Navid A1, on 16 October 2021 - 06:27 PM, said:
Can you take a screenshot of your direwolf build in the mechlab and post it here?
If I remember correctly, you usually play stock builds.
DWF-C, considering the armor quirk has 79 armor stock on front left torso and 20 in the back.
Based on the range on the ERPPCs, this probably is not a fully skilled dire... So we consider you have 80 armor on front left torso.
Based on the Paper doll color on your left torso front, you had about 50-60% armor remaining there.... which is about 40-48 hitpoints.
After the Stalker shot you, your left torso got opened yellow, indicating that the stalker had just enough damage output to remove armor but not do much to internals.... after that the Vapor eagle shot you and made it orange open.
So what I can see there was an 85 ton mech with an alpha of about 40-48 from about 500m,... which is very very normal and nowhere near "high alpha"... you being in the open was the reason the Vapor eagle got a shot too... and that was not a high alpha either, otherwise you would have lost your torso.
You are correct: that is an unmodified DWF-C build. You are also correct that it is only partially skilled. It has Seismic, Advanced Zoom, ECM, Jump Jets, and full Speed-Tweak, with a few points in the Firepower tree enroute to the missile damage and spread nodes, picking up Heat Gen along the way. I don't tend to pick up armor skills unless I have points left over because I generally feel like they're not the same bang-for-the-buck vs the ability to move and shoot. (15 skills for 6 pts of armor is just depressing, and I'll typically skill into something else, instead).
Reaction to the play-by-play below, just because you both described it with better detail than I seem to have noticed at the time, and I do appreciate it.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
No problem on the audio. I was just talking with someone about right to repair issues the other day, haha.
Anyway, looking at the video, I think you've misjudged what even happened:
- The stalker and mauler shoot you at the same time. The mauler probably didn't do much as its just AC2's and he seems to have missed some, then switched to shooting someone else. The Stalker hit your Left Leg then CT. Total, you go from 99% to 93%. The right leg got tagged, probably by the Mauler. Neither side torso is damaged yet, but the left gets tagged a split second later by something that isn't the Stalker. The lasers spread between 2 areas.
- The stalker gives you a second volley of 4 Large Lasers, which can clearly been seen to rake from right to left, and register damage on all 3 torsos. This takes you from 93% to 90%. Its a very big spreading of damage.
- The direwolf tags your CT, but most of his laserburn gets cut off by you moving behind the rock. Again, lasers have spread damage. This drops you to 89%
- You move to the left side of the rock and take a laser burn from the Vapor Eagle. It puts a bunch of it into your right legs, then rakes it over your CT ending at your LT. Another burn that's been totally spread out. You are now at 82%.
- You move back over to the right side and poptart the direwolf in the trench. While in the air, something shoots you. I can't quite tell what, but from the sound it may have been lasers (or the team mate next to you fired his lasers.) Either way, you take damage to both legs and the left arm. If it was lasers, they spread all over. Your right leg is actually the most damaged part of the mech right now. 75%.
- While you are trying to ATM the direwolf in the trench, the Stalker returns with his 4 large lasers. His burn rakes across your CT, LT, and LA. Big spread. 71%.
- A split second later, the vapor eagle on their ramp lasers you, raking your LL, CT, LT, and LA. The Left torso is now open. Can't quite read %, but its like 64%.
- Something nails your open LT with from the right. From the explosion, its some sort of ballistic weapon. Can't quite read %, still low 60's. I assume its the AC2 Mauler.
- You continue taking ballistic fire while turning around. There might be some laser in there too. Hits show on CT, RT, and RA. The Left Torso finally pops. You go from 60% to 33% in this brief couple of seconds, because you are under fire from several mechs at once.
- Right after, the last hit before you get into the trench is lasers. It hits your CT, RT, and RA. The RT and RA are now open. Unknown if this was the Stalker or Vapor eagle or someone else. Footage ends.
So, I'm not trying to be mean here, but what you thought happened in this clip is not even remotely what is shown. You get whittled down by energy weapons from a variety of sources, as well as taking ballistic damage. The footage plainly shows that the lasers were NOT pinpoint at all. Every burn you took spread over multiple areas of the mech, and often over ones that were a waste of damage, like the legs and arms. Your armor got used quite well. Almost all your areas were open before you lost anything.
So to both you and Navid, I appreciate the play-by-play. I was under the impression that, when my armor was bright yellow, I was still effectively "undamaged" and that my armor was in the 80-90% range, hence the claim of a 60-something damage strike based on a starting value of 72 pts of armor on the front LT based on MechDB's "Stock Loadout" (faster than loading into the game). If the armor factor was only 50% at the time, first, I feel like that should have been a bit more obvious, but second, I'll agree then that opening to bright yellow torso is less surprising. It was still annoying that that Stalker's entire shot was concentrated on just that single component. As for the turn to the right: that's where the ramp was to get down to cover, and that's all I was thinking about at that point in time. In retrospect, a turn to the left might have brought me behind that pillar, after which a drop off the edge would have dealt insignificant leg damage, if any, but that's not what I was thinking about at the time. Interestingly, the side torso didn't blow off until after I was facing the ramp, suggesting that somehow it got hit by a follow up shot. Watching the video, it appears as though the Vapor Eagle reappears in the viewscreen, so I must have turned further than I thought and gave him another frontal angle.
The ballistic hit on the open LT most likely came from the Warhammer, standing to the left of the Vapor Eagle, though. Once the Mauler fell off the ledge, I never saw him again in the clip. This suggests a larger ballistic weapon, probably some form of 10-sized autocannon, but possibly quad-5's.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
Your problem is that you repeatedly made bad trades against a larger number of enemies, and then got caught in the open under fire when the rest of your team was falling back. Nothing about this situation was due to lasers having pinpoint damage. Not a single laser burn kept even 50% of its duration on the same body part. And you would have been equally screwed if you were being shot by anything else, and likely much more screwed facing ERPPCs or other projectiles that would have nailed your LT much sooner.
In my defense, all my trades were 1v1 until right when the torso was opened, at which point the Warhammer and VGL popped up to join the Stalker. At that point, yes: I was caught in the open with the Dire Wolf's bad mobility. The "feel" of the match was still that that side torso was scalpeled off by that Stalker shot, although the after-action review does suggest that it took more damage than I was aware of in the match.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
The choice was made to buff weaker weapons up to match the performance of stronger ones, rather than nerfing stronger ones down. This was largely because nerfs are often received badly. It may have been the wrong design choice, but that's a whole other issues. This is the reason for the overall increase in damage though.
Agreed, and my initial reception of the patch announcement was much more positive than it has become in the months since. Daedaloss512 was the only one to really sound the alarm leading up to the patch, but I remained optimistic. Post-patch, however, I have had my opinion changed by my in-game experiences, and feel that damage output should be universally rolled back, both on the weapons that were buffed, and on the outliers that were supposedly used as the baseline.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
I use a gaming mouse. I can manage 4 or 5 weapon groups. But there's no benefit to it. I do know of lots of people who struggle with more than two groups though. Can't say if its because of the mouse specifically, but you are correct in general.
Yeah, groups 5 and 6 are under my pinky, and while 5 is generally doable, 6 gives me a lot of trouble and I try to avoid it if I can. Sniping with group 5 is also tricky, since applying pressure to a side-button typically moves the mouse sideways and ruins my aim.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
You are hearing wrong then. Before, people who didn't know what they were doing ran a variety of poorly optimized builds and got poor results. People who did know what they were doing in the mechlab had a huge advantage and got good results. Since the weapon buffs, people who don't know what they are doing have much better performance. People who know what they are doing have not gotten any more powerful, but have more options.
People have not been pigeonholed into meta builds. That was the situation before. Now, there's lots of builds that are as about as effective as the meta builds, and people who aren't doing optimized builds are not left behind as much.
And people weren't necessarily enjoying themselves before either. There was tons of complaints! The overall feedback is that people enjoy themselves more now because they are less penalized for not keeping up to date with the meta builds.
I dunno, then. Since the weapon buffs, I've actually had much worse performance and have been enjoying myself less.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
A stock direwolf has 102 armor on its side torso to split between front and back. Even stock loadouts with way too much back armor will have way more than 72 after skills. Atlases have 114 stock. Nearly double what you claim.
Timberwolves have 72 armor pts on side torsos. Assuming a reasonable amount of back armor and skills, it will about strip the armor and not touch structure if the entire burn duration hits.
Also, that 72 is between two volleys, and those have a burn time. It takes ~1.6 seconds to deliver that damage. No way its going to stay on target on one location unless the defender is completely immobile.
Warhawks with 4 ERPPCs deal 20 then 20 in a ~.5 second window, and then also splash damage. Its much more than you say.
So my numbers for armor values were based on MechDB "Stock Loadout" (faster than loading into the game). Even in the days when I did slightly front-load armor, I never dropped below 16/20 on the rear torsos. If the stock armor was already less than that, then it remained as-is. Recently, I've been reverting even that back to stock, more because "that's how it is" than any specific performance change, although I feel as though I have a higher incidence of back-damage than other players (or I notice it more) because I've found I need every point of the 20-28 points of rear-CT armor at least once a day.
Thus, the LT of the Dire Wolf in question is 74 points (Navid says 79, but that's the Right torso.
I just logged in to double-check the skill tree). The side torsos on an Atlas are 94, and the side torsos of the TBR-C that I just checked are 58 (54 on whichever version I looked at on MechDB last night).
So against a 72 alpha, that's all the armor minus a couple points on the DWF, brings the Atlas down to about 20 pts on the side torsos, and completely cores out a TBR Bunny-Ear.
4-then-4 is appreciated, though, and thank you for pointing that part out. Ever since someone mentioned it, I've been envisioning an 8-laser shot. 3-then-3 is still bad enough, though. It's crazy right now that the Clans, known for their ranged combat, can't even remotely compete at range with IS 'mechs (at least in Faction Play).
In fairness to your argument of "just a heavy's loadout on an assault 'mech", that IS all the Marauder II ever carried.
The MAD-4A is literally the same loadout as the MAD-3D. The advantages the assault version brought to the battlefield were improved cooling and improved armor. They never did have better firepower, just better ability to keep using it over and over again.
Heavy Money, on 16 October 2021 - 06:31 PM, said:
So, again, I'm not trying to be mean or make fun of you. But all of your factual claims here are just wrong. And often not even in the right ballpark. If the numbers you are citing were correct, you'd be right to be concerned. But they are not. And you aren't getting drilled to death by pinpoint lasers. So stop worrying about this stuff.
And seriously, just try something other than stock loadouts.
I appreciate that. You're one of the few who isn't, and so I hope I'm sufficiently civil in return.
I actually enjoy civil discourse regarding these issues. As I point out with regards to politics sometimes: if we discard the banners and focus on the issues, we often find we're closer in agreement than we might initially believe.
What we're discussing, then, are the merits of potential solutions.
As for stock loadouts: I started out with custom builds. I got bored, so I switched to stock.
I was quite enjoying myself until the weapon patch... Now Meta is boring and stock is suicidal... Something went very wrong somewhere along the lines.
Edited by C337Skymaster, 16 October 2021 - 07:56 PM.
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