463 replies to this topic

[Der Geisterbaer]

YueFei, on 08 July 2018 - 12:11 PM, said:

I agree with others who say we shouldn't hold TT stats as if they were inviolate canon.

Kind of ironic considering that this thread deals with a mech variant which utilizes a weapon which is already far below its canon values - at least under the premise that other weapons like the AC2 are more or less canon.

[MischiefSC]

Mcgral18, on 08 July 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

Though, let's be fair, you need a minimum amount of them to be useful
4 is no longer that number
6 can be adequate (but need supporting lasers)

To clarify though -

Buff the **** out of MGs. Totally okay with that -

Just make sure there's other changes going in at the same time to make way more lights viable. My issue with MGs is that they're so strong they're used regularly on heavies and assaults and they're the hallmark of the strongest lights. The ACH, once the premier laserboat light, is just a 2nd rate MG boat now.

THAT is the issue. When we have 12 total decent lights with various loadouts that sre fun to play then great. If someone can make that happen in a lore friendly way, wonderful.

The current system of nerf-a-mole to rotate 2 or 3 mechs not just as top meta but not sucking is bad and unenjoyable.

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2018 - 12:50 PM, said:

To clarify though -

Buff the **** out of MGs. Totally okay with that -

Just make sure there's other changes going in at the same time to make way more lights viable. My issue with MGs is that they're so strong they're used regularly on heavies and assaults and they're the hallmark of the strongest lights. The ACH, once the premier laserboat light, is just a 2nd rate MG boat now.

THAT is the issue. When we have 12 total decent lights with various loadouts that sre fun to play then great. If someone can make that happen in a lore friendly way, wonderful.

The current system of nerf-a-mole to rotate 2 or 3 mechs not just as top meta but not sucking is bad and unenjoyable.

If the Javelin, JR7-IIC, and Oxide, and LCT-3S were armored up and/or more agile, they would be extremely viable. If the Locust 1E and 3M were as agile as they used to be, they would be comp-viable. If cSPL damage hadn't been nerfed into oblivion and the duration on cERSL wasn't comparable to the time span between the comet killing the dinosaurs and present day, alternative flavors of ACH and MLX and PIR would be viable.

None of this is directly an MG issue. Even now, MG boats can be fought with a decent success rate by IS laser-boating Lights, it's just nobody praises IS laser boat lights because their impact isn't compressed into a few seconds of very high output. But racking up 600+ in a MedLas Locust or an MPL/SL/SPL Flea is really not any more difficult than doing the same in an MG Piranha, and in some ways is actually easier.

[Prototelis]

The flea has the slight advantage of being ignored, people don't appreciate how dangerous it can be.

I very firmly believe the PIR appears OP, but only because most of the other light mechs in this game are garbage.

I find it suspect that the people saying they've tried it and still believe it is OP won't post their mech stats or even a good end game score in support of their "ease of use" argument.

[MischiefSC]

Yeonne Greene, on 08 July 2018 - 08:15 PM, said:

If the Javelin, JR7-IIC, and Oxide, and LCT-3S were armored up and/or more agile, they would be extremely viable. If the Locust 1E and 3M were as agile as they used to be, they would be comp-viable. If cSPL damage hadn't been nerfed into oblivion and the duration on cERSL wasn't comparable to the time span between the comet killing the dinosaurs and present day, alternative flavors of ACH and MLX and PIR would be viable.

None of this is directly an MG issue. Even now, MG boats can be fought with a decent success rate by IS laser-boating Lights, it's just nobody praises IS laser boat lights because their impact isn't compressed into a few seconds of very high output. But racking up 600+ in a MedLas Locust or an MPL/SL/SPL Flea is really not any more difficult than doing the same in an MG Piranha, and in some ways is actually easier.

Anything can beat anything else with sufficient skill. People beat Timberwolves all the time when they first came out and that wasn't in any way balanced.

If you say the Flea is 100% as likely to get picked for a comp match as a Flea I'll take your word for it but I'd really like to see it actually happen. If the Wolfhound didn't have any quirks, would it still get picked over the Mist Lynx? If the ACH had the exact same quirks as the WLF, would people still take the WLF?

People take the MG PIR over the laser PIR because the MGs perform better. MGs are not balanced relative to same tonnage of lasers, they're better for the same tonnage. You want to fix that by buffing lasers, great. I'd rather see MGs nerfed a little and lasers buffed a little and I'd most of all prefer that they not directly compete in the same space so that lights with mixed energy/ballistics are not flat out inferior to boated but, well, that's always been an issue.

[Sjorpha]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2018 - 09:47 AM, said:

The Piranha is a light and most people suck in lights. Suck real bad. You'd want a set of 20+ matches from 4+ people who consistently do well in lights. The KDK3 was an abnormality, most imbalances are hard to sort from the noise of the overall average players suck factor.

Locusts are even more skill dependent than Piranhas, so there is no reason to expect a larger performance gap with better pilots (we don't know that those weren't good pilots but whatever). I agree you'd want better statistics, but the lack of better evidence doesn't support any position/assumption, this is still the best compilation on the issue I've seen.

Yes the Kodiak 3 was abnormally strong so it produced abnormal results. The Piranha doesn't produce abnormal results so it's apparently within normal ranges of power. That was exactly the point I was making all along.

It may be hard to sort and compile evidence, but that's no excuse to hold an unsupported position.

There might be a simple explanation for the fact that the only stats anyone has bothered to compile shows slightly above locust performance, and that is simply that the Piranha is only slightly stronger than the locust. It doesn't necessarily have to be more complex than that.

Edited by Sjorpha, 08 July 2018 - 10:53 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2018 - 10:20 PM, said:

Anything can beat anything else with sufficient skill. People beat Timberwolves all the time when they first came out and that wasn't in any way balanced.

That is literally not the point. The point is that those other 'Mechs I listed have very valid use-cases that trump what a PIR can do with MGs even now, and without any significant weapon quirks, but they are let down by other factors such as being too squishy for their size/range/etc.

Quote

If you say the Flea is 100% as likely to get picked for a comp match as a Flea I'll take your word for it but I'd really like to see it actually happen. If the Wolfhound didn't have any quirks, would it still get picked over the Mist Lynx? If the ACH had the exact same quirks as the WLF, would people still take the WLF?

You are moving goalposts and you don't even realize it. Look at what is effective in the game now and how it got there. Are IS Medium-class lasers good on Lights universally? Yes, they actually are. Why is the WLF in particular good? Because it has enough armor to offset its XL engine, big size, and lack of agility. Do any other IS Lights have this? Possibly only the FLE, using size and agility instead of raw armor; JR7, JVN, and OSR are too squishy, though their agility is solid for their size. Solution? Armor them up. Bam, done.

The ACH, PIR, and MLX all already have reasonable agility for their size. Because of cXL (and extensive quirks on the MLX), they also have reasonable durability. So why are MGs preferred? Because cSPL damage reduction requires lingering to compensate, at which point I might as well take MGs. Ditto ERuL and uPL. Because cERSL and cHSL cycle and burn for too long for their range and damage relative to isML and isMPL. Because their cMPL demand too much weight to be as heat-efficient as isML for the damage (note: this is due to the 'Mechs available having locked equipment or guns in bad places; the upcoming INC-4 will run 5x cMPL quite well). Because cERML are now too hot and either can't be cooled sufficiently or result in too low of a damage/tick relative to the isERML when you cut back on the count of lasers to manage the heat. Ditto HML.

Do you see the trend? Clan lasers just do not fit the necessary requirements for Lights...but IS ones do. IS laser Lights are bad because they have chassis deficiencies that they did not used to have, Clan laser Lights are bad because they have weapon deficiencies that they did not used to have. The MGs didn't get added on top of already good Clan lasers, they got added on top of nerfed lasers.

And people already do take the ACH over the WLF...when you need long-range ERLL harassing fire. It's a valid role that the ACH took over from the Spider 5K with the addition of the ACH-E omnipods. It's not the typical MG boat, it doesn't do frontal assaults like the MLX and it doesn't do rear-ganks like the PIR. If it had ERML quirks that made them burn for a bit less time, it would probably be a toss-up on whether you choose the WLF-2 or ACH for ERML poke on certain larger maps. When we get the INC-4 in the near future, it will be another toss-up between that with 5x cMPL or a WLF-2 with 6x ML/5x MPL.

Quote

People take the MG PIR over the laser PIR because the MGs perform better. MGs are not balanced relative to same tonnage of lasers, they're better for the same tonnage. You want to fix that by buffing lasers, great. I'd rather see MGs nerfed a little and lasers buffed a little and I'd most of all prefer that they not directly compete in the same space so that lights with mixed energy/ballistics are not flat out inferior to boated but, well, that's always been an issue.

12 cMGs with 4 tons of ammo is 8 tons. A CMD-TDK with 8 tons of MPLs will do equally disgusting things.

You were saying?

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 08 July 2018 - 11:16 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Not moving the goal post at all. My point is that MGs are better than lasers currently. I'm not sure I agree that a 4MPL CMD is equal in performance to a 12 MG PIR.Aside from being almost double the DPS for 0 heat it's literally doing more damage/tic than the 4 MPL CMD. Even if they were trading at 130m (not really how it would work I'm sure) the PIR has the advantage, even beyond the IS XL stuff on a CMD. Ignoring the bonus crit damage of the MGs maybe the CMDs stronger quirks would give it an edge? 90m in range with the PIR faster, I dunno. I also compared the 12 MG PIR to the 12 E hardpoint PIR specifically to point out that the 12 MG one is better. That's the point.

I said all along you can buff the small lasers back up but that currently MGs are stronger for all the reasons you listed. As to the ACH vs WLF, I was asking that if the ACH has the same quirks as the WLF would you take the MG+laser ACH over the WLF, specifically because MGs on the ACH (with JJs and good mobility) vs the WLF with just IS lasers.

I get that MGs are the thing on lights because of the laser nerfs. It's why I've said buff small/ER small/small pulse lasers.

The only reason I said nerf MGs or make them more niche in some form or fashion is, again, if you have them competing in the same role as lasers you're always going to have a better/worse scenario that makes mixed MG + energy loadouts an additional casualty. Give them complementary roles or just different roles and you increase the viable options for mechs.

[OmniFail]

O wow man....

It's like the Twilight Zone up in this thread. I can't believe that I agree with MischiefSC on something for once.

[Wil McCullough]

OmniFail, on 09 July 2018 - 01:28 AM, said:

O wow man....

It's like the Twilight Zone up in this thread. I can't believe that I agree with MischiefSC on something for once.

Why not? I find mischief's arguments reasonable most, if not all, of the time

[Thrudvangar]

Sjorpha, on 04 July 2018 - 03:35 AM, said:

There really hasn't been any strong indications of the Piranha being OP. It doesn't produce abnormal scores, it doesn't dominate in any game mode and as far as I know it hasn't caused any upsets in the comp scene either.

WHAT?!

Nice try...

[Sjorpha]

Thrudvangar, on 09 July 2018 - 02:34 AM, said:

WHAT?!

Nice try...

It's not about trying anything, no one is actually presenting anything to support their position. 11 pages and I'm the only one so far even trying to look at any data.

I'm completely agnostic on the issue and I'll gladly concede the Piranha is OP the moment I see solid statistical evidence that it is. I just haven't seen it and the only research I've seen suggests a fairly average power level.

[DGTLDaemon]

PIR-1 is a funny little mech. You catch a lone assault hanging in the back, and you can easily take out a target 5 times your tonnage. You catch a stray shot, and you'll explode faster than you can say "Oh, crap!". I've been both on the giving and the receiving end of its MG's, and TBH, I simply like having this mech in the game. I enjoy piloting it, and I respect the threat it presents when I'm piloting other mechs. It's a pity that it will most likely get nerfed into obsolescence in the nearest future, as it has already happend with a number of other mechs that were pereceived as "OP".

On a side note, highest damage I've done so far with it was 746, and it was nearly a perfect match where I ran out of all 3 tons of MG ammo. Not sure if 1k dmg is even achievable, and that's how I personally tend to measure mech performance: if I can at least occasionally produce 1k dmg games with a particular build, that build is good in my book. So I'm not sure what the fuss is all about. It's not like people are setting any damage records with this mech.

[Haipyng]

I currently have a 2.35 K/D ratio after 64 games with the PIR-1. I think this is misleading because it is purely a backstabbing scavenger/pack mech. As I said in an early post, at the start of the game it looks for/kills stragglers or loners, spotting (which it is not great at as it has no ECM) and does objectives. At the end of the match it's 12 C-MGs enable it to hit often and so it does claim alot of kills, but rarely are those ever solo kills. Attacking a fresh target eats up MG ammo like crazy, especially if they are hiding their backside against a wall. I've been forced to retire from attacking a lone assault using that tactic.

Now that I have skilled it up, I am seeing 300+ to 500+ games not much different at the high end from my Kodiak KDK-3 or SB The difference is a wrong move with the KDK-3 is usually survivable with the armor. The PIR-1 is very unforgiving of mistakes and a wrong turn will end your game in a hurry.

It is a fun mech to play currently if you like close in fighting and a nervous existence. It would be a shame to nerf it because it "kill steals". Kills I find in MWO don't mean as much as other metrics taken as a whole.

Edited by Haipyng, 09 July 2018 - 05:55 AM.

[YueFei]

Sjorpha, on 09 July 2018 - 04:38 AM, said:

It's not about trying anything, no one is actually presenting anything to support their position. 11 pages and I'm the only one so far even trying to look at any data.

I'm completely agnostic on the issue and I'll gladly concede the Piranha is OP the moment I see solid statistical evidence that it is. I just haven't seen it and the only research I've seen suggests a fairly average power level.

It's a bias in the way the human psyche often works. They're only remembering those terrifying moments the Piranha is already upon them.

Most people probably don't really remember those times when a Piranha gets popped in 2 hits before it can contribute anything useful. Hell, most probably don't even realize it's a Piranha getting popped in the first place, on either team, because they won't have direct LOS to the event.

[Quandoo]

Cheetah with ECM, 6 hvy mg and 2 flamers (or 2 hvy medium) is still better. Firestarter with ROF perk is also awesome. Pirnaha is just the easiest to use...mostly 1 button.

Edited by Quandoo, 09 July 2018 - 10:37 AM.

[Nightbird]

Low floor low ceiling mech

[Battlemaster56]

Quandoo, on 09 July 2018 - 10:36 AM, said:

Cheetah with ECM, 6 hvy mg and 2 flamers (or 2 hvy medium) is still better. Firestarter with ROF perk is also awesome. Pirnaha is just the easiest to use...mostly 1 button.

That cheetah build...urgh serioudly better off droping most those weapons for 6mg and 2 hsl or ersl with ecm or go for 3 hsl with 6mgs is better what you just posted.

[MischiefSC]

@Yeonne -

I'm worried that maybe I haven't made myself clear.

I don't think MGs are OP in general. I don't think the Piranha is OP. I think it's performing out of scope with other lights but that's because other lights suck balls.

I think we both agree that small lasers of pretty much all sort need buffed. Also lights need their mobility back.

When you do that, isn't it just going to make MGs irrelevant again? We do that all the time - PPC/Gauss, LL/ERLL/LPL, ML/ERML, all of it. We make one set of weapons or even type of hardpoints irrelevant for a while or OP for a while.

So why not push the MGs sideways? So that when yes, SPL/ERSML/SML is better for burst damage and the primary weapon for lights (there's, what, 1 or 2 total variants of all mechs in this game that really only CAN boat MGs vs how many that have both energy and small ballistic hardpoints?) but it's actually not bad to take a couple/few MGs for destroying internal structure or whatever.

This isn't about Piranha OP. It's that right now small lasers suck so MGs are pretty much overall better. When/if you fix that, suddenly the MG ones are just worthless again because they were functionally just doing the same role. Make small lasers good again but keep MGs in a role that has value used alongside them.

[Revis Volek]

Cer6erus, on 04 July 2018 - 03:38 PM, said:

Jarl's list has me at
99.5% overall
98% this season (skilling mechs)
99.9% for a tryhard assault only season

Your point fails to consider that I can get no where near this level of performance form ANY other light mech thats trying to occupy a similar role. I also don't believe lights are in a bad place. Of course they wont be as good as a medium/heavy/assault because they are not suppose to be. They have other strengths and roles in the game.

My point is that IMO the PIR-1 utterly blows away all other light mechs in the same role, and in a way that is not fun to play or play against. And if I am 'going to outperform most of the player base' I could do it in any light mech, but I can't. Im a heavy/light assault pilot. Lights are hard for me. But the PIR is brainlessly OP

Why not?


I can do the exact same things in WLF, Urbies, ACH and MLX.


Sounds like you are just a bad light pilot. Its cool man, i know people BETTER then your and they are **** in lights. They are not everyones cup of tea.


Also, PIR is bad at light vs Light fighting because of how fragile it is. Light vs Light is never a fight you want anyway, unless you are in a Quirked IS mech and they are in a PIR. lol

I actually think my Cougar has some of the best stats for a light (its like 8.00 kdr) only because no one thinks im a threat and even then they think im just an Adder. LUL

Edited by Revis Volek, 09 July 2018 - 03:13 PM.