65 replies to this topic

[Besh]

Love how we succesfully turned this Thread into the exact opposite of [Title] .

Thanks a lot guys, appreciate it much . Theres a lot of new 'Mechs to learn for me it looks like .

[RickySpanish]

The best Lights I have found so far are the Incubus 2, Wolfhound 2 and Wolfhound 1A. The INC-2 is the same build from Grimmechs - 2 HLL and LMGs. The Wolfhounds both carry a BL and ERMLs, but the quirks afford different strategies. The WLF-2 is all about sustained damage, and it can alpha about 3 times in a row. The 1A trades sustain for noticeably shorter laser burn, and can alpha about twice before needing to cool off. You could try the Grinner as well, but the ECM means it carries less and also gets less quirks, I think it's not particularly worth it but it is still good.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

RickySpanish, on 02 December 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

The best Lights I have found so far are the Incubus 2, Wolfhound 2 and Wolfhound 1A. The INC-2 is the same build from Grimmechs - 2 HLL and LMGs. The Wolfhounds both carry a BL and ERMLs, but the quirks afford different strategies. The WLF-2 is all about sustained damage, and it can alpha about 3 times in a row. The 1A trades sustain for noticeably shorter laser burn, and can alpha about twice before needing to cool off. You could try the Grinner as well, but the ECM means it carries less and also gets less quirks, I think it's not particularly worth it but it is still good.

love my grinner, but the ecm-less variants seem to perform better; like you said: quirks.
additionally, ecm gives you an advantage vs say t5-4 people, but is 1,5t of "simply less stuff" once you go against those who are aware of what you're doing or trying to do.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Besh, on 02 December 2023 - 02:03 AM, said:

So, you want to make 'Mechs make perform equally across the Classes

Not quite, but despite MWO being the best game for lights, they are still the weakest class. They also have the least build options just because of the tonnage of equipment being too high to make a good build out of ACs for example without uber quirks. What if instead of trying to give it uber quirks, you just made it heavier? Honestly, I don't think it breaks the spirit of mechs but also makes them more competitive without the need for uber quirks. To bridge those, yes, you have to ditch quite a few TT construction rules. Tonnages being looser, both on chassis' and weapons. Now nowhere did I say the mechlab is problematic, just TT construction rules, do not conflate the two. MW4 had a mechlab without using really any of the TT construction rules. It played loose with tonnages and tbh, that was the smart choice it just didn't go far enough IMO.

Again, I'm not saying anything about ruining BT or what makes MW unique in the shooter space because gameplay is the exact same and THAT'S what makes the game unique. Well that and having some level of customization and tuning available but that really doesn't have to be complex like TT to be enjoyable.

[RickySpanish]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 02 December 2023 - 07:54 AM, said:

love my grinner, but the ecm-less variants seem to perform better; like you said: quirks.
additionally, ecm gives you an advantage vs say t5-4 people, but is 1,5t of "simply less stuff" once you go against those who are aware of what you're doing or trying to do.

Yep that's the question often on my mind too. ECM 'Mechs tend to lack additional hardpoints, and 1.5 tons is a lot of tonnage to spend. However the advantage of not having a red UI indicator on you does afford an extra moment to fire before players 'see' you.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

RickySpanish, on 02 December 2023 - 09:31 AM, said:

Yep that's the question often on my mind too. ECM 'Mechs tend to lack additional hardpoints, and 1.5 tons is a lot of tonnage to spend. However the advantage of not having a red UI indicator on you does afford an extra moment to fire before players 'see' you.

The problem with not being red boxable is that you CAN be spotted but you don't get the derp ping to let you know that someone had you targeted.

[Meep Meep]

ECM is just as important in tryhard tier 1 as super casual tier 5. Not having that red dorito is more effective than it would seem. I know this by the difference in tactics when I run lights. Lights with ecm more or less can roam the field and be ignored until they shoot where non ecm will get casually spotted at 800~1200m if they expose even a sliver of the mech and a red is facing that direction.

[Davegt27]

I just looked at my loyalty Jenner
and the mech has one weapon lol

I wonder if any assaults have one weapon ??

or how many other Lights have only one weapon

its impossible to have any balance or any usefulness for mechs with one weapon

now I am sure someone is going to say --oh a one weapon mech is totally viable

edit:

Edited by Davegt27, 02 December 2023 - 03:13 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Davegt27, on 02 December 2023 - 03:13 PM, said:

I just looked at my loyalty Jenner and the mech has one weapon lol

The other major streamers have also ran it with binary or lpl and had even better performance.

It's a high skill floor mech were map knowledge for superior positioning pays off.

[ImaginaryFireball]

Davegt27, on 02 December 2023 - 03:13 PM, said:

I just looked at my loyalty Jenner
and the mech has one weapon lol

I wonder if any assaults have one weapon ??

or how many other Lights have only one weapon

its impossible to have any balance or any usefulness for mechs with one weapon

now I am sure someone is going to say --oh a one weapon mech is totally viable

It has %99.9 laser cool-down reduction. A large pulse laser does about 12 damage per second, the equivalent of 12 machine guns at several times the range and with no spread.

[Fookerton]

RickySpanish, on 02 December 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

The best Lights I have found so far are the Incubus 2, Wolfhound 2 and Wolfhound 1A. The INC-2 is the same build from Grimmechs - 2 HLL and LMGs. The Wolfhounds both carry a BL and ERMLs, but the quirks afford different strategies. The WLF-2 is all about sustained damage, and it can alpha about 3 times in a row. The 1A trades sustain for noticeably shorter laser burn, and can alpha about twice before needing to cool off. You could try the Grinner as well, but the ECM means it carries less and also gets less quirks, I think it's not particularly worth it but it is still good.

Just a re: regarding the wolfhounds

This speaks more to my skill than anything probably, but also a warning to others: it is extremely easy to blow yourself up when adding a BLC to the 1A. The shorter burn quirk means that the alpha heat spike is much harder to manage, or at least you think you have the room on your heat bar when you in fact, do not.

I do the same in the grinner actually, but that's just because of less HS I think.

EDIT: Just to be more on topic, recently I played a whole month exclusively playing lights and my avg score jumped +40 points so .... :shrug:

Unless something drastically changed since September?

Edited by Fookerton, 02 December 2023 - 03:55 PM.

[JediPanther]

Just make them BIGER that'll fix them. Just like the last time in 2016. Give them a much needed RE_RE_SIZE. A few of them are only as tall as a 65t mech.

[Curccu]

Davegt27, on 02 December 2023 - 03:13 PM, said:

I just looked at my loyalty Jenner
and the mech has one weapon lol
I wonder if any assaults have one weapon ??
or how many other Lights have only one weapon
its impossible to have any balance or any usefulness for mechs with one weapon
now I am sure someone is going to say --oh a one weapon mech is totally viable

How is jr7-al not viable?
Before any skills calculated into this it can do 216,7 dmg before overheating and in less than 18 seconds. @ range of 400, that is pretty damn good.

Maybe check quirks before QQ about mech being bad?

[foamyesque]

Meep Meep, on 02 December 2023 - 01:38 PM, said:

ECM is just as important in tryhard tier 1 as super casual tier 5. Not having that red dorito is more effective than it would seem. I know this by the difference in tactics when I run lights. Lights with ecm more or less can roam the field and be ignored until they shoot where non ecm will get casually spotted at 800~1200m if they expose even a sliver of the mech and a red is facing that direction.

ECM's the best expenditure of slots and tonnage you can possibly make, yeah, across every tier, even if you account for the fact that ECM 'mechs tend to have impaired firepower in one way or another.

It is very noticeable how much of a difference there is in how fast people can figure out there's an ECM machine shooting at them depending on tier though. Single biggest indicator to me of being matched downtier instead of equal/up is how much time ECM buys you.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Curccu, on 02 December 2023 - 06:02 PM, said:

Before any skills calculated into this it can do 216,7 dmg before overheating and in less than 18 seconds. @ range of 400, that is pretty damn good.

TBF, that also requires you to be staring that entire time. Compared to 6 ERML which allows you to jump and shoot and do 150-180 in 22.5s-27s with less than 5-6s of exposure. One seems much better for lights, maybe if it had two hardpoints it would be more of a threat.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 02 December 2023 - 09:44 PM.

[Heavy Money]

Been running lasers on Wolfhounds and Incubi yesterday and today. Easy 400+ MS each match, even on losses. Lots of situations where if I was in an assault or heavy I'd have gotten overrun.

[RickySpanish]

Fookerton, on 02 December 2023 - 03:51 PM, said:

Just a re: regarding the wolfhounds

This speaks more to my skill than anything probably, but also a warning to others: it is extremely easy to blow yourself up when adding a BLC to the 1A. The shorter burn quirk means that the alpha heat spike is much harder to manage, or at least you think you have the room on your heat bar when you in fact, do not.

I do the same in the grinner actually, but that's just because of less HS I think.

EDIT: Just to be more on topic, recently I played a whole month exclusively playing lights and my avg score jumped +40 points so .... :shrug:

Unless something drastically changed since September?

It's best to think of structure as extra heat bar on the 1A. The trick is to not end up spectating because your heat debt ended up in collections.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

High skill floor doesn't mean a whole lot to us sitting at the lower end.

[Breaktime]

pbiggz, on 01 December 2023 - 11:38 AM, said:

Just a corollary thought; if you were to build a mech game from the ground up, like MWO (Where the objective is to kill the other mechs) you wouldn't bother to include anything smaller than a phoenix hawk. Below that size, diminishing returns from the lack of weight and durability start to be intolerable, and the roles those mechs are meant to carry out (recon mostly) don't exist in this game. I think thats probably why I get a kick out of the light mediums (40-45 tonners) far more than I ever got out of 30-35 tonners.

Regarding the cauldron approach: I dont think there's a deliberate intent to kill lights off. On the contrary, I think there hasn't been an attempt to do anything to them at all and that's the problem: neglect. As they've shaped the meta, they've left light mechs behind, and they were already by all measures, the worst weight class in the game.

I'm a relatively new player and only recently made tier 4, so maybe my words stop being true at tier 1. I accept this possibility. That said, at my end of the ladder lights are strong. Assault mechs are usually are top damage dealers, but right under them are light mechs. I started with lights (cheaper to get and faster queue times), moved to urbanmechs because I thought it would be funny, and with practice I find them to be very powerful. I tend to favor light mechs now because I know all the tricks, and I haven't figured out how to consistently pilot larger mechs. Clearly the skill set doesn't translate, suggesting light mechs offer unique advantages, and I am relying on these advantages in game.

At mid range, Light mechs are small enough they can peak, shoot, and get back into cover before players can aim, fire, and have the projectile travel to hit you, even if they know you are there. If it's a laser, the time it spends clipping my mech amounts to insignificant damage. Lights are small enough they can shift and peak from all kinds of places so that an opponent can't reasonably pre-aim you either. Even strong players cannot endure these peek shots for very long because it means they will get shot apart too quickly when they do have to fight something scary, so they shift to seek a new position, so you can shape the battlefield if you pick and harass your targets well, and this shaping the battlefield is the real strength to this ability. Lights can also do this kind of thing better than others because they are small enough they can find cover behind slopes and other features other mechs won't be able to hide behind as they move.

On some maps, terrain also gives another benefit, where lights can act as a sort of 'brawl booster'. The trenches maps are full of this kind of cover. On some approaches there is enough short cover that lights can push alongside brawler mechs while being protected by this cover and without getting in the way, where mediums and larger moving across the same terrain both couldn't use the small cover effectively because the cover is too small and they act as less of an increase because they block each other's line of fire. On some maps there are slopes where a light can peek alongside another mech without getting in each others' way. This very significant in my experience.

[Davegt27]

what a joke lol

Edited by Davegt27, 03 December 2023 - 09:23 AM.