2 replies to this topic

[CraneArmy]

Before you nerf machine guns PGI, I just want to repost a post I made about 6 months ago before the piranha was announced.

I've recently heard more whisperings that mg's are about to get nerfed across the board, and I want to reiterate that machine guns used to be balanced solely based on a lack of abundant ballistic hard-points on light and medium mechs.

Releasing the mlx-g and the ach-e and shard were mistakes.
with the piranha you doubled down on your mistake.
...But, a blanket nerf of machine guns is the worst solution, and is going to hit tons more mechs that are average to bad in the game already.
If you want to fix those handful of mechs, why would you hit the urbie, the shadowcat, the viper, the bj-a, sdr-5k etc... at the same time?

https://mwomercs.com...ne/page__st__80

CraneArmy, on 05 September 2017 - 10:19 PM, said:

MG's were in a great place right before and right after Civil war.

4 MG lights and 6 MG mediums were great.

Throwing 2 MG's on a lot of other things for support weapons was great.

Putting 6-8 MG's + 26-40 laser alphas together on one light mech was the mistake.

Its strong with high level solo queue, its strong with pugs, its strong in FW and its strong in group queue. I dont know about competitive / private lobbies yet, but its possible that it's strong there too.

There are a lot of people in this thread saying "dont take my MG mysty away, it has drawbacks", sure it doesnt have structure quirks like a spider 5k, or an ember, or armor quirks like an urbie.
But, honestly tell me if you think one of those mechs is outperforming the ach or mlx-g. Double down and tell me that you think the structure quirks on those other mechs actually matters any more with 6-8 mg lights in every game.

Cat is out of the bag and honestly, unless PGI wants to simply refund those new MLX and ACH, they are absolutely ****** on balance for a loooooong time. They should just refund the mechs and delete them. They could possibly change the hardpoints to the 4mg limit which has been the precedent for lights until this point. They wont because both of these things are too risky.

The second most reasonable thing they could do is nerf them with quirks, or do something incredibly dumb like putting ghost heat on more than 4 to 6 machine guns (yes I did say that would be dumb. Yet in the aftermath of the supremely dumb 8 mg light idea, doing something only kinda dumb is still your second best option).

The third option is buff the crap out of every other light until people want to play them again. also change everything with now useless structure quirks into armor quirks and double the effect of structure skills in the skill tree so at least you can use structure as bonus heat capacity while you have armor (this is the only real perk of structure bonuses atm). This option is a painfully huge amount of work, but might bring lights and the rest of tanky IS mechs to where they should be within this meta, it also avoids total eclipse of armor nodes over structure nodes in the skill tree.

Probably the worst option is the blanket band aid MG's nerf. This has the effect of ruining dozens of viable mech builds in order to put exactly two back in line. Would you kill 100 people to save 2? I wouldnt. Sux, but its easy, and those old mechs wernt selling that well anyway.

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I would love to be able to get match scores in a light, like I can in a heavy on a more consistent basis. The new Cheetah's and MLX-G do that.
I lack the confidence that there exists the willpower to do a total overhaul of the class to match these two mechs.

I'll admit its going to be hard to dig yourself out of this hole,

[MrXanthios]

Totally agree with the ghost heat on the machine guns, it is a dumb idea, but less dumb than releasing this 1k+ damage 20 tonner unleashing hell on the battlefield. Maybe on more than 8 machine guns so that the Piranha would be the only one to suffer. Cheetah and Mlx are easy to disarm, due to the dimension of their machine gun groups on the arms. I don't think they deserve any penalty.

[CraneArmy]

MrXanthios, on 11 April 2018 - 11:23 PM, said:

Cheetah and Mlx are easy to disarm, due to the dimension of their machine gun groups on the arms. I don't think they deserve any penalty.

I think right now the ach and mlx appear somewhat tame, partialy because of the threat of a pir in the backfield. Since if either is is caught out by a pir early game, its boned. Cant run, might be able to fight (if the pilot is decent), and cant dodge, duck, dip, dive or dodge.

I'll stand by my previous statement that I think the mlx and ach were out-preforming the almost all of the rest of the light field 1v1 before the pir (the couple of armor quirked lights being the exception), and as a component of 12v12 qp possibly the entire light field.
The pir is vastly outperforming the light field now, now including the ach and the mlx.

Honestly the best thing that could happen imo, is that pgi would just buff the rest of the light field, but I think thats really unlikely because as I said before "those mechs wernt selling that well anyway". It would be nice if all the classes were equally effective but its not happening.

What will happen is a mg nerf AFTER the flea is available for c-bills, because that mech is going to be $$$ in the piggybank, an IS 20 tonner with masc, will be the most maneuverable in the game, wide spread long slender legs, and torsos that looks like they are going to spread damage and shield super easy..... and have the mg loadout of the ACH-E, without crazy clantech lasers.