I don't think that PGI has gone the right direction with the most recent patch - even with the heat tuning of the heavy energy
weapons:
Heat Tuning on Large Lasers and PPCs
- Large Laser stays at 7.0.
- Large Pulse Laser reduced from 9.0 to 7.3.
- Extended Range Large Laser reduced from 10.0 to 9.5.
- PPC reduced from 9.0 to 8.0.
- Extended Range PPC reduced from 13.0 to 11.0.
With each consecutive patch, PGI deviates further and further away from canon heat values, and yet does nothing to address the root issue at hand - dissipation. The problem has always been about dissipation, not the heat contribution firing a weapon has to a mech's heat level.
Compounding the problem has been the borked heatscale - with a base of 30, and increasing with bonus heatscale with additional fitted heatsinks - and you get builds that are high alpha, low dissipation skirmishers that really shouldn't be as efficient at their jobs as they are: Case in point - the 45 alpha, 9ML Hunchback 4P:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...be0caf93f50e300
Running this build gives me a 61.2 Heatcap. One alpha strike with all 9 medium lasers is a "mere" 36 heat, for 45 pinpoint damage to a single section. I've decapitated lights with this build. Not only this, but I only have to wait 4-5 seconds before I can alpha
Again. Without penalties to movement or accuracy at 80-90% heatcap, I can even stay at this heat level, chainfiring with 0.25 seconds between shots to
lose heat. (I wait a half a second on Caustic instead).
A nerf to heat cap would kill this mech, but an increase in dissipation will not actually increase its efficiency at delimbing, decapitating, and de-armouring side torsos in a single salvo. I play with Australian Ping (avg 266), and in a good round will average about 400-600 damage.
Now, granted, some of this terror is due to the simple fact that medium lasers are OP, slot for slot, ton for ton, and heat for heat. But the question has to be asked - how is it that this mech is a terror on the battlefield, where as the stock AWS-9M is essentially a paper tiger?
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...ab#i=32&l=stock
Go into Smurfy weapon lab and disable all weapon firing except a single ERPPC. You will note that the heat per second of an ERPPC - 3.67 (post patch - prepatch was 4.33recurring) actually exceeds the dissipation per second of the build. Firing the ERPPC on cooldown, chainfire, whatever - it doesn't matter. The HPS exceeds the dissipation per second. You will build heat even firing ONE weapon out of the 9M's 6 weapons, let alone the
three ERPPCs. Compare this to the tabletop's optimal damage rotation - 3ERPPC, then 2, then 3. Doing this in game would shut you down after the second salvo.
Add all the systemic problems inherent to the heat system in MWO and you get the patch behaviour of PGI over the last few months. Heat increases to Medium and Small lasers, the removal of the small pulse laser as a viable weapon, the reduction in efficiency of Medium pulse, the large laser heat tweak and damage increase, and the current favoured weapons being high damage per ton, low heat load weapons.
The trend was first to switch to LRMs and SRMs once it was discovered the pulse lasers had anomalous heat generation, and then the introduction of ECM to obviate the need to use cover against the buffed missile weapons. Now the flavour of the month is Gauss, UAC5, and the various catapult boats like the boomcat, gausscat or streak/SRMcat.
And now we have come to the heat tweak of the heavy energy weapons. I feel that even with tweaks, PGI has continued to not address the most salient issue concerning energy weapons - heat dissipation.
The point of my post is not that buffs or nerfs to certain weapons are in order - far from it. PGI has done an excellent job of making most, if not all classes of weapons viable. Even the lower caliber autocannons have their place, whereas they were bad to take on the tabletop. PGI's balance still has a long way to go if their ultimate goal, which I hope is diversity in builds and weapons for all mechs of all classes, is to be reached.
In case it wasn't obvious already, the heat dissipation problem extends to trial mechs as well, which is why for the most part they are considerably worse than they should be in BT canon. When you have pretty much all (canon) stock mechs on trial run super hot and shut down after 2-4 salvos, it does not translate to a good beginner experience, nor does it serve PGI to have newbies turned off the game after shutting down and dying for the tenth game in a row.
TL;DR: PGI doesn't have to do all this weapon tweaking of heat. Just look at the rate of dissipation provided by SHS and DHS, and tweak that. I guarantee that half of your weapon balance issues will disappear overnight.
By the way, here's the cheesiest, beardiest, most "trendy" weapon boating cataphract that I own and run:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9fe1260254debb8
The only way I can build heat (not overheat) is if I fire the Medium lasers on cooldown. It alphas for 60, 30 of which is pinpoint. Elimination of either side torso still leaves me with excellent firepower. It takes me 5 alphas firing on cooldown to reach critical heat (80%). A good round can net me 400-500 damage.
2
Aym, on 11 December 2012 - 07:49 AM, said:
