258 replies to this topic

[Chris Lowrey]

I am here to announce the conclusion of the Alpha Balance PTS series. I want to start out with a big thank you for all who have participated and provided feedback over the various testing sessions. Over the next few months we will be rolling a number of large changes into the core MWO game based on results tested throughout the series.

With this PTS series we tested different design directions in an aggressive way to monitor the impact of such changes both through metrics and user feedback. No singular test got us exactly where we wanted to be, but collectively, they moved the dial on a number of individual things in a direction we wish to move in. Over the next few months we will be integrating various aspects found in the PTS sessions into the live game. What will be integrated will be a middle ground on a number of various points tested throughout the series with some more closely resembling what was found on PTS, while some will more closely resemble what is currently on live.

In order to consolidate the various points, I will be providing a short summery of our results from the various PTS's followed by a more elaborate breakdown as they relate to the core issues that where tested that we will be making changes to in the coming months:

• Heatsink Changes
  
• Weapon Changes
  
• Mobility Changes
  
• Quirk Changes

PTS Summary

We want to briefly give a short summary of results from the various PTS testing sessions. More elaborate breakdowns of certain findings will be touched on in the larger consolidated topics session. Keep in mind that as a brief summary, these will focus more on global results, and not focus on any individual game system, 'Mech, or weapon setting.

PTS 1.0

What was tested:

• Various reductions to clan weapon systems with various degrees of intensity changes.
  
• Laser weapons seeing global damage reductions with some values shifted to cooldowns and heat efficiency.
  
• Clan Gauss Rifles receiving a recoil

PTS 1.0 overall set out what it accomplished to do, testing results showed that the path affected Heavier and Assault 'Mechs performance more then lighter 'Mechs performance and Inner Sphere laser heavy options performed better against their Clan counterparts. In fact, Black Knights, Grasshoppers, and a number of other IS focused laser 'Mechs ended up being some of the top performers within the PTS itself. But this does not mean that the exact numbers are what we would consider game ready.

We purposefully went aggressive on a number of numbers in the weapon tuning to examine break points, as well as provide an agitant to the higher top down numbers so we can better chart the global results of the general direction. As a result of this, while the global trajectory did show that this direction targeted the things we wished to target most, the degree in which their performance dipped was too much on the extreme side, especially in the assault category that saw the greatest losses.

IS heavy and assault performance not just against clan 'Mechs, but against all 'Mechs also posed an issue as well. With their general durability making it not only tougher for clan 'Mechs, but also for smaller IS 'Mechs to compete against them. Despite the testing sessions being 4v4, lighter 'Mech performance against heavier targets is just as much of a balance point that we manage just as much as various other points. With Clans being brought into better offensive alignment, the high durability perks on some IS 'Mechs came under the microscope for future testing.

PTS 1.1

What we tested:

• Various reductions to clan weapon systems with various degrees of intensity changes.
  
• Laser weapons seeing near global beam duration adjustments as opposed to previously tested value adjustments
  
• Clan Gauss Rifles kept their recoil from PTS 1.0
  
• Heavily armored IS 'Mechs received a reduction to their Durability quirks

Based on player feedback, we attempted a mass migration of beam duration stats to monitor if we can receive similar results to PTS 1.0 utilizing a different method that was seen as more tolerable from player feedback. If we could receive similar results to PTS 1.0, we would use it as a base for how we can target the laser vomit. While their was the desirable dip in performance, where these dips came from we felt did not adequately address the issue we where targeting.

In an almost inverse effect of what was tested in PTS 1.0, those most heavily impacted by the change where lighter 'Mechs, who's longer beam duration made it harder to maintain damage against a target while moving at high speeds. While slower heavy and assault 'Mechs only saw a minor inconvenience to the way their gameplay was impacted. As they effectively functioned identically to how they did before with only a minor inconvenience of a longer beam duration. This lead to only a very slight dip in performance for Clan heavy and assault laser vomit outside of those builds impacted by the Gauss Rifle change, and unlike PTS 1, did not see the desirable results of closer parity in performance between clan Laser heavy builds compared to IS laser heavy builds.

In addition to this, we found that beam duration increases at a certain point becomes a breakpoint where players simply don't use the weapon in favor of other, shorter beam weapons. We saw heavy lasers take a massive use dip, with many people shifting over towards pulse lasers over other laser types to mitigate the higher beam durrations. This is unlike what we saw in PTS 1.0 where the spread of laser usage was much more evenly distributed from where they where on PTS 1.1, and where those break points lied was not far off from their present tuning.

We found that within the test the armor changes did not negatively impact the performance of the IS 'Mechs. Despite the reduction, they still remained highly competitive against various clan 'Mechs within the testing space.

PTS 2.0 and 2.1

What we tested in both of these sessions:

• Rework of Heatsink Functionality providing higher dissipation for less Shutdown Threshold
  
• Higher Mobility values for over 400 'Mech Variants

Overall, PTS 2.1 was hailed as game ready by a large amount of player feedback, while we are encouraged by the support, we did find that the heat system changes tended to be a bit too restrictive for a number of heavier 'Mechs, and for core weapons that dealt with high amounts of high heat "Spikes" such as PPC's, AC/20's and others. While we are happy to see the enthusiasm regarding these changes, there are a few points that we felt we could not ignore if we where to push something similar to this live. We will elaborate on these points under the Heatsink Changes section.

Mobility was also well received and well tested overall, but resulted in a number of things that gave us some concerns. We will be moving forward on mobility improvements, but with a few caveats that we will elaborate on in the Mobility Changes section of this announcement.

Although these two points tested well, the core thing we wished to address through this PTS series, bringing the performance between IS and Clan laser focused builds into better alignment, was not accomplished with this PTS. Overall Clan laser focused builds remained at a point where they overshadowed IS laser focused builds, and while the PTS did bring up a number of alternatives, they did not get raised to the point that we would have liked to see.

Moving Forward

Without a doubt one of the largest responses we have received revolve around the heatsink testing. And after reviewing the PTS' we will be making changes to the system as it exists in the current live game. Before we get into these changes, we would like to provide a bit of a top down view to what we wish to accomplish with the heat system.

Role of Heat Within MWO:

We want to take the time to state that the heat system's primary role within MWO is not to curtail high alpha use, but to provide a resource pool in which 'Mechwarriors can tap for short term gains at the expense of longer period of vulnerability. Much like in the original game of BattleTech where you can push a 'Mechs heat past it's capabilities to exploit an opening for a turn at the expense of reduced performance in subsequent turns, MWO attempts to replicate this with its overall threshold, dissipation, and general weapon cooldown tuning. Where pushing a 'Mech past its capacity to sustain DPS and up to the point where it is "Heat Capped" leaves it vulnerable for an extended period of time to more DPS efficient loadouts, or 'Mechs that are not heat capped themselves. Effectively trading short term gains for longer term periods of vulnerability to potential counter attacks.

The balance between burst damage / alpha focused and high sustain / DPS focused load-outs is one of the central focus of the balance team, and one that is front and center for a number of changes that have happened over the years. To this end, we are never attempting to fully remove high burst alpha from the table, but make sure that the amount of power one gets out of it is not so vast that it marginalizes weapons / builds that focus on the opposite end of the spectrum. Using the Heat bar exclusively as an alpha mitigation tool fundamentally alters its design intention away from what it was in BattleTech, and what we want it to be in MWO. So while we are open to tightening of certain systems, we do want to keep in mind the general role of the heat system when it came to implementation of these changes.

Heatsink Changes in PTS 2.0 / 2.1:

With the above in mind, we get to the PTS 2.0 and 2.1 results. Upfront, we liked what we saw with the increase to dissipation values. We believe it opened up more DPS options compared to what we have seen in the past, and we will be moving forward with changes along this direction as we will get to bellow.

Regarding the shutdown threshold though, while we do see value in the direction, we felt that both PTS 2.0 and PTS 2.1 still did not get us to where we wanted to be. We feel that the PTS changes pushed the dial too far into the sustained DPS camp, and too aggressively punished all but the most highly optimized high alpha builds. Chief among them, a number of high damage + High heat, non-laser weapons such as PPC's, AC/20's, mass SRM, did not have enough threshold to effectively utilize their load-outs, nor the dissipation through lower heat sink investments due to higher weapon weights to properly sustain their builds for long. We have decided that we will be significantly reducing threshold values, but we will not be going with a flat value as tested in PTS 2.0 and 2.1. This is in order to provide those that do invest in additional heatsinks just a bit more threshold compared to those that do not invest it to give you a bit more overhead to utilize in burst heat situations, but no where near the levels that they used to occupy. At least for double heatsinks.

Standard heatsinks will be tuned to be slightly similar to how they operate currently. They will get a bit more dissipation then they had before, but their scaling has been reworked to account for the incoming changes to double heatsinks. Offering a bit of an immediate boost to threshold at the onset, but it will no longer scale at the same level it once did once you get past 18 heatsinks.

Based on the testing in PTS 2.0 and 2.1 we additionally feel that it is time to breakaway from differentiating between internal engine heatsinks and external player placed heat sinks. We will be streamlining heatsinks to only have a singular value that is added based on the number of total heatsinks on the 'Mech. This will eliminate the need to artificially enhance sub 250 engine rating 'Mechs, and we hope it provides more options for 'Mechs in the Medium weight bracket to not feel artificially punished for taking slower engines for larger payloads. As well as make the system a bit more transparent and easy to grasp for players who may not have known the difference between engine based heat sinks and externally placed heatsinks.

Final Changes:

With all of the above taken into consideration, here will be the changes that we will be pushing live:

• Base Heat Bar increased to 45 (from 30)
  
• Heatsinks
  
  • Dissipation Increased to 0.14 (from 0.13)
    
  • Heat Capacity reduced to 0.85 (from 1.3)
    
  • Removed settings related to differences between Engine and External Heatsinks.
• Double Heatsinks
  
  • Dissipation Increased to 0.22 (from 0.15)
    
  • Heat Capacity reduced to 0.5 (from 1.5)
    
  • Removed settings related to differences between Engine and External Heatsinks.
• Clan Double Heatsinks
  
  • Dissipation Increased to 0.22 (from 0.15)
    
  • Heat Capacity reduced to 0.5 (from 1.5)
    
  • Removed settings related to differences between Engine and External Heatsinks.
• Quirks
  
  • Corrective Heat Dissipation quirks on sub 250 engine 'Mechs will be generally phased out.
    
  • Some quirks may remain depending on if we wish to keep a small amount of dissipation as a specific flavor or Omnipod perk.

ETA - October Patch

Chart of the Dissipation Changes:


Chart of the Shutdown Thresholds:


Known Issues:

Through PTS 2.0 and 2.1 testing we have identified a handful of issues that we will be attempting to resolve leading up to or shortly after the Heatsink change's release:

Inner Sphere Light Engine + Clan XL engine destruction penalties:

With the shifting of heat capacity values from heatsinks to the base values, this is something that is not covered by the current side torso destruction penalties for IS Light and Clan XL engines, and as observed in PTS2.0 and PTS2.1, it provides these engine types with a significant buff over their live versions by having only their dissipation values being affected through torso destruction rather than both their dissipation and their threshold values affected. This is a buff that we strongly feel these engine types do not need. We will be working towards correcting this for release so that the side torso destruction penalties provides similar performance hits to a 'Mech's shutdown threshold that you would find with the equipment currently in the live game.

Stealth Armor:

Because stealth armor completely negates dissipation and relies on a 'Mechs total threshold in order to effectively operate, the changes being pushed for heatsinks drastically affects the current mechanics regarding stealth armor. We will be targeting changes to the stealth armor to ensure that it is better tuned to account for the incoming heat system changes.

Flamers:

Changes to shutdown thresholds as well as increases to heat dissipation will end up putting flamers, a weapon specifically tuned to the current heat system settings, directly under the microscope, and may need further changes to account for the new heat system. Unlike the previous two entries, we will not be targeting changes for the flamer for release, but instead closely observe both it's post launch performance, as well as player feedback regarding it's role post heat sink changes. We will be closely monitoring player feedback on this matter and won't rule out potential changes post release if we feel they are needed.

[Chris Lowrey]

Weapon Changes

As mentioned in the PTS summary, although PTS 2.1 was well received, it did not adequately address our desire to bring the overall performance of Inner Sphere laser focused builds and Clan laser focused builds into better parity with one another. We do not feel the need to move in as aggressive of a direction as was tested through the PTS series, but we will be combining the info that we have assembled based on current live data, the previously sent Community Suggestion doc, as well as our own data and feedback pulled through the PTS testing to implement changes that will push us along this path.

Please note that these changes are explicitly designed to go hand in hand with the aforementioned heatsink changes. As a result, weapon tuning will accompany the heatsink changes into the game. They will not be released prior to the Heatsink changes.

Final Changes:

With all of the above in mind, here will be the changes that we will be pushing live:

• ER Large Laser
  
  • Heat increased to 8.75 (from 8)
• Clan ER Large Laser
  
  • Damage reduced to 10.75 (from 11)
    
  • Heat increased to 11.8 (from 10.8)

Design Notes: While we agree with the overall point that the previously sent community doc put together regarding the ER Large Laser being a bit too "spammy," and we ourselves feel that it can sometimes cover too many bases on it's own, we only find it to really be problematic as you go up in the tonnage range, with lighter tonned 'Mechs able to use the weapon, but not to the same effect that you see in the Heavy and Assault category.

We are targeting Heat and Clan Damage to keep the focus towards its performance more on the higher end of the spectrum. Accounting for the incoming threshold changes where the extra heat burden will put more pressure on heavier 'Mechs that carry a larger amount of them, but still giving them enough DPS potential to where lighter 'Mechs that can only take one or two of them can utilize the weapon as an effective supplement to their builds, and not have it become a weapon that can only find effective use when you go up into the heavier weight chassis'.

We won't rule out cooldown changes in the future if these changes do not produce the intended results. But for now, we want to target something that would specifically put more pressure on the higher tonnage 'Mechs over the lighter tonnage mechs.

• Clan ER Medium Laser
  
  • Damage reduced to 6.5 (from 7)
• Clan Medium Pulse Laser
  
  • Damage reduced to 6.5 (from 7)
• Clan Heavy Large Laser
  
  • Damage reduced to 16 (from 18)

Design Notes: Given the incoming release of the heatsink changes, we feel only the need to hit a bit of damage output against the heavy offenders on the Clan Side. Given that the damage reduction route tested in PTS 1.0 has been tested to hit heavier 'Mechs over the methods tested in PTS 1.1, we feel that this is a better direction to bring closer parity not only with the Clan vs. IS Laser focused builds, but also the interaction between the varying classes of 'Mechs across the entire 'Mech roster.

While we know these values amount to similar values represented on the Community Suggestion doc minus a number of heat buffs, due to the re-working of the Heatsinks, we wish to monitor the effects that those would have before pushing further changes. They will be under close observation and should we feel it is needed, we will make adjustments in future patches based on their performance post launch of the new heat system.

ETA - October Patch

Mobility Changes

The Mobility increases tested in PTS 2.0 and 2.1 provided us with enough to move on quickly enough to have some changes make it into the incoming September patch, but before getting into the specifics, we want to highlight one of the top down points that we keep in mind when considering moving forward in this direction.

Mobility Scaling in MWO:

Be it 20 tonners to 100 tonners, all 'Mech classes need to have a functional place within MWO. If an entire class of 'Mechs cannot meaningfully contribute to a skirmish based combat match, It does not work well for that weight classes, and no weight class within MWO exists for the sole reason to be another 'Mechs fodder. Prior to the introduction of the Engine Desync, this was one of the core balance issues with the game. Heavy and Assault 'Mechs being almost as agile as 'Mechs half their size, but bringing heavier payloads and more armor to the table saw that at the global level, 'Mechs 65 tons and over globally performed much better than Mechs under the 65 ton bar. With often non-conquest matches with the Heaviest 'Mech on the field was often the side that had a distinct advantage at winning the match. While we know that Heavy and Assault 'Mechs are often among the most beloved and favorite 'Mechs within the BattleTech community, this favoritism is not one that we on the balance team can feed into when it comes to balancing the 'Mechs against one another within the context of a PvP first person shooter.

As we said at the time of its introduction, Engine Desync massively re-aligned the general performance of 'Mechs. While Heavies and Assaults still excel as massive potential damage dealers, they are no longer so responsive that they push out Light and Medium 'Mechs out from their core role, and if the Light and Medium chooses their fights carefully, they can stand toe to toe with much heavier chassis. While we have now had enough time away from the Engine Desync system to see where some 'Mechs have fallen behind since it's introduction, as a generality, we will not be looking to return to a state in which heavies and assault 'Mechs marginalized their lighter counterparts. Mobility is and will remain one of the key factors that will primarily benefit lighter chassis' over their heavier counterparts.

Mobility Scaling in PTS 2.0 and 2.1:

With the above out of the way, we can state the results of the PTS. While we are satisfied with the increases to some of the Lighter 'Mechs provided in the PTS, we where not so satisfied with some of the results on viewing the heavier spectrum and we did see many instances of higher mobility values on heavier 'Mechs contributing to an ease of use that allowed for highly focused damage, especially from torso mounted weapons, against lighter opponents. While we are willing to try to find a middle ground to provide under performing and heavier 'Mechs who have a core brawling role the ability to better twist damage, that ability to more easily twist damage also translates into an ability to more easily track lighter targets. Of which, making it easier to snap fire twin Heavy Gauss against lighter targets is not the desired effect that results in a net positive when considering the balance across the entire weight spectrum. To this end, we are continuing to work internally towards finding a middle ground in cases such as this.

Final Changes:

Considering the above, we still feel there are plenty of areas that we can target for improvements. Testing has highlighted a number of 'Mechs that we feel fine with allowing greater degrees of mobility, and we will be making moves to improve these 'Mechs over the next few months. As mobility requires a large amount of internal tuning and testing, the roll out of these improvements will have to come over a period of multiple months. Starting with the greatest outliers and working our way inward.

Mechs that will be targeted for mobility improvements in September:

• Firestarter
  
• Hellspawn
  
• Thanatos
  
• Atlas
  
• Adder
  
• Viper
  
• Storm Crow
  
• Kodiak

October-Dec

• TBD

Quirk Changes

Considering the changes to Clan damage outputs, their current performance in the live game, as well as their performance across the various PTS', we feel it is time to consider a handful of defensive quirk scale downs for a handful of IS 'Mechs. PTS 1.1 tested these quirk scale downs with no overall negative impact against the 'Mechs tested, and monitoring their subsequent performance within PTS 2.0 and PTS 2.1 in which many of the 'Mechs received performance boosts through the increased Heatsink Dissipation with the defensive quirks still in-tact, we believe it is time to begin ramping down some of the more aggressively quirked 'Mechs. We want to stress that those that need quirks as part of Geometry or particular flavor quirks will still receive them. But the current scale on the quirks will be tightened up a bit.

We are still in the process of evaluating and will have more info as we approach the release patch for the Heatsink changes. As this is a change that is explicitly accounting for the incoming changes with the Heatsinks, we will only be implementing this tuning with the introduction of the Heatsink changes.

Also, as briefly mentioned in the Heatsink change, we will also be looking at phasing out a number of Heat Dissipation quirks for a number of 'Mechs with sub 250 max engine ratings now that we are streamlining the way heatsinks operate. Although we will more then likely keep a handfull of them on select 'Mechs as either flavor, or omnipod quirks.

ETA - October Patch

In Conclusion

We would like to extend out a big thank you to all of the community members who took the time to extensively test and provided feedback on the various PTS. We have worked to consider all options available to us to progress MWO in a direction that as many of you out there can be satisfied with. While I am sure some will not agree with all of the positions we have taken, know that we went into this testing with an eye towards finding the best solutions to issues that we wanted to internally address with the input of all who participated through the PTS testing. We will be continuing to work hard to monitor the impacts of these changes and will continue to look into ways of further improving the overall balance of the game.

Thank you all for your input and contributions.

[Nightbird]

TTK will go down by about 10% due to these changes.

[Rydiak Randborir]

Quick math, my HBR with 2 HLL 4 ERML (and the skill build I use on it) goes from 3.58 AlphasBeforeHeatcap to 3.87. Accounting for the changed cHLL and cERML damage values, this drops DamageBeforeOverheat from 229 (Live) to 224 (October). Compare that to PTS2.1 values, which had 127 DamageBeforeOverheat (no clan laser nerfs). So MUCH stronger than PTS2.1, but slightly nerfed versus Live. However, neutral-heat (sustained) alpha DPS raises from 5.91 (Live) to 6.97 (October), compared to 6.99 (PTS2.1, no clan laser nerfs).

So DamageBeforeOverheat is only slightly nerfed (2.2%, compared to the massive 44.5% nerf that PTS2.1 would have had), but October Patch will greatly increase sustained DPS by nearly 18%!

Overall, THIS IS A BUFF TO LASER VOMIT!

For comparison, keeping all other values the same but reducing DHS dissipation to PTS2.1 values (.20) would drop the DamageBeforeOverheat to 167 and SustainedAlphaDPS to 6.33. This would yield a nerf to DamageBeforeOverheat of 27% while buffing SustainedAlphaDPS by only 7%.

Therefore,

RETURN DHS DISSIPATION RATE TO .20 (PTS 2.1 value)

Unless, of course, you want laservomit to be buffed, which October Patch will do.

Edited by Rydiak, 20 October 2018 - 10:39 AM.

[Appogee]

Inb4 Clanner QQ.

[Sereglach]

Overall, I don't think it's a bad direction to move in. While I'd rather not see DHS provide any extra capacity at all, and SHS only providing along the lines of .5 capacity, if you're going to do it then I think the DHS capacity could/should only be around .25 instead of .5, because quirks and skill nodes quickly make the values on your tables higher than they appear; and right now the meta-gamed skill tree builds all revolve around more firepower. However, giving SHS a solid difference vs. DHS is a great move that should actually give them a semblance of viability in a variety of builds.

To me, though, the biggest issue in everything written falls within Flamers. Not addressing them when the heatsink changes hit will lead to a Flamergeddon 2.0 scenario, in my opinion. Here's why:

- On a realistic 20 DHS build with 55 capacity, 3 seconds of firing 4 Flamers will inflict 54 heat damage + extra damage from accelerated/exponential scaling. That exceeds the 90% cap and even covers for skill nodes that increase the cap to 60-62 heat.

- 20 DHS will cool 4.4 heat/second. It'll take a mech hit with those Flamers ~12.27 seconds to cool off the inflicted 54 heat damage. However, the flamers will be able to fire again, with zero heat, within 7.25 seconds (4.25 second pseudo cooldown + time fired); and that's not including the Flamer nodes which shorten that window.

- Even bumping the above scenario to 30 DHS only requires an extra .5 second of firing to cover the extra DHS capacity; and SHS suffer even more because the extra capacity doesn't save them when it'll take ~30% longer to expend the Flamers' heat damage.

- It's just as abuse-ready as the PTS runs, even if the Flamers need to fire about an extra .5 - .75 seconds vs. PTS 2.1. They're still firing 5 seconds before all of the heat damage would be removed; and in fact the target wouldn't have even cooled off half the heat damage done (which means volleys after the first require shorter windows, which means the remainder of the window can be applied to a second mech). That's still opening the window to very easy stunlocking; and there are lots of mechs that can easily squeeze in 4 flamers and still have the weapons to inflict serious damage.

I really don't want to see what was really fun PTS runs marred by a Flamergeddon 2.0 when the systems hit live; and it will happen once people realize it can be abused, just like it did the first time. Again, my personally recommended solution is move to fixed flat values, drastically drop the heat damage to make it a viable crowd control weapon that's not readily available to stunlock anyone, and return its previous physical damage to compensate. I still think 0.8-1.0 DPS, 1.0-1.5 Heat DPS, and 0.75-1.0 HPS are reasonable ranges to start working with.

Sadly, the current implementation of pure crowd control weapon leaves it too open to extremes, either it'll be tuned high enough to allow easy stun locking, or it'll be tuned low enough that no one will use it. In MWO's world where damage is king over everything else, there's no real middle ground for such a weapon to be a regular competitive choice.

EDIT: P.S. "Role of Heat Within MWO" . . . I believe you mean vulnerable and not venerable. Mechs with high heat are vulnerable: i.e. open to exploitation and/or punishment, not venerable: i.e. wise sages, likely of advanced age, of great respect and moral character. Emphasis added to the mistakes:

Chris Lowrey, on 06 September 2018 - 04:36 PM, said:

Role of Heat Within MWO:

We want to take the time to state that the heat system's primary role within MWO is not to curtail high alpha use, but to provide a resource pool in which 'Mechwarriors can tap for short term gains at the expense of longer period of venerability. Much like in the original game of BattleTech where you can push a 'Mechs heat past it's capabilities to exploit an opening for a turn at the expense of reduced performance in subsequent turns, MWO attempts to replicate this with its overall threshold, dissipation, and general weapon cooldown tuning. Where pushing a 'Mech past its capacity to sustain DPS and up to the point where it is "Heat Capped" leaves it venerable for an extended period of time to more DPS efficient loadouts, or 'Mechs that are not heat capped themselves. Effectively trading short term gains for longer term periods of venerability to potential counter attacks.

Edited by Sereglach, 07 September 2018 - 06:33 PM.

[Vxheous]

Would you be able to add heat cap as a stat that shows for your mech, so we don't have to manually do the math?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

I don't understand this move.....no one asked for more dissipation but higher capacity from the last round of PTS and given how powerful dakka boats are in PUG queue, this makes them that much better (and they are already better than laser vomit for stomping PUG queue).

[Daurock]

Knee Jerk Reaction - Not Bad.

It will be interesting to see how all the changes jive together

[Shadowomega1]

Just going to copy over what I posted on the reddit thread.

Wow, just wow They didn't learn, they nearly had it right with 2.0 and those that can't manage their mechs heat complained and we got 2.1. Those people still complained and we are pretty much back at square one, but with a slightly lower cap and higher dissipation, leaving those builds even more dangerous.

The laser changes are also in very poor taste.

Clan ERLL change I would be fine with 10 damage for 12 heat if ghost heat is being removed or even cut back from 2 to 3. However, they are not making changes to the IS LL or ERLL as those should be 8 damage for 8 heat for IS LL not 9 for 8 as it is now, and 8 damage for 12 heat for IS ERLL.

Clan ERML on live is fine at 7 damage for 5 heat
Clan MPL on live is fine at 7 damage for 4 heat

Clan Heavy Laser is the only one I liked how it was on live as priorly in MW3 Pirates Moon this weapon used the lore value of 16 damage for 18 heat and I felt the increase in damage for the increase in heat, increase in crit slots and decrease in range didn't make the weapon feel even like a side grade to the cERLL. It felt more of a down grade as range would always trump damage.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 07 September 2018 - 06:27 PM, said:

I don't understand this move.....no one asked for more dissipation but higher capacity from the last round of PTS and given how powerful dakka boats are in PUG queue, this makes them that much better (and they are already better than laser vomit for stomping PUG queue).

The Dissipation rate of 0.20 was fine from the way things went on test, pushing the heat up to 45 with this dissipation is just going to lead to more issues.

[Hayek Lahiri]

So, what was the whole point of having PTS 2.0 and 2.1 if the Hellbringer, Ebon Jag, and Deathstrike are going to be able to do more alphas with heat sinks still adding to heat cap? Yes, they got nerfed, but as Rydiak pointed out, his Hellbringer goes from 174 damage before overheat to 163 before overheat. That doesn't rein those builds in enough.

Edit: Wording.

Edit 2: Alpha numbers are slightly nerfed as pointed out by Rydiak down below, but my point stands: These changes are for naught if they go live.

Edited by UndeadKingofPopMichaelJackson, 07 September 2018 - 09:13 PM.

[Sereglach]

Vxheous, on 07 September 2018 - 06:26 PM, said:

Would you be able to add heat cap as a stat that shows for your mech, so we don't have to manually do the math?

If they at least put total heat cap and total dissipation (including modifiers from quirks and skills) as a hover-over tooltip for heat sinks and/or the heat sink section of the mech stats that'd still be great. They could just treat the mech heat stats the same way they treat weapon stats.

[Monkey Lover]

The mobility improvements list is a great start. Other than maybe the hellspawn every one of these could use help.

Just an idea, other than a baseline increase why don't you increase the skill tree percentage. Let people select the level of mobility they want.

[process]

I really don't think increasing heat dissipation further and permitting high capacity is going to end well. If you want to give players the option to risk high heat vs DPS, build that into the skill tree -- require a more substantial investment to increase heat capacity. It's supposed to be a trade-off, isn't it?

Edited by process, 07 September 2018 - 08:06 PM.

[Grus]

Gee would you look at that? More clan nerfs....

[Rydiak Randborir]

Deathstrike with 2 Gauss, 2 ERLL, 4 ERML and 18 DHS (the typical 80-alpha build) a skill test-build of 10% coolrun, 15% heatcontainment, 8.4% heat gen, 6% cooldown, and 10% duration:


Live:
Heat Capacity: 71.3
Alpha Damage: 80
Alpha Heat: 40.424
Alphas before Overheat: 2.58232733
Damage before Overheat: 206.5861864
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 6.579439252

PTS2.1:
Heat Capacity: 57.5
Alpha Damage: 80
Alpha Heat: 39.8894
Alphas before Overheat: 1.90807583
Damage before Overheat: 152.6460664
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0.925959596
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 7.443189294

October Patch:
Heat Capacity: 62.1
Alpha Damage: 77.5
Alpha Heat: 41.24026
Alphas before Overheat: 2.498684538
Damage before Overheat: 193.6480517
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 7.641143526


Yea....about that October patch....

Edited by Rydiak, 20 October 2018 - 10:05 AM.

[Grus]

And do my eyes deceive me? They are looking into making IS XL survive st loss? Well thats just.... dandy....

[Rydiak Randborir]

Grus, on 07 September 2018 - 08:16 PM, said:

And do my eyes deceive me? They are looking into making IS XL survive st loss? Well thats just.... dandy....

Read that paragraph again. IS LFE and Clan XL.

[Monkey Lover]

Grus, on 07 September 2018 - 08:16 PM, said:

And do my eyes deceive me? They are looking into making IS XL survive st loss? Well thats just.... dandy....

ggclose clans if that was true haha

Edited by Monkey Lover, 07 September 2018 - 08:31 PM.

[Hayek Lahiri]

Rydiak, on 07 September 2018 - 08:16 PM, said:

Deathstrike with 2 Gauss, 2 ERLL, 4 ERML and 18 DHS (the typical 80-alpha build) a skill-test build of 10% coolrun, 15% heatcontainment, 8.4% heat gen, 6% cooldown, and 10% duration:


Live:
Alpha Damage: 80
Alpha Heat: 40.424
Alphas before Overheat: 2.58232733
Damage before Overheat: 206.5861864
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 6.966158718

PTS2.1:
Alpha Damage: 80
Alpha Heat: 39.8894
Alphas before Overheat: 1.90807583
Damage before Overheat: 152.6460664
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0.925959596
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 7.941959518

October Patch:
Alpha Damage: 77.5
Alpha Heat: 41.24026
Alphas before Overheat: 2.498684538
Damage before Overheat: 193.6480517
2nd Alpha Wait Time: 0
Neutral Heat Alpha DPS: 8.185932872


Yea....about that October patch....

Back to square one. How lovely...