237 replies to this topic

[Gallowglas]

If people let a brawler-build Stalker get up close, then what do you expect to happen? Every other mech aside from the Atlas can be built to move faster, so if you're caught in a Stalker's SRM range, it means you either got blindsided or careless. I routinely pilot a Stalker as well. People die to it because they try to go toe-to-toe with me. I can't count the number of times any number of mechs just chest-bump me and expect that they're going to win the alpha-strike battle. Heck, I've seen Centurions and Hunchbacks try it. It doesn't work out too well. Even most Atlas builds should never try that tactic, and yet people do it match after match.

A smart player who stays outside my SRM range has me at a distinct disadvantage. I cannot count the number of times I've found myself on the losing end of a sniper battle because all I have to compete at longer ranges are a pair of large lasers.

And remember, a Stalker is an ASSAULT mech with more limited hardpoints and slower turn radius than its counterparts. It also has a lower top speed than most mechs, less armor than the Atlas, etc. If you take away it's close-up firepower, you take away its only real advantage.

Edited by Gallowglas, 14 January 2013 - 11:02 AM.

[Odins Fist]

Zrave, on 14 January 2013 - 10:50 AM, said:

A few of the responses were of the "qq more noob" variety, so I recorded a video while playing an SRM stalker (one of my main mechs). Yeah the opponents were bad but this is a fairly typical match.

.
Yeah the opponents were pretty not good... But I saw a lot of Cherry Picking as well...

[Abstrusity]

I'm not an expert, but I've been playing Cent-D and Cent-A variants of what we had dubbed the Centubomb since late the missile door patch(before the build was posted here, even!), and I can attest to the weaknesses of SRM builds as a result. Cent-D marginalizes the problem because you can rocket around as fast as a Cicada, but Cent-A, at 92.7, is not slow, either.
Without Artemis, you can still expect SRMs to hit within the correct area within 100m, but within 10m, you're still spreading the damage all over the place at worst. Generally speaking, however, you can line up your torso with theirs and blow out their armor in one or two shots.
I would not say that particular build is cheesy, inasmuch as Catapults in general are, but to be effective, you need to be within knife range.
But that also means the enemy is within knife range of you.
Furthermore, Cat A1 with 6SRM6 has a major spread problem. I'd recommend setting them up on weapon groups and turning(you should be turning anyway to keep damage off your center torso), swivel, fire one side, swivel back or switchback and fire the second.
I take 7 tons of SRM ammo in my Centurion and routinely go through almost all of it, but I suffer tremendously from a general lack of medium range pinpoint damage with only a pair of lasers.
Contrast this to the pinpoint damage of a Centurion-AL, who can get up close with SRMs, then burn through you with 2LL, 2ML, for roughly the same damage.
Except the lasers won't spread with a steady hand, the damage won't simply disappear at knife range because the server decided your SRMs didn't exist.
The only reason SRMs are the metagame now is because of the missile door changes. I would argue that it made Centurions useful, because previously, they were definitely not. Keep in mind that SRMs used to spread out in a wave pattern every 100m or so, so you could actually pinpoint them at 100 or 200m(or was it 120 and 240?), or fire them at point blank. And they'd all hit.
I miss that. I want my 18 SRMs in one large clump that looks like a damn Long Tom.

[Lorcan Lladd]

It is my belief that nerfing the SRM launcher will have the same effect on the CPLT-A1 and STK-5M as the nerf to the Gauss Rifle and UAC/5 had on the CPLT-K2 and Illya Muromets, respectively.

[Miles Naismith]

Broceratops, on 13 January 2013 - 08:58 AM, said:

good players adapt, bad players qq until things get nerfed then qq about whatever the good players switch over to. turn yourself into a good player to break the cycle.

And yet, in the end, neither of them have any clue if they're balanced or not.

[PropagandaWar]

Peekaboo I C JU, on 13 January 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

You have no idea how many time i turned a corner to find myself face to face with a splatter cat...and yes...the first thing that went through my mind was OH CRAP!......but it is what it is, and no matter how many time i die to a mech or weapon set, i will never say they are OP....now some builds in certain scenarios are a little op, but no build is god mode....now was it the splatter cats fault i ran around like a chicken with its head cut off and wandered into his "oh Crap" range?...nope...i will just adjust my tactics to accomadate my builds strengths

exactly. I went head to head with one the other night in my Flame. We duked it out. Me with an LBX 10, SRM6 four med lasers. Him standard Hell cat. I used building and tried to stay over 100 meters away and ripped off an arm and cored him. Right as I was about to hit that orange ct full of pain his buddy caught me on the side and blew me to shreds. I played a Hell cat 6 varient. They run hotter than hell have big ears you can blow off start being useless at 100 meters out and have no backup weapons. yeah a srm 6 can do 15 points of damage "Spread Out" and more often than not even those who know how to use them can get partials hits (I use a hunchy with 2x 6 SRM's or SRM 4 / SRM 6 combo no Artemis). I swear these threads that pop up about weapons are funny some times. If your getting your butt handed to you over and over by non-lock weapons its you not the weapon it the pilot the build or both.

Edited by PropagandaWar, 14 January 2013 - 12:10 PM.

[Hou]

Zrave, on 14 January 2013 - 10:50 AM, said:

A few of the responses were of the "qq more noob" variety, so I recorded a video while playing an SRM stalker (one of my main mechs). Yeah the opponents were bad but this is a fairly typical match.

In that video you took out another stalker in the tunnel that was configured to hunt lights and snipe, a dragon in the tunnel that wanted to outgun you from under 100 meters while not even attempting to move, a centurion that was chased into you under LRM fire(and already banged up), and a trial stalker(also already engaged). The only times you weren't in the most ideal situation possible(you firing at an enemy distracted and under fire from teammates) was when you ran into two in the tunnel, where the enemy stalker impeded the dragon's line of fire anyways.

Sure, the damage number at the end was impressive, but that's mostly because you selected a weapon that destroys the entire enemy mech before you kill it. That would be vexing if we still had R&R since it would screw the target, but we don't.

Edited by Hou, 14 January 2013 - 12:02 PM.

[ThunderOverWater]

M4rtyr, on 14 January 2013 - 08:17 AM, said:

But no, you guys obviously don't understand these concepts so therefore all weapons have to do killing leve of damage instead of having their roles.

You're missing something: opportunity cost. Why take a mech that can't kill when you can take one that can? Being unable to kill is a role?

Edited by colorado, 14 January 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[PeekaBoo I C Ju]

first of all, this is not WoW and not every mech has a specific role it is intended to solely fill, the point to customization is that YOU decide the role that you intend your mech to play...to even assume that lights only purpose is to be a scout..is fail

[Hou]

colorado, on 14 January 2013 - 12:06 PM, said:

You're missing something: opportunity cost. Why take a mech that can't kill when you can take one that can? Being unable to kill is a role?

It can be. You can make a mech that enables somebody else to kill something. Back before all my RL friends got bored with the amount of content here I would duo drop occasionally. One of them liked to run high alpha strike assaults with pinpoint damage. I grabbed a LRM Centurion with tag. Two Artemis 15s and a medium laser. My mech was terribad, but it worked efficiently as part of that duo. It almost never killed anything, all it was there to do was perch on the shoulder of the brawling assault and volley approaching targets a couple times to weaken the armor enough that the pinpoint punches would destroy sections and core things out rather than just burning into armor. Why take the Centy to do this job instead of a Catapult or Awesome/Atlas set up to do it? Because it slotted a counterpoint medium onto the other team. One that was probably set up to brawl and one that would probably be demolished on approach to us. A light would be harder to tag under ECM, an assault was harder to kill.

Edited by Hou, 14 January 2013 - 12:31 PM.

[Stoicblitzer]

Sheraf, on 13 January 2013 - 07:32 AM, said:

SRM damage is fine. Sometimes, I killed the SRM 6 Catapult from afar. Sometimes, I was careless, and let one came close to kill me. It is just that if your team is actually working as a team and spot these mechs, so the rest can deal with them. They are very vulnerable to long range weapons.

Same argument against STRK cats.

[Rift Hawk]

SRM damage too high ?

Simple answer : Yes.

Good day.

[Sheraf]

Stoicblitzer, on 14 January 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:

Same argument against STRK cats.

I don't argue against them. Streaks and SRM are fine the way they are.

[Hou]

Stoicblitzer, on 14 January 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:

Same argument against STRK cats.

It's a very similar argument, yes. There are some fundamental differences. Range and spread being the big one in relation to light mechs. Boating SRM6s is going to give you 3x the damage. If the target is big and close you may even be able to direct the shotgun at a specific quadrant of the mech. Over 100 meters and particularly if the target is small and fast - many of those missiles are going to miss. A light can hover around and be able to do damge while riding the line of danger if they're good. Pre-ECM(or on non-ecm'd lights even now) if you boat 6SSRM2s, those missiles don't miss. They can be locked past range and they're effective 100% hit all the way out to 270 meters traveled barring terrain. Heck, they'll even oblige and shoot sideways out of thieir tubes then travel through your own mech to hit their target.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I would like to see SRM damage reduced slightly with a corresponding increase in ammo/ton...

[Thuzel]

SpiralRazor, on 13 January 2013 - 09:42 PM, said:

Still dont get it.....SRMs are mostly worthless at 270. Medium Lasers are still doing a full 5 often to one or two locations and good out till 540. And were talking about alpha capability? Right, then heat neutral rarely enters into that..

Tons of damage from a x6 SRM strike? Yes, of course...but you have to be pretty close to get it all on the same panel. I can be a lot further away with Six LLs from MUCH further away. In fact, ive taken off several heads in one go from 450-550. And if i dont get it on the first rake, ive got 2 more before shutting down.

You're comparing apples and oranges. 6 large lasers are going to require so much weight dedicated to weapons and cooling that it won't even be viable for anything less than an 85 ton mech. It's limited to a 54 damage strike and is still going to have extremely heavy limitations on firing rate due to heat (in fact, I'd say that build is so heat limited it's probably going to sustain less than half it's optimal damage).

The 6 SRM build can be thrown onto a 65 ton mech that runs twice as fast, runs a heck of a lot cooler, throws out almost twice the damage, and can generally outmaneuver almost anything near or above it's own weight class. This just highlights the fact that SRM's are a bit too good.

In other words, just because you can throw 6 large lasers on a stalker, doesn't mean the SRM isn't overpowered.

Do the math (as I did above in my earlier posts). The SRM is about 20 to 25% too efficient for it's total cost, even considering it's range and spread drawbacks.

20 to 25% isn't a huge advantage, but it becomes one when people start boating them.

[Hou]

Thuzel, the problem here is the same one that's dogged us for months - it isn't really that the SRMs/SSRMs/LRMs on most mechs, it's the issue that catapults have extremely gamey hardpoint allocations.

[SpiralRazor]

Thuzel, on 14 January 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

You're comparing apples and oranges. 6 large lasers are going to require so much weight dedicated to weapons and cooling that it won't even be viable for anything less than an 85 ton mech. It's limited to a 54 damage strike and is still going to have extremely heavy limitations on firing rate due to heat (in fact, I'd say that build is so heat limited it's probably going to sustain less than half it's optimal damage).

The 6 SRM build can be thrown onto a 65 ton mech that runs twice as fast, runs a heck of a lot cooler, throws out almost twice the damage, and can generally outmaneuver almost anything near or above it's own weight class. This just highlights the fact that SRM's are a bit too good.

In other words, just because you can throw 6 large lasers on a stalker, doesn't mean the SRM isn't overpowered.

Do the math (as I did above in my earlier posts). The SRM is about 20 to 25% too efficient for it's total cost, even considering it's range and spread drawbacks.

20 to 25% isn't a huge advantage, but it becomes one when people start boating them.

Im not comparing apples to oranges dude......Were talking about a Damage Number at the end of battle screen.

Dude was stating that Big Damage numbers on the end screen were all that was important. And i showed him with real play experience that he is incorrect. You can have huge damage numbers with LRMS vs PUG teams, and still go 0/6.

An LL based build, while posting much lower damage numbers, can kill people just as fast as a knife fighting range SRM mauling. And I do it from a much safer distance too boot.

Also, your A1 SRM cat doesnt run a heck of a lot cooler......6 SRM 6s with enough accompanying ammo is going to take up LOTS Of weight on that A1...i know, i have one sitting there in a mechbay waiting for when ECM finally gets nerfed. Your heatsinks will be gimped as a result. You most likely will have about the same numbers of Alpha strikes as I will. For a K2, you can utilize 4 LLs to much the same result, if you want to compare same weight classes.

It runs hot, and has limited ammo. Even if you take the XL version 315 engine. And the situation is even worse if you take Artemis on those Six launchers.

The A1 is currently a gimped chassis due to ECM......The only effective build on it, as the game stands right now, is SRMS.

Dont blame the Mech, as was tried already and failed, dont blame SRMS as they are fine after the nerfs; rather blame ECM for making LRMS/Streaks marginal builds.

[Thuzel]

Hou, on 14 January 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

Thuzel, the problem here is the same one that's dogged us for months - it isn't really that the SRMs/SSRMs/LRMs on most mechs, it's the issue that catapults have extremely gamey hardpoint allocations.

Yeah, I agree that the hardpoint system isn't helping. PGI needs to decide whether or not they want to use hardpoint restrictions as a real balancing mechanic. Right now we're stuck dealing with hardpoints as a "kind of" balance system.

But that being said, with the way things are now, any weapons which aren't balanced by the traditional mechanics (heat, weight, slots, ammo, damage, firing rate, and range) will still be unbalanced and will still be taken advantage of.

A lot of people argue that boats are the problem, but they're not the root of it. What boats really do is take an unbalanced weapon and magnify whatever advantage it has. A 20% efficiency advantage on any one weapon still makes it an unbalanced weapon, no matter how many are on a mech. It's just easier to ignore if there are only one or two.

Mind you, I'm not saying that SRMs are incredibly overpowered. They're not. But they ARE overpowered. I don't know about anyone else, but I want to play a game that encourages varied usage and tactics and fully balanced mechanics are what makes that possible.

[Hou]

SpiralRazor, on 14 January 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Dont blame the Mech, as was tried already and failed, dont blame SRMS as they are fine after the nerfs; rather blame ECM for making LRMS/Streaks marginal builds.

Well, it's not the mech's "fault." I'm not saying Catapults are OP, just that their hardpoint allocations are gamey, which they are. I don't know why people are bent on SRMs. Missiles are 1 of 3 types of weapon hardpoint and there is really only 3 options of what to put in them. Long range guided missiles, short range guided missiles, or short range dumbfire missiles. I agree with your assessment that two of those types are crappy right now so you are going to see a lot of dumbfire SRMs. Only caveat is that SSRMs are still extremely powerful when sported on a mech with ECM that can can fire them effectively. This is excacerbated by the fact that both light mechs that can mount ECM can also effectively mount SSRMs, thus locking the other team into getting a mech that is specifically what ecm lights are good against. The best case scenario is the opposing team also receives an ecm light to maintain the "two rocks beats one rock" of the rock/paper/scissors balance of ECM. It really needs to be three separate modules.

Edited by Hou, 14 January 2013 - 02:24 PM.