People overstate the danger of backstabbing lights. They usually only carry alphas in the 30-40 point range or so - even if they get right up on you and are allowed to take the perfect opening shot you won't lose a component on a big assault. It's even unlikely that you'll lose important equipment. Only 62% of incoming damage translates to equipment damage, so you can expect to take maybe 15-20 damage or so after back armor. Small lasers and guns have at least 8 HP and it scales up from there - unless your torso is very sparsely loaded it's unlikely much breaks on the first hit (especially given the alpha that hits you is probably rolling lots of small crits that spread the damage out instead of one big crit that could concentrate it).
And realistically, they shouldn't be able to sneak up and take that perfect shot very often. Good teammates will call out light mechs that are trying to sneak around - even average teammates will shoot at them in pursuit of matchscore, which provides a visual and audible alert to the player they were creeping on. Additionally, they have direct item and skill counters in a way that most non-LRM builds do not. Seismic Sensors provides a crucial moment of warning that a light mech is getting in position to shoot - even if it doesn't let you anticipate them, it can be the difference between spreading 40 damage across three torsos as you turn and eating it all into one component. A UAV can provide similar coverage, albeit on a timer and with destructibility.
And even if you are in the worst situation possible - isolated from your team, totally oblivious, and suddenly take a big hit from behind - you can put your back against the wall and fight back with a lot of success. One on one an assault, even an assault that was built for sniping, will usually beat a light mech of equal skill in a straight up fight. At the very least it will take FOREVER to kill the assault through its frontal armor, and the light will be an ammo-starved stumbling scrap pile afterwards.
I tried to run backstabbing lights and ultimately gave on all but one of them because they just suck. Their greatest benefit is the distraction they create in the enemy team, but you can take a midrange laservomit/PPC poptart and accomplish the same thing with less risk. If you're dying a lot to them, something is going seriously wrong in either your positioning or your buildmaking.
kalashnikity, on 29 January 2025 - 04:08 PM, said:
If you are in a tall assault, with no arm mounted weapons, you are cooked... they will simply face tank you and you can only shoot over their head.
It's become so ubiquitous that I think people forget putting all your weapons in the torsos on high mounts is itself a tradeoff - you're giving up the responsive aiming and tracking ability of arm-mounted weapons in exchange for convergence, weight savings from armor stripping, and peeking ability. It
should feel bad to fight a light mech in that sort of assault - because you sacrificed things that would have helped you in that matchup for power elsewhere.
(as an aside, crotch-sniffing is an act of desperation in modern MWO. Even when it was more common to be unable to aim down far enough to hit the light it relied on the assault being totally isolated because otherwise their team would just shoot you in your immobile backside. Now, the huge majority of assaults can aim down far enough to shoot lights, and those that can't can always take torso pitch in the skill tree to prevent exactly this kind of situation).
1
