ATM 3 and 6 health appears to have been buffed since February 2019 (thanks byter). ATM12 was not buffed and 9 received a minor buff. 9 and 12 were net nerfed due to the AMS range increase. Also to clarify, I don't think AMS is necessary *right now* in the upper tiers, just because you don't see as many LRMs there. It's actually a decent investment starting at 1 ton and 2 slots (1 AMS and half ton of ammo). In the lower tiers where you see more LRMs, I think it's a good idea. If somehow missiles got way more common in the upper tiers, then certainly players would adapt to the meta shift and bring AMS to the upper tiers.
hmm... Let me write out a timeline: 1. Before the March 2019 patch. All missiles had a health of 1 (narc was 2) 2. The Match patch brought more ams range and all these new missile health values: www.reddit.com/r/OutreachHPG/comments/b3b5rz/new_missile_stats_or_come_see_the_stealth_mrm_nerf/ 3. The April patch then nudges the numbers about a bit: mwomercs.com/news/2019/04/2266-patch-notes-141990-16apr2019 4. Upcomming May patch fiddles with ams again? Basically 2 months ago PGI made ams a lot stronger. Take ams to help screw over anyone foolish enough to still take missile weapons. :p
It's still used and there's still a difference between say T5/4 games and T1. I can definitely tell the difference when I log into my T4 account for experiments. When the MM struggles then it will relax a little bit and put T4 and 1 together.
I've been running AMS on my larger mechs that can take it. For example, I dropped the two medium lasers in the arms and a bit of armor in the arms off of my Atlas-K in exchange for a pair of AMS and 1.5 tonnes of ammo. In maps where my build (Heavy Gauss + MRM40, 2 medium lasers) they don't make much a difference. But when I get into the maps with less Atlas friendly cover, those AMS help to keep me more fresh so I can so my job properly. Plus it gives me an excuse to use one of the least optimal AS7 chassis while still utilizing the huge quirks it gets.
Terrific video as usual. I like the comparison of tonnage invested vs. tonnage nullified. It's a good way to exemplify just how potent AMS can be. I'm not a big LRM or SRM player, but I like my ATMs and I am experiencing a lot more games where AMS is a big problem, especially on my low tube count AMS medium mechs. I really have to work the flanks to find mechs far enough away from the AMS bubble to be effective. I think if they implemented line of sight rules on AMS (no more firing from the basement) and did some tweaking on dmg vs. health it would be fine. As it stands, I only play my very favorite missile mechs right now, and I take an AMS whenever I can.
The community has caught on. The amount of missile weapons being used right now is down to an all time low. From Mrms to Lrms, some players event commented that some of the builds they had with mrms were back to srm builds. Also single ams is much more common to see specially the laser variant. Thx for the vid, as always really good content.
One way to correctly balance missiles might be to give every missile of the same type the same health (e.g. all clan LRMs have the same health, all MRMs have the same health etc.) regardless of the number of tubes the launcher has. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think we could make launchers with more tubes have a higher tonnage than launchers with fewer tubes to offset the fact that they can fire more missiles at once (i.e. an LRM5 should weigh less than an LRM20). If AMS turns out to be less/more effective than it should be, then we could adjust the missile health values for each type of missile, rather than the mindbogglingly complicated process of trying to 'balance' the health of each missile type from each size launcher individually.
Before March of this year, every missile did have the same health. This incentivized taking the biggest launchers you can to blow through AMS or just simply maximizing the damage you can do during a short window. Historically one of the big complaints about AMS was how it does hardly anything against these big launchers.
Great video, these missile nerfs need to be talked about, they fucked up ATMs and LRMs are just non-existent in tier 1 I'm not saying they should be great but it's like shooting lukewarm air.
i agree with byter, i use streaks a lot and 4 streak 4 barely get through i hardley play those mechs since the ams buffs, im surprised you didnt include them in your testing. thanks for doing the tests its always interesting to see what the results of PGI fiddling is more testing videos! cause science is fun
In the games I have played (tier 2, not sure if that matters) It's common for teams to have more ams than players. Even using clan lrms in short direct fire situations on a mech with velocity skills, it is extremely common for my salvo to fail making it outside of the launcher before being eviscerated completely. Lrms are straight up being hard countered in most of my games, and when I do decide to use some as support weapons, my strategy is always to kill the ams boats before using them, or shoot enemies isolated from their team. The other thing I used to try was to shoot unlocked lrms into the air to burn through ams ammo, but it doesnt work fast enough, and only manages to help if you have mulitple lrm mechs on your team Ams need a range nerf so that lrm users can actually target uncovered mechs and find angles where ams coverage is lighter. Another change I would like to see involving missiles as well as other weapon systems applies to the skilltree. It would be awesome if range nodes decreased minimum range by 1% as well. All of the minimum range weapons are far from overpowered, and this would be a small way to give players more options.
With weapons that fire a stream (mrms, clan lrms, atms) the larger launchers might fire more total missile health (other than mrm40) but that health is more spread out, this problem is particularly pronounced for clan lrms who have the longest duration to fire (2 every 0.1 seconds). I don't remember hearing enough about how quirks/skills effect ams effectiveness. Ams overload claims to have a great impact on ams damage output and since it's pretty cheap to take (particularly if you already take survival) it should almost always be taken with ams (therefore most testing should be with these skills). Range quirks/skills can also stack together with the base range increase to greatly increase the area covered by ams, which plays into the herd immunity aspect that taking more ams can provide. Even if you aren't getting shot, your presence can reduce the damage teamates take, which may help you a lot more in the long run. Also in our testing, the facing of a mech can effect ams effectiveness. Our ams piranha & nova are more effective when facing to the side rather than head on, I'm not sure why. (Here's our own testing when the new missile health was implimented: th-cam.com/video/dBnfCg_3vCU/w-d-xo.html (I'll look for a good the timestamp after posting this)) For example a big feature (to at least mention) of the quad ams corsair is its combined 15% range quirk for ams, which with the skill tree can be increased to a total of 30%. It won't really change how many srms fired directly at it will get through but this much larger area extends its coverage greatly to nearby teamates (which makes its ams a much more consistent/omnipresent defence on the battlefeild).
@@BlackhawkSC Do you how ams actually works in game? Because I mostly am stuck just looking at missile heatlh, velocity and such. The in game tooltip says ams has a 100 projectile velocity, which can benefit from skills. Does changing the velocity have any impact on their effectiveness? (I left it out because I assume it doesn't) In game it says ams does 105 damage per second which is 30 shots that do 3.5 each. If each shot does 3.5, then it would overkill any missile in the game, possibly making ams overload pointless. (it seems though that the health changes are noticeable, implying the damage is somehow splashed over to other nearby missiles) Ams can shoot through walls (but is a projectile?), it feels like a statisical bubble but mech facing changes their effectiveness(?). Ams is weird.
My quad ams corsair with triple rac 2 and quad med laser build is really solid. Preforms superb anti missle support while providing more than adequate dps in a preferably supporting role.
It appears that your video, while two years old, is still effective. I run a triple laser ams and have been routinely shooting down 1100-1500 missiles per match
Nowadays cadets are matched with tier 1 players in QP and it also brings a lot of lower tier lurmers in the mix. I never thought i'd say this but I consider going FP full time now XD
outside of the Specialized Ams Mechs like the kitfox i tend to throw a AMS on Massive Hitbox mechs to add a little more protection over there Hitbox weakness all other mechs i rather have a heatsink or another piece of Equipment for the tonnage
It might have changed since this was posted but currently I got back into MWO and I usually for 1 ton I'll put an AMS with 1/2 ton of ammo for QP and it works great. Sure a single AMS does not stop everything but it reduces incoming fire. If someone else has a single it starts really adding up. I always figure its worth 1 ton.
It can be a bit frustrating having AMS mechs in the basement of HPG when you are trying to fire missiles from the top. It's really silly terrain doesn't block AMS.
1:30 When you fire an LRM20, you often don't do 20 damage. Even stationary targets may have missiles eating dirt. The AMS randomly picks among those 20 missiles, possibly shooting down all the "hittles", or maybe expending itself on the "missiles". Since everybody only pays attention to "hittles" they have little/no idea how many "missiles" get through(the ground is strangely uncommunicative on this subject).
Yes, I've mentioned this before in a different video th-cam.com/video/JvhiAiT1l2E/w-d-xo.html This is definitely something a lot of people miss when they equate X number of missiles destroyed with X amount of damage prevented to their team. A lot of those missiles would have hit terrain or just missed completely. Missiles that have lost their locks would have also been destroyed if they passed your AMS radius. I think this, before, lead to a lot of folks overestimating AMS's effectiveness. It's still interesting to see what kind of launcher is neutralized by AMS though regardless of how many would have actually hit.
As for weapon balance, there's a lot to go through. mrms were mostly average and didn't *need* the large nerfs to their missile health. They still aren't greatly effected by ams and it does make sense to make them more vunerable to ams, however it feels like they should get a little cooldown/heat-gen buff to help their viability, particularly the poor mrm40 (which streams the longest, has the most restrictive ghost heat, longest cooldown and the same volley health as the mrm30). Weapons like srms, atms and streaks are the most badly effected by ams changes due to their smaller number of higher damage missiles. Atms thankfully have only received buffs to their health and they are able to take fairly large launchers/volleys to make it through ams. The srm families of weapons however did not need the large nerfs they had to missile health with their 4/6 launchers. The worst effected are streaks, particularly IS streaks. They are very heavy for amount of missile health launched and their velocity is fairly slow. As it currently stands, an IS ssrm6 weighs 3 times that of an atm3 but the atm3 has 33% more missile health, making the atm launcher have double the missile health for the same tonnage. As you can probably tell (due to how much I bring them up), I really enjoyed taking streaks and these nerfs have radically effected my fun in the game due to how inconsistent they can be due to ams (I have mostly stopped playing after this change). I would say that all the srm-y systems were a bit below mrms for viability before this change and these nerfs were not warrented in the slightest. Before the changes only the larger launchers were viable and even then, they were hardly top tier. Instead of dragging the only semi-viable missile launchers down, they should've just buffed smaller launchers. The srm families are the most limited in launcher and volley size, they are all used differently, blanket universal nerfs was incredibly lazy and pushed them all in the wrong direction. IS tech should have more volley health &/or velocity due to the greater investment required. The streak launchers play very differently to srms and each other. They suffer from either being either very heavy or a long cooldown, for the most part they should perform as well as, if not better than atms do against ams. Clan lrms perform very differently from IS lrms against ams, they should not get the same treatment as IS lrms. I feel like they need to be made more consistent (not less), something like quicker volleys but much longer cooldown.
Are you suggesting that ATMs received health buffs? PGI in their March patch notes, didn't say what was the initial health of the missiles, only that they used the smallest launcher as the base value. Therefore I assume it was a decrease. Let me know if you know otherwise.
@@BlackhawkSC Before pgi started fiddling with the missile health values recently, they were all 1 per missile (except narc which is still 2). You might also like to know that rocket health is now 1.0, 0.9 and 0.8 for the rocket 10, 15 and 20 respectively (since pgi have never pubilically announced the new numbers for rocket health).
Hm I see a patch notes from 2018 that says ATM3 duration was decreased, but nothing on missile health until March 2019. Maybe you can point me to which patch notes you're referring to.
@@BlackhawkSC PGI haven't really changed missile health values untill march 2019 (or the lrm pts leading up to it), the old values of missile health have been unchanged for a very very long time. A source I could point you towards was this after the march patch: www.reddit.com/r/OutreachHPG/comments/b3b5rz/new_missile_stats_or_come_see_the_stealth_mrm_nerf/ Where people looked into mwo's api to find the numbers that PGI initially didn't tell us. Many people there share/discuss the old values with most agreeing upon 1hp per missile (2 for narc).
OK I see. ATM 3 and 6 had their health buffed, but not 9 and 12. ATM3s weren't used that much anyway, and 6's similarly so I think overall ATMs still got a net nerf due to the AMS range.
1 of my 3 fav mech builds relies heavily on ATM's and ever since there was an increase in AMS builds/mechs my dmg output with that build has dropped significantly :( ... thats just life
Yeah, your damage output probably dropped from 1200 to a measly 900. My best mech runs 24 ATM tubes. Although it might be worth a few salvos at range, your place is on the front line 200 meters from the enemy with hate in your heart and a shot of liquid courage at your side. (I might be watching too much black pants legion)
I feel like stream missiles REALLY need higher health per missile than standard LRMs too. Because as it stands, IS LRMs are just better in every conceivable way.
The missile health reduction and and changes were one of the good things pgi has done in all actuality Missiles are less OP and AMS skill nodes are actually worth taking now. The changes have promoted more brawling and mid range fighting
There's definitely some differing opinions on this, partly due to what kind of matches people are getting. For me at the moment, missiles are the least effective class of weapons in the game. ATM and LRM effectiveness highly depends on what map you get and how aggressive your team is. If they're not getting locks for you, you have to get them yourself, which, given the time it takes to get a lock and the staring, can be very risky.
Do AMSes work in an AOE like ECM, or onky for the single mech? And you think they're too powerful? Passive equipment incapable of doing any damage on its own, focused on only limiting the effectiveness of a single, uncommon class of weaponry?
It's an Area of Effect. It prioritizes protecting you first then your teammates. IMO, for solo matches it's only worth it if you can take multiple, which is when it'll start doing real damage to incoming missiles. It's passive but it takes up tonnage for other things like weapons.
Missiles and AMS can turn matches into a very rock/paper/scissors type game. I've seen teams with a good amount of AMS completely shut down a team that invested too much into missiles. I've also seen teams absolutely wipe the floor with ATM spam vs. a team that didn't bring any AMS. Right now in my opinion I think it is worth it for a team to bring a scattering of AMS through their mechs, rather than a dedicated AMS mech. A triple AMS Kit Fox or Nova sounds nice, but it is an anemic mech when it comes time to do damage to the enemy, which you need to do to win. I'd prefer a sprinkling of AMS systems among heavies and assaults, and mediums that can take them without sacrificing much firepower. A scattering of ECM through the team also helps immensely. You can always roll the dice and not take any AMS, but right now I think a team of LRM/ATM/Streaks will wipe the floor of a team that chooses to go 100% direct fire. Depending on the map, of course.
Yeah, I was thinking what if everyone took at least one AMS? Then I think there'd be so many disincentives to take missiles, other than those who absolutely can't aim and can't play anything else. IMO missiles are already weaker in general than ballistics or energy, then add mass AMS. It's just really not worth it at that point.
@@BlackhawkSC In the solo and group drop games I play (I'm tier 1 too), I do see a lot of missiles. In my opinion a coordinated and aggressive team of ATM skirmishers (3xATM9, 2xATM12) with some heavy dedicated LRM backup (4xLRM15, 4xLRM20) will absolutely WRECK an all direct fire team that has no AMS or ECM. Depending on game mode and map, of course. But you can make missiles work on most maps, with the exception of Solaris, where direct fire has a definite edge. Crimson Straight has a couple 'safe' areas too. But most maps make a pretty decent playground for ATM skirmishers.
I honestly haven't had the same experience with ATMs. Every time I take an ATM boat I know it's going to be a crap shoot of which map I get and which area on on urban maps the fight takes place. Then add ECM which makes it take longer to get a lock, or AMS. Most importantly I don't know whether my team is going to be proactive and get in close enough to be in my 3 dmg/missile range. And will they run away when I'm trying to fight. If they take a shitty position it's super risky for me to make a flank solo. This kind of dependency is one reason why my experience with ATMs have not been consistent, and I don't like inconsistent weapons. Even if sometimes you can get massive games, in my mind it doesn't make up for the games where you can do nothing. LRMs have the same kind of limitations.
AMS definitely depends on the build... on most heavier mechs it's a waste of weight versus sinks or ammo depending on loadout. On my AC2 marauder 3R I run a laser AMS and even with 4x ML it runs cold enough to stay 100% active and not overheat.
As of late I have been putting ams on a lot more of my big mechs because it's only 1 ton that just further adds to the herd immunity the usual blob of mechs have against missiles. I tend to find it a lot easier to find the space for ams on my clan mechs (and I don't have to worry about ammo explosions so much).
Speaking as a low-tier player, if they made a mech with 12 AMS hardpoints I would buy it. You can never have enough. Even as effective as AMS is, a single AMS still feels really weak in the low tiers, because SO MANY people are kitting out heavies/assaults as LRM boats. (Almost every Stalker I see is just filled to the brim with LRMs and like 4000 rounds of LRM ammo). After a certain saturation point, it just overpowers the AMS coverage with a giant rain of missiles. And you’d be better off hiding in cover and hoping your lights/snipers can pick them off rather than exposing yourself to take potshots.
I have a low tier test account that I use occasionally and I also see the same thing. Lots more LRMs there. ECM + hugging cover + midrange weapons while using ECM is a great counter. I know it's not perfect, there being TAG and all, but it slows down their lock by a lot, enough for you to get back to cover before they get a lock or immediately after.
Main goal is to avoid this by playing aggressive. LRM is not underpowered, instead tactics been created to reduce their power. AMS doesn't help much if opponent team end up with only missiles. It is when randomized mechs end up together you see value in AMS if everyone carry a single AMS. Since the goal is to reduce your team mates performance while winning the game why should you help them.
i hated the first of those two balance updates so much that i completely stopped playing. too many of my (atm) builds became substantially less viable or even unviable with little to no options to mitigate the loss in effectiveness and just playing ballistics all the time is boring. sad to see pgi still hasn't rolled back what i consider one of their biggest mistakes to date. after years of playing on an almost daily basis, i was put off so much (the lazy classic map rehash being the final nail in the coffin) that i quit cold turkey with no regrets whatsoever and from what i see it looks like i won't be back before their servers go dark. they should rather have done something about the nascaring, which has gotten so completely out of hand that it has become the main focus of pretty much every build and also makes a lot of chassis unusable, leaving few good (and fun) options at this point. no amount of free and crappy cannon fodder chassis or mc (with no noteworthy buying power left at this point) can make up for that. looking at the situation right now, imo they might as well remove all weapon systems except ballistic from the game.
Certainly everyone's experiences will be different. Right now for me lasers are still fine. Clan MPL and IS LPL deal very well with nascar. I posted a video not too long ago explaining why the 3x LPL QKD-4G performs well in nascar situations. For clan the LBK-H 6x MPL is also very good. Whenever there's a nascar either of these chassis will put out probably at least 700 dmg for me. The Hellbringer HLL+ERML laser vomit is doing great for me generally. cERPPC is also in a good place. I don't like the clan missile options right now but IS has MRMs, which is OK. I do play missiles the least though.
@@BlackhawkSC definitely. being only left with ballistics is to some extent a consequence of my preferred playstyles, even though they were quite varied. then again, the variety of builds and strategies >was< one of the game's main draws for me (besides the high average age of the player base and providing a relatively level playing field for players of all ages). sadly, considering current viability, that variety has largely evaporated. i agree that lasers are ok, but the way the game has progressed over the years, with the high heat and the short games, they rarely allow you to excel and carry the game to the same extent that ballistics do. if a game runs long enough to do 700 dmg in a laser mech, you can do 1k+ in a ballistic mech, wouldn't you agree? i prefer(red) using lasers for long range rather than for brawling (other than for spare heat), but ever since nascaring has become the norm, those chassis have all been collecting dust in my mech bay. here's hoping that mw5mercs turns out well!
Well the best ballistic mechs are assaults which doesn't keep up as well in nascars. The advantage of the QKD-4G and LBK-H is their speed and agility. The IS LPL and cMPL have pretty good DPS. I'd go and check the video I referenced, you'll see how cool it runs. th-cam.com/video/l1aFdhBa0z0/w-d-xo.html No guarantee that it'll work for you but I think it's worth a shot. The LBK-H I featured a while back here th-cam.com/video/m0TmZn1oqo4/w-d-xo.html At that point it was just OK, but now it's stronger just because the nascar puts mechs right in the cMPL range. With these two mechs you're often at the front of the nascar poking the back side of the slowest enemies. But they also are tough enough to withstand return fire in case they turn around and decide to fight you.
@@BlackhawkSC i watched it as soon as you released it, i'm still watching most of your stuff even though i stopped playing. :) i've found that the clan assaults are usually fast enough to stay on target and out of trouble regarding my backside. i'm sure your builds would generally work for me, but i wouldn't want to sacrifice dps for additional mobility. pgi would have to fix nascaring and weapon balance to get me excited again though. it's not like it couldn't be done with different maps and/or some kind of mechanic to discourage going in a ccw circle at full speed all the time (limited fuel/more or separate engine heat/...).
Yes, you should watch the entire video though because I know you didn't based on this comment ;) The PIR-A is kind of gimmicky. It sacrifices what makes the Piranha good to carry quad AMS, so realistically the -A variant doesn't see much play time.
I forget exactly the reason but basically he needed to redo the math/examples for missile crits. For example he shot an Atlas (which has a crit chance receiving quirk) to show the difference the skill made on the number of shots needed to kill (which would obviously be different than your typical vanilia mech with/without skills).
More and more proof that PGI hates clans and will try to always give IS the edge. Even when it’s different in fluff or would better balance things. PGI HATES CLANS!
ams that works through the walls and solid obstackles is cancer, and thats the problem of stupid developer and their lack of skill in modding outdated cry engine
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
ATM 3 and 6 health appears to have been buffed since February 2019 (thanks byter). ATM12 was not buffed and 9 received a minor buff. 9 and 12 were net nerfed due to the AMS range increase.
Also to clarify, I don't think AMS is necessary *right now* in the upper tiers, just because you don't see as many LRMs there. It's actually a decent investment starting at 1 ton and 2 slots (1 AMS and half ton of ammo). In the lower tiers where you see more LRMs, I think it's a good idea. If somehow missiles got way more common in the upper tiers, then certainly players would adapt to the meta shift and bring AMS to the upper tiers.
hmm...
Let me write out a timeline:
1. Before the March 2019 patch. All missiles had a health of 1 (narc was 2)
2. The Match patch brought more ams range and all these new missile health values: www.reddit.com/r/OutreachHPG/comments/b3b5rz/new_missile_stats_or_come_see_the_stealth_mrm_nerf/
3. The April patch then nudges the numbers about a bit: mwomercs.com/news/2019/04/2266-patch-notes-141990-16apr2019
4. Upcomming May patch fiddles with ams again?
Basically 2 months ago PGI made ams a lot stronger. Take ams to help screw over anyone foolish enough to still take missile weapons. :p
I thought, due to player count being low, the tier system isn't being used? Im top tier yet, always have that gym in a lurm boat.
It's still used and there's still a difference between say T5/4 games and T1. I can definitely tell the difference when I log into my T4 account for experiments. When the MM struggles then it will relax a little bit and put T4 and 1 together.
@@BlackhawkSC ah, cheers for the explanation.
I've been running AMS on my larger mechs that can take it. For example, I dropped the two medium lasers in the arms and a bit of armor in the arms off of my Atlas-K in exchange for a pair of AMS and 1.5 tonnes of ammo. In maps where my build (Heavy Gauss + MRM40, 2 medium lasers) they don't make much a difference. But when I get into the maps with less Atlas friendly cover, those AMS help to keep me more fresh so I can so my job properly. Plus it gives me an excuse to use one of the least optimal AS7 chassis while still utilizing the huge quirks it gets.
Had a team full of single hard point AMS. Completely neutralized LRM players.
Not only LRMs players when you bring
I fill every AMS hardpoint on everything that will carry it AND add skills; saves me all the time.
Can you do a targeting computer video?
Mark Calhoun I second this
Terrific video as usual. I like the comparison of tonnage invested vs. tonnage nullified. It's a good way to exemplify just how potent AMS can be. I'm not a big LRM or SRM player, but I like my ATMs and I am experiencing a lot more games where AMS is a big problem, especially on my low tube count AMS medium mechs. I really have to work the flanks to find mechs far enough away from the AMS bubble to be effective. I think if they implemented line of sight rules on AMS (no more firing from the basement) and did some tweaking on dmg vs. health it would be fine. As it stands, I only play my very favorite missile mechs right now, and I take an AMS whenever I can.
The community has caught on. The amount of missile weapons being used right now is down to an all time low. From Mrms to Lrms, some players event commented that some of the builds they had with mrms were back to srm builds. Also single ams is much more common to see specially the laser variant.
Thx for the vid, as always really good content.
It may be because of the recent AMS event that's still going on btw.
One way to correctly balance missiles might be to give every missile of the same type the same health (e.g. all clan LRMs have the same health, all MRMs have the same health etc.) regardless of the number of tubes the launcher has.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I think we could make launchers with more tubes have a higher tonnage than launchers with fewer tubes to offset the fact that they can fire more missiles at once (i.e. an LRM5 should weigh less than an LRM20). If AMS turns out to be less/more effective than it should be, then we could adjust the missile health values for each type of missile, rather than the mindbogglingly complicated process of trying to 'balance' the health of each missile type from each size launcher individually.
Before March of this year, every missile did have the same health. This incentivized taking the biggest launchers you can to blow through AMS or just simply maximizing the damage you can do during a short window. Historically one of the big complaints about AMS was how it does hardly anything against these big launchers.
Thanks for doing these analysis. Hope you can resolve your hardware issues to keep the content coming.
Great video, these missile nerfs need to be talked about, they fucked up ATMs and LRMs are just non-existent in tier 1 I'm not saying they should be great but it's like shooting lukewarm air.
i agree with byter, i use streaks a lot and 4 streak 4 barely get through i hardley play those mechs since the ams buffs, im surprised you didnt include them in your testing. thanks for doing the tests its always interesting to see what the results of PGI fiddling is more testing videos! cause science is fun
Yeah, I don't use streaks so I hope someone who's more familiar with them would be able to comment.
In the games I have played (tier 2, not sure if that matters) It's common for teams to have more ams than players. Even using clan lrms in short direct fire situations on a mech with velocity skills, it is extremely common for my salvo to fail making it outside of the launcher before being eviscerated completely.
Lrms are straight up being hard countered in most of my games, and when I do decide to use some as support weapons, my strategy is always to kill the ams boats before using them, or shoot enemies isolated from their team.
The other thing I used to try was to shoot unlocked lrms into the air to burn through ams ammo, but it doesnt work fast enough, and only manages to help if you have mulitple lrm mechs on your team
Ams need a range nerf so that lrm users can actually target uncovered mechs and find angles where ams coverage is lighter.
Another change I would like to see involving missiles as well as other weapon systems applies to the skilltree. It would be awesome if range nodes decreased minimum range by 1% as well. All of the minimum range weapons are far from overpowered, and this would be a small way to give players more options.
With weapons that fire a stream (mrms, clan lrms, atms) the larger launchers might fire more total missile health (other than mrm40) but that health is more spread out, this problem is particularly pronounced for clan lrms who have the longest duration to fire (2 every 0.1 seconds).
I don't remember hearing enough about how quirks/skills effect ams effectiveness. Ams overload claims to have a great impact on ams damage output and since it's pretty cheap to take (particularly if you already take survival) it should almost always be taken with ams (therefore most testing should be with these skills). Range quirks/skills can also stack together with the base range increase to greatly increase the area covered by ams, which plays into the herd immunity aspect that taking more ams can provide. Even if you aren't getting shot, your presence can reduce the damage teamates take, which may help you a lot more in the long run.
Also in our testing, the facing of a mech can effect ams effectiveness. Our ams piranha & nova are more effective when facing to the side rather than head on, I'm not sure why. (Here's our own testing when the new missile health was implimented: th-cam.com/video/dBnfCg_3vCU/w-d-xo.html (I'll look for a good the timestamp after posting this))
For example a big feature (to at least mention) of the quad ams corsair is its combined 15% range quirk for ams, which with the skill tree can be increased to a total of 30%. It won't really change how many srms fired directly at it will get through but this much larger area extends its coverage greatly to nearby teamates (which makes its ams a much more consistent/omnipresent defence on the battlefeild).
FYI the 2 AMS overload skill nodes were used to simulate what a normal player would do if they went down the survival tree with an AMS mech.
@@BlackhawkSC Do you how ams actually works in game? Because I mostly am stuck just looking at missile heatlh, velocity and such.
The in game tooltip says ams has a 100 projectile velocity, which can benefit from skills. Does changing the velocity have any impact on their effectiveness? (I left it out because I assume it doesn't)
In game it says ams does 105 damage per second which is 30 shots that do 3.5 each. If each shot does 3.5, then it would overkill any missile in the game, possibly making ams overload pointless. (it seems though that the health changes are noticeable, implying the damage is somehow splashed over to other nearby missiles)
Ams can shoot through walls (but is a projectile?), it feels like a statisical bubble but mech facing changes their effectiveness(?). Ams is weird.
My quad ams corsair with triple rac 2 and quad med laser build is really solid. Preforms superb anti missle support while providing more than adequate dps in a preferably supporting role.
It appears that your video, while two years old, is still effective. I run a triple laser ams and have been routinely shooting down 1100-1500 missiles per match
Nowadays cadets are matched with tier 1 players in QP and it also brings a lot of lower tier lurmers in the mix. I never thought i'd say this but I consider going FP full time now XD
outside of the Specialized Ams Mechs like the kitfox i tend to throw a AMS on Massive Hitbox mechs to add a little more protection over there Hitbox weakness all other mechs i rather have a heatsink or another piece of Equipment for the tonnage
Novakaine here AMS is never worth it wink wink.
thanks for doing this
more ams tests
Thanks for the MWO science!
It might have changed since this was posted but currently I got back into MWO and I usually for 1 ton I'll put an AMS with 1/2 ton of ammo for QP and it works great. Sure a single AMS does not stop everything but it reduces incoming fire. If someone else has a single it starts really adding up. I always figure its worth 1 ton.
AMS can fire through terrain? I didn't realize they'd actually destroy missiles that way.
It can be a bit frustrating having AMS mechs in the basement of HPG when you are trying to fire missiles from the top. It's really silly terrain doesn't block AMS.
1:30 When you fire an LRM20, you often don't do 20 damage. Even stationary targets may have missiles eating dirt.
The AMS randomly picks among those 20 missiles, possibly shooting down all the "hittles", or maybe expending itself on the "missiles". Since everybody only pays attention to "hittles" they have little/no idea how many "missiles" get through(the ground is strangely uncommunicative on this subject).
Yes, I've mentioned this before in a different video th-cam.com/video/JvhiAiT1l2E/w-d-xo.html
This is definitely something a lot of people miss when they equate X number of missiles destroyed with X amount of damage prevented to their team. A lot of those missiles would have hit terrain or just missed completely. Missiles that have lost their locks would have also been destroyed if they passed your AMS radius. I think this, before, lead to a lot of folks overestimating AMS's effectiveness.
It's still interesting to see what kind of launcher is neutralized by AMS though regardless of how many would have actually hit.
As for weapon balance, there's a lot to go through.
mrms were mostly average and didn't *need* the large nerfs to their missile health. They still aren't greatly effected by ams and it does make sense to make them more vunerable to ams, however it feels like they should get a little cooldown/heat-gen buff to help their viability, particularly the poor mrm40 (which streams the longest, has the most restrictive ghost heat, longest cooldown and the same volley health as the mrm30).
Weapons like srms, atms and streaks are the most badly effected by ams changes due to their smaller number of higher damage missiles.
Atms thankfully have only received buffs to their health and they are able to take fairly large launchers/volleys to make it through ams.
The srm families of weapons however did not need the large nerfs they had to missile health with their 4/6 launchers.
The worst effected are streaks, particularly IS streaks. They are very heavy for amount of missile health launched and their velocity is fairly slow. As it currently stands, an IS ssrm6 weighs 3 times that of an atm3 but the atm3 has 33% more missile health, making the atm launcher have double the missile health for the same tonnage.
As you can probably tell (due to how much I bring them up), I really enjoyed taking streaks and these nerfs have radically effected my fun in the game due to how inconsistent they can be due to ams (I have mostly stopped playing after this change). I would say that all the srm-y systems were a bit below mrms for viability before this change and these nerfs were not warrented in the slightest.
Before the changes only the larger launchers were viable and even then, they were hardly top tier. Instead of dragging the only semi-viable missile launchers down, they should've just buffed smaller launchers.
The srm families are the most limited in launcher and volley size, they are all used differently, blanket universal nerfs was incredibly lazy and pushed them all in the wrong direction. IS tech should have more volley health &/or velocity due to the greater investment required. The streak launchers play very differently to srms and each other. They suffer from either being either very heavy or a long cooldown, for the most part they should perform as well as, if not better than atms do against ams.
Clan lrms perform very differently from IS lrms against ams, they should not get the same treatment as IS lrms. I feel like they need to be made more consistent (not less), something like quicker volleys but much longer cooldown.
Are you suggesting that ATMs received health buffs? PGI in their March patch notes, didn't say what was the initial health of the missiles, only that they used the smallest launcher as the base value. Therefore I assume it was a decrease. Let me know if you know otherwise.
@@BlackhawkSC Before pgi started fiddling with the missile health values recently, they were all 1 per missile (except narc which is still 2).
You might also like to know that rocket health is now 1.0, 0.9 and 0.8 for the rocket 10, 15 and 20 respectively (since pgi have never pubilically announced the new numbers for rocket health).
Hm I see a patch notes from 2018 that says ATM3 duration was decreased, but nothing on missile health until March 2019. Maybe you can point me to which patch notes you're referring to.
@@BlackhawkSC PGI haven't really changed missile health values untill march 2019 (or the lrm pts leading up to it), the old values of missile health have been unchanged for a very very long time.
A source I could point you towards was this after the march patch: www.reddit.com/r/OutreachHPG/comments/b3b5rz/new_missile_stats_or_come_see_the_stealth_mrm_nerf/ Where people looked into mwo's api to find the numbers that PGI initially didn't tell us. Many people there share/discuss the old values with most agreeing upon 1hp per missile (2 for narc).
OK I see. ATM 3 and 6 had their health buffed, but not 9 and 12. ATM3s weren't used that much anyway, and 6's similarly so I think overall ATMs still got a net nerf due to the AMS range.
1 of my 3 fav mech builds relies heavily on ATM's and ever since there was an increase in AMS builds/mechs my dmg output with that build has dropped significantly :( ... thats just life
Yeah, your damage output probably dropped from 1200 to a measly 900. My best mech runs 24 ATM tubes. Although it might be worth a few salvos at range, your place is on the front line 200 meters from the enemy with hate in your heart and a shot of liquid courage at your side. (I might be watching too much black pants legion)
@@L0stEngineer not really, more like 50% drop on dmg output
I feel like stream missiles REALLY need higher health per missile than standard LRMs too. Because as it stands, IS LRMs are just better in every conceivable way.
I typically put 1 AMS on my Warhawk, but I imagine its more a placebo than anything worthwhile.
The missile health reduction and and changes were one of the good things pgi has done in all actuality
Missiles are less OP and AMS skill nodes are actually worth taking now. The changes have promoted more brawling and mid range fighting
There's definitely some differing opinions on this, partly due to what kind of matches people are getting. For me at the moment, missiles are the least effective class of weapons in the game. ATM and LRM effectiveness highly depends on what map you get and how aggressive your team is. If they're not getting locks for you, you have to get them yourself, which, given the time it takes to get a lock and the staring, can be very risky.
in an optimum circumstance a whole mech group with 1 ams each or more would alleviate a lot of incoming damage.
Are the AMS skill nodes used in these tests?
Yes
Does a damaged missile do less damage on impact?
Nope
Do AMSes work in an AOE like ECM, or onky for the single mech?
And you think they're too powerful? Passive equipment incapable of doing any damage on its own, focused on only limiting the effectiveness of a single, uncommon class of weaponry?
It's an Area of Effect. It prioritizes protecting you first then your teammates. IMO, for solo matches it's only worth it if you can take multiple, which is when it'll start doing real damage to incoming missiles. It's passive but it takes up tonnage for other things like weapons.
Targeting computer review please
Missiles and AMS can turn matches into a very rock/paper/scissors type game. I've seen teams with a good amount of AMS completely shut down a team that invested too much into missiles. I've also seen teams absolutely wipe the floor with ATM spam vs. a team that didn't bring any AMS. Right now in my opinion I think it is worth it for a team to bring a scattering of AMS through their mechs, rather than a dedicated AMS mech. A triple AMS Kit Fox or Nova sounds nice, but it is an anemic mech when it comes time to do damage to the enemy, which you need to do to win. I'd prefer a sprinkling of AMS systems among heavies and assaults, and mediums that can take them without sacrificing much firepower. A scattering of ECM through the team also helps immensely. You can always roll the dice and not take any AMS, but right now I think a team of LRM/ATM/Streaks will wipe the floor of a team that chooses to go 100% direct fire. Depending on the map, of course.
Yeah, I was thinking what if everyone took at least one AMS? Then I think there'd be so many disincentives to take missiles, other than those who absolutely can't aim and can't play anything else. IMO missiles are already weaker in general than ballistics or energy, then add mass AMS. It's just really not worth it at that point.
@@BlackhawkSC In the solo and group drop games I play (I'm tier 1 too), I do see a lot of missiles. In my opinion a coordinated and aggressive team of ATM skirmishers (3xATM9, 2xATM12) with some heavy dedicated LRM backup (4xLRM15, 4xLRM20) will absolutely WRECK an all direct fire team that has no AMS or ECM. Depending on game mode and map, of course. But you can make missiles work on most maps, with the exception of Solaris, where direct fire has a definite edge. Crimson Straight has a couple 'safe' areas too. But most maps make a pretty decent playground for ATM skirmishers.
I honestly haven't had the same experience with ATMs. Every time I take an ATM boat I know it's going to be a crap shoot of which map I get and which area on on urban maps the fight takes place. Then add ECM which makes it take longer to get a lock, or AMS. Most importantly I don't know whether my team is going to be proactive and get in close enough to be in my 3 dmg/missile range. And will they run away when I'm trying to fight. If they take a shitty position it's super risky for me to make a flank solo. This kind of dependency is one reason why my experience with ATMs have not been consistent, and I don't like inconsistent weapons. Even if sometimes you can get massive games, in my mind it doesn't make up for the games where you can do nothing. LRMs have the same kind of limitations.
AMS definitely depends on the build... on most heavier mechs it's a waste of weight versus sinks or ammo depending on loadout. On my AC2 marauder 3R I run a laser AMS and even with 4x ML it runs cold enough to stay 100% active and not overheat.
When is the the DMS logo and sight droppin?
As of late I have been putting ams on a lot more of my big mechs because it's only 1 ton that just further adds to the herd immunity the usual blob of mechs have against missiles. I tend to find it a lot easier to find the space for ams on my clan mechs (and I don't have to worry about ammo explosions so much).
Speaking as a low-tier player, if they made a mech with 12 AMS hardpoints I would buy it. You can never have enough. Even as effective as AMS is, a single AMS still feels really weak in the low tiers, because SO MANY people are kitting out heavies/assaults as LRM boats. (Almost every Stalker I see is just filled to the brim with LRMs and like 4000 rounds of LRM ammo). After a certain saturation point, it just overpowers the AMS coverage with a giant rain of missiles. And you’d be better off hiding in cover and hoping your lights/snipers can pick them off rather than exposing yourself to take potshots.
I like playing aggressively
I have a low tier test account that I use occasionally and I also see the same thing. Lots more LRMs there. ECM + hugging cover + midrange weapons while using ECM is a great counter. I know it's not perfect, there being TAG and all, but it slows down their lock by a lot, enough for you to get back to cover before they get a lock or immediately after.
Main goal is to avoid this by playing aggressive. LRM is not underpowered, instead tactics been created to reduce their power. AMS doesn't help much if opponent team end up with only missiles. It is when randomized mechs end up together you see value in AMS if everyone carry a single AMS. Since the goal is to reduce your team mates performance while winning the game why should you help them.
i hated the first of those two balance updates so much that i completely stopped playing. too many of my (atm) builds became substantially less viable or even unviable with little to no options to mitigate the loss in effectiveness and just playing ballistics all the time is boring. sad to see pgi still hasn't rolled back what i consider one of their biggest mistakes to date. after years of playing on an almost daily basis, i was put off so much (the lazy classic map rehash being the final nail in the coffin) that i quit cold turkey with no regrets whatsoever and from what i see it looks like i won't be back before their servers go dark.
they should rather have done something about the nascaring, which has gotten so completely out of hand that it has become the main focus of pretty much every build and also makes a lot of chassis unusable, leaving few good (and fun) options at this point. no amount of free and crappy cannon fodder chassis or mc (with no noteworthy buying power left at this point) can make up for that.
looking at the situation right now, imo they might as well remove all weapon systems except ballistic from the game.
Certainly everyone's experiences will be different. Right now for me lasers are still fine. Clan MPL and IS LPL deal very well with nascar. I posted a video not too long ago explaining why the 3x LPL QKD-4G performs well in nascar situations. For clan the LBK-H 6x MPL is also very good. Whenever there's a nascar either of these chassis will put out probably at least 700 dmg for me. The Hellbringer HLL+ERML laser vomit is doing great for me generally. cERPPC is also in a good place. I don't like the clan missile options right now but IS has MRMs, which is OK. I do play missiles the least though.
@@BlackhawkSC definitely. being only left with ballistics is to some extent a consequence of my preferred playstyles, even though they were quite varied. then again, the variety of builds and strategies >was< one of the game's main draws for me (besides the high average age of the player base and providing a relatively level playing field for players of all ages). sadly, considering current viability, that variety has largely evaporated. i agree that lasers are ok, but the way the game has progressed over the years, with the high heat and the short games, they rarely allow you to excel and carry the game to the same extent that ballistics do. if a game runs long enough to do 700 dmg in a laser mech, you can do 1k+ in a ballistic mech, wouldn't you agree? i prefer(red) using lasers for long range rather than for brawling (other than for spare heat), but ever since nascaring has become the norm, those chassis have all been collecting dust in my mech bay.
here's hoping that mw5mercs turns out well!
Well the best ballistic mechs are assaults which doesn't keep up as well in nascars. The advantage of the QKD-4G and LBK-H is their speed and agility. The IS LPL and cMPL have pretty good DPS. I'd go and check the video I referenced, you'll see how cool it runs. th-cam.com/video/l1aFdhBa0z0/w-d-xo.html No guarantee that it'll work for you but I think it's worth a shot.
The LBK-H I featured a while back here th-cam.com/video/m0TmZn1oqo4/w-d-xo.html At that point it was just OK, but now it's stronger just because the nascar puts mechs right in the cMPL range. With these two mechs you're often at the front of the nascar poking the back side of the slowest enemies. But they also are tough enough to withstand return fire in case they turn around and decide to fight you.
@@BlackhawkSC i watched it as soon as you released it, i'm still watching most of your stuff even though i stopped playing. :) i've found that the clan assaults are usually fast enough to stay on target and out of trouble regarding my backside. i'm sure your builds would generally work for me, but i wouldn't want to sacrifice dps for additional mobility. pgi would have to fix nascaring and weapon balance to get me excited again though. it's not like it couldn't be done with different maps and/or some kind of mechanic to discourage going in a ccw circle at full speed all the time (limited fuel/more or separate engine heat/...).
Triple ams? There's quad ams corsair and piranha now.
Yes, you should watch the entire video though because I know you didn't based on this comment ;)
The PIR-A is kind of gimmicky. It sacrifices what makes the Piranha good to carry quad AMS, so realistically the -A variant doesn't see much play time.
What happened to your high explosive skill video?
I forget exactly the reason but basically he needed to redo the math/examples for missile crits.
For example he shot an Atlas (which has a crit chance receiving quirk) to show the difference the skill made on the number of shots needed to kill (which would obviously be different than your typical vanilia mech with/without skills).
The Atlas S didn't have a crit chance bonus. But one of the inconsistencies I saw was the number of SRMs needed to side torso that Atlas.
The lrm spam at certain hours of the day is so bad. I get out my 3 ams boat.
Yuhhh it is
Do your testing in lobby.
What happen in first 2 minutes?!
Yes private lobby. The first two minutes is just some random AMS footage for the narration.
More and more proof that PGI hates clans and will try to always give IS the edge. Even when it’s different in fluff or would better balance things. PGI HATES CLANS!
But MRM also suffer from AMS...
ams that works through the walls and solid obstackles is cancer, and thats the problem of stupid developer and their lack of skill in modding outdated cry engine
IMO AMS should only be effective against guided missile systems.