0:21 in tabletop, the Plasma CANNON by the clans deals ONLY heat, the plasma RIFLE by the Cappellans deals Inner Sphere PPC damage at IS LL ranges and deals bonus heat on top of the damage.
Yeah, that's one thing I was scratching my head at when they first released it. Both weapon systems function completely differently canonically as well. The Plasma Rifle doesn't actually emit light within the weapon system the way the plasma canon does. It basically takes a plastic cartridge and fires it in a manner that has the projectile not reaching it's plasma point in it's heating cycle until it's out of the barrel some distance. The projectile also doesn't glow blue-green on a Plasma Rifle; it's yellow/orange, at least in-universe. That said, color is fairly meaningless as there are numerous conflicting descriptions.
@@DIEGhostfish there is no IS plasma rifle in MWO, you have the clan plasmacannon only it deals 4.5 points of damage and causes heat on the target similar to a flamer in the tabletop the plasmacannon (and IS plasmarifle) use ammo but in MWO due to technical reasons (with no cryengine engineer available) the MWO version functions closer to a ppc without the need of ammo ..
They need tweaks, badly. I love the look and the sound, but they don't do much damage and you are getting more heat than the enemy is. As they stand, they suck.
MWO has always f'd up heat weaponry. This thing was originally in Battletech as a super heatgun, but the idea of cooking opponents horrified PGI so we got this mediocre weapon system in which the heat it generates is barely noticeable, but punishes the stats of the weapon in other ways unfairly.
@Talendale Largely because post beta, right after the game's full release, they had just removed stackpoling (using mech explosions to wipe enemy mechs), Knockdown, and repair/rearm bills. Shortly after they released the Firestarter line and the hero mech EMBER, and with its 4 flamers it was shutting down people left and right. It became such a menace because heat was so powerful back then that they had to release an emergency patch that nerfed heat into the ground and it still took two updates for it to be 'dead' effectively. Now if PGI wants us to use heat weapons they need to take a step back and analyze how they can implement them much better.
Unfortunately Plasma Cannons still need a lot of help in their current state. Most of what the Clans got in the new weapon releases are just not even remotely viable, because their drawbacks are far too great than their benefit. I'd be fine if Plasma cannons didn't get any damage increase but inflicted much greater heat on the opponent and created less heat for the user. On top of that, giving them the PPC limitations only makes them worse. If they get buffed I'd be fine with PPC limitations, but if they aren't going to function how they do in tabletop either, then they need some major, major help.
you do realize it's half a er ppc right? 2 PCs is the same weight, and same heat as 1 er ppc for 1 point less damage, with a much faster cooldown. Explain how they can suck, if er PPCs dont also suck...
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@hohenzollern6025 ER PPCs aren't great but even here in T1 they do serve an actual purpose on specific builds, and you always see at least one person running them every match. Plasma cannons don't serve that purpose. While they're a "Light PPC" equivalent for clans, they're worse in every way. They generate far too much personal heat for even a single, and even if you manage the heat properly the damage and heat caused on the enemy isn't significant enough.
They need to take a page from Roguetech, and add in cooling suppression vs. just adding heat. And yes, there should be some more variation between the clan and IS versions as well, but that is less of an issue, to me.
Is thr IS rifle the full PPC damage plus halfish to a third the Clan Cannon's heat at IS LL ranges? In MWO where you rarely have time to run out of ammo that might be OP.
@@LupusGr3y That's not necessarily true. It's not data that PGI could *accurately* get, however. It would also potentially induce more server overhead than it's worth by implementing things such as fire pattern and overheat duration tracking. For example, if someone starts overheating and your plasma cannons or flamers cause them to stay in the overheat state an additional .5 seconds which is just enough time for them to knock out their engine then it's your kill, but PGI can only directly infer that if they stop firing as soon as they run hot as the moment they shoot again after your last hit there's no guarantee your heat would have helped them die. Likewise with pattern recognition they could track someone's weapon usage to get a rough idea of how overheating impacts that and make a general determination based on that. If you've spent the last 3 minutes firing two large lasers every time they come off cooldown with a little extra time to not overheat and now you're having to wait longer or switch to one laser to avoid overheating then that drop in DPS can be construed as an effect of your opponent's overheating. And doing that for up to 24 players in every (quick play) game simultaneously is a bunch of extra calculations. So yeah, I would say they could "easily" get the data, but I doubt that they could get very accurate data without inducing server overhead that isn't worthwhile. That said, they could at least track heat applied as its own metric and *maybe* tag you as the killer if you were the last heat source applied to an enemy and there is is something like an 80% chance they wouldn't have destroyed their mech from overheating if you hadn't tagged them with heat damage in the last second or two. That way players can see just how much heat they're applying to enemies for at least some feedback and they have a reasonable chance of getting credit for kills where the target overheated long enough to self-destruct without adding to their own trouble by continuing to fire.
@@Mesterick Which, since we are talking about PGI and considering how long it took for them to give us Damage Taken, I highly doubt they are up to the task for something that is actually complicated to implement. But yeah, Heat Taken and Heat Applied should be simple, so there is more hope of getting those stats.
I think a really cool thing they could do is have these weapons apply an extra debuff that lowers the target's maximum heat threshold/hogs some of their heatsinks for a short while. Instead of focus fire the more you splash this debuff over an enemy mech the more their heastinks are overwhelmed. I don't play though, so this could be super annoying, or super fun and interesting from a utility and support perspective.
as someone who runs flamers on quite a few mechs that I use I have been wanting a heat tracking metric for some time. I KNOW I'm helping my team by overheating enemy mechs during a brawl, but the stats dont show it and I often LOSE psr during winning games even when I was active all game. Like you say, Damage isnt everything.
I hate that AMS no longer contributes at least a little to match score. Boating multiples on a heavy or assault may not be punishing tonnage wise, but it definitely makes a difference in your damage potential when you do it on lights and mediums.
I feel like they could do some kind of heat damage metric. Like, you get credit for overheat damage that a mech incurs in a period of time after you hit them with a heat generating weapon or something. Or if a mech dies to overheating while you're attacking with a head damage weapon you get a kill credit. There's gotta be a way to showcase this sort of thing.
Cauldron leaked stats for next patch are 5.5 heat for these things. No changes to damage or HSL if I recall correctly. Still, with the DPS they will have they should be more useful than now.
@@joshuamiller8235 mate, heat generated (7 now) not heat applied to enemies. I know I didn't specify but I did specifically mention DPS didn't I?... A bit of context goes a long way -_-
@@PraetorGix which is why i was asking, i was confused. thanks for the reply. 5 heat isnt too bad. much better then 7. we'll see in practice tho i guess.
My experiment was with ECM Jump Jet Kit fox and 4 Plasma cannons. I set it to chain fire and used it to harrass. Took the right map and team to live, but was fun. DId get a kill here and there, similiar to my R80 Urbie with 4 Light PPC. But i never really topped much over 200 damage. Went back to Er mediums and got 400plus damage with same tactics. YEah, i just wanted the plasma same damage as Light ppc, has same basic range. But either are not really all that, more or less niche tactics.
"I won't be a priority mech" *Can you please inform my enemy teams? Because every time I take a Cougar, I could have 5 assaults on my team and they seem to ALWAYS turn AWAY from high priority targets JUST to burn me.*
I wonder if they are calculating heat damage inflicted towards the final damage dealt Because normally it should be and if an overheat blowup occurs after heat damage was dealth, it should be creditted not as a suicide, but kill to the plasma shooter. The same as if you shoot and blow up the ammo of an enemy that in turn explodeds the mech itself.
It's hard to say. If your heat made them shoot your team a bit less it could definitely help. They just gotta add a way to see how much heat you put into the enemy.
So far my best build with these has been a Shadowcat I'm affectionately calling the "Hellcat" 3x Plasma PPC 3x Flamer 2x MG A really fun harasser that can get in there and really support your more aggressive assault teammates
@@hidefstatic go into the game, into the mechlab for your "hellcat" Click the export button. highlight that entire string, hit Ctrl+C. Then come here and reply and hit Ctrl+V
i really like the 3 plasma ppcs on the kit fox with jump jets and ecm it seems to work pretty similar to this but a little smaller with a little better convergence
All PPCs and the plasma cannon are well plasma, superheated ionized gas. Seriously. PGI should add " Heat Given " and " Heat Taken " to the score table. Also the Plasma cannons need to give like... 2.5-4% heat PER shot on enemies ( Nightgyr half? ) and the heat/ plasma should stick to the enemy mechs and lock that temporarily heat increase on said enemy mech for several seconds. Like add 1.5% - 3% temp heat increase for 9- 12 seconds on enemy mech PER shot. Damage should be less and less the more heat PGI decides the P.Cannons should give
agreed. i tried this weapon, and its impossible to overheat a mech with them. brought 5 of them on a marauder II build, and even with the massive heat sink capability for the marauder II, i just couldnt do anything that made a noticeable difference. it just doesnt do enough heat.. .25 in 3.5 seconds against anything is nothing when you are dissipating .22/.20 per second per double heat sink. even my kodiak, with only 16 double heat sinks 10+2 engine +4 additional, literally doesnt care when getting hit by these things. if it applied some kind of status effect, or even just a flat .6 heat damage per shot, it would be more effective. A flamer has nearly 3x the heat output, per second, and is still widely not used unless stacked 2+.
1:13 Based on what I learned, Plasma Cannons deal 4.5 damage and 1 splash damage to each side. So total damage varies between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on where you hit, also it deals the heat damage of 0.25 mentioned for each point of damage impact (point of impact and splash points are equal in this regard). Which gives you the range of total heat damage applied between 0.5 and 0.75 heat.
Something like this weapon, no matter what PGI does, you're never going to get a full scope of it's impact. It could have great impact, or it could have little to none. It depends greatly on the decisions of your enemies. It could apply some bonus heat and keep an enemy from peaking for a few seconds, similar to how airstrikes apply pressure in a given area, or it could just be ignored largely, especially if a mech has good heat dissipation and low heat weapons. It really just depends on too many factors. So many that even if PGI added heat damage for folks using heat damage weapons you still wouldn't technically see the impact of such a weapon. I do agree though, it does feel a little bit too weak. Though considering the unknown impact it has, it makes it difficult to suggest what needs to happen to properly balance it.
The issue is, even with a heat dealt stat to inform how much you did, dealing heat will always be situational and subjective. Unlike damage which permanently sticks to a target, any and all heat will go away. So even if you dealt some crazy heat number like 600+ if that didn't cause a shutdown, a reduction in firing or damage from overheating it just doesn't mean anything. Granted I think those scenarios can be very powerful and impactful, but they are certainly hard to quantify.
Plasma cannons are supposed to be ranged anti-infantry flamers essentially. They were never meant for mech vs mech combat, but I'd imagine combining plasma with small or medium pulse lasers would help with heat buildup.
Tabletop ones did 3d6 heat per hit, making them rather complimentary in terms of forcing opponents to restrain their return fire lest a lucky plasma hit or two sent their heat towards shutdown warnings. Of course, you could only add 15 heat points to a target per turn- a mechanic MWO doesn't have, and it shows in how poorly they handle anything that causes a 'Mech to heat up.
Some tweaks for PCs might be things like lowering heat dissipation on hit, maybe an armor softening effect, high ammo crit rate, or even leaving a blobs cooling plasma on the deck that could make an area too hot to stand around in after several salvoes. Not really tabletop rules, but those aren't really taken into consideration by PGI for balance reasons anyway, right?
I wonder how the battle would go if your entire team were equipped with nothing but Plasma Cannons. I bet the heat would really stack up quick with everyone engaging at once. You could MAYBE shut down the front line attackers, or at least make them decide to shutdown or suicide.
The entire team takes plasma cannons and flamethrowers. It turned out that the enemy took only classic gauss guns. The enemy laughs long and contemptuously.
I think you were doing more than you thought for the team - by dealing heat, you probably kept the enemy from firing which allowed your team to roflstomp. But you're right, they need to show a metric with the amount of heat you throw out.
The match score would have to show impact of heating up enemies for this to work. If someone did 400 damage and had a 700 match score with heaters, this weapon would work.
With a pure plasma cannon build you should be able to approximate how much heat damage you did -- it'll be in proportion to your actual damage, bar whatever difference the splash makes. Roughly 1 heat for every 25 damage, call it. So in a 500 damage match you would've done a whopping 20 heat damage.
I've just realised what the purpose of the Plasma cannon is, to counter stealth armored (light) mechs, not only does it scramble their ECM, but it also adds to their heat, which doesn't dissipate when their stealth is active... Which makes it such a niche use weapon, that you're better off with almost any other weapon.
Unfortunately, doesn't exactly work that way. If you hit a stealthing mech with a Plasma Cannon it automatically turns off their stealth, thus removing the heat malus for being stealthed, so even then it is pointless as turning off a stealth mech's stealth, giving them a tiny bit of heat, and then removing the stealth heat per second cost? Its a net negative; you end up cooling the stealth mech instead of heating them up. Edit: typod a few things.
I honestly don't think they should base things off of any of the other games, including tabletop. Instead, go by the lore set up in the canon books. Maybe not for mwo since it's pvp, but it would be nice to see in a pve environment. If they can even make it work. It would be difficult at the very least. I've always been fascinated by the way stuff works in the lore moreso than any of the game rules. If that's a dumb idea, I'd be happy to hear why 🙃
The damage looks passable (if you hit enough), but it includes a lot of "splash" that doesn't actually do much. The heat doesn't seem very significant. Also this mech is very slow. Not a very good weapon IMO.
Yeah I don’t like the Light-PPC-but-bad version of the Plasma Cannon that MWO has brought. In tabletop, it’s a very good strategic weapon that only deals heat damage to ‘Mechs and uses a styrofoam/plastic substance as ammo. I feel like they just shouldn’t have added something called a PLASMA CANNON if it’s just gonna be a bad PPC. Implement it properly PGI or call it something else (or just pick another weapon that could be just as cool a concept but already exists!) Edit: side note, I also think the fact that the green turns blue at a distance and when it strikes, basically just becoming a normal PPC again, is also goofy and lazy.
As it is right now, it only does .25 heat dmg, so it’s not even good at applying heat in any meaningful way. It’s basically just a bad Light PPC currently.
Try combo each arm. 1 LPPC + 1 PLASMA + 1AP GAUSS . Then remaining small pulses in torsos. Think plasmas as designed are meant to be visual more than a kill tool at this time. Or to be used in combos. As they seem to have splash damage. That kill looked like you hit LT and splashed CT for kill. If it's actually an aoe splash damage weapon, then pair it with weapons meant to do same or crit seekers. I hope @Baradul explores this and combos more. Suspect hidden benefits. May add heat, as well as reducing heat dissipation. Problem is, does it stack? Could you use two triple plasma shots in succession to cripple their heat dissipation and at same time add heat? Perhaps some testing grounds experiments are needed too.
@@Artificer1911 so plasmas only clans? Thought it was originally IS tech clans picked up and tweaked too. What energy weapons would complement the clan plasmas?
I'm running a Nova-A with 4 Plasma Cannon (2 per arm). Doing the PPC EMP effect to targets as well as heat is useful but I'm overheating before they do. 😞
It feel like this the type of weapon that is very bad solo, trying to heat up someone looks way too hard But it's also the type of weapon that can be very toxic in team, whit like 4 or 5 Mech whit plasma you can lock enemy in place and destroy whitout any counter play So yeah there's that x)
@@robertagren9360 yeah it's not really a practical build for arena matches but it could definitely work in forested battlefields. They'd hate that mech with a vengeance
Not sure you're aware Bara but Plasma Cannons also do 1 point of splash damage. That's why your damage output in the 1st match was respectable. They can deal a total of 6.5 damage per hit to torso components. The next patch will lower their heat cost down to 5.25. This will result in them having a decent damage / heat heat ratio. Physical damage output won't be a problem. The problem is the heat damage is so low it's not even noticeable. In fact, the heat damage is so low one can only conclude that the Cauldron never had any intention for the weapon to do a meaningful amount of heat damage. They intended for it to be a rough copy of the IS Light PPC which is pathetic and an waste of a opportunity to add a truly unique weapon to the game. It's stunning to me how PGI allows the Cauldron to repeatedly make bad decisions like this and screw up their game.
In a game where the most important thing is always damage (not playing the mode, not countering ECM, not NARCing, etc.), a person who plays the game on this level feeling like they aren't contributing and actually saying "I need to be always shooting in order to do some damage" out loud is exactly right - heat isn't as important as damage, but if you want it to be important... then make it important. They look and sound amazing but for the tonnage and heatscale limit and effectiveness on the battlefield... meh. That's three plasma cannons doing middle-ish damage for a light... why would a larger mech waste space on them at all? Definitely needs adjusting. FWIW, it'd be neat if heat vision signatures became brighter because of internal heat build-up. Not sure that's a thing that can be done at this late stage, but it'd be rad. You could really maximize your target selection for these kinds of systems.
My repeated criticism will be that you don't do well with single arm weapon stacks. You never maximize for peeking with the correct side. You are ALWAYS going the wrong direction. On the second map, you were on an elevated position, on the highway and were peeking down the correct side and just gave up the position for no reason.
Honestly, until they track something like average heat, you won't see a great way to track. Weapons that deal heat damage but can't force a shutdown and don't suppress cooling, AND cost you more build up are just terrible
Hrm, was interrupted by a Call of Dragons commercial; Total ripoff of the vid intro to Original Warcraft III mixed with the vid for Elder Scrolls Online: Elseweyr: game awards 2019 trailer. The part where the dragon blows up and the wizard struggles to contain the explosion so the others can escape. Lol, no imagination beyond "oh, stealing that part would be cool, lets do that." ROFL
Your using a 15 pt alpha build, of course it's not gonna be great. I mean, duh... gonna be just about as good as using 3 medium lasers in a match. I used one of the set of 8 novas to goof off with them because the quirks were nuts and it had 3 energy hard points. At least that mech had some quirks to make em make sense.
Plasma cannons in MWO are garbage. No sugar on top. The heat delivered is utterly useless. The damage, weight, range compared to other weapons makes it a laughable choice. If your in plasma cannon range, you should have a MPL and flamer instead haha.
10:25 sadly no. You destroy side torso on XL clan mech, heat limit goes down while heat level remains the same. It will be same with any other weapon. Just simple math. First game 542 damage done. Your alpha strike is 13,5. It mean you have about 40 instance of applying heat to the enemy. So even IF every time you apply 0,75 heat with alpha strike - _during the whole match_ you barely apply 30 heat to the enemy. Most mechs have heat limit about 60, it's absolutely nothing for such long time span. Seems like my predictions was correct. Weapon kinda ok, C-ERPPC with bigger DPS but cost 4 slots. (so you reach sustain DPS without additional DHS even earlier) But "applying heat mechanics" kinda doesn't exist. Classic PGI game design, not surprised at all.
Just make it a clan light ppc and don’t mess around with heat shenanigans that don’t work with MWO design. Also confused as to why amongst all these new clan weapons they didn’t give them the clan rac5.
0:21 in tabletop, the Plasma CANNON by the clans deals ONLY heat, the plasma RIFLE by the Cappellans deals Inner Sphere PPC damage at IS LL ranges and deals bonus heat on top of the damage.
Yeah, that's one thing I was scratching my head at when they first released it. Both weapon systems function completely differently canonically as well. The Plasma Rifle doesn't actually emit light within the weapon system the way the plasma canon does. It basically takes a plastic cartridge and fires it in a manner that has the projectile not reaching it's plasma point in it's heating cycle until it's out of the barrel some distance. The projectile also doesn't glow blue-green on a Plasma Rifle; it's yellow/orange, at least in-universe. That said, color is fairly meaningless as there are numerous conflicting descriptions.
@@ZackThRipper How does the rifle work in MWO?
@@DIEGhostfish there is no IS plasma rifle in MWO, you have the clan plasmacannon only
it deals 4.5 points of damage and causes heat on the target similar to a flamer
in the tabletop the plasmacannon (and IS plasmarifle) use ammo but in MWO due to technical reasons (with no cryengine engineer available)
the MWO version functions closer to a ppc without the need of ammo ..
@@MrTBSC Oof
Plasma Cannons are cool looking and sound great ……but damage ehhh
They need tweaks, badly. I love the look and the sound, but they don't do much damage and you are getting more heat than the enemy is. As they stand, they suck.
a "Noisy Cricket" without the punch 😢
already ahead of u
Double the heat applied, and maybe a point or more of dmg would make them nasty.
MWO has always f'd up heat weaponry. This thing was originally in Battletech as a super heatgun, but the idea of cooking opponents horrified PGI so we got this mediocre weapon system in which the heat it generates is barely noticeable, but punishes the stats of the weapon in other ways unfairly.
@Talendale Largely because post beta, right after the game's full release, they had just removed stackpoling (using mech explosions to wipe enemy mechs), Knockdown, and repair/rearm bills. Shortly after they released the Firestarter line and the hero mech EMBER, and with its 4 flamers it was shutting down people left and right. It became such a menace because heat was so powerful back then that they had to release an emergency patch that nerfed heat into the ground and it still took two updates for it to be 'dead' effectively.
Now if PGI wants us to use heat weapons they need to take a step back and analyze how they can implement them much better.
Unfortunately Plasma Cannons still need a lot of help in their current state. Most of what the Clans got in the new weapon releases are just not even remotely viable, because their drawbacks are far too great than their benefit.
I'd be fine if Plasma cannons didn't get any damage increase but inflicted much greater heat on the opponent and created less heat for the user. On top of that, giving them the PPC limitations only makes them worse. If they get buffed I'd be fine with PPC limitations, but if they aren't going to function how they do in tabletop either, then they need some major, major help.
you do realize it's half a er ppc right? 2 PCs is the same weight, and same heat as 1 er ppc for 1 point less damage, with a much faster cooldown. Explain how they can suck, if er PPCs dont also suck...
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@hohenzollern6025 ER PPCs aren't great but even here in T1 they do serve an actual purpose on specific builds, and you always see at least one person running them every match.
Plasma cannons don't serve that purpose. While they're a "Light PPC" equivalent for clans, they're worse in every way. They generate far too much personal heat for even a single, and even if you manage the heat properly the damage and heat caused on the enemy isn't significant enough.
They need to take a page from Roguetech, and add in cooling suppression vs. just adding heat.
And yes, there should be some more variation between the clan and IS versions as well, but that is less of an issue, to me.
Is thr IS rifle the full PPC damage plus halfish to a third the Clan Cannon's heat at IS LL ranges?
In MWO where you rarely have time to run out of ammo that might be OP.
@@DIEGhostfish I don't recall the exact stats. At least not tabletop; Roguetech is closer to TT values but still differs by a bit.
Heat damage needs to be added as a stat. Flamers are a thing also right?
Also Inferno missiles and some other possible future weapons (ammo) in MWO.
Problem is, how do you know if someones overheat damage was caused by themselves or by you? So it's not a stat PGI could easily get, if ever
@@LupusGr3y That's not necessarily true. It's not data that PGI could *accurately* get, however. It would also potentially induce more server overhead than it's worth by implementing things such as fire pattern and overheat duration tracking. For example, if someone starts overheating and your plasma cannons or flamers cause them to stay in the overheat state an additional .5 seconds which is just enough time for them to knock out their engine then it's your kill, but PGI can only directly infer that if they stop firing as soon as they run hot as the moment they shoot again after your last hit there's no guarantee your heat would have helped them die.
Likewise with pattern recognition they could track someone's weapon usage to get a rough idea of how overheating impacts that and make a general determination based on that. If you've spent the last 3 minutes firing two large lasers every time they come off cooldown with a little extra time to not overheat and now you're having to wait longer or switch to one laser to avoid overheating then that drop in DPS can be construed as an effect of your opponent's overheating. And doing that for up to 24 players in every (quick play) game simultaneously is a bunch of extra calculations.
So yeah, I would say they could "easily" get the data, but I doubt that they could get very accurate data without inducing server overhead that isn't worthwhile. That said, they could at least track heat applied as its own metric and *maybe* tag you as the killer if you were the last heat source applied to an enemy and there is is something like an 80% chance they wouldn't have destroyed their mech from overheating if you hadn't tagged them with heat damage in the last second or two. That way players can see just how much heat they're applying to enemies for at least some feedback and they have a reasonable chance of getting credit for kills where the target overheated long enough to self-destruct without adding to their own trouble by continuing to fire.
@@Mesterick Which, since we are talking about PGI and considering how long it took for them to give us Damage Taken, I highly doubt they are up to the task for something that is actually complicated to implement.
But yeah, Heat Taken and Heat Applied should be simple, so there is more hope of getting those stats.
I think a really cool thing they could do is have these weapons apply an extra debuff that lowers the target's maximum heat threshold/hogs some of their heatsinks for a short while. Instead of focus fire the more you splash this debuff over an enemy mech the more their heastinks are overwhelmed. I don't play though, so this could be super annoying, or super fun and interesting from a utility and support perspective.
I like the debuff idea. like 10% cooling reduction per plasma hit up to maybe 50% max. maybe returns to normal over 5s
as someone who runs flamers on quite a few mechs that I use I have been wanting a heat tracking metric for some time.
I KNOW I'm helping my team by overheating enemy mechs during a brawl, but the stats dont show it and I often LOSE psr during winning games even when I was active all game.
Like you say, Damage isnt everything.
I hate that AMS no longer contributes at least a little to match score. Boating multiples on a heavy or assault may not be punishing tonnage wise, but it definitely makes a difference in your damage potential when you do it on lights and mediums.
I feel like they could do some kind of heat damage metric. Like, you get credit for overheat damage that a mech incurs in a period of time after you hit them with a heat generating weapon or something. Or if a mech dies to overheating while you're attacking with a head damage weapon you get a kill credit. There's gotta be a way to showcase this sort of thing.
Cauldron leaked stats for next patch are 5.5 heat for these things. No changes to damage or HSL if I recall correctly. Still, with the DPS they will have they should be more useful than now.
isnt the current heat .25? This sounds like a MASSIVE buff if so.
@@joshuamiller8235 mate, heat generated (7 now) not heat applied to enemies. I know I didn't specify but I did specifically mention DPS didn't I?... A bit of context goes a long way -_-
@@PraetorGix which is why i was asking, i was confused. thanks for the reply.
5 heat isnt too bad. much better then 7. we'll see in practice tho i guess.
My experiment was with ECM Jump Jet Kit fox and 4 Plasma cannons. I set it to chain fire and used it to harrass. Took the right map and team to live, but was fun. DId get a kill here and there, similiar to my R80 Urbie with 4 Light PPC. But i never really topped much over 200 damage. Went back to Er mediums and got 400plus damage with same tactics. YEah, i just wanted the plasma same damage as Light ppc, has same basic range. But either are not really all that, more or less niche tactics.
"I won't be a priority mech"
*Can you please inform my enemy teams? Because every time I take a Cougar, I could have 5 assaults on my team and they seem to ALWAYS turn AWAY from high priority targets JUST to burn me.*
Que the Benny Hill theme.
Are you running 12 magshots? 'Cause yeah... I'ma prioritize you. You're dangerous, relatively easy to hit, and not as fast as most other lights.
@@Pulmonox that's the Adder you're thinking of.
@@Kepora1 I DO get those two mixed up a lot, NGL.
This gun is desperately in need of a major buff.
I wonder if they are calculating heat damage inflicted towards the final damage dealt
Because normally it should be and if an overheat blowup occurs after heat damage was dealth, it should be creditted not as a suicide, but kill to the plasma shooter. The same as if you shoot and blow up the ammo of an enemy that in turn explodeds the mech itself.
It's hard to say. If your heat made them shoot your team a bit less it could definitely help. They just gotta add a way to see how much heat you put into the enemy.
That's what heat vision is for. Hot mechs = brighter.
So far my best build with these has been a Shadowcat I'm affectionately calling the "Hellcat"
3x Plasma PPC
3x Flamer
2x MG
A really fun harasser that can get in there and really support your more aggressive assault teammates
that sounds fun. Gonna have to try that one.
Got a build code for that? Sounds fun!
Also would love to see a build code for this
@@Lexiconjurer is that not the build code above? Sorry I've never had to send one before
@@hidefstatic go into the game, into the mechlab for your "hellcat"
Click the export button.
highlight that entire string, hit Ctrl+C.
Then come here and reply and hit Ctrl+V
The internet needs a linebacker stacked with ap gausses and I think you're the man to put that on digital database forever Baradual
I tried it out last night. Went ok as long as I was part of a pack attack. May just go back to the 3 HML/ UAC5 I had on it before.
i really like the 3 plasma ppcs on the kit fox with jump jets and ecm it seems to work pretty similar to this but a little smaller with a little better convergence
All PPCs and the plasma cannon are well plasma, superheated ionized gas. Seriously. PGI should add " Heat Given " and " Heat Taken " to the score table. Also the Plasma cannons need to give like... 2.5-4% heat PER shot on enemies ( Nightgyr half? ) and the heat/ plasma should stick to the enemy mechs and lock that temporarily heat increase on said enemy mech for several seconds. Like add 1.5% - 3% temp heat increase for 9- 12 seconds on enemy mech PER shot. Damage should be less and less the more heat PGI decides the P.Cannons should give
agreed. i tried this weapon, and its impossible to overheat a mech with them. brought 5 of them on a marauder II build, and even with the massive heat sink capability for the marauder II, i just couldnt do anything that made a noticeable difference. it just doesnt do enough heat.. .25 in 3.5 seconds against anything is nothing when you are dissipating .22/.20 per second per double heat sink. even my kodiak, with only 16 double heat sinks 10+2 engine +4 additional, literally doesnt care when getting hit by these things. if it applied some kind of status effect, or even just a flat .6 heat damage per shot, it would be more effective. A flamer has nearly 3x the heat output, per second, and is still widely not used unless stacked 2+.
1:13 Based on what I learned, Plasma Cannons deal 4.5 damage and 1 splash damage to each side. So total damage varies between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on where you hit, also it deals the heat damage of 0.25 mentioned for each point of damage impact (point of impact and splash points are equal in this regard). Which gives you the range of total heat damage applied between 0.5 and 0.75 heat.
You can do better with 2erppc
Something like this weapon, no matter what PGI does, you're never going to get a full scope of it's impact. It could have great impact, or it could have little to none. It depends greatly on the decisions of your enemies. It could apply some bonus heat and keep an enemy from peaking for a few seconds, similar to how airstrikes apply pressure in a given area, or it could just be ignored largely, especially if a mech has good heat dissipation and low heat weapons.
It really just depends on too many factors. So many that even if PGI added heat damage for folks using heat damage weapons you still wouldn't technically see the impact of such a weapon. I do agree though, it does feel a little bit too weak. Though considering the unknown impact it has, it makes it difficult to suggest what needs to happen to properly balance it.
The issue is, even with a heat dealt stat to inform how much you did, dealing heat will always be situational and subjective. Unlike damage which permanently sticks to a target, any and all heat will go away. So even if you dealt some crazy heat number like 600+ if that didn't cause a shutdown, a reduction in firing or damage from overheating it just doesn't mean anything. Granted I think those scenarios can be very powerful and impactful, but they are certainly hard to quantify.
Plasma cannons are supposed to be ranged anti-infantry flamers essentially.
They were never meant for mech vs mech combat, but I'd imagine combining plasma with small or medium pulse lasers would help with heat buildup.
Tabletop ones did 3d6 heat per hit, making them rather complimentary in terms of forcing opponents to restrain their return fire lest a lucky plasma hit or two sent their heat towards shutdown warnings. Of course, you could only add 15 heat points to a target per turn- a mechanic MWO doesn't have, and it shows in how poorly they handle anything that causes a 'Mech to heat up.
Some tweaks for PCs might be things like lowering heat dissipation on hit, maybe an armor softening effect, high ammo crit rate, or even leaving a blobs cooling plasma on the deck that could make an area too hot to stand around in after several salvoes. Not really tabletop rules, but those aren't really taken into consideration by PGI for balance reasons anyway, right?
Should deal heat over time or maybe negate the heat dissipation of any heatsinks in those component locations for some amount of time.
I wonder how the battle would go if your entire team were equipped with nothing but Plasma Cannons. I bet the heat would really stack up quick with everyone engaging at once. You could MAYBE shut down the front line attackers, or at least make them decide to shutdown or suicide.
The entire team takes plasma cannons and flamethrowers. It turned out that the enemy took only classic gauss guns. The enemy laughs long and contemptuously.
Wait until I get machineguns
I think you were doing more than you thought for the team - by dealing heat, you probably kept the enemy from firing which allowed your team to roflstomp. But you're right, they need to show a metric with the amount of heat you throw out.
Love it. Your performance will be more efficient wit practice.
I Ran a cougar with double beam lasers last night it was alot of fun
The match score would have to show impact of heating up enemies for this to work. If someone did 400 damage and had a 700 match score with heaters, this weapon would work.
Lookin good bro, new hair an Gee Tar is cool. You dont look like a gaint nerd today lol
"Let me try to reach around again." -Baradul
With a pure plasma cannon build you should be able to approximate how much heat damage you did -- it'll be in proportion to your actual damage, bar whatever difference the splash makes. Roughly 1 heat for every 25 damage, call it. So in a 500 damage match you would've done a whopping 20 heat damage.
That early Basilisk in game 2 looked like it lost a torso before it lost armor, that might have been you. It's so hard to tell what it's doing
I've just realised what the purpose of the Plasma cannon is, to counter stealth armored (light) mechs, not only does it scramble their ECM, but it also adds to their heat, which doesn't dissipate when their stealth is active...
Which makes it such a niche use weapon, that you're better off with almost any other weapon.
Unfortunately, doesn't exactly work that way. If you hit a stealthing mech with a Plasma Cannon it automatically turns off their stealth, thus removing the heat malus for being stealthed, so even then it is pointless as turning off a stealth mech's stealth, giving them a tiny bit of heat, and then removing the stealth heat per second cost? Its a net negative; you end up cooling the stealth mech instead of heating them up.
Edit: typod a few things.
Any ppc disable stealth and to find a stealth mech is as hard to find a chicken tooth.
In HEAT vision, you can see the mech heat rise as you were hitting them
With some buffs this weapon makes perfect sense with all the heat intensive beam weapons in vogue. It would have to be pretty significant though
Hot cougars in your area *.*
I honestly don't think they should base things off of any of the other games, including tabletop. Instead, go by the lore set up in the canon books. Maybe not for mwo since it's pvp, but it would be nice to see in a pve environment. If they can even make it work. It would be difficult at the very least.
I've always been fascinated by the way stuff works in the lore moreso than any of the game rules. If that's a dumb idea, I'd be happy to hear why 🙃
It just needs a little tweaking IMO. Double the heat and add a point or two of total damage and I think they would be decent.,
The damage looks passable (if you hit enough), but it includes a lot of "splash" that doesn't actually do much. The heat doesn't seem very significant. Also this mech is very slow.
Not a very good weapon IMO.
Don't forget that the heat damage is splash so if you hit an arm you don't get all of it.
Yeah I don’t like the Light-PPC-but-bad version of the Plasma Cannon that MWO has brought. In tabletop, it’s a very good strategic weapon that only deals heat damage to ‘Mechs and uses a styrofoam/plastic substance as ammo. I feel like they just shouldn’t have added something called a PLASMA CANNON if it’s just gonna be a bad PPC. Implement it properly PGI or call it something else (or just pick another weapon that could be just as cool a concept but already exists!)
Edit: side note, I also think the fact that the green turns blue at a distance and when it strikes, basically just becoming a normal PPC again, is also goofy and lazy.
The way they're implemented right now they're pretty much a novelty or meme weapon, superseded by several other less janky options.
You'd of thought heat generated would be a thing that could be tracked like damage
The plasma cannon is only as good as a heat gun. All heats, no real damage
As it is right now, it only does .25 heat dmg, so it’s not even good at applying heat in any meaningful way. It’s basically just a bad Light PPC currently.
try out a Howl with either 4 pac/8 (xl 380) or 3 pac/8 and a uac/20 (xl 350)
Try combo each arm.
1 LPPC + 1 PLASMA + 1AP GAUSS .
Then remaining small pulses in torsos.
Think plasmas as designed are meant to be visual more than a kill tool at this time.
Or to be used in combos. As they seem to have splash damage.
That kill looked like you hit LT and splashed CT for kill.
If it's actually an aoe splash damage weapon, then pair it with weapons meant to do same or crit seekers.
I hope @Baradul explores this and combos more.
Suspect hidden benefits. May add heat, as well as reducing heat dissipation.
Problem is, does it stack? Could you use two triple plasma shots in succession to cripple their heat dissipation and at same time add heat?
Perhaps some testing grounds experiments are needed too.
Can't have LPPC and Plasma. They are different techs.
@@Artificer1911 so plasmas only clans? Thought it was originally IS tech clans picked up and tweaked too. What energy weapons would complement the clan plasmas?
I'm running a Nova-A with 4 Plasma Cannon (2 per arm). Doing the PPC EMP effect to targets as well as heat is useful but I'm overheating before they do. 😞
I mean the damage isn't thaaat bad. A clan er-ppc does 10 damage at 6 tons, 2 plasma cannons do 9 damage + heat at 6 tons.
I love how surprised you looked after the first match. Maybe some patch tweaks and you may have that code cracked.
I was plying around on a test map an found with the splash damage you can get head shots
Would this weapon be more deadly on hot maps? Or would it cook you just as fast as the enemy?
It feel like this the type of weapon that is very bad solo, trying to heat up someone looks way too hard
But it's also the type of weapon that can be very toxic in team, whit like 4 or 5 Mech whit plasma you can lock enemy in place and destroy whitout any counter play
So yeah there's that x)
If you could pair the plasma with SRM inferno rounds it might work better for overheating enemy mechs
Pray they use a medium mech. Anything else kills faster or evades damage better.
@@robertagren9360 yeah it's not really a practical build for arena matches but it could definitely work in forested battlefields. They'd hate that mech with a vengeance
Too bad PGI cannot into ammo switching, so no inferno SRMs.
Not sure you're aware Bara but Plasma Cannons also do 1 point of splash damage. That's why your damage output in the 1st match was respectable. They can deal a total of 6.5 damage per hit to torso components. The next patch will lower their heat cost down to 5.25. This will result in them having a decent damage / heat heat ratio. Physical damage output won't be a problem.
The problem is the heat damage is so low it's not even noticeable. In fact, the heat damage is so low one can only conclude that the Cauldron never had any intention for the weapon to do a meaningful amount of heat damage. They intended for it to be a rough copy of the IS Light PPC which is pathetic and an waste of a opportunity to add a truly unique weapon to the game.
It's stunning to me how PGI allows the Cauldron to repeatedly make bad decisions like this and screw up their game.
Sun guns for the win... or not..?
"Why am I not killing him!?" Me everytime I can't kill an IS mech with red structure in my Clan mechs.
Interesting.
In a game where the most important thing is always damage (not playing the mode, not countering ECM, not NARCing, etc.), a person who plays the game on this level feeling like they aren't contributing and actually saying "I need to be always shooting in order to do some damage" out loud is exactly right - heat isn't as important as damage, but if you want it to be important... then make it important. They look and sound amazing but for the tonnage and heatscale limit and effectiveness on the battlefield... meh. That's three plasma cannons doing middle-ish damage for a light... why would a larger mech waste space on them at all? Definitely needs adjusting.
FWIW, it'd be neat if heat vision signatures became brighter because of internal heat build-up. Not sure that's a thing that can be done at this late stage, but it'd be rad. You could really maximize your target selection for these kinds of systems.
seems like plasma cannon just deals a little damage and a little heat,
Rating.
...but plasma needs a buff.
👍
My repeated criticism will be that you don't do well with single arm weapon stacks. You never maximize for peeking with the correct side. You are ALWAYS going the wrong direction. On the second map, you were on an elevated position, on the highway and were peeking down the correct side and just gave up the position for no reason.
Honestly, until they track something like average heat, you won't see a great way to track. Weapons that deal heat damage but can't force a shutdown and don't suppress cooling, AND cost you more build up are just terrible
I wouldnt bother with these until april
Heat vs damage just isn't worth it at the moment
Hrm, was interrupted by a Call of Dragons commercial; Total ripoff of the vid intro to Original Warcraft III mixed with the vid for Elder Scrolls Online: Elseweyr: game awards 2019 trailer. The part where the dragon blows up and the wizard struggles to contain the explosion so the others can escape. Lol, no imagination beyond "oh, stealing that part would be cool, lets do that." ROFL
Seems like it's best lane is as an escort. Damage amplification.
Good old inferior clan tech.
Your using a 15 pt alpha build, of course it's not gonna be great. I mean, duh... gonna be just about as good as using 3 medium lasers in a match.
I used one of the set of 8 novas to goof off with them because the quirks were nuts and it had 3 energy hard points. At least that mech had some quirks to make em make sense.
i find them very under whelming
Plasma cannons in MWO are garbage. No sugar on top. The heat delivered is utterly useless. The damage, weight, range compared to other weapons makes it a laughable choice. If your in plasma cannon range, you should have a MPL and flamer instead haha.
ATM3's or UAC2 + plasma cannon
It need to be cheap and light to compensate the weight of the plasma. As well " face tanking " a lot.
10:25 sadly no. You destroy side torso on XL clan mech, heat limit goes down while heat level remains the same.
It will be same with any other weapon.
Just simple math.
First game 542 damage done.
Your alpha strike is 13,5.
It mean you have about 40 instance of applying heat to the enemy.
So even IF every time you apply 0,75 heat with alpha strike - _during the whole match_ you barely apply 30 heat to the enemy.
Most mechs have heat limit about 60, it's absolutely nothing for such long time span.
Seems like my predictions was correct. Weapon kinda ok, C-ERPPC with bigger DPS but cost 4 slots.
(so you reach sustain DPS without additional DHS even earlier)
But "applying heat mechanics" kinda doesn't exist.
Classic PGI game design, not surprised at all.
🙄🤗
damn those plasma cannons are trash.do something with the cooldown and/or heat.
Just make it a clan light ppc and don’t mess around with heat shenanigans that don’t work with MWO design. Also confused as to why amongst all these new clan weapons they didn’t give them the clan rac5.