463 replies to this topic

[dario03]

Vorpal Puppy, on 04 July 2018 - 03:11 PM, said:

I've had the Piranha base pack from when they were introduced. Fun to play, but certainly not OP in my hands or when played by most pilots. However, in the hands of an elite level pilot, the PIR-1 is an OP killing machine. I know this - when I drop in a quick play match and see a top 50 player on the red team, I would much rather them be running any assault mech than a PIR-1.

You would rather they have a MKII-B over a PIR-1???

I find the MKII to be much more of a carry mech. The PIR-1 works great if your team is opening up the enemy but if they don't do much you can't do much. Well unless the enemy is just spread all over the place and lets you backshot a bunch of lurmers.

Edited by dario03, 05 July 2018 - 12:10 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Racerxintegra2k, on 05 July 2018 - 06:12 AM, said:

Funny guy over here, a 20 ton mech wiping out an entire enemy lance in under a minute thats normal ? Its the Speed in which you can core someone out with 12 machine guns that i find ridiculous . Tall mechs cant even hit you if you leg hump.

The tonnage shouldn't matter, its 12v12 not tons vs tons. Each mech should be able to contribute equally if we are to expect a balanced game.

The leg hump thing isn't a Piranha thing, its just that some mechs with all torso weapons don't have the torso pitch to be able to use those weapons on a light that is leg humping them. Thats kind of just a risk you take, and you hope that if you have a Piranha leg humping you, one of your teammates notices and takes out that incredibly easy target with dual gauss or similar, because a Piranha that is trying to leg hump is actually an incredibly easy target.

[The Lighthouse]

Gas Guzzler, on 05 July 2018 - 12:37 PM, said:

The tonnage shouldn't matter, its 12v12 not tons vs tons. Each mech should be able to contribute equally if we are to expect a balanced game.

The leg hump thing isn't a Piranha thing, its just that some mechs with all torso weapons don't have the torso pitch to be able to use those weapons on a light that is leg humping them. Thats kind of just a risk you take, and you hope that if you have a Piranha leg humping you, one of your teammates notices and takes out that incredibly easy target with dual gauss or similar, because a Piranha that is trying to leg hump is actually an incredibly easy target.

Yeah. same thing can happen for Locust and Commando. If you are in mechs like KDK-3 and have no arm weapons, you are basically done unless teammates help you out.


Now, the hardest part is whether your teammates help you or not.



That said, when all else fails, streakboats. And maybe bring better light mechs such as wo.... *muffled* wuuuuffff! wuuufff!..

[x Deathstrike x]

dario03, on 05 July 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

I find the MKII to be much more of a carry mech. The PIR-1 works great if your team is opening up the enemy but if they don't do much you can't do much. Well unless the enemy is just spread all over the place and lets you backshot a bunch of lurmers.

There are 4 use cases for the PIR.
1.Use your arty/air strikes to weaken the enemy team in the beginning
2.Spot for the enemy and "show" yourself to the enemy that they get nervous
3.Kill separated mechs from behind
4.Kill anything still alive at the end of a match

But the PIR is defentily no carry mech. MKII is more the material for that.

Edited by x Deathstrike x, 05 July 2018 - 01:28 PM.

[5th Fedcom Rat]

Yeonne Greene, on 05 July 2018 - 09:20 AM, said:

Flea is bae, Piranha is for poseurs.

Also Piranha is definitely the TIE in this arrangement, being on the evil side and all.

Plus Piranha has the same terrible cockpit as the TIE with zero peripheral vision. Firepower be darned, that's why I never liked the Piranha - it feels awful to play anything but a long ranger sniper in it.

[Requiemking]

Abaddun, on 05 July 2018 - 08:14 AM, said:

I'm sure time will vindicate me when we see the flea released for C-bills, there will be no-where near this level of controversy. IS light mechs may be faster, but the firepower they bring is paltry to what clan mechs can bring. This has contributed to the rise of the arctic cheetah whilst every other IS light mech, some of which were staples, fade in obscurity. Compared to how many arctic Cheetahs we see, there are a paltry number of jenners, Ravens, Panthers and firestarters in the field. Regardless of the rescaling, Clan light mechs are significantly more prominent over IS light mechs.

That only happened because all the good IS Lights got giga-nerfed in June of 2016, when the Rescale hit. Prior to that, the Cheeto was nowhere near as prevalent as any of the IS Lights, especially the Oxide.

[Haipyng]

I went out and bought a PIR-1 for Cbills yesterday to see what all the fuss was about. I gave up on lights after all of the nerfs to whammy my IS lights like the Spider and Raven, and the power creep of new lights that are just able to carry more weaponry.

I am at best a mediocre player. When ever I get an itch to run a light I usually drag out the Arctic Cheeter Prime. Mine is currently configured with the 6 heavy C-MG and a couple of medium heavy lasers as an impromptu back stabber.

After 15 matches in the PIR-1, I found it similar in overall firepower to my Arctic Cheeter. The 12 standard C-MG, hit more often and are more accurate that the heavy C-MG, but not more powerful than the six heavy C-MGs. . I missed the ECM of my Cheeter, but the size difference and speed make it more difficult to hit than the Cheeter, which is just as well as it is way lighter on armor.

Some random thoughts:

• Holy tunnel vision, batman. FoV is very narrow.
  
• In GP, teams are more concerned about stragglers, so I didn't run into any lone assaults. in QP I found one away from cover and it wasn't terribly hard to bring him down. No easier or harder than with my Cheeter.
  
• Players these days are very concerned with their tender backsides. I found it difficult to work my way in behind them, especially in groups.
  
• The PIR-1 is a scavenger, early game consisted of spotting, checking for stragglers and objectives. It shines when the team is torn up and open. I landed alot of kills in the PIR, just from the rapid RoF of all those C-MG eating structure.
  
• It is a great pack hunter. Other PIR or backstabbing lights really help.
  
• I ran out of MG ammo a few times, mostly from tangling with other lights and a heavy trigger finger.
  
• I was mostly pulling down 325+ games, but topped 500+ in more than a few.
  
• It's not forgiving of mistakes. It meets a quick death.

I don't see it as over powered. It's superior in certain situation to many lights including the Cheeter, but this is mostly due to it being harder to hit. Mostly in GP, I was being countered way more than in QP. All of my high scoring games were in QP. Maybe other PIRs are superior or maybe more skilled light pilots are making them shine brighter. I am not sure what you could change about it that wouldn't seriously hurt it.

[Zibmo]

poltergoost, on 05 July 2018 - 03:31 AM, said:

Wow!!! 6 kills!?!? 700 damage!!!!!

I've never, ever seen any other mech get a score like that

Generally speaking, it usually takes more than one game to do that in the second.

[Yosharian]

Never mind

Edited by Yosharian, 05 July 2018 - 08:01 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Requiemking, on 05 July 2018 - 04:30 PM, said:

That only happened because all the good IS Lights got giga-nerfed in June of 2016, when the Rescale hit. Prior to that, the Cheeto was nowhere near as prevalent as any of the IS Lights, especially the Oxide.

Yes it was. The top Lights prior to the re-scale were the Oxide, JR7-IIC, JR7-IIC-A, FS9-A, FS9-S, and ACH. The ACH vs. FS9 was something of a personal preference, though most tended to favor the ACH because the cXL was a slight edge the longer a game dragged; the FS9-A (8x SPL) had higher DPS and the FS9-S (5x MPL) had longer range. The JR7-IIC vs. the Oxide was decided by whether or not you were going to brawl or whether you were going to bomb. The IIC was used primarily for insta-gibbing 'Mechs from behind with gigantic 72-point alpha-strikes while the Oxide mixed it up in the hairball. Funny enough, the ACH was also used to mix it up in the hairball on MRBC Drop 1 (4x Light + 4x Medium per team). The JR7-IIC-A was a cSPL boat similar to the ACH and was, again, chosen according to user preference.

Ever since the ACH came out, it has been one of the top-performing Lights, if not the highest performing Light. It has consistently had a presence both in QP and in the competitive scene. While its old role as a cSPL duelist is obsolete for competitive play, it still sees use on larger maps in the same role the Spider 5K was briefly prominent in (before it got nerfed): ERLL harassment with MGs for quick crits in the end-game.

[MischiefSC]

FupDup, on 05 July 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

I'm not okay with how quickly the Piranha can currently eat mechs even from the front (not just rear gankers like everybody says), but nerfing MGs globally is not a good answer because that has a ton of collateral damage. Shadow Cats, Vipers, Cute Foxes, and Novas sure as hell weren't pushing the envelope with their MGs.

I know that this sounds like it contradicts my previously stated stance in the "What the community asked for" thread in regard to whether you should nerf guns or robots, but in this specific case study it's just the Piranha. In BT canon there aren't really any other mechs that can abuse MGs like it.

The Kraken can have 16 ballistic hardpoints but it's a big and slow 100-tonner and thus not an issue. There's the 90-ton Juggernaut that can pack 12, but that's an IS mech that requires X-Pulse Laser tech anyways (I assume you only want Clan MG nerfs anyways, Jugger is an IS mech). Lastly there's the Summoner variant Z, which requires a lot of future tech (iATMs, Nova CEWs, ER Pulse, AP Gauss) and it's got a single easily isolated arm for its 8 MGs.

Those are the only other canon mass-MG boats I know about (I'm sure I might have missed a few oddballs). This is one of those times when we have basically no risk of future mechs replacing the Piranha's capabilities, outside of PGI making things up.

I get your logic but MGs could stand to be dialed back a bit. Let the Piranha eat faces with buffed small lasers. You're doing the same thing in reverse; the Scat is pretty terrible outside of some niche builds and needs buffed. Vipers, Foxes and Novas are all crap because small lasers got nerfed or they just suck a bag of .... yeah.

MGs don't need buffed to make otherwise bad mechs good. Small lasers of all sorts need a bit of a buff and bad mechs need buffed to make them not bad.

[S O L A I S]

For myself I was happy when they reduced the crit chances and adjusted the light mg, making the standards the go to which means they need to get closer.

The only thing that I really, really want PGI to do is to make all mechs able to shoot down. Current pitch is aggravating and running in and facehugging something to death is nonsense.

[adamts01]

After their c-bill release and actually piloting them, the Piranha is broken as ****. The 12mg build pumps out 12dps, considerably more than a UAC20. The 14ERSL dumps 32 damage over a second, with a 160+ meter range, and is incredibly cool running at that. In comparison, that's the same dps as a 6SPL Locust but at almost twice the range. But, MGs and ERSmalls aren't broken, it's boating them, the same problem PGI has always had. More Ghost Heat could help the energy build, and I guess the MG build if they got heat. But the best solution is simply to give an exponentially increasing accuracy penalty when too many of a weapon group are fired. That solves boating across the board. Things are just stupid with this mech and all boats at this point. The silly upcoming Clan nerfs aren't going to help and aren't warranted, as again, it hurts the mechs that can't boat more than it hurts the mechs that can.

[YueFei]

ShiverMeRivets, on 05 July 2018 - 04:24 AM, said:

I'll tell you why I hate all 20 tonners. It is my opinion, but I suspect some may share it.

I came to this game to play Mechs - you know, giant robots that stomp on cars, break buildings and fire BFGs Howitzer heavy artillery-calibre guns at each other. What I did not want to play or fight against are things slightly bigger than Marvel's Ironman that go up to 3 times my speed, yet kill me just as quickly as a big F'ing Mech with Howitzers.

Let me ask who shares the following sentiment:
When I get shaked by an AC20 my 1st thought is an angry "who did that?!".
When I hear that pling pling MG sound, my 1st thought is "OMG I an going to die".
Shouldn't that be reversed?

Or, you can stay calm instead of getting flustered, realize that MGs attacking you means that your opponent is very close, and therefore can be hit (unless you're only packing ATMs or LRMs). Aim calmly and hit him. Hit him again. If he sticks around some more after you've hit him a couple times, he'll be dead soon.

Look, I know it's easy to get flustered and start missing shots. I've been there, too, whiffing shot after shot as the Piranha rips my face off. But the only person to blame is the one sitting between my chair and keyboard, and that's me. The opportunity is to hit him is there. As slow as AC20/SRM velocity is, a target that close has no time to react to dodge it (no human has reflexes that fast). So, when I miss, I know it's my own fault.

Just stay calm and don't pull the triggers in panic before you've lined up the shot. Even at 50% accuracy and a modest alpha strike damage total and slow-cycling weapons, you should be able to pull a leg off in about 12 seconds. Sure, by then you've taken some damage and you'll know you've been in a fight, but it'll be a fight you win and can walk away from.

[adamts01]

YueFei, on 05 July 2018 - 10:31 PM, said:

12 seconds. Sure, by then you've taken some damage and you'll know you've been in a fight, but it'll be a fight you win and can walk away from.

12 seconds while the Piranha has 12dps is 144 damage. That's a losing race for most mechs.

Or 180 damage from the 14ERS build at 165 meters.

Most mechs don't have the heat to win that fight. The Piranha is just dirty and broken.

Edited by adamts01, 05 July 2018 - 10:42 PM.

[YueFei]

adamts01, on 05 July 2018 - 10:35 PM, said:

12 seconds while the Piranha has 12dps is 144 damage. That's a losing race for most mechs.

My Shadowhawk would end up at ~75% health after that, assuming I have to shoot 5 times to hit twice to leg him before delivering the kill shot. It hurts, but it's not the end of the world. If the Piranha pilot went for one leg instead of torso (negating any torso-twisting), I may end up missing a leg, but still have all my weapons and I'm still in the fight.

And that assumes he engages me hard starting within of his optimal range. There's always a chance that he gets spotted a bit farther out and takes some damage before he can close in.

I think people focus too myopically on what happens once the Piranha is in range and engages you hard. Yes, he's very very dangerous there, and if you've been opened up somewhere and taken some damage beforehand, you'll probably be taking a dirt nap very quickly. But think about all the work he has to do to even get into that position of advantage in the first place (and don't forget the work his teammates put in to draw attention to help him get there, too). Think about the chances he takes every time he peeks and risks getting shot outside of his range to retaliate. Think about the risks he takes every time he attempts an approach, where at any moment an enemy might suddenly step out at range and punish him. Think about the risk he takes while he's engaged and focused on one opponent, because maybe his opponent has an attentive teammate that ends up two-shotting him if he doesn't stay aware and waits too long to bail out.

It's like saying "OMG, daggers are OP because they kill Knights and armored Men-at-Arms so often by slipping into the gaps in the armor", and forgetting about all the grappling work that went in beforehand to wrestle that plate-armored warrior into a vulnerable position in the first place (to say nothing of getting past his lance/spear/sword without getting killed in the first place).

P.S.: Most of the French knights at Agincourt were killed in melee combat. The longbows helped kill the horses and break the momentum (which was crucial), but when it comes down to it, longbows can't reliably penetrate plate harnesses. The English archers had to join in on the hand-to-hand combat to actually kill the French knights.

[adamts01]

YueFei, on 05 July 2018 - 10:54 PM, said:

I think people focus too myopically on what happens once the Piranha is in range and engages you hard. Yes, he's very very dangerous there, and if you've been opened up somewhere and taken some damage beforehand, you'll probably be taking a dirt nap very quickly.

That argument applies to all brawler lights. As an old school light player I actually believe that most lights should get their size reduced and get other buffs on top of that, so I'm not at all hating on lights in general, just this specific mech. Its firepower is just stupid. At 20 tons it offers more dps than most heavies, easily doubles the dps of any other light, and on top of that the thing never overheats. As much as I love lights, when something's broken it's broken.

[UnofficialOperator]

Yeonne Greene, on 05 July 2018 - 09:20 AM, said:

Flea is bae, Piranha is for poseurs.

Also Piranha is definitely the TIE in this arrangement, being on the evil side and all.

Nah uh, Tie has higher speed and agility than Xwing.

[JediPanther]

UnofficialOperator, on 04 July 2018 - 11:57 PM, said:

Alright fine Pir is OP.

Saw someone pilot a Flea and imo way better than Pir 1. The Flea is like the Tie Fighter to the Pir's X-wing

Wish I had it.

Edit: Pir is potato masher T3 and below. Usually they got no clue why they blowing up

I was quite the ace in the t/i and t/d of tie fighter. Tie fighter was one of my favs back in the 90s.Didn't have x-wing but I loved the mis boat's adv concussion missiles. 20 ton mechs do take some skill in positioning and their speed lets you make a lot of mistakes slower mechs would beheavily damaged or blown up.

[JadeLight]

I've one or two shot so many PIR today. It's not hard with frontoaded high caliber damage. Streaks will tear up a PIR. Most forms of gauss can easily oneshot you when paired. IS AC is extremely dangerous as is all LB. Any decent commando 2D or Jenner or Arctic wolf srm build will find you an easy kill. Light vs light is terribly inefficient to do in the PIR, instead you should be critting out open components or backshotting if possible. While you might win in a light duel, depending on tier, you will lose so much ammo that it isn't worth it.

Btw, the PIR-1 is much better in light brawl then the laser versions, up until it runs dry after just 1 or 2 kills. You should be aiming for around 3-4 K/D or more if you are a top pilot. In lower tiers it very well could be OP but against competent pilots you could be dead rather quickly.