156 replies to this topic

[feeWAIVER]

martian, on 22 August 2023 - 05:11 AM, said:

What 'Mechs are getting 30% velocity buffs in this patch? Specifically, velocity buffs applicable to LRMs?

Oh sorry, only 20%. I guess the sky really is falling, my bad.

[Mark Yore]

Capellan Shenanigans, on 21 August 2023 - 04:40 PM, said:

Could you link some builds? I've been thinking that it's time for my Catapult to drop the MRMs and get back to my roots with LRMs.

I had a massive, cross-country move that made me miss most of the big summer event, so I want to spread the salt.

Blood Asp Rancor with BAS-E arms, LRM-20s in the torso and LRM-15s in the arms. Add a TAG and a CAP, lots of ammo and finish with heat sinks. Set the missiles to chain fire and you've got a great low-heat way of delivering 100 missiles per salvo with very little downtime.
Ideally you want to position yourself in the middle and slightly behind the main body of your team because you will be the number one target. You should be no more than 400 metres from your targets to maximise damage and minimise the opportunity to get swamped by lights. Although there is nothing like the sheer joy of destroying a Piranha by firing everything at almost point blank range.
It's almost the anti-sniper build, where you still have the range to use suppressive fire on the gauss and PPC snipers hiding at the edges of the map or in elevated positions.

Edited by Mark Yore, 22 August 2023 - 06:11 AM.

[Mark Yore]

One thing that hasn't been discussed is that LRMs are the only only weapon that can be substantially nerfed by the environment. The risk of loading up an LRM heavy build and ending up in a map like Solaris City or Coliseum (or the covered areas of HPG Manifold or River City) means that there are substantial problems in taking an LRM boat.

Alpine Peaks is really the only map where there is a small bonus in going LRM, balanced against the fact that gauss/PPC snipers will be targeting you and they don't have to hold locks.

[Runecarver]

Samziel, on 22 August 2023 - 12:13 AM, said:

Everyone seems to ignore what Navid said. LRM velo has been buffed over time to counteract the raise of ECM effectiveness and usage. Which is a wrong way to approach things. They are now gradually trying to nerf both as an attempt to eventually overall buff LRMs without causing a LRM apocalypse in the meanwhile. I can agree this ECM nerf seems too little, but I guess they have to take things slow to see the effect in action. In short, more patches regarding these systems are coming.

That remains to be seen. Will these supposed changes come next month, in 3 months, next year, or be conveniently forgotten? Who knows. We've heard this song and dance many times before. But in current terms, this change is a net negative for little reason.

7% less total sensor range reduction on clan ecm only, while inner sphere ecm will still provide the same 70% sensor range reduction bubble to all allies. For the average game, you won't see any difference. And the lock on system remains the same that said 210m/sec values were based around. From back when mechs were much less nimble, yet they could still reliably avoid said missile locks and missiles by staying on their toes. LRMs need all the speed they can get, because mechs have gotten more agile since then.

Sure, 10% doesn't seem much. Its something like an extra 0.2-0.4 seconds of flight time depending on distance and whether you're looking directly or indirectly at the target. But that's still effectively nullifying the extra bit of time that was provided when a target breaks line of sight when radar deprivation was finally changed from being a guaranteed, instant lock breaker. So now we're essentially back in square one. While many other weapons just keep going up and up in performance. More range, more velocity, more dps, less minimum range, less heat, less duration. Quality of life improvements are fine, but you're supposed to give them out equally.

feeWAIVER, on 22 August 2023 - 04:57 AM, said:

It's only a 10% nerf to base velocity, while mechs in this patch are getting 30% velocity buffs, and there's a ton of velocity quirks already in the game. Really guys, it's not that big of a deal. You're gonna log in after the patch and realize it's fine.

You shouldn't need ridiculously large quirks to make up for the lackluster performance of the base weapon. Not to mention that's a horribly flawed design philosophy, to force certain weapon use on certain variants with huge quirks, that shows someone forgot that MWO is supposed to be about freedom of customization.

And as an aside, those big quirks on specifically the Adder A-variant are a necessary bit of help considering how limited its missile builds are otherwise. 2 LRM20's gets completely shut down by a single skilled out triple AMS mech, with this it might get a couple more missiles through.

Edited by Runecarver, 22 August 2023 - 06:23 AM.

[Khalcruth]

sycocys, on 22 August 2023 - 04:17 AM, said:

Because honestly many of us believe he/they (cauldron) are often quite disingenuous with their tweaks, especially when it comes to already poorly performing systems.

Damn straight. I truly don't understand why anyone believes a single word that comes out of their mouths. Their credibility is exactly zero.

[feeWAIVER]

Runecarver, on 22 August 2023 - 06:13 AM, said:

Sure, 10% doesn't seem much. Its something like an extra 0.2-0.4 seconds of flight time depending on distance and whether you're looking directly or indirectly at the target. But...

I'm gonna say to you what Donald Trump once said to me in a dream:

Spoiler

"It's fine. You'll be fine."

Edited by feeWAIVER, 22 August 2023 - 08:28 AM.

[foamyesque]

Samziel, on 22 August 2023 - 12:13 AM, said:

Everyone seems to ignore what Navid said. LRM velo has been buffed over time to counteract the raise of ECM effectiveness and usage. Which is a wrong way to approach things.

LRMs are the slowest dang projectile in the game already, and also in competition for the worst weapon system generally if you, and multiple of your teammates, haven't built specifically to make it work.

And if the nerf was purely about trying to balance out the ECM nerf, it wouldn't apply to direct fire shots. That's the piece that really sticks out to me -- as a direct fire weapon LRMs are just a worse MRM that happens to have a couple hundred metres more reach. This required a penalty? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

[feeWAIVER]

foamyesque, on 22 August 2023 - 08:52 AM, said:

LRMs are the slowest dang projectile in the game already, and also in competition for the worst weapon system generally if you, and multiple of your teammates, haven't built specifically to make it work.

And if the nerf was purely about trying to balance out the ECM nerf, it wouldn't apply to direct fire shots. That's the piece that really sticks out to me -- as a direct fire weapon LRMs are just a worse MRM that happens to have a couple hundred metres more reach. This required a penalty? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

imo, lurms are better than streaks and atms. So from my perspective, they are the best homing missiles in the game.

[Ken Harkin]

Cauldron hates LRMs. They made a map covered with gigantic mushrooms simply to to punish LRMs and benefit snipers firing from the hills or top of the mushrooms.

feeWAIVER, on 22 August 2023 - 09:44 AM, said:

imo, lurms are better than streaks and atms. So from my perspective, they are the best homing missiles in the game.

Being better than streaks with all the ECM and stealth isn't hard. At least I can dumbfire LRMs at a sniper sitting under ECM coverage. With Streaks all I can do is shout at the Stealth builds.

[An6ryMan69]

Ongoing LRM hate in MWO is another win for a few loud elites over the huddled masses, unfortunately.

It's *** backwards - the very best players are the ones that need the very least catering to, in reality.

[Novakaine]

Just trash.

[foamyesque]

feeWAIVER, on 22 August 2023 - 09:44 AM, said:

imo, lurms are better than streaks and atms. So from my perspective, they are the best homing missiles in the game.

Better than streaks is a very low bar indeed because I think streaks probably *are* the worst weapon in the game. You pay extra tonnage for a weapon that performs worse than a standard SRM except in very limited circumstances.

Better than ATMs? That's more arguable, but only because in LRMs scale better in groups. ATMs do better when you can't rely on your teammates to either synergize with you or cover you, i.e. the more usual solo drop experience.

But either way, 'best of the worst set of weapons' is still bad.

[Bassault]

MrMadguy, on 20 August 2023 - 09:35 AM, said:

What I can say, is that LRMs are suppression weapons, that are great counters against guys, who exploit OP Meta. Especially when combined with tags. And this is exact reason, why Meta exploiters hate them. They just can't exploit their OPness without consequences. That's why they ask for nerfs. Should we listen to them? I don't think so. We should stop this zero-counter Meta, not support it.

How does LRM counter "op meta abusers"? I alphastrike my gauss and large lasers, your lrms lock and fire, I take cover. You eat ****, I take no damage. The only thing your LRMs are countering is people's willingness to move up, because if they do they can get LRM'd out in the open.

[Bassault]

Ken Harkin, on 22 August 2023 - 10:44 AM, said:

Cauldron hates LRMs. They made a map covered with gigantic mushrooms simply to to punish LRMs and benefit snipers firing from the hills or top of the mushrooms.


Being better than streaks with all the ECM and stealth isn't hard. At least I can dumbfire LRMs at a sniper sitting under ECM coverage. With Streaks all I can do is shout at the Stealth builds.

Krazzdax is not part of the cauldron. He is a PGI employee.

[JediPanther]

Not much of a "long" range weapon when nearly every other weapon shoots longer,faster and better. I can matrix doge a 2000 m/s guass round but that 180m lrm? OHHH SHHIIIITTT! amiwite? Lrms are so heavy counters to snipers.

[Taurian_Stubbornness]

VeeOt Dragon, on 22 August 2023 - 02:20 AM, said:

can shoot you two that i use often enough. both run pretty good for me (i tend towards a 50/50 IDF/DF usage so XLs are viable enough) (build code follows each)

Catapult-C4 (2 LRM-20 (9t ammo), 2 MLs, 1 AMS (1/2t ammo) running an Xl-290 with 1 DHS, BAP and endo)

AH0820:1|Y?|Y?|Ld|i^pb0|[O|[O|f?|[O|aO|[<2qb0|[O|[O|[<2rX0|Z?sX0|Z?tb0|[O|[Oua0|[O|[OvA0|Z<2w:0:0:0

Hunchback-4J (2 LRM-15 (6t ammo), 5 ER SLs, 1 AMS (1t ammo), running an XL-245 with 2 DHS, BAP and Endo)

AE0820h0|Z<2|CdpX0|4@|4@|E@|E@|E@qX0|i^|[O|f?|[O|i^rP0|AO|E@s00t_0|[O|[Ou_0|[O|[OvB0|E@w808080

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






yeah thats why i say that RD should have a direct counter skill.

Thanks for the builds, I'll give them some time in the testing grounds.

Here is what I was considering running on my Catapult: A<0:3:@1|Qd|i^|i^|Y?|Y?ph0|Y?|NG|NGqh0|Y?|NG|Z<2|i^rX0|C@sX0|C@tb0|^O|^Oub0|^O|^Ov60|^Ow404040

I like playing my Catapults fast and skirmishy, they handle better than you'd think. I've had success with similar skirmishy, second-line LRM builds in the past, so I'd like to see how something like this holds up.

martian, on 22 August 2023 - 03:36 AM, said:

Considering that LRMs are just about to be nerfed, perhaps you should concentrate on direct-fire weapons.

It's like a protest vote, I'll use them out of sheer defiance. Anything that makes the sniper assualt players cry is worth the price of admission.

Mark Yore, on 22 August 2023 - 05:52 AM, said:

Blood Asp Rancor with BAS-E arms, LRM-20s in the torso and LRM-15s in the arms. Add a TAG and a CAP, lots of ammo and finish with heat sinks. Set the missiles to chain fire and you've got a great low-heat way of delivering 100 missiles per salvo with very little downtime.
Ideally you want to position yourself in the middle and slightly behind the main body of your team because you will be the number one target. You should be no more than 400 metres from your targets to maximise damage and minimise the opportunity to get swamped by lights. Although there is nothing like the sheer joy of destroying a Piranha by firing everything at almost point blank range.
It's almost the anti-sniper build, where you still have the range to use suppressive fire on the gauss and PPC snipers hiding at the edges of the map or in elevated positions.

I appreciate the suggestion!

Edited by Capellan Shenanigans, 22 August 2023 - 06:00 PM.

[martian]

Capellan Shenanigans, on 22 August 2023 - 05:58 PM, said:

It's like a protest vote, I'll use them out of sheer defiance. Anything that makes the sniper assualt players cry is worth the price of admission.

I am sorry to rain on your parade, but LRMs will not "make the sniper assualt players cry". They will just step two steps aside and hide behind cover, while your LRMs are slowly travelling towards them. Have you ever played on Emerald Vale, HPG Manifold, etc.?

[MrMadguy]

Bassault, on 22 August 2023 - 01:02 PM, said:

How does LRM counter "op meta abusers"? I alphastrike my gauss and large lasers, your lrms lock and fire, I take cover. You eat ****, I take no damage. The only thing your LRMs are countering is people's willingness to move up, because if they do they can get LRM'd out in the open.

At least LRMs make snipers nervous and prevent them from overwhelming your teammates via shotting simultaneously. You know, when player sees that "Incoming missiles", he start to seek for cover instead of harassing your teammates.

In normal situation, i.e. no OP radar derp and enough LRM speed, if sniper is poptarting and I have TAG for quicker locks - LRMs usually have enough time to hit him via indirect fire. That prevents poptart tactic, that is still quite OP.

Overall LRMs are good way to suppress snipers and deathball brawlers, especially combined with TAGs. Even if you just waste your missiles, switching quickly between targets makes them hide, instead of snipe-harassing or deathballing.

Conclusion: it's just terrible, when game is already completely broken, but instead of fixing it devs brake it even further. I already can barely play it. Even more nerfs mean, that moment when I will be unable to play it is closer and closer. We had such moment in the past, when game was completely unplayable. It was prior to modern balance passes. And game goes this way again.

Edited by MrMadguy, 22 August 2023 - 10:20 PM.

[martian]

MrMadguy, on 22 August 2023 - 10:18 PM, said:

At least LRMs make snipers nervous and prevent them from overwhelming your teammates via shotting simultaneously. You know, when player sees that "Incoming missiles", he start to seek for cover instead of harassing your teammates.

In normal situation, i.e. no OP radar derp and enough LRM speed, if sniper is poptarting and I have TAG for quicker locks - LRMs usually have enough time to hit him via indirect fire. That prevents poptart tactic, that is still quite OP.

Overall LRMs are good way to suppress snipers and deathball brawlers, especially combined with TAGs. Even if you just waste your missiles, switching quickly between targets makes them hide, instead of snipe-harassing or deathballing.

Clan ER PPC - projectile speed 1650 m/s
Clan Gauss Rifle - projectile speed 2200 m/s
Clan ER Large laser - speed of light

IS and Clan LRM - velocity 266/190 m/s

What would arrive sooner? Sniper's ER PPC bolts / Gauss Rifle slugs / ERLL beams to your 'Mech, or your LRMs to the sniper? Who has got more time to react?

MrMadguy, on 22 August 2023 - 10:18 PM, said:

Conclusion: it's just terrible, when game is already completely broken, but instead of fixing it devs brake it even further. I already can barely play it. Even more nerfs mean, that moment when I will be unable to play it is closer and closer. We had such moment in the past, when game was completely unplayable. It was prior to modern balance passes. And game goes this way again.

Have you ever thought about adjusting your tactic or your 'Mech's loadout?

[VeeOt Dragon]

Capellan Shenanigans, on 22 August 2023 - 05:58 PM, said:

Thanks for the builds, I'll give them some time in the testing grounds.

Here is what I was considering running on my Catapult: A<0:3:@1|Qd|i^|i^|Y?|Y?ph0|Y?|NG|NGqh0|Y?|NG|Z<2|i^rX0|C@sX0|C@tb0|^O|^Oub0|^O|^Ov60|^Ow404040

I like playing my Catapults fast and skirmishy, they handle better than you'd think. I've had success with similar skirmishy, second-line LRM builds in the past, so I'd like to see how something like this holds up.

not a bad build. you might want to strip one of the JJs for more ammo but other than that very workable. just be careful with XLs an a catapult because its side torsos are really easy to pick out. though since you seem to be going for a closer range play style it might be fine. LRM-20s are usually the go to for Catapults (there was a time when running 4 LRM-10s was the go to but again they nerfed that as well so it wasn't worth the extra heat.) but like you said your going for more of a skirmisher so the 15s might work fine.

not a big user of Artemis anymore myself but thats because they nerfed the **** out of it a few years back (during the balance pass that added the variable firing arcs they cut out over half of the functionality of artemis). i just don't find it worth the tonnage or slot cost anymore.