25 replies to this topic

[Vonbach]

Assults are probably the hardest class to play. No matter what you do you can easily die just because of your team.
Brawler assault builds are even worse.
I would recommend a good heavy like a roughneck, marauder or warhammer before an assault. Especially to start with.

[Dormaus]

Like a drunken Irishman looking for a fight: Wobbling horribly and into the largest group I see. Various curses at myself, team and enemies ensue.

[Doriam]

Light -> Med -> Heavy -> Assault
Lasers -> Missiles -> Ballistic boating

This trend of fitting mech is common except some unique mech like pir-1 or Dire Wolfs. The lighter you are - the more lasers you got to show up, hit, and go back to cooldown.
Assaults trend to have high DPS or Insane PINPOINT alfa, because if you show up - you need suppress enemy or make him broken. 72 laser alfa is no near of 80 damage ballistic burst or 50-64 pinpoint damage (2 AC20+3snubs for example).
Also Assaults really need to show up in right time and place and be visible only to one or two enemy at time.
Make fire lines with other assaults or be unexpected and show up from flanks.
Enemy run faster than you so make them wish to be somewhere else. Hard hit in one location make people scarred. And one on one they doesn't scarry to you (if it's not pir-2 from behind. You can literally die in 2 seconds. And I even not joking)

If you have alfa over dps - twist torso while cooldown, don't stare at enemy.

Edited by Doriam, 06 April 2022 - 04:39 PM.

[MrMadguy]

Andrewlik, on 05 April 2022 - 06:38 AM, said:

How are you supposed to play assaults? I legit can't make them work
Like last game I went to the first corner off spawn in my Marauder 4HP, frozen city, then both lanes of approach were swamped with hostiles, and I had neither the agility to trade alphas effectively, nor the mobility to get out. I was pinned on the corner, my entire team knew where the enemy was because I popped a UAV, and I was stuck there

And this keeps happening to me in "fat" assaults - I choose the prescribed "brawling" corner, get pinned behind a rock, team doing good knows what, then I die

With lights, mediums and heavies, my gameplay style is to generally find a firing position, find a line of sight, then poke/alpha/trade until it is time to reposition, the difference between each weight class being the range at which I can alpha and the ease of bringing the guns to bear. With slow assaults, I can't really much of that. It feels like the lack of mobility far outweighs the damage I can do when o bring the guns to bear, and the armor does not help too much when an entire corner decides to focus me.

I say "slow" assaults as for some reason I can make 63 kmh on the cyclops 10Q or Slepnir work (2x MRM 40 and srms or 2x RAC 5 + 2x AC/2) work but not the 48 to 54 on the Marauder 4HP or Loyalty Atlas.

I know there is more nuance than "press w, roll your face over your keyboard, win because you're in an assault," so what am I missing?

Whole idea of balance here - is that Assault's advantages are armor and firepower. They're tanks and should be tanky. Faster 'Mechs should trade these two things to gain more mobility. Problem is - it doesn't work in MWO, because Assaults are the easiest to focus and other weight classes have too much firepower, i.e. too high firepower/weight ratios. Like clan mediums, that have enough hardpoints to boat insane amounts of weapons and have insane alpha dmg.

So, unfortunately, once I start open fight - I get ST-cored and die pretty quick. Only builds, that work for me - are LRM-based builds. Assaults are able to both boat enough LRMs and other support weapons not to be easy targets for OP Lights. This makes Lights mad. When they see LRM rain, they expect to see easy LRM boat frag. So they rush there to get it. What they don't expect - is Gauss shot at their face.

[pbiggz]

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

Whole idea of balance here - is that Assault's advantages are armor and firepower. They're tanks and should be tanky. Faster 'Mechs should trade these two things to gain more mobility. Problem is - it doesn't work in MWO,

Yes it does.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

because Assaults are the easiest to focus

Being "easy to focus" isn't a quality of assault mechs, its a quality of threats. If you have a 70 point alpha on board and the enemy team knows it, they're genuinely bad players if they don't take that threat off the field as soon as they are able to.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

and other weight classes have too much firepower, i.e. too high firepower/weight ratios. Like clan mediums, that have enough hardpoints to boat insane amounts of weapons and have insane alpha dmg.

This is flatly false. Flatly.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

So, unfortunately, once I start open fight - I get ST-cored and die pretty quick.

This is because when you fight personally, you likely wade into open territory and start slogging it out like you would have if this were mechwarrior 4. That doesn't work in this game and that is by design. That you choose to do that despite knowing it doesn't work doesn't make you a victim it just means you don't learn.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

Only builds, that work for me - are LRM-based builds.

These are arguably the worst assault mechs in the game.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

Assaults are able to both boat enough LRMs and other support weapons not to be easy targets for OP Lights. This makes Lights mad. When they see LRM rain, they expect to see easy LRM boat frag.

If anything a heavily dedicated LRM assault is more, not less vulnerable to light mechs.

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

So they rush there to get it. What they don't expect - is Gauss shot at their face.

Part of your issue with light mechs might be that you're mounting gauss rifles, a direct fire sniper weapon, and using it in a medium-close range point defense role. Have you considered streak SRMs, MRMs, Snubnose PPCs, Pulse Lasers, or Autocannons?




Over all there's been alot of noise in this thread. Some of it good, some of it bad, take it all with a grain of salt, because you wont learn any good habits from people who think assault mechs (the statistical best weight class in the game) are somehow the worst mechs in the game.

[Bassault]

MrMadguy, on 06 April 2022 - 10:56 PM, said:

Whole idea of balance here - is that Assault's advantages are armor and firepower. They're tanks and should be tanky. Faster 'Mechs should trade these two things to gain more mobility. Problem is - it doesn't work in MWO, because Assaults are the easiest to focus and other weight classes have too much firepower, i.e. too high firepower/weight ratios. Like clan mediums, that have enough hardpoints to boat insane amounts of weapons and have insane alpha dmg.

So, unfortunately, once I start open fight - I get ST-cored and die pretty quick. Only builds, that work for me - are LRM-based builds. Assaults are able to both boat enough LRMs and other support weapons not to be easy targets for OP Lights. This makes Lights mad. When they see LRM rain, they expect to see easy LRM boat frag. So they rush there to get it. What they don't expect - is Gauss shot at their face.

If you're running gauss and lrms... Have you ever considered that you're the problem? Have you ever asked/seen what tier 1s do with assaults... And how they don't die instantly when being shot at? Depending on your assault, many are very durable. Annihilators, Marauder IIC, Atlases, Marauder 2, Stalkers for example can take serious punishment. Maybe it isnt that assaults are weak but its because you expect to be able to survive being shot at by 5 or so people while you stand still not even torso twisting. Sorry this isn't MW5, sentient players are more intelligent than bots on the easiest difficulty. Even 3 people can mess you up in one salvo, especially if there are heavies or assaults in that group.

Edited by I LOVE ANNIHILATORS, 07 April 2022 - 06:16 AM.