger lasers and fire from 2 volleys from further away. IS mechs may go this route, Clan mechs will probably go the giga-alpha route, more than they already do I guess.

So long story short, quad ERLL thunderbolts, or any other mech that can boat large lasers properly should be more relevant.

Unless I read that incorrectly, which I very well may have?

[InvictusLee]

So I wasnt the only one who was confused?

[Stf Sgt Marblez]

November11th, on 14 October 2017 - 06:00 PM, said:

So I wasnt the only one who was confused?

Far from it yeah, we all seem to be in the same boat here.....

Hand me that bucket of tar, we seem to have sprung a leak

[TLBFestus]

I kinda skimmed over the patch notes, and even though I don't pay nearly as much attention to detail that some of you obsessives do I scratched my head until I drew blood.

However fear not mechwarriors I have the explanation for you that will make you understand exactly why PGI has screwed up yet again;

[redacted]

In other words, we are damned either way.

Edited by McValium, 16 October 2017 - 07:14 AM.
no personal attacks.

[Brain Cancer]

Jun Watarase, on 14 October 2017 - 06:34 AM, said:

Duration nerf on all lasers would hurt all laser builds, not just laser vomit. Personally i would bump IS LPL up to 0.75 burn duration (roughly same ratio as IS MPL to IS ML), make large and medium lasers share ghost heat (oh noes you have to use more than one type of weapon now!) and increase the ghost heat timer to 0.75s (more face time if you want to boat 9 MPL, 5 LPL or other nonsense).

That's pretty much the point. And yes, merging the GH pool of meds and larges would instantly slay laservomit as we know it, since being able to burn HLL+ (med lasers of choice) is the road to maximum alpha. You could still have MLs firing together, but even one large would reduce combi-blasts to 2 or 3 lasers before things started cooking.

Longer burn would mean poke builds would suffer more exposure, making them increasingly vulnerable to ballistics and even missiles, or lower damage as they're forced to veer off/more damage can be twisted away.


And you could make the Gauss automatically GH with everything (after all, it's a massive power hog), meaning anything + Gauss would instantly drop to a GH count of two. Wave buh-bye to mega-Gauss combos the same way.

[Valdarion Silarius]

Appogee, on 14 October 2017 - 01:23 AM, said:

Maybe PGI are pushing us to abandon MWO to ensure we pre-order MW5 in December?

If there is any truth in this statement, then that is the most half assed backwards marketing scheme that I've ever seen a developer pull behind the curtains. With any intelligence involved, if they made MW:O a game to actually look forward to in future updates with better communication then I would be more apt to purchase MW:5. Again it might be PGI just being PGI. With the lack of communication with only twitter being the primary source of messages to them, it really does make you wonder, doesn't it?

[Brain Cancer]

The Lurm Wurm, on 14 October 2017 - 09:14 AM, said:

Let me preface by saying that the Artemis nerf is quite silly; even with Artemis, TAG, and all the spread nodes, LRMs are still one of the worst direct-fire options you have. They're not unusable, but they're objectively worse than ACs and lasers.

That being said, you can absolutely make non-Assault LRM 'mechs work. I get a ton of work done on an ALRM40 ARC-2R with a personal TAG unit and 5 medium lasers as backup (too bad PGI's nerfing the hell out of those too, kek).

Too bad that PGI's nerfs, supposedly intended to sort out the laser vomit meta and do... something... with missiles, actually directly target builds like this in every possible way to just make them outright worse in every way for no good reason.

Artemis nerfs (and ATM spread increase) are specifically noted as "to prevent the majority of missiles from hitting a single location".

From a guy who lives in an LRM/ATM Supernova, I can say unequivocally that Artemis or not, this doesn't happen. A good shot for me is putting the majority of the missiles into the target, never mind the torso. Some missiles will auto-miss.

Now, thanks to this, even more spread will happen and SRMs (which are the only missile that gets away with putting most of it's launch into any one location) will remain just peachy for in-your-face single-location splat.

I do appreciate the Streak changes, though. Ignoring destroyed locations means a Streak doesn't lose damage hitting a damaged target.

[Rick T Dangerous]

Alex Morgaine, on 14 October 2017 - 04:27 PM, said:

Hmm... You think they did this to try to get people to alpha less and fire smaller groups of vomit to try to keep at least one our two lasers ready to fire due to cooldown?

No, they obviously want to make waiting times to find matches longer. Make us play less. Wanna bet it works that way?

[JediPanther]

DGTLDaemon, on 14 October 2017 - 01:24 AM, said:

I haven't been playing the game anywhere near as long as you, but looking at the patch notes thread, this appears to be the worst-received balance pass ever. I mean, usually there's at least someone white-knighting the nerfs, but not this time...

johhy z hasn't posted. That be the pgi cheer leader. As for the notes good bye every lrm mech build I have and 80% of my remaining light mech stable. Thank goodness the number one competitive light mech is the ach right? I've just abandoned about 25 lights including most if not all the locusts unless there is a ( c ) variant I forgot about.

Forget my pre ordering the piranha. Pgi wants to nerf all is lights then screw them. I hate using clan mechs. I've got roughly 73 IS mechs to 9 clan mechs. since they were al la carte,the invasion wave 1, or reward mechs where i've shelled out money I haven't sold them off. They sit striped of armor,weapons and equipment just like many many of my IS mechs.

[Brain Cancer]

Mr Snrub, on 14 October 2017 - 01:52 PM, said:

Yes, ginormous (Clan) Alphas of 70,80 points at long ranges were the problem people complained about.

Longer cooldowns don't change anything about them. No idea why you're 'happy to see where it goes'.

Heck, the two longest ranged large lasers are the only ones not nerfed by the patch. CERLL/LPL actually become more appealing choices, but only because everything else became worse.

[Shifty McSwift]

Brain Cancer, on 14 October 2017 - 06:34 PM, said:

Artemis nerfs (and ATM spread increase) are specifically noted as "to prevent the majority of missiles from hitting a single location".

From a guy who lives in an LRM/ATM Supernova, I can say unequivocally that Artemis or not, this doesn't happen. A good shot for me is putting the majority of the missiles into the target, never mind the torso. Some missiles will auto-miss.

Now, thanks to this, even more spread will happen and SRMs (which are the only missile that gets away with putting most of it's launch into any one location) will remain just peachy for in-your-face single-location splat.

I do appreciate the Streak changes, though. Ignoring destroyed locations means a Streak doesn't lose damage hitting a damaged target.

I think that hitting the same component thing was more directed at SRM grouping, with that 5% boost since the skill tree making some kind of noticeable difference, as yeah, LRMs and hitting the same component have never really been an issue, I think they just got adversely effected in the process.

[panzer1b]

I simply dont understand where PGI is getting these random dartboard ideas from. The laser nerfs only go to screw over lights (which need to have good ERSLs with DPS since you cant physically boat enough of them to achieve more then 30 alfa strike), and it does absolutely NTOHING to stop the number one issue that i see people complain about with regards to laser/gauss vomit, absurdly high alfa strikes.

Laser/gauss vomit is NEVER going to get weaker until something is done about people who poke out of cover a SINGLE time and dump 70-100 damage onto the first thing they come across. DPS with laser weapons is basically useless in the meta game where you are exposing a single time and then immediately going back under cover. Yeah it will make laser vomit a bit more vulnurable to agressive brawl/uac boat stats, but tbh, laser vomit was already a free kill to a dedicated brawler provided they could get in range before they were hit (which is a big if considering the vast majority of maps and their design).

At least the 100t mechs are getting a buff, its about time they get to do something. That said, we dont know the exact amount its gonna be, if its something like 5% more accel, who cares, if its 50% boost, then it could be huge.

[Tarl Cabot]

Just putting that out there. Those.. adjustments made on the energy weapons would make sense IF the notes also included the longer range energy weapons are being reviewed and we will see adjustments to them in November......

[FupDup]

Tarl Cabot, on 14 October 2017 - 06:58 PM, said:

Just putting that out there. Those.. adjustments made on the energy weapons would make sense IF the notes also included the longer range energy weapons are being reviewed and we will see adjustments to them in November......

I would not be surprised at all if the currently slated micro/small/medium laser nerfs remain untouched, and the large lasers get nerfed to be even slower than the newly nerfed mediums (which are horrendously slow, especially the 5 second Clan ERML).

5-6 second cooldowns on the IS LL. I'm calling it now.

Edited by FupDup, 14 October 2017 - 07:01 PM.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

There are a few nearly comical elements about this. I am laughing through my tears.

1. This laser "balancing" is that it seems to be an obvious endeavor to make under-utilized weapon systems (like the Cspl...because PGI made them bad recently and players bailed) more utilized by just making all the alternatives worse. It's like they said.."nobody is using micro-pulse or Clan small pulse for brawling, the only thing we can do to fix that is to make ersml, er micro, erml, Cmpl worse." They could have just made the bad weapons better...but went the other way.

2. It won't do nearly anything to Clan high-alpha laser vomit traders (They were so high heat, that they couldn't alpha frequently anyway), but it hits IS laser vomit hard. IS has lower damage, but lower heat...so more frequent alphas were possible and needed to compete for dps. Do they not play this game??? Oh wait...