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1. Overall TTK
Opinion:
Feeling with the 4vs4 it's too hard to see a difference. Battles are often over in few good shots when everyone is brawling.
Others might feel that lasers didn't do much dmg...
I feel like the performance of my Clan mechs dependet greatly on the speed of the engagement.
Once the brawling starts, you either had to use smaller lasers, pulse lasers, or go back to SRM builds because of the high heat build.
Fights with only Clan mechs on both sides were more exiting on brawls with Light/Mediums (Nova/Crow/Cougar) and more risky with the hotter builds in heavies/assaults.
Long range 3xERLL snipers felt dangerous enough to not ignore.
IS mechs (especially fast brawlers) were dangerous when pushing.
This was partly because of the brawling lasers (Pulses) were also reduced and most test builds were focused more on ER/Heavy laser boating and less on heat performance.
2. Gauss Shake
Fact:
The Shake will spread your damage a lot if you fire it while your lasers are still burning.
It limits laser+Gauss build to be either:
- Charge Gauss (0.5-1.x sec with skill), Release Gauss, wait (0.5-1s shake), fire lasers (1.x sec burn)
- Fire lasers (1.x sec burn), Charge Gauss (0.5-1.x sec with skill), Release Gauss right after beams are over.
Opinion:
In most cases, depending on the situation (e.g. if you have the time to pre-charge gauss without the target noticing it), you will decide how to fire the Gauss, but using the second option will still deliver the damage of the Gauss right after the Laser beam is done.
The pacing of the shots is helping a twisting target to survive a bit longer by reacting to the initial damage.
-> So skill will be more important for both sides of the gun.
On the other hand, I was thinking of increasing the heat and increasing the charge time of the Gauss (2.0 heat, 1.0s charge) and Heavy Gauss (3.5 heat, 2.0s charge) instead of shake.
3. Lasers in general
Fact:
The current ratio of dmg/heat for Clan Lasers are reducing the performance for large+med laser builds aswell as smaller mech builds with less hardpoints or less tonnage to use for DHS.
Opinion:
The Dmg / Heat is deffinitely an issue for any size of build.
Even light mechs having issues with heat.
Balancing IS light/med vs Clan light/med with laser builds come much closer than SRM builds (because of Clans having 50% ton/slot advantage on SRMs).
The current change will make Clan light/meds need a lot more skill for heatmanagement than what we have now and is moving closer to the IS mech performance (for laser only builds).
I would prefere a more strict GH limit with linking Large+Meds, so that smaller groups of lasers are performing better than boats (e.g. light/med mechs vs assault boats).
I would keep the long cd and beam duration to counter weight/range/dmg advantage.
The heat should be only slightly worse than IS counterpart if the damage is slightly higher and to balance the DHS advantage of the Clan Mechs.
General Laser Beam Duration Concept:
Std or ER Laser should be above 1.0 second duration.
Pulse Lasers should be between 0.5 and 0.8 for both factions.
Where the average difference between the classes and types are:
micro->small->med->large should be 0.2s apart
STD->ER->Heavy should be 0.2 apart
PULSE should be about half duration of STD (and also half dmg, half heat and 1/3 cd)
4.) Ghost Heat limits vs Alpha builds
Fact:
The 3x ERLL and 3x LPL increase provides some new options for long range builds.
Even with the dmg reduction, the the combo dmg is increased from about 24 to about 30, but at the same time reqire another 4 or 6 tons for an ERLL/LPL.
This puts the Clan tonnage and DHS investment closer to the IS builds for similar dmg output.
Opinion:
With the very high heat/dmg values, the Lasers are much closer to the PPCs.
This also affects builds with few lasers as backup or with low tonnage/slot available
I would prefere a better performance with lower number of lasers and a GH penalty using large boats.
So my suggestion would be to keep the 3x ERLarge /LPL limit, but reduce the base heat of all lasers and link Large+Medium laser classes together to reduce the Alpha potential without reducing the overall performance of the lasers dmg/heat.
Suggested GH Limit changes aiming for about 30-40 dmg:
BOTH limits for IS AND CLAN
Large (STD/ER/Pulse) max = 3
Large Heavy max = 2
Medium (all) max = 6
Small (all) max = 10
Micro (all) no max, no sharing
5.) PULSE Laser class
Opinion:
I think the pulse laser class has a hard time to get a role, even with the shorter CD and beam duration.
This is especially noticable on Clan LPL.
I would prefere that all pulse lasers have 1/2 dmg and heat values with 1/3 cd and a average beam duration of 0.5-0.8s to be a dps energy weapon.
6. IS vs Clan laser balancing
Opinion:
Imho, I think the IS lasers could need a little duration nerf in gernal as it is currently too easy to deliver laser damage for both sides.
No Std/ER Laser should be below 1.0 second duration (outherwise the pulses are not standing out enough vs STD/ER).
Aiming for a 1.0 DPS (incl. duration) per ton of the std medium laser would make the starting point
suggested values:
ML = 5dmg, 3.33heat, 3.8s cd, 1.2s duration = 1.0 dps and 1.5dph and 1.0dps/ton
ERML = 5dmg, 4.5heat, 4s cd, 1.4s duration = 0.9259 dps and 1.11dph and 0.9259dps/ton
CERML = 6dmg, 5.0heat, 4.6s cd, 1.6s duration = 0.9677dps and 1.20
dph and 0.9677dps/ton
CHML = 10dmg, 8.0heat, 6.0s cd, 1.8s duration = 1.28 dps and 1.25dph and 1.28dps/ton
MPL = 2.8dmg, 1.6heat, 1.0s cd, 0.6s duration = 1.75 dps and 1.75dph and 0.875dps/ton
CMPL = 3.0dmg, 1.7heat, 1.1s cd, 0.7s duration = 1.67 dps and 1.76dph and 0.833dps/ton
This would mean that CERML being better at dps and dph than IS ERML, but less efficient than the IS STD ML.
The HML would be better than CERML in dmg/dps/dph, but trade it off with long cd, beam and lower range, but would require facetime less often (but longer).
The Pulse lasers can deliver more dps and dph with a trade-off being tonnage and range and the dps behavior requiring facetime more often.
My overall balancing suggestion with many weapon value changes for both sides can be found here:
https://docs.google....#gid=1170158779
Edited by Reno Blade, 15 July 2018 - 07:29 AM.
