Metachanic, on 11 June 2018 - 01:39 PM, said:
It is worth noting that quite a few of the weapons for which we proposed buffs have minimal presense in the current Quick Play meta. Clan standard ACs, LB5-Xs on both sides, IS PPCs, etc., are all essentially unused, so a great deal of the effort was aimed simply at getting those weapons to a viable state. Did we go too far on some? Possibly. Hard to know without a PTS or live test. But effectively addressing Clan laservom while keeping the play style alive is a good start.
I absolutely agree with the premise of the change's in that there are weapons that are heavily underutilized for various reasons. I think the disagreement is about how to solve the problem. I guess the question that needs to be answered on a weapon by weapon basis is which weapons are not used be cause they are weak, and which are not used because others are simply too strong.
To be clear, i don't think the statement was to say that all of the suggestions in the document were bad. I think Paul was saying that overall increasing all weapons to match the highest played weapons would have a negative result on the game. Finding a happy medium isn't going to be easy. I absolutely agree with things like velocity changes to the UAC 20 and dropping the heat penalty on the double AC 20 builds for IS. The AC20 nerf directly reduced the viability of mechs like the king crab that rely on those weapons.
I also agree that huge alpha builds are a problem and I do believe that some of the top tier weapon systems need to be brought down in power.