67 replies to this topic

[VonBruinwald]

justcallme A S H, on 28 January 2020 - 07:07 AM, said:

If the doors are open you lose the bonus until the close again. Or the weapon is expended (in the case of RLs).

This was the missing information I needed, I would ask if it was too much for PGI to document this stuff but I already know the answer.

Not going to switch the Stalker build though, a pair of RL-20s hit damn hard in the endgame when everyone’s internals are exposed.

[FRAGTAST1C]

I tested a few of the mechs suggested here. The Cataphract 3D is a huge disappointment 'cause it's not nimble enough. I guess it's either the Grasshopper 5H with ERPPCs or scratch the thought of IS Heavy Mech ERPPC pop-tart. I kind of liked the Thanatos though but it is 5t heavier. I might try it sometime in the future.

[Y E O N N E]

Thanatos has the advantage of ECM, disadvantage of absolutely atrocious hitboxes. More of a meme than anything else.

[RickySpanish]

Grasshopper 5H might feel underwhelming with ER PPCs instead of H PPCs because you really only get two pop tart worthy mount locations, the rest are at crotch level. So two ER PPCs as your primary weapons are a little weak for a Heavy.

Edited by RickySpanish, 28 January 2020 - 08:08 PM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Yeah, I'll put HPPC for QP to level up quickly when I buy the mech. I'm mainly thinking about getting 1 IS Heavy to pop-tart 2 ERPPC. Given all the info here, 5 ERLL would be simply better for IS mechs in long-range trading and I have a couple of the mechs already there. This is purely to make an IS Summoner. It will most probably fail though.

Regarding the Thanatos, yeah, I agree about the hitboxes. It's why I've never bought any variant so far. But I eventually might buy those two variants, one for UAC10s and the other for ERPPC to collect dust in the stable.

[justcallme A S H]

Don't put ERL on the 5H... You REALLY feel it missing the 10% range quirk of other IS Mechs and thus puts you are a huge disadvantage when the skill tree and a T-Comp come into it.

Only use 10% Range quirked IS Mechs IMO. There are plenty to choose from.

The 5P is OK with only 5% range but it is nothing amazing.

[FRAGTAST1C]

justcallme A S H, on 29 January 2020 - 02:42 PM, said:

Don't put ERL on the 5H... You REALLY feel it missing the 10% range quirk of other IS Mechs and thus puts you are a huge disadvantage when the skill tree and a T-Comp come into it.

Oh, nah, I won't put ERLL on the 5H. I was referring to the Stalkers and Battlemasters which I have ERLLs on (unless I bring them to QP). And as luck would have it, all the (C) mechs are on sale so I might as well buy the 'Hopper 5H(C) to start with.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

You don't have anything better to buy for MC?

[ShiverMeRivets]

justcallme A S H, on 28 January 2020 - 02:35 AM, said:

No one remembers for good reason

The only decent variant would be the CTF-1X (the 3D has more energy, same issue as next sentence). I concur in that it has 2 high mounts in the torso and a heat-gen quirk... But that is where it ends. The other arm energy and ballistic in other variants is super low mounted.

The GHP also have much better agility. It's torso twist speed is ~15% faster. Plus it is not a massive CT/Torso and can shield side-on far better than a CTF. Even with quirks the CTF is still a walking CT with pretty bad torso as well due to the arms not shielding at all really.

I mean yeah you can use it, but it's not great if you want the best for the job and I would say those reasons are all significant, not just a 1% type deal.

And no the Mjolnir is nowhere near better than the GHP-5H. That is flatly incorrect. The GHP-MJ has no heat quirk which is the most important factor and why the GHP-5H is truly that much better.

No argue that the hopper is better at hopping than the 3D. This is why my CTF-3D is not a HPPC poptart and my Mjolnir is.
While Mjolnir does not have a -heat% quirk and the 5H does, the 5H has only +structure in the CT and non at all in the STs. Mjolnir have good +armor everywhere. A poptart is not about dps anyway and my backups are SLs with enough DHSs that I cool while firing them, so I welcome the torsos armor quirks and don’t miss the -10% heat that much. Personal preference.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 29 January 2020 - 10:47 PM, said:

You don't have anything better to buy for MC?

Not for the moment, no.

[RickySpanish]

ShiverMeRivets, on 29 January 2020 - 11:48 PM, said:

No argue that the hopper is better at hopping than the 3D. This is why my CTF-3D is not a HPPC poptart and my Mjolnir is.
While Mjolnir does not have a -heat% quirk and the 5H does, the 5H has only +structure in the CT and non at all in the STs. Mjolnir have good +armor everywhere. A poptart is not about dps anyway and my backups are SLs with enough DHSs that I cool while firing them, so I welcome the torsos armor quirks and don’t miss the -10% heat that much. Personal preference.

-10% heat quirk is huge, it directly equates to more potential damage which contrary to what "support" players might tell you is the number one most important thing in the game. Everything you build for should be geared toward allowing you to deal as much damage as possible, sometimes that is raw damage, sometimes that is heat efficiency, speed, etc. Since you are using cover a lot as a pop tart, minor defensive boosts like mjolnir's quirked armour bonuses aren't important as you won't be eating much return fire if positioned well. You can always go left side of survival tree which gives you a decent boost - you will have points to spare elsewhere since the mobility tree isn't terribly important either.

Edited by RickySpanish, 30 January 2020 - 08:52 AM.

[ShiverMeRivets]

RickySpanish, on 30 January 2020 - 08:47 AM, said:

-10% heat quirk is huge, it directly equates to more potential damage which contrary to what "support" players might tell you is the number one most important thing in the game. Everything you build for should be geared toward allowing you to deal as much damage as possible, sometimes that is raw damage, sometimes that is heat efficiency, speed, etc. Since you are using cover a lot as a pop tart, minor defensive boosts like mjolnir's quirked armour bonuses aren't important as you won't be eating much return fire if positioned well. You can always go left side of survival tree which gives you a decent boost - you will have points to spare elsewhere since the mobility tree isn't terribly important either.

That is mostly true in CW (I don’t play there very often). In QP the typical range at which I fire the HPPCs is much shorter and you are much more vulnerable to counter-poptarting, light mechs making drive-bys on you and generally taking more damage. You also spend more time moving with the team, and time your poptarting responding to what the enemy is doing - so you are not shooting the HPPCs at max dps anyway, cooling is sufficient even without the -10%. I find such -%heat quirks are much more significant in laser vomit builds that are geared towards dps rather than spiked PPFLD.

That said, -10% is still very good to have.

[FupDup]

ShiverMeRivets, on 01 February 2020 - 11:49 AM, said:

That is mostly true in CW (I don’t play there very often). In QP the typical range at which I fire the HPPCs is much shorter and you are much more vulnerable to counter-poptarting, light mechs making drive-bys on you and generally taking more damage. You also spend more time moving with the team, and time your poptarting responding to what the enemy is doing - so you are not shooting the HPPCs at max dps anyway, cooling is sufficient even without the -10%. I find such -%heat quirks are much more significant in laser vomit builds that are geared towards dps rather than spiked PPFLD.

That said, -10% is still very good to have.

Being able to shoot Peepers (or anything) more frequently is pretty darn good, especially given that your alphas are almost always smaller in size that laser vomit alphas. The heat is a pretty yuge bottleneck to your damage output over the course of the match.

[Kubernetes]

justcallme A S H, on 28 January 2020 - 02:35 AM, said:

And no the Mjolnir is nowhere near better than the GHP-5H. That is flatly incorrect. The GHP-MJ has no heat quirk which is the most important factor and why the GHP-5H is truly that much better.

For PPC builds sure, but I like to run laser vomit on my MJ because it's so tanky. It's like an energy IV-Four.

[Vxheous]

ShiverMeRivets, on 01 February 2020 - 11:49 AM, said:

That is mostly true in CW (I don’t play there very often). In QP the typical range at which I fire the HPPCs is much shorter and you are much more vulnerable to counter-poptarting, light mechs making drive-bys on you and generally taking more damage. You also spend more time moving with the team, and time your poptarting responding to what the enemy is doing - so you are not shooting the HPPCs at max dps anyway, cooling is sufficient even without the -10%. I find such -%heat quirks are much more significant in laser vomit builds that are geared towards dps rather than spiked PPFLD.

That said, -10% is still very good to have.

The opposite is true actually. Since the engagement ranges of QP are closer, and there's less distance to close on you as a poptart, the extra heat quirks are more useful to allow you to shoot as much as possible. Positioning as a poptart to mitigate damage doesn't change from FP to QP, to comp, it's all the same map awareness and being able to maintain distance.

[RickySpanish]

ShiverMeRivets, on 01 February 2020 - 11:49 AM, said:

That is mostly true in CW (I don’t play there very often). In QP the typical range at which I fire the HPPCs is much shorter and you are much more vulnerable to counter-poptarting, light mechs making drive-bys on you and generally taking more damage. You also spend more time moving with the team, and time your poptarting responding to what the enemy is doing - so you are not shooting the HPPCs at max dps anyway, cooling is sufficient even without the -10%. I find such -%heat quirks are much more significant in laser vomit builds that are geared towards dps rather than spiked PPFLD.

That said, -10% is still very good to have.

So that's the interesting thing about balancing your various stats with poptarting - you ideally want enough fuel to jump when you need to, don't want to have an empty heat bar with your weapons on cool down, and don't want to have a full heat bar when everything else is good to go. You can actually, just about (in my experience) balance everything on the 5H with max points in heat gen / cool run and the left side of the survival tree. I used to run the big 340 xl and speed tweak because I felt 70kph was slow, but I found I was often in position with too high heat to fire. The 300 at 70kph is perfectly fine, and you can keep up with the team at that speed while firing often. With all that said I don't feel some smallish armour quirks would have ever saved me, death is in my experience rarely due to someone punching through a torso while the rest of my 'Mech is fine. I have found that instead, I often die as a result of overwhelming odds because I didn't cripple the enemy team hard enough and now it's 9:3. By all means run the Mjolnir if you are comfy with it (plus the cbill boost is great) but I wager that if you do go the hppc grasshopper route, it won't be long before you are actually held back my by heat than a lack of armour. Also, those Lights that harass you will realise too late that you are carrying two heavy ppcs - the extra punch is noticeable and your medium lasers can easily finish off what the ppcs started - don't be afraid of a Light 'Mech as long as you aren't out if position.

[ShiverMeRivets]

I checked again the differences between Mjolnir and the 5H hoppers. Mjolnir has 2 lasers in the right arm, which allows you to strip the left arm - it has +11 armor in that arm so I end up with 19 armor in it still. The tonnage gained allows you to forgo endo and reach 17 DHS, 3 JJs, with XL325 engine (2HPPC 5SLs). Alternatively 16 DHS endo and LFE325 is possible. 5H has a laser in each arm so stripping is less of an option unless you give up a laser and you have to give up something.

If you go with 17 DHS vs 16 at most in the 5H you end up with almost the same heat efficiency as the quirked 5H (48% vs 49%), only with a lot more armor and an additional JJ. The 3rd JJ is great in QP and you can even go with 16DHS Mjolnir (45% heat efficiency) and 4 JJ. Given that you mostly fire HPPCs OR the lasers, cooling is not a limiting factor at all. I’ll take the extra armor and +1 or +2 JJs of Mjolnir over the 5H.

[RickySpanish]

XL 300 with light-ferro and standard structure lets you completely fill your space with heatsinks, you end up with 8+10 and three jump jets. Firing H-PPCs and medium lasers is perfectly possible once you get into the thick of things, actually just poptarting h-ppcs rarely produces high damage games, it just takes too long. If you can fire everything you eat a nice big chunk of your heat bar which lets you reposition for longer - before you reach nominal heat and need to shoot again to stay efficient.

Here check this build out from Grimmechs: https://mech.nav-alp...3ceebbe8_GHR-5H

Edited by RickySpanish, 02 February 2020 - 06:17 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

ShiverMeRivets, on 01 February 2020 - 11:49 AM, said:

so you are not shooting the HPPCs at max dps anyway

You absolutely should be.

If you are hot riding the heat line, even with the 5H heat quirk, you quite simply are not shooting enough. I'm heat capped most of a QP game when I've run it and that is including coolshots. I could not imagine it without heat gen.

And that's part of the point here as well. Too many players in this game spend too much time running in circles and not actually shooting anything and that is reflected strongly in their stats. If you are not hot, you are not shooting enough.

ShiverMeRivets, on 02 February 2020 - 09:09 AM, said:

If you go with 17 DHS vs 16 at most in the 5H you end up with almost the same heat efficiency as the quirked 5H (48% vs 49%)

Ah... I have 17 DHS in my 5H. You can also do 18 DHS if you want. Both with 3JJ so not where where you get 16DHS from.

5H = ~20.1 heat per HPPC shot
Others = ~23 heat per HPPC shot

With ~4.7s cooldown*

In 14s/3 shots - you've generated 9 heat more. You are only dissipating ~3.7 heat per second best case scenario (JJs hinder it etc). So around 2.5s longer every 14s (3 times to fire). The mech only has ~53 heat capacity if memory server correct.

So 9 more heat every 14s when you only have 53 heat - That adds up significantly over 3mins of Quickplay if you are shooting as often as you can and riding the heat bar like you should be.

It would be worth 100dmg+ in most matches. That is not insignificant. Of course the above doesn't take any ML into account, they also run cooler of course.


*Numbers above may not be correct, skill maze affects things and I smashed the numbers out in a hurry today.

[ShiverMeRivets]

justcallme A S H, on 02 February 2020 - 07:22 PM, said:

...

So 9 more heat every 14s when you only have 53 heat - That adds up significantly over 3mins of Quickplay if you are shooting as often as you can and riding the heat bar like you should be.

It would be worth 100dmg+ in most matches. That is not insignificant. Of course the above doesn't take any ML into account, they also run cooler of course.


*Numbers above may not be correct, skill maze affects things and I smashed the numbers out in a hurry today.

Thanks for running the numbers. In theory you are probably correct. However a player like you may be able to reach close to the theoretical limits. Myself, I find that I must spend some time on repositioning and calculating good trades, or else I will not survive long enough to make a difference. This is probably why the extra armor helps me get more total damage than cooling - I’ll be cold enough when I am dead...
Someone with better aiming, heat management, and positioning than me will get more out of the cooling quirk.