Curious if anyone has found mechs they loved and which performed well in the past which just don't work anymore despite the skill set implying they should. For me its the JM6-DD, a mech I'm decent with as I topped the JM6 chart in the last Heavy tournament. Not boasting just saying its a mech I should be performing decently in. This is the skill tree I am using and yes I know its 2 points short as I was testing heat etc (I'd add 2 extra heat gen nodes in hindsight as when that "mad minute" strikes my heat is spiking a lot). https://kitlaan.gitlab.io/mwoskill/?p=23f50bd9-5409-11e7-ae4c-2fa472fe826a&s=Weapons My prior weakness was ammo/jam chance and the skill tree REALLY helps there so this should work right? Now the problem I'm having is twofold: a) most people are running with armour/structure quirks which means I'm doing lots of raw damage but not getting near as many kills as I used to; b) I'm getting gaussed to death with side torso deaths as every time I step out with the UAC's to where I can fire both arms - bam dual gauss to a side torso. I will say that if you have the luxury of running pure support side its still great but that's because they're concentrating other mechs down. PS: Should have said this was group queue.
I've started to run my JM6-DD with just 2 UAC5s, a std engine and mgs/ml as brawlery backup. For me, the King Crab, Kodiak and generally 100 tonners have been a consistent pain. The mobility nerfs hit them very hard, and they can't be improved much with the percentage-based skill tree, so they're suuuuuuper sluggish and die at the first breeze of combat if you team doesnt push with you.
I pretty much ignore the weapons skills, I do not see any improvement for using them unless you spec down to the missile rack or magazine capacity. I do see an improvement using the armor skills, agility skills and sensor skills (radar derp). I usually start out with this skill tree and adjust accordingly for brawler, missile boat, or sniper build. https://kitlaan.gitlab.io/mwoskill/?p=159d0070-545a-11e7-ae4c-b77b64a6b8be&s=Armor Structure
Spread and Laser Duration are very noticable for me, but the random modifiers like UAC jam Chance and + Crit Damage seem to be terrible.
Jagger has always been a weak armored heavy. What I recommend is taking dual airstrikes as they have the largest radius and you can rack up high kills and damage that way. Also if your sniping and you run into gauss/ppc combos, you will not win unless your holding the w key and somehow facing them from at least 800 m (exact distance to be able to dodge them everytime). Getting all the anchor turns helps with zig zagging if you want dodging powers.
Its an interesting comment and got me thinking about when it worked well as sniping is not something I'd try in a triple UAC 5 JM6-DD. The defensive battles it was very weak because I was having to get so much out of cover to fire well. Where it did well was actually when we were closer range and playing aggressively as a team or as I said before I had a chance to let loose when they weren't focusing me. It seemed very map reliant!
I'd agree on some of them seeming weak. I did find the UAC jam chance useful in that I was never once out on all 3 uac's so happy with that. Nothing like pressing fire to get silence in response! I also never ran out of ammo - actually don't think in any match I received the 25% warning. On the assaults only one I've been running was the BLR-2C and that probably bites the dust tomorrow (we'll see). I know the mathematics of the %'s on assaults but there I found the torso stuff actually useful. Though I freely admit I only went 15 nodes! https://kitlaan.gitlab.io/mwoskill/?p=8c9b1ecf-3fc6-11e7-ae4c-d9dbf261febe&s=Weapons
Well you could also do what the jagger is infamous for. Super hill humping. Get behind the perfect grade A hill of your choice preferably above your enemy and at a long distance (not 500 m, more) and unload all that ammo in fast burst fire.
I'm surprised you find Missile Spread noticeable given that it's only a 10% bonus with both nodes. It's far less of an effect than Artemis.
All percentages are additive in MWO. If you get 66% spread from artemis and 10% spread reduction with the nodes, that goes to 56% spread. That means that on top of artemis, you feel roughly half-artemis improvement. It's not much, but it's noticeable for me.
This I'm not sure of. As I said I'm pretty decent in the DD and I've never called it a hill humper with its very wide chest and arm mounted weaponry. Its always been a very aggressive support for me.
They shoot exactly where your retical is pointing over hills. The battlemaster can do this, the stalker can, the kodiak. ETC.
Not really at all relevant to what I said though.... Whether a mech can do something doesn't mean it is best used for that. But then I don't LRM either.
Coincidentally I found out my problem after a lot of matches yesterday when I had no UAC's unjammed at all. Went to look at the quirks and only just found they dropped it from 30% to 20% base jam reduction so I was running 25% with maxed nodes. The heat problem I've contemplated reducing a few times but it means dropping a lot of cooldown and range to do it (to put 9 pts in operations which is mostly garbage). Unsure if the changed nodes on PTS which reduce jam time will help as atm I'm incredibly unsure the triple uac JM6-DD is workable now.
My poor, poor hunchies have suffered. I think that may be more an effect of the endless armor quirks than the skill trees, though.
I think hunchbacks are actually doing fine The 4SP got the nerfbat, but the rest is doing really well for me!
Not that much TBH. HBK-4G is still very enjoyable with the AC20 (especially if you go for the survival quirks: you will tank a lot better) and the 4P is still a very nice vomit laser. The only one that I'm not using anymore for scouting is the 4SP: it lost it's missile spread quirk, so it I had to switch it's SRM6s for SRM4+As for better pinpoint damage, but I found out it wasn't anymore my little king for scouting
Think again, @CarloArmato ! The quirks got removed, but Light Engines got added (So did ERSL, so a STD engine works too) Or you could go full ham on the weight savings of the LE and run dual MRM support: