45 replies to this topic

[pattonesque]

So there I was, in a MAD-4L with two gauss/two ERPPC, the new hotness in sniper assaults. It's got the MADII problem of its cockpit being halfway down the mech and its arms by its calves, but heck, it's really powerful after the latest patch. I drop on HPG and notice there's another -4L on my team. Great! I'm on record as saying that the center in HPG has huge amounts of cover from the walls (I play brawlers on it all the time and rarely get sniped), but not everyone knows that yet and there are plenty of folks who will try to swing into a trench flank in a slow mech and get wrecked. New HPG's kind of a fun puzzle that way.

Anyway, the match starts and I tell my team, hey, I am going to be up on the wall sniping, I'll try to cover you as best I can, just move based on that knowledge.

And of course, the first thing I hear is a loud *sigh* and the beginnings of a rant about how assault snipers would be better off sharing their armor.

Now I get this, I really do. I'm the type of jerk who will seethe at an LRM Atlas (always an Atlas for some reason) standing in the back and lurming ineffectively. You see it, too, with some folks in this game standing 1500 meters away from the enemy and plinking at them with weapons which are doing a quarter of their effective damage. It's frustrating to have a good fight, only to realize the last guy alive on your team is untouched, barely fired his weapons, and is now being set upon by five irritated enemies.

That being said, it's a mistake to think of MWO as a game of sharing armor. It's far more a game of sharing attention.

Let me explain. Oftentimes I play a brawler Atlas, a mech with the most armor in the game, a big gun and a lot of missiles and mounts bad enough that it needs to get up close to use them. The way I like to play this guy is find a point where I can push on the enemy at very close range, press W, twist like mad, and hopefully blow up one or two of them before I die. The thing is, if I do this alone, it's a failure. What I want to do is use my armor to occupy the enemy's attention. I'm the first one around the corner, I have enough firepower that I have to be dealt with, and therefore attention will be on me, allowing my teammates, if they follow, the opportunity to take advantage of about 10 seconds or so of not being shot at. If we do this right, I end up a glowing red stick with 900 damage done, 950 damage taken, and a W.

Now, say I'm in that same MAD-4L. Pushing like an Atlas would be a terrible idea. It's got a lot of armor but is way worse at shielding and besides, gauss/ERPPC is a horrible brawling combo. And yet, if I play it correctly -- roughly within my effective range, constantly looking to engage the enemy, not cowering -- what happens? Well, let's look at the HPG match I mentioned above. I can't speak for the other -4L pilot, but I immediately started engaging two mechs attempting to counter-NASCAR -- a poptart who got off a few alphas on me before I hit him and drove him off, and a RAC2 Nightstar who was trying to rip up our flank. He could have gotten in a good position and done some damage, but I managed to stop him cold and drive him back. Two other mechs lurking behind the ramp paused, reconsidered, and ran to the center. After that, I engaged mechs trying to do the same thing from the lefthand side.

The result here is that a good sniper (I'm an OK sniper), in addition to straight-up killing the enemy, is a problem that the enemy has to solve and cannot ignore. It's not right in the enemy's face tanking damage, but done correctly it's drawing a lot of ineffective damage. That poor RAC2 Nightstar kept having to spin up his barrels for maybe a second of fire, in return for taking 50 points of PPFLD every few seconds. That's damage that could be pouring in to my team that simply never happened. If an enemy mech wants to come out of cover in the center to take an advantageous position against my team, they have to deal with the sniper first or get lit up.

At the end of the match, which we won handily, the original dude smarmily said "well I hope you wallsnipers out-damaged me." He did 640 damage. Pretty good! I did 750 and the other -4L did 1175. I asked him if this was OK. He disconnected without responding.

[Brauer]

Yep, I like to call it juggling aggro.

There are times when sharing armor gets a bit more appropriate (say the enemy team is stuck in low ground on Canyon, you really just need everyone up shooting down on them constantly) but even that is about dividing attention.

[pattonesque]

Brauer, on 21 October 2021 - 08:23 PM, said:

Yep, I like to call it juggling aggro.

There are times when sharing armor gets a bit more appropriate (say the enemy team is stuck in low ground on Canyon, you really just need everyone up shooting down on them constantly) but even that is about dividing attention.

hundred percent, sometimes you gotta get stuck in a bit

[PocketYoda]

If you can actually hit stuff and kill stuff more power to you..

My main worry is newbs reading this then all doing it and getting their teams wasted because no one is actually there to hit the enemy up front and also not being able to hit a barn door with a similar setup to your Mech..



(I hate Lurming Atlas as well)

[justcallme A S H]

I hope newbs read this and actually learn properly.

Rathe than the "Assaults need to share armour" mantra that a number in the community try and claim as good gameplay when it absolutely is not.

[CrimsonPhantom6sg062]

1: For an idea regarding the difference between sharing armour and sharing attention, consider this:

Suppose there are 2 identical mechs on 2 opposing teams. Team A can freely move around (subject) while Team B must stay in one area (control). Let the map that the mechs fight on be some generic map.
Now consider what Team A does (Team B's decision to stay together is assumed, in order to illustrate my point):
Sharing armour is equivalent to Team A rushing Team B together in the same direction.
Result: 50:50 whether Team A or B wins for obvious reasons.
Sharing attention is equivalent to Team A having one mech shoot the enemy. That mech will take the initial fire. After that, the other mech in a very different direction (left-right, front-behind, above-below) will open fire and retreat before Team B can focus their weapons on this mech. And then, the first mech will open fire again when Team B is focusing on the second mech. This will repeat until one team wins.
Result: Team A will very often win.
This is because after the first 3 rotations of Team A, Team A will start having more shooting time on Team B. Team B might be able to focus fire the first time round (assuming they have perfect perception), but they will never predict exactly where the other mech will strike in any subsequent exchange. So their shooting time is minimal on all subsequent exchanges. Note: Light and/ or Assault mech wolfpacks work similarly, because when using the "Circle Of Death", it is difficult to deal effective damage to anyone mech (one mech will focus on twisting and juking, the other will focus on killing you). It is possible for both teams to use the "Circle of Death" on each other, leading to the "Death Ballet".
However, if one mech from Team A shoots Team B and does not bother retreating, and then the other Team A mech joins the fight after the first mech dies, then:
Result: Team B will very often win.
This is because, during the time Team A attacks Team B, Team B will have double the firepower. This situation often occurs during:
Excessively passive play leading to the enemy cleaning up mechs one by one. Bad Nascar/ Lemming Train (doesn't just happen in MWO, it happens in WoT and WoWS a lot too - you just don't notice it because the players die much faster). Poorly coordinated firing lines. Poorly coordinated base rushes. Badly planned charges. Chokepoints.

So does that mean we should always flank? No. The sharing attention strategy can be as simple as switching from cover to cover in as little as 5 seconds in, let's say an Annihilator. All battles, regardless of average player skill, start becoming chaotic as they progress, and in the chaos, you should be able to find opportunities to shoot the enemy from unexpected angles.
This example is highly simplified, but I think it illustrates a practicable point.

2: A sniper shooting mechs from far away (750 to 1250m) is - technically - sharing armour and attention. As long as the sniper exposes themselves to the enemy, the enemy can fire back. The difference between the sniper and brawler is that the sniper can often get away with exposing themselves at their preferred distance (fewer mechs can retaliate). The brawler can't. However, there is no excuse for a sniper to continuously snipe at +1500m during the mid-game phase.

3: Just because a light mech is relatively unscathed near the end of battle does not mean it is not sharing armour and attention. Light mechs rely on speed and agility to avoid hits, rather than tanking them. You can usually tell who the active light mechs are because they are the ones with 300+ match score and possibly <200 damage.

4: Sluggish mechs with high face time weapons (e.g. AC2, RACs) benefit the most from sharing attention. Who cares how slow you get into cover and how long you stare at the enemy if they are not looking at you? Sure a 50 PPFLD alpha is strong, but their sustained DPS usually suffers when compared with another weapon of similar range:
Consider some assault mech with a 40 PPFLD alpha and 4 second cooldown with no extra quirks, and the DWF-UV with 8 AC2s, and assume both can and have perfect opportunities to fire constantly. You will find this is a reasonable comparison in the MechLab:
DPS: John Doe = 10 DPS. DWF-UV = 22.2 DPS.
So, to have an excellent game, John Doe needs at least 121 seconds of constant shooting time while DWF-UV needs only at least 56 seconds.
Also, in the time it takes most players to respond to unexpected threats, DWF-UV would most likely cause more effective damage than John Doe.

But real games don't work this way!

True, but let us bring in all the other factors in a battle: cover, heat mechanics, target selection, etc. If you played many games before, you should find that mechs similar to this DWF-UV would accumulate damage dealt much faster than the hypothetical John Doe build. Also, this DWF-UV is able to kill mechs at an insane rate in the Testing Grounds, even when compared to brawler builds.
When I took out the DWF-UV to practice my AC2 skills, in half the games I literally had no idea how I achieved +500 or +1000 damage - I just walked around a lot, blasted a few mechs, and that was it. And also bear in mind that I have almost non-existent positioning and tactical skills in practice. Hell, I even got +500 damage and 2 kills, without ever engaging the enemy for the first 5 minutes of the battle (I could not find anyone to shoot), because I just kept shooting by the time the enemy came to finish me off.
However, when you look at how much DPS the DWF-UV puts out, it is not so surprising.
Problem is that the DWF-UV can't fight in trading matches, and high face time weapons generally suck in trades (they are fine in a no-cover brawl). They need the enemy to not pay attention to them, in order to shine.

[feeWAIVER]

This is a lot of words to justify hiding behind your teams armor, so you can get 1 kill on a half dead mech at the end, then promptly be scrubbed 4 to 1.

[1453 R]

No, Pattonesque absolutely has the right of it. I see that nonsense so often - "assault 'Mechs need to be at the front sharing armor in close range! DX" when it's just not true. An assault 'Mech's job varies with its configuration like everything else. An Atlas' job is absolutely to 'share armor' at the front - except just like Pattonesque said, it's actually about drawing attention and providing your allies an opening to effectively strike.

A Dire Whale's job, on the other hand, is not even slightly to 'share armor'. The Whale doesn't have any of that to spare, godawful outsized thinly-plated war blimp that it is. A Dire Whale's job is to harvest limbs, torsos, and lives and ruin people's day. It's a kill generation machine, and if it doesn't cut a component off with near every salvo it fires it's not really doing its job.

That MAD-4L? Its job is neither of those. Its job is to find a commanding vantage point and constrain the enemy's options. it uses its heavy Alfalpha Spike damage, significant range, and significant plating to do exactly what the man said - become a problem the enemy is forced to solve. A well positioned, aggressive 'sniper' (i.e. a fire support element) will extract a heavy toll in blood against enemies who ignore it, and because you can't afford to ignore it the thing splits your team's fire and reduces your movement options. Or it punishes you, hard for moving incautiously and giving it free openings. Sure you can poke it back, but it's a hundred-ton gunmonster. It can afford to take a few whiffy trades in order to press its advantage in a good spot, or to get off a shot that cripples a target.

There is no weight class in this entire game that has only one, single job. Everything depends on the 'Mech's specific loadout and the pilot's own capabilities. And keeping the idea of sharing attention in mind is a critical idea for everybody. Not only so you can better recognize when someone is doing their job, but so that you can recognize when a teammate is drawing attention and properly capitalize on a distracted enemy unable to effectively counterfire you.

[RickySpanish]

Yeah sure, sharing armour isn't always appropriate but here's the thing: It is appropriate most of the time. The mantra of sharing armour implies being close to your team mates, firing together, covering your team, and not running off to die alone. Yes you can get more specific with sharing attention, but when most player's chief concern is STILL ROTATING RIGHT ON CANYON, the message needs to be simplified a bit. Sharing armour is absolutely a good concept to gain a foothold with, whereas sharing attention gives lleway for dumb stuff like sniping with medium lasers because you are too scared to engage at optimal range. Saw that last night actually, one of my team mates called out the poor positioning and the whole team jumped down his neck for it. Not good.

[pattonesque]

feeWAIVER, on 22 October 2021 - 05:59 AM, said:

This is a lot of words to justify hiding behind your teams armor, so you can get 1 kill on a half dead mech at the end, then promptly be scrubbed 4 to 1.

this certainly happens, but very rarely to me, because as an OK sniper I'm constantly engaging the enemy and drawing their attention and fire. it kinda sounds like you're purposely misunderstanding a simple concept!

[pattonesque]

1453 R, on 22 October 2021 - 07:06 AM, said:

That MAD-4L? Its job is neither of those. Its job is to find a commanding vantage point and constrain the enemy's options. it uses its heavy Alfalpha Spike damage, significant range, and significant plating to do exactly what the man said - become a problem the enemy is forced to solve. A well positioned, aggressive 'sniper' (i.e. a fire support element) will extract a heavy toll in blood against enemies who ignore it, and because you can't afford to ignore it the thing splits your team's fire and reduces your movement options. Or it punishes you, hard for moving incautiously and giving it free openings. Sure you can poke it back, but it's a hundred-ton gunmonster. It can afford to take a few whiffy trades in order to press its advantage in a good spot, or to get off a shot that cripples a target.

this is the crux of it. A mech like that (which with full survival skills has something like 160 CT armor) piloted by even an OK sniper and properly positioned cannot be ignored and cannot be easily dislodged. It would be a disservice to the team to place it in a brawl or 3-400m away taking effective fire from mid-range mechs.

[pbiggz]

justcallme A S H, on 22 October 2021 - 05:11 AM, said:

I hope newbs read this and actually learn properly.

Rathe than the "Assaults need to share armour" mantra that a number in the community try and claim as good gameplay when it absolutely is not.

It's staggering how much of the 2013 meta this community has simply internalized.

We "shared armour" when triple SRM 6 AC20 ECM DDCs were literally in competitive meta dropdecks.
We "shared armour" pre-host state rewind, when an 86kph medium mech was considered a "fast striker".
We "shared armour" when double ppc gauss poptarting with highlanders and cataphracts (thats a 29 point alpha just in case people didn't realize) reigned supreme.

This is not the game we're playing today. It's not a game we've been playing for years. An assault sniper "sharing armour" is a 60+ point alpha being wasted because pugs don't like being shot at.

Yes mechs are more durable with structure and armour buffs, but hit reg is miles better than it was a decade ago. Alphas are doubled. Net TTK is down and even a fully armoured atlas is not an unkillable monster. "Sharing armour" is an artifact from a time long gone.

Im no comp player, but I think what's being shared these days, at least in quickplay, is attention.

You aren't trying to draw enemy fire, you're trying to be the maximum threat, then your lancemate, then the next guy. If everyone is too dangerous to ignore, the enemy team is more likely to ignore a threat that ends up getting them killed. If everyone is too dangerous to ignore it makes it almost impossible for an enemy team to prioritize and call targets properly. A 60+ point alpha at 800+ meters from an assault sniper is a great way to draw enemies off. It's not a waste at all. If the enemy team ignores a fully loaded to the **** marauder II sniperboat, the marauder gets free kills. If they divert to kill the sniper, the deathball gets free kills instead.

Edited by pbiggz, 22 October 2021 - 08:22 AM.

[Commoners]

Just be relevant in any capacity in the matches. It's a baseline that people fail to hit regularly in the game.

[Storming Angel]

feeWAIVER, on 22 October 2021 - 05:59 AM, said:

This is a lot of words to justify hiding behind your teams armor, so you can get 1 kill on a half dead mech at the end, then promptly be scrubbed 4 to 1.

No it isnt, you need to learn which mechs benefit from tanking, which ones dont, which ones are better at distracting and which ones are better at exploiting, mistakes. It's like world of tanks, just because your team have 5 heavy tanks doesn't mean they can all go and brawl around a corner, tanks like the amx 50 100 or 112 are better flanking, providing support or even wolf packing with mediums since they have far better mobility and top speed to keep up with the light vehicles.

Assaults like the gargoyle are a very good example of this, some heavy tanks are better at a peak-a-boo style like the E100(Super-heavy), large, big gun, lots of armour, but slow as hell and gets clapped hard under a 2v1+ unless the enemy sits in one place. but in a 1v1 its armour and large gun at close range will help it win (and rng being on its side).

The game is no longer low alpha strikes at close ranges, alphas have increased, burst damage has increased and map ranges have increased meaning far more opportunities of hitting mechs at different angles allowing you to put 2-4 mechs onto one and doing severe damage and/or deleting it out right.

And with the way armour works in this game there isn't any armour sharing anyway. It's just HP sharing that all, since armour doesn't ricochet or reduce damage in any meaning full way and simple acts a second HP bar with no other mechanics tied in to it.

Same goes for lights, they would be stuck in light vs light scenarios, hitting bases, reconnaissance and maybe assisting mediums and maybe a few heavies on a small lance strike. Otherwise in this game, they are basically geared towards fighting the biggest mechs which would end up getting deleted by them in the games reality its based from.

Sharing armour is what gets you killed quick, sharing attention is far more important. All the armour in the game won't save you if some mech appears behind yer bum and deletes you as your focused on a pair of heavies in front of you.

[Davegt27]

man talk about a wall of text

bottom line its your mech do what you want

don't be surprised if you take flak no matter what you do

I remember (correct me if I am wrong) the flak over LRMs got so big they had a LRMs vs meta shoot out
(https://www.reddit.c...ay_1213_5pm_et/)

I forget how many times I been told to uninstall or how much I suck
it is what it is

just try to have a little fun

[DaZur]

The only time I get bent about sharing armor is when half or more of the team is pushing and you got three assaults playing peek-a-boo and not contributing to the inertia...

It's like Nascar... You gotta "trade paint" if you want to win.

Edited by DaZur, 22 October 2021 - 12:17 PM.

[LordNothing]

CrimsonPhantom6sg062, on 22 October 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

Problem is that the DWF-UV can't fight in trading matches, and high face time weapons generally suck in trades (they are fine in a no-cover brawl). They need the enemy to not pay attention to them, in order to shine.

im not seeing it. at least in qp middle tier i can usually get out 3 or 4 salvos against poking players, damage equivalent to a large erll alpha or four cerppcs. against skilled players you might be able to pull off 1 or 2. at the other end there are players who are unaware that they are being hit by 16 damage every 2/3 a second and will eat them till they die. part of winning trades is knowing when you are losing them, in that case reposition and try again or try something else.

you can also use it as suppressing fire to support other traders. by keeping the mechs with low skill or low damage output down, and giving your team the numbers advantage in the trade. so it is useful in a trade fight in a team setting.

i think the real benefit of the uv is that it can work in a wide range of situations. range trading, skirmishing, brawling, controlling terrain, area denial, etc. its a lot more jack of all trades than the dedicated ranged trader platforms. this makes it very useful in qp at least. it doesnt always do well in fp with a lot of skilled players and meta mechs, but sometimes it does. it most certainly is not a potato mech, unless piloted by one.

[pbiggz]

Yeah man thats how assault snipers work. You give up mobility for sheer firepower. You pick an overwatch spot, and you start rapidly disassembling enemy mechs. Having watched ER Large Laser Ultraviolets at work, they're ******* terrifying. Paul Inouye tried to nerf ER large laser heat scale down to 1 once because he got microwaved. A well placed sniper with a good shooting arm can easily decide a match.

If your team folds, you die too. You aren't fast enough to get away.

If you miss more shots than you land, your team probably folds. That's not a problem with "assaults not sharing armour", that's just a sniper on your team sucking. That people think sharing armour has anything to do with it highlights perfectly what I mean when I say alot of really toxic 2013 meta lessons have been fully internalized by people and they don't know enough to realize those lessons don't apply anymore, specifically because, people understand that said assault mech underperformed, but they lack the vocabulary to describe how, or why, so they act like every assault mech is some flavour of the old comp DDC.

Edited by pbiggz, 22 October 2021 - 01:46 PM.

[RickySpanish]

LordNothing, on 22 October 2021 - 01:24 PM, said:

im not seeing it. at least in qp middle tier i can usually get out 3 or 4 salvos against poking players, damage equivalent to a large erll alpha or four cerppcs. against skilled players you might be able to pull off 1 or 2. at the other end there are players who are unaware that they are being hit by 16 damage every 2/3 a second and will eat them till they die. part of winning trades is knowing when you are losing them, in that case reposition and try again or try something else.

you can also use it as suppressing fire to support other traders. by keeping the mechs with low skill or low damage output down, and giving your team the numbers advantage in the trade. so it is useful in a trade fight in a team setting.

i think the real benefit of the uv is that it can work in a wide range of situations. range trading, skirmishing, brawling, controlling terrain, area denial, etc. its a lot more jack of all trades than the dedicated ranged trader platforms. this makes it very useful in qp at least. it doesnt always do well in fp with a lot of skilled players and meta mechs, but sometimes it does. it most certainly is not a potato mech, unless piloted by one.

Yeah anyone who says Direwolf can't face time has never been on the wrong end of 8 AC-2s. The whale can pack an assload of long range guns and win trades beyond the effective range of its victim's weapons. In fact, I'd almost hesitate to field the UAC-10/5 build because it kind of feels like the wrong way to play the whale. An Assault at long range that's hitting its targets has amaaazing staying power, because all that armour counts for more beyond effective range.

With that said, winning trades by factoring effective range as part of your armour is not a concept that is usually grasped by the average sniper. That's why sharing armour is the better mantra in my opinion - it's a simpler strategy to drill to.

[Blood Rose]

Just going to say, sharing armour goes both ways. By all means, cry about the Assault not 'sharing its armour' but if your popping up for 0.2 second vomit dumps and running and hiding the second an enemy Light looks at you funny, then you are part of the problem.
Also, there is nothing quite as funny as seeing heavies and mediums with next to no damage break and flee in the face of the awesome might of a.... Flea?!