The easiest way to understand a meta is to play it. You will see where the weaknesses are, you will see the challenges other players face when running a meta and you will understand why it is a meta.
This does not mean that morally you lost or something equally dumb that I've seen people say. You did not give in, you did not lose some mythical moral high ground nor are you doing what some shadowy illuminate wants you to do, this is pure and simply smart gameplay. The most important thing is you can realise that a) It's a gameplay style that has strengths and weaknesses just like any other meta and b.) you will know how to counter it or what it takes to succeed with it and c)maybe illuminate what you are doing wrong yourself.
Playing around a bit in the mechlab I can say a couple things with some certainty:
- They are using very large XL engines. It's required to run 5 ERLL with the number of heatsinks required to make this build feasible on a 70t Mech. They could run smaller LFEs but you'd have to give up a lot of tonnage and more importantly heatsink slots in the engine to do that. In general if a team is decent enough and coordinated enough it doesn't matter that they're in XLs because most everyone dies before they get into range to pose a threat.
- They are using double coolshots with full coolshot skill tree. Self explanatory. If you are not willing to do this yourself then you give them the advantage.
- Their mechs either have Cooldown, Heat reduction, Range or all 3 quirks. Not a huge amount you can do about that but knowing the exact variant they're running will allow you to know if they have an extra 5 or 10% range, if they have faster cooldowns or generate less heat. Any enemy team worth their salt sure as hell knows the exact maximum and minimum stats of your weapon systems.
- Their skill trees are tailor built for the exact tactics they employ. Max Range, Max Heat reduction, Max Duration and Max heat skills in Ops as well as all coolshot skills and probably the rest in Armor. Some might be running avanced zoom and some might have Strike skills.
As for the teams themselves;
- They've practices this, a lot. They've put in the hours. They put in the effort and they spend the extra energy and concentration required to make sure they aim and hit the components they want to hit. It's easy to lazy mode MWO and just 'hit' a mech. It takes a lot more energy and concentration to aim for specific components at extreme ranges consistently. It's not impossible it's just *effort*.
- They know the mechs they are facing inside and out, something a lot of IS AND Clan pilots are not willing to do because wah wah mah lore or effort or some BS along those lines.
So you'll need to spend the time in the mechlab and in quickplay and in lobbys and with your unit at the *minimum* because if you're not willing to do what the other unit *is* and then want to win then the problem definitely isn't with the meta, the mechs, the faction or the players
Edited by ForceUser, 20 November 2017 - 10:18 AM.
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