Unpopular Opinion: Armor should not be a skill

[Chaoslord]

It's a serious barrier to entry enjoyment to have to play dozens of matches in a much squishier mech.

[salamatmahal]

Squishy is relative.

Some enjoy playing a bit squishier mechs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJG2Lm1Fgo

[SHARKPLUSH]

Yes, mine is a catapult with 50 LRM, one whole side of the mech has less armor.

[theraxc]

Experience-grind-requiring skill tree in general does not belong in an arena shooter.

[Tritol]

Armour being a skill is not the issue.

General lack of survivability and insanely low time to kill is the problem, that makes structure + armour skills absolutely mandatory and your first dozen or so matches feel like trash when even 100 ton atlas loses 3 arms, 6 side torsos, 5 weapons, dog and will to live from simple stray laser swipe that wasnt even aimed at you.

They could easily double the "health" of every mech over night and it would be barely noticeable.
Maybe after that you could pick some other skills too and sacrificing armour for free tonnage would actually be worth it.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Tritol:

... when even 100 ton atlas loses 3 arms, 6 side torsos, 5 weapons...

my friend, this isnt mortal kombat! lol.

[Phits]

Originally posted by Chaoslord:

It's a serious barrier to entry enjoyment to have to play dozens of matches in a much squishier mech.

The grind is supposed to help you play the game better. Learn to position with your team to avoid being the sole or better target and all that stuff. It did for me but I'm at a point now I have so much GSP built up I just fully skill any knew mech right off.

[Gronth_XXL]

While there are mechs that really need the armor and structure tree, mainly brawlers to stay in a face-to face fight, most of mechs actually dont really need it. Yes, you will be more tanky but at a cost. In general if you rely on strenght of your armor, in most cases even from low experience level, you are already done.

Also, most people have wrong idea on mechs class. Most "Heavy" mechs are heavy in terms of weaponry they take on board, not tankiness. That's Assault domain. If you wanna go juking it out with enemies in open fight while piloting a Dragon for example, you are generally gonna have a very short life-span in battle.

The whole shtick of the game is to get the positioning, learn to peek and utilize your weapon mounts properly. Thats why jump-jet equipped mechs used to be so oppresive.

[phero c]

Me doing 1000 damage and 6 kills in my locust

[Tritol]

You have it backwards, the reason why we have ppctard meta and everyone playing builds that start somewhere at 18km optimal range is exactly because leaving cover for half a second means you are dead.

Yes you can absolutely skimp on armour, if you play some stick mech you basically ignore 4 out of your 8 body parts, but the general rule of thumb is "why the hell would I want to have less health than my opponent". Same reason we dont run 50/50 split on rear armour (most of the time).

[salamatmahal]

Different people have different opinions.

I suspect I have more mechs running close to zero tonnage of armor than mechs with nearly full available armor allocated.

Edited to add: I'm a huge nerd, so I'll get specific. I believe I run more mechs with less than 2 tons allocated to armor than I run mechs that could not be mech-labbed to run 2 more tons of armor.

[Jaasrg]

Yes, I do like my ac20 chicken.

[ressenmacher]

Agreed. Not taking full armor hardening, and arguably full structure HP trees, puts you at a large disadvantage against an equivalent mech that does most of the time.

Optional-but-not-really skills are dumb because they work as a noob trap, they add clutter and tedium to the menus and leveling process, and don't improve build variety or personalization. In MWO, they also have the additional problem of lengthening the leveling process - more points to put in = longer time spent fighting against people who have a numerical advantage over you for no other reason than letting PGI push GSP/MC sales. Especially bad for newer players who don't have GSP and GXP saved up to cushion the starting-a-new-mech phase.

[Ace]

I'd say this about any of the heat/cooling/dps skills instead. Some builds are completely nonviable without them and even if you weren't using one of those builds it's still essential to grab them even before armor.

[Suut]

It basically comes down to what Gronth_XXL says (can't citate for some reason). It is all about the class and role of the mech and the tactics needed to play said mech. A sniper doesn't need the armor skill and a brawler does. Mechs with more then average structure benefits of the structure skill. A laser vomit build benefits from heat management. And so on. For me it is usually the last skill i fill if needed.

The whole skill tree idea is part of the way mwo generates revenue (which they were pretty bad at 10 years ago). You feel you are lacking on the battlefield and you feel the need to quirk up your mech. Buy GSP. While in fact you just need to know the pros and cons of the mech and which mech is just bad (and the best skill that is free).

The best skill you can have is knowledge. Know the layout of the maps and its terrain. Know the benefits and disadvantages of the fixed starting points. Use uav's to position and the movement of the enemy team. Press R. Communicate, it is a team effort not COD.

Play the game more often and you will know it is not about the skills in the skill tree you lack but it is something else.

[drugon]

I'd say - 100% of skills should not be a skill but that's how the system works in this game. And it works... well not that bad to my surprise counting that it have no sense (how on earth your projectiles should fly faster when you are more experienced?). At least it's better than it was back then with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ three variants of the same mech system.