33 replies to this topic

[CFC Conky]

In my opinion, Clan MPLs are a bit more useful because of their increased range but otherwise, you need to boat them and the bigger the mech, the more you'll need. I try to carry a minimum of 4 on a light mech, 8 for a heavy and, well, more for an assault-class ride. The IS MPL's pair well with IS small lasers on lights and lighter medium mechs to mitigate hard point and/or weight constraints. If I had my way I'd like to see a range increase to 270m like the IS medium laser since you're already paying the price of increased weight and heat to use them. That said, I'm no balance expert so increasing the range could be a bad idea.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 28 September 2024 - 10:13 AM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

not sure about the MPLs since i have never really used them (i prefer more of a mid range play style most of the time, hell i have never once used standard SLs or SPLs. the rare cases i us smalls i only ever use the ERs). they just never seemed worth the extra tonnage and heat with that lower range. hell i see standard MLs as the quintessential "back-up" weapon with 90% of my mechs having at least 2.

as for MRMs that is something i have much more experience with. yes the smaller launchers always seem to preform better mostly because 1- time to fire volley (they get all their missiles out quickly) and 2- tighter spread. though for some mechs and builds an MRM-40 is just more tonnage and heat efficient than say 4 MRM-10s. i never really do the whole 2 MRM-40 builds because i try to avoid ghost heat whenever possible. take my Missile Marauder- if i remember right it runs something like 2 MRM-30 and 4 or 6 MLs. the MRMs are good for suppression and oh **** moments on the enemy while the MLs are when you get closer and can now pick apart those weakened components. MRMs are just not a weapon system that preforms well on its own. they are something that do their best wok when paired with a more precise weapon (i have also Paired them with LBX-10s and even standard AC/10 to pretty good effect as they have similar range brackets and at those ranges the difference in velocity isn't that noticeable.)

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 02 October 2024 - 05:50 AM.

[CronenbergWorld]

Right now MPL range is too low for tonnage and heat bl-6-knt running that too test MPL and they are weak.

[Remover of Obstacles]

BlueDevilspawn, on 25 September 2024 - 09:53 PM, said:

We are likely nerfing cooldown slightly for magshot/apgauss, as has been said elsewhere. They are not being removed.

Please consider a 15% to 25% range nerf as well.

That would help some short range weapons being able to hit back.

At least it won't be full damage for shooting outside of streak range. Never mind, I think streaks were removed from the game.

[VeeOt Dragon]

nope we still have streaks they just aren't used much.

[Ken Harkin]

VeeOt Dragon, on 06 October 2024 - 07:54 PM, said:

nope we still have streaks they just aren't used much.

The preponderance of ECM and stealth makes streaks a dicey proposition. Typically an SRM6+A will trump a SSRM6.

[VeeOt Dragon]

pretty much

[Pixel Hunter]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 27 September 2024 - 06:05 AM, said:

Mechs on average have more health than they used to, part of arms race/power creep that's been active since the 2018 heat sink changes pushed firepower up quite a bit. That is likely part of the reason MRMs don't feel as good is because that sandblasting just isn't as potent as it used to be.

I'm thinking maybe they need to start rolling that back. 50-80 pinpoint and 100+ spread alphas are pretty common now. I almost feel like a mech is underpowered if it's not 50 alpha for a medium. Buffing a lot of bad hitbox mechs with a ton of structure was a band-aid, but I think we need to start making heat more of a factor again.

[Void Angel]

misachii, on 26 September 2024 - 04:15 AM, said:

the biggest problem is that you put 6 med pulses on a grasshopper (heavy) and expect it to perform well.
grasshopper 5j is wasted tonnage for 6 medpulses, you would be way better with 3 binarys on that or 4 large x pulses.

these weapons are either for boating like on the victor legendery where you can put 10 medpulses or if you want to play with med pulses take a mech that is made for it like the wolfhound grinner, ecm and 5 medpulses, and its a light so you actually usefull tonnage vs weapons.

the biggest problem with mrms is their slow travel time and the longer range you can fire them and desynch.
you hit more with srms simply for the reason you fire them on half distance of mrms thus the desynch eats less.
try mrms on trial maps with the standing still mechs, they actually rip those apart pretty well. the problem is latency slow travel time and long distance.

Point of order: the Testing Grounds 'mechs are stock armor without quirks, so you have to adjust for that when evaluating weapon effects on target.

[Void Angel]

Thinking about MPL builds, I find that I'm not seeing the problem with them for Lights like the Grinner, or to fill in extra heat capacity. However, some builds that used to be better in the past are harder to make work today. But that's not necessarily the weapon, per se.

Consider my Thunderbolt 5SS. It's quirked for wubs, it's built for wubs, MPLs used to be its bread and butter. But it feels like an uphill battle to use it in today's meta. Now, feelings aren't numbers, and we shouldn't treat them like they are; however, I just returned to the game, last year-ish, from a long hiatus, which gives me a different perspective. I didn't experience all of the gradual changes that happened while I was gone, and the difference seems to be pronounced enough that I'm confident the build's performance has dropped off. The question is, why?

Some off-the-cuff logic gives me some probable culprits: relative weapon buffs, new weapons, buffs to other 'mechs, and game mechanical changes that impact the meta. Weapon buffs are always in flux, but MPLs have been tuned a bit here and there; particularly, they've been tuned after the introduction of the newer timeline weapons. It's possible more tuning needs to be done, but I don't see a smoking gun here. Ditto for other 'mechs; my old ThunderWubby wasn't being eclipsed by new 'mechs or weapons, it just didn't seem to be lasting as long in combat. Hmm, are my other Thunderbolts having that problem?

Kind of yeah, they are. Not to the point of being broken! I still play my Thunderbolts, and I have a lot of fun with a variety of builds - but compared to Back in the Day? During Faction Warfare, people used to leg Thunderbolts like a Light, because the chassis' blocky hit boxes spread damage so well. I once walked through an entire enemy team on Terra Therma, and then turned around for another pass: my guildie's disgusted "how are you still alive?" is one of my most cherished memories in MWO. Nobody does that any more; the amount of firepower being slung around on the modern battlefield makes it unnecessary.

So I think that's it. Balance is a web, not a slider, and a lot of things go into weapon performance on the field. Are MPLs underpowered? Eh, I dunno; I don't have an opinion on that, really. Nor is this a "Buff Thunderbolts" post; I might wish they had armor quirks instead of Machine Gun Farm structure, but I'm not arguing for a change. The purpose of this rabbit-hole is to demonstrate how a simple balance question can have a non-intuitive answer. As a final example, why not "just" reduce weapon damage across the board to increase time to kill? Remember the feedback thread from the last Event Queue, with 8v8? A lot of complaints centered around how slow brawlers like the Atlas were over-tuned - because for 8v8, they are. Nothing is simple here, and a certain degree of agnosticism is warranted.

Edited by Void Angel, 12 October 2024 - 07:44 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Void Angel, on 12 October 2024 - 07:43 AM, said:

Nobody does that any more; the amount of firepower being slung around on the modern battlefield makes it unnecessary.

On average, there is just more health on the field thanks to armor quirks galore and the skill tree redo that made survival easier to grab with other stuff. That created an arms race and some weapons just haven't kept up. Short range pulse lasers have become obsolete because they lack the sustained DPS or upfront damage to be relevant (cSPLs being somewhat of an exception, but I think their use has even dropped off). Shout out to cHMLs and cERSL which also feel entirely outclassed outside mechs quirked for it, which I think is just the Jenner IIC for cHMLs.

MRMs suffer a bit similarly but also suffer from such a fast meta (average speed is higher than any other meta in MWO thanks to MASC's power), the velocity that isn't much better than SRMs makes it just as easy to kite against leaving MRMs pretty much just as assault farmers and they just don't have the range to do that as safely or as effectively given mid-range probably has the most potent alphas.

The increasing of health and alphas also shifted the minimum weight/hardpoints for good alphas/weapons to be higher increasing the desire for hardpoint inflation ironically.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 12 October 2024 - 07:53 AM.

[Void Angel]

I've been going through some of the DLC content for MW5, and one of the things I have to halt myself on when I tune builds is trying to take too much gun. Heat is a much more stringent limiter on weapon fire in that game, and the longer cooldowns for certain weapons make it much easier to use different weapon types together.

[Void Angel]

And yeah, there's a lot more health overall, with 'mechs like the Atlas getting huge armor quirks to compensate them for their hardpoints, and give them a dedicated role at the same time. But between 12v12 and hardpoint inflation, there's less use for targeted damage and component destruction than there used to be, I think.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Void Angel, on 12 October 2024 - 11:57 AM, said:

And yeah, there's a lot more health overall, with 'mechs like the Atlas getting huge armor quirks to compensate them for their hardpoints, and give them a dedicated role at the same time. But between 12v12 and hardpoint inflation, there's less use for targeted damage and component destruction than there used to be, I think.

I think health quirks just got overused. Mechs with bad hitboxes/mounts should maybe have a little bit of health quirks but the thing they are really missing is firepower so that when they poke they can make the most of it. Low mounts suffer much less for brawling/pushing and if you have firepower you can punish pokes, armor helps you push, but if you skew too much to armor/firepower you end up with either a mech that gets farmed hard or a mech that is too much of a glass cannon (ie too risky). The problem is the mechlab gives very little control over amount of firepower a mech can be limited to which was actually a thing in a certain MW4 mod for example JJs typically meant less overall firepower, as did electronics, so for example the Shadow Cat B was extremely limited in firepower because it had JJs, ECM, and BAP. Same is true for what weapons could actually be mounted in high mounts (like Battlemaster).