25 replies to this topic

[Andrewlik]

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?

[Zeddicuus]

I play the biggestest fwoosh fwoosh, bang bang or pew pew I can fit.

Currently running an assault with 2 RAC 5 and a heavy PPC.

I am new to Assaults myself, but so far I find it works good to lay out suppressing fire so that others can reposition. If anyone dares to stick their cockpit out, I ensure they don't see anything other than shell explosions on their dome.

Edited by Zeddicuus, 05 April 2022 - 06:59 AM.

[John Bronco]

Slow short range assaults are difficult to play these days, just state of the game, results will be very inconsistent.

The loyalty atlas at least has some strong ranged builds (lgr/erppc or hppc)

[Magnus Santini]

If I am a brawling assault, it is stay right with the team but out of LOS until the enemy is close enough to attack or be attacked. Then make them sorry.

[DaZur]

IMHO, Assaults are the hardest class to play...

- Folks assume with all that armor you can just tank damage. Not quite... Yes it does sponge but as one of the biggest targets in the match, you draw a lot of focused (multiple enemy targeting you at once) and your survivability wains quickly.

- Two schools of thought for arming: 1.) Big weapons to front-load your damage 2.) Higher DPS (damage per second) weapons to provide sustained fire and suppress return fire.

- Watch your 6. You are slow, often times your sight line and firing arc is above the height of many light so you can easily be sneaked up on and leg humped.

- Learn to torso-twist to spread damage... In short make use of all that armor, don't let single areas soak all the damage.

-ECM and or AMS are pretty much required.

Personally, I tend to lean toward slightly lighter Assaults (85 tons). I lean toward weapons' with better rate of fire and middle-ground range. This allows me to engage at any range aside from long range, move fast enough to keep up with the natural rotation of your teams movement and allow you to react / retreat a little bit faster when you do stupid stuff or get cornered.

That's my opinions... Hope it helps!

[Bud Crue]

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

How are you supposed to play assaults?

With a friend.

[Bassault]

The hardest part about being an assault is positioning. On heavies and mediums you may be able to move somewhere dumb and easily get back in the action, but in an assault if you fell down a gap on the floor or took the wrong ramp, hill, etc, you will take forever to get back in position, and even worse, you may be stuck somewhere while the enemy is approaching or firing at you.

Brawling Assault: Great map knowledge and situational awareness is required, more than any other mech. You need to know where to be on each map and what to do if your team is with you or NASCARs away, and you need to know where sightlines are so you can avoid being sniped since you're fat and slow. ****'s hard and it's not even that fun anyway, everyone targets you once you're in close range because big scary mech, so you usually get melted instantly. Ideally, you will flank at the most opportune times at close range and you will single out 1-2 mechs in close range mauling.

Mid-Range Assault: Same as brawling assault, but now you can also guard sightlines and peek in and out when the rest of the team is doing it too. You can also punish people for peeking in your direction. Mid range is much better. Depending on your build you can be a DPS staredown monster who bullies anyone infront of him, or you can be an alphastriker who blows his load and torso twists/slinks into cover.

Long-Range Assault: Map knowledge is required to pick the best spot to sit back and shoot reds. You also need to know when to rotate and move up, as enemies can be too far or in cover compared to your position, they may be rotating into your position while you're alone, or your team may be dying while you aren't doing much from where you are.

[Corbantu]

Bud Crue, on 05 April 2022 - 09:50 AM, said:

With a friend.

This, preferably your friend is loaded with AMS or ECM also.

Assault really is the anchor to a good Lance, and due to being the slowest the rest of the Lance should play off the posistion of their slower assaults. I'm not sure how solo qps manage, it's gotta be frustrating to play asault.

[DaZur]

Corbantu, on 05 April 2022 - 10:02 AM, said:

This, preferably your friend is loaded with AMS or ECM also.

Assault really is the anchor to a good Lance, and due to being the slowest the rest of the Lance should play off the posistion of their slower assaults. I'm not sure how solo qps manage, it's gotta be frustrating to play asault.

Rarely happens in QP... Faster mechs almost ALWAYS tear off and leave the Assault to waddle along...

In the same breath these are the same pilots who scream for assistance at the first exchange of fire and Assault pilots are like "WTF you want me to do from all the way back here?!)

[LordNothing]

the rule of thumb for assaults is if you cant keep up with your team, then you are squirrel food. this needs not just observing what they do in the minimap to figure out what way they are headed but you must also predict what it might do in various situations. just ask yourself if that gets you dead. its sort of like playing chess, as you got to think several steps ahead to survive. assaults need to be shooting the enemy a lot to matter, and you have to be alive before you can do that.

Edited by LordNothing, 05 April 2022 - 11:33 AM.

[stress doG]

Most people play behind cover, take cover alpha then recover.

[RickySpanish]

Pilot an Executioner.

[Dekallis]

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

Marauder 4HP

This. This right here is your problem. that's a sub 50kph mech that has primarily missile hardpoints, and while not unusable, it's by far harder than most other assaults to use effectively. I think i've only ever seen one be useful with a mrm100ish build. it's too slow to consistently use srms since it can't reliably close the gap and also too slow to depend on lrms because it just becomes a big target to get rushed down.

Slow assaults are generally either going to go mid-range or long range builds, some go cqc but that's basically them assuming they're going to get rushed by lights and they want to be equipped for that fight. For refence a number of mechs can litterally walk backwards faster than this thing can run forwards so cqc isn't really viable if your opponents decide to kite you.

Most of the common assaults are 55-60ish KPH mechs by default with exception to Fafnir,Annihilator, and Atlas. It may not seem like much but if the second slowest mech is 64kph and you're 48kph that's often the difference between keeping up enough to be in support range and getting left behind when the team rotates or does whatever randomness soloq teams do. It also means when you get a forward spawn position there's basically no chance for you to get out before the enemy team can attack you.

Fafnir's just kinda accept being slow and go long range with exceptional pinpoint damage(and still frequently becomes squirrel food), annihilators bring all the guns to the yard and out dps's basically anything short of a ultraviolet 1v1,Atlas...Is atlas. It does what it wants as long as no one shoots it in the eye. but all of these are generally still vulnerable to being swarmed by lights.

The other more common assaults like the Blood Asp,MarauderIIC, Battlemaster, and MadKatMKII are all generally just fast enough to keep up with the team(All running around 64kph with stock engines.). They're never really left totally behind by the team and generally are able to stay in or at least near enough to the pack that they can't be isolated by lights and that's to say nothing of the visual blindspots and torso rotation speeds.

[PocketYoda]

Do not run off alone always stay with the pack (harder than it looks) and try to not make yourself the center of attention.. Fafnirs, King Crabs Direwolves, Annihilators and Atlases all demand peoples attention just by sheer size and damage.. If you are new to Assaults try something slightly quicker like Cyclops, Marauder II or Awesomes, they tend to blend in better than other slow scary Assaults..

Some Assaults you need to play like Mediums (Victors, Chargers and Zeus) others like Heavies.. Stalkers, Warhammer IIC etc.)

Edited by Nomad Tech, 05 April 2022 - 05:25 PM.

[Akamia Terizen]

In QP solo queue, I take a look at what everyone else is using, and try to stay close to other ’Mechs I know to have similar speed profiles to my own within a certain margin of error after accounting for whether or not they might have swapped engines or playing an OmniMech and thus have a fixed top speed. An isolated ’Mech is a dead ’Mech, especially if they’re an assault; if there’s even one other ’Mech who can stick by you at any given time, then make it your priority to stay by them so you can support each other and make any would-be hunter-killer lights work for their food.

After that, it depends on what my ’Mech is equipped with. I don’t run specialist builds often, in any weight class, and if I do, as far as assaults go, it’s either a stock Warhawk Prime, an ATM/LRM Supernova A, or a UAC-boating Dire Wolf C. All three of these are long range ’Mechs*, so I will generally try to keep at range when running them. My Lostech BattleMaster 1G is more of a mid-range brawler, with medium pulse lasers, an ER PPC, and an XL engine. Probably not my smartest build, but I’ve gotten some stuff done with it.

Whatever you choose to run, just be aware of what your ’Mech can do, and perhaps more importantly, what it can’t do. Now get out there and blow things up!

* The Supernova can actually perform in mid range fights fairly decently, as can the Dire Wolf, though the latter needs quite a bit of face time to do it. The builds I have for these two are probably not ideal in any capacity, but they do seem to punish my fellow T5 players pretty hard under most circumstances. I could probably blast my way out of T5 with these if I really wanted to; I just prefer my other ’Mechs so much more. I’ve been seeing some better success with my machines across the board lately, though; I might be able to fight my way free of T5 on fundamentals alone. I might need to commit to better builds to go higher, on the other hand. lol

Edited by Akamia Terizen, 06 April 2022 - 01:38 AM.

[cazeral]

To be fair, you are describing an old style of play which doesn't fit particularly well with today's mechs and loadouts. Most experienced (not saying good or bad; that's a different thing all together), know the vast majority of sniping points where a trading mech will go to; they have processes in place to wheedle them out with little risk to themselves, so I can see why you struggle.

Best bet is to ask for an escort as you try and waddle after the nascar pack or better yet, call for anti-nascar and scare the boots of the light pilot who comes charging in for an easy kill to find they are facing a fully ready firing line

A supported assault is an amazing thing, a solo one, well.

So, welcome to the "new" MWO, better to stick to mediums and fast moving heavies while the pack nascar mentality is still strong in QP. In FP/CW, its a whole different kettle of fish, just a shame that mode is under supported at them moment.

[Bamboozle Gold]

Slow assaults are hard. Play faster assaults instead. I have 1 assault that goes less than 60kph and that's my Corsair 7A. It works because the whole team huddles under your umbrella.

Otherwise I've got Executioners, Cyclopses, Chargers, Spirit Bear etc. Much more feasible in QP if playing solo.

Or you can try to be active on comms. Sometimes they'll listen.

[McLaine]

By and large, team mates you don't know are rarely going to be playing the game to get the best out of the team roster. Don't expect the team to position around you, and don't go to 'prescribed' spots automatically. Look at the minimap often in early game, try to stay roughly with the initial team movement, and get the best position based on that.

Now, is your assault a Brawler, a corner peeker, a ridge peeker, or a stand out in the open at range and alpha anyone who has the audacity to shoot you? You need to figure how you should play based on chassis and loadout.

Choosing your path when the team goes from A-B is crucial. You often need to take a shorter inside line to keep up, and that often leads to you drawing the enemy fire. Map knowledge is key here. Get in the training grounds and explore the maps.

[caravann]

Made out of glass

The reason why is because assault mechs have superior dps vs all other mechs they're able to hit.
Assault destroy side torso with two to three shots. These shots are able to be within 5-10 seconds.

Medium and light mechs are able to weaken the armor and long range missiles deals a lot armor shredding.
This is why long range missiles are useful even at the start of the game.

The assault task is to secure kills. There are plenty of medium to heavy mechs who are able to use er large lasers or lrm.
Assault is the sledgehammer who nails them down, You are made out of glass because you are a glass cannon.

There shouldn't be many assault on the team because your task is to shoot into each side torso until it falls down.
Heavy mechs have er large lasers and lrm . Light mechs don't need to fire a single gun early on if it means the lrm boat get to shoot.
Medium mechs meant to hunt scouts and to protect.

You can play assault as if they were medium or heavy mech and think of them as medium mechs with bigger hitboxes.
The reason behind having a sledgehammer is that it quickly end the fight.
With a pilot who is able to aim at the side torso instead having an assault with massive center torso eating time and feeding ammo.

This is why there's a misconception that assault should fight first when what the team should do is to secure superiority by removing light mechs.
Some players stand by afk with an assault and win the game because this is what assault was meant to do.


Light mechs are able to travel in packs, working as a combined arms able to defeat their opponent.

[sosegado]

I highly recommend that you play your assault solo in QP for at least a month maybe more or a minimum of 100 drops, whichever comes first.

The reason is that you'll get a feel for defending yourself and an intuition on when to assault and when to hold back that you cannot develop in teamplay.

If you're always being commanded by your lancemates they might not see what you see, or understand the capabilities that your mech has left to it after some engagements.

You'll learn these skills playing your mech solo much faster then you'll learn them playing in a team.

Also, when you do finally drop with a team and they inevitably leave you behind your attitude should have developed to be more along the lines of, "Oh well, here I go again I'm alone but I got this!" ..rather then, "You Blankety Blank Blankers Left Me AGAIN!!"

Either way have fun with it!

Cya on the battlefield!