As an active, armor sharing, team-playing Missileer (ATM for clan and MRM for IS with some SRM sprinkles):
I support a general buff to AMS.
Buffing AMS would have been a much better way to handle missile "spam" without nuking all lock-on missile mechanics, and would actually encourage some players to equip the damn thing instead of running to the forums and complaining until everything gets nerfed into the ground. In the case of this outlandish patch, it hardly even affected passive LRMing - they're just dropping Artemis for more tubes - and instead outright damaged the other lock-on missile systems, which have no equal way to make up for the losses in usability.
The mechs I typically run on a regular basis have either a single AMS (some double) and the skills for them, or an ECM also skilled. As a player who likes and understands the missile systems pretty well, I realize the potential need for these counter systems on the receiving end, too. Most players, however, apparently would rather not "waste" the single ton/ton and a half and rather cry until the cows come home instead. "OMG that would cost me an entire heat sink, leaving me with only 29 instead of 30!" Well I'm sorry but if you can't find a single ton to spare to prevent multiple tons of armor damage to yourself and your team because you want to min/max so hard, that's your own problem and as far as I'm concerned you've made an active choice to allow yourself to be more vulnerable to missiles.
*ATMs would need a buff, as a single AMS already chews through an entire ATM12 and then some. Easy fix though: more missile HP, instantaneous launch instead of stream fired, or massive velocity increase. Or a combo of the three.
Edited by Hiten Bongz, 25 August 2018 - 02:11 PM.