Fattimus Prime, on 02 December 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:
Great responses, again ty all.
And yeah despite my previous ill fortune, it just looks like it'd be so much fun when you see those little dudes zipping around and actually wrecking. I actually had almost sold the ACH but there's some solid advice here, a lot of stuff I hadn't really considered so I feel like I have somewhere to start from now. Appreciate it, guys.
I used to be a heavy/medium mech player but I've almost exclusively switched to playing lights. Here are some random thoughts on my experiences...
There are different kinds of lights. Some of them, such as a locusts (my favorite) or commandos are great at zipping around the battlefield at really high speeds. I used these guys to do a couple of different things. Either I find a location to spot for my team (lern2press 'r'), help defend our heavies and assaults from enemy lights, or, my favorite pastime, hunting lrm boats. The others kinds of lights act more as a supporting fire mech. I stick really close to an assault on our team and dish out damage by peeking and poking (my panther with 2 snub nose ppcs is great for this)
Yes, you will turn the corner and die when playing the faster light mech. Sometimes you'll get one shot and not know where it came from. But as you become more familiar with the maps, it doesn't happen as often. You also get used to making better judgement calls as to when you should move in on a mech to take it out or when you should put your tail between your legs and run. As an example, in my locust, I might attempt to take on a solo Timberwolf if he's rocking a couple of lasers and some lrms. I will, however, avoid the mad dog with a boat load of streak srms. I always engage other lights if it's one on one...the exception being the machine gun mist lynx...I hate those. I find a lot of light vs light battles is determined by the better pilot, not necessarily the chassis...with a couple of exceptions. If I ever find that I'm outgunned, I try to escape and find a bigger buddy to help me out.
Modes often dictate what you'll be doing. Conquest provides you with a lot of opportunity to harass enemies and get into one on ones or two on twos. Domination usually gives you more opportunities to get behind enemies as they generally stick closer to the circle. As a rule, I groan when escort is selected...if you're out looking to destroy the VIP, you have to deal with turrets that shred your armor before you ever get to see the enemy. Incursion is actually one of my favorite modes as a fast mover...a trip to retrieve a battery is about enough time for the battlefield to unfold for you to do some serious work.
Personally, I love piloting lights more than any other class. You have more freedom to affect the engagements to your liking and you don't have to rely so much on others to do your job. Just understand, especially in pugs, a lot of heavies and assaults don't understand your role. I find it much more beneficial to take out a mech or two behind enemy lines than spot for some guy who sits 900 meters out and fires salvo after salvo of lrms. It's more challenging, yes, but it's also a lot more rewarding when you get that 1000 damage game in a locust rather than an assault mech.
The real answer to this question is get an Urbie, max the structure and armor tree, and manhandle mechs twice your tonnage with your newly minted 30 ton pocket heavy.
Fattimus Prime, on 02 December 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:
Appreciate it, guys.
It varies with what Light Mech. Though I will say with Heavy Laser and Heavy MGs, you seriously lack range so hanging with the team is somewhat of a moot point. Running off will only lead you to certain doom.
So what is left?
Well it depends on the game mode. Conquest has a lot of options so I won't get into that. But lets say you're playing Skirmish or some other straight forward kill them all scenario. You can run off and find the enemy but don't get too close, you want to sneak up and observe them not turn a corner and suddenly die.
From there, sneak your way back to the lance and let them know where the enemy is. Marking them with the spot command on the Command Wheel helps significantly. This ensures your team will be headed in the right direction.
If for some reason it is just you and a heavy or assault or even a slower medium/light, stick with the guy and remember... slower mechs tend to carry bigger guns. Let them focus on any big target that they stumble on. You can help, but remember what you really need to do when there's only two of you is remember there may be two or more of them, and any slow mech with big guns is gonna be fragile on the back so protect him.
In one match I was in a Night Star and a Blackjack was following me. I'd drill into an enemy and he'd kinda help from the safety of being kinda behind me. That's fine I don't fret much about that. An issue came up though when we began to engage some enemies and I've got my hands full blasting away at a heavy and an assault at the same time. The blackjack was all too happy to start shooting them as a Light sneaks up behind me. If I turn to deal with him, I expose my weak point to the big guns, if I ignore him I'll soon be dead. The only strategy I can do is hope the guy in the lighter mech picks up a clue and deals with the pest... but that doesn't happen and as the last of our team we are soon wiped out which shouldn't have happened since all the enemies were really weak and barely even alive.
Which brings up another thing. The number one cause of loses that occur in spite of a strong front line... is the lack of players covering the sides and back from a sneak attack. Sometimes bobbing back and forth around allies to look for those pests.
Whatever you do, however, don't stop moving even if it is a really slow speed. Any movement decreases the chance of landing a shot on you.
With the firepower you have, provided that other allies have engaged and weakened the enemy, you should be able to sweep in and finish them like this.
7 kills and 711 damage in just over 7 minutes of gameplay.
For another example. In the first short bit I read off some lore, but then I get with it.
Laser, machine guns, a couple of small SRMs.
Both of these videos are chasing me, so you see how the action looks from an exterior perspective. I know I'm in a medium, but as had been suggested you should learn mediums before lights if possible.
LocationStationed at the Iron Dingo's Base on Dumassas
Posted 02 December 2017 - 09:54 PM
Wolfways, on 02 December 2017 - 09:06 PM, said:
Eh....no. Assaults are the weakest by far.
Actually, there is one critical way in which Lights are worse than Assaults. If you make even a momentary misstep in a Light, you are dead, no questions asked. Make a similar mistake with assaults(or any other weightclass besides Lights) and you have enough armour/structure to back out before you get wreaked.
Requiemking, on 02 December 2017 - 09:54 PM, said:
Actually, there is one critical way in which Lights are worse than Assaults. If you make even a momentary misstep in a Light, you are dead, no questions asked. Make a similar mistake with assaults(or any other weightclass besides Lights) and you have enough armour/structure to back out before you get wreaked.
Okay, I'll remember that next time I walk around a corner in my Atlas and get instantly cored, like what just happened in my last match...and most other matches.
My Raven lasts longer than my Atlas.
I guess there aren't many light pilots that make mistakes then, seeing as nearly every match ends with a 5 minute game of "kill the lights".
Okay, I'll remember that next time I walk around a corner in my Atlas and get instantly cored, like what just happened in my last match...and most other matches.
My Raven lasts longer than my Atlas.
I guess there aren't many light pilots that make mistakes then, seeing as nearly every match ends with a 5 minute game of "kill the lights".
Takes a fair portion of the enemy team to core your Atlas on a wrong turn, lights can get vaporized by a single well equipped medium on a misstep.
And a lot of players trying to pilot lights aren't very good at it and play with a fair amount of cowardice directing their actions, hence the reason all of their heavy firepower is long dead and you have to chase them down... they didn't actually help their team win (or go down swinging where the battle could've still been decided in the team's favor with their help).
Season 17
- overall avg MS: 220
- avg MS with lights: 189
- avg. MS with assaults: 270
- overall KDR: 0.66
- KDR with lights: 0.31
- KDR with assaults: 1.0
So forgive me if I have some trouble believing your Raven is super survivable. Furthermore, such a claim is at best dubious given that the Raven is one of the most fragile lights out there. If you were an experienced light driver, with less experience on assaults, and if you had made that claim with a Wolfhound e.g. ... I might have given you some credit for that is exactly where I come from. And I am very much inclined to say assaults need some help.
But from where you come from I don't see why you feel confident claiming lights were op.
Season 17
- overall avg MS: 220
- avg MS with lights: 189
- avg. MS with assaults: 270
- overall KDR: 0.66
- KDR with lights: 0.31
- KDR with assaults: 1.0
So forgive me if I have some trouble believing your Raven is super survivable. Furthermore, such a claim is at best dubious given that the Raven is one of the most fragile lights out there. If you were an experienced light driver, with less experience on assaults, and if you had made that claim with a Wolfhound e.g. ... I might have given you some credit for that is exactly where I come from. And I am very much inclined to say assaults need some help.
But from where you come from I don't see why you feel confident claiming lights were op.
lol those stats mean nothing.
Firstly, you're looking at the wrong account, and secondly, I don't really play lights or assaults much because I know how easy it is to kill assaults and I only play slow lights (my most used being my Raven and Kit Fox) because I have no interest in speedboat-online (I also only get about 20fps in MWO for some reason).
My opinion comes from constantly seeing lights running around in the middle of the enemy, seemingly taking a hell of a lot of fire and then running away to come back when the team have forgotten about them.
I also know from experience that some lights have the firepower to 1-shot fresh heavy mechs (SRM's).
I have tried fast lights a few times since I started MWO.
Years ago I said lights could survive a lot of damage and people laughed. I bought a Jenner and played a few matches. I just ran around the enemy team for the whole match. I didn't do much damage but I survived nearly the whole match. There are even videos on YouTube of people doing the same thing, but people just put it down to lag.
I came back from a long break a few weeks ago and bought an Arctic Cheetah just to see what they are like. I survived the match and got 500+ damage straight away, and that is being played by someone with almost no experience piloting fast lights.
Hell, I've seen lights stand in place and trade shots with heavies and win.
Lights are only vulnerable to meta alpha strikes, and most players don't use meta. So, like LRM's maybe lights are just bad in competitive matches?
Imo the problem is because defence = armour + speed. Customisation gave all mechs more speed, especially lights, and then pgi gave all mechs an armour buff when it was the slower mechs that needed it.
But yeah...whatever. I really don't care enough anymore to go on another rant
Edit: Wow, you got me to look at my stats. My KDR has really dropped since I stopped using IS mechs!
Been playing around with this. Seems kinda light on ammo but I've been doing alright sticking with team/ECMing and just using the tag/streaks on anything that gets close while I kinda get my legs. Thoughts/suggestions?
Snazzy Dragon, on 02 December 2017 - 04:12 PM, said:
Kind of hard when light mechs are a bit of a liability themselves as the weakest class of MWO
said like a true heavy easy mode elite player.
as far as liability goes i think its assaults. good light pilots tend to pay for themselves many times over in terms of tons allocated vs tons destroyed. its much harder to break even with a 100 ton mech. you might bring 100 and take out a pair of mediums for 90, where as with a light you are always going to take out more than you put in on games where you earn kills.
both lights and assaults are very easy to potato out in. assaults because they are slow and because they need to plan 10 moves ahead (its pretty much like chess) just to get into a position where you can be useful. the assaults that cant do this are going to be squirrel food or at the very least armor for your buddies. when im in an assault i always want to be hunting, but im also tailing the group because a lone assault is a dead assault.
lights are hard because you need razor sharp situational awareness and you need to be out and about, not safe in the pack (unless wolfpack, which is the best way to light). being stuck in a non moving formation is like suicide for a light because you cant use your main defence, your speed, when you are couped up behind a very static murder ball. when you are with a moving formation things get better for you. and sometimes you have to be the thing that gets your team in motion, probe the weak points, draw off enemies, distract with hit and runs, to give your firing line the advantage. ive had games where i identified a mark, ran through the enemy murder ball to kill it, and follow through, and by the time i returned to the group what had looked like a useless patch of potatoes was stomping out the last couple mechs as a result to the chaos i caused. thats usually suicide but choice of target, weapons, attack vector and pre-planning an escape route were all part of it, and of course the rest of the team exploiting the situation helps.
Edited by LordNothing, 03 December 2017 - 01:16 AM.
I suggest getting a viper and rolling with that for a while then go down tonnage. Viper fast and nimble like a light and a little more forgiving when you make mistakes like over extending yourself. I advise never stop moving... even when you have what seems like a multi alpha opportunity. Every time I sit down for turkey dinner like that some baddie comes out of nowhere and drills my tail pipe hard. Just stick and move like Doc advises and you'll start having a lot more fun.
Just to reiterate what everyone has been saying, for the most part there are a couple key components of being a light pilot.
First and foremost, knowing your mechs is ultra important. Which arm/side torso has the most valuable weaponry? What is your effective range? Are you made to harass, or to skirmish? Do you jumpjet and poptart with your loadout, or is your build reliant on ground cover and team members? Are you tanky as heck or are you made out of paper mache? Some mechs like the cheetah can play any way they want, others like the wolfhound, spiders and ravens are really particular, and mechs like the locust are in sketchville no matter how you play them. The same goes for your enemies; if you know their mech, you know which component to target. Murder gauss rifles, and take out parts that are likely loaded with ammo. You can absolutely neuter asymmetric mechs.
If you're new to lights, I'd say be opportunistic no matter what build you're setup with. The cheetah and mist lynx can do absolutely devastating things, and the wolfhound is the most forgiving of the lights to play. You can 1v1 most assaults, if not cause them to die sheerly by the virtue of your distraction and harassment, but keep in mind that it goes both ways. If you're boating all close range weaponry (ie: under 300m) engaging recklessly is a liability. You're the weight class that can, very legitimately, pick off every remaining mech come the end of a game with good play. You're the class that perturbs heavies and assaults the most. Take what you can get, and pull away if you don't have a good enough advantage or your team isn't using you.
Unless you're poking around some very good cover, or poptarting over something unexpected, don't stop moving, and don't stay in one place for an overly long period of time. You can score some pretty massive damage when you skirmish well, and there's not much the enemy team can do about that. But you're made out of glass, and if you get predictable, there are a lot of loadouts that can instantly kill you. Especially heavy gauss rifles. Mix it up.
If you're scouting very early on into the match, you should be using a mech that can jumpjet to do it. You just need to see how they're moving and call it out on voice quickly. You don't need to be up close, and you should never risk yourself to do it. If you're scouting on the ground, you'll constantly run into the scenario where you go around a corner and instantly die. But being able to pull it off safely can be a major game changer if your group reacts to your information.
Especially if you're using a mech with jumpjets, abuse the heck out of air strikes and artillery strikes. You're the fastest and most mobile member of your team. If you get good at placing these, you will very consistently score absolutely nutty amounts of damage for your weight class. A good number of my builds are running 3-4 consumables. You'll probably mess up every now and then, but hey, there's something to be said about knowing you've done 300+ damage before your team has even engaged the enemy for the first time.
Know your game modes and objectives. If you're fast, you need to be responsible when it comes to capping points and taking power nodes. Even if your team is annihilated, you can still win the game this way, as long as you reengage afterwards and put in your work. You, on the other hand, are not responsible for forgetting about the team and sitting on the enemy flag on assault. You deprive your own team of a player that way. Leave it for the end of the game if it comes to that. And always prioritize getting rid of immediate threats instead of splitting off for something meaningless. You won't always be able to change the tide of the game, but if you help get that one kill before running off to cap that point, it will make a difference.
Are you built to support? Can you support? Any mech with ECM will be an assault's best friend on polar highlands. Some mechs like the kitfox are entirely built around this, also boating hella AMS potential. Keep your team safe if it also allows you to play to your potential. The more your distractions and shields can do, the more work you can do.
Most importantly, though, don't give up. Keep trying until you find the builds and setups that work for you. Lights and assaults are the two most unforgiving classes to play because doing any one little thing incorrectly can and will kill you. You'll wonder what your team was doing. You'll get hella mad when you get oneshot for seemingly zero reason. Sometimes you'll just get surrounded and die before you can even react. But the more you see the scenarios, the better you come to be at expecting and reacting to them.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record I can't stress enough how helpful most of this advice has been. Been putting out much better numbers w/a better idea of what I should be doing, learning more from the mistakes as well. Some of this stuff should probably be compiled/stickied somewhere.
Been playing around with this. Seems kinda light on ammo but I've been doing alright sticking with team/ECMing and just using the tag/streaks on anything that gets close while I kinda get my legs. Thoughts/suggestions?
Ammo seems fine to me, on the high side really. Overall firepower seems low though. Also, make sure to get the Artemis upgrade with streak SRMs, it decreases their lock time for no extra weight or slots.
Okay, I keep saying this - you may disagree but I stand firm.
You don't become a good light pilot by learning techniques, how to shoot, how to load-out, how to play your role even. Those are just the basics anyone should know and is sadly, quite lacking in your average game. Ready for the really fun stuff?
You wanna git gud in lights in a team game? You think. Build that #gamesense.
That means predicting movements, that means knowing when to potshot, peek and commit, and when to disengage without anyone even noticing you. Hell, you could even memorize the locations of easy targets and the routes to them.
It means knowing all possible routes and flanks you and your enemy can take. There are only so many maps in MWO (sadly).
You're not a lumbering slow 'Mech full of guns, you're someone with a feather tickler that could potentially make the enemies die of laughter. Things that come with the job include causing the enemy to split up because of you being an annoying squirrel, opening up and critting out people's backs.
Run whatever build you like, but take direct fire weapons over Streaks once you're ready - Streaks do not add to your game and lure you into complacency.
Best part about building #gamesense? It doesn't just help you with lights, but carries over to every other chassis you will touch in the future.
Edit: Think, mate, think!
Edited by A Headless Chicken, 03 December 2017 - 11:49 PM.
Yeah, I ditched the streaks, running 2 ERLL/ECM right now, fun stuff. And yeah reading all this advice definitely got me looking for isolated targets, flanking angles etc... putting more thought into positioning than I had before
Edited by Fattimus Prime, 04 December 2017 - 01:34 AM.
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Fattimus Prime, on 02 December 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:
