291 replies to this topic

[Trenchbird]

Khobai, on 12 May 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

those advantages are largely non-existent when you take IS quirks into consideration.

the only real advantage clan lasers ever really had over IS lasers was the ability to do better alphas. And now that advantage is gone.

Not if you build in a certain way. Most of my laservom alpha builds aren't affected by this, mostly because I always build around 4X Medium Lasers and rarely use Heavy Lasers anyways.

I mean, hell, my favorite Huntsman-ironically a laserboat one despite how much I hate laserboating-isn't even affected by this, and it mounts ER Mediums and LPLs. And most of my other Laservom mechs aren't even being affected by this, with about 3 exceptions out of 9.

I'm not saying that people should follow my example, but this is far from the end of the world.

Edited by Catten Hart, 12 May 2018 - 10:57 AM.

[Trenchbird]

frumpylumps, on 12 May 2018 - 11:11 AM, said:

Do you know how pointless it feels to argue with someone like you when you act like that and ignore reality?

That's like 90% of the forumgoers, man.

[FireStoat]

Catten, the ability to 'build in a certain way' falls short when it comes to the topics of what hardpoints a mech has, and what playstyle one faction will now have over an over. A set of quick examples on what I'm saying would be... Marauder IIC and Supernova have variants that are exclusively energy. People who own those mechs put the hours into them to skill them out, and are now being told to stagger fire or just build with less. For those mechs, does this make a great deal of sense?

Next up, we have mechs that have sharply limited tonnage available for weapons but ample energy hardpoints for the use of medium lasers. Ice Ferret, Black Lanner, Linebacker, and a good percentage of clan Light mechs fall into this area. Previously, they could take 6 medium lasers of different kinds. Now that has been reduced to 4. So, the people playing these mechs who most certainly do NOT have the chance to risk additional frontal exposure for stagger fire are supposed to... do what? Take missiles along with their energy weapons? They could, but now they have to contend with different ranges as well as move completely away from a style of play that was competitive for these mechs.

I think Chris was facing the Hellbringer as the worst offender for laser vomit and took the most lazy, illogical approach for a fix while completely disregarding the status of other mechs the rely on energy weapons - either because there's no other choice for them, or because of very restrictive weapons tonnage.

The good news is, there's other games to play. When Star Wars: Galaxies had the NGE completely wreck the game, players screamed and then moved on. Having your time investment in over 21 different clan chassis / variants that were intended to use energy weapons from lore builds as well as simply having no other real options due to how they are built being told that "hey, if you take more than 4 medium lasers - ur doin' it wrong" is a good prompt to move on.

[Luminis]

So, the comp players over at Outreach HPG (the few that posted on the topic) disagree with the change, but the 200 matchscore dudes are happy - I guess we've found PGI's target audience.

Edited by Luminis, 12 May 2018 - 11:24 AM.

[Trenchbird]

Luminis, on 12 May 2018 - 11:24 AM, said:

So, the comp players over at Outreach HPG (the few that posted on the topic) disagree with the change, but the 200 matchscore dudes are happy - I guess we've found PGI's target audience.

Eh. Comp Players are a minority, so PGI has their priorities straight in that regard.

Edited by Catten Hart, 12 May 2018 - 11:34 AM.

[Luminis]

Catten Hart, on 12 May 2018 - 11:33 AM, said:

Eh. Comp Players are a minority, so PGI has their priorities straight in that regard.

Assuming that numbers trump competence in this case.

Whether that's the right choice to make is for everyone to decide on their own, I guess.

[Trenchbird]

Luminis, on 12 May 2018 - 11:35 AM, said:

Assuming that numbers trump competence in this case.

Whether that's the right choice to make is for everyone to decide on their own, I guess.

Financially it makes sense, is what I meant more specifically. It makes more sense to keep the rank and file that buy Daddy Russ' Mechpack Milk happy than the limited Comp base.

Comp Players certainly have a major place in balance discussions, but it's also important to keep in mind that they might/do have a different experience in how MWO runs than someone stuck in a lower Tier (I mean, hell, I have a buddy who's stuck in a lower Tier in SQ and gets rolled on the reg by LRM boat squads, yet performs extremely well in GQ where the average tiers are more varied). What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

Edited by Catten Hart, 12 May 2018 - 11:43 AM.

[Alexander of Macedon]

It's not even like Heavy Lasers or current-state cMLas were strong. They're only usable if you're part of the 0.1% who can hold a long burn on a stationary target.

[Cy Mitchell]

I only play Clan and I will admit that Clan laser vomit Alphas were STUPID strong. Something needed to be done. Ghost heat is one way to do it. I would rather have seen Coolshots removed from the game and/or damage lowered on the Clan lasers.

cHLL - 15
cHML - 8
cerML - 6
cMPL was fine it already got its range reduced drastically

Still, I can live with the changes. You can still boat all the lasers. You just have to stagger your shots and pair them up right.

Typical forum over reaction as expected.

[Luminis]

Catten Hart, on 12 May 2018 - 11:42 AM, said:

What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

Oh, not saying that's always the case.

Still. A certain understanding of the game is usually prerequisite to somewhat reliably predict the impact a certain change is gonna have. Plus, we have a lot of ganders around here and their opinions range from "delete Clans from the game" to "Clans need to mob the floor with ten times their tonnage in IS Mechs"...

[Hayek Lahiri]

Bud Crue, on 11 May 2018 - 08:14 PM, said:

I wonder what's next.

Players asking for refunds and abandoning this game. I'm reaching that point meself.

[Mystere]

Catten Hart, on 12 May 2018 - 11:33 AM, said:

Eh. Comp Players are a minority, so PGI has their priorities straight in that regard.

If your point was to say that if the better players leave the game, then there will be no one left to murder the bad ones, well, you are absolutely right.

Edited by Mystere, 12 May 2018 - 12:17 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Mixed builds on Battletech are fun....

So force mixed builds in MWO?

[Luminis]

MischiefSC, on 12 May 2018 - 12:22 PM, said:

Mixed builds on Battletech are fun....

So force mixed builds in MWO?

Dream come true for a certain bunch of players, no doubt.

[Monkey Lover]

Luminis, on 12 May 2018 - 11:24 AM, said:

So, the comp players over at Outreach HPG (the few that posted on the topic) disagree with the change, but the 200 matchscore dudes are happy - I guess we've found PGI's target audience.

Pgi has always balanced to the pugs and nerfed teams/units. This is another reason FP and groupQ has died over the years.

I havn't seen a 12man in groupQ in forever.


Im guessing new people put more money into the game than old people with tons of mechs

Edited by Monkey Lover, 12 May 2018 - 12:26 PM.

[Mystere]

MischiefSC, on 12 May 2018 - 12:22 PM, said:

Mixed builds on Battletech are fun....

So force mixed builds in MWO?

Well, if that is indeed the case, then a good first step is to force chain firing of all weapons.

[Judah Malganis]

I see why they did it. Clan laser vomit is stupid strong, and now a single laser type can now contribute only about 30 pts towards an alpha, give or take a few pts. It slows vomit mechs and brings them in line with IS alphas. The HLL nerf is weird, though. They generate so much heat they basically have ghost heat and the burn is ridiculous, so it should have limit of 2.

Clan still has the advantages of greater range and more sinks, but I do think that a slight burn time reduction I probably warranted.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 12 May 2018 - 12:38 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Twitter laser war of 2018 is over! Clans have won

https://twitter.com/russ_bullock

Edited by Monkey Lover, 12 May 2018 - 12:35 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Shocked, yes shocked I am.

[Andi Nagasia]

Noguchi-san, on 11 May 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

You totally forget about the IS Quirks and the paper clan mechs.

didnt forget about them, they do matter, but if this Nerf opens the door for Clan to get some Quirk love, ill be happy,
all in all IS mechs with the largest Quirks usually only have 2-3 hardpoints for those quirks,

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

That is some nice fancy math, but lacking in:
Quirks.
Skill Node Tree.
Burn Time.
Cooldown.

Let's add some, shall we?

ok sure,

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

First off all burn times (without skill nodes)
Longest burn time on clan:
1.25
Longest burn time on IS:
1.1

0.15 on 4 ER mediums: 0.84dmg per medium laser lost = 3.36 dmg not on target.

With skill nodes:
1.125 ER Med
0,935 Large Laser

Difference of 0.19 leading to: 1.182 dmg per medium laser lost = 4.728 dmg not on target.

ether way both weapons still have the same damage per tic(1dam per 0.122sec)
um why are you puting up ERLL burn times then using an ERML analogy,
-
IS-ERLL for 1.1Laser Burn is 9Damage(3.4Cooldown @5Tons & 2Crits)
C-ERLL for 1.1Laser Burn is also 9Damage(4.0Cooldown @4Tons & 1Crits)
so the Clan ERLL does get a longer Cooldown but also is smaller and lighter,
with quirks the IS ERLL may come out on top but its not by a huge margian,

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

Survivability (going full survivability quirks and no back amour):
174 on the ct of a warhammer
153 on the ct of a hellbringer
174 on the ct of a summoner (wich sacrifices lots of tons for jumpjets)

ok but your comparing a 75Ton mech(only+11CT-Armor) with a 65Ton mech,
a TBR(no Quirks just Skill tree) has around 165Total Hp&Armor,
thats just 9 short of your WHM(174)(with Quirks and Skills)

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

Cooldown:
Clan Medium: 4.5 (after a longer fireing cycle), total of 5.625 seconds before the next alpha can be fired.
IS LL: 3.1 (after a shorter fireing cycle), total of 4,035 seconds before the next alpha can be fired.
Note: did not use cooldown nodes for this, but the difference is pretty clear.

So the IS mech will be ready to fire sooner and can take its time to aim, potentially putting all the damage in to the enemy before they can even retarget properly to apply their damage.

again your comparing dissimilar items, also your math seems abit off, assuming unquirked/skill tree,
C-ERML has 4.5Cooldown + 1.25Burn = 5.75Full-Cooldown(assuming no quirks/Skills),
IS-LL has 3.1Cooldown + 1.10Burn = 4.2Full-Cooldown & -10% = 3.78Cooldown(no Skills)
yes it would have much less cooldown, but at 4more Tons per weapon!
this is why we need to balance ERML vs ERML not ERML vs LL,
-
C-ERML has 4.5Cooldown + 1.25Burn = 5.75Full-Cooldown(assuming no quirks/Skills),
IS-ERML has 4.0Cooldown + 0.90Burn = 4.90Full-Cooldown & -10% = 4.41Cooldown(no Skills)
it would have less cooldown, but at 2 less damage and alittle less Range & heat,

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

Furthermore we have 0.6 vs 0.75 heat gen quirks in favour of IS. Though clans might even this out by investment in to the opertions tree which gives them more heatsinks being effected by this.

In regards to energy the only relevant warhammer gets +10% range. This means the medium lasers of both in your example are basically indistinguishable. The clan mech should have a slight advantage with its pulse lasers at a range greater than 500 meters. But it will lose an engagement at more than 900 meters due to the clan large pulse laser only having 50% falloff addtion.

the problem is you cant compare (insert Clan Mech here) vs (specific Meta IS mech)
as it doesnt offer a full picture of whats going on, it has to be Meta vs Meta, or Avrage vs Avreage,
(yes i agree, with the heat gen things IS comes out on top)

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

So we have:
IS = 6xERML + 2LL = 48Damge, 41Heat, 16Tons, 4,035 seconds refire, nearly 1000 meters max range due to energy range quirk proliferation.
Clan = 4xERML + 2LPL = 52 47.3Damge, 45.2Heat, 16Tons, 5.625 seconds refire, 900 meters max range

And the IS mech is going to live longer.

It takes 3.6 salvoes for the clan mech to kill the IS mech.
It takes 3.2 salvoes for the IS mech to kill the clan mech.

it does take abit more damage to kill an IS mech, but even your stats show less than a half a alpha diffrence,
mech health is in IS favor, but its countered by Clan doing slightly more damage,

Sixpack, on 11 May 2018 - 06:59 PM, said:

So you can conclude that the the is mechs are going to be superior to clan mechs in laser vomit.

Incidentally andi, could you tell me the average engagement range in mwo?

its 300-500, ERML Range,


im not saying that this will fully balance the game,
just that if it leads to Clan getting some more quirk love to chassis that need it, why not atleast try it out?