Nerf beam lasers?!?!

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

meh we have this discussion every patch.  The only thing that's missing for a complete repeat is flames about the heat system and how coolant breaks everything blah blah.

[Frostiken]

meh we have this discussion every patch.  The only thing that's missing for a complete repeat is flames about the heat system and how coolant breaks everything blah blah.

Outside of the usual CLPL and the totally fapped-over but ignored Vulture / Cougar, I don't really remember much of a discussion about the laser relationships, or anyone even really mention beam lasers maybe being too good which is marginalizing the other choices...

Anyway, I'm glad the Heretic also thinks the BLs discharge too fast. I honestly don't think the game needs to be *more* lethal and I think the massive laser boats have too much of an advantage over anything else (certainly missiles boats don't even *dare* approach their level of lethality, and ballistic boats are limited by the features of ballistics, which is ammo and range). If we operate under the assumption that heavys and pulses are actually working okay now, would it work better in the long run to nerf X-Pulses (somewhat) and beams (by a lot) to bring them all back in line?

I don't think the X-Pulses need a nerf. They have the highest DPS of all lasers, but thats what they are, a extreme dps weapon.

Like I said, I don't use X-Pulses very often, but when I do, I like them. I think they're decently effective weapons right now. I was, however, referring to *if* a general lowering of the laser bar occurred to take some of the edge off of lasers to make other weapons feel more competitive. Right now, I think they're just gravy.

[=KoS= Tripod]

meh we have this discussion every patch.  The only thing that's missing for a complete repeat is flames about the heat system and how coolant breaks everything blah blah.

The heat system sucks and coolant breaks everything blah blah

Also I'd gladly downgrade the LRMs by 5 on the Cougar and Vulture prime (well, more like remove completely ) for more heatsinks and armor

[DFDelta]

meh we have this discussion every patch.  The only thing that's missing for a complete repeat is flames about the heat system and how coolant breaks everything blah blah.

Also I'd gladly downgrade the LRMs by 5 on the Cougar and Vulture prime (well, more like remove completely ) for more heatsinks and armor

Thats what I was thinking.
I'd gladly reduce both launchers one size and fill up the free tonnage with DHS. Tough I don't think 3 more DHS will make any difference. The Cougar Prime already has 4 of them and 2 CLPLs make it explode like a coconut in a microwave, if you fire your missiles every now and then.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

It's clear lasers of all types aren't horribly broken. Maybe X-Pulse should cost more, Maybe normal pulse should generate less heat, but its close. I do think nerfing the Lasers would be a mistake at this time.

Given a mechlab, I wouldn't expect to see players dropping HL and Pulse Laser in droves, instead I'd expect players to create variants that play to those weapon's strengths. e.g. Fewer mechs trying to boat HL and Pulses exclusively (or mixing LRM with Pulse) instead mixing them with RAC and SRM.

I have not even looked at the .5.1. to .5.2 weapon damage changes. So it could be there are some stealth nerf/buffs that will take some time for the community to shake out.

[Frostiken]

Also I'd gladly downgrade the LRMs by 5 on the Cougar and Vulture prime (well, more like remove completely ) for more heatsinks and armor

I don't think that'd bother the Vulture so much, but that'd halve the missile capacity of the Cougar, and at that point, it's like why even bother with them.

Given a mechlab, I wouldn't expect to see players dropping HL and Pulse Laser in droves, instead I'd expect players to create variants that play to those weapon's strengths. e.g. Fewer mechs trying to boat HL and Pulses exclusively (or mixing LRM with Pulse) instead mixing them with RAC and SRM.

I actually had the opposite idea. On Clan mechs, the way things are now, I would expect people to go with beam-heavy designs. Personally I don't see a lot of reason at this time to pick CPLs or CHLs over CERBLs.

I don't think the IS is as bad off. First of all, they have the choice of ER or non-ER, so brawlers can seriously save on heat that Clan mechs cannot. And while XPLs are right now a somewhat more valid choice than just BLs on everything, XPLs super-marginalize PLs to the extent that I'm not sure why the IS would even have them anymore.

I think things might be better if there was a set in stone relationship between the laser types - obvious +x% -y%, rather than the esoteric heat/damage tradeoffs. The main differentiation between the lasers should be accuracy (beam / burst duration) and recycle time. The damage / heat / weight / cost should be secondary to that. I think balancing lasers is too much of an act of jenga since they all have their own special ratios and properties which makes the whole thing so far above most people's understanding of the game, beam lasers are just easier and more simple to use.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

I actually had the opposite idea. On Clan mechs, the way things are now, I would expect people to go with beam-heavy designs. Personally I don't see a lot of reason at this time to pick CPLs or CHLs over CERBLs.

I just mean there are not enough designs that play to the strengths of CPL and HL. I'd like to see what one could do with CLPL+ATM or MPL+SRMs. I think the HL makes a great "Off Cycle" weapon. Such as on the Thor. Fire the HL while you're waiting for the LBX20 to reload.  Chain fired HL works out well. But If I'm going to do that, I want to combine it with another weapon that needs a lot of time on target like the UAC5.

Are ER*L good? Sure are. But we have lots of designs in all weight classes that boat them. Would I drop the Pulse lasers on the Vulture Prime and Cougar Prime for ERLL? Sure would. But that's because LRMs+Pulse lasers aren't a good mix. I could just as easily keep the CPL and replace the LRM20s with ATM12s.

[Cik]

meh. beams aren't great either though, in my humble opinion. too much heat to deal with unless the 'mech is purpose-built for mounting them in large numbers. clan pulse lasers are very good, with the probable exception of the large, which is a very, very hot weapon. and does questionable(?) damage. look at the kit fox C. i mean yes, a boat. but it works very well. someone suggested earlier in the thread that pulse lasers be switched to a UAC/ sort of a system. i think it's a good idea. then you have the XPLs be able to fire continuously forever, and adjust them to have different damages and range. i approve of this. heavy lasers were nerfed unnecessarily. honestly even before the nerf they weren't used that often, and now assault pumas are never, ever fielded because the damage is so anemic. might as well take the CMPL kitfox, it's better.

Me

Meaning they still have a set time to fire them (longer than now) but not infinite like XPLs.....

did i understand you right that you are suggesting pulses move from a rapid fire pulse set duration system? as it is now: fire pulse laser and it goes bang bang bang bang bang automatically. switch to a UAC system and it changes to: hold down button and it fires, but if you release the button it stops. as you fire, it builds heat, kind of like the way a UAC/ works? i think it would help the effectiveness of the weapon, personally. though it would be a pain to work with on the thor where you have to be concentrating on firing the UAC most of the time.

[xInVicTuSx]

Frosti points out things I'm already aware of, then throws in unneeded troll bait.

*Yawn* 

Beam lasers are fine as they are, only the CERLBL and CERMBL start getting stupid good and those already have mechanisms in place to keep them from being unbeatable. Current coolant mechanics hurt here but Sweet Jesus lets just wait till that gets added features and not talk about it.

Clan Pulse lasers are fine, they do a little more damage for some more heat, but the larges particularly now have 700m range, allowing you to get damage in before brawlers close range.

IS Pulse lasers now are hhhhngh, 200m, 300m, and a crippling 400m for LPL makes me sad. I hope they get a bit of a rework on how they fire to keep them from being impossible to use seeing as you're now in SSRM range at this point.

Heavy lasers are bad, yup they are, yup the nerfs were somewhat unneeded and too much. On this front though, I don't expect any changes until they can figure out a way to have more interesting drawbacks rather than rofl heat and rofl shot time (basically keeping them from being an I win weapon without giving them stupidly harsh drawbacks).

X-Pulse... I don't know honestly, yes they are great weapons overall, but I keep getting told that they are not "working" yet due to frame dependency problems and they obviously wouldn't be tweaked until they are actually fully working. Seeing as MXPL has more range than the CMPL and the LXPL has the same range as the CLPL, I don't see them ever being bad.

One thing about LPL in particular is variant problems, there is no reason whatsoever to boat 4 LPL on one mech, they fire so quickly that you build up heat too quickly no matter how many DHS you have. I don't think I've ever seen a stock CBT config with more than two Large pulse lasers. They are best for racking up nice high heat damage along with low heat weapons that allow you to focus on aiming the lasers, such as SSRMs, Gauss rifles, and perhaps RAC5\ UAC5 for firing when you're cooling down. x4 LPL is just overkill. 

[Frostiken]

Heavy lasers are bad, yup they are, yup the nerfs were somewhat unneeded and too much. On this front though, I don't expect any changes until they can figure out a way to have more interesting drawbacks rather than rofl heat and rofl shot time (basically keeping them from being an I win weapon without giving them stupidly harsh drawbacks).

Well that's a problem, because Heavy Laser are *supposed* to be good. They're supposed to melt giant rivers of ownage through IS mechs.

Yeah, the HLL is pretty painful, but the SHL and MHL weren't ever problematic. Aside from the CRAP which was basically designed to hunt legs, the only time I ever saw MHLs used was on the Vulture, and that presented such a meager threat I never *ever* felt that SHLs and MHLs, when used within reason, were really 'all that'.

I mean, in MWLL you need lots of medium lasers to do anything. In CBT, a couple medium lasers was a decent fighting loadout for light and medium mechs, but in MWLL (and this is true of just about all mechwarrior games) you need to boat lots of them to really feel effective. So carrying something like two heavy medium lasers is a 'sane' loadout, but can't match the superiority of four medium beams. But you can't carry more medium heavies, because you need the excess space to pack five double heatsinks in. Sort of a Catch-22...

I thought the excess beam duration was a neat way to simulate accuracy, but it combined with massive heat and knife-fighting range may be too much. I personally never really put much stock in heavy lasers simply because of the massive 1.5 second discharge. That's a long time in an FPS game, wheres a beam laser discharges three times faster, making it oh SO much more effective leveraging its range advantage to hit that exact soft spot on an enemy mech.

At the very least, a one second beam laser discharge might make the heavy lasers not quite so unattractive from an accuracy standpoint.

[xInVicTuSx]

All Heavy Lasers, however, build a tremendous amount of heat and interfere with a 'Mech's sensors. The Heavy Large Laser receives a +1 to-hit modifier to reflect that.

As I said, they need some creative drawbacks to balance them out so they can get their damage back.

HLL are only really good on the Morrigu because you can stand there completely still and keep them on one section of your target without worrying about getting roflpwned.

I would like to see them get some damage back and the shot time decreased a bit when another drawback is introduced.

The weapon screams for it because its like those PPCs that were all jacked with... you start screwing with the weapon and you screw with the pilot and the rest of the mech.

As they are now it feels more like  +3 modifier if you try to use HML on anything moving faster than 30kph.

[Artemis Dragmire]

Heavy lasers could use a buff.

Beam lasers are fine.

XPulses are fine now. (IF your PC can handle the game at a steady 40-50 FPS. Yes, they should be un-tied from FPS dependency, but in ideal conditions, they work fine.)

Pulses are amazing. Warhammer Prime/Thanatos D/Uller C prove this.

[xInVicTuSx]

Medium Pulses are amazing. Warhammer Prime/Thanatos D/Uller C prove this.

Fixed that for ya.

[=CJW=YalK]

Stuff

Me

Meaning they still have a set time to fire them (longer than now) but not infinite like XPLs.....

did i understand you right that you are suggesting pulses move from a rapid fire pulse set duration system? as it is now: fire pulse laser and it goes bang bang bang bang bang automatically. switch to a UAC system and it changes to: hold down button and it fires, but if you release the button it stops. as you fire, it builds heat, kind of like the way a UAC/ works? i think it would help the effectiveness of the weapon, personally. though it would be a pain to work with on the thor where you have to be concentrating on firing the UAC most of the time.

Yes, well said....that's exactly what I was trying to say

Pulses I always thought should give you more control in firing....thus increased accuracy

And just too add, ERMBL is the Gold standard of Laser tech in CBT...combining the perfect balance of:

Weight
Crits
Heat
Range
Damage

It's like comparing most Mediums to the StormCrow or heavies too the Timberwolf...

I don't think all weapons are created equal, but they should all have a reason to use them....right now Pulse doesn't make me want to use them, they are just a harder to use, harder to hit (full damage a section) with, heavier, less efficient (read heat) laser right now....

[xInVicTuSx]

MPL have very nice heat efficiency, as Artemis pointed out, the WH Prime, Thanatos D and Uller C all have very forgivable heat curves with very high damage.

SPL have amazaballs heat efficiency and you can bet your socks they will be boated along with some LBX and SRM as soon as mechlab is completed.

LPL however have rotten heat efficiency, so if you miss (which is very easy) you are heavily punished and you must hit multiple shots successfully to surpass the damage you would get from ERLBL.