15 replies to this topic

[Phoenix 72]

I had an interesting quick play match earlier today. I have no idea what I could have done differently.

We were playing on the Canyon Network. We had a few AMS and the enemy had what looked like 3 lurm boats and 2 Narcers. They found us faster than we found them and Narced our lead Assault. Started lurming it down. I tried to give some cover with my AMS but boy, did that do little. So the lead Assault and me tried to push in to the lurmers. Did not work well, essentially the whole enemy team was in front of them. They focused down the Assault, then my Marauder was narced and the rain started to fall. Cover did not work, so I decided to just charge them, so I would at least get some damage out. Managed to get something like 110 damage out before I was focused down. Watched them do the same to the next team member that came into range. Then stopped spectating. Impressive teamwork on a pug, I have to say.

I keep thinking about this, but I have no idea what I could have done different. The moment the Narc hit, I was done. How do you prevent 2 Lights coming from two different angles from getting a hit on you? Best I could come up with was charge straight into the enemy, but the were set up for that. We did call out that we were going in but not everybody followed in. Obviously their team work was better than ours, because they pulled that strategy off quite well, but even a few hours later I cannot for the life of me think of what I could have done to counter this. Canyon walls were not steep enough to provide cover from the LRMs, the AMS we had did not do anything, neither did my radar deprivation of 60%.

Kind of at a loss. Can anybody more experienced give me some suggestions?

Edited by Darakor Stormwind, 05 August 2018 - 11:38 AM.

[Judah Malganis]

Yeah, the canyons suck vs LRMs. The cover is better in the top portions. One question though, were the enemy NARCers in front of their formation, or where they flanking? If it's the latter, your lights could have chased them off, perhaps getting a kill or two. They might have gotten NARCed in the process, but even that could have distracted the LRM boats as they go for easier kills, plus multiple NARCs tend to confuse LRMers and diffuse their dmg, allowing your bigger mechs to make a push.

On the other hand, it seems like your team was doing the congo line from your description, so it might have all been moot anyways, as your teammates file in one by one to accept death.

Edited by Judah Malganis, 05 August 2018 - 11:44 AM.

[Ghogiel]

You need the right sort of build to do much in that situation.

Also pugs can't shoot lights well so the narcers are always going to light the whole team up for most of the match unless you personally kill them. So just hunker down and trade as well as possible/kill the narcers when they peek, especially if you are a med/heavy, the assaults probably won't be able to do much, so you need to start carrying.

Lights should obviously be either killing their lurmers or on anti light duty depending if you are a PIR or something else.

Oh and you made a mistake before the narc hit you, the narc just highlighted you were not optimally positioned/ and then made another mistake by following a panicking assault into yolo. Never, and I mean never make it easy for them to kill you, if they kill you they have to work for it

Edited by Ghogiel, 05 August 2018 - 12:10 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Canyon network is an awful travesty of a map that should be voted against at all costs. The canyons not only offer sod all cover from LRMs, but they also seal your fate at the very beginning of the match if you are not either fast enough to scale the shallower walls, or equipped with jump jets. There is probably little you could have done to avoid your fate, the enemy team likely stacked the vote for that map for a good reason.

[Phoenix 72]

Honestly, I did not even see where the Narc came from. Didn't see the narcing Light at all. At first I dropped down a bit to get into cover, but when I reached 80% health, I thought it was better to go down swinging. Would have felt even more embarrassed getting lurmed to death without even hitting anything at all. This was bad enough.

***EDIT: My Marauder sports 4ML and 2LBX10. Normally, I am not terribly bad at hitting lights, if they do not crotch hump me. The shotgun nature of the LBX helps. ***

Edited by Darakor Stormwind, 05 August 2018 - 12:36 PM.

[Brizna]

RickySpanish, on 05 August 2018 - 12:28 PM, said:

Canyon network is an awful travesty of a map that should be voted against at all costs. The canyons not only offer sod all cover from LRMs, but they also seal your fate at the very beginning of the match if you are not either fast enough to scale the shallower walls, or equipped with jump jets. There is probably little you could have done to avoid your fate, the enemy team likely stacked the vote for that map for a good reason.

Canyon network is actually one of the best maps when it comes to tactical possibilities, in the first MWO world championship it was picked all the time, but of course I am talking about highly organized teams with very skilled mech warriors. I can see how it can seem a bad map when looking at it from the perspective of an inexperienced player though, you really need to know its layout to know all the ways up the canyons otherwise you can get stuck in the bottom of a canyon for minutes literally.

[O L L O]

I think you cancel narc if you get inside a friendly ECM bubble (if the ECM mech itself gets narced it must hide in another mech's ECM bubble).

And Canyon is the best map.

Edited by Ollollo, 05 August 2018 - 01:20 PM.

[Prototelis]

You have to hang out behind the tall rocks, or get under one of the bridges.

Beaten this strat in GQ, but thats a little different.

[El Bandito]

Remember to have AMS mechs position themselves so that they are in the front of your team for maximum amount of missiles shot down. Theoretically, having at least 6 AMS divided between the 12 of you would have drastically lowered the LRM damage from 3 LRM boats. I know that you tried to charge them and died, but try your damnedest to have the team charge with you at the same time. Pugs can be very unreliable on that, but sitting around against LRM boats is the worst thing you can do. Use the AMS cover for offense, not defense.

[Dragonporn]

AMS or ECM can't do jack against rains of lurms, no matter how many you have, they will just break through. When their team figured out their NARC'ers doing good job and have enough lurms to blast whole enemy team, they just bunch up around those boats and Lights can literally run forever. You can't catch them unless they engage, and they won't, obviously.

I've been on both ends of this situation, plus I run NARC Raven from time-to-time, so I know how hard team is screwed if opposing one has both NARCs and LRMs in good numbers.

[RickySpanish]

Brizna, on 05 August 2018 - 12:34 PM, said:

Canyon network is actually one of the best maps when it comes to tactical possibilities, in the first MWO world championship it was picked all the time, but of course I am talking about highly organized teams with very skilled mech warriors. I can see how it can seem a bad map when looking at it from the perspective of an inexperienced player though, you really need to know its layout to know all the ways up the canyons otherwise you can get stuck in the bottom of a canyon for minutes literally.

When you know it's coming and have an entire team prepared for it, then I'm sure it's a swell map to "cross swords" with other like minded players on. When you are in solo queue however, even if you are equipped to deal with the sort of chaos that usually ensues when one team charges the centre because it's a nice spot for the blue graveyard, it's the sort of encounter whose outcome is guaranteed depending on which direction you swing at the start. You commit immediately and cannot reposition afterward as the cliffs are unpassable; it's extremely easy to lose an entire lance of 'Mechs if you aren't all on the same page at the start.

[Yosharian]

Here's what you can do different: bring an ECM mech. ECM stops NARC.

Glad to help

PS: your AMS doesn't do ****, remove it and use the tonnage on something else

Edited by Yosharian, 05 August 2018 - 05:47 PM.

[IIXxXII]

Sometimes its better to hang back with the team and provide AMS cover than to solo charge and die.

If you can live 30 seconds to a minute longer sometimes it buys time for your team to work out a solution.

Maybe someone will drop a UAV or an arty strike that forces the other team to back off. Then you'll be in a better position with more options.

Narcing lights sometimes sacrifice a substantial amount of tonnage to equip NARCs which make them vulnerable & make it easy to pick them off.

[YueFei]

Darakor Stormwind, on 05 August 2018 - 12:30 PM, said:

Honestly, I did not even see where the Narc came from. Didn't see the narcing Light at all. At first I dropped down a bit to get into cover, but when I reached 80% health, I thought it was better to go down swinging. Would have felt even more embarrassed getting lurmed to death without even hitting anything at all. This was bad enough.

***EDIT: My Marauder sports 4ML and 2LBX10. Normally, I am not terribly bad at hitting lights, if they do not crotch hump me. The shotgun nature of the LBX helps. ***

The canyons themselves actually don't offer hard cover from LRMs. This is something I have also learned the hard way, more than once.

If you can position on the higher ground, there are rocky formations that do offer hard cover, or nearly so. They might allow a couple missiles from a spread of missiles to nip at the top of your mech, but it's better than eating entire salvos of LRMs to the face.

If possible, try to get to higher ground, onto the ridgelines. You can always drop off of them later on if the situation calls for it, but it's harder to climb up out of it in an emergency.

[Vellron2005]

Darakor Stormwind, on 05 August 2018 - 11:32 AM, said:

I had an interesting quick play match earlier today. I have no idea what I could have done differently.

We were playing on the Canyon Network. We had a few AMS and the enemy had what looked like 3 lurm boats and 2 Narcers. They found us faster than we found them and Narced our lead Assault. Started lurming it down. I tried to give some cover with my AMS but boy, did that do little. So the lead Assault and me tried to push in to the lurmers. Did not work well, essentially the whole enemy team was in front of them. They focused down the Assault, then my Marauder was narced and the rain started to fall. Cover did not work, so I decided to just charge them, so I would at least get some damage out. Managed to get something like 110 damage out before I was focused down. Watched them do the same to the next team member that came into range. Then stopped spectating. Impressive teamwork on a pug, I have to say.

I keep thinking about this, but I have no idea what I could have done different. The moment the Narc hit, I was done. How do you prevent 2 Lights coming from two different angles from getting a hit on you? Best I could come up with was charge straight into the enemy, but the were set up for that. We did call out that we were going in but not everybody followed in. Obviously their team work was better than ours, because they pulled that strategy off quite well, but even a few hours later I cannot for the life of me think of what I could have done to counter this. Canyon walls were not steep enough to provide cover from the LRMs, the AMS we had did not do anything, neither did my radar deprivation of 60%.

Kind of at a loss. Can anybody more experienced give me some suggestions?

OK, so let a dedicated LRM boater tell you what you can do in a situation like that - Nothing. At least not on your own. You had the right idea tho.. to rush the LRM boats, but you can't do it alone.

The way to counter this, the ONLY way in fact, is to have the LRM boats distracted by fast lights chewing on their rear torsos, and then commit your whole team to a full push. That's what usually gets me when I'm in a LRM boat with a dedicated NARC-er teammate.

We can still counter this tho, but only if your team chickens-out and stops the push mid-way, when the first couple of Narced mechs fall, or if our brawlers make short work of distracting lights..

Either way, this strategy gives you a chance.

The only other thing that works on maps like Polar is when my whole stupid team nascars around the Antenna on Domination and forgets that their LRM boat assets are slow assaults, so we get a bunch of enemy mechs in our rear and get taken out first. But that's a failure of teamwork on our part, not an enemy's success.

[El Bandito]

Just two dual AMS BLR-2Cs against 4 LRM boats + spotters per wave. We crushed em good. Didn't do much damage but thanks to AMS my match score shot up.

Edited by El Bandito, 06 August 2018 - 02:50 AM.