58 replies to this topic

[ThreeStooges]

TLDR: Quit claiming IS lights are EZ mode, play an IS Light and see how EZ Mode it really is; it isn't.


With the recent events and just added sns mechs I've seen a lot of people say lights are ez gg mode. I've taken a lot of verbal jabs some in jest and some out right verbal abuse on voip and/or typed in game chat. I've even taken FF before first contact with the enemy. Quit that BS. Everyone knows about the XL death from side torso loss for IS lights. That is just one of the things that makes IS lights HARD MODE.

The light que hovering between 1% and 4% last night as I played shows that lights are rare especially during events and when a new mech drops at the same time. I've decided to make this thread to show just how hard IS lights really are in not only to cost but to upgrade and use. I'm not saying they need a nerf or buff or they are "OP." They are the farthest thing from OP for many reasons. I'll use the most common IS lights: Raven 3L.

I'll start with the costs. Pretty cheap at only 5,862,992 or 2,350 mc. That's easily covered by the 25 games cadet bonus or a day with pt going. With its stock xl 210 it goes around 90-92 kph. After a few matches you find your self lossing to other faster lights so you decide to upgrade the engine to its max of XL 280. It'll cost you 4,573,000 c-bills. Now your new mech just cost you a total of 10,436,325 c-bills. You decide that stock narc, narc ammo, and case has to go; it has to if you want to use that new engine. On the plus side you can now max out your armor and have your mech weigh 35 tons.

A few matches later your enjoying your faster 3L zipping around shooting stuff, calling targets but still loosing and diying hard to other fast lights,fast mediums like that 100-ish kph linebacker. You simply over heat real fast and can't return fire fast enough so decide to rip off those stock shs for dhs for 1,500,000 c-bills. Total cost of your mech is now 11,936,325 c-bills.
A while later you find out about something called stealth armor. You think you can go Crysis or Solid Snake behind enemy lines killing without beeing seen. Freekin' sweet right? Only 251,643 c-bill to convert that fero fiber armor the mech came with or is that 12,500 per ton? Maybe it's 689,143. I'm sure I have that mwo tutorial on the mech lab some where.

Total cost of your new mech with stealth: 12,625,468 c-bills. Don't forget your mech automatically raises heat and overheats faster when firing weapons because it doesn't cool down while stealth is active plus that ten second cool down between on and off. OH yeah you have to turn it on and off manually. Stealth isn't automatic and active all the time. It really isn't like Snake's stealth or Prophet's stealth at all. Snake? SNAAAKKEEE!!! GAME OVER.

You've got your new mech at 12,625,468 c-bills and are having fun with it. You've riped off the narc and ammo for dhs space, got stealth armor with its required ecm and you're going super fast from that XL 280 upgrade from a slow as a clan light of 90kph up to I'm-the-flash-b--s 129 kph. What now?

MOAR GUNS! DUH!
What? That tag laser, two mediums and srm six with single ton of ammo isn't enough? I mean it all came with the mech for free so it's OP right? All Lights are OP right? You have a super awsome everything dies alpha of 22. The forums..LIE! Remeber all the nice new engine and stealth we just got? Our armor is max but that 35 tons...must have more guns!
Ok let's rip off that tag laser for...wait for it...a new MEDIUM laser! A wooping increse of damage to it's OVER 9000...sorry wrong game a mere 27. So 5 more damage now. Woop de doo. Add on the cost of that laser: 80,000 c-bills. Total: 12,705,469.

Alrighty then! We just blew c-bills on our mech and an alpha of 27. But wait. I can change structure too? Only 350,000 c-bills for endo and 14 ***** umm I ment to typle slots. A mere 10,000 per ton?! GIMME GIMME GIMME! Take my slu..slots! 13,055,468 total c-bills. Look at all that space saved! MORE GUNS! Srm 2 and half ton ammo! New alpha of 32! I AM SO OP! FEAR ME! BOW BEFORE MY MIGHT BY THE POWER OF GREEN 3L'S LIGHT! Srm2 cost: 20,000. Srm 2 half-ton ammo cost: 13,500. Total cost:13,055,468 + 20,000 + 13,500 = 13,088,968.

Whew. Finally haveRVN-3L Over9000 ! Stealth armor,max armor and maximuim speed of 129kph. My dirt cheap OP!! mech of 5,862,992 c-bills costed me 7,225,976 c-bill to fully upgrade. My XL can go up to XL 295?! But I have XL 280! BLEEPING BLEEP TRAIN OF BLEEPS!

My firepower certainly doesn't seem OP EZ mode. Three medium lasers for only 15 damage. Srms with one and a half ton ammo dependent on hit reg issues only good for short range. 32 alpha untill that ammo is spent. I'm sure that 150 ammo devide by eight per shot will go fast. Many mechs can do much higher damage. Other lights certainly can do 32 or more alpha.
My mech is fast(er) than most at 129.kph. Mediums like the outlier called linebacker do 100kph which is fast enough to keep me in weapons range untill I find cover. Other lights go the same 129 kph or faster. I have to avoid them since I can't out alpha or dps them at 4.13 max dps. I guess speed is OP. Anything bigger than a medium can virtually one shot me every time thanks to the XL and their higher 40-90 alphas escpecially on clan mechs which can do over 90 alpha,cool shot and alpha near instantly.

What about LFE? Exactly. It weights more. You must lose something to make up the weight diffrence in either droping your limited fire power or giving up the OP speed which you must have to be OP. But does speed alone make my mech so OP? The assaults would scream YES SPEED OP MUST NERF! NERF NERF NERF NERF! 50kph too fast! NERF NERF NERF! 10kph ok!

Your armor is max! Go scout! Go Cap! Go suicide into the domination point so others can snipe and lrm! Assuming I front load my armor to have only 1 rear armor it leaves me with only have 31/43/31 armor max. Again the higher alphas of all those mediums,heavies and assassults will blow though it easily in 1-2 alphas. In addition it leaves my rear exposed to enemy lights and makes me a super easy kill. Nothing OP EZ about my armor.


Stealth is OP! No it isn't. As noted above it requies ecm, builds up your heat on use, can over heat kill me from firing weapons and I lose virtually all map awareness from team mates' mechs since stealth disables my own mech's sensors. Unless I spot a mech myself I'm more likely to run through/into or ram an enemy mech. It does make it eaiser to get a position to 'snipe' from except the build is limited by med laser or er med laser range. They also point directly back to your position negating the point of having stealth.

Use large or er large lasers? Only if you want to give up the speed which makes the mech OP since it doesn't have the firepower or armor making it OP EZ at this point.
My mech is fast to a point and small. How does that make it OP EZ mode? It's not the fire power,armor, or stealth making it EZ. What can you do with being small? You had pgi RE-SCALE which made most of them the size of mediums and easier to hit. Engine desync also slowed the down.

Being small my mech can move into areas other mechs can't. Under objects like bridges,overhangs, in those crashed dropships on turmine desert which even the atlas can get into. But can I get higher than a mech so it can't return fire? If there is a pathway my mech can run maybe. It lacks jump jets. You can get up the walls on hpg from two side routes by running and trying not to self destruct going out of bounds. Being higher just lets me un arm lock the two lasers in the side arm so ten damage OP EZ mode? Nope that doesn't make my light EZ mode.

Running around so fast does teach you one thing most pilots never learn. The maps. Does the map itself make my mech op or super easy? No. I just know it better than you and the fastest way to get one place to another most of the time. Also I can risk going too fast on a map. A lot of maps have small variations in the terrain. A small drop might end up a leap of faith at max speed. I'll take leg damage. Other parts of maps like most of rubite oasis and alpine the drops are significantly longer resulting in even more damage. Can I get you to walk into a hole in the map so you can't move and kill you? I've seen a few videos of it happen but in my four years of playing it hasn't happen to me yet. Can I use some invisible wall geomerty and "block" your fire power? I wish. Pgi is pretty good about finding and fixing those plus even if a few were widly know i'd doubt I'd have its exaclt location and angle memorised. Clearly it isn't the map making my light OP EZ.

What makes an IS light so OP and EZ? The easy answer is you being a bad aim. The worse you aim and the more you miss gives me more time to shoot you will my OP EZ 32 alpha or 15 damage mega lasers of DOOM! The real answer is you got out played from better positioning, better angles of attack, better aim and you don't know how to break the light mechs' attack pattern. Yes we have a attack pattern just like those video game bosses. Those who know it kill lights far faster than those who don't.

With all those limitations of weak armor, small alpha, instant death, constant nerfs from pgi like rescale,desync,mobility,structure,armor nerfs, weapon nerfs which we rely on to do damage;rip spls, direct counter in the form of streak missiles, and weight limits of the mech such as theLCT-1E 7 ton limit . It isn't the mech OP EZ mode. It's the pilot working his *** off doing 2-3x more work to damage and kill you because to him the challenge of killing you and succeeding is FUN. The pilot is OP and you can't nerf the pilot only his tools. GG EZ.

[Jackal Noble]

My favorite thing to do is stare at awe as a commando stomachs multiple dual gauss rounds

[Alexander of Macedon]

3L's engine cap is 295, not 280.

[process]

Lights, like assaults and LRMs, can either be really potent or really useless. It depends on the player, the situation, the team, and sometimes just dumb luck.

[Seranov]

Nobody has ever said IS Lights are easy to play (except the Urbie, which yeah, is easy to play, because it's a Medium) so I don't know why you bothered with this TL;DR rant.

[Eisenhorne]

Gotta play a GOOD IS light. Not easy mode, but way better than the raven. The JVN-10P or the WLF-GR are probably the best.

[Y E O N N E]

JVN-10P is solid, if a bit squishy for the range it operates.

LCT-1E is also solid, if not quite agile enough for its lack of armor (you WILL take hits when not playing against spuds)

OSR-4D is underrated, but not flashy.

FS9 (all) have great firepower and actually aren't too bad in the durability department, but the inability to pitch that torso up is crippling its ability to fight targets equipped with JJs or on inclines...and there are a lot of inclines in the game

WLF-2 is extremely good with its armor and is in a fine place.

IS don't have an MLX or a PIR for MGs (and the Flea is unlikely to match), but by the same token the Clans don't really have any answer for the IS ML/MPL boats like the WLF (4x cMPL is not as good as 6x isML).

[Funky Bacon]

Well my Jenners are in a positive K/D ratio I guess...

[Old dirty B]

When you play against idiots any mech is ez mode. A good light pilot is just able to exploit that very well...

Edited by Old dirty B, 21 March 2018 - 01:05 PM.

[Darian DelFord]

process, on 21 March 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

Lights, like assaults and LRMs, can either be really potent or really useless. It depends on the player, the situation, the team, and sometimes just dumb luck.

True in all regards

Yeonne Greene, on 21 March 2018 - 12:55 PM, said:

JVN-10P is solid, if a bit squishy for the range it operates.

LCT-1E is also solid, if not quite agile enough for its lack of armor (you WILL take hits when not playing against spuds)

OSR-4D is underrated, but not flashy.

FS9 (all) have great firepower and actually aren't too bad in the durability department, but the inability to pitch that torso up is crippling its ability to fight targets equipped with JJs or on inclines...and there are a lot of inclines in the game

WLF-2 is extremely good with its armor and is in a fine place.

IS don't have an MLX or a PIR for MGs (and the Flea is unlikely to match), but by the same token the Clans don't really have any answer for the IS ML/MPL boats like the WLF (4x cMPL is not as good as 6x isML).

NO mention of my Jenners....... Darian is a sad panda with no Jenner to pilot

Old dirty B, on 21 March 2018 - 01:04 PM, said:

When you play against idiots any mech is ez mode. A good light pilot is just able to exploit that very well...

Also very true, but don't let the assault mechs hear that.... they think we are gods... they do not realize that it takes skill to play a light and actually be good at it. Which means we capitalize on others mistakes.

[Y E O N N E]

Darian DelFord, on 21 March 2018 - 01:12 PM, said:

NO mention of my Jenners....... Darian is a sad panda with no Jenner to pilot

bcuz they ugly!

I haven't taken mine out recently, but last time I did they felt alright. Not amazing, but certainly not garbage. They have better agility than the Osiris.

[Grus]

IS lights are tough, wouldn't say "easy mode" but they are more forgiving than a clan light.

[The6thMessenger]

********. Drop in an Urbanmech, you already win once you set foot on the battlefield.

JK though.

The Urbie however, it plays more like a medium mech, it's not that fragile and packs quite a punch.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 21 March 2018 - 03:37 PM.

[BreakinStuff]

I prefer the LCT-1V and Pirate's Bane as my primary light mechs.

They're both fun as hell, and I deeply enjoy driving people insane.

[Grus]

As for a IS mech to fly? Deathknel w/4medpl = win

you could go old school and do 1LL 3mL but its hot and not for brawling.

[Papaspud]

Grus, on 21 March 2018 - 03:29 PM, said:

IS lights are tough, wouldn't say "easy mode" but they are more forgiving than a clan light.

Really?, drop in a jenner sometime and tell me about tough and forgiving......

[Alexander of Macedon]

Grus, on 21 March 2018 - 03:29 PM, said:

IS lights are tough, wouldn't say "easy mode" but they are more forgiving than a clan light.

IS lights have to run IS XL and have, on average, around +4 total CT armor and +2 ST armor. The Urbie is tough, but it's also slow as ****. Everything else will die if just about anything gets a full burn on a ST. The only real difference I've seen between my clan lights and IS lights is that unlocked engines tends to make some of the latter slightly better at escaping from nasty spots.

I can run a Locust into the flank of an enemy team, take sustained fire from a full lance for 30+ seconds while my team takes advantage, and still come out alive, but that's not happening without a combination of lots of cover, constant janky movement, bad enemy aim, good latency, and a decent spot of luck. Lacking any one of those will very quickly transition things from "risky diversion" to "suicide".

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Skipped reading all that stuff, just play a WLF-2 and enjoy EZ mode. If that light mech isn't easy mode for you then no mech is.

After reading the post, you're build's just bad and the Raven's not meant for close range fights, you're not playing to the mech advantage whatsoever. Your ECM is useless at those ranges anyway. Raven 3L just relies on using long range and ECM cover and the high mounted arm to use dual ERLLs so it can snipe things without return fire with ease.

If you want to play close up get a Wolfhound-2, put on 6 MPLs and XL280, you have 36 damage a shot that is hitscan and very short duration so you can easily poke out and shoot things and get back to cover without much return fire. Your armor is also super high for a light and you easily defeat any other light mech in 1v1 combat along with any mediums built for long range. In the current laser meta you'll also beat most heavies if you spread incoming damage and focus your lasers.

Edited by Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, 21 March 2018 - 05:18 PM.

[Grus]

Papaspud, on 21 March 2018 - 04:15 PM, said:

Really?, drop in a jenner sometime and tell me about tough and forgiving......

Yeah both jenners are in a bad place right now. I have one that i haven't used in a very long time (founders jenner) and that makes me sad. i mostly drop in the Commando DK, PB, and wolfhound.

and all 3 are solid, ive lived through way more than i should have in those 3

Edited by Grus, 21 March 2018 - 05:27 PM.

[Grus]

Alexander of Macedon, on 21 March 2018 - 05:07 PM, said:

IS lights have to run IS XL and have, on average, around +4 total CT armor and +2 ST armor. The Urbie is tough, but it's also slow as ****. Everything else will die if just about anything gets a full burn on a ST. The only real difference I've seen between my clan lights and IS lights is that unlocked engines tends to make some of the latter slightly better at escaping from nasty spots.

I can run a Locust into the flank of an enemy team, take sustained fire from a full lance for 30+ seconds while my team takes advantage, and still come out alive, but that's not happening without a combination of lots of cover, constant janky movement, bad enemy aim, good latency, and a decent spot of luck. Lacking any one of those will very quickly transition things from "risky diversion" to "suicide".

IS doesn't "Have to" run a XL if they dont want to. Claners HAVE to run what the omni mech has... no option.

Now i will say the best mechs to run a ISXL is the lights and some meds. other than that, LFE. As with the drawbacks of using a XL well you have to take the good with the bad. understand that if you lose a ST you're toast... so dont stop moving and keep that twist alive.