183 replies to this topic

[Nightbird]

https://mwomercs.com...-and-suggestion

Still nothing wrong with Assaults, the BEST PERFORMING weight class in MWO.

[Insanity09]

And yet, some folks have put up statistics that have suggested that assaults are the least effective weight class.

Iirc, the post I'm recalling went light, heavy, medium, assault (not 100% sure on M v H, I know L and A were 1 and 4, resp.). This guy looked at stats from hundreds of games, and found that when lights performed better, that was a bigger indicator of the team winning than any other class. It was well-reasoned analysis with quite a few details, even if the results were more than a little surprising.

I've not seen a good statistical analysis suggesting the opposite (assaults are the most important), but I'd be happy to see some.

[MischiefSC]

Insanity09, on 26 November 2017 - 08:27 PM, said:

And yet, some folks have put up statistics that have suggested that assaults are the least effective weight class.

Iirc, the post I'm recalling went light, heavy, medium, assault (not 100% sure on M v H, I know L and A were 1 and 4, resp.). This guy looked at stats from hundreds of games, and found that when lights performed better, that was a bigger indicator of the team winning than any other class. It was well-reasoned analysis with quite a few details, even if the results were more than a little surprising.

I've not seen a good statistical analysis suggesting the opposite (assaults are the most important), but I'd be happy to see some.

What the assaults do drives the win - however it's the action by the more mobile mechs (lights being a great example) that drives the win home.

The other team maneuvers to deal with the assaults while avoiding being destroyed. If your assaults manage a particular lane then the other team is functionally denied it. That forces them into a set area. If your lights/mediums can corner them out and pick off people or drive them into the lane your assaults are running, that's your win.

It's rare to get a situation where you've got assaults/heavies in an 'L' shape around the enemy team - normally the assaults are one leg of it. Your lights become the other leg, forcing the other team to either fight in a bad spot or move into the lane your assaults are covering and trade in the open against someone in cover.

[Roadbuster]

Imho, many assault mechs are weak because they can't join the vomit meta and they can't tank the vomit other mechs vomit at them.
Atlas is a good example. Few hardpoints and you can't really boat any weapon. Hardpoint location is low, the mech is slow and you can only push. Peek-a-boo is no option.
Now, Atlas got some desperately needed armor/structure quirks, but it's still not enough, considering its weak loadout and maneuverability.

The other problem are teammates who think they can hide behind assaults and block their already abysmal movement. Or people who think a single assault mech can tank half the enemy team, while they hide behind cover and watch said assault get vaporized, instead of providing cover fire.

Yes, piloting assault mechs can be very frustrating. And to some extent it's because the other weight classes are too egoistic to support an assault mech.

[The Basilisk]

There are two things about assaults that I noticed to be largely misunderstood or ignored by lots of people.

It is not the armor, it is the assaults stoping and stunning power that makes most of its defense.
Even the most tankiest Mech in game, the Annihilator, goes down within mere seconds if 3 heavies man up and focus him down.
The reason why this does not happen as often as one should expect it to happen is the sheer firepower and hindrance that comes out of the guns of most Annihilator builds. When this mech goes full "slap ya butt little *femaledoggy*" most pilots snap some hasty alibie shots of and dive for cover or react like a deer on a highway staring into the headlights of an approaching 45t truck. It is this "awwww crap cant see or aim or do anything" feeling you get when running face first into a UAC5, MRM 120 or similar mech.

The second thing is more subtile. Assaults draw lots of aggro...that is secret .... but they also creep the sh...out of most less mobile or larger heavy mechs and missile platforms. Some well placed shots in the faces of selected mechs can wreck havoc to the enemys ability to move coherently and fluently.
Sure you may have to move into positions that will cause you to get eaten by lights and your score and dmg numbers may stand in no relation to the actual damage you did to the enemy team that now gets roled because you deprived them of their lights and caused their mainforce to lemmingtrain because you creaped out one or two mechs that stayed behind in cover.

[Y E O N N E]

Insanity09, on 26 November 2017 - 08:27 PM, said:

And yet, some folks have put up statistics that have suggested that assaults are the least effective weight class.

Iirc, the post I'm recalling went light, heavy, medium, assault (not 100% sure on M v H, I know L and A were 1 and 4, resp.). This guy looked at stats from hundreds of games, and found that when lights performed better, that was a bigger indicator of the team winning than any other class. It was well-reasoned analysis with quite a few details, even if the results were more than a little surprising.

I've not seen a good statistical analysis suggesting the opposite (assaults are the most important), but I'd be happy to see some.

You have the sauce for this analysis?

[Alan Hicks]

I used to pilot some Assaults, now I rarely play them. It started with the fall of the Kodiak, this game is getting worse everyday.

TY PGI. Oh and they banned a post in the events feed, that is unjustified repression.

[Khobai]

Roadbuster, on 27 November 2017 - 12:53 AM, said:

Imho, many assault mechs are weak because they can't join the vomit meta and they can't tank the vomit other mechs vomit at them.
Atlas is a good example. Few hardpoints and you can't really boat any weapon. Hardpoint location is low, the mech is slow and you can only push. Peek-a-boo is no option.
Now, Atlas got some desperately needed armor/structure quirks, but it's still not enough, considering its weak loadout and maneuverability.

The other problem are teammates who think they can hide behind assaults and block their already abysmal movement. Or people who think a single assault mech can tank half the enemy team, while they hide behind cover and watch said assault get vaporized, instead of providing cover fire.

Yes, piloting assault mechs can be very frustrating. And to some extent it's because the other weight classes are too egoistic to support an assault mech.

yep the atlas is a good example of an assault that needs major help

there are atlas builds that do tremendous damage, the problem is most of them are short range. and short range on a slow mech thats a huge target is a pretty awful combination.

the atlas just isnt capable of poking effectively at medium or long range and thats pretty much the current meta

a lot of the problem with its survivability comes from how poorly scaled the atlas is. it should only be 3 times bigger than a jenner. and its more like 5 times bigger than a jenner. its almost twice the size it should be by volume.

PGI really needs to do a another rescaling pass. I mean I dont expect a half-size atlas but certainly they should reduce its volume by at least 10%. They also need raise up the atlas' hardpoints because theyre way too low.

assault mechs also need better baseline acceleration. its physically impossible for some assault mechs to get out of an artillery strike in time. assaults need at bare minimum 12kph/s acceleration.

Edited by Khobai, 27 November 2017 - 09:46 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

You want to play assaults? Stick to MAD-IIC, MCII, CP, SNV, BLR, DWF, MAL, ANH

[Gas Guzzler]

Khobai, on 27 November 2017 - 09:26 AM, said:

the atlas just isnt capable of poking effectively at medium or long range and thats pretty much the current meta

This is kind of an oversimplification, because there was a time while the Atlas was not a great solo public queue pick due to its incompatibility with the current meta, but was a top tier Assault in terms of 8v8 competitive play.

Granted, those days are long past as there are faster Clan assaults with more short range firepower, but mechs don't necessarily have to be shoehorned into the current meta to be useful, as long as they have a role where they are very strong.

[Mole]

I pilot all the weight classes a fair amount but I by far feel the least confident when in my Assaults. That's not to say I can't do good in them, but I actually feel more vulnerable in an assault 'mech than I do in any other weight class. There are prevalent 'mechs in every weight class that can mount enough firepower to render my extra armor nothing more than a footnote yet I am so restrained in mobility that I cannot avoid the damage, and if I do, I get called for being a "cowardly assault" because I refuse to march happily into a hot death for people who probably won't follow me anyway, my sacrifice being ultimately a waste. That all being said, I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. I don't think we can just nerf weapons, I don't think we can just nerf all other weight classes, and we can't just fix it with more durability quirks either because they would have to be quirked to unreasonable levels in order to make this issue go away. Perhaps though... just perhaps we could make being behind the controls of an Assault 'mech feel good again if we buffed the entire weight class' torso yaw and their base mobility quite considerably.

[Shifty McSwift]

Assaults still mostly do their job fine, the problem is comparative performance in the meta, most of the heaviest assaults are just plain overkill, they are too big, too heavy, too slow to make up for their extended firepower/armor, particularly in the face of ghost heat.

Why ever take a direwolf that can shoot 2 volleys of 2HLL and 4HML (4hll and 8hml total), when you can take a linebacker who can fire a single volley of 2hll and 4hml with an insane amount of other benefits that come freely (just one example, not perfect but you get the general idea). The value to those kinds of choices is minimal to non existent.

[FupDup]

Shifty McSwift, on 27 November 2017 - 03:49 PM, said:

Assaults still mostly do their job fine, the problem is comparative performance in the meta, most of the heaviest assaults are just plain overkill, they are too big, too heavy, too slow to make up for their extended firepower/armor, particularly in the face of ghost heat.

Why ever take a direwolf that can shoot 2 volleys of 2HLL and 4HML (4hll and 8hml total), when you can take a linebacker who can fire a single volley of 2hll and 4hml with an insane amount of other benefits that come freely (just one example, not perfect but you get the general idea). The value to those kinds of choices is minimal to non existent.

That example isn't just slightly imperfect...

For one, it's just a bad Dire Whale build. You have more than 19 tons of free pod space with 4 HLL + 8 HML because you run out of critslots very fast. You should be using ballistics in there to both eat up that tonnage and give you a low-heat weapon to lean on while your laser heat cools off.

Secondly, a build with an alpha strike of 112 damage should NEVER be anything more than a troll/joke build. That's enough to oneshot a lot of assault mechs through the front center torso. If something like that ever became legit mainstream viable...just lolno.

[Snazzy Dragon]

FupDup, on 27 November 2017 - 04:06 PM, said:

That example isn't just slightly imperfect...

For one, it's just a bad Dire Whale build. You have more than 19 tons of free pod space with 4 HLL + 8 HML because you run out of critslots very fast. You should be using ballistics in there to both eat up that tonnage and give you a low-heat weapon to lean on while your laser heat cools off.

Secondly, a build with an alpha strike of 112 damage should NEVER be anything more than a troll/joke build. That's enough to oneshot a lot of assault mechs through the front center torso. If something like that ever became legit mainstream viable...just lolno.

Well, there is the 106 damage deathstrike that's actually pretty serious about killing things..

[Insanity09]

Yeonne, I have looked for the sauce, as you call it. With the MWO forum search function totally non-functional (a search for the word "weapon" came up with zero results?!), and having not posted in the thread I'm referring to I cannot seem to locate it. I went back through 40 pages of General Discussion and about 10 each of NPH and Guides. Maybe it was in another folder.

My own feeling on the general subject is that all mech classes have importance to a match when played well. Whether that gets reflected in the score at the end is a different and sad issue.
I just finished a match in a faux-light mech (viper-c, so medium functioning as a light), where I distracted about 3 enemy mechs for more than a minute (they were locked on me, and shooting at me directly when I poked my head out). Another actual light gave a good report on the location of the remaining enemies. That should have been a decisive advantage, but the team couldn't or wouldn't take advantage of it.

My point is that everybody needs to do their job for a team to succeed. That said, with the way the game works, I think assaults do need a bit of help. In addition to the earlier suggestion to improve the numbers for assaults in the mobility tree, since that is still likely to give only marginal benefit, I suggest magnifying it with a slight increase (10%) to the survival tree numbers, giving assaults back their primary role.

[Genesis23]

i play mostly lights and mediums, but started to get more into heavies because they are easy to play and deal loads of damage (which is apparently the only thing that counts for c-bill gain and match score) with. assaults are way too slow and unwieldy, i allways have the feeling to be able to tank better in a warhammer than in a battlemaster because of the sluggishness of the later.

for years, i was used to the PUG queue numbers being about 10-15% lights, 25-30% mediums, 30-40% heavies and 20-30% assaults. but for a few months now i have seen the light and assault percentage switch and assault now being the least played class.

as far as i can say, on IS side everything 95t and below can perform quite adequate, but 100t are mostly too slow to bring their weaponry to good use. and lets be honest, one of the best assault mechs in game imo, the Marauder IIC, is that good exactly because he is fast enough to do that. high alpha, the speed of an IS heavy with much more survivability and the agility to also threaten fast targets that would be reasonably safe attacking large, sluggish enemies like an atlas or dire wolf.

[gooddragon2]

Nightbird, on 26 November 2017 - 05:02 PM, said:

https://mwomercs.com...-and-suggestion

Still nothing wrong with Assaults, the BEST PERFORMING weight class in MWO.

Can't spell assault without ATLAS?

[Sjorpha]

Gas Guzzler, on 27 November 2017 - 02:02 PM, said:

This is kind of an oversimplification, because there was a time while the Atlas was not a great solo public queue pick due to its incompatibility with the current meta, but was a top tier Assault in terms of 8v8 competitive play.

Granted, those days are long past as there are faster Clan assaults with more short range firepower, but mechs don't necessarily have to be shoehorned into the current meta to be useful, as long as they have a role where they are very strong.

I think if the Atlas got a significant boost in twist speed/agility and armour instead of (or on top of) structure it could get this niche back, at least the S variant.

[Genesis23]

with all the new tech, you Atlas pilots have loads of new toys to meddle with. if you struggle to get into brawling range, try something new with ultras, MRM, er medium lasers. the main problem is that a short range mech should either be relatively fast or survive long enough to bring its weapons into range and wreck havoc, both options dont really with for the Atlas.

bottom line is, dont be slow AND short range. go for medium range if your old way no longer works out for you. i replaced the srm in my orion (the one with the uac5 quirks) with mrm and it works much better for me now, same for the non-ballistic centurion.

[Y E O N N E]

Gas Guzzler, on 27 November 2017 - 01:59 PM, said:

You want to play assaults? Stick to MAD-IIC, MCII, CP, SNV, BLR, DWF, MAL, ANH

BNC should be in that list. And, having had time to adapt to it, so should the NSR.