11 replies to this topic

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:07 PM.

[CFC Conky]

A slight correction on your guide: Purchasing a skill node costs 800 XP and 45,000 c-bills.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[Horseman]

Throe, on 21 February 2018 - 05:42 PM, said:

Mobility in the Skill Trees is currently considered by most players to be broken. This is caused by two factors: 1) 'Mechs that are already fast/agile enough to compete on the battle field don't need more Mobility to be effective. and 2) 'Mechs that aren't fast/agile enough don't benefit enough from Mobility skills to make these skills worth taking over Armor or Firepower(because +x% of "too slow" is still "too slow" in almost every case(the Atlas is currently a prime example)). Armor and Firepower on these platforms is worth proportionately more already due to their heavier payload capacities and heavier armor loads.

Some mechs - like the Jagermech - benefit from investing into Torso Speed nodes. On Assaults with low engine caps, Speed Tweak is the only way to squeeze out more speed.

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Regardless of what 'Mech you end up choosing, you'll want to apply your first skills into Survival.

Locust and Piranha say hello. Maxing out survival on them will earn you 1-2 armor points per location - too little to make an appreciable difference in their performance. Might as well dump these points into Mobility (accel/decel/turn rate) and use it to evade being hit in the first place

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Currently, the most valuable Survival skill is Armor. I say this mostly because Armor and Firepower are viewed as equally valuable. Firepower allows you to do more damage in a shorter time, but Survival allows you to be in the fight longer. However, Firepower also comes with the disadvantage of requiring a good bit more of either forethought or "trial and error" to match it up with your actual loadout(see below). Armor maxes out at 26 SP in Survival including prerequisites.

You don't have to max out armor - going by the left edge of the tree, you can grab 8 Armor nodes out of ten for a total of 16 points. It's the last two that cost you five points each.

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Decision Making:
I recommend holding off on Firepower skills as long as possible. Here is the basic reasoning:

1) Each time you initially purchase a skill point to unlock a node, it costs 800 Experience(either XP or GXP) and 45,000 CBills.(Thanks to CFC Conky for the correct numbers)
2) Every time you drop and then subsequently "respecialize" into that skill node afterward, it costs another 400 Experience.
3) This means you will want to avoid "respecialization" as much as possible.
4) Putting off investing points into the Firepower tree allows you to try out various weapons loadouts without any concern for constantly changing your Firepower skills to match. There are other skills in other trees which are also tied to your current load out, but the Firepower tree easily contains the most significant build-dependent skills.

Which is why you should plan out your target build first, plan out skills that go with it and then purchase then by that plan.

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Sensors:
I recommend Sensors. You're going to want to start practicing attacking your opponents' weak spots, like in the Target Practice module in the Tutorial, and Target Information Gathering is the skill that speeds up the obtainment of that information about your opponent.

Hacking: It also just so happens that you can score 4 of 5 Target Info Gathering skills on the way down the Sensors tree toward one skill you'll want to keep forever, and that is at least 1 rank of Seismic Sensor. Seismic sensor is effectively a wall hack. Any time you're standing still next to a wall/corner, you can see any opponent moving on the other side of the wall/corner within a certain distance. This manifests as a small glowing red spot on your map, and looks strikingly different from the normal red target markers; it grants no information about Weight Class.

Radar Deprivation:
This also sets you up nicely to take 3 of 5 ranks very useful although somewhat situational skill, Radar Deprivation. Radar Deprivation simply makes you disappear from enemy targeting systems when you reenter cover. As an added bonus, you get an audible blip for each opponent who had you targeted, when they lose their target due to your Radar Deprivation skills. This can help you to determine how much attention you're attracting from the enemy.

Target Gathering doesn't make all that much of a difference in most cases. Seismic is a huge investment, unless you're an ECM mech (in which case you can grab it for four nodes extra on top of what you need for ECM already).
While we're at it, you need to cover ECM and Target Decay (which is #1 priority for LRM builds).
But I do agree that for most purposes the only investment needed in Sensors are 3 Radar Decay nodes. Very light mechs (Locust, Piranha) may want to go for max Radar Decay to avoid enemy LRMs (which for their paper armor can be painful as hell)

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Afterward, you can go get those Auxiliary skills if you like consumables, or if you don't want to "waste" your money on them, feel free to ignore them for now. Keep in mind that if you intend to eventually get into Faction Play, it would behoove you to at least take 1 Consumable with you into each match, so you can begin practicing with them some. You can do so with 0 Auxiliary skills.

I'd say more forcefully: don't use consumables as a new player, learn to play without them first. All of them eat into your winnings, it's easy to get dependent on Cool Shots and Strikes get added to your damage total, so you won't know how much damage you've actually dealt with your weapons. Once you earn enough C-Bills per match that you can afford to burn 80k of it per match and still come out ahead - and by that point, you should have a good enough grasp of the gameplay that you can distinguish situations where the consumables are worth spending vs ones where using them would be a waste.

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Last, but certainly not least, as you begin filling in the Firepower tree, you'll want to pay attention to the fact that you can get a good "baseline" Firepower tree for 36 points, which includes all Range and Cooldown quirks(along with one system-specific skill). This is a great starting point for two reasons. 1) Range and Cooldown affect *every* weapon system pretty much equally. 2) Because it allows you to move a small handful of points around to shift from pure ballistics to missle boat to laser vomit, and back again. Ideally, you'd be looking at spending no more than 4 points on any specific weapon system here. This is honestly another reason to fill in your other trees sparingly. Saving as many points for Firepower as possible increases your flexibility, which allows you to spend less time trying to optimize your Skill Trees, and more time blowing up those Reds!

Unless your mech is running very cool to begin with, investing into Cooldown and Heat Gen is more reasonable - Range is like dirt, you'll pick up some whether you want it or not.
Laser boats should consider Laser Duration nodes - since the cooldown doesn't start until the burn finishes, they also improve your cycle rate. Depending on the specific lasers you're boating, it will either come close to or exceed a Cooldown node: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing

[CFC Conky]

What I like to do with new mechs is play at least ten matches in them before touching the skill tree. That way I have a better idea of their strengths and weaknesses and go from there. That said, most mechs benefit from getting 60% radar dep, the first three heat capacity and first two heat dissipation nodes in operations.

I rarely use consumables in QP, saving them for the rare times I play FP.


Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:07 PM.

[Horseman]

Throe, on 22 February 2018 - 04:13 PM, said:

In any case, neither the Jagermech nor Assaults are a subject of this guide.

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However, the Lights you mention here are not a focus of this guide either.

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The only problem here is that I haven't recommended Laser Vomit. Similarly, I don't recommend LRMs(which is why I didn't cover ECM or Target Decay).

Like you said, new players. You tell them "do this" and they will "do this" everywhere before they realize - if they ever do - that they spent a pile of XP and C-Bills on skills that are useless for their mech.

Hence, they also have to be told "but not if <X>" even if you don't plan on covering the details of what to do instead if <X>.

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Getting Target Information Gathering is just icing on the cake here, but it's still a great skill to have for practicing targeting specific components as quickly as possible.
Radar Deprivation is great to have(better than ECM for multiple reasons) but is still highly situational, and doesn't even apply to all builds.

Low tiers (where newbies start) tend to periodically devolve into lurmageddon. Also, building the tree for 60% Radar Derp coincidentally gets you all but one node of Information Gathering without deliberately speccing for it.

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I value Range above Heat Gen in most builds, even relatively hot ones, because Range can directly contribute to higher damage per volley, where Heat Gen just allows you to fire in a more sustained fashion. There is a lot to be said for doing more damage per volley. Picking Range over Heat Gen simultaneously limits your exposure, meaning your opponents have a smaller opportunity to return fire.

New players clause. Cover? Controlled fire? Optimal range? Withdrawing? None of those concepts will be ingrained yet, think more along the lines of Leeroy Jenkins-FIREFIREFIRE-OHGODWHYISMYMECHPOWEREDDOWN.

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Besides, if you have extra points, Cool Run is often more valuable than Heat Gen anyway.

When you take Cool Run against your overall investment into Operations, 4/5 or 5/5 Cool Run comes out to around 0.6% per node invested - worse than Heat Dissipation on a node-for-node basis for IS, barely equal for Clans.

Edited by Horseman, 22 February 2018 - 10:56 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

You want skill trees? I give you skill trees...
These trees assume you are running proper/META builds. Not some bracket build, for which, there is no skill tree that is gonna help you. Even new-ish players have reported back that using my trees as a base has increased their performance inline with a decent build.

The below are for mainly Hvy/Assaults, but can work on Med. They also assume you have a few heatsinks as well. Even on DAKKA, it gets not now (due to silly nerfs).

Laser Vom Skirmish (cLPL/ERML IS ERML/LL)
DAKKA (assuming UACs, if not take 2x UAC node and put elsewhere)
ER Large Laser
SRM Brawling
SRM/Energy Brawling
Energy Brawling
Ballistic + Energy skirmish (eg. Gauss/Laser)
ERPPC


NOTES:

• These are GENERIC. Chop/Change as you see fit.
  
• I haven't put ECM in there, if you have a mech with ECM it's up to you to decide what is most important. Usually less Survival tree as the magic jesus box (ECM) means people won't see you usually.
  
• I do not get Radar Derp / Seismic. In todays game, it is no longer required and you get far more benefit elsewhere in the skill tree. Dying to LRMs too much? Learn to use cover better, that literally is the best Radar Derp you can get and it costs no nodes in the maze, so, use it.
  
• Most Hvy/Assaults mobilty is so bad I do not invest in mobilty much anymore. A couple of mechs it is worthwhile going the left side if the maze only to get 4-5 torso twist nodes. But yes, by and large it's useless so don't waste nodes there.
  
• Speed Tweak is a waste unless you are in a light or a fast med, so ignore it.
  
• As these are "META" they include dual strike/coolshots. If you are new, probably not wise to get them as they are a cbill sink. Get more survival or operations if you don't use the AUX tree.

** Obviously these are examples, but I assure you they are GOOD ones. Feel free to chop/change to suit if you need of course.

Any other Qs just ask me. I will not mislead you.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 22 February 2018 - 08:55 PM.

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:07 PM.

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:07 PM.

[frumpylumps]

I have a question about skills. If you skill up a mech and then sell it, and then later rebuy the mech, will you have to spend xp to unlock all the skills again?

Will this change in the march patch notes allow you to re-skill old mechs you have sold and previously skilled up at no additional xp cost?


Removal of the Respec Cost in Skill Tree
As of the March 20th patch, we are removing the 400 XP cost associated with re-acquiring a previously unlocked Skill! The removal of this cost is not retroactive, and will not result in any refunds of XP/GXP previously used to reacquire an unlocked Node. This is simply a change to the respec system moving forward.

[Horseman]

frumpylumps, on 02 March 2018 - 12:53 PM, said:

I have a question about skills. If you skill up a mech and then sell it, and then later rebuy the mech, will you have to spend xp to unlock all the skills again?

You will also have to re-grind the XP again, since all the XP you had on that mech will go with it when you sell it.

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Will this change in the march patch notes allow you to re-skill old mechs you have sold and previously skilled up at no additional xp cost?

No.

[frumpylumps]

Horseman, on 02 March 2018 - 01:28 PM, said:

You will also have to re-grind the XP again, since all the XP you had on that mech will go with it when you sell it.

No.

thanks for clarifying.