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[Tranderas]

I went into the newer PTS wondering if I'd find something to change my mind that lowering the heat cap is a bad idea.

I didn't find anything.

I did, however, find a group of mechs that feel great thanks to agility buffs. So this thread is going to be making a case in favor of direct buffs and against heat cap changes.

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Let's start with mobility and agility. Some of these mechs are just smooth. My Kraken can move without feeling like it has an Urbanmech engine, and my BLR can do the twist. It's so wonderful, in fact, that I want even more agil buffs, across the board.

It should start at some arbitrary number- maybe 8.5% across the board- with some mechs getting more or less based on the individual chassis. The MCII really doesn't need more agility, but the KDK and TBR need it desperately, so tweak those lower and higher than the baseline, respectively.

Everyone should support the idea of increased baseline agility:

- For lorehounds, you start going back to the era when Atlas pilots could do cartwheels to avoid shots. Mechs are very nimble in early lore, and battles are extremely dynamic. Dodging is much more common, and it should be in MWO, too.

- Lower-skilled players will find it easier to get into a position to shoot at enemy mechs, and to get the hell out when they start taking more damage than they think they can handle. It allows a "nope, I'm out" escape route that the sluggish mechs we have now simply don't allow.

- Higher skilled players will find it easier to twist alpha, to directly respond to enemy positions, and to "play their game" as it were.

Agility buffs have the following additional benefits:

- They indirectly nerf the clan alpha boogeyman that PGI hates so much by allowing players to respond to the damage. Big clan alpha strikes are reliant on ERMLs and ERLLs, with long burn durations. A buff to agility allows players to react to the burn, either twisting their torsos or ducking into cover, before the burn ends. This means that alpha mechs have to be more selective in their shots and their opponents are more likely to have an escape.

- They indirectly buff suffering weapons systems- specifically pulse lasers and Light Gauss. If people are more agile so it's harder to track them and keep damage on specific components, then shorter burns are at a premium. This will give pulse lasers more of a role to play, and while it's not a big buff to LGauss, it definitely helps as the pinpoint is even more relevant.

- They indirectly nerf LRMs- and, to a lesser extent, ATMs and clan streaks. More agility means more ability to react to incoming damage, and that includes that WARNING: INCOMING MISSILE bleep. Not only does it make it easier to pop in and out of cover, but it allows more movement while out in the open, making it harder for the missiles to track. To a lesser extent, but along the same line, it nerfs ATMs and max-range streaks. There's not as much time to react, but that extra half-second can make a difference.

- A bigger buff to baseline agility for lights helps them better settle into their role as flankers. I'm imagining some lights ducking and weaving in and out of combat, rather than the current system of either sneaking up on an enemy and coring him out or getting burned down.

- It increases TTK while also increasing how dynamic the game is. Everything is moving and flowing on the battlefield, twisting and getting opportunistic shots. It's exciting, it's active, it's fun!

So yes, the agility buffs are a good thing. Give us more- both on the tested mechs and on every other mech in the game as well.

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On the other side of that coin, heat cap nerfs are problematic.

- It's a heavy-handed nerf that punishes clans more so than IS. Our mechs are big and thick. They can't handle longer engagements. That's why we were given the alpha to begin with. Taking it away punishes one of our only real advantages without giving us anything in return. We simply can't handle the kind of facetime that the dissipation meant to compensate for the change would provide.

- It disproportionately punishes newer players. Heat skills go from being a nice bonus to being mandatory to play a lot of mechs at all. The oft-maligned meta Deathstrike goes from 90% cooldown and being able to fire around 13 seconds later without skills, to 70% and firing 7 seconds later with skills. While skills should make a difference in a mech's play, they shouldn't take a mech from "you shouldn't play this" to "you should definitely play this."

- It doesn't help problem weapons at all. IS SPLs, LPLs, and LGauss see nothing from this, nor do clan SPLs, LPLs, SRMs, or UACs. There's nothing here that benefits anything that's actually suffering in the game whatsoever.

- The only big-alpha mechs that are affected are clan vomit. 50 pinpoint dual heavy gauss mechs are unaffected, nor are any other mechs that use DHG, such as the 6ml DHG ANH-1X, which has 80 alpha and fires 4 times on Forest Colony unskilled- five times with an extra two-second wait before the last blast. The 6aSRM6 Cyclops has 76 alpha and can fire twice on a cold map without skills. Yet heat cap only goes after mechs that are reliant on high-heat lasers- ie clans.

- It's an indirect buff to LRMs... again. As LRM players tend to go close to heat neutral chain firing to begin with, with high theoretical DPS when they do, a heat cap reduction actually helps them by nerfing everything in relation to them.

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I've always been against buffing by nerfing- ie making something better by making everything else worse. Heat cap reduction does just that, forcing clan players to play dakka by making their vomit much worse. It might increase TTK, but at a cost of dynamic gameplay, On the other hand, strong increases to agility increase both TTK and the speed and flow of individual games.

At the very least, a heavy-handed agility buff should be put in place on live servers before any other changes are made to weapon systems or heat caps. Give us back our ability to move our mechs, then see how the weapons react based on that. 4v4 won't tell you anything. Put it live in 12v12. Players have been asking for it for a long time, and you benefit everyone while not unduly punishing any specific playstyle. And while I'm so anti-heat cap nerfs that I'm uninstalling if any go through, I'd at least entertain the idea of sticking around if it's shown that certain styles are overperforming even after agility buffs and buffs to specific weapons systems, such as light gauss and flamers.

Thanks for listening.