LTS Metagaming Overthinking Dumb Wonderthread

[wittyscorpion]

Regarding Titan-specific Kit, I guess that the only one that we haven't had an in-depth discussion is Tone.

Tone Kit

Enhanced Tracker Rounds – Critical hits apply two tracker marks on targets
Reinforced Particle Wall – Particle Wall lasts longer and blocks more damage
Pulse-Echo – After a short delay, Sonar Pulse echoes a second pulse
Rocket Barrage – Tracker Rockets fire two additional missiles

They all look pretty good. If I have to rank them, I am thinking:

#1: Particle Wall +
#2: Pulse-Echo +
#3: Enhanced Tracker Rounds
#4: Rocket Barrage

The reason why I rank defense > awareness > offense is because Tone is already a DPS monster.

Thoughts?

[trizzydizzy]

It's a shame all of Tone's options are great.

I'll go back to my Northstar now and try to figure out which one isn't the most useless.

[Pegasus Actual]

For Tone kit I'd say Rocket Barrage and Reinforced Particle Wall are 1a and 1b.

Enhanced Tracker Rounds are only particularly useful if you have less than 2 locks, and even then it jumps out and surprises you a bit. It's hard to bank on crit shots. And a lot of time you'll have your Sonar Pulse up for a third-lock anyway if another 40mm shot isn't coming.

Pulse-Echo doesn't give you an extra lock, and people will either stay in your pulse zone and you kind of know where they are already, or they leave and the follow-up pulse misses anyway. Junk, outside of maybe niche uses in objective game modes but even then I'm not buying it.

Rocket Barrage is probably my slight preference just because the wall is already fairly strong as is, and you should be looking to back out if you're getting focus fired down hard enough for your wall to die anyway. In Tone vs Tone, the barrage gives you an advantage. If you both pop your walls with nobody able to get a lock, it's pretty much foolish to try to break through the walls with 40mm rounds. It just takes too long (you won't break either wall before they expire naturally without support), you'll probably have to reload your 40mm for the actual fight, and the guy without the amped wall can and should just back down anyway. If only one of you gets the lock, the other person's wall is basically dead, and they need to break off the engagement or else they're going to be soaking up big damage. The interesting matchup here though is if you both manage to get locks on each other. In that case, the guy with reinforced wall fires his rockets, and they will outright break his opponents wall. Meanwhile Rocket Barrage guy won't break through in a single volley. Sounds bad for Rocket Barrage guy right? But it turns out it takes exactly 1 follow-up 40mm round from your cannon and the Reinforced Wall is toast as well. At which point you're trading and the guy firing 8x rockets at a time is going to rapidly out-DPS the guy shooting 6x rockets at a time and more importantly get your Salvo Core aka GG button more quickly.

Reinforced Particle Wall is really good though. If your wall is going to be up for the duration, it gives you 9 seconds up-time vs 6 seconds for the regular. And I believe it's a 1.5x buff to damage it can take, so it makes it work for two Titans focus firing on you to break it. And since the cooldown starts when you pop it, not when it finishes, you are only waiting 5 seconds for it to come back, as opposed to an 8 second wait for the normal wall. It's a great choice if you want to play at more of a distance getting free 40mm shots. It's just not a great fit for my playstyle where if they're backing off of my wall I'm probably trying to chase them anyway.

[qupie]

Pulse echo does give an extra lock though. I am 99% sure. I have played with it a long time. It can work really well against multiple titans.

Funny how well balanced tone's abilities are. I think the reinforced wall is the worst one, but I tend to only fight around cover anyways.

I used to love pulse echo and rocket barrage, but after regen I didn't really bother changing it and Enhanced tracker is the clear winner for me now. Sure, if you try it for one game it will surprise you. But in the fights that really matter (head to head fights) enhanced tracker increases your DPS the most. 2 40mm + 6 rockets > 3 40 mm + 8 rockets (assuming you can hit 1 crit out of 2 shots). And it makes your missiles less predictable, which is good against ion and scorch.

Anyhow, I can see how players think Tone is OP, and his salvo core is a little too much on top of everything else. But man, if you stick with one of the others, there is just so much things they can do that Tone can't. Have really been having fun with scorch lately.

[Pegasus Actual]

Nov 16, 2016 4:52:25 GMT -5 qupie said:

Pulse echo does give an extra lock though. I am 99% sure. I have played with it a long time. It can work really well against multiple titans.

You're right, I just tried it out in private match against a Bounty Hunt Titan. I'm positive that Dumien 'tested' it and said it didn't give an extra lock. Any inaccuracy in my post is entirely his fault. He should apologize for not meeting the standards of the Den forums, and letting all the bros down. Sad!

With that lock, yeah I'd say the choices are generally pretty viable for Tone. I think the only Titan that really completely locks you into a choice in that slot is Scorch. Only the enhanced shield is worth having there.

The enhanced tracking rounds thing I'm still not convinced on though. So many fights involve trying to get a lock off of some splash damage, or otherwise working around a shield of some sort or cover. I just don't find as many opportunities to pound on someone's crit spot in this game compared with the original. Plus if you find yourself in a battle with the upgraded Particle Wall, you're not going to be able to break it.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 16, 2016 5:42:03 GMT -5 Pegasus Actual said:

I think the only Titan that really completely locks you into a choice in that slot is Scorch. Only the enhanced shield is worth having there.

What about Ronin? Isn't the double Arc Wave the clean winner?

Nov 14, 2016 22:18:08 GMT -5 Dumien said:

Nov 11, 2016 4:04:16 GMT -5 qupie said:

Dumien Are you saying arc wave does more damage when your sword core is up? Hmm, I didn't know that...

Yes. It multiplies arc wave by 1.5

It multiplies sword damage by 2.0 (normal titan punch is 500. Ronin sword is 800).

It doubles your sword block damage mitigation.

It super buffs your dash cooldown (we didn't test by how much...but you will generally get a dash per second).

Pegasus and I did alot of testing.

On sword core: just to confirm, when you say "sword core is up", you mean when the core is activated, not just when it is ready to be used, right?

[wittyscorpion]

And in general, Dumien/Pegasus Actual: can you share the results of these "tests" we have been hearing about, or you plan to keep them as trade secret?

Specifically, I am curious about Titan health related aspects. I have learnt that:

1) Each health bar has 2500 health;
2) 2500 health post doom;
3) Battery provides 2500 health worth of shield, + X amount of additional health (X ~= 1000)?

Q1: Are these accurate?
Q2: How much health can a regular melee take out?
Q3: How many melees does it take to kill a doomed Titan?

[Pegasus Actual]

And then... there was Northstar. First of all, ignore everything Dumien said about Northstar, because it's mostly nonsense.

Great. Now, next thing to know, Northstar is adorable. She's athletic, she's pretty. She's the Titan Next Door. She's the Titan all the boy Titans want to take to TitanProm. Including her angsty little weirdo brother Ronin, which is equal parts sad and creepy.

Now that that's out of the way, a couple of rounds of gameplay from the Queueing with Randoms Collection, by PS4:



Northstar, much like Tone, is very much a Titan loadout taken and refined from the original game. I'm not sure if people recall, but the Plasma Railgun in the original had that tight zoomed in FOV making it very hard to use, but a later patch widened it out considerably. At which point, at least in the PC version, it was fairly common to see a Stryder Railgun combo boosting around, taking big chunks of damage off you and running away. The good news for Titanfall 2 is now your Plasma Railgun gets a variable zoom mechanic, making it the best extreme range weapon by a wide margin, but also keeping it useful closer up. The name of the game here is use cover, charge it up, peek and punish. If your aim is true and you can land some crits you'll be breakin' off not just pieces but pretty much entire Kit Kat bars off of enemy Titans, as the kids on the streets of Angel City would say...

A lot of times don't worry about getting a full charge, if they don't see it coming and they're not shooting you, of course, get the biggest chunk of damage you can. But let's say you're in a Northstar v. Northstar situation, take the shot as soon as you got it. The damage viewkick is real and you'll have a very good chance to land a fully charged follow-up as they recover.

The Cluster Missile also makes its return, and it's a fantastic piece of ordnance. This time you get a nice straight precision shot with it akin to the amped version in the original (If you recall the normal cluster missile in TF1 had a crazy wavy flight path), though it has that shoulder mounted delay where it primes to fire, you can't hold it in like a Laser Shot, so hold your aim until the missile is away for best results. It's still great area denial. It's still great for murdering pesky pilots inside a building. It's still massive damage if you can get it in a group of Titans trying out that Hillary "Stronger Together" nonsense. It recharges in a very quick feeling 10 seconds, so get those Cluster Missiles out there early and often!

Northstar is incredibly difficult to play with randoms. They will bump into you. They will overload your lane and block your shots. They will leave your flank exposed. This clip segues into the one and only Northstar loadout people should be using, but just check out how triggered I was when that Tone walks up and Foxtrots up my shot. This kind of thing happens multiple times a match with randoms. It's infuriating to say the least:



WORLDSTAAAR!!! NORTHSTAAAAAR!!!! NUKESTAAAAAR!!!!!

If you haven't picked up on it yet, the loadout for Northstar is Nuclear Ejection paired with Twin Traps. Piercing Shot is very niche, how often are you going to collateral shot Titans in practice? Enhanced Payload is probably pretty decent, but Cluster Missile is strong as is, and Viper Thrusters, while seemingly making Flight Core a bit more useful, probably goads you into getting killed by popping your Flight Core at bad times more than anything.

Nuclear Ejection got nerfed a bit for TF2, it no longer triggers if you manually eject. I have a feeling that this was very deliberate in order to keep Nukestar in check. The dual tethers obviously let you snag two Titans in your nuke. In that video above, I believe that amounted to a 27.5k damage eject, not to mention the two pilot kills I got while staying quite alive myself. A very good trade. Sure one guy hopped out of his Titan to grab a battery and got squished for his trouble but frankly he wasn't getting out of there no matter what. The timing to make your tethers do the work is a bit tight. You want to launch them about 1-2 seconds before you're going to eject. You go a little too early and they'll get out of the tethers and back away from the nuke just in time. You go too late (i.e. at the same time as you nuke) and they will get out of the range of the tethers before they trigger just as a natural consequence of running the hell away from your nuke.

The Twin Traps are also great for dealing with single Titans though. One tether actually gives them a nice little patch of land to roam. But if you can catch them between two tethers, they're going nowhere. They're going to eat the full Cluster Missile you put at their feet. They're going to eat a fully charged Plasma Railgun shot to the face. And they will know fear. And they will panic.

Speaking of panic, Northstar dishes out psychological damage in spades. When someone peeks your lane and eats a charged shot, they're not peeking your lane again. They're going somewhere else. For this reason, my preference is to hold a lane with Northstar ALONE. Post up in cover, make it hard for them to land any shots. Never give Tone a chance to lock, and if she does, make sure you're somewhere where simply crouching or backing off slightly will block the Tracker Rockets. Ideally it's a 1v2. If you play well, they just will not be able to get down your lane, eat disproportionate damage, and leave their teammates 3v4 on the other lanes. 3 can push you out of your spot, at which point you might consider asking for health, but still make them pay a price. Tethers plus Cluster Missiles can dish out major damage as you egress. Remember to always fall back to good cover, and to place your tethers solidly on your side of whatever corner they're rounding. You don't want them to have enough slack to get back around the cover. You want them to have to try to dance around your Cluster Missile in the open.

Now, if on the other hand you successfully hold your lane, and see them retreat, or they just never challenge your lane to begin with, you need to become a Flankstar post-haste! Generally they expect you to just stay back and keep holding the lane. Which makes sense, because that's generally what people do. But that's just stupid. In LTS if you're not doing something, then you're helping the other team. I guess you don't necessarily have to flank, you can come up behind your teammates and start poking shots in other lanes, maybe occasionally double-checking your old lane just in case. But I believe strongly in the Flankstar life. Since they don't expect you to push the lane being the little long-range Titan that you are, you're probably going to get a free Cluster Missile and Plasma Railgun shot on them as they fight your teammates. You might get an opportunity to run up, electric smoke them, get tethers down, and if your health is in the right spot pull off a big time nuke eject. No matter what, chances are it's going to be super fun. Only getting a blind flank with Scorch compares... you know, with the upgraded Flame Shield. Melty melty. Mmmm. Good.

A more deliberate use of Nukestar in a rushing capacity running with some X-Bros: xboxdvr.com/gamer/Pegasus%20Actual/video/23563136 -- You can't really see the tethers in the chaos. But they're there. And they work. You see as soon as that Legion decides he doesn't want to try to fight me over that lane I am going in with radioactive genocide in my heart. Editor's note: I doubt I would have died after ejecting if it weren't for struggling with GameDVR during my eject.

Tether + nuke also makes Northstar viable for other modes. It turns out if you can time a Dome Shield they're completely screwed. You can just bounce dual tethers off the top of the Dome Shield and as soon as it goes down, they're trapped. This will (probably?) also give you an instant rebuild, so you are just trading in for a brand new full health Northstar, no down payment! Not bad at all. This could be a really good way to grab Titan bounties in Bounty Hunt. Or you can sneak behind an enemy Titan who's working on the bounty, land your tethers, murder him, and clean up after. And it's downright traumatizing to be on the wrong side of it.



I guess I should say a few words about VTOL Hover. It's good for traversal on a couple of maps. Drydock. Black Water. Kodai. It's good for getting peeks, but please use conservatively. Don't do the same peek twice if someone sees you. Try not to peek in a way that exposes your entire body. Start pre-charging a railgun shot (but don't wait for it to fully charge) before hitting your Hover. When you hit your apex you'll have a fully charged shot ready to go, lay it down somewhere if you have a shot, and follow up immediately with a Cluster Missile. There's just enough hover to do them both comfortably.

Some thoughts on Flight Core are in order as well. Yeah. It's kind of shit. There is no doubt about it. You can't just pop it in a straight up 1v1 and expect to succeed. Northstar just ain't about that life. It can deal an absurd 15k+ damage, being rivaled by only a Laser Core with Grand Cannon or a Flame Core hitting 3+ opponents in raw damage, maybe Ronin too if you just go HAM with the Sword... anyway the point is it does have massive potential in theory. But landing even a quarter of your munitions is sometimes impossible. This is one core that you just don't always want to be using. If you use it anywhere with a ceiling you might get caught in an awkward position, where your shots are blocked, but your opponent can hit your feet. So only use outdoors, unless you are absolutely sure what you're doing. And frankly only use it if you have a flank. On something at least Atlas sized, preferably Ogre. And try to keep your head, get your tethers out and a Cluster Missile before you pop it, otherwise you're wasting your cooldown. And tethering a big fat Titan or two is probably the only way you're ever going to clear 10k damage from your Flight Core in a real match.

Dumien said something in party chat, while training up a typical meathead CODtard, along the lines of acting like you're on your last sliver of health when playing LTS, even when you're at full health. That's great advice in general, and even more so when you're living the Northstar life. Act like the next hit you take is going to kill you. Every shot you take feels like death. You don't have any magic defensive shields like some of the more popular Titans. Avoid damage at all costs. The only way something like a Legion can hurt you at distance is if you let him. The Power Shot timing forces him to get lucky if you're constantly popping in and out of cover, he's slow so you should be able to land all of your peek shots. Tone's shield won't stand up to a Cluster Missile and a charged shot, so you can keep her at bay indefinitely for the cost of occasionally catching a 40mm on your peeks. But so long as you don't allow follow-up shots and otherwise trade evenly, you're coming out ahead. Ion can be a total bitch in a peek battle thanks to your lack of shield and that hitcan Laser Shot magic. The good news is she'll have to use up her energy meter if she wants to Vortex Shield down your lane, so it's still hard for her to push you out completely. Still against a good and patient Ion you probably want to retreat and switch off with a teammate better equipped to deal with her.

One last clip I'll leave you with from a semi-sweaty Xbox lobby: xboxdvr.com/gamer/Pegasus%20Actual/video/23562947 -- man Boomtown is so good for Tone, wallhack plus tree cover that you can shoot through. Yep, if you're try-harding Boomtown, Tone is the only answer.

[Dumien]

Welp... I've got some crow to eat.

First off: that IS a way better northstar guide than mine. Editing mine accordingly.

That last clip has probably the closest LTS round I've seen. The moral of this story is that even if you "get good" at northstar like Pegasus has, Ion is still way too good against you.

Second: Played some tone today. That echo pulse DOES work and I'm pretty sure it elevates Tone even higher on my mental tier list. Thanks qupie

[Dumien]

Nov 16, 2016 5:42:03 GMT -5 Pegasus Actual said:

With that lock, yeah I'd say the choices are generally pretty viable for Tone. I think the only Titan that really completely locks you into a choice in that slot is Scorch. Only the enhanced shield is worth having there.

Legion, yes?

[Pegasus Actual]

You seemed to like both Bulwark and Enhanced Ammo Capacity. But I'll defer to you, I haven't even gotten my Legion to Gen 2.

[Dumien]

Ahah. I understand. I was thinking you were saying that tone only has to use enhanced shield to defend against scorch

...because I read "only titan" as "only enemy titan" with "enemy" inferred since we were talking matchups. lol

Moving on...

[wittyscorpion]

Another topic I am interested in: how to be an effective pilot in LTS? Any tips to share?

[trizzydizzy]

Make enemy Titans make bad decisions by continuously pinging them with instant charge rifle shots.

[wittyscorpion]

How about getting batteries and rodeoing? I guess in most of the games there is not enough time for the Titan-less pilots to get the battery and give them to the friendly Titan?

[trizzydizzy]

Batteries if it's safe, but I generally figure it's a netgain on damage over health with a charge rifle over battery. I never rodeo with the new mechanics, too risky with Smoke, other pilots, and other trickery. If it's the last Titan maybe, but I still prefer the safety of my instant charge rifle.

[Will]

Nov 17, 2016 19:21:27 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

How about getting batteries and rodeoing? I guess in most of the games there is not enough time for the Titan-less pilots to get the battery and give them to the friendly Titan?

It works if you can find a lone enemy titan, I won a LTS match doing a triple-rodeo on the last titan while I left mine in guard mode hidden in a corner on a sliver of health (I had a teammate in his titan somewhere too, so I wasn't risking the whole round doing this). But don't waste your time if they have a teammate nearby

[wittyscorpion]

A mix bag of random questions in order become a better LTS fighter in gen 2:

1) Pilot load out suggestions?

2) How does Phase Embark work? Trying to decide whether it is worth buying with credits

3) Is there a way to tell whether a Titan has its core?

For this GEN I am planning to mainly focus on being a more competent Ion:

4) Tips on using Vortex Shield effectively? Mainly on how to aim better. I need to lead my shots, right?

5) Where should I try to hit when against Legion and Tone with Shield up, either caught bullets or laser?

6) I know I can block but can't catch shots from Ion's Splitter, any other weapons I can't block or catch? Ion's Laser shots? Laser core? Salvo Core?

7) Seems to me that I can acquire laser core fairly quickly but am not very good at finishing Titans. Should I consider Grand Canyon (longer laser core)? Does that make laser core last twice as long? Does laser core penetrate Titans/particle wall/gumshield/vortex shield?

8) Is it even worth trying to put a whole bunch of traps on the field with the zero energy kit? Do you bother with the trap at all?

On effective use of melee:

9) For a doomed Titan with blue bar from battery, melee won't be an execution, right?

10) When are good times to use melee, other than execution?

[qupie]

1) doesn't really matter. But at least have an anti titan weapon. Pilot vs pilot gunfights are so rare that maybe the best loadout would be charge rifle + sidewinder + amped weapons (or any other combination of short + long range anti titan??

2) phase embark is by far the best option in Last titan standing. If you play that a lot, it is worth it for sure. I personally use it in every game type.

3) I don't think so

4) I think so, I think the travel speed of the projectile depends on what you caught.

5) Don't even try. Run

6) Any energy weapons. That includes all weapons fired by ion, as well as charge rifle and probably a lot more.

7) I really like grand canon. I suck with returning fire with vortex and 20% extra damage seems pretty lackluster. Grand canon is definitely noticeable, but I don't think it is twice as long. Others swear by vortex though.

8) I have never tried it. It could theoretically work if your teammates are in on it. But if you are in the back setting up shop, while 3 teammates are rushing the enemy spawn. You will lose either way. I don't know if multiple tripmines are even possible though.

9) I don't know

10) Against pilots, if you are ronin, and probably if your enemy titan is low on health. I don't think it is a good option too often. I feel like I do it too much, most titans will dish out more damage by reloading/firing weapons.




I got a question myself as well. What is the consensus on charge hacked charge rifle? I love that thing, but I see a lot of streamers still using the normal one. I feel like even if it did half the damage, it is stil easily worth it.

[wittyscorpion]

On charge rifle: Dumien used hacked one with A-Wall and the result seems to be quite impressive.

That leads me to wonder whether I should use A-Wall on my pilot.

[Pegasus Actual]

1) Cloak, Phase Embark, Sidewinder, Archer and Amped Weapons is how I like to roll.

2) It cuts time to get into your Titan big league. Believe me. Important to have if you're grabbing batteries.

3) There actually is a way. If you watch at the start of the round, calling cards pop up showing people doing their Titanfalls. Calling cards will also drop with the phrase "Core Earned" or something along those lines. It's tough to keep track of during the course of a round but I've found myself catching the message for my opponent in 1v1s and getting ready to avoid his core on occasion.

4) Yeah I think hitscan stuff bounces back hitscan style, and projectile stuff goes back at what seems like a slower speed than it comes at you. I'm not completely sure. Energy weapons just dissipate into the ether. I always aim return shots for Legion at the easiest to hit Titan, usually back at the same Legion but if he has his gunshield up I'll send a nasty surprise to a buddy if available. Returning Tracker Rockets is fairly tough, if they have a Particle Wall up I'll typically use it to try to break that. Might be something worth testing, to see how close the upgraded Vortex Shield gets with the standard complement of Tracker Rockets against the upgraded Particle Wall. Ion's weapons in general seem to do nothing against the Particle Wall with the exception of the Laser Core of course which absolutely melts it. I did notice the other day that when you catch Ronin's shotgun pellets it seems to get returned in a very wide spread.

5) As I said before, Legion is 'aim for his poor buddy' who is probably more of a threat than Legion to an Ion at any given time. And also it sews discontent. I mean who is going to happy with their teammate when they lose 3/4 of their health because Legion fed your Vortex Shield? I believe Confucious mentions such a use of Vortex Shield in The Art of War

6) Vortex blocks just about everything. It doesn't really hold up against core abilities though. Whereas Tone's Particle Wall seems to counter Salvo Core (Presumably since you're meant to up-and-over it Javelin Missile style). You can catch a little bit of a Salvo Core and return it but you still get overwhelmed by missiles. Actually I think I'll put that on my "to test" list. How much of a Salvo Core can you reflect if you happen to have full energy? My gut still tells me it's very little. As anytime an Ion has tried it against me they've had very little success.

7) Grand Cannon is 1.5x duration. You got to ask yourself what goes wrong with your Laser Core. If your opponents are getting around cover then extra duration isn't going to help you. And since you move so slowly when it's firing you have to consider that Grand Cannon might just be a way for you to get yourself killed. Just make sure you have the angle on your opponent, and you dump at least one Laser Shot into your opponent before hitting your Laser Core since it will recharge nicely while firing. Also if you land a full standard Laser Core, you do something like 12k damage, which is overkill except for full health Atlas and Ogre class titans. Though admittedly it's tough to land the full core if they are dashing and moving, but I feel like they're most likely to dodge that last 0.5x you add from Grand Cannon is it seems relevant. I do like the upgraded Vortex Shield but I've been running Entangled Energy lately. Recharging my energy level is all-purpose useful whereas upgrading Vortex Shield feels like it's mostly for counter-Legion and maybe somewhat counter-Tone. Also Entangled Energy plus using the ADS Split Beam mode on your Splitter Rifle lets you just dump-truck damage up close on a Titan's crit spot. I haven't really gotten much utility out of that outside of testing but if you can land a high percentage of crit shots you can use the whole magazine that way effectively tripling your damage output. It's more than a tickle at that point.

8) No they suck. They are almost impossible to not see. Only complete potatoes will walk through them without shooting them.

9) Haven't tested but my sense of truthiness agrees with you.

10) If you're not using Ronin, who does double the effective damage with melee (and like quadruple plus in Sword Core) assuming that the chart's melee cooldown times are more accurate than the damage numbers, then I would say melee is mostly a desperation maneuver outside of execution attempts. I guess it probably makes sense to punch an Ion who still has his Vortex Shield up? And maybe it's slightly better than hipfiring Plasma Railgun shots? I don't know but it seems in most cases there are better options. This isn't the original game where a well timed Big Punch Dumien-special will take off a huge chunk of health and send a Titan clear across the map.

As for Charge Hack, it's pretty good. Dumien uses it to great effect from behind an Amped Wall and it's super annoying in general. The fast recharge time makes it easier to time peeks to minimize your risk of death and makes it more forgiving to use in general. Since they have limited ammo maybe ammo capacity would be an argument against using Charge Hack but I don't think I've noticed if you get more shots with Charge Hack or not. I do know I've run out of ammo before using it, which is why I really like the Sidewinder + Archer combo. They are a perfect short + long range combo, and I believe you get infinite Sidewinder since it's a primary.

[Dumien]

The normal charge rifle is an all purpose monster.

I feel like the hacked charge rifle should only be used with the a-wall. If you aren't using A-Wall, I think mag launcher/archer are better alternatives.

I should also note that if you find a situation where you are up against a titan that has like a bar of health that KNOWS where you are and WHERE YOU ARE is on the GROUND... you actually have a chance to win if you quickly pop a-wall, bust out the sidewinder, and start spraying at the glowy bits. That combo melts WAAAY faster than the charge rifle hack. Problem is that it is super risky. I have a clip showing this I could maybe get around to posting tomorrow but XBOX storage problems mean I don't have access to it atm.

One thing I forgot to mention is that you can't overkill into the doomed state. Say the enemy titan has like 100 health left before doom. Even if you hit them with that mondo-supremo-killshot they are still getting that full doom bar. Sidewinder has a bunch of little shots that do a smaller of damage so you are going to naturally kill them faster when a titan is that close to death, because you aren't going to waste as much excess damage on the overkill rule.

This is one of the reasons it is almost always better to put a titan into the doomed state with Ion's energy orbs rather than the shoulder laser. You don't want any of that super sweet damage to go to waste.

[Pegasus Actual]

That's a good point about the doom health wall. I've noticed that as well but sometimes it's hard to notice in the heat of battle. Also it's a little incongruous when one little Kit Kat of health is the equivalent of the whole doom meter. I mean if there's still half a Kit Kat left using Laser Shot to doom isn't a bad idea. I think the only Titan I've really focused on that doom wall is Northstar. I've gotten a good feel for how much of a charge I need to get to the doom state and then charge up a full finishing shot as a follow-up.

[Dumien]

And it is true that once you get through that last kit kat you get a nice core boost... so maybe its better to just laser shot them if you are about to get your core.

This is the overthinking thread isn't it?!

[wittyscorpion]

On the long lasting laser core for Ion: I watched some stream archives of frothyomen using it, the most impressive part is the ability of finishing multiple Titans through a surprise flank. When an Ion with Grand Canyon hit your team's formation from the back or the side while you are not looking, it is basically game over (the following YT video is bookmarked at the start of an LTS game demonstrating this):

[qupie]

Sidewinder really is a gem. I also use it in the inside map (with the dome where you always drop your titan forgetting it is actually an inside area). Wallruning while shooting that thing is awesome, and so is prefiring into the small side hallways, especially in game modes like hardpoint and capture the flag. Add one of the very potent pistols for some flexibility.

I really can't understand why you like the archer though. Hitting crit spots with (hacked) charge rifle seems to do way more damage. You can shoot it like 3-4 times in the time you fire one archer.

Haven't really used A-wall. Seems like a noob ability to me (sorry )

[Will]

My LTS Pilot loadout:

Cloak or Phase Shift
Sidewinder (ext mag + fast swap)
Charge Rifle (hacked + fast swap)
Firestar
Phase Embark
Stealth Kit

As soon as you eject pop cloak to avoid the easy gooser. If the enemy isn't looking up to the sky to ping you, dump your sidewinder into him while ejecting/falling. Nail titans with your firestar if you ever get the chance, it sucks a full bar of health. Or they pop their e-smoke to remove it, opening them up to sneaky rodeo if you're brave enough (never rodeo if they have another titan nearby, you'll die. Rodeo best used when they are engaged with one of your teammates titans, and then you also have a nearby place to put the battery). Dump sidewinder at close range, ping them with charge rifle from long range. If the enemy titans ever direct their attention to you, pop cloak/phase and GTFO. Staying alive with their attention directed on you is better than dying to do an extra tick of damage, it will give your team a huge advantage. And if they aren't paying attention to you? Awesome, keep pinging away at their health

[mannon]

I've just unlocked tone and while the damage potential is definitely there I struggle in titan CQB. It just seems like there's no defense. I guess I'm just supposed to out DPS and burn other titans down quicker than they can get me?

In other news Scorch is my new BFF. I get more pilot and titan kills with it than any other kit. I still miss triple threat and this is very very different, but scorch is quite cool. I hate having no dash unless I giveup the nuke, though. Nuking people is just so satisfying...

Haven't tried Ronin yet as I'm terrible in CQB so I wanted to wait until I had more experience.

[qupie]

Scorch is the sleeper of this meta imho. p.s. he nukes anything with his flameshield, he doesn't need the nuke. Really, go for the dash. Nuke can only be used on the stryder classes without hampering the rest of the loadout imho.

To be honest, I think the titan meta is pretty good as is. Tone is very flexible, yes. Tone is one of the best, yes. But it is not THAT far off off the other titans. He is certainly not OP imho (at least on console).

If I would have to grade them to usability and strength I would do it like:

Tone and Ion are 10/10
Scorch is 9.5/10
legion and ronin 9/10
Northstar is 8.5/10

They are pretty gosh darn golly gee whiz close, and I am really afraid all the begging for a Tone nerf will end up with a worse meta. At least at this moment a mixed team almost always beats a team of only one titan. How much better can it get?

Nerf the salvo core a little, buff northstar core a bit and that should be it for now, let the dust settle.

What do you guys think about the meta and nerf/buffs?

[wittyscorpion]

Played through the entire gen 2 with Ion, going with Tone for gen 3, more thoughts.

I have to agree with frothyomen on Tone is OP for players who have passed the beginner stage (say after 2 gens), mainly due to its insane core ability, it's like push-to-win "auto delete button", sometimes multiple Titans. If you are fighting head on against a Tone with core, you are basically as good as dead.

Why? Because Tone can fire core to the sky and bring them down while shooting primary/pulse/missiles, she can also plant the shield to defend herself, that's just too hard to deal with.

Tone is also the only Titan that can get the core re-built from the core damage! One core hit can refill significant amount of core meter, allow her to chain cores together.

Furthermore: Tone's core followed by pulse+missiles is exceptional when fighting against multiple enemies.

Other Titans' core in comparison:

Ion: can build core fairly fast with laser poking, but is completely defenseless while using core. Without Grand Canyon it is only good for finishing one doomed Titan.

Scorch: awesome core ability, great for crashing multiple Titans, but very slow to build up unless you can sneak up on some enemy, have to work very hard to get there.

Legion: also awesome core, but unfortunately Legion is currently the underdog in alpha Titan competition vs. Ion/Tone. Other Titans can easily escape the encounter through either speed or defensive ability.

Ronin: the Titan explosion from the sword core kill can cause significant self damage. That's just unfortunate.

Northstar: the kid with a core that got laughed at by other bullies. Not only becoming vulnerable while using it, it also does puny damage in comparison.