62 replies to this topic

[RockmachinE]

Saved By The Bell, on 31 August 2024 - 10:17 PM, said:

Its your best argument?

Such a preposterous claim doesn't warrant a proper response. You're either exaggerating, generalizing or are genuinely terrible at MWO.

[East Indy]

RockmachinE, on 01 September 2024 - 12:00 AM, said:

Such a preposterous claim doesn't warrant a proper response. You're either exaggerating, generalizing or are genuinely terrible at MWO.

Don't bully players whose average MS is two less than yours. Seriously, dude.

The Warthog can pretty much solo any medium, and can probably take the lower end of heavies. Do something useful and record 1:1s with someone of equal skill, best out of 10.

I haven't played in weeks so hearing Mag and AP are getting peppered onto assaults is funny in a sad way.

No boating limits are a bad look for the player balancers and whoever getting paid. Reeks of dead game.

[Tiy0s]

We’re looking at AP Gauss and Magshot weapon nerfs. Not in the form of HSL, as ghost heat on a weapon designed almost exclusively around boating feels off.

I will admit that I was very hesitant to the idea of nerfing these weapons because they’ve been a renaissance to weaker or otherwise forgotten mechs. But they’ve also pushed the envelope too far on already strong mechs so we have to do something about them. We’re not finalized on how we want to nerf yet, but just wanted to let you all know that it is something we’re currently discussing.

[Duke Falcon]

Tiy0s, on 01 September 2024 - 09:22 AM, said:

We’re looking at AP Gauss and Magshot weapon nerfs. Not in the form of HSL, as ghost heat on a weapon designed almost exclusively around boating feels off.

I will admit that I was very hesitant to the idea of nerfing these weapons because they’ve been a renaissance to weaker or otherwise forgotten mechs. But they’ve also pushed the envelope too far on already strong mechs so we have to do something about them. We’re not finalized on how we want to nerf yet, but just wanted to let you all know that it is something we’re currently discussing.

Why not treat them like Gausses? Either add a charge time or limit how many one could use simultaneously. Both are minor change are but nuissances generally...

[RockmachinE]

East Indy, on 01 September 2024 - 04:49 AM, said:

Don't bully players whose average MS is two less than yours. Seriously, dude.

I told them not to panic and focus the Warthog down, what I got in return was a generalized, exaggerated blanket statement with a touch of victim mentality. Not a question for builds or tactics, not a well worded argument to support the claim. My response was appropriate.

No single mech can take any other mech in a 1 on 1.

You know what I just might do a little video for the "lights are OP" crowd just for shi*s and giggles.

Edited by RockmachinE, 01 September 2024 - 10:16 AM.

[BlueDevilspawn]

Duke Falcon, on 01 September 2024 - 09:37 AM, said:

Why not treat them like Gausses? Either add a charge time or limit how many one could use simultaneously. Both are minor change are but nuissances generally...

Gauss charge is not easily changed (note, this is charge specifically, not HSL). Increasing the charge limit would also apply to regular gauss (e.g., someone could charge and fire 3 or 4, for example). Limiting apg or magsto 2 would be anemic for a 2 damage weapon at 270m w/no skills. Mags and APG were created to be boated and will be tweaked accordingly.

[1453 R]

Tiy0s, on 01 September 2024 - 09:22 AM, said:

We’re looking at AP Gauss and Magshot weapon nerfs. Not in the form of HSL, as ghost heat on a weapon designed almost exclusively around boating feels off.

I will admit that I was very hesitant to the idea of nerfing these weapons because they’ve been a renaissance to weaker or otherwise forgotten mechs. But they’ve also pushed the envelope too far on already strong mechs so we have to do something about them. We’re not finalized on how we want to nerf yet, but just wanted to let you all know that it is something we’re currently discussing.

That is honestly disappointing to hear. As you said, they've been a big boon to designs that had fallen off the map and a great new way to bring ballistics back into the realm of smaller, lighter machines in a way PACS and LACS simply didn't and couldn't.. They're also just fun to use and provide a new way to play, even for larger machines. One of my favorite new assault 'Mechs is a Moonwalker with an Ultra/20, five AP Gauss, four SRM-6, and an entirely-too-large engine. Good/meta? Not even slightly - but nobody's ready for a 'Mech like Moonwalker to charge at them at north of 75kph blasting a horde of short-range weapons and easily able to engage enemy lights and nimble mids. Tons of fun, when I don't misplay and get caught out and die anyways.

Kneecapping Smolgauss to account for people's inability to simply Shoot The Adder will be sad.

[Bigbacon]

I say make them shorter range and/or longer cooldown and add ghost heat past maybe 4 of them. I run some mechs with more than 4 and it gets pretty ridiculouis when you can face hug heavies and what not and just pound them into the ground....also get stuck onthe reverse of that a lot also.

get a group drop in a bunch of lights boating these and its more or less game over unless they just memerun right into the entire team.

Something with them needs to change.

Edited by Bigbacon, 02 September 2024 - 09:04 AM.

[torsie]

I wonder what will this change be. If not ghost heat, I think that is best idea, make it more dangerous for big mechs and still useful for small mechs.
Weight or size would be good idea, but if they are supposed to be boated, then you can not make them bigger.
Less ammo makes them bad from smaller mechs, short range I think is not good idea, because most problems come from light mechs who are under your nose anyway.
Maybe velocity?

I am looking forward, I am curious, despite being quite strong (I think) I still like them, because now you can use more ballistic mechs and not use only machine guns.
So making them super weak would be bad again.

I think any mech can look strong when 4 people use it together.

[Bigbacon]

torsie, on 02 September 2024 - 10:42 AM, said:

I wonder what will this change be. If not ghost heat, I think that is best idea, make it more dangerous for big mechs and still useful for small mechs.
Weight or size would be good idea, but if they are supposed to be boated, then you can not make them bigger.
Less ammo makes them bad from smaller mechs, short range I think is not good idea, because most problems come from light mechs who are under your nose anyway.
Maybe velocity?

I am looking forward, I am curious, despite being quite strong (I think) I still like them, because now you can use more ballistic mechs and not use only machine guns.
So making them super weak would be bad again.

I think any mech can look strong when 4 people use it together.

what if they just did 1 damage vs 2? Makes them less valuable in a way vs an AC2 but still possibly better than MGs?

thats at least a 50% reduction in overall pin point damage every 2 seconds or less. Maybe make them a fixed cooldown t hat can't be changed?

the group problem can be easily solved by not allowing more than 2 man group in the solo queue and limiting teams to no more than 2 groups of 2. might getr an occasional sync drop but I think that not happen very often.

Edited by Bigbacon, 02 September 2024 - 11:09 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Bigbacon, on 02 September 2024 - 09:02 AM, said:

I say make them shorter range and/or longer cooldown and add ghost heat past maybe 4 of them

You only get one, 2 or more of these is just overkill. Honestly I'm surprised they had the same DPS as MGs when they dropped, so I fully expect a cooldown nerf. Range would hurt those who don't already have range quirks and HSL is just overkill given the FLE-19 is also going to get looked at and it's probably the most meta of the boats. I do wish Magshots synced with IS PPCs better though.

Bigbacon, on 02 September 2024 - 11:07 AM, said:

what if they just did 1 damage vs 2? Makes them less valuable in a way vs an AC2 but still possibly better than MGs?

Just no. No light is going to bother with AC2s so stop trying to make that a competition.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 02 September 2024 - 11:50 AM.

[1453 R]

An AC/2 weighs six tons.

Six. Tons.

Nobody alive is using those on any 'Mech smaller than a Rifleman, and even the Rifleman is mostly a meme. The AC/2's weight was set forty years ago when nobody knew a gorram bloody thing about BattleTech, and there is absolutely no reason on God's green earth it should still be a six-ton weapon. So no - turning an APG or Magshot into an even worse AC/2 is not the solution.

I am presuming we will see a cooldown nerf, as hitting its range effectively kills the weapon and a velocity nerf significant enough to be meaningful would also be super dumb. As would any form of charge-to-fire. It's a short-range, lightweight weapon designed to effectively engage quick, agile targets - it needs to be snappy. What it technically doesn't need to fulfill its primary* role of anti-lightweight weapon is a 2s cooldown. 2.5s would hurt, but would not likely kill the weapon. Y'know, except for the thirty or forty marginal variants that are just barely good enough with the guns as-is and will fall out of the game again with any nerf to them. Bleh.

What I honestly wish is that MWO had a system where stats on guns could get progressively worse the more of them existed on a machine. I.e. for every APG past 5, let's say, the cooldown increased by .2s So 5APG would still be 2s cooldown, but 6 would be 2.2, 7, would be 2.4, and 14 would be 3.8s. Ditto firing heat for energy weapons, spread for missile launchers, or whatever else needed to change such that there was a system of diminishing returns past [X] count of a given weapon.

Would it 100% Solve Boating Forever? No, and nor should it, a certain level of combining weapons effectively is fun. But Ghost Heat is technically a scaling-penalty system of that sort and it does its job...decently well. Even if it should apply prior to the shot and not before it, simply changing the base heat generation of the weapon rather than punishing firing too many at once. If it could also be Ghost Cooldown, Ghost Spread, or Ghost Whatever-Else-A-Gun-Needs, that would be vastly easier to use to control undesirable loadouts without brutalizing the 'Mechs using B-Tier or lower configurations.

Edited by 1453 R, 02 September 2024 - 01:20 PM.

[Ttly]

APG Warthogs/Fle-19s are just obnoxious and APG/Magshots as a weapon really feels like they are made for aimbotters to have a field day with.
Also Adders are still agile and quick enough to zip from cover to cover as much as a quick mediums does which synergizes even better with the entire gimmick of the weapon, so I do not get where the "just focus fire them stuff" comes from, 6 medium lasers loadouts just does not really compare to it either thanks to the instant damage.
But hey, it is still a light so it does apply when the players make mistakes.

Edited by Ttly, 03 September 2024 - 05:31 PM.

[1453 R]

Ttly, on 03 September 2024 - 05:02 PM, said:

APG Warthogs/Fle-19s are just obnoxious and APG/Magshots as a weapon really feels like they are made for aimbotters to have a field day with.
Also Adders are still agile and quick enough to zip from cover to cover as much as a quick mediums does which synergizes even better with the entire gimmick of the weapon, so I do not get where the "just focus fire them stuff" comes from, 6 medium lasers loadouts just does not really compare to it either thanks to the instant damage.
But hey, it is still a light so it does apply when the players make mistakes.

So...if an Adder pilot makes canny use of abundant cover to engage in agile hit-and-run skirmishing engagements perfectly suited to their machine's strengths, they're really dangerous?

Man. It's almost like somebody should do well if they can maximize their 'Mech's strengths while minimizing/covering their weaknesses or something...

[Ttly]

1453 R, on 04 September 2024 - 08:11 AM, said:

So...if an Adder pilot makes canny use of abundant cover to engage in agile hit-and-run skirmishing engagements perfectly suited to their machine's strengths, they're really dangerous? Man. It's almost like somebody should do well if they can maximize their 'Mech's strengths while minimizing/covering their weaknesses or something...

Yeah, except unlike something like LPPC/SNPPC builds that it plays similarly to, they can do this pinpoint alpha dozen times more in a short time since it's just way less heat, oh and only 2s cooldown compared to SNPPC's 4s I guess.
Being an ammo weapon isn't a real downside since all ammo really does is a limit on potential damage you could do in a match and usually anything more than 800 potential ammo damage is hopeful/lack of anything better to bring.
Having gauss explosion isn't a real downside to them either, at least on the lights/mediums as the structure HP of mechs at those weight bracket are low enough that if you got hit by a crit that would cause gaussplosion you would lose that limb anyway even if it weren't a crit in most cases, this is not to mention that the APG/Magshot ammo being non-explosive which makes them excellent way to pad your limbs against crits.

Edited by Ttly, 04 September 2024 - 09:54 AM.

[1453 R]

Ttly, on 04 September 2024 - 09:35 AM, said:

Yeah, except unlike something like LPPC/SNPPC builds that it plays similarly to, they can do this pinpoint alpha dozen times more in a short time since it's just way less heat, oh and only 2s cooldown compared to SNPPC's 4s I guess.
Being an ammo weapon isn't a real downside since all ammo really does is a limit on potential damage you could do in a match and usually anything more than 800 potential ammo damage is hopeful/lack of anything better to bring.
Having gauss explosion isn't a real downside to them either, at least on the lights/mediums as the structure HP of mechs at those weight bracket are low enough that if you got hit by a crit that would cause gaussplosion you would lose that limb anyway even if it weren't a crit in most cases, this is not to mention that the APG/Magshot ammo being non-explosive which makes them excellent way to pad your limbs against crits.

The 14 AP Gauss on a Warthog weigh 7 tons. Most builds run six to eight tons of ammunition for them, loadout dependent. To take your number we'll go with six, since that's 1200 total damage plus bonuses from Ammo Rack. Sufficient for most games, with a bit of padding against inevitable wiffs. Thirteen total tons for weaponry. Presuming you shave armor in an unhealthy manner and ignore the CT laser to fit four additional DHS, you get ~10 sustained DPS and 14 total.

The best snubshot builds I can find on Grim tend to have lower sustained DPS, though the older Snub/SL Firestarters and one of the UrbanMooks actually beat the Warthog in terms of maximum output. If not by much. All of them jump, which the Adder does not. A couple are significantly faster, and a couple have some pretty intense firepower for a light 'Mech. The UrbanMechs have way better profiles than the Adder and are significantly more durable. The Firestarters are likely the closest apples-to-apples comparison, and I will admit the FS9s will generally lose that fight. They have better profiles than the Adder, better durability quirks, but not by enough to outweight the Warthog's edge in firepower - even if most of the FS9s actually beat the Warthog pretty handily in single-shot burst damage. Not pinpoint instant damage, but two snubs and a mess of small lasers produces significantly more total damage than even fourteen APG.

The primary issue is all the Snub designs have to use iXLs to gain the weight needed for their loadouts, which heavily decreases their combat survivability. The Adder, of course, does not suffer this issue because the cXL is still the most ******** item in the game insofar as balance goes. An unfortunate relic of tabletop we're all stuck with.

Is the Warthog better than all the IS Snub lights? Probably. But I'm not sure it's by such a huge and drastic margin as people are protesting. The whole "They can fire faster!" bit is irrelevant if the 'Mech is doing what was otherwise given as their playstyle - shooting and scooting between cover. They can't duck in and out of cover reliably every two seconds to keep up their maximum fire rate (or if they can, those pilots deserve their wins), which narrows the gap between SNub builds and APG builds. Is 'Mechs also tend to have various forms of SuperMegaUltraQuirk to redress some of the balance disparity, which the Adder decidedly does not.

I just don't think this is nearly so catastrophic a problem as people proclaim it to be. Frankly, I don't think they need to touch the Magshot at all - its doubled size next to the APG is already a severe issue given the boat-y nature of the guns. A lot of 'Mechs have to give up quite a bit of internal space, trading away weight-saving upgrades simply to fit enough of the damn things in their machine to make them work. The FLE-19 is an infamous little troublemaker, but I don't think it's actually a problem. Very good, yes. Fun to play in that cracked-out rocket tag way an excellent superlight 'Mech should be? Absolutely. But it's not really a problem the way the Warthog may well be. If the Warthog didn't exist, nobody would have a (legitimate) problem with the APG. The Warthog is the only 'Mech that gives people conniptions with this weapon system, and frankly if NegaQuirks weren't off the table I'd simply say apply a 25% total cooldown nerf to the ADR-W pods specifically and call it a day.

Really, that's the best solution - NegaQuirk the ADR-W pods to blunt the 14APG build without harming the HMG build it was supposed to be used for, or ruining the APG for all the dozens of other 'Mechs that need it to stay the way it is.

[KursedVixen]

Saved By The Bell, on 26 July 2024 - 10:02 AM, said:

magshot-gauss lights so arrogant now, they even dont afraid streaks

more streaks, more streaks

clan streaks do less damage than Srms so buffing thier damage back to 2 per missile would help.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Ttly, on 03 September 2024 - 05:02 PM, said:

Also Adders are still agile and quick enough to zip from cover to cover as much as a quick mediums does

I'm curious of what your definition of a quick medium is......because an Adder ain't it.

[1453 R]

KursedVixen, on 04 September 2024 - 12:19 PM, said:

clan streaks do less damage than Srms so buffing thier damage back to 2 per missile would help.

I'm gonna be honest - even as a T4 Scrublander, when I'm out in one of my light zippy things? I don't really care about enemy Streaks. It's not that difficult to juke someone's lock in knife-fighting range, and even if I take a few flights it's sandpapered all over my 'Mech. If I'm on the ball and my target is already wounded, I can take a shoulder before a Streaker can do more than reduce my armor, or I can spot the Streaker ahead of time through the magic of the 'R' key and simply not engage until odds are more favorable. I'm way more wary of stuff with X-pulse lasers or machines with heavy instant alphas - The X-Pulse guys can chase me with fire, and the Beeg Boolet sorts only need to land a single good shot to put me in the can. Streak boats are not remotely the horrifying murder shield against lights they used to be, and minor damage buffs aren't reallyt going to fix that.

[Ttly]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 04 September 2024 - 12:29 PM, said:

I'm curious of what your definition of a quick medium is......because an Adder ain't it.

It has 80 accel, 85 decel, more than a Viper, still more than a Wolfhound too, I should've put emphasis agility in particular, not raw speed mainly, and 97kph with speed tweak putting higher to 104kph is pretty fast too.

Also yeah, after messing around with streaks I'd agree that they're not even that great against lights if they know to break LoS/Lock-On even just for half a second since everyone has R.Dep anyway, because god forbid LRM/Streak users gets lock-ons, it's really only useful as anti-light weapon on a quick platform to chase lights with/on open areas.

Edited by Ttly, 04 September 2024 - 02:39 PM.