9 replies to this topic

[Abohac]

I was just trying out the ppc summoner with removed quirks on LT and RT and honestly I can't justify piloting it over the vapor eagle any more. I was staring at various torsos without hardpoints with all those nice quirks but couldn't figure a meaningful build out. Anybody care to help this summoner enthusiast?

[pbiggz]

I guess they are PPC nerfs but the quirks seem generally good from a quick read? I will need to take time to look into them. Summoners are my babies, I want them to be strong but varied and the fact that they all get run as PPC boats always kind of bothered me. Tricky things to balance though.

[Abohac]

pbiggz, on 14 December 2021 - 01:11 PM, said:

I guess they are PPC nerfs but the quirks seem generally good from a quick read? I will need to take time to look into them. Summoners are my babies, I want them to be strong but varied and the fact that they all get run as PPC boats always kind of bothered me. Tricky things to balance though.

Yup the mech had godly PPC quirks on the torsos, now gone

[panzer1b]

There are other builds that are viable like dakka (2UAC10s is not that rarely encountered, ive also seen 1UAC10+1UAC5 and some ERSLs provided they didnt remove teh uac jam quirks and the cooldowns), but yeah, PPCs on the summoner just arent what they were (and this was already apparent b4 the patch). The vapin eagle has more or less become the de-facto ERPPC mech on clam side the moment it came out since it has everything ERPPCs need, JJs, excellent mobility, and a good enough profile that you wont get instantly obliterated when you expose it solong as you have all the weapons in torso mounts.

They should have kept thjose quirks since the summoner's thimng was always ERPPC especially in CW back in the days when anyone played that gamemode, but it is what it is and for now just stick to the vapin eagle which is the best clam ppc mech imo right now and not much can be done to nerf it without destroying PPCs for all other clam mechs...

[D A T A]

Abohac, on 14 December 2021 - 12:58 PM, said:

I was just trying out the ppc summoner with removed quirks on LT and RT and honestly I can't justify piloting it over the vapor eagle any more. I was staring at various torsos without hardpoints with all those nice quirks but couldn't figure a meaningful build out. Anybody care to help this summoner enthusiast?

There was a CERPPC cooldown specific in RT prime and it got REPLACED with a generic all energy cooldown 15 (from10) so the cooldown on CERPPCs is actually buffed, not nerfed.
Same with the set of 8 ppc velocity, that was turned into all velocity.

What LT are you referring at?

Edit, mech DB 2.0 still has old pre patch values: there were no LT specific PPC quirks.....so you are just spreading false informations, pls just drop it.

Double edit, now the summoner PD left torso has cooldown that wasn't even there, so the ppcs are even more buffed than what i thought

Edited by D A T A, 14 December 2021 - 01:46 PM.

[pbiggz]

panzer1b, on 14 December 2021 - 01:16 PM, said:

There are other builds that are viable like dakka (2UAC10s is not that rarely encountered, ive also seen 1UAC10+1UAC5 and some ERSLs provided they didnt remove teh uac jam quirks and the cooldowns), but yeah, PPCs on the summoner just arent what they were (and this was already apparent b4 the patch). The vapin eagle has more or less become the de-facto ERPPC mech on clam side the moment it came out since it has everything ERPPCs need, JJs, excellent mobility, and a good enough profile that you wont get instantly obliterated when you expose it solong as you have all the weapons in torso mounts.

They should have kept thjose quirks since the summoner's thimng was always ERPPC especially in CW back in the days when anyone played that gamemode, but it is what it is and for now just stick to the vapin eagle which is the best clam ppc mech imo right now and not much can be done to nerf it without destroying PPCs for all other clam mechs...

I would personally prefer to see powerful PPC quirks tied to set of 8. For instance, the summoner prime, is limited to 3 hardpoints, one of each. If the bog standard summoner before this patch was double ER PPC, adding cooldown or damage quirks to boost at least the DPS output of a single PPC would have made it unique, and frankly it still would not have been broken.

D A T A, on 14 December 2021 - 01:25 PM, said:

There was a CERPPC cooldown specific in RT prime and it got REPLACED with a generic all energy cooldown 15 (from10) so the cooldown on CERPPCs is actually buffed, not nerfed.
Same with the set of 8 ppc velocity, that was turned into all velocity.

What LT are you referring at?

Yeah I need to get in and toy with them. The quirks look cool, not as straight forward as before and frankly thats ok. I want to see more varied builds on summoners.

[Abohac]

Hm, must have had some wrong memory of what SMN torsos had on them... I was certain that they had some godly ppc quirks. Thanks for clearing up the confusion.

[1453 R]

Ran a set-of-8 Summoner Prime earlier today actually, mostly to see what the hullaballoo was about. You can get an LB/X-10 down to close to 50% cooldown, and the missile cooldown's not terrible either. Ran the 10/X, a HLL, and an LRM15. Ammo was still unpleasantly thin, but the ammo quirk on the left arm makes it semi-bearable. Managed to score 700 damage that game, though I did die trying to fight a Corsair and a Shadow Cat off my base alone.

Build was very heat-efficient given that it had basically no weaponry, but it did kinda run into facetime-y issues. The only reason to run it is getting CN9-D-level LB/X cooldowns, which means you gotta be holding down that trigger to derive any real benefit. hard to defend yourself when you've gotta be staring right at your target every ~1.2s to clustershot them again. 'Mech also has zero pressure capabilities - if it gets pressed by even just two enemies it has to retreat. Nor is "switch the lerms for an SRM launcher!" an answer - one SRM-6 won't do ****-all to give the thing any better pressure capabilities. It's so weight-starved as it is that it's hard to make each of its hardpoints do their job, I had to use the heavy laser just to get a worthwhile energy weapon. I happen to really like heavy lasers, but I'm also me so mleghm. Also shot the autocannon dry even with the ammo quirks and was close to dry on the missiles by the time I went down with my ~700 damage.

Feels very much like one of those "this works great if nobody pays attention to it!" 'Mechs that doesn't actually work whenever it has to actually fight an aware, fighting-back target. A goodly chunk of my damage in that game was finding an isolated Cougar and bullying it like a junior high football jock. Anybody can put up numbers dueling a Cougar in a heavy 'Mech - if you lose that fight, I don't know what to tell ya. And it still took me most of a minute to pick the thing apart with the autocannon.

The Summoner Prime in tabletop is a cool-running, versatile, highly maneuverable raider that doesn't need more than its three weapons because each of those weapons hits real damn hard. Even if it's badly undersupplied on autocannon ammo (shoulda been one ton of lerms and two tons of LB/X, that was a bad oversight on the designer's parts). The PPC opens holes and the missiles and autocannon exploit them. In MWO, absolutely none of thet holds true except the 'cool-running' part. The Timber Wolf is more maneuverable than the Summoner save in jump capacity, and the Prime's paucity of hardpoints and particular quirks forces it into effectively ONE build - LB/X, big LRM launcher, and choice of pithy energy.

It sucks. I want to enjoy my Summoners. I do. But they just...don't do anything I can't do better with half a dozen other 'Mechs.

[Valdarion Silarius]

There's alot of good Summoner builds out there. I personally run these two here:

A58L<9D1|e<2ph0\P7|1C|l^|l^|l^qh0bP7|1C|l^|l^|l^rZ0AG7|kB|kBsZ0EG7|kB|kBth0^P7uh0_P7vB0XP7w404040

Am24<5C1|e<2pg0\P7|PC|l^|l^qg0bP7|PC|l^|l^r\0AG7|lB|lB|l^|l^s\0EG7|lB|lB|l^|l^tf0FG7uf0GG7vB0@G7w505050

One is a ER PPC poptart while the other is a hard alpha strike HLL oriented build. One thing I want to note is that Summoners are very tanky and mobile. It's one of the very few mechs that I recall from memory that I survived a QP match with 1-3% health and is the only mech on record that I have survived dipping down so low on HP. I won't argue that they can be light on fire power, but I do enjoy them and I believe they are not as bad as people make them out to be.

[FupDup]

1453 R, on 15 December 2021 - 02:26 PM, said:

-Le Snip-

It sucks. I want to enjoy my Summoners. I do. But they just...don't do anything I can't do better with half a dozen other 'Mechs.

Maybe try ERPPC + LB20X on the Prime SO8?

Otherwise you'll probably have to just join the bandwagon of ERPPC/UAC10 nipples or SRM bombing. Maybe laser vomit if you're feeling spicy.