damage or kills

What makes a better lancemate; high damage in a match or higher kills?

I have much builds that excel at both and have the same win:loss rates with both. Option a would be a mech that does 500-700 damage with 8+ assists or option b, a mech with 300-400 damage with 3-4 kills?

 

Kills win matches
Damage is for bragging rights (and also a good metric to see who works their ass off)

 

The only solution is to crank out the damage and get the kills. Leave no doubt.

 

Both.

[size=8pt]or

Depends.

my gut says kills, if your role is to be involved in combat for any signif period of time
my gut also says damage, if your role looks compromised by enemy tactics positioning etc and you're going down most likely, team play
gun to my head? - i say kills

 

I only care about damage because that is the only thing you can control. I've been in a match where I had 0 kills and 900 damage with the next highest teammate is below 400.

That being said, damage is only important if you only ever shoot to kill. If you spread damage purposely all over a mech just to inflate your damage numbers then the metric is erroneous.

 

Both damage and kills are less important that people make them out to be. Yes, in general it is an indication of skill / contribution to your team, but there are plenty of other ways to assist your team that don't involve damage or kills at all.

Holding targets for friendly LRMs.
Providing ECM cover for your team.
Sacrificing yourself to cripple/kill a high threat enemy.
Growing a pair of balls and pushing when your team refuses to... sometimes a PUG team needs a little encouragement to engage the enemy.

I'm sure there are several other important things that a person can do for their team that won't show up on the leaderboard but you get the idea.

 

If pressed for a response I'd have to say damage over kills since all else being equal, even if all that damage is to armor you're still making it easier for team mates to land killing blows. Further to that, I find it remarkable how often I'll have a "helpful" team-mate appear out of nowhere when I've run my heat scale close to max ripping the **** out of an enemy and have them "save" me by landing that killing blow against cherry red internals. I've literally had team mates dodge and even JUMP DIRECTLY IN FRONT of me to land that killing blow (that was a regrettable move just last night since my heroic saviour jumped in and got the kill right as he was taking a full alpha in the back from my Jester, costing me 150XP AND the kill [on the up-side he was sensible enough not to bi**h at me for the team kill so I didn't have to find a way to strangle him remotely with his mouse cord])

I would agree that it's a di** move to deliberately spread your damage around to inflate numbers though.

 

I don't think I understand why people consider it a dick move to spread your damage around?

 

agree with Michael - it's not so much dick move, as just very bad piloting if you're spraying a mech all over the place. Only time you willfully spray is when it's safe to (only a few mechs remaining at the end of the match and you want that 1k+ dmg score).

 

Exactly.

I have taken my Raven out and been the last guy on my team facing 2-3 assault mechs and I literally pull them apart piece by piece. A leg, an arm, a torso; this is done to inflate my damage score because I like to challenge myself and members of my unit also have a running bet on who can get to 1500 damage with the Raven. Closest I can get so far is 1250ish and that required a fair bit of concentration, skill and effort.

How that could be considered a dick move? Noooooooooooooooooooooo idea!

 

In the case of someone who's just not particularly good at aiming yet, or using something like missiles or LBXs - not a dick move, prettymuch unavoidable.

The quoted example above COULD be interpreted as pretty much the definition of a dick move. You're showboating at the end of a match, holding 24 mechs hostage and adding extra risk of a loss if you screw up. (granted you're carrying the team at that point so whatever floats your boat)

For my part, it sounds like fun and I've been in similar situations with my Spider though never managed to take out more than 2 of 4 remaining big mechs even when specifically focusing on quick kills.

The only thing that particularly gets on my nerves is that foolishness mentioned in my first post to this thread re. leaping right into my line of fire to steal a kill.

 

That's not a dick move, that's just fun.

 

Damage > Kills

Kills can be stolen. We need a proper assist counter, where you need to have a certain percantage of the damage dealt on a cored mech to get one. It should also be on a timer that resets after awhile. Until then, I don't even care who gets how many kills, but damage I can get a little info from.

The other problem is, of course, someone could be super efficient in focus-firing and coring people, resulting in a lot of kills and very little damage. Or they could almost core people, have others steal their kills consistently, and then have low kills and low damage.

There's no winning with this system. PGI pls fix scoring. Give us a score counter instead of a broken K/D/D.

 

After a bit more thought this morning/afternoon, the answer is quite obvious.

Kills win rounds.

 

I understand what you are saying Fuzzy, and I realize the "is a dick move" isn't addressed specifically towards me so I don't take it personally. The way I see it? I have JUST as much right to play how *I* want, whether the rest of my team is dead, or not.

If I want to inflate my damage scores for my own reasons then so be it. If they have to wait? TFB to be honest; shouldn't have rushed out and gotten yourself killed. As long as I am not powered down somewhere trying to hide out the rest of the match then whiners can go and take a flying leap. It actually takes a great deal of skill to score 1000+ in a light mech; outscoring assault mechs ain't easy ya know!

To the general public, I say be warned; if you are in a drop with me and I'm last man standing and running in my Raven? Chances are you should go make some popcorn and enjoy the show cause I will neither run out and die quickly, just so you can move on to the next failure of a match, nor will I sit there and attempt to go for quick kills unless I am heavily damaged and don't have any room for error.

 

I prettymuch agree with you, and if I see you doing this on the field I'll happily eat my popcorn and hopefully learn some new tricks from the show It's not like I haven't gotten annoyed when armchair quarterbacks have bitched at me for playing my style instead of theirs ;P

Exceptions aside, I still tend to lean towards the side that considers scattering your damage all over deliberately during a match to inflate damage numbers is in "dick move" territory. Only because it's less effective than focused fire for crippling or killing enemy mechs, and though it may look pretty on the scoreboard dosen't really help the team effectively. (honestly I don't know how prevalent this behavior actually is but I get why it would bug people)

 

I tend to specifically strip mechs when I know that speed and maneuverability are on my side. I'll identify a Battlemaster and strip his left ballistics arm. I'll run into a Jager with fairly new armor, except a red armored leg, then I'll gun for that leg. It mostly depends on my accuracy at that range and/or what weapon(s) I am using in that situation. The way I see it, if you can destroy any component on a mech, it will severely cripple them (with the exception of shield arms). If you leg a mech, there is always a chance it had ammo in that leg and might go boom, otherwise it is now a sitting duck to be picked off slowly by me or quickly by the rest of my team. In Michaels situation with the 3L, I see no reason why you couldn't play this way and boost damage. You are testing and advancing your own skill while making the enemy team work for their win (improving their skill as well). If they are having difficulty or frustration dealing with a single 3L, perhaps they need to learn new tactics and some teamwork to deal with that situation instead of mindlessly chase the Raven.

There is absolutely nothing "dickish" about it. Take the game to its max, role-play it, strive to be a better pilot. I think most players would benefit from learning to target components and spreading damage accurately. Certainly livens up the game at least.

 

I was on Canyon the other night running my 3L (finally broke 400+ damage in it) running the outskirts harrassing and disrupting as much as I could, basically just starting to get a good feel for the mech when I hit tab and find I am one against LOL! twelve. At this point, as a heavy pilot, I would have picked out the closest damaged mech and went for that last HuRaa! hear: before his buddies catch up with and obliterate me, but I'm in a Raven klicking along at 136kph (no speed tweek yet) with two ERLL's and an ECM hear: time to start thinking like a light pilot Mike. So I resign myself to the long haul, and a some good experience towards getting me over that learning curve between wannabe (me now) & light pilot (Me later) when the banter starts... not from my opposition, but from my own team I put up with it, and pick out a target... a Cattie C4... Prime! I start to whittle away at him, blowing off his remaining ear on my first pass and the banter from my team continues with "Why don't you just die and get it over with so I can go on to my next match... :angry: So I get pissed and type "You know what... Fu#$ you guys" power down in front of him, and watch as he finishes me with 2 ML's... Stupid I know, I had that Catapult, and I should have just ignored chat and focused on what I was doing, got the kill and moved on, but I didn't get any kills.

I still pulled more damage than any of those Fuc#s.

Sorry about the rant, but my point is, you do what you need to do, to best support your team, in order to win the engagement weather that is softening up targets (damage) or popping AC20 rounds into softened targets to remove them from the engagment in short order (kills) both are equally important depending on the state of the battle.

P.S. I need to find a good unit to join... I'm getting tired of PUG dropping.