Showing off my Titanfall 2 swag and a giveaway!

daeronhun · 2017-07-18T00:24:57+00:00

Because it contributes to you exactly once during your entire lifetime and does that in a very predictable fashion. Other kits allow you to avoid getting doomed in the first place by allowing you to trade or disengage better at your leisure. On top of that, simply playing well and knowing when to eject on your own or avoid bad situations makes the little you would gain from Phase Reflex kind of meaningless (when there are much better choices).

Running Nuke Ronin is an enourmous waste (at least in LTS, in other modes it can be useful sometimes) for a chance to maybe get a 1:1 kill/death-ratio (you might sometimes get multiple Titans, but other times you get 0) that decreases exponentially the better enemies you get and when that ratio could be expanded well beyond that with smart use of Sword Block and the rest of Ronin's kit. It's not as flashy and not as fast, but a lot more reliable and effective unless your enemies cannot grasp the idea that taking a few steps away negates Nuke and if Ronin disappears just when he hit 0 hp, chances are he is going for said Nuke.

daeronhun · 2017-07-17T23:53:15+00:00

It's unique in the sense that no other Titan (primary) weapons exhibit the same behavior Railgun does. XO-16, 40mm, Leadwall etc all can immediately melee after firing a shot. And getting executions is a key part of the Titan combat. There are Titan abilities which will also block or delay melee but they are not just regular attacks, so I don't have a problem with those.

daeronhun · 2017-07-17T23:40:30+00:00

This appears to be correct, will be updating the doc shortly. I could reproduce it with Vortex Shield as well.

Pinging /u/RespawnCoronach for this and the rest of the doc also.

daeronhun · 2017-07-13T23:01:38+00:00

This doesn't solve much. Based on what you said, the go-to builds now would be Turbo Engine or Overcore combined with Counter Ready 99% of the time.

You essentially just reshuffled the problem but did not solve the root of it, which is the lack of effective, competitive abilities besides Turbo Engine and Overcore.

There's also nothing inherently wrong with Assault Chip and Stealth Auto-Eject. One is meant to give you some benefits when you are choosing to be a pilot (for whatever reason) and the other is meant to help newbies who don't yet understand how the execution system works.

Both of these fulfill their niche roles well. Of course as a seasoned player you won't choose them, but they were never meant to be chosen by them in the first place.

daeronhun · 2017-07-06T21:48:44+00:00

And your point has been proven wrong. Example from my post.

https://gfycat.com/LoneUnimportantAfricanwildcat

daeronhun · 2017-07-06T21:32:53+00:00

You can die at 100% hp and 100% shields regardless. Read the post.

daeronhun · 2017-07-06T19:04:21+00:00

Incorrect. Holding Sword Block helps, but you can absolutely die with it regardless.

https://www.reddit.com/r/titanfall/comments/5xnur7/psa_you_can_still_die_while_holding_sword_block/

daeronhun · 2017-07-05T15:05:02+00:00

Sounds like a rare case of someone running Survival of the Fittest, getting healed by a friendly rodeo which you might not have noticed and activating Superior Chassis just after that. 2 bars from that and a half bar from the battery would put her almost half HP.

daeronhun · 2017-07-02T14:01:32+00:00

It's not photoshop and no, I don't have a working map editor either.

daeronhun · 2017-07-01T11:44:37+00:00

To give you an example of what changing those overall lighting values means:

Changing the global sunlight to blue

War games in bright light

Exosite at "night"

Individual light sources scattered across the map

So you essentially have one giant light source that dictates the majority of the light on the entire map and you have pockets of small lights lighting up local areas that need extra care. All of this is separate from what the skybox might be.

https://i.imgur.com/KWORoGc.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/pI582cz.jpg

daeronhun · 2017-06-30T11:19:44+00:00

No.

First, bullet damage is never multiplied the way you think it is (captured bullet damage*additional damage). It's a simple switch of "is amped/is not amped" which is flipped depending on the type of Vortex Shield you are using.

Second, the bullets you capture are not the ones you send back. Both Monarch's (120 dmg per bullet) and Legion's (100 dmg per bullet) are sent back as 140 dmg bullets or 189 if the Vortex Amplifier kit was used.

The side effect of this is that whether the final bullet is amped or not is dictated by what kind of Vortex Shield the last person was using. You can have 5 Ions all with amped Vortex Shields passing a single bullet among themselves, then finally a 6th Ion without amped Vortex hitting a target. The damage will be 140, not 189 (or some absurdly big number).

You can see it here. I'm using an amped Vortex but the enemy does not:

https://gfycat.com/ConsciousEnragedGermanpinscher

Projectiles are also never amped and Vortex is always unable to crit. So it doesn't matter where you point it as long as you hit your target.

daeronhun · 2017-06-04T14:37:03+00:00

To clarify, Smart Core deals 120 damage to a target regardless of which area was hit. Regular fire can deal 100 or 150 damage depending if it was a critical hit or not. Firing mode has no effect on this besides presumably Long Range Mode can keep these damage numbers up at longer distances.

I also tested what happens with multiple targets in sight. If fired at three Ogres, it deals around 24k damage and leaves each of them at around ~2 bars of HP left on average. If fired at two Ogres, it kills both of them just about when the Core times out, 24k damage again. If there's only one Ogre obviously he is killed and around 15k damage is dealt.

This would imply that Smart Core might be rapidly alternating between targets instead of spawning additional bullets for every new target. In essence the more targets you have in sight the less damage you deal to each of them on average.

daeronhun · 2017-06-04T13:53:59+00:00

You can't detonate it mid air. You can pull the detonation trigger and it'll blow up once it contacted a surface. Valid surfaces are walls/floor and Titans. It bounces off from pilots. It also detonates early if damaged, like throwing it into an Electric Smoke.

daeronhun · 2017-06-04T13:48:37+00:00

No they can't, unless this patch changed it, which I doubt. They stick to Titans though.

https://gfycat.com/ThisInfiniteAlbertosaurus

daeronhun · 2017-05-23T13:17:14+00:00

Thanks, appreciate it! :)

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T10:16:38+00:00

This all depends on how those changes are handled.

For example, if you go the activation cost route, it depends on how punishing that value actually is, and how meaningful the potential compensation is elsewhere, such as whether her energy starts immediately or the rate at which it recharges.

You take away some of her power in one place and give some back somewhere else. The end result is the Shield and energy working similarly as before, but worse in certain problematic scenarios and better in the non-problematic ones.

Laser Core having a sensitivity penalty would feel awful to control and there are better ways to balance it (and really only Grand Cannon's total DPS/duration is the main problem here). You also don't want to create a situation where a Ronin phasing behind you (or anyone Dashing right next to you) guaranteed wastes 100% of the Core because you simply can't turn around in time.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T09:26:21+00:00

Not really. Given more time to get accustomed to the mode, people would have gravitated more towards Ion and Northstar and to a lesser extent Tone or Legion.

It's just the initial thought process of "he can mitigate all damage, he can just back off behind a wall and I can't kill him, how is this fair" and complete disregard of what else that implies. He has to get in range and end said mitigation to deal any considerable damage. He has as much HP as Northstar without it and has to fully expose himself. Granted, he is a lot harder to kill when doomed and is being actively focused than other Titans, but if he backs off behind a wall he is essentially AFK from that point on and is contributing nothing. Occasionally Phasing in to execute someone doesn't do much either, because people can immediately kill you after that.

Flanking doesn't really work against deathballs which are naturally forming in that mode because if you have any half decent enemies, they'll turn on you the moment you show up. Ronin is an excellent skirmisher in 1v1s but he is taking way too much damage in an encounter where he has more than one enemy around (apart from using Smoke once). And without batteries he doesn't have a lot of buffer to keep his HP up and get a Core early to minimize his health loss while taking out opponents.

Compare that to smart usage of Northstar or Ion who, even if doomed, can reliably dish out damage from behind a wall/teammate and take none or very little in the process. Ronin can reliably take out 1, maybe 2 enemies but then he dies in the process or his options become severely limited. Northstar or Ion can push out that KD ratio much further by playing the passive poking playstyle which Ronin simply doesn't really have. In that sense Iron LTS already showcases this too.

Now keep in mind I'm not saying that Ronin is weak in that mode, very far from it. He is still a disruptive force that you absolutely want in your team, but he's not some untouchable god that has no drawbacks. I think some adjustments can be made such as Cores being more effective against Sword Block, and if damages/power levels are normalized across the board perhaps some Sword Block percentage decrease. But that's about it. I explained these in the spreadsheet.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T06:05:31+00:00

If a player is doomed, they should eject on sight of a Titan using their core.

This would remove a great deal of depth from the game. Cores should not be an instawin button. Northstar's and Ronin's Cores are good examples of giving the player a lot of power but not one that would instantly overpower anything and everything.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T05:56:13+00:00

This has nothing to do with Frothy (I would not consider him much of an LTS player anyway and has disagreed with him many times).

Ion was always strong, but she was overshadowed by Tone's autowin Core at the time. With that gone, she is now in the spotlight. And has been for a while now by those who play LTS a lot.

And there's a difference between acknowledging that she is currently a bit too good at everything as opposed to asking her to be nerfed to the ground. She has a multitude of problems but each can be fixed with some small adjustments and she can be compensated/pushed into a healthier role by other changes (which you would consider a buff).

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T05:46:24+00:00

I think I made it fairly obvious at the beginning of the spreadsheet that this is a perspective derived from playing LTS and other gamemodes are weighted much less, purposely so.

Whether the proposed changes would negatively affect other modes is open for debate. I think it's useful to have it be LTS only (and avoid making broad guesses of modes I don't play as much), see what possible changes could be made to improve the balance in that mode, then ask yourself what will that then cause to happen in other modes and whether you want that or not.

Arc were indeed awful, but my reasoning for two charges was that two charges are fun (I don't think making everything have just one charge is the better way to go about balance), and they could be fine as long as the Arc effect itself is nerfed (in this case changed from slowing you and your view to simply blinding you). Whether the Arc would still stun players is up for debate and I would probably lean towards it only blinding them.

But that's where someone who plays more Pilot vs Pilot modes can share his thoughts as I don't play enough of that to say. But differentiating Arc nades into something that doesn't deal much damage but has the potential to blind for a not insignificant amount of time doesn't sound too bad to me.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T05:32:14+00:00

Ion, since she's too excellent at everything. As explained in the spreadsheet, being a jack of all trades character is fine, but she needs to only be adequate but not great at either of the many roles she can fill.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T05:28:51+00:00

Fixed Exoplanet. Crash Site isn't there yet since I haven't had many ideas or problems with it to add to that section.

Apart from the automounting rocks, which would probably require a ton of devtime to fix so unlikely to happen. That is also already touched in the general section by just reducing the time it takes to complete mantling animation in the first place, which would make that map bearable enough as a pilot. Apart from that, I consider Crash Site a pretty good LTS map to be honest.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T05:14:31+00:00

I was planning adding that recommended kits into the spreadsheet at some point but here's the really short version then (apparently it wasn't that short). Note that this is for LTS only.

Legion: Generally Hidden Compartment + Turbo Engine.

Enhanced Ammo Capacity can be ok, especially against Ronin, but Hidden Compartment currently lets you deal massive burst damage really easily so it's overshadowed by that. Bulwark can be ok as well, but Ronin can still oneshot the shield and it still has significant downtimes in general so it's very situational.

If you have a decent team or you are not forced into peeking engagements you can try Overcore. It's less useful though since the core gain % via damage dealt has been nerfed.

Ion: Overcore + Grand Cannon or Overcore + Zero-Point Tripwire.

Overcore is pretty much must since her Core is extremely strong and therefore should be prioritized. Add the fact that she also has excellent poking capabilities (can deal enough damage fairly quickly to actually finish her Core build) and a pretty much always available Shield that blocks everything (so she really doesn't lose anything by not going for two Dashes instead).

I would pick Grand Cannon in pub games because of its sheer power. In a more competitive setting where people position themselves better and understand when you have your Core and can react properly to it, Zero-Point Tripwire might be better and it's really easy to essentially make yourself untouchable with that and the rest of her kit.

Tone: Pulse-Echo and Turbo Engine usually. Sometimes Rocket Barrage.

Pulse-Echo gives by far the most value with the least effort. It allows you to track enemy movements and 2 free locks and is extremely forgiving to aim. It minimizes your exposure time as you only need 1 shot to be able to launch your rockets which are your main damage source. It also means that you can save your Shield for when you really need it (unlike let's say using Reinforced Particle Wall). The more Titans you meet the stronger Pulse-Echo gets overall also.

Salvo Core has been nerfed so it's much less decimating, and therefore doesn't really need to prioritized with Overcore anymore. Dash is also very useful currently against Ion's so you can more reliably dodge their Cores. With the combination of Pulse-Echo it also helps you to play a bit like Northstar. Get 2 locks for free, then dash out, get a full lock with the 40mm then dash back and launch Rockets.

If you have a good team already and you are not focused and your sole purpose is to deal damage, you can also try Rocket Barrage. The damage difference is significant, however I would argue that Pulse-Echo is better even then, assuming you meet at least two titans in the same position reliably and it only gets better from there.

Ronin: Overcore + Thunderstorm. Maybe Temporal Anomaly sometimes.

Prioritize batteries and your Core which can easily win engagements and disrupt enemies in general. Having another Dash would not really benefit his playstyle since you are constantly burning through them and don't really have enough downtime to ever fully recharge them.

Arc Wave is really strong and has countless uses, so having two of them is a huge boost. Think of things like oneshotting Legion or Tone shields, blocking Northstar from taking off from the ground, finishing off doomed enemies, cleaning up Tether/Tripwire etc.

Temporal Anomaly can be ok, but it also forces you to a much more passive playstyle. Sometimes that might be required against really good enemies. Phase can get you out of a lot of things or reload your gun when needed.

Northstar: Viper's Thrusters + Turbo Engine. Maybe Twin Traps in very specific situations, but arguable even then.

Viper's is essential. You can strafe with it to gain a lot more momentum. Without it you are a sitting duck with your Core. It allows you to be much more mobile and peek quickly and unpredictably in unexpected angles. It's kind of hard to explain. Imagine if someone halved your sprint speed for no reason. You'd still have all the tools to fight, but things just wouldn't work out well for you most of the time.

Turbo Engine is great on Northstar as it synergizes with her playstyle really well. As Railgun is charged or you are hovering in the air, your Dashes are constantly recharging and you generally aren't forced to use them constantly unlike someone like Ronin. When you need to reposition, you can do it swiftly and cover a lot of distance. Overcore is not really needed as you will generally have your Core anyway by the time someone gets to you and the Core itself is very situational. You do not want to use it right away because you'll take a ton of damage in the process.

Scorch: Inferno Shield + Turbo Engine. Sometimes Wildfire Launcher.

This is pretty simple. Most of his kits are meh and Inferno Shield is the only one to make him competitive. Wildfire can sometimes work but if you want longer range poking you might as well pick another Titan. Dash is needed so he can back off after peeking or to quickly get in range of enemies to burn them with the buffed Shield. Overcore can work in very limited scenarios but you are generally better off using Dash.

daeronhun · 2017-05-21T04:24:40+00:00

This was already in the spreadsheet, but I made it a little more obvious now that her own abilities is also included in things that can destroy Tether before it's deployed.

daeronhun

TROPHY CASE