184 replies to this topic

[Hellrazer_001]

Well I have just played my first " Missile Assault " match since the Patch, and all I can say is it sucks so far, I could not kill anyone, and everytime I tried to lay mines near a missile tower, the enemy Mechs would be on me from the closest tower before I could finish laying them.

Lately most of the time I have been in the top half of the scores, sometimes I end up low, but this match was just ridiculous, I had no chance at all.

Obviously the Devs have no idea of some of the shortcomings of the Predator, because they nerfed it  " side dash cloak " instead  of buffing it a bit, because of the new Mech speeds, we need to be able to toggle mines from single lay, to lay a close group of 5 in one click. "5" because 10 could make it an insta kill if used directly on an enemy.

EDIT

I just played another game, " Siege " that was not too bad, the main problem I was finding was alot of the time, as I was about to finish someone off, my weapons would overheat right when they where about to die, and they either get away or finish me off, I would be quite happy if they just gave the pred a little less heat, when you get a lot of enemy together and you have your side with you, you can pepper the enemy and cause them a lot of hassles, but you just dont seem to have that 5 seconds more you need to finish alot of them off.

8 out of 10 1v1 I end up with this because of overheat.



My views may change, lol, I dont know, sometimes I love the Mech, sometimes I hate it , but I just cant stop playing the Pred!

Edited by Hellrazer_001, March 27 2014 - 06:44 PM.

[Veritasnous]

There was one stealth improvement. Repairing while in stalker mode now gives you the 2 second cooldown (I think), instead of dropping you out for the longer cooldown.

Edit: this was wrong. It does drop you to the longer cooldown, but the cooldown runs as you repair.

Edited by Veritasnous, March 27 2014 - 08:18 PM.

[The_Silencer]

Maybe, maybe if Pred pilots could manually detonate their secondary mines in midair... that could worth an evaluation on the battlefield, IMHO.. Just an idea though...

[Stingz]

The_Silencer, on March 27 2014 - 06:03 PM, said:

Maybe, maybe if Pred pilots could manually detonate their secondary mines in midair... that could worth an evaluation on the battlefield, IMHO.. Just an idea though...

Quite sure they said no to that yesterday(March.26) in the dev stream.

Something along the lines of: "The predator isn't mean to fight directly, it's a poke mech."
aka. Steamrolled by Techs easily.

Edited by Stingz, March 28 2014 - 10:31 AM.

[Veritasnous]

Meh.

Edited by Veritasnous, March 28 2014 - 01:12 PM.

[LazerusKI]

Stingz, on March 27 2014 - 06:11 PM, said:

The_Silencer, on March 27 2014 - 06:03 PM, said:

Maybe, maybe if Pred pilots could manually detonate their secondary mines in midair... that could worth an evaluation on the battlefield, IMHO.. Just an idea though...

Quite sure they said no to that yesterday(March.26) in the dev stream.

Something along the lines of: "The predator isn't mean to fight directly, it's a poke mech."
aka. Steamrolled by Techs easily.

is there a link to the stream_ cant see it from 26. march

[Stingz]

LazerusKI, on March 28 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:

Is there a link to the stream_ cant see it from 26. march

[Link to the Cockpit Stream of March 26.]

[IroncladLion]

I didn't watch the dev stream, but if that is true that they don't want it to be able to airburst mines because 'It's a poke mech'.... Dear lord. You know what is a poke mech_ The Rocketeer, you know what else is a poke mech_ The Reaper. We already have 'poke' mechs.

They are giving the Predator a stick to fight with while they give the scout a shotgun and rockets_ *Frustration intensifies* The reason the whole 'Predator' thing doesn't work for me is that it doesn't have a mech identity. Most mechs make sense, but the pred doesn't serve its intended purpose, let alone any purpose.

If this is a competitive game, every mech is supposed to be 'competitive'. In this current meta dominated by Air Compressing A classes and the occasional pro brawler/vanguard, the predator is going to need some crazy buffs.

Sorry for the rant, had to get that out there. Any suggestions to make it better_

[Stingz]

IroncladLion, on March 28 2014 - 10:40 AM, said:

I didn't watch the dev stream, but if that is true that they don't want it to be able to airburst mines because 'It's a poke mech'.... Dear lord. You know what is a poke mech_ The Rocketeer, you know what else is a poke mech_ The Reaper. We already have 'poke' mechs.

They are giving the Predator a stick to fight with while they give the scout a shotgun and rockets_ *Frustration intensifies* The reason the whole 'Predator' thing doesn't work for me is that it doesn't have a mech identity. Most mechs make sense, but the pred doesn't serve its intended purpose, let alone any purpose.

If this is a competitive game, every mech is supposed to be 'competitive'. In this current meta dominated by Air Compressing A classes and the occasional pro brawler/vanguard, the predator is going to need some crazy buffs.

Sorry for the rant, had to get that out there. Any suggestions to make it better_

Make EOC-P less of a pancake launcher and give it less but more damaging sticky bombs (and longer reload).
Perhaps let EOC-P load more mines like Repeater does, maximum of 3-4 mines

Increase reload speed on Breacher, uncharged it's has gigantic spread and is impractical to fire uncharged most of the time.
Charge time already limits the use of slug mode.

It's the bigger brother of Infiltrator, it deserves better.
Right now it's about as reliable as dice against good players (and the dice gods are angry).

Edited by Stingz, March 28 2014 - 10:50 AM.

[Bazookagofer]

Switch breacher to be secondary... P-EOC to be primary... adjust numbers.. PROFIT_
So those that actually want to be useful to the team and run a t 32 bolt with breacher with stealth and blow people up and if you dont want to do that you can lay mine fields and try to kill someone who is already weakend and be dead weight to your team...

[Stingz]

Bazookagofer, on March 28 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

Switch breacher to be secondary... P-EOC to be primary... adjust numbers.. PROFIT_
So those that actually want to be useful to the team and run a t 32 bolt with breacher with stealth and blow people up and if you dont want to do that you can lay mine fields and try to kill someone who is already weakend and be dead weight to your team...

If you put Breacher as the secondary it starts to look too much like Raider.

[IroncladLion]

Bazookagofer, on March 28 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

Switch breacher to be secondary... P-EOC to be primary... adjust numbers.. PROFIT_
So those that actually want to be useful to the team and run a t 32 bolt with breacher with stealth and blow people up and if you dont want to do that you can lay mine fields and try to kill someone who is already weakend and be dead weight to your team...

Stingz kind of has a point with this one, that'd be a lot like the raider. But I like the suggestion. I feel that the Predator can still do with a mine launcher, but they need to make it an 'aggressive' mine launcher rather than a passive one. Basically if they reduced the heat + double firing rate it'd become a pretty awesome weapon. Or if they could add the whole 'chargeable shotgun mines' thing to it, i think it could work.

Another one of the main things that sucks about the breacher + EOC Pred (and the other weapons also) is that you can't really use both the weapons at the same time. Considering the EOC Pred defies the laws of physics and flies completely straight (did I mention you can't explode the mines in the air), you ending up hitting the wall way behind your opponent. So you either have to decide if you want to try and use the horribly incapable breacher to kill your enemy, or shoot mines at the ground, you CAN'T do both. That's why if you could charge the EOC pred and launch a fat burst of mines like a shotgun -> explode them in the air, the Predator could actually do damage to flying enemies, or at least scare them away.

Seriously being able to press space to kill the predator is just bad design. I'm not even going to start about the problems if they have air compressor, but unless you can make hilarious looking WWII balloons to take down flying classes, there is no way.

[LazerusKI]

Stingz, on March 28 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

[Link to the Cockpit Stream of March 26.]

Do you remember when they said it_ edit: jsut found it at the very end

The thing that i dont understand is, that the Predator completely defies the typical Cloaker Roles.

Normally there are two common types of cloakers i know of.

The Nuker:
Very High Special-Damage (Backstab, Headshots, Criticals, Cloak-Bonus)
Low Direct Damage
Low Movement speed
Low Armor

The Infiltrator:
Very High Attack Speed with low damage per hit
Very High Movement speed
Good Dodge-Ability
Very Low Armor

the predator is the combination of both of them.
Low Damage
Low Movement Speed
Low Armor
Cant dodge in cloak, cant boost in cloak, wont deal extra damage in cloak...

I mean...if there would be something like a weakspot on the back, he could be interesting to play with.
If he would deal more damage with a shot from cloak, he would be a very interesting Guerilla-Mech
But no...instead he gets shredded by everything, even Technicians...that cant be right, where is the sense of a mech who hunts for weakened targets when there are mechs like Infiltrator or Scout_
I mean...scouts are normally Support Characters for the theam, they SCOUT, but here they are hit and run damage-beasts...that not a scout, thats a Nuker.

Edited by LazerusKI, March 29 2014 - 01:48 AM.

[mccrorie]

The predators two projectile weapons, the EOC combo, now have slower projectile speeds compared to the new pace of the game. The whole speed increase has been a serious neg for the Predator.

All round the Predator is really fuzzy bunny now.

Edited by mccrorie, March 29 2014 - 01:52 AM.

[Hellrazer_001]

I am actually ending up on the top of the Board for about 70% of my games. Then it is a toss up between coming  last and in the top 3 for the other 30% of my games.

I think the Patch has made the Predator much more lethal now, I use the EOC Repeater and the EOC Predator, and even 1v1, unless the Enemy Mech is very good I can win alot more of 1v1 now.

I do feel it seems to depend on your team as to how good your scores are, if your team is hopeless and the Enemy is running around in a Pack then there is not much you can do to counter that anway.



This is just a few of the Matches I have played in the last two days, I especially Like the Bottom Right one 4 players Dominated

Edited by Hellrazer_001, March 29 2014 - 05:26 AM.

[IroncladLion]

LazerusKI, on March 29 2014 - 12:39 AM, said:

I mean...if there would be something like a weakspot on the back, he could be interesting to play with.
If he would deal more damage with a shot from cloak, he would be a very interesting Guerilla-Mech
But no...instead he gets shredded by everything, even Technicians...that cant be right, where is the sense of a mech who hunts for weakened targets when there are mechs like Infiltrator or Scout_
I mean...scouts are normally Support Characters for the theam, they SCOUT, but here they are hit and run damage-beasts...that not a scout, thats a Nuker.

I couldn't agree more. The higher damage from cloak sounds like a good idea. Or like, all damage for 1-2 seconds after shooting from cloak gets boosted by like 20%. But yeah, it really doesn't fit it's 'intended' role.

[mccrorie]

It's intended role doesn't even fit the game. They're gradually still moving furhter away from tactical shooter toward arena-style DM.

[LazerusKI]

mccrorie, on March 29 2014 - 02:28 PM, said:

It's intended role doesn't even fit the game. They're gradually still moving furhter away from tactical shooter toward arena-style DM.

sadly...alway "faster faster faster"
until it turns into CoD with Mechs

[mccrorie]

I don't how it's CoD. But it's not what I remember many moons ago.

It reminds me of the first UT but with jump-packs

Edited by mccrorie, March 29 2014 - 04:00 PM.

[Yorgoss]

I've yet to use the Predator, but if you think about it it's the only A-Class mech outfitted to be a chokepoint monster.

Breacher lets you play some versatile peek-a-boo, mines help you hold the choke down, Cloak in a random corner if the chokepoint falls and you need to lay low instantly.

With Scramblers and EMPs it could easily do some heavy lifting in a "for the team" sense, while being an A-Class bastard.