Garth Erlam, on 16 January 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:
The fact is ECM numbers are dropping - in both pub games (a LOT), and in competitive games (a fair amount - the average is much, much lower than 'all eight Mechs'.
Garth, surely you realize that the raw number of ECM being used is not an indication of whether or not it is too powerful?
If there was only 1 ECM in every match, but the team that had ECM won every time, would that not indicate that ECM is too powerful despite the fact that matches would be averaging only 1 ECM?
Even those of us who know just how powerful it is don't always pilot ECM Mechs. It gets boring. But that doesn't change the fact that it is ridiculously powerful for 1.5 tons, 2 crits, and 0 weapon hard points.
I have posted this elsewhere, but might as well mention it here also. The best sign of ECM's power is this: what percentage of ECM-capable Mechs are equipped with ECM in missions? It is irrelevant that someone brought a Jenner and didn't have ECM. That person might just be trying to level up his Jenners, or he might be bored to death of always piloting a Raven 3L.
But how many Raven 3Ls do you see in game that are NOT equipped with ECM? How many Atlas D-DCs do you see in game that are NOT equipped with ECM?
Virtually none. Which means that ECM is BY FAR the best value for its tonnage and crit space. If it were even remotely balanced you'd see someone replace it with BAP. Or an extra double heat sink. Or SOMETHING. But that just never happens, because ECM is drastically overpowered.
As others have pointed out over and over, the current MWO implementation of "Guardian" ECM is in fact the equivalent of the tabletop game's Angel ECM (the advanced successor to Guardian ECM) + Stealth Armor + Null Signature System, but without the balancing costs of the latter two systems. How anyone could have possible thought that would be balanced is beyond me.