478 replies to this topic

[Insanity09]

Two parts.
@ no one
Making the pickup zone known to the attacking team would be a huge mistake, giving the attacker too much of an advantage due to foreknowledge. Making the specific drop zone known to the defenders would be fine, and if the attackers are paying attention they might get a clue as to the final destination from the behavior of the defenders (giving you your wish there)
As an alternative, making all the potential pickup zones known to both sides might be acceptable (as long as it isn't instantly clear which one will be used, as it is on some maps).

Part two
On the subject of peeking, be it hill hump, corner, or poptart, it needs to be done with great care. I've seen far too many cases of people poking their head out, being visible to multiple enemies, and getting various body parts blown off as a result (or at least taking far more damage than they dished out). On no map is this more apparent than Polar Highlands (Alpine can come close). In WoW terms this was the classic battle line from vanilla days, where the person who stepped forward first took it in the teeth, more often than not.

Think before you volunteer to be the enemies' target dummy.

The solution? As Void keeps saying, communicate: call your targets and move together. Four people peeking or pushing, firing at the same target will do 4 times the damage to one target, and incoming fire is likely to be spread across all 4, meaning no friendly is as likely to be taken out.

[JigglyMoobs]

I think for the defender side, tac map and ground overlay should prominently show the VIP position AND expected direction of travel for the next 30 seconds.

As things are sometimes defenders don't have enough forewarning to set up effective protection.

[Void Angel]

That would be helpful. There's no feedback when - for example - the VIP turns for the pass instead of the tunnel on Crimson Strait. Telling the defenders what the VIP's planned route is going to be in advance would be an improvement; and it's how escort missions work any way.

[Steel Raven]

Can't seem to win as Attacker on Grim Plexus. The F7-G7 hilltop has always been a very effective spot for a firing line in any battle so unless you plan on waiting for the Atlas to get the half way point, all the Defenders need to do is keep you busy and otherwise play it like a normal skirmish while the sensor arrays give them a slight edge.

Crimson Straight seems to be the most straight forward for ether Attacker or Defender as the VIP will go one of two directions. Defenders just need to be ready to push the saddle or the city once the Atlas crosses the river, That means splinting the team but the Saddle is a choke point which makes it easier to do. The attackers will often loss if they are too invested in one area or commit to a brawl too early in the wrong part of the city.

Alpine Peaks was a favorite when Escort first dropped but seems to benefit the Defenders slightly more thanks to the sensors warning you of most scouts (though those mountain goat snipers should have the advantage) it's only when the VIP chooses to walk right into a the enemy team that it turns into a meat grinder.

Haven't played Escort on the other maps enough to get a good read but the key to victory for the Defenders proves the title of this topic is correct: Follow the fracking Atlas and your good! The Attackers won't have the advantage until they can single out the stumbling VIP and can start pounding on the armor on that slow brute. The easiest games I have had as attacker is when the bright orange Atlas comes across my gun sight with no one else to draw my fire.

[Old-dirty B]

Havent seen a charging Atlas in a long while, past few weeks the only Atlasses i've seen where either the VIP on escort missions or a whole bunch of LRM boating Atlas S'es...

Have people given up leading the charge with an Atlas (or any assault actually) ?

[Void Angel]

Nah, I do it all the time - particularly in group play if I have people behind me whom I can trust to kill things while everyone whales away at me. But the meta recently has been long-range, frontloaded damage and laser poking builds which operate at standoff, making it difficult for something as slow as an Atlas to brawl - or get support when he tries. Combine that with the sad fact that there are more mobile brawling chassis available, and you get people who decide to splash in LRMs for "something to do," failing to notice that they are now a very well-armored, under-armed Hunchback when it comes time for the face-to-face. And on top of that, many alternative Assaults fit very well into the poke meta... So it all adds up to a relative dearth of focused brawling pushes.

The solution is generally to either wait until the snipers pare each other down a bit, or to try to get your team to move for a flank, depending on the situation.

Also remember: "follow the Atlas" is a euphemism for cooperation and teamwork, rather than advocacy of any given tactical tool - because those will change with the game.

[Barkem Squirrel]

What is funny, this is still good advice now as it was over 4 years ago.

[Void Angel]

That's why I went out of my way to cover specific tactics only for the point of illustration, and sparingly even then. I'm lazy, you see, and didn't want to be endlessly revising (and arguing about) my recommended tactics with players of multiple tiers (Elo rankings back then) every time the meta shifted a bit.

[Steel Raven]

Ah yes, Meta! Remember when you judge a mech by how many Medium Pulses Laser it could carry and T-Wolf pilots called the Thunderbolt 5SS overpowered? lol

One thing that never changes: allot of people think 'follow the Atlas' means 'use the fattie as a human shield!' Atlases are allot more effective when you stand beside them, not behind them.

[Old-dirty B]

My idea of "follow the atlas" was not so much literally following the atlas in his trails but more so the directions of the atlas as the spear tip or at least the center of the main attack. What i've seen mostly lately is the hiding atlas all the way at the back of the group lurming...

[Void Angel]

Heh. Remember the first six or so pages of the thread? =) LRMs on an Atlas are one of my pet peeves - you're gimping your build using them. And if you're boating LRMs, it's just an objectively inferior build. But even worse is the Atlas who splashed LRMs "so I have something to do at long range," and then doggedly hides in the rear until the five tons of ammo he brought for one launcher are gone...

[Void Angel]

Steel Raven, on 09 January 2017 - 11:20 PM, said:

Ah yes, Meta! Remember when you judge a mech by how many Medium Pulses Laser it could carry and T-Wolf pilots called the Thunderbolt 5SS overpowered? lol

One thing that never changes: allot of people think 'follow the Atlas' means 'use the fattie as a human shield!' Atlases are allot more effective when you stand beside them, not behind them.

Well, to be fair, it was overpowered. The 5SS could spread damage amazingly well, and still blast people with ultra-fast burning lasers for ever, and ever, and ever. The 9S was arguably even worse - you could outsnipe multiple Clan 'mechs, and then close to brawl effectively with backup medium lasers and the ERPPCs. I think they nerfed the 9S too hard, but both 'mechs had it coming.

Even the Timber Wolf meta builds of the time would often lose to a 5SS, though - they did trials between high level players. It's just that the Timber Wolf outperformed everything but the top Inner Sphere 'mechs so handily that makes complaints from its pilots so hard to swallow. Yet balance was pretty good for a while, while still favoring the Clans a bit - until their stable of Omnimechs started to diversify - and Clan Battlemechs started hitting the field.

A lot of what made the Clans roughly balanced(-ish) against the post-quirk Inner Sphere despite the Clan's superior weapons and engines was the limitations imposed on the first few runs of Omnimechs. Sure, 'mechs like the Stormcrow had lighter and/or more compact equipment, longer ranges, great mixes of hardpoints, and insane survivability with their XLs; but they also had burst-fire autocannons, a lot of arm hardpoints, hard-locked equipment in inconvenient places, and a locked engine that forces it to be faster than many pilots would have wanted (this was an argument repeatedly used by Clan partisans claiming that their 'mechs were underpowered at release.) Their Lights generally couldn't handle the Inner Sphere's Light 'mechs (they didn't even have a truly fast Light,) and their Assaults were even worse off - either too slow (Dire Wolf,) or on the fast side with extremely restrictive hard-locked equipment (Warhawk.)

Recently, however, the Clans' Omnimech stable has expanded, and several highly effective Battlemechs have hit the field. The Clans' fast Light, the Arctic Cheetah, quickly replaced the Firestarter as the alpha predator of combat Lights, while the Kodiak and Hunchback IIC are at the top of their respective weight classes. With 'mechs like the Huntsman and Night Gyr providing lower-speed alternatives (with jump jets) to the faster Omnis, both partisans and detractors are able to see just how much those inconvenient hard-lockings and (especially) larger-than-necessary XL engines really were holding the Clans in check.

Edited by Void Angel, 10 January 2017 - 11:56 AM.

[Steel Raven]

Void Angel, on 10 January 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

Well, to be fair, it was overpowered. The 5SS could spread damage amazingly well, and still blast people with ultra-fast burning lasers for ever, and ever, and ever. The 9S was arguably even worse - you could outsnipe multiple Clan 'mechs, and then close to brawl effectively with backup medium lasers and the ERPPCs. I think they nerfed the 9S too hard, but both 'mechs had it coming.

I'll give you the 9S, it was what the Awesome was suppose to be but in a 65 ton package. Only problem is they nerfed the PPC with it.

People stop complaining about the 5SS after they applied ghost heat to Medium Pules Laser which I also consed was needed with every other Black Knight and Grasshopper build was ALL MPL ALPHA! like the 5SS.

(I simply though it was funny at the time considering the Clans were still curb stomping the IS in CW)

My real point was the Meta has gone180 from MPL brawlers to AC/5/PPC/Gauss snipers after buffing, nerfing, rebalancing, rescaling, new maps and allot of new mechs. It will continue to change but the fundamental argument will remain: teamwork wins the game.

[Void Angel]

The 5SS stopped being overpowered when they nerfed its quirks fairly heavily - the Heat Scale penalty for one pulse laser is just over 3 heat, or an 11% increase in overall heat generation. With the Thunderbolt's original heat reduction and given the 78 heat capacity of the build, it's not terribly significant unless you're outnumbered and going to die anyway; otherwise, you've won or lost the fight before the extra heat makes you start waiting in between shots.

Regardless, the meta will always change, and people who refuse to roll with it will have it roll over them. I recall an argument I had with some uberitis patient in the New Player forums my first year or so playing the game. Some guy was asking for input on a change he had made, swapping a Gauss Rifle for two AC/5s on his Cataphract - he reasoned that while he was frontoading less damage, he was getting more dps and felt better in sustained combat. He wanted the advice of veteran players, and people gave various constructive opinions... until Captain Uberitis chimes in yelling at the kid for being bad, and tell him him that a larger amount of punch damage was always better than DPS.

At that point I had to disagree; not only was the guy borderline abusive, he was empirically wrong (uberitis is a terrible, debilitating illness.) I have to be clear here - his claim was that any amount of DPS was and would always be inferior to frontloaded damage. Because torso twisting. I know this for a fact because I asked him point-blank. I then proceeded to demonstrate to him that - assuming only the Gauss on one hand and the two AC/5s on the other - the newb asking the question could leg him to death and walk away laughing before his Gauss Rifle would even penetrate the kid's armor. Nope! Still wrong, because all the top-level players use punch damage, so there! When the Kodiak hit the top of the charts (and it's still there...) I thought of this conversation, and laughed.

That's why I specifically worded both of my guides to avoid the discussion of specific tactics - it simply invites uninformed disagreement by people who ape the meta, and would require constant revision every time the builds and tactics changed.

Edited by Void Angel, 11 January 2017 - 12:44 PM.

[oldradagast]

Broke out the old Atlas-D yesterday with a silly brawler build (2 LBX10, SRM6's, 2 medium pulse lasers to keep it running cold) and actually had a game where the attack stalled out on the central platform in Mining Collective. For once in a long time, I got the chance to just march into the fray up top, the team rallying behind me, while I erased a Maurader 2C at point blank range. Good game - well over 600 damage, 1 kill, and a pile of assists.

It's rare to see this - or even the Atlas itself - much anymore, but it was a fun, classic moment.

[Arkama]

I'm guessing the current meta is why nine out of ten if Polar Highlands is an option, it's the map chosen?
It's kind of hard to use a mid range 6 U-AC/5 Dire Wolf when you invariably get targeted and then torn apart by swarms of LRM15s and 20s.
Most of my short range brawlers now include at least one ERLL for all the games where I don't get to brawl. (My 6 SRM6 1 ERLL Linebacker for example.)

[SlightlyMobileTurret]

6SRM6 + ERLL Linebacker?!?!?

I wouldn't go that far in a MAD DOG which has 50% more free weapon tonnage

[Void Angel]

Arkama, on 15 January 2017 - 03:16 AM, said:

I'm guessing the current meta is why nine out of ten if Polar Highlands is an option, it's the map chosen?
It's kind of hard to use a mid range 6 U-AC/5 Dire Wolf when you invariably get targeted and then torn apart by swarms of LRM15s and 20s.
Most of my short range brawlers now include at least one ERLL for all the games where I don't get to brawl. (My 6 SRM6 1 ERLL Linebacker for example.)

Map selection depends heavily on what time of day you're playing, as well as whether or not you're on a weekend. Polar Highlands is often selected by people who don't understand it and prefer long-range sniping builds. However, Polar is designed to reward mobility and maneuver - no matter what piece of cover the enemy is camping behind, there is a covered and concealed route to get behind it.

You shouldn't bother with an ERLL on your Linebacker, because it's fast enough to make full use of that mobility. Just bide your time, probe the edges of the field, kill targets of opportunity, provide information to your team - and wreck people with your brawling build once the range inevitably closes.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 January 2017 - 11:11 PM.

[Void Angel]

Keshav Murali, on 15 January 2017 - 05:21 AM, said:

6SRM6 + ERLL Linebacker?!?!?

I wouldn't go that far in a MAD DOG which has 50% more free weapon tonnage

He can do it, but he has to skip Artemis or pack a massively inadequate ammunition load Heck, he's only got 4 tons without Artemis. Another reason not to use the ER Large.

The best reason is that it mixes two radically different weapon types on a weight-restricted chassis.