42 replies to this topic

[GreyNovember]

Quick TLDR:
- The addition of small PPFLD ballistics good overall, but make hunchbacks even worse in comparison
- Hunchbacks have to work extra hard / be extra lucky to do "okay" vs other mechs in it's weight range
- Single big gun isn't scary on the chassis it's built around


Specifically, big ballistic shoulder hunchbacks.

An AC20 strapped to one should be horrifying. But in practice a bunch of magshot/AP Gauss accomplish roughly the same thing, probably fire faster, colder, and cost less tonnage to mount relative to the weight range of a hunchback.

The Grid Iron's Gauss, while it fires quickly, doesn't really work as a weapon if you ping people for 15, and they retaliate for, on average, 45-ish damage. Spread, granted, but they can keep that up for longer than you can peek and shoot unless the only thing you hit is the head, every single time.

This is to say nothing of the fact that Hunchbacks, by their very nature, have a massive target painted on their right shoulder that makes it evaporate quickly, no matter how you quirk it. Because unlike the shield on the LGD Centurion which twists to shield your body and catch incoming fire, people absolutely want to shoot you there, and you probably can't twist it away from them.

And yes, I was slapped by that one Adder build.

I'm not advocating for them to be gutted. Scary lights good.

I just want choosing the Hunchback to not feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot and being even more of a liability than I probably am, and that specific Adder build felt like the best comparison for something encroaching on it's territory, and a benchmark for what driving a hunchie should feel like in terms of threat.

[Meep Meep]

Single ballistics are not really meant to be used alone in the current meta even heavily quirked. Gotta back it up with secondary weapons or run in a lance where you are not always the primary target when exposing.

As to the gauss argument those 45 damage alphas tend to be short or mid range vs the gauss hitting from across the map so if you are trading and losing to a 45 point brawler then maybe its more due to positioning than an actual imbalance?

[Gasboy]

The reason why it isn't 'horrifying' (not that it ever was) is that everyone know to shoot the hump to neuter the mech. Or just shoot the mech because lots of weapons fire faster.

Also, gauss rifles on their own are really meant for sniping, and if you're losing on the trade, move somewhere else.

The Hunchie's issues existed long before the ap/magshot weapons, and there are planty of people running around in tbem still.

Edited by Gasboy, 19 May 2024 - 07:09 AM.

[feeWAIVER]

GreyNovember, on 19 May 2024 - 02:14 AM, said:

An AC20 strapped to one should be horrifying.

It's not horrifying, but it is certainly intimidating.
While you do have to protect the hunch, the 4G is incredibly deadly poking from corners and hills.

[CFC Conky]

To be fair, the Hunchie is a 50-ton ride, eating a 45pt alpha’s gonna hurt.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 19 May 2024 - 08:36 AM.

[Gasboy]

It's just a flesh wound!

[ReginaldVanjaster]

oh look its the venerable forum community telling you youre wrong

Youre not wrong. They are not wrong

They are realists

We are idealists

We like to have fun with the mechs we like

They like to win with the mechs that are top tier

The real question is, why the hell are there seemingly so little idealists working on the dev team ensuring that the regular players who simply want to enjoy the game without a roster of s tier mechs?

OR, why is noone among the devs or the venerable forum community calling for the bcdef tier mechs to be buffed?

I tried it. I was a bit past somewhat flamed/trolled. and ultimately my posts were locked.

p.s. the hunchback is a great mech but needs to look less like fricken igor.

Good Day Sir!

Gasboy, on 19 May 2024 - 09:07 AM, said:

It's just a flesh wound!

wrong mech gasboy

That would be my black knight

[GreyNovember]

Meep Meep, on 19 May 2024 - 03:28 AM, said:

Single ballistics are not really meant to be used alone in the current meta even heavily quirked. Gotta back it up with secondary weapons or run in a lance where you are not always the primary target when exposing.

Arguably making the hunch fire stupidly quick, not unlike that one Jenner with a zero cooldown laser quirk, would at least make fighting one a genuine threat, instead of something where you tap the RT a few times while tanking 20 damage shots, then lightly tickle the exposed structure to neuter the enemy mech.

The Huginn in the past with it's rapid fire SRM4s also comes to mind. Giving it THAT level of obscene firepower would at least make it feel like the inbuilt disadvantage of it's geometry would be worthwhile.

Piling on more defensive quirks just lets you *maybe* take one more alpha to the RT, while not actually threatening someone more.

[Bud Crue]

ReginaldVanjaster, on 19 May 2024 - 09:16 AM, said:

...why is noone among the devs or the venerable forum community calling for the bcdef tier mechs to be buffed?

I think because there are more than a few among the devs/Cauldron who are convinced that most, if not all mechs "can be competitive in the right hands" and if that's your view, and you are making the decisions, then most mechs will be viewed as fine the way they are. It's inherently subjective but that's the way it is. I mean, I see the point of the OP, but I totally disagree that one needs to work particularly hard to do "OK" in a Hunchy (they're mostly pretty good in my view) , and yet I too raise the same sort issues for other mechs that seem to me as being particularly bad or require extreme effort to do "OK" in and am also regularly told that such mechs are fine (Panther 10P, for example). Whadiyagonnado?

Edited by Bud Crue, 19 May 2024 - 10:03 AM.

[KursedVixen]

GreyNovember, on 19 May 2024 - 02:14 AM, said:

Quick TLDR:
- The addition of small PPFLD ballistics good overall, but make hunchbacks even worse in comparison
- Hunchbacks have to work extra hard / be extra lucky to do "okay" vs other mechs in it's weight range
- Single big gun isn't scary on the chassis it's built around


Specifically, big ballistic shoulder hunchbacks.

An AC20 strapped to one should be horrifying. But in practice a bunch of magshot/AP Gauss accomplish roughly the same thing, probably fire faster, colder, and cost less tonnage to mount relative to the weight range of a hunchback.

The Grid Iron's Gauss, while it fires quickly, doesn't really work as a weapon if you ping people for 15, and they retaliate for, on average, 45-ish damage. Spread, granted, but they can keep that up for longer than you can peek and shoot unless the only thing you hit is the head, every single time.

This is to say nothing of the fact that Hunchbacks, by their very nature, have a massive target painted on their right shoulder that makes it evaporate quickly, no matter how you quirk it. Because unlike the shield on the LGD Centurion which twists to shield your body and catch incoming fire, people absolutely want to shoot you there, and you probably can't twist it away from them.

And yes, I was slapped by that one Adder build.

I'm not advocating for them to be gutted. Scary lights good.

I just want choosing the Hunchback to not feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot and being even more of a liability than I probably am, and that specific Adder build felt like the best comparison for something encroaching on it's territory, and a benchmark for what driving a hunchie should feel like in terms of threat.

I've always though the stock hunchback IIC needed more ammo or something since you really can't put much else into it when i carrys the dual uac 20's

[feeWAIVER]

The hunchback can fire while only revealing like 10% of your mech.
The 4G is uber quirked for AC20.
The 4P has an impressive alpha.
The 4SP is a strong brawler.

The mech is short, agile, tanky, and has good hardpoints.
I never look at a hunchback on my team and think that player made a bad choice.

[GreyNovember]

LapisMaddog, on 19 May 2024 - 01:49 PM, said:

(And the Hunchback's RT is not much of a weakness you can shield with the other side which is good enough in qp most of the time and +28 armor +12 structure makes it equal too heavy mech's structure and armor)

You can do lots of things, hypothetically.

But it's quite a bit harder practically to shield the Hunch than it is, say, a Centurion's gun arm.

The latter feels like it performs much better as a result, having similar output with superior geometry.

I again posit that just adding more HP doesn't do all that much, if it's always able to be picked off.

[Void Angel]

Adding more durability to the iconic shoulder mount does help. But the way Hunchbacks - or really all middle-mobility Mediums work - is that you can't be the one they're shooting at very often. No 'mech has that much durability. Instead, you want to engage alongside teammates - even with a Gauss build on the Grid Iron - and that's not always going to happen easily.

So, as with most Mediums that don't have high mobility, you'll need to master positioning and focus on not trading if you can help it. My favorite tactic is to become someone's "Hunchbuddy." Find someone in a big 'mech who wants to engage at close-to-medium ranges, and just peek with him. If all goes well, you'll take your shot just after people return fire at your Heavy/Assault buddy, and you'll only take grazing fire from people who shot late. It can be hard to do in practice, and sometimes you have to change up who your buddy is mid-match, but it works great if you get your positioning down. If the enemy team lets you, you can mix in traditional trading and working angles as well.

[CFC Conky]

At my tier I can get decent results with the Deathwish using it as a Clan version of the 4G. 1xAC20 and 5xERML.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[Gasboy]

ReginaldVanjaster, on 19 May 2024 - 09:16 AM, said:

oh look its the venerable forum community telling you youre wrong

Well an AC/20 on a Hunchie isn't horrifying. It's objectively the wrong word here.

Quote

They are realists
We are idealists

Idealism doesn't make for great game balance.

Quote

We like to have fun with the mechs we like
They like to win with the mechs that are top tier

No, we all like to have fun in mechs we like. The difference is that some acknowledge that some mechs are better than others for a specific situation. Some weapons are better than others for a specific situation. Some tactics are better than others for a specific situation. Sorry, you have to accept that if you go into battle with one single weapon, you risk losing that weapon if an opponent knows where to shoot you. There's little that can be done, fairly, to fix that. Also, it exposes the flaws in lore builds, at least as far as translating them from BT to MWO goes.

Quote

The real question is, why the hell are there seemingly so little idealists working on the dev team ensuring that the regular players who simply want to enjoy the game without a roster of s tier mechs?

OR, why is noone among the devs or the venerable forum community calling for the bcdef tier mechs to be buffed?

Being an idealist doesn't do proper balance. Being a realist does.

And who says they're not calling for buffs for older mechs? QoL is a thing Cauldron is working on..

Edited by Gasboy, 19 May 2024 - 08:16 PM.

[Void Angel]

We did literally get a bevvy of QoL fixes for jump-centric mech builds - specifically the ones that are jumpy in the lore. That's a really good thing, because those chassis have been underperformers, too. Hence, you can see that PGI is paying attention to older variants. It's just, you know, there's about a thousand of them.

[MarcinT1981]

CFC Conky, on 19 May 2024 - 06:26 PM, said:

At my tier I can get decent results with the Deathwish using it as a Clan version of the 4G. 1xAC20 and 5xERML.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

hbk-iic-dw

[Gasboy]

Void Angel, on 19 May 2024 - 09:49 PM, said:

We did literally get a bevvy of QoL fixes for jump-centric mech builds - specifically the ones that are jumpy in the lore. That's a really good thing, because those chassis have been underperformers, too. Hence, you can see that PGI is paying attention to older variants. It's just, you know, there's about a thousand of them.

So.. they should all be up to snuff by Friday?

[CFC Conky]

MarcinT1981, on 20 May 2024 - 04:11 AM, said:

hbk-iic-dw

Yup, that’ll work too although I usually don’t like shaving that much armour off the legs.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Hunchy was kinda meh even before APG/Magshot, it's a problem of mounting a big ballistic as your main weapon in a weight class where weight is still at a premium.

Ballistic weapon's big sell is their heat efficiency for the big initial tonnage investment to mount them, however lights/mediums don't really care about that, they need some combination of speed, JJs, and DPS to really compete against the bigger poke mechs which will always out-trade unless you are using one or more of those three things to force more favorable engagements. Energy weapons typically offer the cheapest way to boost your DPS (outside of MGs and APGs) which is why typically the best lights and mediums have been either energy boats or fast MG spam. Even with the quirks the 4G has, the sustained DPS isn't awful but the burst DPS is pretty meh for a medium. You can generally get better DPS on MGs/laser spam mechs all with either better speed and/or range.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 20 May 2024 - 08:03 AM.